Just One Day (9 page)

Ten

I
fall asleep. And then I wake up, and everything feels different. The park is quiet
now. The sound of laughter and echoes of handballs have disappeared into the long
dusky twilight. Fat, gray rainclouds have overtaken the darkening sky.

But something else has shifted, something less quantifiable yet somehow elemental.
I feel it as soon as I wake; the atoms and molecules have rearranged themselves, rendering
the whole world irrevocably changed.

And that’s when I notice Willem’s hand.

Willem has also fallen asleep; his long body is curved in the space around mine like
a question mark. We aren’t touching at all except for his one hand, which is tucked
into the crease of my hip, casually, like a dropped scarf, like it blew there on the
soft breeze of sleep. And yet now that it’s there, it feels like it belongs there.
Like it’s always belonged there.

I hold myself perfectly still, listening to the wind rustle through the trees, to
the soft in-out of Willem’s rhythmic breathing. I concentrate on his hand, which feels
like it’s delivering a direct line of electricity from his fingertips into some core
part of me I didn’t even know existed until just now.

Willem stirs in his sleep, and I wonder if he’s feeling this too. How can he not?
The electricity is so real, so palpable, that if someone waved a meter around, it
would spin off the dial.

He shifts again, and his fingertips dig in right there into that tender flesh in the
hollow of my hip, sending a shock and a zing so deliciously intense that I buck, kicking
his leg behind me.

I swear, somehow I can feel his eyelashes flutter open, followed by the heat of his
breath against the back of my neck.
“Goeiemorgen,”
he says, his voice still pliant with sleep.

I roll over to face him, thankful that his hand remains slung over my hip. His ruddy
cheeks bear little indentations from the grass, like tribal initiation scars. I want
to touch them, to feel the grooves of his otherwise smooth skin. I want to touch every
part of him. It’s like his body is a giant sun, emitting its own gravitational pull.

“I think that means good morning, though technically it’s still evening.” My words
come out sounding gaspy. I’ve forgotten how to talk and breathe at the same time.

“You forget, time doesn’t exist anymore. You gave it to me.”

“I gave it you,” I repeat. There’s such delicious surrender in the words, and I feel
myself slipping away to him. Some small part of me warns against this. This is just
one day. I am just one girl. But the part that can resist, that
would
resist, I woke up finally liberated of her.

Willem blinks at me, his eyes dark, lazy, and sexy. I can feel us kissing already.
I can feel his lips all over me. I can feel the jut of his sharp hipbones against
me. The park is almost deserted. There are a couple of younger girls in jeans and
head scarves talking to some guys. But they are off in a corner of their own. And
I don’t care about propriety.

My thoughts must be like a movie projected on a screen. He watches it all. I can tell
by his knowing smile. We inch closer to each other. Beneath the chirp of cicadas,
I can practically hear the energy between us humming, like the power lines that buzz
overhead in the countryside.

But then I hear something else. At first, I don’t know how to place it, so discordant
is it from the sounds in this bubble of electricity we are generating. But then I
hear it a second time, cold and jagged and bracingly clear, and I know exactly what
it is. Because fear needs no translation. A scream is the same in any language.

Willem jumps up. I jump up. “Stay here!” he commands. And before I know what has happened,
he is striding away on those long legs of his, leaving me whiplashed between lust
and terror.

There’s another scream. A girl’s scream. Everything seems to slow down then, like
a slow-motion sequence in a movie. I see the girls, the ones with the head scarves,
there are two of them, only now one isn’t wearing her scarf anymore. It is on the
ground, revealing a fall of black hair that is wild and staticky, as if her hair is
frightened too. She is huddled with the other girl, as if trying to disappear from
the boys. Who I now see aren’t boys at all, but are men, the kind who sport shaved
heads, and combat fatigues, and big black boots. The essential wrongness of
these
men with
these
girls in this now-quiet park hits me all at once. I pick up Willem’s backpack, which
he’s just abandoned there, and creep closer.

I hear the soft cries of one of the girls and the men’s guttural laughter. Then they
speak again. I never knew French could sound so ugly.

Just as I’m wondering where he went, Willem steps between the men and the girls and
starts saying something. He’s speaking softly, but I can hear him all the way over
here, which must be a kind of actor’s trick. But he’s also speaking in French, so
I have no idea what he’s saying. Whatever it is, it’s gotten the skinheads’ attention.
They answer him back, in loud staccato voices that echo off the empty handball courts.
Willem replies in a voice as calm and quiet as a breeze, and I strain to understand
just a word of it, but I can’t.

