The underground lights of the tram tunnel whipped past the window and the woman seated behind Cal gave him the faintest smile that her worried eyes didn't share. She was a few years younger, athletic and stylish. Cal remembered being both.
"I'm fine," she said in crisp English with an accent that sent Cal's mind searching for a source.
Scandinavian? Russian?
She turned away to stare out the black window.
"I was married for a long time," Cal said, "and experience has taught me that when a woman says she's fine, she's usually not."
The woman hmphed what might have been a dismissive laugh.
"Was married?" she asked, still looking out the window at nothing. "I guess she wasn't okay in the long run."
Rude. And he was trying to be helpful. Cal pressed his lips together until the swell of grief receded.
"No, she wasn't," he said. "She died. Cancer."
The woman snapped her head back to Cal. She studied him for a long moment, and he almost looked away. Just as he couldn't stand another moment of her pale eyes searching over his weathered creases and sleep-deprived puffiness, he recognized something in her face. The wrinkle at the corner of her eyes. Lines where her lips pressed too tightly together for too long. The subtle makeup applied not to enhance but to shield. He and mirrors weren't too friendly anymore, but it was like looking into one, seeing himself in this stranger's face. She winced just slightly like she had seen it, too.
Frank sat across the tram aisle, silent.
"I'm so sorry!" the woman said at last. "I didn't mean—"
"—It's okay."
"—I thought you were divorced, which would still have been a cruel comment to make."
Her voice was melodic and with her blonde hair and fine features, she was otherworldly. Molly would have said she looked like an elf.
"I'm sorry for my words," she said, and her face looked like she meant it.
"Apology accepted. I'm Cal, by the way."
"Eeva," she returned and offered her hand over the seats between them. Cal shook it and ignored the jolt he felt at her touch.
"Eeva, nice to meet you. So, what's wrong? Is it those guys?" Cal said and gave an upward nod over her shoulder to the back of the tram.
She sighed. "Look, I am not some damsel in distress. I can handle myself, but—yes—these men are following me. I was going to lead them straight to the police station, but maybe you can save me some time."
"I'm always happy to be a woman's shortcut."
Stop smiling, he told himself but there was no helping it.
"You are a funny man, Cal. Since you offered, here's how you and your silent friend can help."
Cal turned back to Frank and said, "Eeva, this is my friend —"
"—Martin," Frank interrupted and leaned close to shake her hand.
Cal groaned internally. Martin?
The tram slowed as it approached the next station, Alsace-Lorraine, still underground, and Eeva indicated for them to follow her off the tram. She stood and clutched her purse close to her even as the tram had yet to stop. The purse was turquoise and embellished with a geometric design like something from the American Southwest with leather tassels that hung from the outer seam. An American design out of place in a foreign land. Like himself.
Cal let her pass once the tram stopped and then let Frank stand before he struggled into the aisle with his luggage, holding up other passengers and blocking the shady men at the back from immediately following.
Frank grabbed his smaller carry-on bag and leaned close to whisper, "You're flirting."
"And you're lying, Martin." Cal said through his teeth. Frank winked at him and then followed Eeva off the tram, leaving Cal to bring up the rear.
Overhead lamps lined the curved concrete ceiling of a cavernous space so similar to the Florida aquifer Cal had dived years ago. Familiar, too, was the feeling of being underwater and in over his head as he followed Eeva through the crowded station.
"What's the plan?" he asked Eeva, catching up as she stepped onto an escalator leading up.
"There's a public park directly north of this station," she said. "I don't think they will follow me if they see I am with a group, but if they do, we can stay in the park until they get bored and leave."
"It's a good plan," said Frank from the escalator step behind and below them, "but you two go to the park. I want to stay back and watch our new friends, Hoodie and Goggles, from a distance."
Cal laughed and asked, "We're giving them code names now?"
Frank shrugged like why not?
Eeva nodded in agreement. "Once we've lost them, meet us at the garden cafe across the street to the west. We will compare notes."
Frank nodded back.
Cal stayed silent, having never been followed in his life and having no clue what to do. In the old days, his ballplayer frame was enough to deter unwanted attention. Now he was just old.
Let Frank be the brains, I'll just be the muscle, he thought. Like usual. Although usual had been thirty years in the past.
