That Spring in Paris

by Ciji Ware

  By this time, Juliet had arrived in the hospital lobby and paused to sign in. Despite her good intentions, however, as the elevator rose to the second floor, her mind kept reviewing every enjoyable instant that she’d spent on L’Étoile de Paris. When she reached the door to Avery’s room, a nurse in the hallway explained the patient had been taken downstairs for another X-ray.

  “Could you please tell Ms. Evans that I’m grabbing a coffee in the cafeteria and I’ll be back in twenty minutes?”

  “D’accord,” nodded the nurse.

  Juliet left her suitcase in Avery’s room and soon settled in a plastic chair clutching a paper cup containing a surprisingly decent brew. The cafeteria was filled with doctors and nurses coming off the night shift, along with the usual cluster of friends and relatives of patients waiting to gain entry to the hospital rooms when official visiting hours began. As she slowly sipped her third cup of caffeine that morning, she found her mind circling back to everything she had observed about the airman she’d met two days ago. She was positive that Finn had felt the same spark she had when they’d been talking late into the night and so compatibly for an hour more this morning—that was, until the phone call from his lawyer had so clearly upset him. Timing was everything, and her timing with Major Deschanel was lousy. Tempted though she might be, she knew for sure that if she took a single step in Finn’s direction, things would just get messier than they already were.

  She rose from her chair, tossed her cup into a trash bin, and made her way back toward Avery’s floor. As she approached Room 203, a stab of deep sadness and regret took hold, convincing her—though she knew without a doubt, anyway—that she was missing out on something that might have been quite wonderful.

  But facts are facts, kiddo.

  Juliet was scheduled to leave Paris in a few days’ time. Sadly, she’d never have a chance to find out where the path down the embankment to Finn’s barge might ultimately have led. And then there was Jed Jarvis, the supposed man in her life. One good thing to come out of all this, she thought, heading toward Avery’s hospital room: I knew, for sure, now, what I intend to do about him.

  * * *

  Juliet stood in the doorway to Avery’s hospital room. “Hi, brittle bones, how’re you feeling?”

  “Like I got shot and then was run over by a truck,” Avery answered with a weak grin and her own stab at gallows humor. “Who knew having an X-ray could knock the stuffing out of a person?”

  Juliet advanced to her bedside and gently placed a waxy paper bag with two croissants fresh from the hospital cafeteria on top of the bedcovers.

  “Well, you’re still among the living, which means you’re healthy enough to eat a little contraband,” she announced. “I snuck it past the authorities at the nurses’ station.”

  “You are a total champ. Café crème, too?”

  “Of course,” Juliet said with a sly smile. “Next time, I’ll stop at a real boulangerie.” She grinned at her friend. “Takes me back to the days when you used to demand your daily latte from the GatherGames commissary, remember?”

  “Café crème... latte... it’s all the same. I need my caffeine fix to feel human, and this might start me on the road to that. You are truly my rescuing angel.”

  Juliet crept back to the door to Avery’s room and closed it quietly, praying a nurse wouldn’t walk in and eject her for not following the rules. She removed the puffed pastry from the bag, tore Avery’s into bite-sized pieces, and uncapped her “take-away” paper cup of coffee laced with hot milk.

  “Just put it there,” Avery indicated, pointing to the rolling tray that fit over her bedcovers. “I can manage with my good arm.”

  Juliet had also brought a cup of orange juice with her, so the two friends nibbled their pastry and sipped in companionable silence as they had so many times when they’d sat at their computers at work.

  “How was the apartment?” Avery asked after several minutes.

  “Honestly? A frigid cell in a prison tower! The heater wouldn’t work, so I spent the last two nights on a barge moored on the Seine near the Eiffel Tower, thanks to a very nice friend of the Grenelles.” Juliet proceeded to tell the story of Finn’s escorting her to Avery’s apartment, only to insist she come back to his place to avoid freezing to death.

  Avery, with a mouthful of pastry, acknowledged, “It took me a week to learn to master the heat at my place.”

