by Nina Lemay
“What?”
“What were you doing in there?”
I gape at him, dread creeping over me.
“You have a smear of paint on your forehead.”
My hand flies up to my face and I start to scrub. He catches my wrist and gently scrapes a spot right at my hairline. “There. All gone.”
“Thanks.” I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand, just to be sure.
“So you were painting. Is that criminal?”
“It was nothing. A project for school.”
“If it was a nothing project for school, then why can’t I see it?” He doesn’t sound accusing, only a touch disappointed. “I might give you pointers.”
“I don’t need pointers.”
“Hey, I want to say I know you’re a damn great artist in your own right and you don’t need pointers, but… guess what, I’ve never seen a thing you painted.”
We start walking down the hall toward the stairwell and I’m tempted to storm ahead of him, stomping my feet like a child.
“Hey, Hannah. What’s the rush?” Emmanuel catches up with me and takes my hand. I ease it out of his grip.
“Are you mad at me? Should I just go?”
“No,” I stop cold, staring at the floor. One thing for certain, I don’t want him to go. I just want him as far from my inner sanctum—and my paintings—as possible.
He puts his hands on my arms. “It’s okay, I get it. I won’t pester you about seeing your paintings. When I come over next time, I’ll give you fair advance warning so you can squirrel them away somewhere.”
“Who said you’ll be coming over again?”
He doesn’t bat an eyelash. “Well, we’re always at my place. I don’t even know what the place you live in looks like. Don’t you think that’s a little odd?”
“You know what else I think is odd? The fact that I’m—that I’m sleeping with someone I met at work, for one. Or with someone who teaches one of my classes. That’s just to start you off with.” My face flares when I realize I almost said “dating.”
Emmanuel pulls me close and kisses my temple. “Oh, Hannah… What am I going to do with you?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
“What I mean is, you don’t let anyone in. Do you?”
I draw in a breath, but it feels like I’m drowning from the inside. My ribs clench and my eyes start to burn; I press the heels of my hands over my eyelids. I don’t. I don’t let anyone in, but much good it does when he can see right through me.
Emmanuel takes me into his arms and holds me close. My forehead rests on his shoulder and I let the tears trickle from my tightly squeezed eyelids, sink into his jacket.
“That’s not it,” I murmur. “It’s just… my place, it sucks. There’s a hole in my bathroom ceiling that my cheap-ass landlord won’t fix for months now, and I don’t own a complete set of plates and cutlery and eat out of Tupperware containers half the time. And you’re going to see all that. You have heated floors and you don’t sleep on a second-hand futon, and we can go out for a coffee without risking running into people from school.”
He doesn’t say anything, letting me ramble until I get self-conscious and stop. Pulling away, I wipe my eyes and try not to sniffle.
“Hannah, it’s okay. We’ll go to my place. Or somewhere nice in the Old Port, or anywhere you want.”
“Your place,” I say. “Your place is just fine.”
The day before Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, I linger in Emmanuel’s class until even Audrey gives up and slinks out, her camera bag over her shoulder. The second the door closes behind her, I look up to see Emmanuel watching me with that smile I now recognize. I throw a last cautious glance at the door and saunter over to put my arms around his neck. His hands settle on my lower back, so easy and comfortable like they’re meant to be there.
“So how are we going to do this?” I whisper in his ear.
“Go to your place and pack your weekend bag. Get some comfy shoes you can walk in…”
“I can walk in all my shoes, I’ll have you know.” I giggle.
“Good. You’re not one of those girls who wears spike heels to go hiking on a mountain and then I have to carry her to the top because her feet hurt?”
“No, definitely not. Is that where we’re going?”
He gives an infuriating shrug. “And bring a bathing suit.”
“It’s practically November. Unless we’re going to Florida…”
“Don’t worry, we’re not. You’ll see.” He kisses me again, harder, nipping on my lower lip, his stubble grazing my chin. I have to pull away before I get too turned on.
Emmanuel comes to pick me up after the sun has already set. I triple-check to make sure all the electronics are turned off and the door is locked before I sprint downstairs, my overstuffed duffel bag pulling down my arm. At the last second, I turn back and go get the camera along with an empty roll of film.
This time, at least, he waits in the car like he said he would. I put my duffel in the back seat but keep the camera bag, which I prop up in my lap.
