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reconstitution historique de beauté mauvaise” for no good reason—their abductors rarely beg for chloroform as well. So, there’s that distraction to assist me.
    Tweaking every word before it moved my lips, I told Jean-Paul that, circumstances being what they were—and I roughed out certain issues we’d discussed, then divulged Serge’s location—a bit of news that didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest, I’ll add—I couldn’t see the boy living more than, say, a day or two perhaps.
    “This is terrible,” Jean-Paul said, “but . . . would it be possible to . . . observe the ending? While safely hidden in the passageways, of course.”
    I replied that were his hands to wind up dirty—the form of dirt to be determined—which would likely need his DNA and necessitate his posing for some grisly family portraits, all of which would stay locked in my possession if uncalled for, and were the chateau’s secret walkways reenvisioned as a hiking trail that wended up a man-made mountain, I could promise any highlights would transpire within its scenic viewing spots and most conceivably, as strange as it might sound, in the kitchen.
    Jean-Paul forced his jittering, inattentive eyes into a collision with mine, or at best I seemed to be their second choice.
    “If I appear distracted or withholding,” he said, “it’s because this property has a deeper and more thorough secret, concealed from you until this moment, and in light of which even the passages I showed you will seem as public as a sidewalk. In truth, the chateau is a kind of theater, and its rooms and floors and private berths a tiered and complicated stage where my family and I form an involuntary cast. Never
having cause to give it words before, I can’t think of how to phrase this.”
    I have a tendency to blather when a thoughtful “hm” would serve, and yet so taxing were my feelings of confusion and disinterest that I smiled suspiciously, then shook my head to show I hadn’t understood a word he’d said and likely never would.
    He seemed perplexed by my misgivings, although, as years have passed and superseded his inflationary image of the chateau with my own, I’ve revised his cringe and worried gaze across the yard into a look of disappointment.
    “On second thought,” he said, “it will prove more understandable if you discover it yourself.”

Chapter 2
     
    M y car is a customized Citroën Hypnos, and I don’t believe you need to know much more about it other than, perhaps, a hasty rundown on the actual revision.
    The backseat was enlarged and gussied up in hopes of holding and impressing up to five short, skinny guests—six, if one or two of them have died, by which I mean are put to better use as unwitting contortionists.
    This reshuffle chopped the trunk into a wedge unsuitable for luggage and barely large enough to cram a corpse, much less a boy with working lungs who also has a multilayered Emo outfit and detailed hairstyle to consider.
    No sooner was the driveway’s crust of twigs and pebbles crackling beneath our tires than I heard Serge’s . . . fist, I think, bang repeatedly on something. Due to his lack of elbow room, the sound was pleasantly non-bell-like.
    Azmir, my driver, has lived in France since he was ten, thanks to an epicure of scale-model Algerians. When his appointed week or two of lopsided sexual recipience were up, a gory head wound would have exiled him in Jannah had he not overheard his owner ragging on a newer harem dweller and taken it upon himself to kill the little loser on the spot, apparently so charming his master with this burst of loyalty that he was spared and given tenure.
    Years later, my late father hired him as a driver and, rather oddly, fattened up some bigwig’s bank account to make the boy a citizen. Thus, Azmir’s sleaze factor and flying off the handle are so ingrained within my worries that to this day I can’t sit behind him without fingering my mace.
    Azmir’s choppy voice