Just One Day (23 page)

I find my voice. “Wait, how’d you know I was here? I mean, today?”

“Marco just text me an American girl was looking for me. I knew it had to be you.
Come.”

I follow him back inside the club, where this Marco is now mopping the floor and refusing
to look at me. I have a hard time looking at him after calling him an asshole in French.

“Je suis très désolée,”
I apologize as I shuffle past him.

“He’s Latvian. His French is new, so he’s timid to speak,” Yves says. “He is the cleaner.
Come downstairs, that is where your suitcase is.” I glance at Marco and think of Dee,
and Shakespeare, and remind myself that things are rarely what they appear. I hope
he didn’t understand my French curses, either. I apologize again. The Giant beckons
downstairs to the storeroom. In a corner, behind a stack of boxes, is my suitcase.

Everything is as I left it. The Ziploc with the list. The souvenirs. My travel diary
with the bag of blank postcards inside. I half expect it all be covered in a layer
of dust. I finger the diary. The souvenirs from last year’s trip. They’re not the
memories that matter, the ones that lasted.

“It is very nice suitcase,” the Giant says.

“You want it?” I ask. I don’t want to lug it around with me. I can ship the souvenirs
home. The suitcase is just extra baggage.

“Oh, no, no, no. It is for you.”

“I can’t take it. I’ll take the important things, but I can’t carry all this with
me.”

He looks at me seriously. “But I save it for you.”

“The saving is the best part, but I really don’t need it anymore.”

He smiles, the whites of his teeth gleaming. “I
am
going to Roché Estair in the spring, to celebrate my brother’s graduation.”

I fish out the important things—my diary, my favorite T-shirt, earrings I’ve missed—and
put them in my bag. I put all the souvenirs, the unwritten postcards in a cardboard
box to ship home. “You take this to Roché Estair for the graduation,” I tell him.
“It would make me happy.”

He nods solemnly. “You did not come back for your suitcase.”

I shake my head. “Have you seen him?” I ask.

He looks at me for a long moment. He nods again. “One time. The day after I meet you.”

“Do you know where I might find him?”

He strokes the goatee on his chin and looks at me with a sympathy I could really do
without. After a long moment, he says, “Maybe you should better speak with Céline.”

And the way he says it, it implies all the things I already know. That Willem and
Céline have a history. That I might’ve been right to doubt him all along. But if the
Giant knows any of that, he’s not saying. “She is off today, but sometimes she comes
to the shows at night. Androgynie is playing, and she is very good friends with them.
I will see if she is coming and let you know. Then you can find out what you need.
You can call me later, and I will let you know if she will be here.”

“Okay.” I pull out my Paris phone, and we exchange numbers. “You never told me your
name, by the way?”

He laughs at that. “No, I didn’t. I am Modou Mjodi. And I never learned your name.
I looked on the suitcase but there was nothing.”

“I know. My name is Allyson, but Céline will know me as Lulu.”

He looks perplexed. “Which is correct?”

“I’m beginning to think they both are.”

He shrugs a little, takes my hand, kisses my cheeks twice, and then he bids me adieu.

_ _ _

It’s only lunchtime when I leave Modou, and with no idea when I will see Céline, I
feel oddly relieved, like I’ve been given a reprieve. I hadn’t really planned on being
a tourist in Paris, but I decide to do it. I brave the Metro and get off in the Marais
quarter and go to one of the cafés along the beautiful Place des Vosges, where I order
a salad and a
citron pressé
, adding plenty of sugar this time. I sit there for hours, waiting for the waiter
to kick me out, but he leaves me alone until I ask for my check. At a patisserie,
I get a ridiculously expensive macaron—this one a pale tangerine, like the last whispers
of a sunset. I eat it and walk, in and out of the narrow streets, through a lively
Jewish section, full of Orthodox men with black hats and stylish skinny suits. I snap
a few pictures for my mom and text them to her and tell her to forward them to Grandma,
who’ll get a kick out of it. Then I wander around looking at the boutiques, gazing
at clothing I can barely afford to touch. When the salesladies ask me in French if
I need help, I answer in French that I am just browsing.

