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a taxi and I said we had a car service we use and there was a driver available. So she took the car. You want me to get the driver?”
    I gave him some money. He extracted a whistle from his overcoat, blew it, waved a car over. The driver got out and thumbed through his receipts.
    â€œI can take you,” he said.
    Since I was a kid, I always wanted a look at Paris. Outside the car window, as the driver sped across town, it was white and chilly, the freezing rain still falling. I tried to lose the feeling that someone was following me, that I was like a rat in a lab cage and I didn’t know what the test was.
    On the other side of the river, in a nondescript area, the car pulled up in front of a modern five-story apartment building.
    â€œI dropped her here,” the driver said. “Your friend. This is where I left her. She was a nice lady. Shall I wait?”
    â€œNo,” I said, paid him, got out and checked the street sign: Boulevard Pasteur.
    On the building’s intercom were numbers but no names. I didn’t know who the hell I was looking for. Ihuddled under a bus shelter close by, away from the sleet that came down in sheets. I waited.
    I was bone cold by the time a woman came down the street towards the building, carrying a bag of groceries in one hand and a pile of books in the other arm. She stopped at the building, fumbled with her keys, got the heavy door open, and held it with her foot. There was a picture of Lily in my wallet – Lily before she was beaten and bruised – and I ran at the woman with the groceries and stuck it in her face. I said I was looking for the woman in the picture. I was pretty incoherent and I figured she’d slam the door in my face. But she only put her bag down on the sidewalk and said in a southern drawl, “I know her. Yes. Who are you?”
    In a café down the street from Martha Burnham’s place, she ordered soup and chicken and a glass of red wine.
    â€œI’m sorry. I missed lunch. I want to eat something before I go to work and I’ve only got an hour.”
    She had dark hair, a nice, placid face, wide hips, no makeup. About Lily’s age. She was wearing a sleeveless down vest, a black turtleneck, black skirt and boots. She picked up the wine glass when the waiter brought it and drank the wine greedily. A red stain appeared on her mouth.
    â€œIs she all right, Lily, I mean?” she said.
    â€œHow come you’re asking? You’ve seen the papers?”
    She shook her head. “I don’t read the papers. I hate the news. I was so upset not to see her again, you know. I’ve waited twenty years to see Lily and we had a drink Tuesday and she told me about you, so I knew your name.So we make another date, she never shows up. I didn’t know where she was staying. I tried a number I had in New York and got a machine. So I figured something happened.” She put her wine glass down and cracked her knuckles. “Then I decided she forgot. But something did happen, right? You said the papers.”
    â€œShe got hurt. You knew her in New York?”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œWhat?”
    Martha said, “Did she have an accident?”
    â€œNo. Someone attacked her.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œI don’t know yet.”
    â€œIs she OK?”
    â€œNo.” I told her what I could. “How did you know her?”
    â€œI want to see her.”
    â€œNot right now. We’ll go together if you want, but later.”
    â€œIs she conscious?”
    â€œNo. I need your help.”
    She said, “I knew her in college, then in New York. I was from a little town in Tennessee so I was awed by Lily who was from New York City and knew about jazz and food and had met writers even when she was in high school. For me she was New York City. We kept in touch for a while, but I moved to France.”
    Her soup arrived and Martha spooned it up carefully. Her honeyed voice still had vestiges of a southern