The Paris Connection

by Lorraine Brown

  “A little,” he said, looking at me blankly.

  I glanced nervously at Léo, who was busy tapping away on his phone.

  “Um, I was in the ticket office at Gare du Nord and I put my phone on the counter while I tried to find something. And then when I looked for it about five minutes later, it wasn’t in my bag. I thought I’d left it behind on the counter at first, so I—”

  “Stolen?” said the officer. “Pickpocket?”

  “Maybe. Yes. I think so.”

  “Fill this out, please.”

  The officer slid a document across the counter and I went to take a seat next to Léo, who was already sprawled out, taking up two of the chairs on the back row.

  I started filling out the form, managing to complete all the basics: name, address, telephone number. When I got to the bit where I had to describe the nature of the crime that had been committed, I was stuck.

  “What’s the word for ticket office, again?” I asked Léo, who was rubbing his face and stifling a yawn.

  “Guichet,” he said, stretching.

  “Guichet?”

  “Yes. Guichet.”

  I was pretty sure that wasn’t the word I’d learned when I was revising for my high school French, but I could hardly argue about it. He was probably using the colloquial form or something, but it would have to do. I wrote it down.

  “How do you say ‘stolen’?” I asked him about a minute later.

  “Volé.”

  Honestly, none of these words were looking the slightest bit familiar. Plus I kept getting distracted by the comings and goings at the station. At one point, a police officer strode through the room with a machine gun in his belt, which made me wonder exactly how volatile and unsafe Paris might be, and about how going off on a bike with someone I barely knew was a bad idea. What if something happened? How would I ever explain it to Si? A few minutes later a drunk guy was manhandled through the doors, swaying and shouting as someone tried to determine his name. Quel est votre nom? Votre nom! I rushed through the rest of the form, handed it in, had some sort of receipt shoved back at me and then we left. It was all over with very quickly and yet was the sort of thing that I would usually have procrastinated about for days while I went back and forth over the pros and cons of reporting my phone stolen, struggling to make a decision.

  I was relieved to get outside and tipped my face toward the clouds, squinting into the light, which was dazzling after the dinginess of the police station.

  “It’s drying up, at least,” I said.

  The rain had finally stopped, and there was the tiniest smattering of blue poking through the gray sky.

  “Perhaps the sun will come out,” said Léo, going over to the bike and wiping rain off the wing mirrors with a cloth he found in the box on the back.

  I watched him for a bit, not sure what to do with myself.

  “I suppose I should get back to the station, then,” I said.

  Because what if, by some miracle, the engineering works had finished early and a train was announced that would get me to Amsterdam sooner?

  “Sure. One moment,” he said, polishing the handlebars intently.

  “Here,” I said, taking off his jacket. “I seem to have taken all your clothes, you must be cold.”

  “No, please. I am good,” he said, although when I looked at his arms, I could see his dark hairs standing on end, sharp and spiky, as though it might hurt to run my hand across them.

  I put the jacket back on. The sleeves were too long for me so that only the tips of my fingers poked out of the bottoms.

  He pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. “You do not smoke, right?”

  “No,” I said, taking one anyway.

  He looked surprised and I shrugged. I thought it wouldn’t do any harm; I’d make sure it was just the one. He lit mine for me, then his own. I almost gasped in ecstasy when the first drag filled my mouth and nicotine swept into my bloodstream. Oh, how I’d missed it.

  Léo looked across at me. “Good?”

  I nodded, holding the cigarette at arm’s length, relishing how familiar it felt in my hand. “I’m supposed to have given up.”

  I watched a policeman inside the building; he was standing by the window, barking instructions into a handset.

  “Good for you,” said Léo. “One day, I will do the same.”

  “Why does everything fun have to be so bad for you?” I wondered out loud.

  He shrugged. “Perhaps it is the thrill of it you enjoy, rather than the thing itself? The idea that you are doing something you shouldn’t be.”

  Thrills were few and far between these days, it seemed. I could count on one hand the number of times Si and I had been for a proper night out since we’d moved in together. I wasn’t complaining: I loved sharing a place with him, having him to come home to each night. Trying out recipes I’d found online, chatting about his day while we ate. And on the plus side, I was also managing to avoid the earth-shattering lows that used to spring themselves on me in between all the highs. I much preferred things as they were, a steady stream of normality, of feeling looked-after and settled and loved. I didn’t think I’d change that for anything.

  “What were your plans in Amsterdam, then?” I asked.

  We perched on the edge of the curb. I watched him send rings of smoke silently up into the ether. Si would go mad if he could see me now. He’d been ecstatic when I’d managed to stop completely and was now on a one-man crusade to get me to join a gym.

  “A meeting,” he said. “To discuss a project I have been working on.”

  “What do you do?”

  His phone rang and he looked at it, shaking his head and rejecting the call.

  “I write music,” he said.

  “You’re a composer?” I said. Creating music required a certain sensitivity that I wouldn’t have thought he possessed.