I buy some postcards and go back to Place des Vosges and sit down in the park inside
the square. Amid the mothers playing with their babies and the old men reading their
newspapers, puffing away on cigarettes, I write them out. I have a lot to send. One
to my parents, one to my grandmother, one to Dee, one to Kali, one to Jenn, one to
Café Finlay, one to Carol. And then, at the last minute, I decide to write one to
Melanie too.

It’s kind of a perfect day. I feel totally relaxed, and though I’m undoubtedly a tourist,
I also feel like a Parisian. I’m almost relieved that I haven’t heard from Modou.
Kelly sends me a text about meeting up for dinner, and I’m getting ready to make my
way back to the hostel when my phone chirps. It’s from Modou. Céline will be at the
club after ten o’clock.

I feel like the mellow relaxing vibe of the afternoon disappears behind a storm cloud.
It’s only seven. I have several hours to kill, and I could go meet the Oz gang for
dinner, but I’m too nervous. So, I walk the city in my nervousness. I get to the club
at nine thirty and stand outside, the heavy bass thump of live music making my heart
pound. She’s probably already there, but it feels like being early is some kind of
faux pas. So I linger outside, watching the stylishly edgy Parisians with razored
haircuts and angular clothes filter into the club. I look down at myself: khaki skirt,
black T-shirt, leather flip-flops. Why didn’t I dress for battle?

At ten fifteen, I pay my (ten-euro) entry and go in. The club is packed, and there’s
a band on the stage, all heavy guitars and a violin screeching feedback, and the tiniest
Asian girl singing in this high, squeaky voice. All alone, surrounded by these hipsters,
I don’t think I’ve ever felt so out of place, and every part of me is telling me to
leave before I make a fool of myself. But I don’t. I haven’t come this far to chicken
out. I fight my way to the bar, and when I see Modou, I greet him like a long-lost
brother. He smiles at me and pours me a glass of wine. When I try to pay, he waves
the bill away, and immediately, I feel better.

“Ahh, Céline is there,” he says, pointing to a table up front. She sits, alone, watching
the band with a strange intensity, the smoke from her cigarette curling witchily around
her.

I walk over to her table. She doesn’t acknowledge me, though I can’t tell if it’s
because she’s snubbing me or concentrating on the band. I stand next to the open chair
waiting for her to invite me to sit down, but then I just give up. I pull the chair
out and sit. She gives me the slightest of nods, takes a puff of the cigarette, and
blows smoke all over me, which I suppose counts as a greeting. Then she turns back
to the band.

We sit there, listening. We are sitting right up close to the speakers, so the sound
is extra deafening; my ears are already beginning to ring. It’s hard to tell if she’s
enjoying the music. She doesn’t tap her toes or sway or anything. She just stares
and smokes.

Finally, when the band takes a break, she looks at me. “Your name is Allyson.” She
pronounces it
Aleeseesyoohn
, which makes it sound ridiculous somehow, an SUV of an American name with too many
syllables.

I nod.

“So, not French at all?”

I shake my head. I never claimed it was.

We stare at each other, and I realize she won’t give me a thing. I have to take it.
“I’m looking for Willem. Do you know where I can find him?” I’d meant to come in guns
blazing, French spouting, but my nerves have sent me scurrying back to the comforts
of my mother tongue.

She lights a new cigarette and blows more smoke on me. “No.”

“But, but he said you were good friends.”

“He said that? No. I am just like you.”

I cannot imagine in what way she would think she is even remotely like me, aside from
us both possessing two X chromosomes. “How, how are we anything alike?”

“I am just one of the girls. There are many of us.”

It’s not like I didn’t know this about him. Not like he hid it. But hearing it out
loud, from her, I feel exhausted, jet lag dropping me like a plummeting elevator.

“So you don’t know where he is?”

She shakes her head.

“And you don’t know where I can find him?”

“No.”

“And would you even tell me if you did?”

Her eyebrow goes up into that perfect arch as smoke curls out of her mouth.

“Can you even tell me his last name? Can you tell me that much?”

And here she smiles. Because in this little game we are playing, have been playing
since last summer, I just showed my hand. And what a rotten hand it is. She takes
a pen and a scrap of paper and writes something down. She slides the paper over to
me. His name is on there. His full name! But I won’t give her the satisfaction of
my eagerness, so I casually tuck it in my pocket without even glancing at it.

