Fleur Bisset

Perhaps he ought to head back. Draw a bath, call it a day. Just another day. Well, maybe he’d do a spot of celebrating; there was champagne in the house. An office-warming gift of sorts, from the the embassy’s chief translator. Probably less out of genuine welcome than appreciation for the fact that their newest attache was unusually fluent - blame Apollinaire, and Lamartine, and a little Verlaine, which he’d confiscated as a captain and dipped into after Alistair insisted on introducing him to la fée verte - and would have little need of his services. Cam turned a few more pages, then closed up his guide. Yes, a bath of Epsom salts, and too much champagne. A fine plan. He could probably manage a bit of sabrage, still. For old times’ sake. Fine use for that Anson sword. 

Sliding that book into his jacket, he reached back, up the stony prow, to leverage himself. And lurched forward instead, snapping around, wide-eyed, at the shock of having his fingers stepped on. Not heavily, at all - she was a little thing, the girl standing over him, staring down from her perch at Nike’s back. But stepped on. By a young woman who’d decided to climb an exhibit at the Louvre. “Good evening,” Cam managed, painfully tense from the shock, tight-jawed. “I’m quite certain you’re not meant to be up there, at all.” Really. Entirely out of order. 

Fleur startled backwards and nearly lost her balance but neatly caught herself -- with the practiced ease of someone who had, after all, always gotten herself and her equally tipsy dates home more or less upright after innumerable debauched nights -- with an arm around the statue’s waist.  “Oh!” she sputtered and then paused infinitesimally to take the measure of the situation. There weren’t any guards in the vicinity and the scandalized whisper that emerged from the stranger was certainly not enough to call one. And he’d prefaced his horrified admonishment with “good evening” -- how absolutely posh and also clearly the reflex of someone with a profound aversion to causing any kind of scene. She relaxed into a smile, at the end of that calculation, but quickly modified it to something approximating embarrassed contrition. “Oh no!” she said, still a little breathless and leaning into it, “I’m so sorry, sir. You’re absolutely, right. I just couldn’t resist a closer look and I’m afraid you startled me just as much as I startled you.” She hopped down. “Are you alright?” she asked, quickly slipping her shoes back on, just in case a quick getaway would be warranted after all.  

“Lucienne Picou.” She nodded in answer. It was easy enough information to discover. She was as close to a public figure as a member of the Cosa Nostra were supposed to get. (Al Capone didn’t count. Al Capone was crazy. Surprisingly supportive of people who looked like her, but still crazy.) Plus a little quid pro quo would be a good precedent to set considering the request she was about to make.  A thief with principles was valuable. That was what her organization was - illicit order against the chaos of the usual criminality. 

“A distinction I respect and support.” Lucienne nodded again, sipping her coffee before putting it down again softly on the table. She let the remark to the queer gatherings slide by without a blink. Lucienne didn’t attend any sort of nightlife outside of Le Grand Duc and Nico’s shows when she wasn’t “working,” and she’d never been one to cruise. The Angel kept things compartmentalized and private, which was the only way Lucienne felt she could have such “attachments” at all, outside the expected gender spectrum or no. 

“The matter at the Basilica will have to stop. My men are too Catholic to support the fleecing of the faithful. Steer clear of the Arène de Atlas too.” She didn’t offer an explanation. Let her think there was match fixing or that Lucienne was simply a particular fan of pugilism. It was small potatoes to her broader plans. 

“But I have a proposal for you that will hopefully prevent such whims in the future. How’re you with long games? Can you control your tendencies for one night or several?” She hoped that she was being clear about all of little Miss Fleur’s tendencies. Where they were going, they didn’t need flashiness. Not of that sort.  “If so, we can discuss a position. And…” She purred it slightly, leaning forward just a little, knowing intimately what she had. “A retainer.” 

Fleur schooled her face as soberly as possible in response to Picou’s slightly surprising assertion of respect for Fleur’s capricious moral compass. She winced at the prohibition against the Basilica. Well, it was only a petty satisfaction anyway and if she hadn’t been prepared to make some sacrifices she shouldn’t have made the original suggestion, so she sighed and nodded. She shrugged agreeably at Arene de Atlas. “Fine, I don’t mind the excuse to focus on the entertainment,” she quipped, letting herself relax a little, in imagination already half way out the door and regaling her friends with a highly exaggerated version of events.

As Picou continued, Fleur startled back into the moment and her eyes opened wide with complete astonishment. “I--what? I mean, no, I heard you, I think that is...,” Fleur stuttered to a halt. 

She spun the bangle around and around on her arm and frowned into the air. “A position? --No, wait. Let me answer your questions first and then ask my own. Long games? Probably not my forte. But --” Fleur paused, thinking of how diligently and carefully she’d worked when she was trying to save up for those tickets -- “yes, I can play long a game if I want it badly enough, if I have a goal to motivate me.” 

Fleur ran over the other woman’s words in her mind again. “Self-control. Well, again, not a frequently exercised muscle. But yes,” -- she turned the word “tendencies” around mentally, what all was Picou encompassing in that term? Her men were Catholic, which phrasing suggested she was not especially so, but still, tendencies had almost the same ring to it as temptations -- “I can restrain my many and varied impulses for at least a night or two or longer, if necessary, if sufficiently motivated, though I won’t do either of us the disservice of pretending that it will come naturally or easily to me and if it’s not impertinent I would recommend giving me very clear and very explicit instructions both of what you want from me and of what tendencies you want me to keep the tightest rein on and when.”

She strolled down to the Seine’s bristling bookshelves. The green boxes of the  bouquinistes were open and overflowing and she browsed intently and purposefully. She knew which stalls were likely to have the items she most sought and she started there but it was trial and error. She picked up and rifled through and tossed aside ten books for everyone she smirked at and handed over a coin for. So intent was she on this process, and the growing stack of books in her arms, that she very nearly spilled herself and her books into the river as she spun into an innocent pedestrian. 

