Just One Day (7 page)

“What did you say?” he asks.

I give him a look. No way I’m telling.

“You just made it up.”

I shrug. “You’ll never know.”

“What does it mean?”

I grin. “You’ll have to look it up.”

“Can you write it too?” He pulls out his little black book and opens to a blank page
near the back. He rifles back into his bag. “Do you have a pen?”

I have one of those fancy roller balls I swiped from my dad, this one emblazoned
BREATHE EASY WITH PULMOCLEAR
. I write the character for sun, moon, stars. Willem nods admiringly.

“And look, I love this one. It’s double happiness.”

“See how the characters are symmetrical?”

“Double happiness,” Willem repeats, tracing the lines with his index finger.

“It’s a popular phrase. You’ll see it on restaurants and things. I think it has to
do with luck. In China, it’s apparently big at weddings. Probably because of the story
of its origin.”

“Which is?”

“A young man was traveling to take a very important exam to become a minister. On
the way, he gets sick in a mountain village. So this mountain doctor takes care of
him, and while he’s recovering, he meets the doctor’s daughter, and they fall in love.
Right before he leaves, the girl tells him a line of verse. The boy heads off to the
capital to take his exam and does well, and the emperor’s all impressed. So, I guess
to test him further, he says a line of verse. Of course, the boy immediately recognizes
this mysterious line as the other half of the couplet the girl told him, so he repeats
what the girl said. The emperor’s doubly impressed, and the boy gets the job. Then
he goes back and marries the girl. So, double happiness, I guess. He gets the job
and the girl. You know, the Chinese are very big on luck.”

Willem shakes his head. “I think the double happiness is the two halves finding each
other. Like the couplet.”

I’d never thought of it, but of course that’s what it is.

“Do you remember how it goes?” Willem asks.

I nod. “Green trees against the sky in the spring rain while the sky set off the spring
trees in the obscuration. Red flowers dot the land in the breeze’s chase while the
land colored up in red after the kiss.”

_ _ _

The final section of the canal is underground. The walls are arched, and so low that
I can reach up and touch the slick, wet bricks. It’s eerie, hushed but echoey down
here. Even the boisterous Danes have shushed. Willem and I sit with our legs dangling
over the edge of the boat, kicking the side of the tunnel wall when we can.

He nudges my ankle with his toe. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For arranging this.” He gestures to the boat.

“My pleasure. Thank you for arranging
this
.” I point above us, to where Paris is no doubt going about its business.

“Any time.” He looks around. “It’s nice, this. The canal.” He looks at me. “You.”

“I’ll bet you say that to all the canals.” But I flush in the musty, rich darkness.

We stay like that for the rest of the ride, swinging our legs against the side of
the boat, listening as the odd bit of laughter or music from Paris seeps underground.
It feels like the city is telling secrets down here, privy only to those who think
to listen.

Eight

A
rsenal Marina is like a parking lot for boats, tightly packed into cement piers on
both sides of the water. Willem helps Captain Jack guide the barge into its narrow
mooring, hopping out to tie the lines in complicated knots. We bid farewell to the
Danes, who are now truly soused, and I take down Agnethe’s cell phone number, promising
to text her the pictures as soon as I can.

As we get off, Captain Jack shakes our hands. “I feel a little bad to take your money,”
he says.

“No. Don’t feel bad.” I think of the look on Willem’s face, of being in the tunnel.
That alone was worth a hundred bucks.

“And we’ll take it off you soon enough,” Gustav calls.

Jacques shrugs. He kisses my hand before he helps me off the boat, and he practically
hugs Willem.

As we walk away, Willem taps my shoulder. “Did you see what the boat is named?”

I didn’t. It’s right on the back, etched in blue lettering, next to the vertical red,
white, and blue stripes of the French flag.
Viola
.
Deauville
.

“Viola? After Shakespeare’s Viola?”

“No. Jacques meant for it be called
Voilà
, but his cousin painted it wrong, and he liked the name, so he registered her as
Viola
.”

“Okaaay—that’s still a little weird,” I say.

As always, Willem smiles.

“Accidents?” Immediately, a strange little tremor goes up my spine.

Willem nods, almost solemnly. “Accidents,” he confirms.

“But what does it mean? Does it mean we were meant to take
that
boat? Does it mean something better or worse would’ve happened to us if we
hadn’t
taken that boat? Did taking that boat
alter
the course of our lives? Is life really that random?”

Willem just shrugs.

“Or does it mean that Jacques’s cousin can’t spell?” I say.

Willem laughs again. The sound is clear and strong as a bell, and it fills me with
joy, and it’s like, for the first time in my life, I understand that
this
is the point of laughter, to spread happiness.

“Sometimes you can’t know until you know,” he says.

“That’s very helpful.”

He laughs and looks at me for a long moment. “You know, I think you might be good
at traveling after all.”

“Seriously? I’m not. Today is a total anomaly. I was miserable on the tour. Trust
me, I didn’t flag down a single boat. Not even a taxi. Not even a bicycle.”

“What about before the tour?”

“I haven’t traveled much, and the kind I’ve done . . . not a lot of room for accidents.”

