Page 7 of The Crimson Lily

I am in awe, like a little girl discovering a new land of colors and magic.

I walk the Boulevard Haussmann, stop to inspect each shop, each boutique, turn left at Rue Halévy, and stand, mouth agape, in front of the beautiful Palais Garnier.

I take a moment to admire its multi-era architectural blend and its two gold angelic statues watching over the street, but the gilded bronze color of the roof is what captures my gaze most.

I head down Avenue de l’Opéra and come face to face with an adjacent passage with stone arches that seems to lead to another mysterious place.

But it is no mysterious place. As I cross the passage, I end up on Place du Carrousel, right between the magnificent Louvre and the Tuileries Garden.

I knew it was the Louvre the second I saw the pyramid of glass and the huge line of people amassed at its foot.

It feels like my favorite place on Earth.

I’ve stood in that line many, many times before.

To my right, there is the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, the gateway to the long-gone Tuileries Palace.

I am no architect, but I definitely seem to have a taste for buildings with more history than history books.

When in Paris, I might as well do some tourism.

I walk the Tuileries until I reach the Place de la Concorde behind the Ferris wheel.

My shoulders literally drop at the overwhelming sight of this huge plaza of unending traffic, buses, people, noise…

?This is a little too much noise for me, yet it is still magical.

I haven’t felt so amazed in a very long time.

It’s like I’m rediscovering what it means to exist, to live, to walk the streets of this very City of Lights.

I raise my arms in the air, feeling the warm breeze and the sunlight on my face.

“I’m alive,” I murmur to myself.

In this moment, nothing matters. Just me and Paris.

But then, just like that, as I close my eyes, the reflection of a metallic object flashes in my thoughts. I can see it clearly, the glint of a gun. It is aimed at me.

My heart skips a beat.

There’s a gun pointed at me, and I’m being forced to walk.

I gasp. I lower my arms and take my face in my hands, a self-soothing motion.

When did this happen? Was it the Bratva?

No, this doesn’t feel like the Bratva. This reeks of something else, like the putrid scent of a vile stratagem is in the air.

This is definitely from before the accident, but it makes me doubt everything I know about said accident.

I had a gun aimed at my head. I fell on the pavement and hurt myself so bad that I lost my memory.

These two events could not be unrelated.

It’s just not possible. They have to be connected. What is the likelihood of the contrary?

The migraine returns, and it diverts my attention from the gun behind my eyes.

I check in my purse to see if I brought that bottled hotel water with me and thank my past self for being so well-prepared.

I gulp half of it, then check my phone. 1 p.m. In an hour, I will meet with Béatrice, and hopefully get answers to all of this.

A bus ride and a five-minute walk—that’s all it took to get from Concorde to Columbus Café near the Luxembourg station.

I’m early. Half an hour early, to be exact.

Oh well, I’ll just order a coffee or something.

The waitress greets me, and I sit on the left of the terrace, close to the street, so Béatrice, wherever she comes from, can immediately spot me.

I thought I’d be anxious, excited, afraid, apprehensive, concerned.

I feel none of that. I am numb again. My mind is absolutely blank.

Perhaps because of the memory that came back to me.

The point of a gun. I have no idea what to expect from this meeting, but I so darn want it to happen.

I have to see Béatrice again. She has to tell me everything she knows.

“Liliana?” a woman calls.

I hear her voice next to me, but I did not see her arrive. Now the anxiety is here. Now my palms are sweaty and my heart is racing. I don’t dare look, but I have to.

She stands by me, waiting for me to make a move.

I collapse. No, actually, I rise to my feet and wrap my arms around her. I am so happy to see her, so relieved that tears start to flow. I can’t control the words that come out next.

“Thank goodness I found you, Béatrice. You have no idea what it’s been like.” I admit to all the feelings I’ve been hiding behind a blank wall of numbness.

At first, her body is frozen, but she begins to relax when she hears my sobs, taking me in her arms and speaking softly to me.

“I don’t know what to say,” she concedes. “I think we have a lot to talk about.”

Her voice, her French accent, sounds like home.

She takes a seat in front of me, orders herself a soymilk cappuccino, and looks at me.

