Chapter Three (Benjamin, Age 28)

And then we were out on the street, walking briskly through the narrow Paris streets. Pretty much every building in the whole neighborhood was white. Maybe the cafe in the bottom floor was painted a different color, but there was a lot of white, including the giant cathedral on the hill.

“It’s called La Basilique du Sacré Cœur, Benjamin. Perhaps later, we can walk up the steps and get a caricature drawn,” Camille said when I asked its name.

“You’re kidding, right?”

She shot me a very French sort of look. I never knew what they meant, but they always made me feel like an asshole.

We came to a small wine shop on the rue de chigla-- something extremely long and French.

“It’s closed,” I said. “Guess you’ll have to stock up somewhere else.”

She pulled a set of keys out of her jacket pocket. “Now it’s open.”

She opened the door and led me inside. It was pretty charming, and small, like everything in Paris. The floor was wooden planks, and the walls were wooden panels, covered in shelves and wrought iron racks of wine. There was a counter with an espresso machine and one of those hanging racks with glasses dangling upside down.

“So when you said ’get to work,’ you meant your job... at this wine shop?”

“Yes. What did you think I meant?”

“Well, you said it so, y’know, dramatically, I thought you meant we were going to go to some lab at the university or something. Anything, really. Is this your job?”

Camille shrugged. If you’ve never found indifference sexy, you’ve never been friends with a brilliant Frenchwoman. If you could call us friends.

“It’s a job. I work here, when I feel like it. I tutor, when I feel like it,” she said as she popped open a bottle of red.

“Okay, it’s not even 11:30. This is your second bottle,” I said, even though I was sure she’d have some kind of dry response.

“I didn’t finish the first bottle.”

And there is was.

“So you just work here and ’tutor’ your boy toy when you feel like it? Isn’t this neighborhood kinda really expensive?”

“I save money by replacing meals with wine; the wine is free after all. You remember my uncle has a vineyard, no?”

“I know. You used to supply some pretty rockin’ lab parties.”

“Back when I had access to a lab.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, I said it before.”

“I feel your, eh, contrition. Would you like a glass?” she asked, pouring two before I answered.

“I mean, as long as we’re fucking around, sure.”

She slid the glass towards me across the bar, smiling, with one eye hidden behind her curls. I was playing her game, and she knew it. Sometimes I felt like we were all playing her game. She was always two steps ahead. I loved science. I loved designing experiments, and the way physics could tell you how to move from point A to point B. But I worked for all of it. While my roommate in the dorms was washing out because of his MMO addiction, I was grinding through endless calc homework. I mean, I had fun. I went out most weekends, and would have a puff off a joint during a study break, but I worked. Camille did less work than any grad student I’d ever met, but she was still always two steps ahead.

“Sometimes, Benjamin, patience is required.”

“Uh huh.”

“When one is rich, one learns the value of waiting. When one is constantly hungry, immediate action is always required. However, when one has resources stored, one can wait to take action until it becomes most advantageous. To wit –”

“To wit? Really? That sounds a little bit English, y’know.”

“– To wit, we come here, open the shop, and we wait. Do you know why?”

“I do not.”

“Because I have a regular customer.”

“Okay, let’s hit the pause button on this thing you’re doing, because you’re clearly leading me down a road and you have some whole big point. When one is rich? Since when are you rich?”

“Clever boy,” she said. I blush easily; it’s part of why I have a beard. “I have a small fortune, yes.”

“How small?”

“At present, a little over twelve million Euros.”

“What. The. Fuck, Camille.”

She just sipped her wine and smirked at me.

“You haven’t had a similar offer?”

“Offer from who?”

“Whom, Benjamin. Mikkelsen, of course. After you told him I sabotaged the equipment and destroyed our data, after he sabotaged my entire career and I ended up exiled to Paris with nothing but time on my hands and a seething resentment, Mikkelsen decided it would be wise to buy my silence, my cooperation. He first offered ten million, but I talked him up to fifteen, and had him inform me of the best ways to structure the income to avoid tax.”

“I dunno what to say, so I’m gonna go with ’what the fuck’ again, mostly.”

“Think about it, Benjamin.”

“I can’t. Think module, disengaged.”

“Mikkelsen is not an idiot. He knows that he has to sacrifice me to maintain his standing within the scientific community, but he also knows that I’m smart enough to still be an asset to this rather bizarre project we now know will come to fruition. He may have pretended to believe that I simply went mad and sabotaged one of the world’s most expensive telescopes, but given his funding of our endeavor he would certainly hold out hope that something else was afoot. But of course, the very rich, they play both sides. Donate to the socialists and the conservatives because they have the resources to ensure they will maintain their influence no matter what the scenario. So, he bought my silence, my compliance, for fifteen million Euro.”