Willem raises a questioning eyebrow.

“I’ve been places. Florida. Skiing. And to Mexico, but even that sounds more exotic
than it is. Every year, we go to this time-share resort south of Cancún. It’s meant
to look like a giant Mayan temple, but I swear the only clue that you’re not in America
is the piped-in mariachi Christmas carols along the fake river waterslide thing. We
stay in the same unit. We go to the same beach. We eat at the same restaurants. We
barely even leave the gates, and when we do, it’s to visit the ruins, but we go to
the same ones every single year. It’s like the calendar flips but nothing else changes.”

“Same, same, but different,” Willem says.

“More like same, same, but same.”

“Next time when you go to Cancún, you can sneak out into the real Mexico,” he suggests.
“Tempt fate. See what happens.”

“Maybe,” I allow, just imagining my mom’s response if I suggested a little freelance
traveling.

“Maybe I’ll go to Mexico one day,” Willem says. “I’ll bump into you, and we’ll escape
into the wilds.”

“You think that would happen? We’d just randomly bump into each other?”

Willem lifts his hands up in the air. “There would have to be another accident. A
big one.”

“Oh, so you’re saying that
I’m
an accident?”

His smile stretches like caramel. “Absolutely.”

I rub my toe against the curb. I think of my Ziploc bags. I think of the color-coded
schedule of all my activities that we’ve kept tacked to the fridge since I was, like,
eight. I think of my neat files with all my college application materials. Everything
ordered. Everything planned. I look at Willem, so the opposite of that, of me, today,
also the opposite of that.

“I think that might possibly be one of the most flattering things anyone has ever
said to me.” I pause. “I’m not sure what that says about me, though.”

“It says that you haven’t been flattered enough.”

I bow and give a sweeping be-my-guest gesture.

He stops and looks at me, and it’s like his eyes are scanners. I have that same sensation
I did on the train earlier, that he’s appraising me, only this time not for looks
and black-market value, but for something else.

“I won’t say that you’re pretty, because that dog already did. And I won’t say you’re
funny, because you have had me laughing since I met you.”

Evan used to tell me that he and I were “so compatible,” as if being like him was
the highest form of praise.
Pretty and funny
—Willem could stop right there, and it would be enough.

But he doesn’t stop there. “I think you’re the sort of person who finds money on the
ground and waves it in the air and asks if anyone has lost it. I think you cry in
movies that aren’t even sad because you have a soft heart, though you don’t let it
show. I think you do things that scare you, and that makes you braver than those adrenaline
junkies who bungee-jump off bridges.”

He stops then. I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out and there’s
a lump in my throat and for one small second, I’m scared I’m going to cry.

Because I’d hoped for baubles, trinkets, fizzy things:
You have a nice smile. You have pretty legs. You’re sexy.

But what he said . . . I did once turn in forty dollars I found at the food court
to mall security. I have cried in every single Jason Bourne movie. As for the last
thing he said, I don’t know if it’s true. But I hope more than anything that it is.

“We should get going,” I say, clearing my throat. “If we want to get to the Louvre.
How far is it from here?”

“Maybe a few kilometers. But it’s fast by bike.”

“You want me to wave one down?” I joke.

“No, we’ll just get a Vélib’.” Willem looks around and walks toward a stand of gray
bicycles. “Have you ever heard of the White Bicycle?” he asks.

I shake my head, and Willem starts explaining how for a brief time in Amsterdam in
the 1960s, there used to be white bicycles, and they were free and everywhere. When
you wanted a bike, you grabbed one, and when you were done, you left it. But it didn’t
work because there weren’t enough bikes, and people stole them. “In Paris, you can
borrow a bike for free for a half hour, but you have to lock it back up, or you get
charged.”

“Oh, I think I just read they started something like this back home. So, it’s free?”

“All you need is a credit card for the deposit.”

I don’t have a credit card—well, not one that doesn’t link back to my parents’ account,
but Willem has his bank card, though he says he isn’t sure if there’s enough. When
he runs it through the little keypad, one of the bikes unlocks, but when he tries
it again for a second bike, the card is declined. I’m not entirely disappointed. Cycling
around Paris, sans helmet, seems vaguely suicidal.

But Willem’s not replacing the bike. He’s wheeling it over to where I’m standing and
raising the seat. He looks at me. Then pats the saddle.

“Wait, you want
me
to ride the bike?”

He nods.

“And you’ll what? Run alongside me?”

“No. I’ll ride you.” His eyebrows shoot up, and I feel myself blush. “On the bike,”
he clarifies.

I climb onto the wide seat. Willem steps in front of me. “Where exactly are you going
to go?” I ask

“Don’t worry about that. You just get comfortable,” he says, as if it’s possible in
the current situation, with his back inches from my face, so close I can feel the
heat radiating off of him, so close I can smell the new-clothes aroma of his T-shirt
mingling with the light musk of his sweat. He puts one foot on one of the pedals.
Then he turns around, an impish grin on his face. “Warn me if you see police. This
isn’t quite legal.”

“Wait, what’s not legal?”

But he’s already pushed off. I shut my eyes. This is insane. We’re going to die. And
then my parents really will kill me.

