The Paris Apartment

Jess shouts and bangs on the basement door, and a young man eventually opens the door. When he speaks, she discovers he’s British, too. He claims he found the door jammed, but he doesn’t believe someone purposefully locked her in. He introduces himself as Nick, Ben’s friend who helped him move into the building.

Nick invites Jess up to his apartment and is surprised that she and Ben have different accents and mannerisms. He tells her that the cellar was once used by the Gestapo for keeping prisoners. Nick believes that Ben could be missing because, as Ben often did, he grabbed some cash and chased a story. Nick and Ben met in college, and their reunion three months earlier took Nick by surprise. Ben was in Paris searching for a story to establish his name in journalism. Nick helped him get the apartment in his building at a low rent. Jess’s cellular data is low, so she helps herself to Nick’s computer to investigate Nick’s social media.

Nick tries to get Jess off his computer and out of his apartment by telling her he has somewhere to go. He gives her his Wi-Fi password so she can try connecting from upstairs. Jess wonders what livelihood enables him to afford such a luxurious apartment. Years of snooping have taught her that bathrooms are an excellent place to discover things about a person—and earlier in Nick’s bathroom, she found a lot of oxycodone. He tells her he’s an angel investor in tech development, but he seems uncomfortable with questions about his job. Jess isn’t sure if she can trust him, especially because she finds him attractive.

In Ben’s apartment, Jess connects to Nick’s Wi-Fi and searches Ben’s social media for information about Nick but finds nothing. Theo, the Guardian editor, texts her back and invites her to meet him at a café; he’s been expecting stories from Ben. In Ben’s wallet, Jess finds a dark blue metal card with the image of a gold exploding firework. On her way out of the apartment, she runs into the concierge, who tells her there’s nothing here for her.

The concierge recalls Ben’s kindness to her. She can’t help but to follow Sophie’s instructions, but she wishes Jess would leave and get out of the mess that is happening in the apartment.

At the café, Theo tells Jess that Ben often freelances for him, writing mostly about the recent Parisian riots over rising taxes and costs of petrol. She tells him Ben has disappeared and shows him the mysterious blue metal she found. Theo thinks he recognizes the symbol and asks to keep it so he can look into it further. Though hesitant, she gives it up, worried she has few options. Theo shares his noise-canceling headphones with Jess so they can listen to the end of Ben’s message: They make out the creak of wood and Ben questioning someone’s arrival, confirming Jess’s suspicions that something bad has happened to him.

Mimi notices that Jess has left the building. She hopes to see Ben appear, a habit he has. Once she was in a record store and unexpectedly ran into him. Mimi was pleased when Ben remembered her name but forgot her attractive roommate’s name. She told him that the apartment building had a dumbwaiter, and a few days later Ben sent her a note telling her he found it. Ben used the dumbwaiter to send Mimi the record he bought that day at the store, which thrilled her.

Jess is running out of cellular data and is unsure how to get back to the apartment. She calls the police, but they don’t take her seriously. When she realizes a beautiful woman is following her, the woman says that she’s also looking for Ben and that she heard Jess ask about him in the street the night before. Jess says Ben may be missing and in trouble, and the woman runs away. Jess can’t catch up.

Back in Ben’s apartment, Jess keeps all the lights on and notices that without proper curtains, it’s easy to look into Ben’s apartment from different angles around the building. She looks around for more clues and finds Ben’s notebooks. He’s written about something called “the little death,” noting that Sophie knows about it but he’s not sure about Mimi or the concierge. At around 3:00am, Jess is awoken by the sound of footsteps in the next room. None of the lights are on, implying that it’s not Ben. Before she can decide what to do, the footsteps retreat and the person leaves. When she’s certain the person is gone, she looks around and notices that Ben’s notebook is now gone.

The narrative momentarily flashes back to when Ben is attacked in his apartment. He reaches out for the window, hoping someone can see him and come to help. His last conscious thought is about Jess, who should arrive any minute and will also be in danger.

Nick runs into Jess in the hallway and notes her sickly pallor. When she tells him somebody was in the apartment with her last night, he offers to bring her to the police department and translate for her.

On the way to the police station, Jess tells Nick that she got into some trouble with work in the UK and doesn’t want to give her name to the police. Nick offers to be the contact in the case. She tells him about the notes in Ben’s notebook, and Nick says that “the little death” is a French euphemism for an orgasm.

When they meet with a detective, Nick explains the situation and Jess plays the voicemail for him. Nick is shocked at Ben’s reaction to whoever entered his apartment. After the meeting, Nick assures her that the detective took the voicemail seriously.