“Do you need anything else?” Her tone, haughty and gloating, manages to carry over
the sounds of the band, who have started playing again. I can already hear her laughing
about me with all her hipster pals.

“No, you’ve done quite enough.”

She eyes me for a long second. Her eyes aren’t so much blue as violet. “What will
you do now?”

I force a bitchy smile, which I expect doesn’t look bitchy so much as constipated.
“Oh, you know, see the sights.”

She blows more smoke on me. “Yes, you can be a
touriste
,” she says, as though tourist were an epithet. Then she begins ticking off all the
places lowly people like us go. The Eiffel Tower. Sacré-Coeur. The Louvre.

I search her face for hidden meaning. Did he tell her about our day? I can just picture
them laughing about me throwing the book at the skinheads, telling Willem I’d take
care of him.

Céline is still talking about all the things I can do in Paris. “You can go shopping,”
she is saying. Buy a new handbag. Some jewelry. Another watch. Some shoes. I can’t
quite fathom how someone spouting off Ms. Foley–like advice can be so condescending.

“Thank you for your time,” I say. In French. Annoyance has made me bilingual.

Thirty-one

W
illem de Ruiter.

His name is Willem de Ruiter. I rush to an Internet café and start Googling him. But
Willem de Ruiter turns out to be a popular name in Holland. There’s a Dutch cinematographer
with that name. There’s some famous diplomat with that name. And hundreds of other
nonfamous people who nevertheless have some reason to be on the Internet. I go through
hundreds of pages, in English, in Dutch, and I find not one link to him, not one piece
of evidence that he actually he exists. I Google his parents’ names Bram de Ruiter.
Yael de Ruiter. Naturopath. Actor. Anything I can think of. All these combinations.
I get vaguely excited when some weird theater thing comes up, but when I click through,
the website is down.

How can it be this hard to find someone? It occurs to me that maybe Céline intentionally
gave me the wrong name.

But then I Google myself, “Allyson Healey,” and I don’t come up, either. You have
to add the name of my college before you get my Facebook page.

I realize then it’s not enough to know what someone is called.

You have to know who they are.

Thirty-two

T
he next morning, Kelly and her friends ask me if I want to join them for a trip to
the Rodin Museum, followed by some shopping. And I almost say yes. Because that’s
what I would like. But there is still one more stop. It’s not even that I think I’ll
find anything; it’s just that, if I’m facing down demons, I have go to there too.

I’m not sure where it is, exactly, but I do know the intersection where Ms. Foley
had me picked up. It is seared into my brain. Avenue Simon Bolivar and Rue de l’Equerre,
the cross streets of Humiliation and Defeat.

When I get out of the Metro, nothing seems familiar. Maybe because the last time I
was here, I was flipping out in such a panic. But I know I didn’t run that far before
finding the pay phone, so I know it can’t be that far to the art squat. I methodically
go up one block. Down the next. Up and back. But nothing seems familiar. I attempt
to ask directions, but how do you say “art squat” in French? Old building with artists?
That doesn’t work. I remember the Chinese restaurants in the vicinity and ask for
them. One young guy gets really excited and, I think, offers a recommendation to one
supposedly good place across on Rue de Belleville. I find it. And from there, I find
a sign for double happiness. It could be one of many, but I have a feeling it’s the
one.

I wander around for fifteen more minutes and, on a quiet triangle of streets, find
the squat. It has the same scaffolding, same distorted portraits, maybe a little more
weather-beaten. I knock on the steel door. No one answers, but there are obviously
people inside. Music wafts out from the open windows. I give the door a push. It creaks
open. I push it farther. I walk inside. No one pays me any notice. I go up the creaking
staircase, to the place where it all happened.

I see the clay first, bright white, yet at the same time, golden and warm. Inside,
a man is working. He is petite, Asian, a study in contrasts: His hair white with black
roots, his clothes all black and strangely antiquated, like he stepped out of a Charles
Dickens novel, and all covered in the same white dust that covered me that night.

He is carving at a piece of clay with a scalpel, his attention so focused I’m afraid
he’ll startle with the merest sound. I clear my throat and knock quietly on the door.

He looks up and rubs his eyes, which are bleary with concentration.
“Oui.”

“Bonjour,”
I begin. And then I sputter. My limited French is no match for what I need to explain
to him. I crashed your squat, with a guy. I had the most intimate night of my life,
and I woke up utterly alone. “Umm, I’m looking for a friend who I think you might
know. Oh, I’m sorry—
parlez-vous anglais
?”