They go back and forth and as they do, the girls use the cover as it was intended
and slip away. The skinheads don’t even notice. Or don’t care. It’s Willem they are
interested in now. At first, I think that Willem’s powers of charm must know no bounds.
That he has even made friends with skinheads. But then my ear attunes to the tone
of what he is saying as opposed to the words. And I recognize the tone because it’s
one I’ve been privy to all day. He’s teasing them. He is mocking them in that way
that I’m not even sure they fully recognize. Because there are three of them and one
of him, and if they knew what he was doing, they wouldn’t still be standing there
talking.

I can smell the sickly sweet odor of booze and the acrid tang of adrenaline, and all
at once, I can
feel
what they are going to do to Willem. I can feel it as if they are going to do it
to me. And this should paralyze me with fear. It doesn’t. Instead it fills me with
something hot and tender and vicious.

Who takes care of you?

Without even thinking about it, I’m reaching into Willem’s bag and grabbing the thickest
thing I can find—the Rough Guide—and I’m striding toward them. No one sees me coming,
not even Willem, so I have the element of surprise on my side. Also, apparently, some
serious fight-or-flight strength. Because when I hurl that book at that guy closest
to Willem, the one holding a beer bottle, it hits him with such force that he drops
the bottle. And when he raises his hand to his brow, there’s a welt of blood blooming
like a red flower.

I know I should be scared, but I’m not. I’m oddly calm, happy to be back in Willem’s
presence after those interminable seconds apart. Willem, however, is staring at me
wide-eyed and slack-jawed. The skinheads are looking right past me, surveying the
park, as if they can’t quite believe that I could be the source of the attack.

It’s their moment of confusion that saves us. Because in that moment, Willem’s hand
finds mine. And we run.

Out of the park, past the church, and back into that crazy mishmash neighborhood,
past the tea shops and cafés and the animal carcasses. We leap over the overflowing
gutters, past the congregation of motorcycles and bicycles, dodging delivery vans
disgorging racks of clothing heavily bejeweled with glitter and sparkles.

The neighborhood’s residents stop to watch us, parting to let us through like we are
a spectator sport, an Olympic event—the Crazy-White-People Chase.

I should be scared. I am being chased by angry skinheads; the only person who’s ever
run after me before is my dad when we’ve gone out jogging. I can hear the clomp of
their boots beat in time with the heartbeat in my head. But I’m not scared. I feel
my legs magically lengthen, allowing me to match Willem’s long stride. I feel the
ground undulating under our feet, as if it too is on our side. I feel like we are
barely touching the earth, like we might just take off into the sky and run right
over the Paris rooftops, where no one can ever touch us.

I hear them shouting behind us. I hear the sound of glass breaking. I hear something
whizz past my ear and then something wet on my neck, as if my sweat glands have all
opened up and released at once. And then I hear more laughter and the boot steps abruptly
stop.

But Willem keeps going. He pulls me through the tiny jigsaw streets until they open
up onto a large boulevard. We dash across as the light changes, running by a police
car. It’s crowded now. I’m pretty sure we aren’t being chased. We are safe. But still,
Willem carries on running, yanking me this way and that down a series of smaller,
quieter streets until, like a bookcase revealing a secret door, a gap in the streetscape
emerges. It’s the keypadded opening to one of those grand apartment houses. An old
man with a wheeled cart leaves the inner courtyard just as Willem skids us into the
entryway. Our momentum crashes from sixty to zero as we slam together against a stone
wall just as the door clicks shut behind us.

We stand there, our bodies pressed together, barely an inch of space separating us.
I can feel the fast, steady thud of his heart, the sharp in-out of his breath. I can
see the rivulet of perspiration trickling down his neck. I feel my blood, thrumming,
like a river about to spill over its banks. It’s as if my body can no longer contain
me. I have become too big for it somehow.

“Willem,” I begin. There is so much I need to say to him.

He puts a finger up to my neck, and I fall silent, his touch at once calming and electrifying.
But then he removes his finger and it’s red with blood. I reach up to touch my neck.
My blood.

“Godverdomme!”
he swears under his breath. With one hand, he reaches into his backpack for a bandanna,
and with the other, he licks the blood on his finger clean.

He holds the bandanna against the side of my neck. I’m definitely bleeding, but not
badly. I’m not even sure what happened.

“They threw a broken bottle at you.” Willem’s voice is pure fury.

But it doesn’t hurt. I’m not hurt. Not really. It’s just a little nick.

