Even The King of Time wasn't immune to the passing of hours. Eventually the colorful lights winked out, the dancing troupes dispersed, and the grandstands around the plaza emptied their revelers into the streets and into the restaurants and bars up and down the beach. The Night Parade might have finished but its wild spirit had possessed the city.
Cal MacIntyre felt like a young man again, out late and exploring a city that wasn’t his. Heartland, Florida didn’t have much of a nightlife, but he and Frank would occasionally slip away to Orlando or Ybor to walk neon-lit streets and pretend they weren't country mice. That was decades ago now, and while he’d arrived in this magic city with Frank, Cal much preferred his new walking companion and the blonde hair that trailed over her shoulders as they walked the city.
They talked as they went.
Cal opened up about Molly: how they met, how they lived, and how she died. He shared stories of her kindness and her love for animals, how even a squirrel or a backyard songbird could delight her. He talked about the Florida landscapes she painted, and how her watercolors hung in offices and hospitals across Central Florida. She never got rich, but she’d been respected, and she’d spent her last years doing what she loved. Eeva listened without interruption, her eyes wet, her hands wrapped around his.
"She sounds like an amazing person," Eeva said when he finished and Cal could only nod and wipe away his tears.
"Like your brother, no doubt," he said and squeezed her hand.
Eeva stopped and started several times, but eventually she found the words and told him all about Jaan. By Eeva's account, he was a doting husband and father and was beyond proud to serve Estonia as a helicopter pilot in the armed forces. She smiled as she remembered his excitement at finally visiting America for a joint military exercise in the Arizona desert where he trained with American pilots. He returned home with a million photos of red rock formations and stories of extreme temperatures. And American gifts. She laughed softly at the memory of an oversized cowboy hat he’d dropped onto his son’s head. The Navajo purse slung over her shoulder had been a gift from that same trip.
Cal now liked the purse even more, and the Southwestern design finally made sense, as out of place as it was in the French Riviera on the arm of an Estonian woman. She wore it proudly to stay close to him, something Cal understood deeply as he subconsciously rubbed the empty space on his wrist where there should have been a Bell & Ross.
They ended their walk through Nice back at the beach where she’d first found him weeks ago, staring out at the Mediterranean. The sun was creeping up from the eastern horizon, the night sky paling to silver and then pink, an explosion of gold waiting just out of reach. Waves tumbled the pebbles at their feet, counting seconds neither of them wanted to spend.
Cal wished he could stop time there. The beach felt suspended between night and day, past and future, the city climbing the slope behind them and the sea stretching endlessly ahead. They sat close against the chill wind, saying nothing, knowing that even a word would break the spell.
Eventually, they stood and walked back toward their apartments.
The streets of Le Carré d’Or were quiet now. They passed Wine House and the vine-choked side of the building, parting at the garden. Cal watched Eeva disappear through the shrubs toward her own entrance. Niles and Jonathan sat nearby with a thermos of coffee, steam curling into the cool air. Cal wondered what it would be like to grow that old with someone. He’d prepared to do exactly that with Molly, but could he see himself that old with Eeva by his side? Or would it be just he and Frank, bachelors forever?
“Late night?” Niles asked a question of his own, smiling behind his thick glasses.
Cal nodded, unable to find the words, and headed inside.
“You and Frank both,” Niles called after him. “That damned elevator had me up at oh-dark-thirty.”
The antique lift rattled as Cal sent it upward, no mystery why it had woken half the building. As it climbed, a thought needled at him: while he was moving forward, was he leaving Frank behind? Frank had always been a night owl, prowling the city when Cal withdrew. Cal had no intention of abandoning his best friend, but he wondered if Frank knew that.
Had Frank really been worried about Eeva? Or had some of that doubt been jealousy? Nice was supposed to be a city they shared, another small adventure before reality intruded. It wasn’t Eeva who had ended that—it was the Russians, the cliff, the near miss with death.
Cal had almost died. Coming out the other side, he was done waiting. He’d promised Molly he’d find a way to be happy, that he wouldn’t stay buried in that hospice room forever. For a long time he’d tried and failed, clawing at the dirt. Frank had been there, offering a hand. And now Eeva, too. Between them, they’d pulled him back into the light.
The elevator clanged to a halt. The accordion gate slid open and Cal stepped into the short hallway, weak morning light creeping in from the window at the far end. He paused outside the apartment door and made a quiet decision: he would bring Frank and Eeva together, show them how it had taken both of them to set him back on his feet. It wouldn’t be easy. But it would happen.
After some sleep.
Cal was exhausted. He leaned into the apartment door to open it with minimal effort.
And then he froze.
