The Paris Connection

by Lorraine Brown

  “I can get you another if you want?” he said, as though he could read my mind.

  “Better not,” I said, making a mental note to google Angelina when I got home. I wondered if they had an online shop. I could just imagine having a version of it at home, especially in the winter, Si and I all curled up with a hot drink each in front of the TV.

  Léo went to throw the cups away and then jogged back. I noticed he had a tattoo on his right arm, a barbed-wire design that curled itself around his biceps. I’d recently decided to get a tattoo of my own, although everyone I’d told had launched themselves at me with ferocity, informing me what a terrible idea it would be. Mum had warned me about the perils of navigating a job interview with “a body covered in tattoos,” as though I was planning to be riddled with them from the neck down. Si branded them trashy on women, which I’d told him was both insulting and misogynistic, and Ellie reckoned I’d regret it when I reached old age and my skin sagged, distorting the image beyond recognition. I fully intended to do it anyway. I wanted to find a really beautiful quote. Something about hope and moving forward and not looking back. I’d have it etched on my wrist so that I could look at it every day.

  “Next: the Champs-Élysées,” announced Léo.

  I ran my fingers along the handlebars of the bike. I should say no. I should think about Si and I should say no, that he must take me back to the station, right this second.

  “Do we have time?” I asked.

  “It is 9:20. The train does not leave for more than four hours,” he said. “You can relax a little, Hannah.”

  I got back on, still not sure if I was doing the right thing. Before I could decide if I was or if I wasn’t, he pulled off, pointing out the Jardin des Tuileries on our left, which I thought might lead up to the Louvre. I held on tightly as we carved our way through gridlocked, beeping traffic on the biggest, most chaotic roundabout I’d ever seen in my life. It was like a Wild West of cars and bikes and mopeds coming from all directions, as far as the eye could see. There were no road markings, either, so how you were supposed to know which lane to be in, or how to cut across to come off at your turning, I had no idea.

  “Where are we?” I shouted.

  “Place de la Concorde,” he called back. “Marie Antoinette was beheaded right here, in this square.”

  “Seriously?” I yelled, turning my head as if to catch a glimpse of some relic from the past.

  “So you can think about death again,” he said, laughing to himself.

  Somehow we fought our way through to the other side, passing the Hôtel de Crillon on our right. Wasn’t that where they held those ridiculously old-fashioned debutante balls? A film crew was gathered outside, their camera equipment by their feet, some sort of location truck parked in the bay out front.

  “A beautiful hotel,” said Léo when we stopped to let a stream of cars out in front of us. “But even the simplest room costs over one thousand euros per night.”

  And then we turned onto a very long, straight road. The Champs-Élysées, I thought, spotting the Arc de Triomphe standing majestically in the distance. Red brake lights snaked in front of us like ticker tape, hundreds of them, four lanes deep.

  “What’s that?” I asked him when we stopped at a junction, daring to hold on with one hand while I pointed to a building with glass domes and bronze chariots sprouting out of its roof.

  “The Grand Palais,” Léo replied over his shoulder. “A very nice exhibition space and art gallery. In the winter, you can skate on the biggest ice rink in the world.”

  Another thing that was “the biggest in the world.” I was beginning to think his—admittedly quite interesting—facts about Paris were ever so slightly biased.

  We pulled off the Champs-Élysées and Léo accelerated now that there was less stopping and starting, whizzing past trendy hotels with smoked-glass windows, chic patisseries and boutiques advertising haute couture. I spotted Alaïa; Christian Dior Atelier. It was like a different world, this street; I could picture the wealthy women who shopped here sliding in and out of chauffeur-driven cars, stopping for long lunches that probably cost as much as my weekly salary.

  “Hold tighter,” he shouted as we drove up onto a bridge and whipped across the Seine. The wind was blowing through my hair, which had long ago escaped its bun; the sun warmed the back of my neck and I could see the Eiffel Tower shooting into the sky right in front of us. I’d always dismissed it as tacky, branding it nothing more than a tourist trap, but now that I could see it properly, or perhaps because of the angle I was seeing it from, it took my breath away.

  On the other side of the bridge, we turned onto a side street where Léo pulled over and turned off the engine.

  “Come. There is something I want to show you,” he said, leaping off.

  “What is it?” I asked him, a buzz of excitement rippling through me. I hadn’t felt like this in ages. He beckoned for me to follow him.

  “You will see,” said Léo mysteriously, stepping out onto a zebra crossing despite my worrying that the oncoming bus wasn’t actually going to stop.

  I hesitated.

  “What are you doing, Hannah?” he asked, throwing his arms in the air.

  “Do cars have the right of way or people?” I called to him.

  He waved me after him. “People, of course. You show the traffic you intend to cross, and then you cross.”

  “But what if they don’t see you?”

  He shook his head and marched off. I followed him nervously, not sure which way to look first, and of course the traffic simply stopped to let me pass, as I should have guessed it would. What had I imagined? Honking cars full of angry Parisians shaking their fists at me? A pileup, with me stranded in the middle of the street surrounded by twisted metal? I watched Léo striding off, so carefree and sure of himself, and I wished that I could just do things, too, without driving myself mad with all the reasons why I shouldn’t.

