Never mind that his trucks were for civilian use. Never mind that he sold just as many to the French. Never mind that those trucks helped deliver food to Paris. In his friends’ eyes, he was a collaborator. And he had to remain a collaborator in their eyes so he could remain a collaborator in German eyes. That’s why they trusted Paul with information. Information he fed to the US military.
Paul tromped north on the boulevard Saint-Michel.
The only American expatriates who would see him socially were an unpleasant assortment of opportunists, socialites, and fascists. Paul had even stopped attending church, tired of the whispers and glares.
The Odéon Théâter rose in the distance. The Métro station couldn’t be far.
Josie’s skipping turned to walking, and the stories stopped as she gawked at unfamiliar cafés and publishing houses. He’d never taken her to the Left Bank, home to the bohemian crowd—artists and writers and theater folk.
Paul passed the theater, built of creamy stone, and he paused. No sign of a subway station, and half a dozen streets ran off the plaza in spokes.
He flagged down a middle-aged woman and asked directions. She waved toward the spokes and went her way.
“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.” Paul headed down the closest street.
“Feenee?” Josie said.
Paul laughed. “No, it’s an old rhyme.” He recited it and told her how children used it to choose things.
“Like books?” Josie pointed to a store.
In the window display books with titles in English lay surrounded by spring leaves. By the door, a red US Embassy certificate labeled the store as owned by a neutral American, protecting it from German requisition. Overhead, the sign read Green Leaf Books.
“That’s right,” Paul said. A friend had once mentioned an English-language bookstore in the Latin Quarter. As a subscriber to the American Library in Paris, he’d never needed to go elsewhere.
“Can we go in, Daddy? Please?” Brown eyes melted him like chocolate on a warm day.
Madame Coudray had said Josie didn’t have many books for a girl her age.
“Let’s look inside,” Paul said.
Josie hopped a few times, and Paul opened the door.
The store smelled of old books and woodsmoke. A counter stood on the wall to his left, flanked by bookshelves and magazine racks. Photographs hung over the counter—pictures of authors, it looked like. Bookcases jutted out from the wall to his right, and bookshelves covered every wall, even under the windows.
On the shelf before him, books ran in a proper row for half a shelf, then a stack of books on their sides. More books rested in front of the row, on top, wherever they fit. New books with crisp dust jackets stood beside older titles with spines shiny from wear.
More books covered a table by the window, circled by two mismatched wooden chairs and a stuffed armchair.
“I like it here,” Josie said in a hushed voice.
“Bonjour, monsieur—ah!—et mademoiselle!” A petite young lady with light brown hair approached wearing a green suit. She clapped her hands together and beamed at Josie.
Josie shrank behind Paul’s legs.
He removed his fedora. “Bonjour, madame.”
“Miss Girard is my name. Is this your first time visiting my store?” she asked in flawless English. “I haven’t seen you before.”
“It is.” Paul smiled. Pretty lady. And smart. She’d pegged Paul as an English speaker in two short words.
“Please make yourselves at home. Green Leaf Books has been a light in Paris for twenty years.” Her hand fluttered toward the shelf, her fingers like feathers on a bird’s wing. “May I help you find something?”
“Yes, for my daughter, Josephine—Josie for short. She’s four.”
Josie’s head rubbed against Paul’s trouser leg as she nodded.
Miss Girard gave him an amused smile, her eyes bright and expressive. Light brown, maybe hazel. “Four is a nice age for girls. The nicest, I think. Does she—she looks like the sort of little girl who likes kitty-cats.”