A block later, we’re still alive. I squint an eye open. Willem is leaning all the
way forward over handlebars, effortlessly standing on the pedals, while I lean back,
my legs dangling alongside the rear wheel. I open my other eye, release my clammy
grip on the hem of his T-shirt. The marina is well behind us, and we are on a regular
street, in a bike lane, cruising along with all the other gray bicycles.

We turn onto a choked street full of construction, half the avenue blocked by scaffolding
and blockades, and I’m looking at all the graffiti; the
SOS
, just like on the T-shirt for that band
Sous ou Sur
is scrawled there. I’m about to point it out to Willem, but then I turn in the other
direction and there’s the Seine. And there’s Paris. Postcard Paris! Paris from
French Kiss
and from
Midnight in Paris
and from
Charade
and every other Paris film I’ve ever seen. I gape at the Seine, which is rippling
in the breeze and glimmering in the early-evening sun. Down the expanse of it, I can
see a series of arched bridges, draped like expensive bracelets over an elegant wrist.
Willem points out Notre Dame Cathedral, just towering there, in the middle of an island
in the middle of a river, like it’s nothing. Like it’s any other day, and it’s not
the freaking Notre Dame! We pass by another building, a wedding-cake confection that
looks like it might house royalty. But, no, it’s just City Hall.

It’s funny how on the tour, we often saw sights like this as we whizzed by on a bus.
Ms. Foley would stand at the front of the coach, microphone in hand, and tell us facts
about this cathedral or that opera house. Sometimes, we’d stop and go in, but with
one or two days per city, most of the time, we drove on by.

I’m driving by them now too. But somehow, it feels different. Like, being here, outside,
on the back of this bike, with the wind in my hair and the sounds singing in my ears
and the centuries-old cobblestones rattling beneath my butt, I’m not missing anything.
On the contrary, I’m inhaling it, consuming it, becoming it.

I’m not sure how to account for the change, for all the changes today. Is it Paris?
Is it Lulu? Or is it Willem? Is it his nearness that makes the city so intoxicating
or the city that makes his nearness so irresistible?

A loud whistle cuts through my reverie, and the bike comes to an abrupt halt.

“Ride’s over,” Willem says. I hop off, and Willem starts wheeling the bicycle down
the street.

A policeman with a thin mustache and a constipated expression comes chasing after
us. He starts yelling at Willem, gesticulating, wagging a finger at me. His face is
turning a bright red, and when he pulls out his little book and starts pointing to
me and Willem, I get nervous. I thought Willem had been joking about the illegal thing.

Then Willem says something to the cop that stops the tirade cold.

The cop starts nattering on, and I don’t understand a word, except I’m pretty sure
he says “Shakespeare!” while holding a finger up in an
aha
motion. Willem nods, and the cop’s tone softens. He still wagging his finger at us,
but the little book goes back into his satchel. With a tip of his funny little hat,
he walks away.

“Did you just quote Shakespeare to a cop?” I ask.

Willem nods.

I’m not sure what’s crazier: That Willem did that. Or that the cops here know Shakespeare.

“What did you say?”

“La beauté est une enchanteresse, et la bonne foi qui s’expose à ses charmes se dissout
en sang,”
he says. “It’s from
Much Ado About Nothing
.”

“What does it mean?”

Willem gives me that look of his, licks his lips, smiles. “You’ll have to look it
up.”

We walk along the river and onto a main road full of restaurants, art galleries, and
high-end boutiques. Willem parks the bike in a stand, and we take off on foot under
a long portico and then make a few more turns into what, at first, seems like it should
be a presidential residence or a royal palace, Versailles or something, the buildings
are so huge and grand. Then I spot the glass pyramid in the middle of the courtyard,
so I know we have arrived at the Louvre.

It’s mobbed. Thousands of people are flooding out of the buildings, like they’re evacuating
it, clutching poster tubes and large black-and-white shopping bags. Some are energized,
chatty, but many more look shell-shocked, weary, glazed after a day spent ingesting
epic portions of Culture! I know that look. The Teen Tours! brochure bragged that
it offered “young people the full-on European immersion experience! We’ll expose your
teen to a maximum number of cultures in a short period of time, broadening their view
of history, language, art, heritage, cuisine.” It was supposed to be enlightening,
but it mostly felt exhausting.

So when we discover that the Louvre just closed, I’m actually relieved.

“I’m sorry,” Willem says.

“Oh, I’m not.” I’m not sure if this qualifies as an accident or not, but I’m happy
either way.

We do an about-face and cross over a bridge and turn up the other bank of the river.
Alongside the embankment there are all kinds of vendors selling books and old magazines,
pristine issues of
Paris Match
with Jackie Kennedy on the cover and old pulp paperbacks with lurid covers, titled
in both English and French. There’s one vendor with a bunch of bric-a-brac, old vases,
costume jewelry, and in a box on the side, a collection of dusty vintage alarm clocks.
I paw through and find a vintage SMI in Bakelite. “Twenty euro,” the kerchiefed saleslady
says to me. I try to keep a poker face. Twenty euro is about thirty bucks. The clock
is easily worth two hundred dollars.