Sophie decants wine for herself and Jacques. She recalls hosting Ben for drinks; Ben easily impressed Jacques, but when she found Ben in Jacques’s study instead of smoking on the patio like he had asked for, she decided Ben was dangerous. That night she had also hosted Antoine and his wife, Dominique; Antoine and Dominique argued, and Antoine grabbed at her. Ben and Dominique shared a cigarette privately on the patio, which enraged Antoine so much that Jacques had to throw him out of the apartment. Later, Sophie imagined Ben on the patio as she masturbated.

Jess hears voices in the stairwell and investigates, believing she hears Ben’s name mentioned. She follows the sounds to the stairwell by the penthouse. Sophie opens the door, sees her, and invites her in for a drink. Inside, Jess recognizes the face of a man in a portrait. Sophie explains that it’s her husband, who is away on business. Jess also notices that a gun is missing from a display of old guns, which Sophie says is away for repair. Sophie is hosting a little gathering, and Jess recognizes Antoine as the man who cursed at her at the building’s entrance. Mimi is at the party and spills some wine on Sophie’s expensive furnishings.

After spilling her wine, Mimi is so embarrassed and anxious that she goes to her apartment to throw up. She recalls watching Ben from her window and painting his figure.

Nick arrives at the party and brings Jess out to the patio to see the penthouse view, pointing out the former maids’ quarters above them. When Jess asks him about his relationship with the neighbors, he says he dislikes Sophie’s husband and that she’s with him for the money. He avoids conversations about Antoine, whose wife has just left him. They look out at the view of Paris as Nick tells Jess about traveling around Europe with Ben, who was always adventurous and curious. Jess mentions their upbringing in North London with their mother.

The concierge watches security footage of the party on the penthouse terrace while she listens to the news of more riots nearby. It makes her nervous to see Jess so close to the railing.

Nick inwardly recalls his Euro-trip with Ben. It was incredible, though there were harrowing moments, such as when their friend nearly overdosed and drowned, or when a gang nearly killed them. Ben, who had always kept his family to himself, revealed over drinks that his half-sister Jess found their mother when Jess was only eight years old. In Amsterdam, some of their other friends wanted to go to a brothel, but Nick excused himself. Ben followed him to make sure he was okay, and Nick told him about a perverse gift his father had given him for his 16th birthday to make him a man. Nick hadn’t wanted the gift, but Jacques had then become angry and shamed him into accepting it. This chapter does not yet reveal what the gift was—only that Nick felt “changed” afterward, and in a profoundly negative way.

Ten years went by between that trip and when Nick and Ben reunited; when Jess asks Nick what happened, he brushes it off and invites her to join him back inside. She excuses herself to the bathroom but instead looks around the apartment. She finds Jacques’s study and is shocked to see a photo of a nude woman. She also finds an old passport photo of Sophie; the passport looks Russian. There’s then a photo of Sophie with two teenage boys and a girl: Antoine, Nick, and Mimi.

The party guests have left, and Sophie is disappointed that Jess’s appearance derailed her plans. One night, Ben noticed that Sophie’s manner of speaking French seemed foreign. He asked her where she was from, putting her on edge. The next day, another extortion note arrived, alleging that her bourgeois lifestyle can’t hide her secrets. Again, Sophie pawned expensive jewelry to pay off the extortion.

Sophie stares at herself in the mirror, admiring her body but secretly screaming inside.

Jess thinks about Nick, whose British accent was so spot-on that she assumed he was British, though his French sounds native too. He introduced himself as Nick Miller, and she now realizes that Miller is the English translation for Sophie’s last name, Meunier. Though Antoine, Mimi, Nick, and Sophie all seem different from one another, a family connection would explain why Nick can afford his luxurious lifestyle. In an English-French dictionary of Ben’s, Jess finds a folded paper from Ben’s journal with the letter M and the same firework symbol from the metal card in his wallet. He noted “ask Irina,” a new clue for Jess. She takes a picture of the notes and sends it to Theo, asking for his input. Jess hears a scratching noise at the door. She opens it and sees the concierge, who has something clenched in her fist (Jess can’t tell what it is). Jess confronts her, asking if it was the concierge who was sneaking around in Ben’s apartment the night before. The concierge denies it, and Jess doesn’t want to threaten the elderly woman, so she backs off. The concierge leaves.

Jess decides not to confront Nick about his identity because there’s power in her silent secret.