“And you took it.”

“Of course I took it. I knew that any traditional path to my career was over, and that Mikkelsen had he resources to do much worse than buy my silence if he so desired. The money took the edge of the bitterness, which was what he wanted, as well as what I wanted. You know I love science. Or do I love science? Perhaps. What I love is to play the piano, but I am shit at it. I’ll never be Chopin, or Debussy, or even Helene Grimaud. Science is where I excel. The paths of particles, theoretical infinite surfaces, flux integrals: all of these things make sense to me, as sure as eating and sleeping. But I have been forced out of the institutions of science, so my choices, simply, are to have the money, or to not have the money. So I took the money.”

“So this whole time you’ve been a millionaire --”

“Multi-millionaire, technically.”

“And you still haven’t spoken to me in two years?”’

“Two years, three months, and perhaps a week.”

“Technically.”

“Oui.”

“Why?”

“Because you sold me up!”

“You mean out?”

“Whatever direction you sell people in English, sacre merde!”

“All I did was tell him what happened! What else was I supposed to do? You broke a billion-dollar telescope and deleted all our data. We all thought you went crazy!”

“Which is precisely what Mikkelsen told my department head to force me out, and he made certain that every major physics department in the world knew of my supposed condition so that no one would take me on. He did, of course, let them know that he felt responsible for my actions, which was why he was paying for only the best psychological counseling.”

“Oh shit, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”

“It was. That’s why I took his shush money.”

I didn’t correct her.

“Camille...”

“Drink your fucking wine, Benjamin, we’re going to be here for a while.”

I drank some of the wine. It was good. I don’t know wine. “How long?”

“Almost always between one and a half and two hours,” she said. “Follow my lead and try not to be an idiot.”

She wouldn’t tell me what was going on, and I didn’t want to push it. I figured I was lucky enough just to be in a room with her again, drinking wine and talking about science. It wasn’t always at lunchtime back in the day, but, hey it felt good to be in Paris drinking wine with a beautiful woman after years of grad student exile. No one tells you, but until you’re a post-doc, you probably won’t have a window. Or be above ground. I spend a lot of time in basements.

We were well into our second bottle of Camille’s Uncle’s Bordeaux when a fifty-something man wandered into the shop. He was pretty handsome, actually: salt and pepper hair, a long coat, even though it really wasn’t cold out, and a pinstripe vest. I was wearing some made-in-America blue slacks and a button down shirt with a map of the interstate highway system on it.

“Ah, Gerard!” Camille a little bit shouted even though she was right next to my ear.

“Bonjour,” said the older man, who must have been Gerard.

“Parlez Anglais, oui?”

“Oui,” he said.

“Gerard, this is my old friend Benjamin.”

“Oh, now we’re old friends.”

She shushed me in French, which amused the old guy.

“He has come all the way from America to visit me. Would you like to have a glass of wine with us?”

He did, and took up a nearby stool. Camille fetched a fresh bottle, and poured us each a healthy glass. She started making small talk, touching my arm, asking me to chime in, laughing charmingly when I couldn’t think of anything clever to add to the conversation. Whoever this Gerard guy was, he was clearly a regular. We had another glass of wine, and a third. I was getting a little dizzy. I was still early afternoon, and I only had a chocolate croissant and a cafe au lait for breakfast.

I was starting to wonder whether there was a point to any of this when Camille put her hand on Gerard’s arm.

“Gerard,” she said, “have I told you I met Benjamin here? We worked together on the most interesting project.”

“Uh, Camille,” I said, but she charged ahead.

“We were trying to learn how to send information through time. Until there was, you know, an incident. I was thrown out of the group by this insane asshole of a Danish billionaire who discredited me and destroyed my career. Only now, Benjamin can corroborate that I was right, and --”

“Camille, what the hell...”

“-- and I plan to prove I was right and make that son of a bitch answer to me personally.”

“She’s had a lot to drink,” I said to the guy, whose eyes were darting back and forth between Camille’s angry crazy-person face and her grip on his arm.

“So I want you, Gerard, to call your employer, and make sure that Monsieur Mikkelsen knows that the two of us are coming to visit him. Tomorrow. At his estate in Copenhagen. And we had best be welcome, unless he wants some very noisy protests appearing at his corporate gates. Do you understand me, Gerard?”