  “Well, before I came here today, I booked myself a room at a small hotel nearby until they let you out of the hospital and we get someone to fix your heat.” Juliet smiled with false cheer and added, “I can get into my room around noon.”

  Avery’s eyes were suddenly rife with anxiety.

  “Did you hear anything more this morning about Jean-Pierre?”

  “Not anything beyond what we were told before.”

  Juliet swiftly shifted away from the dangerous direction the conversation was taking by volunteering to contact Avery’s parents, “To let them know you’re okay.”

  Avery abruptly set down her paper coffee cup. “Now why would I want to do that?” she said with a scowl on her face.

  “Because they’ll be worried with all the news, knowing you’re in Paris and they haven’t heard from you since Friday.”

  “They don’t know I’m here and haven’t heard from me in the six months I’ve been living here, nor me from them.” She stared at the last morsels of her croissant. “Trust me, I could be on death’s door and my mom would make what’s happened to me be all about her.” Avery’s voice took on a mimicking tone. “‘Flying to Paris is such a strain on the immune system, to say nothing what a complete bummer it is to be missing the marijuana harvest.’”

  “C’mon, Avery,” protested Juliet.

  Avery’s face became redder as she enumerated the predicted reactions of her parents if they were informed of what had happened to their daughter.

  “Oh, and of course, my mom would bemoan the food and water upsetting her delicate digestive system, and, besides, ‘the French are so rude!’ And, for sure, she’d insist that her expenses coming to look after me should be reimbursed by my father’s zillions, and that would cause its usual uproar and—”

  “Avery, no... really, it can’t be that bad.”

  Pain shot through her friend’s eyes. “Honestly? It is,” she stated flatly. “And when it comes to my father, I don’t imagine that he would think what’s happened to me was such a big deal, given that I didn’t actually die Friday night.”

  In the silence that followed, Juliet felt an enormous rush of sympathy. She knew absolutely that her brother Jamie and her father—and even her mother—would immediately fly to her side if it had been her who’d been gunned down. She pulled a tissue from the box on Avery’s side table and handed it to her, alarmed to see her friend’s eyes had filled with tears. Then she dug into Avery’s handbag, resting on the bedside table, and pulled out her cell phone.

  “C’mon, Av, can’t I call or write them a short note about what’s happened? Do you have their email addresses in this?” She waved the phone. “All I’ll do is tell them you were wounded in the attacks but are expected to make a full recovery. At least they should know what’s happened to you!”

  “No! Please don’t.”

  Juliet heaved a defeated shrug. Avery’s estrangement from her parents was not news to her, but the depth of their family dysfunction was alarming. “Okay, then.” She reluctantly replaced her friend’s phone inside the purse where she’d found it. “The ‘non-event’ view of last Friday’s events also sounds like someone else we both know.”

  Avery shot her a knowing look. “Your brother Brad was pissed that you came to Paris, am I right?”

  Juliet wished, then, she hadn’t brought up the subject of her elder brother or had to acknowledge that he’d ordered his sister not to come to France, but Avery and she had built their relationship on total honesty.

  “GatherGames’ newest piece of dreck is to be released soon and he needs me to—”
>
  “No need to go into details,” Avery snapped. “I know: ‘Work comes before life.’ What comes after Sky Slaughter – Death by Drones? Revenge of the Space Terrorists?”

  “Not quite... but you’re close.”

  “No holding back, Juliet. What’s the title of Brad Thayer’s latest masterpiece?” Her mouth was set in a straight line.

  “Sky Slaughter Two–Drones in the Desert. A real shoot-’em-up. Brad says every male under thirty-five in the world has asked for it for Christmas, but it won’t be released until after the first of the year. Too many back orders for Sky Slaughter One.”

  Avery shook her head in disgust. “I ask again, Jules, how could you and Brad be from the same family?” She pursed her lips. “And how are all our other dear colleagues enjoying life at our South of Market headquarters?” she asked, referring to Northern California’s second Silicon Valley.

