Two Americans in Paris (10 page)

This promise to myself doesn’t last long, though, for my next thought is of how I long to see you again. I can’t help but hope romance of any sort might develop between us in the coming weeks.

She is tucked inside your pocket. It is very warm and she can hear your heart beating

I spend the day after our evening together with Lady. I update her on what is going on between you and me. She insists that if I offer it to you, you would have sex with me. “Just be sure he knows that’s all you want, just sex, no worries about his being taken,” she advises. “No man would refuse it.” Perhaps Lady is right. You did, after all, flirt with me yesterday. You even told me I have a beautiful body. Even so, I do not think your attraction to me is yet strong enough to incite you to cheat on your girlfriend. But things are progressing in that direction.

Near the end of the conversation Lady also fortuitously tells me that there are fireworks in Paris on the Fourth of July. Although I know Lady is probably mixing up Bastille Day and the Fourth of July, suggesting the possibility of fireworks to you would be an excellent way to ensure your time tomorrow will be set aside for me alone.

Later that evening, I rest my forearms on my windowsill and look out over the dusty silver rooftops streaked with the day’s final rays of sunlight. I hold my cell phone in my palm, preparing myself for calling you. I know we will only see each other tomorrow to celebrate the Fourth of July if I contact you to arrange the details. I should probably be irritated that I am always the one to initiate our meetings, but I’m becoming accustomed to it. My mind is calm.

You answer my call with “Hey,” your voice pleasantly warm.

“Hey! I was wondering if we’re still on for hot dogs on the Fourth of July tomorrow. Lady said there are fireworks on Champs de Mars in the evening and everyone goes down, drinks throughout the day.” Between my words I hear female laughter and background noise that makes me think you are outdoors. I imagine you sitting on a gingham picnic blanket, enjoying the sight of the girls, their cleavage alluringly exposed as they giggle and tipsily play with one another.

“I’m up for that, definitely up for that. I’m with some girls from my program right now, but I’m just about to leave . . . how about I call you tomorrow at ten?”

“In the morning?” I think it’s unlikely you will get up so early to call me, but since you have set the time yourself, I decide not to argue. “Sounds good. See you tomorrow!”

“Peace.”

The following morning, I wake up shortly after ten. As I suspected, you haven’t yet called, but I want to be dressed when you do.

I select my outfit with the intention of both pleasing your eye and corseting my torso. I want to be a little uncomfortable to give myself a constant physical reminder that I must pin in my desires while I am with you. My dress is patterned with elegant black-and-white stripes and heavily gathered at the waist so that it poufs away from my body, giving my silhouette an exaggerated hourglass shape. I arrange my silk balconette bra dyed a deep marbled rose so that it teasingly pokes up from my strapless dress when I move. My dress’ bodice fits my torso like a glove and the seams are lined with metal strips that press against my abdomen. I imagine that at the end of our day together, in the privacy of my room or yours, you hold the hot weight of your body near mine and slowly unzip my dress. As you move the dress away from my body, you press your lips to the mauve imprints running down my abdomen caused by my bodice’s metal bones, the care imparted from your lips like a healing poultice.

While waiting for you to call I look out my window onto Paris’ quiet streets. It’s just another slow, sunny summer day. None of the French are excited about it being America’s Independence Day.

By 11:45 you still haven’t called, so I decide to call you myself, but you aren’t answering. I begin to phone you in about fifteen minute intervals (not too exact, lest you suspect the obsessive meticulousness of my attempts to reach you). You finally answer at 12:34.

“Hey, I was sleeping.” Your words slur together, sticky with sleep. “Thank you for letting me sleep.”

“Oh, no problem.” I don’t want you to think I am upset you kept me waiting for over two hours. “What time should we meet?”

We agree to meet in an hour at the Monop’ on Saint-Michel to buy groceries before heading to your place. I am so thrilled to know for certain we will be seeing each other today that I forget about how long I had to wait to get in touch with you.

