Autumn in Paris: One

The door opened with a jingle, closed with a slam. Fragments of the cold Paris night wafted in with the cigarette smoke, the smell of exhaust, someone's midnight marijuana fag. "Hey Franny," said the newcomer, swinging himself onto a stool at the counter. "Pour me a glass, won't ya?"

"I'd be glad to," she retorted, wiping her hands on the threadbare towel around her shoulders, "if you'd tell me what you want once in a while."

The man grinned. "What'd I have last time?"

"Vintage French," she said. "1937 Burgundy. I've only got one glass of it left. Care for it?"

"Aw, don't pull that shit on me, Franny. You never run out a drink."

She gave him a shadowy smile, reaching behind her in one smooth, practiced motion, whisking the amber bottle off the shelf and tipping the remainder of its contents into a beer glass. "That was the motto a year ago," she told him, sliding the glass across the table to him. "I've fallen on hard times. Seven hundred woolongs, please."

The newcomer handed her a sweaty palm full of change, holding onto her hand a little longer than he needed to. She let him. When he reluctantly turned back to his drink, she moved away, slinging the towel from her shoulders and onto the bar to mop up traces of water, spilled wine, sweet and sticky margarita drippings. She could sense him watching her between sips of the drink and fixed her eyes instead on the three or four patrons who were still here, staring dejectedly into their drinks or slumped forward on their tables, snoring softly.

There was a quiet thump behind her, a glass set on the counter with a flourish. "Hit the spot, Franny," he told her. "I've got a deal to make so I have to be off. Nice seeing ya."

She finally turned to look at him, giving him the same shadowy smile. "Same for you," she said. "Don't get yourself killed now."

"You know me better than that," he grinned at her, sticking a cigarette between his teeth. "Least, you should."

She folded her arms thoughtfully. "I should," she agreed. "I should be doing a lot of things since Papa died. Or maybe I quit doing them because of it."

The man took a deep drag of the cigarette, blew it out and turned to the door. "You take care of yourself," he said.

She spent the next hour half-dozing with one eye on the door, just in case someone happened to drag himself or herself in for one last drink before closing time. But no one came, and she set to the task of waking the drunk and evicting the stupid, washing the dishes and posting the closed sign on the door before turning out the lights.

She had taken two steps toward the stairs, up to her room on the second floor, when the sense hit her that she was being watched.

"Who's there?" she rasped. Careless, she'd left her gun upstairs, under the bed - or no, next to the computer - or -

"You're called Franny?" the voice said. A man, she thought with a burst of dismay, and close, too. She'd kicked them all out, she was sure of it, and she'd even checked the back twice to make sure no one was sleeping on top of the boxes.

"I'm called that to my friends," she told it, spinning around and wishing her eyes would adjust faster to the darkness. "Which obviously you're not, since you didn't know. What can I do for you? We're closed."

"I'm looking for a Françoise," the voice said. "I was told you might be her."

She began to feel more annoyed than frightened. "This is Paris," she said, "which is a larger part of France, which has more than a million women named Françoise, I'm sure."

"The Françoise I'm looking for," the man continued, "had a father who passed away three years ago, has unfinished school records at the French Technological Academy and an unfinished internship with the ISSP, and bartends in a little run-down place fifteen minutes from Montmartre. Now even with the million or so Françoises in France, I think only one of them fits that description."

She narrowed her eyes. "Well okay, you've got me there. What are you, some kind of bounty hunter? My father's dead, and I haven't done anything wrong that I'm wanted for."

The man chuckled and she realized she could make out a vague shape in the light of the single working streetlamp outside now, a massive, hulking silhouette in the darkness, which didn't do much for her nerves. There had been something about that laugh-

"May I turn on the light?" the voice said.

"Yeah, if you can find-" she began, and with a flicker and a buzz, the lamps came on.

They stared at each other for a minute, the girl and the man made into real flesh-and-blood by the flick of a switch, and she blinked.

"Jet?"