  “A composer,” he said, mulling it over. “It sounds very grand when you say it like this.”

  I wrapped my arms around my knees. “Do you play an instrument, then?”

  “Piano,” he said. “And guitar.”

  I widened my eyes, I couldn’t help it.

  “This is not what you were expecting,” he said, smiling.

  I looked down at the ground, rubbing at the stained satin of my shoe. “Not really.”

  “And you?” he asked. “You play something?”

  I shook my head. “I always wanted to try the piano, but we couldn’t afford lessons.”

  He looked at me, frowning. “So why do you not learn now?”

  I considered his question. “It feels too late, I suppose.”

  He shook his head, as though I’d said the wrong thing again. “So your life is already over, at the age of—what—twenty-six? Twenty-seven?”

  “I’m thirty, actually.”

  “So your life is over at thirty.”

  “Feels like it, sometimes. Why, how old are you?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “A baby.”

  He stood up, doing a side stretch, one way and then the other. “You look younger than thirty, anyway.”

  I tutted. “Yeah, right.”

  “You do not believe me?”

  “Nope.”

  “You have a complex about it, your age?” he asked, flicking his cigarette onto the road.

  “No. I do not.”

  I did, though. A little bit.

  “You are always this negative?” he asked, grinding the butt into the ground with the toe of his trainer.

  “Not always, no,” I said snappily, fed up with his persistent nitpicking. He didn’t like me; he was only here because he felt guilty about making me miss my train. I got it.

  “It is only an observation,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “For example, I give you a complimen
t about your age and you assume I am lying. That is negative, non?”

  I shrugged. “Whatever.” If I’d wanted a character assassination, I could have given my mum another call.

  He sat down next to me again, leaning back on his elbows. A group of women walked past, giggling together over something one of them had said.

  “I have upset you,” he said.

  “I’m feeling sorry for myself, that’s all.”

  “You have not had a good day. A lot of bad luck.”

  “I’m honestly not usually this miserable.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You are not?”

  There was no fooling him. “Well. Not this miserable.”

  It was hardly surprising, was it, with everything that had happened? The shock of finding out I was on the wrong end of the train. The stressful transaction in the ticket office, cards being declined, falling over and hurting my ankle; the pain that still spiked through it when I walked. I swallowed hard, suddenly feeling very tearful. Which was weird, because I hardly ever cried. And on the odd occasion when I couldn’t stop myself, I made sure I did it in secret, completely alone, ashamed that I’d got to that point at all. I stood up so quickly that I felt dizzy. I brushed dirt off my jeans and tidied my hair and desperately tried to stop my eyes from sprouting tears, because now I’d started, I couldn’t seem to stop.

  “Are you all right, Hannah?” asked Léo, coming to stand beside me. A crying girl he barely knew was probably his worst nightmare.

  I looked away, frantically brushing away the tear that was very inconveniently sliding down my cheek at the worst possible moment.

  “I’m fine,” I said, clearing my throat. What was wrong with me? It wasn’t like he’d said anything that bad.

  “It is my fault?” he asked, chewing on his lip.

  I shook my head. “Not really.”

  “But it was—how do you say?—insensitive of me. To say that you are negative. I do not know you, do I? You could be a very positive person usually. Super happy. All of the time.”

  Another tear appeared, in the other eye this time. For God’s sake, what was it about this guy? On one hand he was the most annoying person I’d ever met, and on the other I’d been more emotional around him within an hour of knowing him than I was around anybody else I knew.

  “I feel very bad,” said Léo.

  “That seems to happen a lot, doesn’t it?”

  He put his hand over his mouth again, like I’d seen him do at the station.

  “Anyway, it’s not about you,” I said. “Which I know must be very difficult for you to understand.”

  He smiled. “Even if it is not about me, there must be something I can do, non?”

  “Unless you can turn back time and make it so I don’t switch seats on the train, I don’t think there is,” I said, scrabbling in my bag for a tissue, finding one eventually among all the paraphernalia.

  “Let me show you Paris,” he said with over-the-top exuberance. “You want to see the Eiffel Tower? The Champs-Élysées? The Arc de Triomphe?”

  I blew my nose. “I saw most of that last time I came.”

  “You have been here before, Hannah? Why did you not say?”

  What did I mention that for?

  “It was ages ago now,” I said dismissively, hoping he’d drop it.

  “How long did you spend here?” he asked.

  “A day.”

  “A day? Then of course you did not see everything. Did you get a boat along the Seine? Did you have coffee in Montmartre? Walk through the Jardin des Tuileries?”

  I shook my head. “It wasn’t that kind of trip.”

  We both looked up as a commotion broke out on the steps of the police station, watching as a man was dragged up the steps in handcuffs.

  “What kind of trip was it?” he asked.

  I took my hair out of its band, twisting it over my shoulder.

  “It’s a long story. But let’s just say I’m not the biggest fan of Paris.”

