Hunting and Gathering Read Online Free Page B

was always the middle of the night when she got home, as a rule—she’d found him in the hall, in his pajamas and hunting boots, with a box of kibble in his hand. He seemed really upset and asked her if she hadn’t seen a cat. She said no and followed him for a few steps into the courtyard, looking for the cat in question. “What does he look like?” she’d asked. “I am afraid I don’t know.” “You don’t know what your cat looks like?” He’d stiffened: “How should I know? I have never had a cat in my life!” She had been dead tired, so, shaking her head, she’d just left him there. There was definitely something creepy about the guy.
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“The fancy neighborhood . . .” She remembered Carine’s words as she walked up the first of the one hundred and seventy-two steps between herself and the slum she called home. Fancy neighborhood, yeah right. She lived on the eighth floor of the service stairway of a smart building which looked out onto the Champ-de-Mars, so in that respect, yes, you could say she lived in a nice area because if she climbed onto her stool and leaned out perilously far to the right, it was true, she could just make out the top of the Eiffel Tower. But for all the rest, honey, for all the rest, it’s really not what you think.
    She clung to the banister, coughing her lungs out, dragging her bottles of water behind her. She tried never to stop. Ever. Not on any floor. One night she had stopped and she couldn’t get going again. She’d sat down on the fourth floor and fallen asleep with her head on her knees. When she woke up it was horrible. She was frozen stiff and it took her a few seconds before she understood where she was.
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Before going out she had closed the shutters, afraid there was going to be a storm, and now she sighed, thinking what a furnace it would be up there. When it rained, she got wet; when it was fine, like today, she suffocated; and in winter, she shivered. Camille knew all the climatic conditions inside and out, she’d been living there for over a year. She couldn’t complain; finding this place had been a blessing, and she could still remember Pierre Kessler’s embarrassed expression the day he had pushed open the door of this junk closet and handed her the key.
    It was minute, dirty, cluttered—and a godsend.
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When Pierre had found her on his doorstep a week earlier, Camille was famished, dazed and silent. She had spent the last few nights on the street.
    At first, when he saw the wraith on his landing, he was apprehensive.
    â€œPierre?”
    â€œWho’s there?”
    â€œPierre . . . ,” moaned the voice.
    â€œWho is it?”
    He switched on the light and his apprehension grew.
    â€œCamille? Is that you?”
    â€œPierre,” she sobbed, shoving a small suitcase in his direction, “you have to keep this for me . . . It’s all my stuff, you see, and it’ll get stolen, they’ll steal it, all of it, everything. I don’t want them to take my tools because I’d just die, do you understand? I would absolutely die.”
    He thought she was delirious.
    â€œCamille, what are you talking about? And where have you been? Come in!”
    Mathilde appeared behind him, and Camille collapsed on the doormat.
    They undressed her and put her to bed in the back room. Pierre Kessler pulled a chair up to the bed and looked at her, his expression full of shock and concern.
    â€œIs she asleep?”
    â€œI think so.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œI have no idea.”
    â€œBut look at the state she’s in!”
    â€œShhhh.”
    Camille woke up in the middle of the night and ran a bath, very slowly, so as not to wake them. Pierre and Mathilde weren’t asleep, but they decided it was better to leave her alone. They let her stay for a few days, gave her a second set of keys, and asked no questions. They were truly a