He lifts his head and nods, slightly, with the delicacy and control of a ballet dancer.
“Yes,” he says.

“I’m looking for a friend of mine, and I wonder if you might know him. His name is
Willem de Ruiter. He’s Dutch?” I watch his face for a flicker of recognition, but
it remains impassive, as smooth as the clay sculptures that surround us.

“No? Well, he and I stayed here one night. Not exactly
stayed
here . . .” I trail off, looking around the studio, and it all comes back to me:
the smell of the rain against the thirsty pavement, the swirl of dust, the smooth
wood of his worktable pressing into my back. Willem towering over me.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Allyson,” I hear myself say as if from a distance away.

“Van,” he says, introducing himself while fingering an old pocket watch on a chain.

I’m staring at the table, remembering the intense sharpness of it against my back,
the ease with which Willem hoisted me onto it. The table is, as it was then, meticulously
clean, the neat pile of papers, the half-finished pieces in the corner, the mesh cup
of charcoals, and pens. Wait, what? I grab for the pens.

“That’s my pen!”

“I’m sorry?” Van asks.

I reach over to grab the pen out of the cup. The Rollerball, inscribed
BREATHE EASY WITH PULMOCLEAR
. “This is my pen! From my dad’s practice.”

Van is looking at me, perplexed. But he doesn’t understand. The pen was in my bag.
I never took it out. It just went missing. I had it on the barge. I wrote double happiness
with it. And then the next day, when I was on the phone with Ms. Foley, it was gone.

“Last summer, my friend Willem and I, well, we came here hoping someone might put
us up for the night. He said that squats will do that.” I pause. Van nods slightly.
“But no one was here. Except a window was open. So we slept here, in your studio,
and when I woke up the next morning, my friend, Willem, he was gone.”

I wait for Van to get upset about our trespassing, but he is looking at me, still
trying to understand why I’m gripping the Pulmoclear pen in my hand like it’s a sword.
“This pen was in my purse and then it was gone and now it’s here, and I’m wondering,
maybe there was a note or something. . . .”

Van’s face remains blank, and I’m about to apologize, for trespassing before, and
now again, but then I see something, like the faint glimmers of light before a sunrise,
as some sort of recognition illuminates his face. He taps his index finger to the
bridge of his nose.

“I did find something; I thought it was a shopping list.”

“A shopping list?”

“It said something about, about . . . I don’t recall, perhaps chocolate and bread?”

“Chocolate and bread?” Those were Willem’s staple foods. My heart starts to pound.

“I don’t remember. I thought it came in from the garbage. I had been away for holiday,
and when I came back, everything was disarrayed. I disposed of it. I’m so sorry.”
He looks stricken.

We snuck into his studio, made a mess of it, and
he
looks guilty.

“No, don’t be sorry. This is so helpful. Would there have been any reason for a shopping
list to be in here? I mean, might you have written it?”

“No. And if I did, it would not have contained bread and chocolate.”

I smile at that. “Could the list have been, maybe, a note?”

“It is possible.”

“We were supposed to have bread and chocolate for breakfast. And my pen is here.”

“Please, take your pen.”

“No, you can
have
the pen,” I say, and out escapes a whoop of laughter. A note. Could he have left
me a note?

I throw my arms around Van, who stiffens for a moment in surprise but then relaxes
into my embrace and reaches around to hug me back. It feels good, and he smells nice,
like oil paint and turpentine and dust and old wood—smells that, like everything from
that day, are stitched into the fabric of me now. For the first time in a long time,
this doesn’t seem like a curse.

_ _ _

When I leave Van, it’s mid-afternoon. The Oz crew is probably still at the Rodin Museum;
I could meet up with them. But instead, I decide to try something else. I go to the
nearest Metro station and close my eyes and spin around and then I pick a stop. I
land on Jules Joffrin and then I figure out the series of trains that will take me
there.

I wind up in a very Parisian-seeming neighborhood, lots of narrow, uphill streets
and everyday shops: shoe stores, barbershops, little neighborhood bars. I meander
a ways, no idea where I am, but surprisingly enjoying the feeling of being lost. Eventually,
I come across a broad staircase, carved into the steep hillside, forming a little
canyon between the apartment buildings and green foliage hanging down on either side.
I have no idea where the stairs lead. I can practically hear Willem’s voice:
All the more reason to take them.