He’s standing so close to me now, gently pressing the bandanna against my neck. And
then the cut on my neck is not the point of exit for blood, but the point of entry
for this weird line of electricity that is surging between us.

I want him, all of him. I want to taste his mouth, his mouth that just tasted my blood.
I lean into him.

But he pushes me away, pulls himself back. His hand drops from my neck. The bandanna,
now clotted with blood, hangs there limply.

I look up then, into his eyes. All the color has drained out of them, so they just
seem black. But more disconcerting is what I see in them, something instantly recognizable:
fear. And more than anything, I want to do something, to take that away. Because I
should be scared. But today, I’m not.

“It’s okay,” I begin. “
I’m
okay.”

“What were you
thinking
?” he interrupts, his voice icy as a stranger’s. And maybe it’s that or maybe it’s
just relief, but now I feel like I might cry.

“They were going to hurt you,” I say. My voice breaks. I look at him, to see if he
understands, but his expression has only hardened, fear having been joined by its
twin brother, anger. “And I promised.”

“Promised what?”

An instant replay runs through my head: No punches had been exchanged. I hadn’t even
been able to understand what they’d been saying. But they
were
going to hurt him. I could feel it in my bones.

“That I’d take care of you.” My voice goes quiet as the certainty drains out of me.

“Take care of me? How does
this
take care of me?” He opens his hand, which is stained with my blood.

He takes a step away from me, and with the twilight blinking between us now, it hits
me how utterly
wrong
I have gotten this. I haven’t just skied onto the diamond run; I’ve flown off the
face of the cliff. It was a
joke
, this request to take care of him. When have I ever taken care of anybody? And he
certainly never said he needed taking care of.

We stand there, the silence curdling around us. The last of the sunlight slips away,
and then, almost as if waiting for cover of darkness to sneak in, the rain starts
to fall. Willem looks at the sky and then looks at his watch—my watch—still snug around
his wrist.

I think of those forty pounds I have left. I imagine a quiet, clean hotel room. I
think of us in it, not as I imagined it an hour before in that Paris park, but just
quiet, listening to the rain.
Please
, I silently implore.
Let’s just go somewhere and make this better
.

But then Willem is reaching into his bag for the Eurostar schedule. And then he’s
unclasping my watch. And then I realize, he’s giving time back to me. Which really
means he’s taking it away.

Eleven

T
here are two more trains back to London tonight. Willem tells me it’s after nine,
so there’s probably not enough time for me to exchange my ticket and get on the next
one, but I can definitely catch the last train. Because I gain an hour back going
to England, I should get to London just before the Tube stops running. Willem tells
me all this in a friendly helpful way, like I’m a stranger on the street who stopped
him for directions. And I nod along, like I’m the kind of person who actually takes
the Tube alone, day or night.

He is oddly formal as he opens the door to the apartment courtyard for me, like he’s
letting the dog out for its nightly pee. It’s late, the night edge of the long summer
twilight, and the Paris I walk out into seems wholly changed from the one I left a
half hour ago, though once again, I know that it’s not the rain or all the lights
that have come on. Something has shifted. Or maybe shifted back. Or maybe it never
shifted in the first place and I was just fooling myself.

Still, seeing this new Paris, it brings tears to my eyes that turn all the lights
into a big red scar. I wipe my face with my dampening cardigan, my returned watch
still grasped in my hand. Somehow I cannot bear to put it back on. It feels like it
would hurt me, far more than the cut on my neck. I attempt to walk ahead of Willem,
to put space between us.

“Lulu,” he calls after me.

I don’t answer. That’s not me. It never was.

He jogs to catch up. “I think Gare du Nord is that way.” He takes me by the elbow,
and I steel myself against the zing, but, like tensing against a doctor’s shot, that
only makes it worse.

“Just tell me how to get there.”

“I think you follow this street for a few blocks and then turn left. But first we
have to go to Céline’s club.”

Right. Céline. He’s acting so normal now, not normal like Willem, but normal compared
to how he was twenty minutes ago, the fear gone out of his eyes, replaced with some
kind of relief. The relief of unloading me. I wonder if this was always the plan.
Drop me off and circle back for Céline for the evening shift. Or maybe it’s the other
girl, the one whose number is sitting snugly in his hip pocket. With so many options,
why would he choose me?

You’re a good kid.
That’s what my crush, Shane Michaels, had told me when I’d come as close as I ever
would to admitting my feelings for him.
You’re a good kid.
That’s me
.
Shane used to hold my hand and say flirty, sweet things. I’d always thought it meant
something. And then he went off with some other girl and did things that actually
did
mean something.

