The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

That same evening, Addie arrives at the actor’s apartment, only to find that he is back from his shoot. Addie walks to the East Village and arrives at the apartment building where a woman named Sam lives. Like Toby, Sam has spent many nights with Addie but never remembers her in the morning.

Addie climbs the stairs to enjoy the relative peace and quiet of the rooftop. A few moments later, Sam and three of her friends burst onto the roof. Sam catches her glance and smiles, and the two share a friendly conversation that they’ve had on at least three other occasions. After Sam and her friends leave, Addie falls asleep in a lawn chair reading The Odyssey.

On August 9, 1714, Addie reaches Paris. Contrary to what she’s heard about the city’s glittering streets, the Paris of 1714 is a hot, crowded mess of poverty and suffering. With only four copper sols to her name, Addie rents a room from an old woman who demands three sols to pay for a week in advance. The woman refuses to give Addie a receipt, and only a couple of hours later, the woman rents the room to other tenants and kicks Addie out, having forgotten she ever existed. The woman throws the wooden bird after her, breaking its wing. That night, Addie sleeps on the streets.

The next day, Addie uses her last sol to pay for a bread roll she is caught stealing. Later, she accidentally runs into a woman who tells her to go to the docks to sell her “wares”—by which she means Addie’s body. That night at the docks, a man gives her 10 sols to take her virginity. When the painful and traumatic ordeal is over, Addie thinks to herself, “[T]his cannot be it, this cannot be the life Addie traded everything for, this cannot be the future that erased her past” (110).

After a brief respite from the heat during the fall, Addie braces herself for a winter spent living on the streets of Paris. Amid a sudden freeze, the dead pile up in alleyways and on pushcarts. It is too cold even for the men at the docks, who retreat into bordellos, leaving Addie without her meager income. One night, when all the churches are full, Addie lies down in an alley and endures the experience of freezing to death. Because she is immortal, she wakes up hours later in a pushcart, weighed down by dead bodies. She pushes her way out, to the shock and terror of onlookers. Only when the pushcart is long gone does Addie realize her wooden bird is missing.

It is July 29, 1715, exactly one year since Addie’s curse took effect. She spent the last 12 months learning the contours of the curse so she might enjoy a modicum of comfort in a life otherwise defined by hardship and loneliness. For example, she learns that to drug her clients with laudanum, she must put the drug in the wine, re-cork it, and let the man remove the cork and pour it himself.

After performing this trick, as she prepares for an unmolested night in a hotel bed, Addie hears a voice say, “How disappointing. I confess, my dear, I expected more” (115). The voice belongs to the stranger in the woods, who materializes out of the shadows. After demanding to know why he did this to her, the stranger replies he gave her exactly what she asked for: freedom, or what he calls “[a] life with no one to answer to” (116). He adds that it was in his best interest to make her life as unpleasant as possible so she might more eagerly surrender her life and soul to him. After some internal wavering, Addie declines to surrender, and the stranger disappears.

In 2014, Henry meets his younger sister Muriel for breakfast. The two briefly discuss their older brother David, a head surgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital who Henry believes looks down on him.

In the morning, Sam wakes up Addie, who fell asleep on her rooftop, and invites her inside her apartment to warm up. Most mornings with Sam, Addie quickly scurries out to avoid awkwardness. On this morning, however, their interactions feel natural and new.

An abstract painter, Sam feels the sudden compulsion to paint Addie. She depicts her subject as the night sky, with a constellation of seven stars that mirror the freckles on Addie’s face.

On July 29, 1716 at a Parisian tailor’s shop, Addie poses as a servant charged with picking up a noblewoman’s dress. When the tailor goes in the back to fetch the dress, Addie hides in the store until the tailor closes the shop, having forgotten all about her. Left alone, Addie tries on many dresses but is drawn to men’s clothes, thinking “how much simpler it would be to be a man, how easily they move through the world, and at such little cost” (129).

As Addie leaves the shop dressed in a dark new dress, the stranger emerges exactly a year after his last appearance. When he pressures her to surrender and escape her life of hardship, she talks about all the wonderful experiences she has had over the past 12 months, including seeing an elephant at the palace grounds and drinking Champagne for the first time. Defiantly, Addie says, “Think of all the time I have, and all the things I’ll see” (132). After vowing to crush her, the stranger disappears.

After leaving Sam’s, Addie heads to The Last Word. She asks Henry if she can trade in The Odyssey for another book, explaining that she received it as a gift but already owns it. Henry’s response stuns her. He remembers her from the previous day and castigates her for trying to return a stolen book. In a state of shock, Addie asks if she can buy him a coffee to apologize. He reluctantly agrees. 

After Henry closes the shop, he and Addie walk to a coffee shop. Addie says her name is Eve. Henry asks rather obliquely, “What do you see when you look at me?” (140). Addie says she sees kind eyes and an open face. This response pleases Henry, who asks her if she wants to grab some food and continue the date.

In 1719, on the five-year anniversary of the curse, Addie lounges in the luxurious bedroom of two Parisian nobles who she knows are out of town for the evening. As she powders her face to obscure her freckles, Addie hears a voice from behind say, “I would rather see clouds blot out the stars” (143). It is the stranger.

After Addie once more refuses to yield, the stranger rings a bell to summon the servants of the estate, who appear to be zombified and in his thrall. They prepare a sumptuous dinner for the stranger and Addie, moving around as if they are puppets on strings. After a long silence, Addie asks the stranger for his name. He says he has none and asks Addie what name she gave him when he was still just a figment of her imagination. She says “Luc,” which is short for Lucien but is now more apt as a nickname for Lucifer. As Luc taunts her over her stubbornness, Addie thinks, “He has given her a gift tonight, though she doubts he knows it. Time has no face, no form, nothing to fight against. But in his mocking smile [...] the darkness has given her the one thing she truly needs: an enemy” (150).

Back in 2014, as Addie and Henry continue their date at a bar called the Merchant, Addie worries that if she makes one false move, the spell will be broken, and Henry will forget. He asks her what is the one thing she wants more than anything. She thinks to herself, “This,” but merely answers, “Another beer.”

As the evening continues, Addie and Henry both find excuses to keep the date going. Addie knows why she doesn’t want the date to end but is confused why Henry feels the same way. She also begins to notice that everyone treats Henry with a strange warmth he never acknowledges. When they finally part at the subway, Henry says he wants to see her again. With no fixed address or cell phone, Addie says she will meet him at the bookstore in a couple of days. She also says she lied about her name. To her surprise, she can tell Henry her real name, the first time she’s been able to do so in three centuries.

In 1720, on the six-year anniversary of the curse, Addie sets a table in a rundown yet livable room she calls her own. As she displays a hard-won bounty of bread, cheese, pork, and wine, Addie eagerly awaits Luc’s arrival. Her plan is to show him how much she’s thrived over the past 12 months. Luc, however, never arrives, leaving her first embittered, then fearful and lonely. Although she hates Luc, he is the only one who has not forgotten her, and his absence on this night devastates her.

Henry walks home after his date with Addie, thinking about how happy it made him to hear her say he had kind eyes and an open face