  Léo was quiet for a moment or two and then he reached out and put his hands on my shoulders. “I would like to show you around my city, Hannah. And prove to you that it is as beautiful as everyone says.”

  I shook my head. “I need to get back to the station.”

  He took his hands away and I immediately wanted him to put them back again. It was because I was exhausted, I told myself, and I felt like a mess and my head was all over the place. Anyone could have reached out to me and I would have felt the same way.

  He looked at his watch. “It is only 8:40. We have plenty of time.”

  I felt myself starting to waver. Once I’d got used to the sensations of it, I’d felt so free on the back of the bike. When was I going to get the chance to do something like that again? What harm could come of taking a little detour on the way back to the station?

  “You will come?” said Léo. “A small ride around Paris?”

  I pulled the zip of his jacket up and down a few times, noting where it snagged, where the run was smooth.

  “We’d have to be quick.”

  “No problem. I also have things to do. There is something I must give to a friend.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him, twisting my hair up again.

  “Nothing illegal,” he said, winking at me. He had a dimple in his left cheek that I’d only just noticed.

  “Shall we go?” he said, holding out the helmet.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Okay.”

  “This must be scary for you, non?” he said, waiting while I put on the helmet and then fastening the clasp for me again.

  “What must be?”

  “You are out of your comfort zone, Hannah. You are not used to it, I can see.”

  I would have disagreed with him if I’d had the energy. He couldn’t read me as well as he thought he could. I’d taken risks all the time, once. Maybe not these days, but once. I slid onto the bike behind him, already regretting agreeing to go.

  “Hold tight,” he shouted over his shoulder, starting the engine.

  8

  We’d been driving for fifteen minutes or so when Léo pulled over. My adrenaline was pumping from the journey, a fast-paced set of twists and turns along narrow backstreets and across grand cobbled squares, the bike tipping so violently as we navigated some of the sharper bends that I’d imagined us crashing to the ground at any second, skidding across the tarmac like bowling pins. I’d had to hold on to him more tightly than ever, my face pressed into the back of his neck in a sort of blind panic.

  “Here,” he said, thrusting his helmet at me and sliding off the bike, his knee missing my face by about a centimeter. “Wait here one minute.”

  I gave him the universal sign for okay, because I couldn’t be bothered to project my voice out of the depths of the helmet. I liked how it made me feel cut off from the world. It was nearly silent inside there; a place where nobody could see me and I could barely hear them, which most of the time was how I preferred it.

  I watched Léo run into a place a couple of doors down. There was a queue out onto the street, which he seemed to have bypassed completely, disappearing inside. I hung his helmet on the handlebars and then unclipped my own. I ought to find a way to call Si. But then, how would I explain where I was?

  I looked up at the beautiful, pristinely preserved creamy colonnade above my head, with its old-fashioned lanterns hanging from each arch. We’d parked right in front of Le Meurice, a luxury hotel, by the looks of it. It was one of those places with uniformed doormen outside and black executive cars sliding in and out of the loading bay, dropping people off, Louis Vuitton luggage being pulled discreetly out of trunks.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Hey.”

  Léo was back in what seemed like a nanosecond clutching two dusky pink paper cups.

  “Th
e best chocolat chaud in Paris,” he said, handing one over, looking to me for a reaction.

  “Great,” I said, underwhelmed. I liked hot chocolate, but how good could it be? Of course he would think it was the best; according to him, the best of everything originated in Paris.

  “What is that place?” I asked, more impressed by how esthetically pleasing a disposable cup could look. The color reminded me of Catherine’s wedding invitations: she’d gone for cream, with this exact shade of pink running around the edges.

  “It is called Angelina,” he told me, ripping off his lid and drinking hungrily. “The café has been here on the Rue de Rivoli for over one hundred years.”

  I could smell molten chocolate before I’d even taken a sip, its scent curling through a tiny hole in the white lid. I looked over at the café, which had a grand black awning bearing its name in gold lettering hanging over the door.

  “Coco Chanel used to have tea there,” said Léo. “And Proust. It was the place to come if you wanted to be noticed in the early 1900s.”

  I gingerly took off the lid and blew on the surface before taking my first mouthful. It was like nothing I’d ever tasted: thick and smooth and rich and sweet all in one, like a melted chocolate pudding. I resisted the urge to groan out loud, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of admitting how sensational it was.

  “It’s nice,” I said, pretending to be nonchalant.

  Léo leaned on the front of the bike, watching me suspiciously.

  “Just nice?”

  “Hmm,” I said. “Lovely.”

  “Unbelievable, non?” he said, gulping his down.

  I nodded. “Not bad at all.”

  I sipped mini-mouthfuls of delicious froth, wanting to prolong the experience as long as I could. It felt properly Parisian in this area, upmarket and chic. Even a workman walking past in a yellow hard hat with paint-splattered jeans had impressively chiseled cheekbones.

  I tipped the last dregs of hot chocolate into my mouth, already craving more. Léo took the cup from me.