We follow a large boulevard back toward the station, but after a few blocks, we turn
back off into the smaller streets. I look for the club, but this isn’t an industrial
neighborhood. It’s residential, full of apartment houses, their flowering window boxes
soaking up the rain, their fat cats happily dozing inside closed windows. There’s
a restaurant on the corner, its fogged-up windows glowing. Even from across the street,
I can make out the sound of laughter and silverware clanking against plates. People,
dry and warm, enjoying a Thursday-night dinner in Paris.

The rain is coming down harder now. My sweater is soaking through to my T-shirt. I
pull the sleeves down over my fists. My teeth start to chatter; I clench my jaw to
keep it from showing, but that just detours the shivering to the rest of my body.
I pull the bandanna off my neck. The bleeding has stopped, but my neck is now grimy
with blood and sweat.

Willem looks at me with dismay, or maybe it’s disgust. “We need to clean you up.”

“I have clean clothes in my suitcase.”

Willem peers at my neck and winces. Then he takes my elbow and crosses the street
and opens the door to the restaurant. Inside, candlelight flickers, illuminating the
wine bottles lined up against a zinc bar and the menus scribbled on little chalkboards.
I stop at the threshold. We don’t belong in here.

“We can clean your cut here. See if they have an emergency kit.”

“I’ll do it on the train.” Mom packed me a first-aid kit, naturally.

We just stand there, facing off. A waiter appears. I expect him to ream us out for
letting in the chilly air, or for looking like dirty, bloodied riffraff. But he ushers
me inside like he’s the host to a party, and I’m the guest of honor. He sees my neck,
and his eyes go wide. Willem says something in French, and he nods at once, gesturing
to a corner table.

The restaurant is warm, the air tangy with onions and sweet with vanilla, and I am
too defeated to resist. I slump down into a chair, covering my cut with one hand.
My other hand relaxes and releases my watch onto the white cloth, where it ticks malevolently.

The waiter returns with a small, white first-aid box and a blackboard menu. Willem
opens the kit and pulls out a medicated wipe, but I snatch it from him.

“I can do it myself!” I say.

I dab the wound with ointment and cover it with an oversize bandage. The waiter returns
to check my work. He nods approvingly. Then he says something to me in French. “He’s
asking if you want to hang your sweater in the kitchen so it can dry,” Willem says.

I have to fight the urge to bury my face into his long, crisp, white apron and weep
with gratitude for his kindness. Instead, I hand over my soaked sweater. Underneath,
my damp T-shirt clings to me; there are bloodstains on the collar. I have the T-shirt
Céline gave me, the same obscure, too-cool-for-school band T-shirt Willem is wearing,
but I’d rather parade around in my bra than put that on. Willem says something else
in French, and moments later, a large carafe of red wine is delivered to our table.

“I thought I had a train to catch.”

“You have time to eat a little something.” Willem pours a glass of wine and hands
it to me.

I am technically of age to drink all over Europe, but I haven’t, not even when, at
some of the prepaid lunches, wine was offered as a matter of course and some of the
kids sneaked glasses when Ms. Foley wasn’t looking. Tonight, I don’t hesitate. The
wine glints shades of blood in the candlelight, and drinking it is like receiving
a transfusion. The warmth goes from my throat to my stomach before setting to work
on the chill that has settled in my bones. I drain half a glass in one go.

“Easy there,” Willem cautions.

I gulp the rest of it and thrust out my glass like a middle finger. Willem appraises
me for a second, then fills the glass to the rim.

The waiter returns and makes a formal show of handing us a chalkboard menu and a basket
of bread with a small silver ramekin.

“Et pour vous, le pâté.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I mean,
merci.
”

He smiles.
“De rien
.
”

Willem breaks off a piece of bread and spreads it with the brown paste and offers
it to me. I just glare at him.

“Better than Nutella,” he teases in an almost singsong voice.

Maybe it is the wine or the prospect of getting rid of me, but Willem, the Willem
I’ve been with all day, is back. And somehow,
this
makes me furious. “I’m not hungry,” I say, even though I am, in fact, famished. I
haven’t eaten anything since that crêpe. “And it looks like dog food,” I add for good
measure.

“Just try.” He holds the bread and pâté up to my mouth. I snatch it from his hands,
take a tiny sample. The flavor is both delicate and intense, like meat butter. But
I refuse to give him the satisfaction of seeing me enjoy it. I nibble a bite and make
a face. Then I put the bread back down again.

