“What Became of Jacques?”

Written by: Jessica Minster

Nynette had surrendered to the whims of solitary confinement in the city of Paris. It was not confinement on the basis of law or punishment, but rather it was of complete chance. She had not stopped going to the same places she would go, to the farmers markets or the cafes and bistros, but she had nonetheless been confined. She had not tried to alienate her friends, yet she
found herself utterly alone and without a single soul to call her companion. There is another name for this strange phenomenon: The Social Death.

It could have happened at any time and to anyone. It was merely a slip of God’s finger which caused Nynette to plunge so deeply into loneliness. It could have happened to her next door neighbor (who no longer spoke to her), or to any of the fashionable women on the streets of Paris which she would pass each day. Or, so she thought.

If Nynette were to stop believing that Social Death was a random occurrence, she would then have to search for more answers. The only proposed answer to this small change would be that something was wrong with her. Whether it be her short hair, or her naturally splotchy skin, or even her personality, believing in such things was a sort of Russian Roulette of internal dialogue. And as Nynette knew, Russian Roulette had no bad streaks. The line of thinking that could lead her to suicide would do just that, and nothing else. There would be no turning back, no reconsideration.

One morning, when drinking the last sips of her coffee, Nynette asked the waiter for a chocolate drizzled croissant. It came out quickly, just as everything else did in the sparsely populated cafe. It was only dead because it was an off hour, though there was some part of Nynette which believed that it was dead because she was there; that loneliness emanated from her person, effectively driving people away within some unknown intimate radius around her. The chocolate drizzled croissant was fine, though off putting. Nynette had never had a croissant at this cafe before, but she had smelled fresh chocolate on the street and was drawn to it. In some strange twist of fate, the croissant tasted nothing like a croissant, and the chocolate drizzle tasted nothing like chocolate. The whole thing tasted like some odd and inaccurate approximation of human food. It was sweet, that was about the only adjective Nynette could attribute to it. However, she finished the croissant, taking a morbid joy from its uncanniness.

At around the time she finished the croissant (which somehow landed before she had drunk the last few sips of her coffee), a woman went up to the bar counter of the cafe and ordered a drink. Nynette glanced at the woman, who was small and fragile-looking, and the woman glanced back. The woman’s brief look at Nynette was presumably nothing out of the ordinary, a look like any other. Something about it, however, reminded Nynette of something. The cursory glance reminded Nynette of the look of someone who would— or had— rejected her. Beyond the eyes of the woman ordering the drink, there was a fear, a paranoia. It seemed as if Nynette and this woman had known each other before, that Nynette had humiliated herself as she usually did and that they had broken apart in some way or another. Or perhaps it was just Nynette’s imagination.

There was another memory that cropped up in Nynette from this glance: the memory of Jacques. Nynette hadn’t thought about him in many months, perhaps years. She had gotten to the point where she could forget, but it came back up from the look on the woman’s face. He was a good man, Nynette thought. She wondered if he was still in Paris.

Nynette took a bus to Jacques’ apartment, which was in another part of town, one which Nynette had avoided for many years. She managed to remember where the exact apartment was. The second floor of a building, just above a jeweler’s shop and the jeweler’s apartment. Nynette
approached the jeweler within the shop, who was wrapping up a conversation with a customer.

“Thank you, have a nice day,” the Jeweler said to the customer, who took up the bag in which some precious jewel sat. The Jeweler looked at Nynette. “Bonjour, how can I help you?”

Nynette recognized the Jeweler. He was a rotund old man who she had seen Jacques speak with on multiple occasions. “You probably don’t remember me, but I knew a young man who lived upstairs a while ago, I’m looking for him.”

“What was his name?” the Jeweler asked.
“Jacques Montoir.”
“Ah, Montoir, yes, he left some years ago.”
“Do you know where he went?” Nynette asked.
“Why are you asking around for him?”
“I, I’m a friend.”

“Montoir had a lot of female friends,” the Jeweler chuckled. “He moved out to Rue de Ozanne last time I heard. Just a few blocks down the Seine, that way.” He pointed in the general direction of the place he was speaking of. “I don’t know what his address is anymore.”

“Merci, monsieur, I appreciate it,” Nynette said.

Nynette took a stroll down a scenic Seine-side avenue leading to Rue de Ozanne. It was a notably nicer part of town, though it was only a few blocks away from the comparably dirty old commercial district where Jacques used to live. She started asking around for Jacques, starting on one end of the street and zig-zagging between the two blocks that provided the walls to the street.
A friendly woman walking a little dog said she recalled hearing the name Jacques Montoir before, but she didn’t remember where. Nynette thanked her and moved on.

The day dragged on and Nynette zig-zagged once more going in the opposite direction once she reached the end of Rue de Ozanne.

