God’S Warriors
Megan Nolan emerged from the bowels of Montmartre’s Abbesses Metro station into a cold and raw late afternoon in January of 2001. Rawer and colder, it seemed to her, than when she had entered the Metro near her apartment in the Latin Quarter only twenty minutes earlier. To catch her breath, she lit a Gauloise and stood near the station’s covered entrance. A passing businessman slowed to stare at her as she stood and smoked. Her strawberry blonde hair flowed down to the shoulders of her dark green, au courant wool overcoat, which itself flowed down to the tops of her knee- high Prada boots. Under the coat, she had on faded jeans and an ivory-colored cashmere turtleneck sweater. She did not wear jewelry in Montmartre as she had heard stories of the sudden knock down and necklace-, or worse, earring-grab by marauding boys. Her hair and her gold-flecked green eyes were her best accessories anyway. She did love jewelry though, to wear and to sell, which is why she was going to see her friend Annabella Jeritza, the widowed gypsy fortuneteller whose shop was only a few blocks away near the obscure little Olney Park.
Skirting the Square Jehan-Rictus with its ridiculous Je T’aime wall — a mass of blue tiles with stylized I Love You’s in various languages written on them — Megan headed east on Rue Yvonne le Tac, whose name always made her smile because she had stolen Yvonne Taccopina’s boyfriend in high school and then broken his heart like it was a dry twig. And Yvonne’s too, into the bargain. In her shoulder bag was a white gold, heart-shaped pendant in its original Raumet velvet box, given to her for Christmas by her current boyfriend, Alain, whose father owned the Raumet chain. This Annabella would find a buyer for and