Two
arrondissements
across Paris I walk up Saint-Michel, thinking how I may seek you among Monop’s aisles of mustard and wine.

When I arrive, you are not inside. Opposite the entrance, I find you leaning against a slender tree. Upon seeing me you stand up and move toward me, lifting one cheek in a half smile. Your chestnut eyes rove up and down my body, gleaming with lustful thoughts.

We go into the grocery store.

Grocery stores in Paris are tiny, so the aisles are almost always narrow. We press ourselves against jars of olives and boxes of cereal to squeeze by fellow shoppers as we pick out the ingredients for our Fourth of July lunch: a pack of hot dogs, a baguette, a jar of Dijon mustard, and two liters of Belgian beer.

We put our items on the cashier’s counter. I secretly hope you might offer to pay. If you do, it would make this seem more like a first date. The total comes to €8.63.

You turn to me and say, “I’ll get this. My treat.”

Your words flood my chest with joy. “Thank you! I’ll pay you back . . . somehow.”

“You can pay me back with . . . escargots!”

“Escargots! That would be more than eight euros.” It is essential to me that I have control over how I pay you back. I intend to use this debt as a reason for us to again spend time together soon.

“Yeah. I was trying to think of something of similar value.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I assure you.

You pick up the bags. I offer to carry one, but you insist on carrying them yourself, a gentlemanly gesture I appreciate. We head up Saint-Michel, enjoying the beautiful perspective views created by the flat, classically unified building facades.

“It’s the Fourth of July. No one gives a shit in Paris,” you sigh.

“Yes, I read your status this morning. ‘It’s the Fourth of July, no one gives a fuck in Paris,’” I quote.

You put your disappointment aside in favor of a brighter thought. “You know how after you’ve been traveling, you’re tired, and you’ve had fun, but all you want to do is be home? When I went to Vienna and then came back, Paris was that home. It’s different, but it was nice—to come home to Paris.”

To hear you say this warms me so deeply. It means that although you miss America, a love for Paris is growing in you. I can nurture your love for Paris by introducing you to experiences you may not have had otherwise. “Yes, of course! I’ve had that feeling plenty of times. Paris feels more like home to me than anywhere in the world.”

At the entrance to your building you brush back the leafy palms of a potted plant to enter in your key code. You hold the door open for me and I follow you up the well-worn steps of your building’s wooden staircase.

“How far up is it?” I ask.

“Third floor. There’s a cat, F. Puss,” you say.

“F. Puss?”

“Yeah! In Hemingway’s
A Moveable Feast
he has a cat named F. Puss, so I wanted my cat in Paris to be named F. Puss. He belongs to the guy on the second floor, but since he hangs around the building, I think of him as my cat.”

I find your aspiration to be like Hemingway endearing. I recently read Hemingway’s
A Moveable Feast
and you remind me of the narrator. You are, like him, a young American man in Paris for the purpose of writing who reads often, loves Russian writers, takes great pleasure in good food, has a character-like wit, and, of course, a cat named F. Puss.

On the third floor you unlock your door and hold it open for me. “I bet Padd is here. Padd? Paddington Bear? Padd?” There is no response. “Oh, I guess not. He’ll be back,” you assure me. For now, though, we have the apartment to ourselves.

At the end of the short hallway is the kitchen. We lay the groceries on the table, which is scattered with crumbs and this morning’s dirty dishes. I slip off my shoes, following your example. You slide the crumbs on the table into your hand, brush them into the trash, and move the dirty dishes into the sink. While you wash the dishes, I arrange the ingredients of our lunch on the table. The only thing left to do before we eat is boil water for the hot dogs, which is impossible to do before a pot is washed.

I sit at the table and look out the large, open French window. On the building opposite yours an enormous ionic plaster appears to emerge from the thick, deep green ivy that covers much of the building. Small insects buzz among the shrubs and pigeons coo on the sidewalk below. Hanging on the kitchen wall are two little Impressionist-style paintings: one of a tree-lined boulevard in the fall, the other of a summer sailboat. While you aren’t looking I sneak a peek into the bedroom, the space I have so often imagined joining you in. From here I can’t see much, though—only that there are two beds in there.

