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Summary
Sophie, Jess, Sophie, Jess, Jess, Nick, Jess, Mimi, Jess, Mimi, Sophie, Jess
Sophie
After sending the others back to their apartments, Sophie pours herself a glass of wine before realizing that Antoine is still in her apartment. Gloatingly, he announces that he is her blackmailer, having previously discovered that she was an employee of the club while looking over Jacque’s records.
Jess
Jess and Theo have sex in the bathroom of the bar, and afterwards, he offers for her to stay in his apartment, as he feels it would be dangerous for her to return to Ben’s building. As they are walking, a group of police officers suddenly appear and tackle Theo on the street, planting a bag of drugs on him. Jess sees Commissaire Blanchot, the officer who she met with Nick earlier when reporting Ben’s disappearance, and realizes that he was one of the clients at the club. Aided by the noise and chaos of the riots, she is able to slip away.
Sophie
Antoine demands more money from Sophie, but she refuses. She remembers that she confessed to Ben that her real name was Sofiya Volkova, telling him about the club and the unusual arrangement of her marriage. When Ben asked about Mimi, however, Sophie remembered that he is a journalist and rebuked herself for her recklessness.
Jess
Jess decides to return to Ben’s apartment despite the dangers. She thinks about the past and remembers the day that she found her own mother dead of a drug overdose after ignoring a hunch not to go to school that day. At the foot of the stairs of the building, she sees what she first believes to be a pile of clothing, realizing moments later that it is the Concierge, who has been pushed down the stairs. She checks her pulse and finds that she still has a faint heartbeat.
Jess
Jess attempts to call an ambulance but realizes that she doesn’t have her phone, as it was taken by the doorman of the club. While attempting to run out of the building, she discovers that the gate is locked, trapping her inside. When she returns to the building she sees Nick, who tells her that it’s time for them all to have a talk.
Nick
Jess accuses Nick of pushing the Concierge, which he denies. Jess then accuses him of deceiving her and harming Ben, asking how he could do that to his own friend. Nick angrily rejects the notion that Ben was ever his friend. A few days earlier, when Mimi told him about what she found on Ben’s laptop, Nick recalled that he confessed to Ben about the source of his family’s wealth while they were in Amsterdam. Nick now knows that Ben came to Paris on the basis of that confession, hoping to investigate the family’s connection to prostitution.
Jess
For a moment, Jess almost believes Nick’s claims that he simply wants to talk things over, but when she sees Antoine emerge from the shadows, she realizes she is being ambushed. She jumps into the elevator and takes it to the third floor, running into Ben’s apartment and locking the door. When she hears the door being unlocked with a key, she grabs a knife. Nick and Antoine enter the apartment and Ben’s cat attacks Nick, distracting him. Jess swings the knife at Antoine, who backs up and falls down the stairs.
Mimi
Sophie comforts Mimi, but when they hear the sounds of a scuffle elsewhere in the building, Sophie gets up to investigate.
Jess
Looking for a place to hide, Jess runs up the stairs and picks the lock of the old maid’s quarters at the top of the building. In the dark old room, she sees a mattress and realizes there is a body on it. As she realizes that she is looking at Ben’s corpse, she screams.
Mimi
From her apartment, Mimi hears a scream and suddenly memories from the past few days come back to her. She remembers the smell of blood and the flash of a knife. On the evening that Ben disappeared, she found herself in the shower, washing blood off her hands, without any memory of how she got there. Her mother reassured her that everything would be alright and that she did what had to be done. Though she has no specific memory of what she did on that might, she now believes that she must have killed Ben.
Sophie
Sophie hears Jess screaming and realizes that Jess must have found Ben in the old maid’s quarters. As she makes her way there, she remembers the evening of Ben’s disappearance. She found Mimi in his apartment, covered in blood and in a state of deep shock. Together with the Concierge, they pushed Mimi into the shower to wash the blood off and then began to clean up the apartment, wiping away the blood with towels and bleach and hiding the knife in the dumb waiter. When Nick and Antoine appeared, they were horrified by the bloody scene. Sophie told them that Jacques murdered Ben after discovering what he was writing about. Nick, who told Jacques about Ben’s story after learning about it from Mimi, blamed himself and vomited. Together, the family members planned out their next steps.
Jess
As Jess begins to mourn her brother, she is shocked to discover that he is still alive, though weakened and injured. Sophie and Nick reach the maid’s quarters and Jess observes their different reactions. While Sophie looks intense and controlled, Nick appears to be shocked and horrified by the sight of Ben.
Analysis
A major emphasis in these chapters is the difficulty of escaping the past. Sophie, born Sofiya Volkova, was once a poor Russian immigrant supporting herself through sex work. In marrying the cruel and abusive Jacques, she was able to secure financial stability for herself but only at a great personal cost. Though she feels that she has left her past behind, the first letter that she receives from her blackmailer shows that the past is not so easily erased. The revelation that Antoine, her stepson, has been blackmailing her forces Sophie to confront her own past and the impossibility of her attempt to escape it entirely. Despite all that she has done to maintain her new persona, her husband, Jacques, has carelessly kept documents that attest to her true identity, leaving them somewhere where they can be found by his children. Antoine’s own bitter hatred of Sophie stems from events in the past that he cannot seem to move on from: the death of his mother and his suspicion that Jacques killed her. He has nursed this resentment for decades, finally lashing out at Sophie, a scapegoat for his pain, while his father is away for business.
In The Paris Apartment, the past also haunts characters in the form of trauma. At various points in the novel, Jess hesitates before opening a door. Here, in the final sections of the novel, the source of her anxiety is revealed. It was Jess who found her mother’s dead body after she died of a drug overdose in her home. Worse, her mother did not appear to pass away peacefully, but instead died while attempting to get out of the room in order to seek help. This horrible scene traumatizes Jess deeply, echoing painfully throughout her adult life. Feelings of guilt also torment her. On the morning of the day that her mother died, she had a strong gut feeling that she should stay at home instead of going to school, but she ignored this hunch and now blames herself. For this reason, Jess is very responsive to her own intuition throughout the novel, relying on instinct to alert her to danger.