  A small crowd had gathered on the corner and Léo had already joined them by the time I caught him up. I wondered what all the fuss was about, but when I looked up and saw what they could see, my mouth actually dropped open. Sandwiched between two cream-colored balconied apartment buildings was the most perfect view of the Eiffel Tower, right there in front of us. With the cobbled street, the sky with a hint of blue behind the clouds, the pop of green from the trees growing under its arch, I could see why it was every Instagrammer’s dream shot. I immediately put my camera to my eye, trying to capture it in a way that did it justice. I wanted to feel the essence of it and its size, which was much more imposing than I remembered from before, although of course I’d been farther away from it then.

  “As you can see, we are not the only ones who know about this place,” said Léo, watching, amused, as a girl in a beret and a striped Breton top took pictures of herself using a selfie stick. A Japanese guy was photographing his friend, who was looking enigmatically up at the top of the tower with his hands in his pockets.

  “It’s such a lovely view,” I said, framing an abstract shot of just the very top of the tower.

  “You enjoy taking photographs?” asked Léo as I crouched down to look at the scene from a different perspective.

  I nodded, standing up, suddenly unable to contain my enthusiasm. “I’ve loved it since I was a little girl,” I told him. “Every year I’d ask for one of those disposable cameras for Christmas—do you remember them?—and I’d spend ages deciding how best to use those twenty-seven frames or whatever it was. I’d take covert photos of people doing something that summed up who they were as a person: my mum ironing, for example. The boys from across the road whizzing past on their BMXs, standing up on the pedals. Or I’d go to the park and take what I thought was a very arty shot of a rusty old set of monkey bars.”

  “Sounds fascinating,” said Léo, smiling to himself.

  “Well, I thought so.”

 
“You were happy with how they turned out?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I can’t remember. I never showed them to anybody, so it was difficult to be objective.”

  After a few more minutes of snapping away and a change of film, we walked closer to the tower, dodging the crowds of influencers taking their best I’m in Paris! photo. We passed a restaurant with tables spilling out onto the terrace. Léo stopped, reversed and peered through the window.

  “Un moment,” he said, holding a finger up to me and opening the door to go inside.

  What was he doing now? While I waited, I watched a glamorous woman wearing a red dress and heels leaping through the air as a professional-looking photographer tried to capture her with both feet off the ground.

  “Voilà!” said Léo, reappearing with a bottle of red wine and two plastic glasses. “You cannot appreciate the full glory of Paris without a glass of French wine in your hand,” he said. “Come, let us sit.”

  He ushered me over to a bench, handing me one of the cups. I took it reluctantly.

  “Isn’t it a bit early for this?” I said, covering the top of the glass with my hand. “I don’t want to turn up to the wedding drunk, do I? Plus, you’re driving.”

  “I promise you I will be careful,” he said. I watched him pour a small amount of wine into his own cup. “Relax, Hannah. You will not be in Amsterdam for hours, have some fun.”

  I moved my hand so that he could fill my glass. “You’re very tuned in to everyone else’s flaws, aren’t you?” I said, bristling at the fact he’d branded me uptight already, without giving me the chance to prove him wrong.

  “It is no problem,” he said, clinking his cup against mine. “We all have them.”

  I took a few sips in quick succession, swilling the bold, spicy wine around my mouth to get the full taste sensation. “It’s good,” I admitted reluctantly. My gaze rose to his lips as he took a sip of his own drink, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down when he swallowed.

  “How tall is this thing, then?” I asked, looking up at the tower. From here I was close enough to watch the lift slide up and down through the center and to make out the shapes of tourists milling about on the lowest platform, clamoring to get near the window, cameras flashing.

  He frowned. “I cannot remember the exact measurement. Around three hundred meters, perhaps.”

  “It’s huge. Much bigger than I’d thought.”

  “When it was built in 1889, it was supposed to be a temporary structure only,” he explained. “It was part of an exposition to celebrate the French Revolution.”

  “Seems like a lot of work only to have it ripped straight down again,” I said.

  “Exactly. The architect—Gustave Eiffel—had to prove that not only did it attract many visitors, but it had other attributes, too. It was used as a radio tower in the First World War, for example.”

  I took off the leather jacket and put it on the bench between us.

  “You are warm now?” he asked.

  I nodded, putting my camera to my eye to snap a few more shots of the tower, and the velvety-smooth grass nearby that was scattered with people relaxing in the sun, lying on peeled-off jumpers, their heads propped up on bags while they pored over guidebooks or flicked through their phones. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done something like that, had an unplanned picnic in the park, or sat out in the sun all afternoon with friends. Perhaps that was what happened in your thirties. People moved away, bought houses out of town; every meet-up took a bit more planning. Being here, on this bench with Léo, felt like the most spontaneous thing I’d done in months.

  “So tell me, what is this wedding in Amsterdam you are so desperate to get to?” asked Léo, who had stuck his long legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankle.

  “My boyfriend’s sister is getting married at 5:30 in some swanky hotel.”

  “Shame you will miss it,” he said, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.