  The simple truth was that no one from the company Brad ran dared voice their sympathy for Avery Evans or even about the terrorist attacks in Paris within their boss’s earshot, nor had anyone even asked to convey best wishes for their former co-worker’s recovery when they’d heard Juliet was dashing out the door to the airport. Their CEO was obviously displeased by his sister’s actions, and his many minions were not about to appear to disagree with him. Wishing to change the subject, Juliet pointed to a vase of beautiful cut roses that must have come from a Parisian friend’s garden.

  “Who are those from? They’re gorgeous!”

  Avery reared back on her pillow in surprise. “I have no idea. They must have arrived when I was down getting X-rayed. Can you look at the card for me?”

  Juliet crossed to the small bureau and peered at a note penned in French that was nestled in the stems.

  “‘Let me know when I can come see you. Alain Devereux,’” Juliet read. She looked up. “At least I think that translation is right. Who’s he?”

  “My professor at L’École who teaches the portrait master class.” Avery’s voice suddenly wavered. “That’s how I became friends with Jean-Pierre. J-P speaks excellent English, and Alain asked him to help me get adjusted at the school the first week I enrolled.”

  Avery pushed away the tray with her coffee and the crumbs of the croissant she’d consumed. She lay back with her head on the pillow, and closed her eyes.

  “Tired?” Juliet said with a rush of sympathy. “Why don’t you take a little nap and I’ll go get settled into my new digs.”

  Avery barely nodded as Juliet tiptoed out the room.

  * * *

  Juliet returned to Avery’s beside after her first night in a nondescript hotel near the hospital that could just as easily been a Holiday Inn—bland, efficient, and without much charm, but the price was affordable by Parisian standards. She was startled and pleased to see that another, rather impressively large bouquet of flowers had arrived.

  “Who are these from?” she asked, filled with curiosity after saying good morning to Avery and inquiring how her night had been.

  “They’re from your brother.”

  “Brad?” she marveled. Maybe he has an ounce of empathy, after all, she thought with a stab of guilt for the way she’d condemned him so thoroughly both to Finn and Avery.

  “Of course not Brad! They’re from your other brother. Jamie.”

  “Really?” she said, pleased. “Can I look?”

  Juliet peered at the card, whose message she found quite intriguing.

  Horrified by what’s happened.

  Here’s to a speedy recovery.

  Much love, Jamie

  “Well, well... it looks as if you’ve had a secret admirer all this time,” she teased.

  “Not so secret,” Avery replied with a slight, upward quirk of her lips. “I must have told you, didn’t I, that Jamie and I talked briefly about going out in the early days of GatherGames?”

  “Neither of you told me anything,” she corrected flatly.

  “Well, we mutually decided it wasn’t the greatest idea... dipping our pens into office ink and all that.” Avery shrugged. “But he’s such a sweet guy, and sending flowers like this means a lot.” She fell silent for a moment, and then asked, “Why in the world did you think Brad would send flowers? He had me escorted out of the office by the building’s security guards when I told him I was quitting.”

  “Hope springs eternal, I guess,” Juliet replied with a shrug of her own.

  “That notion could get you in a lot of trouble. When are you going to realize that even though Brad’s your brother, he doesn’t give a damn about anybody else but Old Number One?”

  “Score one for you in the ‘Brutally Honesty Department.’” Avery immediately shot Juliet an apologetic look, but Juliet held up her hand. “No, you’re right,” she agreed with a sigh. “He’s the perfect example of a self-absorbed Millennial-to-the-max.”

  “And a card-carrying member of our More-For-Me Generation.”

  “Weird, isn’t it, that Jamie, he, and I were born only a few years apart, but are—”

  “The two of you are completely opposite,” interrupted Avery.

  Juliet heaved another small sigh. “I just keep thinking that Brad’ll—”

  Avery interrupted again. “Stop drinking from the poison well, will you, Juliet? It is what it is with that guy. You’ve got both a really sweet brother and a skunk of a brother. It’s time you accepted the truth. It happens in a lot of families.”

  Just then a figure appeared in the door, backlit by windows in the corridor. For a split second, Juliet thought it might be Finn Deschanel—but it wasn’t.

  “’Allo! I’m Etienne,” announced a young man of about Finn’s height. “Time for your physical therapy again, mademoiselle.”