Halfway up the street again, the son of a butcher who was running deliveries told Nynette he had a delivery for a man named Jacques Montoir coming up. Nynette told him the same vague story she had told the Jeweler: she was a friend of Jacques’ who wanted to reconnect. The butcher’s son told her she could follow him up to Jacques’ apartment as long as it was okay by his landlady. Nynette was grateful. She waited a while for the man to finish up a few other deliveries before Jacques’, but within an hour she was heading up the steps to Jacques’ door on which the butcher’s son knocked.

The door opened slowly. A short woman was standing in the doorway and Nynette’s heart sunk into the acid of her stomach. “Yes?”

“Delivery for Jacques Montoir.”

“I’m his wife,” the woman said, already holding five hundred francs to exchange for the bundle of meat. Nynette’s stomach was in the process of digesting her heart.

Nynette waited for the transaction to end when she came into the view of Jacques’ wife. “Hello, um, I’m an old friend of Jacques’.” Nynette knew she had made a mistake. She knew that she should have just stopped in her tracks and turned and gone back down the staircase. But it was too late. She continued, “This young man led me up here when I asked around the neighborhood. Could I speak with Jacques?”

The Wife had an odd look on her face for a moment, but she said sure. Nynette was invited in and given a seat to sit in in the salon. It looked out on the rest of the street, so sweet and serine under normal circumstances, then given a certain foreboding to Nynette. After a while two young children playing with each other went through the nearby hall, not even noticing Nynette in their shared fantasy.

A short-haired man with some stubble entered the room. He was thin but not unfed. As he came in he took off some reading glasses and stuck them in his shirt pocket. It took a moment for Nynette to analyze him. Indeed, it was Jacques. He seemed to go rigid, recognizing Nynette.

“Nynette.”
“Jacques,” Nynette replied immediately.
“Um…” Jacques itched the back of his neck for a moment before working up the will to speak properly. “…How did you find me?”

“I asked around…” Nynette fully realized the nature of what she had done. Suddenly, she cracked. “I’m sorry.” She stood and started to walk out of the room.

“Wait, wait.” Jacques said.
Nynette halted. She looked back at the tall man.
“Why? Why did you bother seeking me out?” Jacques asked.
Nynette turned and continued towards the apartment’s front door to leave.

Jacques rushed after Nynette, lightly pulling at her shirt sleeve to turn her around. “You went through all the trouble just to leave once you saw me?”

“No. I looked for you because… Because I was lonely.”
Jacques’ grip loosened. The children watched nearby. Jacques’ wife was in the kitchen,too busy to notice the scene. Nynette quietly opened the front door and closed it behind her.

Nynette left.

Halfway up Rue de Ozanne, Nynette came across an old woman who knew Jacques Montoir. “He’s a good man, but he’s quiet. Don’t see much of him too often. He often hung around the bar my husband manages just down the street. ‘The Juicy Grapevine’, might want to check around there.”

Nynette thanked the old woman and headed down the street and went into the bar. She ordered a drink to be polite, though noticed that Jacques was nowhere to be found. She drank down the cognac in one gulp and asked around for the man who she used to know. A young artist-type said he used to be Jacques’ friend as well. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Nynette.”

“Never heard of you from Jacques. But he hasn’t come here in a month or longer, you see. He’s probably holed up in his apartment on the first floor of vingt-cinq, Rue de Ozanne.”

Nynette went to the apartment, where his name was written next to one of the buzzers of the building. She took a deep breath and pressed the buzzer.

There was no answer. She tried once more, pressing the buzzer a few more times than before. No answer. Nynette was about to turn and go home, somewhat realizing the ridiculous nature of her odyssey to find Jacques, but the door beside her opened. A very old man with a big nose came out through the doorway. “Oh— Monsieur, I’m looking for an old friend of mine.”

“Eh?” the old man asked in the breathy, weak voice of a man within the last months of his life. He held a hand up to his ear, pointing it towards Nynette. She repeated her statement, only louder. “Who?”

“I’m looking for my friend, Jacques Montoir,” Nynette said loudly.

The old man smacked his lips a little bit and squinted, as if straining to remember the name. “Ah, ah… poor son. Poor son,” he said quietly, “Monsieur Montoir died a few months back.”

Nynette jolted awake. “He…?”
“What?” the old man said, holding his ear to Nynette again.
“How did he die?”

“Shut the doors and windows… let the oven go all night. People started smelling it not
too long after and they came in and got his body out.”

Not sure what to do, Nynette asked one more question. “D-do you know why he did it?” “I didn’t know him. Rumor went around that he was a lonely fellow, but I wouldn’t really know.”