  I tutted. “Talk about me being negative. If the train gets in just before five, I don’t see why I can’t jump in a cab and get to the ceremony on time. Amsterdam is tiny compared to Paris, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose,” he said.

  I swirled wine around in my glass. “You don’t think I’ll make it, do you?”

  He stretched. “Maybe.” I noticed how his white T-shirt rode up to reveal a tiny strip of flat, tanned stomach and I drew my eyes away, putting my camera to my eye and playing about with the focus dial.

  “Let’s go,” I said after a while, standing up. “I need to get back.”

  I’d call Si again from Gare du Nord.

  Léo peeled himself off the bench, checking his watch.

  “It is 9:55,” he said, handing me the wine and his cup to put in my bag. “Better rush, non?” he said, walking off and laughing at me over his shoulder.

  9

  I ran my fingers along the metal frame of the bike. Because the engine had only just been switched off, it was still hot under the pads of my fingers.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “It was making a strange sound,” said Léo, his voice muffled as he bent down to check the front tire and then the back one, his brow furrowed with concentration, his long fingers prodding at the rubber.

  The way my day was going, I wouldn’t be surprised if the bike had broken down, leaving us stranded on the wrong side of Paris, miles from the train station. I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to remain calm. This was an adventure, I told myself; a glitch in my otherwise very ordinary life. And anyway, if I had to, I could walk back to Gare du Nord. We hadn’t run out of time yet.

  “It is fine, I think,” he said, standing up, wiping his face with the hem of his T-shirt, revealing his perfect abs again. He probably had them out at every opportunity.

  “Is it safe to drive?” I asked.

  He patted my shoulder reassuringly. “Do not worry, Hannah, the bike is not going to explode on us.”

  I gave him a withering look.

  “So. Come,” he said with a typically Parisian shrug. “A look at the river. And then we must go.”

  “It’s just a river,” I said, grabbing his jacket and following him begrudgingly across the grassy promenade. I had no desire to see the miserable view of the Seine I still remembered. “We do have the Thames at home, you know.”

  The two of us leaned on a wall overlooking the water and directly across from the terminal for the Bateaux Mouches tourist boats on the opposite bank. They slid elegantly up and down, swinging in and out of the jetty, enthusiastic tourists sitting out on the decks, cameras poised. Surprisingly, I wasn’t finding them anywhere near as irritating this time around.

  “Impressive, non?” said Léo.

  “If you say so,” I said, putting my camera to my eye and zooming in on the glass roof of the Grand Palais glittering in the distance.

  I caught him watching what I was doing.

  “Do you like photography?” I asked.

  I’d told him loads about myself and he was full of questions, but I realized I knew very little about him.

  “I never tried,” he said, peering at my camera with interest.

  “You want to have a go?”

  He nodded and I pulled the strap over my head and looped it over his. He brought the camera up to his left eye and swiveled from side to side, looking for a subject. Settling on a flat, sleek-looking boat called the Catherine Deneuve, which was moving slowly past us, he clicked the shutter.

  “How do I focus?” he asked, his voice heavy with concentration, and I had to stop myself from smiling.

  “Here.”

  I reached over, our cheeks almost touching, my wrist bone resting on his shoulder. I felt my neck begin to flush.

  “Rotate this button gently, until the picture is crystal clear.”

  He took a few shots and
then turned the camera on me.

  I put my hand over the lens. “Don’t you dare,” I said, laughing.

  “You are shy?” he said, grinning at me, and it struck me that we already felt comfortable enough to tease each other.

  “Very,” I said. “And I don’t photograph well.”

  “I do not believe that,” he said, handing the camera back to me, then ruffling his hair and looking out at the water. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye.

  “You did not say how it is that you are alone here,” he said. “With no suitcase and no warm clothes.”

  He pulled a cigarette out of its packet, lighting it for me and handing it over. I shook my head, clamping my hands behind my back. If I had one more, I knew I’d be on a slippery slope. I wasn’t the sort of person who could smoke now and again, when I was under stress, or when I was with a particular group of people. I didn’t function that way: it had always been all or nothing with me. Things were either great or they were terrible; I either loved someone or I hated them.

  “So, we were in Venice.”

  “Who is we?”

  “Just me and Si.”

  He looked confused.

  “My boyfriend. Simon.”

  It was breezier down here, and a few degrees cooler even though the bright sunshine now glistened over the river. I slipped his jacket over my shoulders.

  “Simon . . . ,” said Léo. The name sounded nicer in French. “Ah. That is who you called. When we were on the train.”

  I turned to face him, wedging my hands on my hips. “Were you listening in on my conversation or something?”

  He smirked. “I could hardly help it. The entire carriage could hear.”

  “They could not.”

  “You were very loud.”

  I looked sulkily out at the Seine. A dredger passed by with a dog charging about on its decks, which didn’t do anything for my nerves because I was convinced it was about to jump into the water and drown right in front of my eyes.

  “It was because you were upset, non?” said Léo, still going on about it. “Your volume was up here,” he said, reaching his hand up toward the sky to demonstrate just how much of an idiot I’d made of myself.