Chapter 10: (Interlude) Cleaning Up Our Act
The next few days were quiet, far too quiet. No newspapers mentioned the strange apparition on the roofs. There was a little bit about Sapang, but only that there had been arrests for 'disturbing the peace'. I knew better than to ask Juli or Basilio about this.
Marius asked me two more times to bring letters to Cosette. I hid them again, but made sure not to ask for anything like coffee. It was only fair.
It was several days till I found out what the boys had been up to with all of that paper. While I was on the train one Friday to Simoun's Binondo office, I noticed that there was a small card in one of the handholds next to me. When I looked around, there were more tiny squares in all the other handholds in the carriage.
When I got a look at the card in front of me, I knew what was going on. Who else would leave a card agitating for justice for disappeared activists and writers? It was a simple black thing with a date, a name of a person, and a sentence calling for justice. No picture or gory image was necessary. I got a picture of the card on my cellphone, just for record's sake. Then I called up one person who I was sure had something to do with it.
Enjolras picked up after two rings. "Eponine? What's this about?" he asked.
"I'm on the train now and I saw what you guys did," I said as I got off the train and began heading to the turnstiles.
"Did? You mean the cards?"
"Well what else?"
"You called me up in the middle of class about that?"
"Sorry, but really, don't you think it's dangerous?" I looked around to make sure that no one was watching or listening in. "You know who might be watching."
"Eponine, I dare even your boss to find some reason to call the law or lodge a complaint," Enjolras said. He was so calm, as if he had already been expecting me to raise these sorts of questions. "I have to go back to lectures now. We can discuss this later at the Musain."
"What—" I said but he hung up. I cursed before dialling up Makaraig, but he did not answer his phone. By this time I had to get off the train, so there was no use in staying on the line. At least that was what I thought, since when I got to the Binondo office not even half an hour later, I saw a familiar car parked outside the building.
Makaraig got out of his car and waved at me. "Eponine, do you have a shredder in your office?"
A shredder? What would he need such a thing for? "I don't know, I'll check," I said as I ran to him. "Makaraig, are you crazy? If Simoun finds you here, he'll be so mad!" I whispered.
"I'll just say I have an errand," Makaraig said. "He's not in now, is he?"
"I haven't been up yet. You wait outside till I tell you," I told him before I ran up to see if Simoun was in the office. The place was deserted but as always there was a note for me. This time I had to put some spreadsheets in order. Before I could decide if I should call Makaraig in, he was already at the door.
"Don't you laugh," I said when I saw him begin to grin. "This office is weird, I know."
"I was just thinking, 'so this is the lair of Simoun,'" Makaraig replied.
"Doesn't he ever have any other name, in business circles, I mean?" I asked.
"If he does, I've never heard of it," Makaraig replied. He pointed to a desk piled high with papers I had yet to sort. "There might be a shredder there."
He was right. I cleared away some of the stacks and found the desktop gadget. "How did you know he had it?" I asked.
"Taking a guess since most offices do," Makaraig said as he brought out a pile of paper. I saw that these were petitions and banners with slogans waging war against the government. "Some rather enthusiastic students were plastering these all over the U-belt. Bahorel and Combeferre were able to confiscate them before the police could catch on."
"Exactly what's so wrong with these?"
"We could get hauled in for sedition. That's not exactly on our agenda."
I snorted; Makaraig was probably still not aware as to what extremes some of our friends could get to. "After you shred them, burn them," I said as I handed him my lighter.
Makaraig's jaw dropped. "Eponine, you smoke?"
"Not everyone who carries a lighter actually uses it." I helped him feed some of the papers into the shredder and went round to the other side to catch the strips. After a while I had to fetch a plastic bag to get all of the paper.
In the middle of everything, Makaraig's phone began to ring. He motioned for me to take charge of the shredder as he went off to one side of the room. "Hello, Joly? Yeah I have the papers. You what? What, you didn't say so earlier-hang on," he said before covering the mouthpiece of his phone. "Eponine, check what you're shredding. Joly left his biochemistry notes in the stack."
I grabbed the latest batch of shreds and saw what appeared to be hexagons and chemical symbols. There were more of these papers lying about, but now in bits and pieces. "Sorry. I think Joly has to photocopy new notes," I whispered.
Makaraig relayed this news, only to have to put his phone further away from his ears as Joly began to yell. "Sorry about that! I'm sure you have a classmate who can help!" he said into the phone. "Good god, it's just notes, you can reconstruct them from books-"
"You're not a med student, Makaraig, you can't relate!" I shouted. I heard other students besides Joly and Combeferre griping in the Musain and it didn't sound as if they had it easy. "How you all manage to get along is beyond me," I muttered.
"I don't understand it either," Makaraig said some time later as he ended his call. "Well Joly said he'll go ask one of the girls he knows from his class. Something about this girl actually taking her own notes."
I wasn't quite sure of the significance of that; I took my own notes too since I wasn't one to just nick them from the Internet and put them on a tablet. Firstly, I couldn't even afford such a thing. "Good luck to Joly then. You ought to make it up to him."
"In caffeine," Makaraig said. "And I owe you one for this too. What can I do?"
"Hmm, never ask me to do this again. I need this job," I said. I was constantly listening for Simoun's footsteps in the hall. I knew I could never come up with a good excuse if my boss suddenly showed up.
"Well we could work that into logistics. I mean, is there anything else?" Makaraig asked. "I could get you dinner or something?"
I rolled my eyes; these boys were definitely rotten at trying to pick a girl up. "At some place that's not the Musain. Friday night," I said. "Don't you be late, or I'll go pay for dinner myself."
He paused and then nodded. "That's a good idea. But don't you go home on weekends?"
I shook my head. "Usually I'm busy," I said. I didn't want him knowing just yet what I had to deal with; I had heard this week that my family was up with Montparnasse in a resettlement compound past Fairview. I knew how messy those things could get. There was no way I could bring him or the rest of our friends into that.