“Of course I can,” Lucie says. “But are you going to tell us where we’re going?”
“Start out on the A10 toward Le Mans and stop there for gas.”
In the trunk of the car is a monogrammed suitcase, a vintage Louis Vuitton trunk, and something long and unwieldy covered with a sheet. We have to do some Tetris to make everything fit.
“Shit.” Colette jerks her hand back from the sheet. “I nearly sliced off a finger.”
“Is that an actual sword?” Lucie asks as the mysterious object is revealed to be none other than Tipu Sultan’s antique weapon.
“Shove everything in,” I say. “And get ready for more surprises. She’s full of them.”
Stella is asleep within minutes, and I can’t help but wonder if all her new energy is a front. Was the frail, beleaguered widow whose apartment I cleaned for months the real Stella? Or is she this dynamo? Maybe both are a creation.
I close my eyes and let Paris fade into the background. We don’t leave the city that often. Money is tight, and besides, you could spend your whole life in Paris and not see everything within the city limits. Why go anywhere else?
It takes about an hour to get through the industrial wasteland on the outskirts of the city. Then we roll through the Paris suburbs to reach the bucolic fields and vineyards that the Impressionists made famous. As instructed Lucie stops for gas when we reach Le Mans.
“We have to wake her up. I have no idea where we go from here.”
I shake Stella awake. Confusion takes over her face the moment she opens her eyes. I suddenly worry she might not even remember this morning.
But it only takes her a beat to recover her senses. “Are we at Le Mans?”
“We are. We’re getting gas.”
“Lovely. Is anyone hungry?”
Colette and I shake our heads. “Tell us again where we’re going?”
“I told you. To the island.”
“Does it have a name?”
“It does, but no one ever uses it. There are many small islands right off the coast that have been used as ports for commercial shipping, for fishing, for love affairs and escaping reality. Maxwell took me to this one on our honeymoon and we tried to return every year on our anniversary. There’s a ferry right before sunset, so let’s step on it, shall we?”
Stella rustles around in her handbag and pulls out a small Moleskine notebook. She scribbles down some directions and then immediately dozes off again.
“Are we crazy?” Colette whispers to me as the sun starts to sink toward the horizon.
“Did you think it was crazy when you left your husband behind and moved to Paris on your own?”
“Yes. I thought I was absolutely insane, and I was terrified.”
“Are you glad you did it?”
“Every single day.”
“Then, yes. I think this is crazy, but sometimes the crazy choice is the right one.”
“I second that,” Lucie says in a stage whisper.
We make it to the coast before sunset and as Stella promised, a beat-up passenger ferry is being tossed about by the waves in the harbor.
“The car isn’t going to fit on that.”
“We’ll leave the car here. It will be fine,” Stella says through a yawn at the same time as she lights a cigarette. Before we head to the docks, Stella covers her hair with a drab brown scarf and dons a large pair of prescription glasses that are the opposite of chic.
“Are you in disguise?” I ask her.