He was the same as she remembered, except for the salt-and-pepper in his beard and a few new dents in the prosthetic arm. She offered him a drink, a 1935 Bordeaux that she had been saving for a special occasion. He refused. "I don't drink much anymore," he said.

"Yeah, I'll believe that when pigs fly," she told him sarcastically, pouring him one anyway and then another one for herself. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I was in the area," he said noncommittally, eyeing the wine like someone eyeing a poisonous plant. "Thought I'd stop by."

She frowned at him. "Again, Jet, when pigs fly."

He poked at the drink with a finger. "Ed-"

"I'm Françoise now," she told him firmly, deciding he didn't need that wine after all, picking it up and pouring the rest of it into her glass.

"Hey!"

"You don't drink much anymore, remember?" she said dryly, raising the glass to her mouth in a mock salute. "Santé!"

Jet sighed, propping his chin up heavily with the palm of one hand. "You sound like Spike."

She put down the glass. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "He dropped me a note when you guys went separate ways. I know him leaving was hard on you."

He gave her a rueful smile. "That was ten years ago. I'd like to think I'm over it now."

"You're not," she declared, taking another sip of the stuff like it was water. It burned her throat as it went down.

Jet raised one eyebrow. "I didn't know you'd taken psychology classes too."

"I haven't," she said. "I was just one observant thirteen-year-old kid."

He laughed and swiped the glass from her in one motion, downing the rest of the contents. "Honestly, Ed - I mean Françoise-"

"You're out for a bounty," she said flatly, laying her hands on the counter, palms down as if she could dig crevices in the time-worn wood with her fingers. "And you need my help."

"I should have known you'd hacked-"

She shook her head. "Two points. One, I don't hack anymore, not since my father died. Two, I don't help bounty hunters."

Jet scratched his head slowly and suddenly the nostalgia hit her - the smell of the Bebop, Spike's laugh, Ein's yelping bark, cigarette smoke. "I am out for a bounty," he said. "And I do need your help." He looked up at her suddenly and she saw that his face was starting to wrinkle now, frown lines in the shadow of his nose and the corners of his eyes, pouches of sagging tissue and the beginnings of age spots. It didn't seem real to her that Jet Black was growing old, not this heroic figure from her childhood who was etched into her memory like hardwired data, the one person who she hadn't bothered to keep tabs on after leaving the Bebop because she just didn't want to know when he died.

She knew he would die, just as they all died, because that was a bounty hunter's fate.

"I can't help you," she whispered. He sagged in the chair, closing his eyes, and for a moment she wished that Ein was here, that cuddly, mad creature who had made her father's death that much more bearable, who had been gone now for a year and who could never be replaced. "I'm sorry," she said, turning to wash the glass and put it away. "It was nice seeing you."

"Ed, the bounty I'm after-"

"I don't want to know," she told him harshly, swinging around to glare at him in the flickering lights. "I'm not the same girl you knew ten years ago, you know? I've got baggage now, just like the rest of you. I've got debts, I've got creditors on my back, I've even got the undertaker ranting at me about how I still haven't paid him back for my father's funeral. The economy sucks and Paris is a flea-infested slum. I wish I could care about you and your bounty, Jet, but hell, that's life, isn't it?"

He sat there in silence for so long with his eyes closed that she began to wonder if he'd fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion and maybe she'd have to drag him out into the street like the rest of them. "Seems like life's got you down," he said finally.

"Yeah, glad you were listening."

"Maybe you should leave Paris?"

She glared at him patiently, hands on her hips. "Weren't you listening to the part about the debt? What am I gonna do, skip the town and run off with you and the Bebop again?"

"I sold the Bebop," he said.

She stared at him, the wine glass sagging in her hand, suddenly forgotten. "What?"

"Times were hard," he said, throwing her words back in her face. "I've got myself a shipping business up in Britain, mostly respectable. It took me three months to fix a decent location for you, another week and a half to hitchhike a ride all the way across the Channel and then to Paris. They don't speak a word of English in this damned town, you know that? I had all kinds of weird sign language going on trying to find your place."