The escalator brought them up and into a glass enclosure on street level, where the trio exited into blinding sunlight and the sound of light traffic. A one-way street crossed in front of them busy with cars passing. A wide sidewalk was lined with leafless trees still hibernating through the warm Mediterranean winter.
Cal was dying under his long-sleeved sweater, winter be damned.
He couldn't help but crane his neck up at the long row of apartment buildings, six-stories high across the street, taller than anything back home in Heartland, Florida. He jumped as a car honked for no apparent reason. Too many people brushed past him. Above, stylish buildings crowded the pale sky.
A steady hand on his back.
"You good to go?" Frank asked.
Cal nodded, caught his breath, and looked around with more purpose.
A white street sign with blue letters named their location as BOULEVARD VICTOR HUGO. Cal recognized the famous author's name but couldn't remember any of his works. The Three Musketeers?
"Les Miz," Frank said as if reading his mind and then walked off in the opposite direction. "Stay with the girl," he said over his shoulder.
The girl? She was a little younger, probably, but girl?
"Her name is—," Cal called after Frank, but he'd already blended into the flock of people keeping the sidewalk busy and was gone.
If Eeva had heard either of them, she didn't show it and took the handle of Cal's smaller carry-on bag and motioned for Cal to follow her, her Navajo purse—as Cal now dubbed it—strapped across her body. He followed behind with his larger suitcase through an open gate in a tall, black fence with iron posts that enclosed a large garden still lush with palm trees, green grass, and hedges. Le Jardin D'Alsace Lorraine, according to the sign. Eeva paused once inside so Cal could catch up and she used the pause to casually look over his shoulder and scan the sidewalk behind him.
The garden wasn't completely immune to winter's touch. The tall palms were still green, and both the lawn and hedges were healthy from sprinklers, but the flowerbeds were absent of color and several bushy trees clawed skyward with skeletal branches.
"It's beautiful, here, even in the winter," Eeva said as she wheeled the carry-on down a concrete path with Cal at her opposite shoulder.
"It's warm enough," Cal said and forced a laugh.
"Yes! But it's still early in the season. It will cool off soon."
"Thank god for that," Cal said, pulling at the neck of his sweater as a bead of sweat dripped behind his ear. "I'm from Florida so you'd think I'd be used to warm winters."
"The Land of the Mouse!" she said. "And you have those big alligators!"
"You know your geography! Now watch me embarrass myself and ask where you're from and hope I know where that is."
Eeva gave him a sideways smile. "Me? I'm from Kansas."
A laugh escaped before he could stop it.
"You got jokes!"
Eeva looked at him puzzled.
"I'm sorry, that's something my students say."
"You're a teacher."
"I was."
"English?"
Another laugh escaped. "No, history!"
"History? So, you might know Estonia."
He did. "Small nation on the Baltic Sea, bordered by Russia to the east and Lithuania to the south—no, Latvia!"
Eeva stopped in her tracks and looked at Cal with a wide smile he was already fond of. "Impressive, Cal—I'm sorry I don't know your last name."
"Cal MacIntyre," he said. "Being a World War II buff helps, and I love what I teach—well, taught. And baseball. I coached, too."
They were walking again and Cal had to remember they were trying to evade a pair of men. Bad actors, Frank had said. Where had he disappeared to, anyway?
"Did your team score many touchdowns?" Eeva asked.
"No, that's football. American football, not soccer. In baseball we score—" and then Cal paused when he saw the playful look dancing across her face. "You're messing with me, aren't you?"
"I've got jokes," she answered.
"So, you do!" he said. "And I'm sorry. This is only my second time away from America and, uh, I guess I'm not sure what foreigners know—or how to talk to them—and, god, I guess I'm the foreigner now."
"Relax, Cal MacIntyre," she said. "We're in France, so that makes both of us foreigners."
"Strangers in a Strange Land," he said.
"Heinlein?"
"Exodus," Cal said. "And that's what it feels like."
They were silent for the few moments it took to pass a tall hydrangea. Cal only knew the name because he had one in his yard. Had.
"You'll get used to it," Eeva said at last. "Do you want a tip?"
"Absolutely."
"Just don't act so obviously American."
She winked.
She was radiant.
It was torture.