The waiter returns, sees our emptying wine carafe, gestures to it. Willem nods. He
returns with a full one. “The sole is . . . it is
finis
,” he says in English, wiping the entry off the chalkboard. He looks at me. “You are
cold and have lost blood,” he says, as if I hemorrhaged or something. “I recommend
something with
force
.” He makes a fist. “The beef bourguignon is excellent. We also have a fish pot au
feu, very good.”

“Just keep it coming,” I say, gesturing to the wine.

The waiter frowns slightly and looks to me, then Willem, like I am somehow their joint
responsibility. “May I suggest to start, a salad with some asparagus and smoked salmon.”

My traitorous stomach gurgles. Willem nods, then orders for both of us, the two things
that the waiter recommended. He doesn’t even bother to ask me what I want. Which is
fine, because right now all I want is wine. I reach out for another glass, but Willem
puts his hand on top of the opening of the carafe. “You have to eat something first,”
he says. “It’s from duck, not pig.”

“So?” I shove a whole piece of baguette and pâté into my mouth, defiantly and noisily
chomping on it, hiding any satisfaction I’m actually taking from it. Then I hold out
my glass.

Willem looks at me for a long moment. But he does oblige with a refill and then that
lazy half smile. In one day, I’ve come to love that smile. And now I want to murder
it.

We sit in silence until the waiter returns to deliver the salad with a flourish befitting
the beautiful dish: a still life of pink salmon, green asparagus, yellow mustard sauce,
and toast points scattered around the side of the plate like blossoms. My mouth waters,
and it’s like my body is waving the white flag, telling me to just give in, to quit
while I’m ahead, to accept the nice day I had, which really, is far more than I had
any right to hope for. But there’s another part of me that is still hungry, hungry
not just for food, but for everything that’s been laid out in front of me today. On
behalf of that hungry girl, I refuse the salad.

“You’re still upset,” he says. “It’s not so bad as I thought. It won’t even scar.”

Yes, it will. Even if it heals up next week, it’ll scar, although maybe not in the
way he means. “You think I’m upset about
this
?” I touch the bandage on my neck.

He won’t look at me. He knows damn well I’m not upset about that. “Let’s just eat
something, okay?”

“You’re sending me back. Do what you have to do, but don’t ask me to be happy about
it.”

Over the dancing candlelight, I see his expressions pass by like fast clouds: surprise,
amusement, frustration, and tenderness—or maybe it’s pity. “You were going to leave
tomorrow, so what’s the difference?” He brushes some bread crumbs off the tablecloth.

The difference, Willem? The difference is the night.

“Whatever,” is my stellar reply.

“Whatever?” Willem asks. He runs his finger along the rim of his glass; it makes a
low sound, like a foghorn. “Did you think about what would happen?”

It’s all I’ve been thinking about, and all I’ve been trying not to think about: What
would happen tonight.

But again, I’ve misunderstood him. “Did you think about what would happen if they
caught us?” he continues.

I could feel what they wanted to do to him. I could taste their violence in my own
mouth. “That’s why I threw the book at them; they wanted to hurt you,” I say. “What
did you say to them to get them so angry?”

“They were already angry,” he says, evading my question. “I just gave them a different
reason.” But by his answer and the look on his face, I can tell that I’m not wrong.
That they were going to hurt him. What I felt about that, at least, was real.

“Can you imagine if they’d caught us? You?” Willem voice is so quiet I have to lean
in to hear him. “Look what they did.” He reaches over as if to touch my neck, but
then pulls back.

In the adrenaline of the chase and the weird euphoria that followed, I hadn’t thought
about them catching
me
. Maybe because it hadn’t seemed possible. We had wings on our feet; they had leaden
boots. But now, here, with Willem sitting across from me, wearing this strange, somber
expression, with his bloody bandanna crumpled into a ball on the side of the table,
I can hear those boots getting closer, can hear them stomping, can hear bones cracking.

“But they didn’t catch us.” I swallow the tremble in my voice with another gulp of
wine.

He finishes his wine and stares at the empty glass for a moment. “This is not what
I brought you here for.”

“What
did
you bring me here for?” Because he never answered that. Never said why he asked me
to come to Paris with him for the day.

He rubs his eyes with the heel of his hands. When he removes his hands, he looks different
somehow. Stripped bare of all the masks. “Not for things to get out of control.”

“Well, a little late for that.” I’m trying to be flip, to summon whatever dregs of
Lulu I have left. But when I say it, the truth of it wallops me in the stomach. We,
or at least, I, have long since passed the point of no return.

I look back at him. His eyes lock on mine. The current clicks back on.

“I suppose it is,” Willem says.