“If you’re asking if he’d ever really cut me out of his will, the answer is, when it comes to the business, he’ll do whatever it takes to make a dime. And if that includes shutting me out and finding a new partner, he’d do that, too. But I’ve paid my dues for more years than I want to admit, so if he decides to give me the shaft, he’ll do it over my dead body.”
I shivered as the drizzle grew into a light shower, but I wasn’t sure if the chill in my bones was a reaction to the dampness in the air, or the venom I heard oozing from Cal Jolly’s voice.
_____
We followed Madeleine down a pedestrian walkway that threaded between a monstrous church on the left and a series of businesses on the right whose storefronts were locked behind sliding metal grates. The church looked older than the Great Flood, its stone façade blackened with soot, its lacy spikes and spires and arches resembling the buttercream frosting piped out of a pastry tube. We passed restaurants and bistros with immediate outside seating for customers who dared to brave the weather and sip their cafés au lait with a heavy dose of rainwater. We detoured into a narrow alley between two unassuming buildings and wandered into an Alice in Wonderland-like rabbit hole that opened up into a trove of unexpected treasures: a garden of pink hydrangeas tucked behind a wrought-iron fence. A half-timbered house painted the scarlet red and white of a Christmas candy cane. Arcane wooden doors built into a solid brick wall that was half-hidden beneath overhanging vines. By the time we circled around toward the ginormous cathedral whose steeple reached halfway to the stratosphere, it was raining so hard, we ran for cover beneath the columned portico of a furniture shop that stood opposite the church. Huddling together, we collapsed our umbrellas, flicked water off our raingear, and detached our earbuds so we could enjoy the symphonic effect of rain pounding eight-hundred-year-old pavers.
“If I’d known the weather was going to be this foul, I wouldn’t have come,” Virginia Martin complained to Madeleine. “You should cancel these walking tours when storms are predicted. Everyone is miserable. Why don’t you just take us back to the boat and be done with it?”
Madeleine shrugged, palms skyward. “The rain starts, and then it stops. If you go back, there is so much you will miss.”
“How many people demand to be taken back to the boat?” asked Virginia. “Show of hands.”
“Hey, she’s not authorized to do that,” protested Bernice, apparently incensed on Osmond’s behalf.
“You’re overstepping your authority, my pet,” Victor warned in a tight voice.
Virginia shot a defiant hand into the air. “Anyone else?”
“According to the weather radar, this thing should blow over in about five minutes.” A man standing near Cal held up his cell phone. “Did anyone else download a local weather app?”
“Five minutes is not so long, yes?” said Madeleine. “I will tell you about the Cathédrale of Notre-Dame while we wait.” She gestured toward the behemoth across the walkway. “The first cathedral on this site was consecrated in 1063, but a fire in 1200—”
“I thought Notre Dame was in Paris,” a woman called out.
“The very famous Notre Dame cathedral, with its storied gargoyles and hunchback, is in Paris,” said Madeleine, “but throughout France, there are many, many churches dedicated to Our Lady, and they are all called Notre Dame. Rouen’s cathedral was rebuilt after the fire and completed in 1250, but it underwent an expansion that lasted for three centuries, and even now—”
BONGbongbongbongbongBONGBONGbongbongBONGBONGBONG!
Madeleine spoke more loudly into her transmitter, channeling her voice with absolute clarity into the uncomfortable earbuds that everyone had removed from their ears. I caught a few informative phrases blasting through the wires dangling around my neck, but mostly, I heard the unrelenting clash and clang of bells.