Cabenal read my statement, occasionally stopping to glare at me. Afterward, when the statement was printed out and I signed it, she handed me my cell phone and said I was free to go.

I thought: free to go where? I wasn’t ready to go home, to face my tenuous teaching job and no art gallery, to leave behind so many things unanswered, to leave Smith.

On my way out, I stopped at what appeared to be the sergeant’s station, a uniformed gendarme manning a desk, constantly on and off the phone and looking harried. Clearly, it was a busy morning for crime in Paris. In between calls, I sympathized with him in my best French. I kept up the banter and false camaraderie, then very casually asked where they had taken my “partner” John Smith. I hoped he was too busy to ask for an ID, and he didn’t. He took another call, skimmed through a mess of papers on his desk, and said, “Hospital Saint-Jacques,” then went back to his call.

There were dark clouds over Paris as I hurried down the street, turned the corner, found a bench, and made the call. “I’m looking for a patient, an American, John Smith.” I was put on hold for so long I was startled when a voice came back on the line. The woman asked if I was a relative and when I didn’t think fast enough to say yes, she said she could not give me any information.

“I just want to know if he’s okay?”

A gap of silence, then, “All I can tell you is that Mr. Smith is no longer in critical care.”

“So he’s doing better?”

“I’m sorry, that is all I can tell you,” she said, then hung up.

I called Cabenal, and it went straight to voicemail. I left a message asking about Smith’s condition. Reminded her we had a deal, that she’d agreed to let me know if Smith survived. I sat on the bench for maybe twenty minutes, waiting for her to call me back, then walked the Paris streets for a couple of hours, but my phone never rang, and I knew what that meant.

I wasn’t sure where I would be sleeping that night, but I knew what I wanted, and it would not be hard to find.

78

How many bars had I hit?

I remembered the first, a hotel bar on Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and not five-star, where I picked up a woman or she picked me up, married she said, her husband “un bum.” I told her I was a bum too, the two of us laughing like that was the funniest comment ever, making out in between shots of whiskey, not a pretty picture I’m sure. At some point, I obviously left, because I was in another bar, this one a couple of notches lower than the first, where the bartender cut me off after three, maybe four drinks. I left—actually I was led out by the bartender, swearing at him the whole time—Connard!—T’es un salaud!—Va te faire foutre!—not my finest performance, though I remember feeling proud that I knew all those French curse words. I realized too late that the third place was a gay bar and could have scored big—I had a vague memory of some guy in leather licking my face. After that, I couldn’t remember much. It was clear I’d thrown up, though I had no memory of it, only the telltale reek of vomit.