A Dead American in Paris (The 3rd Republic Novels Book 2) by Seth Lynch

Author:Seth Lynch [Lynch, Seth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fahrenheit Press
Published: 2018-03-26T11:00:00+00:00

That oasis, hidden from the rest of Paris, stank to high heaven. One of the tenants owned a cat with considerable bowel problems. All the junk and broken glass had nothing on the cat shit. I dusted off my hat, glad to see it hadn't landed in anything foul. At that moment the sky, which had been cloudless, grew dark and sent a few hundred buckets of water in my direction.

The rain wasn't messing about so I took shelter in somebody's outhouse. The second it let up I made a dash for it, towards the shop, and took cover behind an up-turned wardrobe. From there I crept past the remains of a bathtub and a heap of rotting vegetables, right up to the shop.

The upper floors of the building were dark with their shutters closed tight. I edged my way along the building, nothing more than a shadow in the night merging with the debris and waste matter.

The shutters were rickety and provided plenty of cracks to spy through. One room looked like the stores for the shop's eponymous wood and charcoal. I moved on to the next set of shutters. There I got a view down a hallway into the shop itself. The third set revealed a large back room with its gas lights burning and a couple of tables pushed up against the wall. Implements were lined up on one of the tables. They looked like the tools you'd use if you wanted to re-stuff an armchair. There were no armchairs.

A metre or so away, in the yard, sat a couple of crates. I dragged them over and piled them up under the window. Then I used my pocket knife to enlarge a hole in the shutters. I got a much better view. Fantastic, only I'd seen everything there was to see in that room.

There wasn't much else to do but sit on the crates and sulk. Lights flickered on and off in the windows around the courtyard; people getting ready to go out, putting their kids to bed. The whole place was vibrant, with one exception - the building I was watching. I only stayed because I didn't fancy the climb back and those burning gas lamps must have been lit for a purpose. I climbed back on the crates on the off-chance that somebody had entered the room without me hearing them. Nothing. I sat down again.

'Fortunately,' I said to myself while sitting in the drizzly rain, uncertain if I'd ever be able to escape from that cat-dung covered junk yard, 'I have a lot of cigarettes with me.' I slipped the cigarette case from my pocket and pulled out a Gitanes. After lighting it and getting half-way though smoking it, I decided I shouldn't be smoking right outside the window. They could have noticed the flame from the match or the glow from the fag. I doubted they would have though, not with the lights on inside. Besides, the match was already out. I cupped my hand over the cigarette to shield the orange glow.

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