London Bridges

massive damage, went off in the first arrondissement, near the Louvre. The entire area, a maze of lanes and dead-end streets, was nearly flattened. Close to a thousand people died immediately, or at least within a few seconds. The terrible multiple explosions were heard, and felt, all over Paris.
    The Louvre suffered only minor damage from the blasts, but the three-block area covering rue de Marengo, rue de l’Oratoire and rue Bailleul was almost completely destroyed. As was a nearby bridge—a small one—crossing the Seine.
    A bridge. Another bridge. In Paris this time.
    Not a word of explanation was heard from the Wolf. He didn’t take credit for the wanton and despicable act, nor did he deny it.
    He didn’t need to explain his actions, did he? He thought he was God.
    There are other supremely arrogant people who labor inside our government in Washington, and also some who work in the national media, who believe that they can accurately predict what will happen in the future because they know, or think they know, what happened in the past. I suspect it’s the same in Paris, London, Tel Aviv, and everywhere else in the world: all these basically intelligent, maybe even well-intentioned people who proclaim, “That couldn’t happen,” or “Here’s how it would happen in the real world.” As if they really know. But they don’t know. Nobody knows.
    All bets are off nowadays. Anything can happen, and sooner or later, it probably will. We don’t seem to be getting any smarter as a species, just crazier and crazier. Or at the very least, a whole lot more dangerous. Unbelievably, unbearably more dangerous.
    Or maybe that was just my mood as I flew back from Paris. A terrible, terrible tragedy had occurred there after all. The Wolf had won, if what he did could be called winning, and it hadn’t even been a close contest.
    A power-mad Russian gangster had adopted the tactics of terrorism, or so it seemed. He was better than we were—more organized, more cunning, and far more brutal when he needed results. I couldn’t even remember the last time we’d had a victory in our battle with the Wolf and his forces. He was smarter. I just prayed that it was over now. Could it be? Or was it another calm before another storm? I couldn’t bear to think about that possibility.
    I arrived home a little before three on a Thursday afternoon. The kids were back; Nana had never left Fifth Street. When I got there I insisted on cooking dinner, wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was what I needed: cook a good meal, talk to Nana and the kids about anything we wanted to talk about, get lots of hugs. Not have a single thought about what had happened in Paris, or the Wolf, or any kind of police work.
    So I made my interpretation of a French-style dinner and I even spoke French with Damon and Jannie while the meal was being prepared. Jannie set the dining table with Nana’s silver, cloth napkins, a lace tablecloth that we used only for special occasions. The meal?
Langoustines rôties brunoises de papaye poivrons et oignons doux
—prawns with papaya, peppers, and onions. For a main course, chicken stew in a sweet red wine sauce. We drank small glasses of wine with the meal, a delightful Minervois, and ate with enthusiasm.
    But for dessert—brownies and ice cream. I was back in America, after all.
    I was home, thank God.

Chapter 90
    HOME AGAIN
,
home again.
    The next day I didn’t go to work and the kids stayed out of school. It seemed to satisfy everybody’s needs, even Nana Mama’s, who encouraged us all to play hooky. I called Jamilla a couple of times, and talking to her helped, as it always did, but something seemed off between us.
    For our day of hooky-playing I took the kids on a day trip to St. Michaels, Maryland, which is situated on Chesapeake Bay. The village turned out to be a lively snapshot of quaint, coastal charm: a thriving marina, a couple of small inns with rockers set out on the porches, even a lighthouse. And the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, where we got to watch real shipwrights working on a skipjack restoration. It felt as though we were back in the nineteenth century, which didn’t seem like such a bad idea.
    After lunch at the Crab Claw Restaurant we embarked on an actual skipjack charter. Nana Mama had taken her school classes there many times over the years, but she stayed home this trip, protesting that she had too much work to do around the house. I only hoped she was really feeling okay. I