Nynette felt herself stare into the distance. She went quiet for long enough that the old man walked on down the street by the time she snapped out of it. She quietly wept on the way back to the bus station. By the time she got there, she had cleaned her face up a bit so no one would ask her anything on the crowded Paris bus.

“What was his name?” the Jeweler asked.
“Jacques Montoir.”

The Jeweler’s expression shifted from a kind curiosity to a blunted attempt at hidden trepidation. He averted his eyes from Nynette for a moment.

“…Monsieur?” Nynette said.

“I don’t know him. I don’t know anything about him,” the Jeweler said with haste.
“I seem to remember seeing him talking to you, some years ago.”
“Years! Do you have any idea how many customers I have coming through here every day?”

“He lived upstairs.”

The Jeweler suddenly turned and walked over to the back of the jewelry shop. He whispered something quickly to a young woman standing behind another counter and went behind a door into the back area of the shop. The young woman started walking over to Nynette. “Mademoiselle, pardonne, but we have to ask you to leave.”

Nynette, somewhat stunned, turned and went out of the front door. Not ten feet away, she saw that the door to the stairway of the building was wide open. She walked over nonchalantly, as if walking away so that the people within the jewelry shop would forget about her. She went through the door to the stairway, ascending to the second floor. She was greeted by a door frame
without a door. Jacques’ apartment was completely open to the outside.

Nynette entered through the doorway with hesitation. She could see all around her, the decorations, wallpapers, furniture, and everything else had been torn from place and taken away to some unknown place. She cycled through the rooms, looking for a clue, just a single clue, to lead her to what happened to Jacques and to why the Jeweler was so reluctant. She suddenly noticed a loose brick in the wall, next to where the toilet used to be.

Gently removing the brick and placing it to the side, Nynette could see a piece of paper folded and placed up against the wooden beam behind the brick. She took it out and unfolded it.
“Hey!”

Nynette jumped in surprise and quickly hid the paper in her pocket. It was the landlord, the same landlord she had seen all those years ago.
“No one is to enter this apartment! Where did you come from!?” the man’s voice boomed.

“I’m sorry! The door to the stairway was open!”
“I step out for a sandwich down the street just for a moment, forgetting to shut the door, and you just come in and make yourself at home!?” The man roughly grabbed Nynette’s sleeve, pulling her out of the room. He started to march her out of the building.

“What happened to Jacques?”

The man stopped for a moment, as if stunned that someone would have the gall to bring up the name. “Get out of here.” He let go of her sleeve.

She walked out of the front door and onto the street. She walked around for a while, just enough to avoid any suspicion of her sticking around. When she was sure no one was watching, she took the paper out of her pocket and unfolded it. She looked close.

Written on the paper in an unsteady pen’s scrawl was the phrase “quatorze Rue de Ozanne” next to a crudely drawn symbol depicting what appeared to be a serpent wrapped around a minimalist representation of the Eiffel Tower. Nynette walked to Rue de Ozanne, asking a few people for directions along the way. She found the address listed on the paper. It was in a part of town notably worse than the place where Jacques’ old apartment was. The building that the address on the piece of paper indicated was some sort of flophouse, a gathering place for penny-pinchers and no accounts. She approached the front door, which was wide open. She could hear the boisterous laughter of drinkers and gambling men. A sharp horror started creeping up her esophagus, preventing her from entering for a while.

Once she worked up the courage, Nynette walked into quatorze Rue de Ozanne. It seemed as soon as she walked in, the men all looked at her, stopping what they were doing. Urged to action, Nynette said, “I’m looking for a man named Jacques Montoir.”

There was silence. The room stiffened and the creeping terror continued its way through Nynette’s body. A man gave a hefty “Heh!” from behind Nynette. She turned around and saw a Dutch sailor in an undershirt leaning up against the wall, smoking a cigarette. He snuffed it and started to walk towards Nynette. The room was silent again, aside from the creaks in the floorboards under the Sailor’s feet. “What are you doing, coming around this part of town,
asking around for a man like that, huh, kitty cat?”

“I’m… I’m a friend of his.”

“A friend,” the Sailor chuckled. The bar somewhat seemed to laugh along with him. “Listen. You go back to some place on the other end of the Seine and we’ll forget all about old Jacques. Everyone knows what happened to him. No need to go and dig up old graves.”

“Obviously. Go on, kitty cat,” the Sailor said, putting his greasy hands on Nynette’s shoulders and turning her towards the door she entered through. “Go and get yourself a man who knows a little less than old Jacques did.” He gave her a little push towards the entrance. She turned around again, looking at the Sailor one last time before she left, noticing a tattoo on his back depicting a serpent wrapped around the Eiffel Tower.

Nynette had just finished the last sips of her coffee and was just leaving the cafe, passing by the woman who had given her such a particular glance only minutes prior, on the way out the door.