“You brought it,” Emmanuel says. “Good call. There will be lots for you to work with where we’re going.”
“So where is that?”
“Quebec City.”
He must misinterpret my blank look, because he adds, almost apologetic:
“Sorry, I wish I was the type of guy who could whisk you away to Aruba for the weekend. Sadly, I can only offer a four-star hotel in the heart of the provincial capital.”
“If I wanted to be whisked away to Aruba, there are plenty of those types at my work. Sadly, they’re repulsive in appearance and personality.”
He clears his throat and looks away. I realize my lapse and mentally curse myself out with every word I know, and some of the French words I’ve picked up too.
“And the provincial capital is more than good enough,” I say, desperate to move on from the subject. “Honestly, as long as there’s no Audrey.”
He looks up again, and he’s smiling. Relief floods me.
“It is completely and totally Audrey-free.”
“That’s all I needed to hear.”
We drive for the next two hours as the sun sets slowly, spilling its colors across the horizon. The mountains we pass light up with reds and oranges and yellows with sharp dark-green dashes of pines. It’s oddly serene and wild, even with the highway stretched out in front of us, zigzagging between mountains and hills as far as the eye can see.
I try to take a picture with the camera, but we’re moving too fast, and the colors would be wasted on the black-and-white film. So I end up taking my phone out of my bag and snapping photo after photo from the rolled-down window.
“Have you even been outside of Montreal yet?” Emmanuel asks, turning down the soft jazzy piano playing on the radio.
“I don’t have a car.” I shrug. “It’s really lovely.”
We pass a mountain with green lines running down its slopes as if shaved in with a buzzer. “You ski?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t even know how.”
“What, they don’t have snow in Minnesota?”
“I just never thought to try it.”
“In winter, when the snow is good, I can take you,” he offers casually. I glance sideways at his profile; his gaze is serenely settled on the road. In winter. Assuming we’re still together in winter. In early December the semester ends, and so does his class.
After that, he never has to see me again if he doesn’t want to. The thought fills me with a sharp feeling of sorrow—or maybe it’s just the lonely mountains and the surreal tranquility of the landscape.
We stop for gas about an hour from Quebec City, in a small village on the slope of one of the ski mountains. In the distance, I glimpse the last of the sunset sparkling on the mirror-still waters of a lake. When he stops the car and turns off the engine, silence settles over everything like a thick blanket—real silence, free of the background hum of the cit
y I’m so used to that I never notice it. The only sounds are the soft chirping of birds and the lazy buzz of the last autumn bugs.
I wonder what it’s like to live in a place like this. Your city-dulled senses must become so sharp you can hear a bird sing on top of the mountain and guess which one it is, just by the sound.
I get out of the car and watch the light fade from the purple sky on the slope of the mountain until the soft crunching of gravel announces Emmanuel’s steps.
He’s carrying a convenience-store bag that he holds out to me. “Juice? Iced tea? Energy drink?”
“Thanks,” I say, cracking open an iced green tea. He pops the tab on an energy drink the size of my head and tosses a bag of Skittles onto the seat.
“Sorry. The three-hour drive can be a bit much.”
I throw a last longing look at the mountain in the distance before climbing back into the passenger seat. “Is this the kind of place where you grew up?”
He tilts his head. “Kind of. But smaller.”
“How was it?”
“Boring,” he chuckles. “At least that’s what sixteen-year-old me thought. I know, I know, but would you have liked living in a place like this when you were a teen?”
Silently, I think of my ugly, flat hometown with its squat buildings, with strip malls instead of mountains and grey parking lots instead of lakes.
“Wait, actually, don’t answer that. I sometimes forget that you are still a teen.”
“I’m twenty,” I say, defensive.
“That’s my point.”
“And I think I would have liked it better than back home.”
“Then you’re less of a spoiled brat than I was.”
We peel out of the gas station and back onto the highway. Here it’s narrow, almost deserted, and winding in crazy loops up and down like a roller coaster. Dark forest whirs by at a dizzying speed.
“What was it like?” Emmanuel asks after a few minutes.
“What was what like?”
“Where you grew up. You never told me a thing. I don’t even know what it’s called, besides that you said it was in Minnesota.”