Her round glasses are still the same. She wears a blue blouse that fits perfectly with her golden-brown skin.

Her braided hair is tied in a ponytail. She crosses her arms on the table while searching my eyes, perhaps searching for answers to her own questions. I figure she has many.

“So, you have amnesia?” she asks me directly, not waiting for me to speak first.

Hence, I begin to explain—and I explain everything: the accident, the week at the hospital, the memory loss, the pieces of my life’s puzzle that I found over the weeks.

“I don’t remember the accident,” I say. “Sometimes I get fragments, images, flashes. That’s how I remembered you. I was on the plane, and I suddenly remembered everything about you!”

Throughout my story, she keeps nodding. I’m not sure what she’s thinking, but she has this calculative look in her dark-brown eyes. I figure she is evaluating the truth of my words.

I tell her about the Bratva and the dagger of glass. She has my full and undying trust; I have this gut feeling that I can put all of it in her hands and she will never ever spoil it.

“Wait.” She doesn’t let me finish my train of thought. “The Russian mafia?”

She doesn’t ask that in surprise, more in search of some confirmation. She leans back in her chair. The cappuccino appears, and Béatrice thanks the waitress, then scries my eyes again.

“They want something with this dagger, and it’s supposedly here, with William in Paris.” I continue my explanation, but saying William’s name out loud feels wrong. “Also, holding that dagger in my hands is the only thing I remembered right after the accident.”

Béatrice sighs. She doesn’t touch her cappuccino. She’s looking to the street now, deep in thought. I have to say something before its silent for too long.

“What happened to you?” I ask. “Why are you back in Paris? And…” I really don’t want to ask her about us because I don’t want to hear the answer. I just assume the worst, but I have to ask, or this will eat me up for the rest of my life. “Why have you never called?”

She looks back at me. Now she has tears in her eyes. She lays her hand on mine and bites her lower lip. She wants to speak, but it looks like she first wants to make sure to keep the tears in.

“I called, Lili,” she confesses, her voice failing her. “I called and called.” She takes a deep breath. She really doesn’t want to cry. “William fired me. He accused me of publishing exam papers, saying you were the one who reported it.”

I don’t know how to react to that. I know Béatrice would never have done that.

And if she had, I would have never gone behind her back and gotten her fired.

I would have asked her why she’d done it, and tried to figure a way through such a mess together.

But I would never ever have snitched on my best friend.

“Losing my job meant losing my green card,” she continues. “I canceled my rent and took the next plane back to France. I called you over and over that day. June 16. You never answered. So, I figured you didn’t want to talk to me anymore.”

She’s doing a much better job at not crying than I am.

“I figured William made up a lie to fire me,” she says, pursuing her side of the story. “You know that man was a fucking racist. I guess I just assumed he’d pulled you into this and turned you against me.”

Now I have to take her hand in mine. “That would have never worked,” I assure her with my whole heart. “William could have never turned me against you.”

Hearing and saying William’s name, my boss, makes me cringe again. This is the third time the mention of the man brings up this nasty feeling in me.

“I wasn’t sure anymore when you didn’t return my calls,” she says as she closes her eyes.

Now she’s crying, but she soon starts chuckling. Her chuckle turns into a beautiful laugh, like a cheerful dove soaring from ground to sky.

“So, the Bratva got you here?” She can’t even finish her sentence without giggling. She seems in a state of both incredulity and elation.

I start laughing as well. It sounds too crazy to be real. “I know, right? I don’t even remember how I got to this point. I just know it’s all linked to that dagger of glass.”

Béatrice regains her calm. She clears her throat a few times before speaking again. “That’s the Kinzhal Strastey you’re talking about.”

Oh shit! That name sounds so familiar. It echoes in my mind and triggers my memory center. It’s like a déjà vu, but with words.

“We found it together,” Béatrice adds with a small smile of pride. “We’d been searching for it for months. We found it in a coffin off an excavation site in Siberia.”

I clench her hand with newborn enthusiasm. I have to know all about it. I want to hear the entire story. I want to know where it came from and why it’s so valuable. Béatrice leans over, coming closer to me as if she’s going to tell me a secret. I join her, and we are so close we could be kissing.