The room reeked of stale cigarette smoke. Frank hadn’t picked up a cigarette in years, as far as Cal knew, but the evidence was impossible to ignore: two soggy butts floating in amber liquid at the bottom of a crystal glass on the coffee table. A stubby bottle of Kentucky bourbon stood beside it. Cal had never seen an American brew in their French apartment and wondered where Frank had even found it. He opened two windows at the front of the salon, then crossed into the kitchen and came back with a crystal glass filled with tap water.
Any thought of sleep vanished with the smoke. What the hell had Frank been up to? This was just like him, wasn’t it. Cal had been out having the time of his life while Frank spiraled back toward old, unhealthy habits. Was this punishment for choosing Eeva? Another cry for attention, like Paris, when Frank had jumped into the canal and needed rescuing? He’d been drunk then and was probably drunk now, but the drinking was just the surface of it. Even at the time, that stunt had felt sad, not funny—something brittle showing through.
Frank could stare down terrorists, survive war zones, keep national secrets locked behind his teeth. But when his own life shifted beneath him, he seemed to fracture. A divorce, Cal could understand. This? Cal had only gone on a date. Cigarettes and bourbon? It felt like a petty way to lose control.
What are you doing, Frank?
Cal drained the glass of water and flopped onto the couch.
Something dug into his hip—hard—and it hurt.
“Jesus!”
He shifted his weight and fished a hand between the cushion and the armrest, like he was searching for the television’s lost remote. His fingers closed around something cold and metallic. Confused, Cal slowly pulled out a sleek, silver pistol.
“Fucking… Frank,” he whispered.
He kept his finger well clear of the trigger and inspected the gun. The slide and frame were stainless steel, the grip black, SIG SAUER P226 stamped along the barrel. A sharp chemical smell lingered. He leaned in, sniffed once, then recoiled. The gun had been fired—not recently, but not long ago either. A dark stain marked the metal near the trigger guard.
Blood.
Cal had grown up in Florida and wasn’t a stranger to firearms. With a few practiced movements, he made the pistol safe and laid it on the coffee table beside the magazine and the single 9mm round from the chamber. Nearby, two cigarette butts floated in the dregs of bourbon. The tabletop looked like a still life from some old noir painting.
“Frank?” he called, but there was no answer.
His foot bumped something heavy beneath the table. He crouched and found a long, black container—too long, too rigid. Considering the pistol on the table, it looked very much like a rifle case.
“Frank?” he called again. Nothing.
Cal stood and took two steps toward the hallway. He froze. Red-brown drops stained the sand-colored carpet, trailing past the bedroom doors and into the bathroom.
“FRANK?”
The bathroom door stood open. Blood smeared the white porcelain of the sink. Cal stepped inside, bracing himself, but Frank wasn’t slumped in the tub. The blood wasn’t heavy—nothing arterial. A cut, maybe. A stumble.
Frank’s bedroom door was ajar. Cal nudged it open with the toe of his shoe.
The room was dark. Early sunlight slipped through the horizontal blinds, striping Frank’s body on the bed. He lay face down, fully clothed. After an achingly long moment, his back rose and fell with a slow breath.
A gauze bandage was wrapped haphazardly around Frank’s right hand, which dangled over the edge of the bed holding an unlit cigarette. Otherwise, the room was as neat as Frank liked to keep it, except for a trail of pocket litter leading from the door to the bed: crumpled receipts, a wrinkled pack of smokes, a plastic lighter.
And one more thing.
A beige pair of women’s pantyhose lay crumpled on the floor, the toes sticking up like rabbit ears. Cal ran through every reason Frank might own pantyhose and discarded them all. Then he noticed something caught at the waistband, something long and fuzzy, like a caterpillar inching its way free.
But it wasn’t a caterpillar. It wasn’t spring, for one thing, and there was no reason for a fat, fuzzy asp to be hiding inside pantyhose in Frank’s bedroom. Cal bent and tugged. The object came free with a faint resistance, held fast by tape or static. He let the pantyhose fall and turned the thing over in his fingers.
It did look like a caterpillar—long-haired, black and gray, the whiskers swept to one side. Almost like—
Movement on the bed.
Cal looked up as Frank pushed himself upright, rubbing his eyes. Early sunlight cut through the blinds, striping his face and catching the dark crescents beneath his eyes, the rough shadow of overnight stubble.
“Cal?” Frank said, then yawned.
“Yes, Frank?” Cal said, helplessly.
The man sitting on the bed was Frank, and not Frank. Like a near-perfect copy with one detail wrong.
A spark flared. Frank inhaled from a cigarette that hadn’t been there a moment before.
“Buddy,” he said calmly, “I think you’re holding my mustache.”