  Closer inspection of the person standing in the doorway revealed a tattoo on the man’s burly neck and a gold earring piercing his lobe. He was wearing white pants and a white shirt with longish hair curling at his collar.

  “If it’s okay with you, Avery,” Juliet proposed, “while you’re working with Etienne, I’ll check out of my hotel and go back to your apartment to see if I can get the heat issue sorted out.”

  “Good luck with that, but thanks,” Avery replied, smiling weakly. “I wish I could instruct you, but I’ve forgotten exactly how I got it going the first time.” Juliet could tell her friend was dreading the next hour, but all Avery added was a spunky, “Okay, monsieur... let’s get this torture over with.”

  * * *

  Juliet felt that by now, she must be digging ridges with her wheeled suitcase into the concrete ramp that led from the entrance of the American Hospital of Paris to the street that paralleled the massive institution. To her relief, the number 82 bus was pulled up at the curb, its open door welcoming her until she realized that she needed a pre-paid ticket to climb aboard. Her look of dismay must have filled the driver with pity, for he beckoned her to get on the bus, pointing to a map above her head that indicated she should get off near the Musée d’Orsay, whose back wall faced the street that she’d explained in her halting French was her destination.

  Wearily, she pulled her suitcase onto the bus. She settled into one of the plastic seats and secured her bag between her knees to prevent it from rolling across the aisle. For a half hour, at least, she could relax until the next challenge of being an American in Paris presented itself.

  * * *

  With another stroke of luck, one of Avery’s neighbors was just exiting the big, oak door at Number 7, Rue de Lille. After Juliet hailed him and explained her presence there, he disclosed that he and his wife were fellow Americans who lived with their baby son in one of the luxurious flats just below the frigid attic. Brian Parker, from New York City, worked for a business-consulting firm with an office in Paris. He pointed toward the stairs that led to the apartments above their heads.

  “Actually, I had noticed that Avery hasn’t been here in a while,” he said, expressing his shock that she had been one of the victims in Friday’s terrorist attacks. “Please give her
our best and let us know if there’s anything else we can do.”

  When she informed him of the heating problem, he immediately volunteered to help her when he got home that evening, “... if you haven’t been rescued by the building’s concierge by that time.”

  “Is there Wi-Fi in the building?” Juliet asked doubtfully, considering the building was probably constructed in the eighteenth century. If by some miracle there was, she could do some of her work remotely and perhaps buy an extra day or two to remain in Paris.

  “Feel free to piggy-back off of ours,” Parker offered and gave her the password. “We’re just below Avery’s place and she mentioned it reaches up there.”

  Within an hour of locating the concierge to seek help getting the heating system to work, Juliet had tidied up Avery’s small space and made a list of needed provisions. Soon, she headed out on a shopping mission with Brian’s advice as to grocery stores, the nearest boulangerie for bread and pastries, and the names of several bistros and cafés that he and his wife, Melanie, like to frequent.

  Just as Finn had, Brian recommended La Calèche, right across the street, as a very nice spot for lunch or dinner. With a wave of his hand as he headed off for his day’s work, he’d called, “Tell Philippe that I sent you. He especially caters to locals.”

  With directions in hand, Juliet finished her shopping chores without incident and stored her purchases upstairs. When she called Avery, however, the call went straight to voice mail. Figuring she was probably exhausted from her hour of physical therapy and sound asleep, Juliet quickly heated up and consumed a bowl of ready-made soup she’d bought earlier. Consulting her Paris Districts map book that neatly fit into her jacket pocket, she set off for the campus of L’École des Beaux Arts.

  Despite her concern about Avery, she was wildly curious for a closer inspection of the institution where her great-great grandmother had attended architecture school. Thinking about the pioneering Amelia Hunter Bradshaw who had married James Thayer in 1907, Juliet’s thoughts drifted to her own family. She felt a stab of sadness that no one from home had texted her back after she’d sent word she had landed safely in Paris. She paused on a street corner and checked her email. Her spirits lifted a notch when she scrolled across an earlier message from her dad and one of encouragement from Jamie. Nothing from her mother or Brad, of course.