"So you've quit bounty hunting for good?"

"I did, till something came up. Which is why I'm asking for your help."

"Is this sob story supposed to make me feel guilty?" she demanded.

Jet pushed himself up from his stool, running one hand over his bald head. "Listen, Ed, I didn't come here to argue with you, or force the ghost of the past back on you, or whatever it is you think I'm here for. I came because you're the only one I can trust to help me out of a situation I'm in, and if you don't help me, then I'll go for it myself." He shot her a sardonic smile. "It may be the end of me, but as you said, that's life."

She balled her hands into fists. "Goddamn it, Jet, don't-"

"The police are willing to pay for this bounty in cold, hard, cash, and they're willing to pay immediately upon turnover. All we got to do is catch her, and I could retire and you could be happily doing whatever it is you want to be doing, all debts paid."

"That much cold, hard cash, huh," she said, trying to sound disinterested, unable to keep the curiosity out of her voice, knowing he'd pick up on it. Jet always did.

He favored her with a bitter smile. "All you do is say yes."

"Wait a minute," she said, frowning, the pieces of the puzzle dancing around her head and refusing to put themselves in any kind of order, tantalizingly familiar. "And I'm the only one you can trust?"

Jet said nothing.

"You're expecting me to take you up on this even after I told you flat out no?"

No answer.

An unpleasant suspicion crept through her mind. "Jet, what about Faye? Why can't she help you?"

He looked away.

"You mentioned," she said slowly, "the bounty was a her."

"If you say yes," he returned quietly, "then I'll tell you about the bounty, and you can figure it out."

She was out from behind the counter in two steps, hands digging into Jet's shoulders with a ferocity she didn't know she still had, frantic eyes boring into his. "Jet. What happened to Faye??"

He extricated himself neatly from her deathgrip, retreating to the door and leaving her sagging against the bar. "I'll be at the Renoir café Wednesday night around eight, two blocks from the Rouchechouart metro station. If you're in, come find me.

"Jet-!" she began, half begging, half hating herself for doing so, but the door had already slammed behind him and it was only her alone with the ghosts.





Wednesday evening found her posting a "Closed" sign on the bar door, drawing the curtains and turning off the lights early. "Goddamn it, Ein," she said to the air as she locked the back door and tucked the key securely into her wallet, shoving the ragged thing into her hip pocket. "Why can't you be here when I need you?"

Spike would dig a hand into a jacket pocket and pull out a cigarette, she thought, giving the door one final tug to make sure it was locked and then emerging from the alleyway into the late afternoon autumn sunlight and shadows of slightly moldy looking 16th century architectural wonders, what the local populace called the southeast corner of Montmartre, and what she called a damned hellhole of a place to live. "Not like Papa gave us much choice," she said to the imaginary Ein, slipped her hands into the pockets of her pants, and set off at a brisk trot down the cobblestone pathways.

The dome and spires of the Sacré-Coeur chapel loomed in the distance as she looked both ways, crossed the road, narrowly avoided being hit by two mopeds and a group of tourists, and stubbed her toe on a parking meter. She swore under her breath, limping to the nearest wall and massaging her foot, looking around to find her bearings. The chapel was to her right, narrow rows of shops winding down the cobblestone hill, the roar of some engine warning her that she had better get clear of the road if she didn't want to get run over. She pushed herself off the wall, catching a glimpse of the sign in the window as she turned down one of the smaller alleyways, between wooden roofs. It was a bar. Closed, the sign read, and she grinned at it.

"Seems like we got the same idea."

Something clattered down the street behind her and she spun, clutching the butt of the gun hung at her hip, hidden under her baggy jacket. Late afternoon shadows stretched across the old mortar and brick walls, becoming inky patches of fog where the cobblestone met gutter.

"Who's there?" she barked tersely. The silence, and the bells of the chapel tolling their hourly chime above the buzz of the tourist crowd, was the only answer.