“This is my fault,” I said. “We started drinking very early.”

Gerard said something in French, which I think was about him having to leave.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, but Camille tightened her grip on his sleeve.

“You think you’re subtle, Gerard? You think I haven’t noticed you? I open the shop inconsistently, but you are always here, not too long after I open, in the slowest part of the afternoon, hanging around, drinking, talking, asking me about my life.”

She said something about him watching her, I think. My French is not great, and I was kinda drunk, and Camille was really fucking angry. Like, foaming at the mouth sort of angry.

“I know you work for him,” she said. “I know you’re watching me for him, so you call. You call and you make sure he knows that we are coming, or I’m going to break this bottle over your fucking face, you Pinkerton piece of shit.”

“Pinkerton?” was all I could say.

“You think I don’t notice you, coming in here every day I’m open. I’ve seen you, waiting across the street in a hat and glasses for an hour so you’re not following me in.”

Gerard was starting to look as freaked out as I was, but I wasn’t sure if that was because she was right or because she had completely lost her shit.

“I’ve followed you, Gerard. I know you don’t live in this arrondissement. I’ve followed you to your office, so don’t you dare fucking lie to me; I have neither the time nor the patience. Call him, or your superiors. Now.”

There was a pause. Gerard stared at Camille, who had major crazy eyes. I didn’t even realize I was holding breath until I had to gasp for air. After they both looked at me like I was from Mars, Gerard looked back at Camille and said, “D’accord.”

That’s French for okay; that one I learned from Camille.

Then he pulled out his cell phone, and called someone. The office, I guess. He was speaking in rapid French. I think I heard the word for client, but mostly because it’s the same in English, give or take an accent. I also thought I might have heard the word for spider but that was probably wrong.

He hung up. “He’ll get your message.”

“Thank you. Now get out of my shop, you lying shit.”

Gerard got up and headed for the door. “Je suis desolée,” he said. “It was only a job.”

After he left, Camille topped up her wine and started swiping at her phone.

“You just threatened to bash that guy, that spy, over the head with a bottle and he apologized to you on his way out. Are you insane, or magic, or both? Also what in the holy fucking shit is happening?”

She took a long sip from her glass.

“Everyone of note in the scientific community already thinks I’m crazy, and, since I also have no fear of losing my job in my uncle’s wine shop, I therefore have nothing to lose by acting crazy when it suits my purposes.”

“Jesus, Camille.”

Now It was my turn for a long sip.

“I was right, you realize. He was a spy. He has been a regular customer for over a year. In here, making charming small talk, asking me about my day, waiting for something to happen. Now has succeeded in his job.”

“Yeah, total win-win,” I said.

“Don’t feel bad for Gerard, Benjamin. It was nearly two months before I began to suspect him. Prior to that, I thought I was making a friend, but it turns out he works for a large investigation firm which has offices not only in Paris, but in London, Munich, and Copenhagen.”

“Home of our illustrious benefactor.”

“Precisement,” she said. “It wasn’t enough for Mikkelsen to destroy my career and reputation, he has to infiltrate my life with false friends to make sure I’m not saying anything he doesn’t want said.”

“I guess you should feel lucky he didn’t decide to have you killed. He definitely has hide-the-bodies money.”

“I’m too valuable to him to be killed.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, brah,” she said, in her horrible, mock-American accent. It made me see why she would be annoyed when I tried speaking French. “Mikkelsen may be eccentric in the extreme, but he understands the complexity of the implications of our research. He’s smart enough to know that I may prove useful in the future.”

“Still don’t know what the hell he wants out of the research though. He’s worth twelve billion dollars, it’s not like he needs to go back in time and bet on the World Series or some shit.”

“Twelve billion Euro.”

“What’s that in dollars?”

“A little over fifteen billion at the moment, I believe.”

“Well shit.”

“Shit indeed.” Camille held up her phone, and flipped the screen at me briefly. You know, when people point their phone at you to show you that they did something, but you can’t actually tell because they don’t hold it up long enough for you to see what’s on the screen, which is probably back to the lock screen already anyway and it’s really pointless. She did that thing. “I booked us a train to Copenhagen. We leave in a few hours. We need to pack the essentials.”

“How much wine are you packing?”

“A lot,” she said. “You can’t get good wine in Denmark.”

And then we were on a train of Copenhagen.

Next Chapter: Chapter 4 (Camille, Age 27)