Now that I have fully observed your apartment, I become restless. “I feel like I should be doing something to help.”

“My mother would castigate me if I made a guest do the dishes.”

“Hah.” I am pleased that your mother raised you well, at least with regard to how to treat a guest, and also that you used the word “castigate,” a word I do not hear often though it is perfect for the context.

“So did you find out anything about fireworks today?”

“Oh, no. I did find stuff about previous Bastille Day events in Paris—you know, concerts on the Champ de Mars and such. Nothing about fireworks on the fourth, but I didn’t look very hard. We might still find something.” Although I am almost certain Lady was wrong about there being fireworks in Paris on the Fourth of July, I have persuaded myself into believing her at least a little in order to more easily make you believe her, too. I know, though, that once I do some more internet research, I am probably going to have to tell you that Lady was wrong.

“Yeah, there are a lot of Americans in Paris. There should be something.”

You fill a freshly washed pot with water and hand it to me. I set the water to boil and we busy ourselves with preparing the table: a pair of plates, a pair of glasses, our pair of beers. Your dishware is all mismatched, gradually assembled by the many students who have lived here before you. You set aside the nicer version of each eating utensil for me—a glass cup instead of a plastic one, for example.

While bubbles of hot air begin to appear on the base of the pot on the stove, we sit at the table and chat.

“I was up until three
a.m.
talking to . . . my girlfriend.” You rub your eyes, drawing my attention to the flush of fatigue lightly pinking the whites of your eyes.

A knotted rope of pain twists inside me at hearing you mention your girlfriend for the second time. I avoid thinking about her as much as possible because I find the reality of the situation upsetting. I do not wish to hear another word about her. To change the topic of conversation I notice your lack of stubble. “You’ve kept your moustache shaved off!”

“Yeah. I play with my moustache, and it distracts me.” You motion your fingers around your mouth. “So I shave it off. Then I’ll play with the hair back here.” You turn your head and twist your fingers through wisps of hair that lay flat against the nape of your neck.

Though I wouldn’t admit it to you right now, I play with my hair too. I picture us reading in our comfy chairs together as an old couple, each of us playing with our hair. Knowing we share the same habit makes me like you even more. It make me feel less alone.

I look to the pot of boiling water on the stove, its steam rising steadily like my lust for you. Before putting the hot dogs in, I ask you how many you think you will eat.

“I’m a big eater, I could eat the whole thing. If you give me a whole pizza, I can eat it. I may be a small guy, but I have an incredibly fast metabolism.” Your stretch your slim torso, showcasing the breadth of your finely muscled ribs, a feast for my eyes. “I crap like eight times a day.”

Your overshare momentarily kills my desire. “So the entire packet, then.” I slip all eight of the hot dogs into the boiling water.

While the hot dogs cook we twist the lids off of our beers. “Cheers!” you say. “To the Fourth of July,” I add, knowing you will enjoy being reminded of the holiday. You smile and our beer bottles meet with a clink. We each take a drink. The beer is light and slightly sweet. I rarely drink, so even though the beer has a low alcohol content, your apartment quickly takes on a wonderful, hazy glow. Everything looks a little more attractive to me. Especially you.

As soon as I detect the warm, meaty smell of the hot dogs, I check on them. I carefully evaluate their mauve skins and how they float in rhythm with the simmering water. It is important to me that the hot dogs have been cooked just right so our first meal together is delicious, establishing your interest in future meals I have cooked. We each slot one hot dog into a portion of baguette and douse them with Dijon mustard.

You take a bite and your face lights up with foodie pleasure. “Mm, this is so good.”

I slowly savor each bite and while I eat a second hotdog you devour several more. You ask if I would mind if you ate the last hot dog. “I told you, I can eat,” you say. I request only the last piece of baguette, so that I may nibble on it.