She kept her hand on the gun the rest of the way down the alley until she had emerged safely on the other side in the shade of a small grove of trees overlooking the stairs of the Sacré-Coeur. Groups of tourists lounged lazily on the railings, sprawled on the grass under the foliage, talked in loud jabbering voices and threw bits of trash over their shoulders - candy bar wrappings, empty soda cans, ragged maps.

We'll start over, Fran, she heard her father say to her again, all those years ago as they stood together on the empty steps of the chapel after the sun had set and the tourists had gone home. We'll open a little shop, settle down, and you can go to school.

They'd opened a shop, but France had little use for mapmakers now and school cost more than she could afford. Before long the shop had turned into a bar and school had turned into correspondence classes from the top floor of the shop, where she scrawled equations onto bits of old paper when she wasn't helping below at the counter. There were two choices in Montmartre: open a bar, or open a tourist shop, and her father hadn't wanted the latter.

She looked down reflexively for Ein, jerked her head back up when she realized what she was doing, and started resolutely down the stone stairs. No one stared at her, a skinny French girl in a ragged jacket and pants two sizes too big, floppy hat covering untrimmed hair, hands shoved into oversized pockets almost as an afterthought. She skirted the merry-go-round at the bottom of the steps, wound her way over the cobblestone roads and another alleyway or two that detoured around the cluster of would-be famous street artists with their berets and stands of canvases and brushes and the larger cluster of tourists clamoring to be immortalized in some portrait. The sun was going down, the lights were coming on, and the beer was coming out.

It was three more alleyways and across a small stream, which she waded through without bothering to remove her shoes or take another minute to cross the stone bridge further on. The cafe's neon sign was half lit, half flickering like some broken-bulbed firefly, and she stopped to make sure her gun was still there under the jacket, flicked a stray lock of wispy hair behind her ear, and went in.

Jet wasn't there. She had half expected him to be waiting by the door for her as she walked in, but she scanned the homemade wooden tables and chairs, all unoccupied, in the shadowy light. The low-ceilinged room smelled like French autumn, sharp cheese and rich ale and the last lingering traces of cigarette smoke. It was a little early yet, she decided, watching the antique clock above the bar that read 19:46. When they'd moved here, the owner of the Renoir had been a small, wiry man who had purportedly been in the bounty hunter trade before he went respectable, and her father would talk about him sometimes. Jacques, the man with the tiny stature and big laugh and who made sure your glass was never empty.

But Jacques had died a year and a half ago, and whoever was running the Renoir now liked to keep to himself. The loose association of bartenders and barkeeps throughout the Paris area had little to say about him, except that he served the best cocktails in Montmartre, but trying to talk to him was like talking to a wooden hitching post. Also, the rumor was that he spoke no English and wouldn't as much look at a tourist.

Which explained why the cafe was empty, she thought, picking a chair near the door. A wonder the Renoir was still around.

A door creaked behind the bar and she looked up sharply, relaxing as she realized it was just said bartender coming through from the back, wiping his hands on a towel. He looked over at her and she at him, but his face was hidden under the loose, floppy brim of his hat and she could make out nothing but the curve of his bottom lip. He was a tall, skinny man, as unlike Jacques as any man could be. She wondered how they'd known each other.

"Korbinian, please," she called out to him, sliding a few notes across the table to catch his eye. He nodded almost imperceptibly, reached behind the counter to pull out a glass, behind him for the tap, walked the frothing mahogany over to her table, and stopped there with the beer in his hand. She still could not see his face.

"Meeting someone?" he asked her softly in French.

She stiffened and her hand went to her gun. "What business is it of yours?" she said, just as softly.

He didn't answer, set the beer down on the table with a soft thunk of glass hitting wood, and then he raised his head and looked at her.

Her right hand clenched convulsively on her gun, her left hand went shakingly to the glass of beer, grasped, missed. It tipped in slow motion, and she could not look away from his eyes as she heard the splintering of glass on the floor and the hiss of spilled beer seeping into wood.

"I'm sorry, Ed," Spike Spiegel said, and his fist came swinging out of the darkness as everything went black.