So I do. And take them, and take them. No sooner do I reach one landing than I find
another set of stairs. At the top of the stairs, I cross a small cobblestoned medieval
street and then,
boom
, it’s like I’m back in the world of the tour. There are idling coaches and sardine-packed
cafés, and an accordion player doing Edith Piaf covers.

I follow the crowds around the corner, and at the end of a street full of cafés advertising
menus in English, Spanish, French, and German is a huge white-domed cathedral.

“Excusez-moi, qu’est-ce que c’est?”
I ask a man standing outside of one of the cafés.

He rolls his eyes.
“C’est Sacré-Coeur!”

Oh, Sacré-Coeur. Of course. I walk closer and see three domes, two smaller ones flanking
the big one the middle, reigning regal over the rooftops of Paris. In front of the
cathedral, which is glowing golden in the afternoon sun, is a grassy hillside esplanade,
bisected by marble staircases leading down the other side of the hill. There are people
everywhere: the tourists with their video cameras rolling, backpackers lolling in
the sun, artists with easels out, young couples leaning into each other, whispering
secrets. Paris! Life!

At the end of the tour, I’d sworn off setting foot in another moldering old church.
But for some reason, I follow the crowds inside. Even with the golden mosaics, looming
statues and swelling crowds, it somehow still manages to feel like a neighborhood
church, with people quietly praying, fingering rosaries, or just lost in thought.

There’s a stand of candles, and you can pay a few euros and light one yourself. I’m
not Catholic, and I’m not entirely clear on this ritual, but I feel the need to commemorate
this somehow. I hand over some change and am given a candle, and when I light it,
it occurs to me that I should say a prayer. Should I pray for someone who’s died,
like my grandfather? Or should I pray for Dee? For my mom? Should I pray to find Willem?

But none of that feels right. What feels right is just
this
. Being here. Again. By myself, this time. I’m not sure what the word for
this
is, but I say a prayer for it anyway.

I’m getting hungry, and the long twilight is starting. I decide to go down the back
steps into that typical neighborhood and try to find an inexpensive bistro for dinner.
But first, I need to get a macaron before all the patisseries close for the day.

At the base of the steps, I wander for a few blocks before I find a patisserie. At
first I think it’s closed because a shade is drawn down the door, but I hear voices,
lots and lots of voices, inside, so hesitantly, I push the door open.

It seems like a party is going on. The air is humid with so many people crammed together,
and there are bottles of booze and bouquets of flowers. I begin to edge back out,
but there is a huge booming protest from inside, so I open it up again, and they wave
me in. Inside, there are maybe ten people, some of them still in bakers’ aprons, others
in street clothes. They all have cups in hands, faces flushed with excitement.

In halting French, I ask if it might be possible to buy a macaron. There is much shuffling,
and a macaron is produced. When I reach for my wallet, my money is refused. I start
to head for the door, but before I get to it, I’m handed some Champagne in a paper
cup. I raise the cup and everyone clinks with me and drinks. Then a burly guy with
a handlebar mustache starts to cry and everyone pats him on the back.

I have no idea what’s going on. I look around questioningly, and one of the women
starts talking very fast, in a very strong accent, so I don’t catch much, but I do
catch
bébé
.

“Baby?” I exclaim in English.

The guy with the handlebar mustache hands me his telephone. On it is a photo of a
puckered, red-faced thing in a blue cap. “Rémy!” he declares.

“Your son?” I ask.
“Votre fils?”

Handlebar Mustache nods, then his eyes fill with tears.

“Félicitations!”
I say. And then Handlebar Mustache embraces me in a huge hug, and the crowd claps
and cheers.

A bottle of amber booze is passed around. When all our paper cups have been filled,
people hold them up and offer different toasts or just say some version of cheers.
Everyone takes a turn, and when it gets to me, I shout out what Jewish people say
at times like this:
“L’chaim!”

“It means ‘to life,’” I explain. And as I say it, I think that maybe this is what
I was saying a prayer for back in the cathedral. To life.

“L’chaim,”
the rowdy bakers repeat back to me. And then we drink.