It had been a while since Nadja had meet someone with energy as infectious as the young woman sitting across from her. Once upon a time, perhaps she had been half so vibrant to be around. But Fleur was quite like her name- a blossom in the face of a life that could be gray and dull. 

“No, you did very well! It means ‘darling’, darling.” A laugh welled up from within the ballerina, like bubbles in a glass of champagne. 

She had absolutely no idea what was in the special. And to be frank, she did not care. She was here for an adventure. An experience. To order the same old thing would simply not do- she followed the young woman’s lead. “I’ll have the special as well.” Nadja smiled more and more as Fleur wove her a story to wear. “I wish I were a princess. But I do play one from time to time,” Nadja began, leaning forward to rest her chin against the palm of her hand. “I’m a ballerina- I dance at the Palais Garnier.”

“Askling,” Fleur repeated brightly -- “Oh, I’m stealing that for my repertoire.” Fleur felt warm with the small joys of an unexpectedly delightful dinner companion and the satisfaction of watching her teasing have an effect. Really, now that she was laughing -- such a lovely sweet light laugh -- and talking, Fleur scratched out her initial assessment entirely. This was a far more vibrantly alive young woman than she had appeared to be when she was hovering at the door.

Fleur nodded approvingly at Nadja’s order -- a more adventurous spirit than she had thought too.

“A dancer!” Fleur exclaimed with genuine shock and delight. “Oh, how marvelous! I love to dance too, though I certainly lack the discipline and talent to ever dance as you do.” She grinned -- “And you dance in a palace! You see, I was not far wrong about you. Even if you do work ever so much harder than any princess. And here you have snuck away from your palace and your adoring fans and harsh taskmistresses -- shall I be your fairy godmother for the night? Show you all the dazzling sights of our beautiful city. It would be only fair payment on behalf of the city as you have come so far to dazzle us.”

Did she just m’am her? A slight flutter of both annoyance and vanity flushed Lucienne’s cheeks. She usually traded on appearing to be older than she was, but something about being addressed like the bawds at her father’s workplace hit a nerve she hadn’t realized existed. 

Still, the bird had folded quickly enough. This left Lucienne wondering what exactly to do with her. She had a deft hand, for sure, if not a great sense of situational awareness. “Tell me your name and where you usually operate. And place your haul on the table, of course.” 

She’d place the items in the lost and found, do her best to space out the claims or get the pocket books and watches back to their owners without being asked. She had regulars now, which was a lovely thing. She would protect them like her family. That was hospitality, after all. 

“You are good at the actual purloining. I’ll give you that credit. Am I right to presume you didn’t case my place out of desperation?” She softened a little. “I don’t intend to be indelicate. I’m genuinely concerned.” She was, really. It seemed an awful waste for talent to go hungry when she could be so… useful. 

Fleur hesitated for just a moment and realized as soon as she did so -- watching her interrogator watch her -- that by doing so she had absolutely forfeited the opportunity for any deception. “Fleur Bisset,” she admitted, almost finishing the sentence with “ma’am” but decided at the last moment that it might be laying it on a bit thick, really. Still, she fervently hoped that Lucienne might provide her name or preferred address soon -- she had a strange instinct against admitting any foreknowledge of her or her relationship to Conor.

“As for where I usually operate -- here and there, really. Most frequently the nightclubs on the Mountparnasse side and around the Basilique Du Sacre-Coer, sometimes the Louvre, but I roam a lot.”

“Really,” she admitted, “it’s more a matter of where I don’t operate -- I don’t steal from people with less wealth than myself and I never work in Le Monocle, or Le Bal -- I don’t mix business with pleasure.” She risked an upward glance through her lashes, assessing Lucienne’s reaction to that.

“To be honest -- as,” Fleur hastily assured her, “I have been in everything I’ve said -- this isn’t the kind of place I usually operate in...there’s not nearly enough of the drunk and foolish indolent wealthy here.”

Nadja often felt like a stranger to the city she practically grew up in. It would seem that the Palais Garnier was the world she knew. There was a glimmering moment in years past where that world seemed to expand, and then poof- it shrunk down to the size of her little apartment and the glittering music box she danced in almost every night. 

She let Fleur lead her where she would, feeling an awful lot like she was being guided center stage for a moment before being offered a seat. Her new companion showered her in questions, and something of a stunned and amused smile crept onto her face while she laughed softly. “No, no, don’t apologize… You’re fine, älskling-” She glanced up at the musicians for a moment. Music was the one constant wherever she went. It changed, sure, but the sound was still there. It was comforting… 

“My name is Nadja, I’ve been here since… god, since I was six? Seven? I’m originally from Stockholm, but my father is from here. So a little bit of both, I suppose… And no, I haven’t had the special this week… or any week- I don’t really get the chance to roam about much.”

Fleur grinned back at the small smile and soft laugh -- “Oh,” she thought with some surprise, “now that’s a laugh I’d do any number of foolish things for the reward of hearing.”

“Nadja!” she exclaimed out loud, “A beautiful name. And from Stockholm -- ah, and “älskling” this must be Swedish then! What does it mean? It sounds quite lovely coming from you, though I’m afraid I just butchered it atrociously.”

As they seated themselves, Fleur waved to the nearest waiter; then turned back to Nadja. “Then I’ll have the special and you can have whatever you like -- it’s my treat.” She cocked her head curiously. “And why’s that? What’s keeping you from roaming our beautiful streets and trying every special on every menu? Let me guess! Perhaps you’re a princess? Trapped in all those tedious duties and dreadful dresses?” She widened her eyes with the hopeful expectation that her outrageous suggestions would elicit an interesting story.