My mood sours. I gulp my iced tea, which suddenly tastes all wrong, bitter and gross, and wish I’d asked for a can of Dr. Pepper. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“You did run away to another country. So I figure it had to be pretty bad.”
“It was boring.” I take another gulp of tea and wince. “Boring shitty town filled with boring shitty people doing shitty things to each other.”
“Well, you’re from there,” he says. “And you’re neither boring nor shitty.”
“And that’s why I ran away.” I try to make it sound light, carefree. The manic pixie getting her wings and flying off, to someplace more suitable, more…glittery. “Obviously.”
He laughs. “Obviously.”
We drive on in silence; the darkness condenses around us, engulfing everything except the two beams of headlights. It’s like driving through nothingness. I’m sure if I turn back, there will be no road, just a bottomless dark abyss.
“Hey,” Emmanuel speaks up. “You want to put on your music? Not that I could ever get sick of jazz, but right now I could use something to keep me awake.”
“I mostly have sad-girl music,” I admit. “You know. To play after a breakup. Amy Winehouse, Adele, you name it.”
“Then let’s go with sad-girl music.”
“I thought guys hated that.”
“I’m not most guys.”
“I think I have other stuff too. Like, eighties new wave. Britpop. No, wait… it’s all sad-girl music.”
He chuckles, and I rummage through my purse for my phone. But when I turn it on, a little trill announces that I have a new text. The phone’s glow seems to fill the entire car, bouncing off the windows. I frown as I scroll through the message:
So I guess you won’t be showing up at work this weekend, huh.
A chill courses down my spine. My hands start to tremble and it takes me three tries to get to the sender ID. Unavailable.
“Everything all right?” Emmanuel asks.
“Yeah,” I murmur, poking around my screen. I try to call the “unavailable” number, which predictably doesn’t work. I try to see the history, but the only two other numbers with “unavailable” ID were spam texts, trying to sell me something or informing me that my “bank account’s security info may have been compromised.”
I stare at my screen, slack-jawed. It could be Maryse or someone. Maybe the number doesn’t show up because the phone is prepaid.
Yeah.
“Hannah? What is it? Bad news?”
“No.” I press the button and close the texts window. Thumbing through my music collection with shaky fingers, I settle on my work playlist, a mix of Sad Girl Music, M.I.A and the occasional classic rock ballad. It takes me a few more minutes of fumbling to set up the phone and figure out how to make the speakers work.
“Hey, if something’s wrong, I’ll turn back. Even though we’re eight-tenths of the way there.”
“Nothing is wrong. Just spam.”
“You do know he’s not a real Nigerian prince, right?”
I giggle nervously. “They’re not my type.”
I sit up with a start, realizing that I’ve managed to nod off. Outside the car window, lights pass by in a blur. There are ugly squat buildings with chain-link fences, grey lots, car dealerships with floodlights bouncing off rows and rows of shiny new Toyotas. We’re getting close to the city.
“Rise and shine,” Emmanuel says, handing me a can of energy drink. My head is heavy and the back of my throat feels sticky; one of the Sad Girl Songs is still playing quietly in the background. I rub my eyes and roll my shoulders to stretch them.
“Are we almost there?”
“Close.”
Within twenty minutes, the Chateau Frontenac—I know because I Googled the city weeks ago—is looming over us at a distance, lit up from the ground to the roof like some kind of fairytale castle with its four iconic turrets and green oxidized copper roof. The car winds though narrow paved streets, jumping and jolting on the cobblestones. My teeth clack together with every bump we hit. Certainly old-world, but not very practical.
But besides that, the city looks like a postcard come to life. Or like we’ve magically teleported to the heart of an old European capital, car and all. Fieldstone buildings line the narrow street, with wrought-iron fences and gables. Antique-looking streetlamps flood everything with warm orange light and garlands crisscross the street above us, intertwined with strings of lanterns. Restaurant terraces are empty because of the October chill, but through the windows I can glimpse how crowded it is. Faint music is pouring from doors and windows here and there, more jazz, classical.
“They’re not big on nightclubs here,” Emmanuel says. “Sorry. Maybe I should have asked.”
“No!” I say, unable to tear my gaze away from the charming, old-fashioned scene. “It’s—”
Perfect.
“Are we actually staying at that place?” I nod at the glowing tower of Chateau Frontenac looming above the buildings.
Emmanuel laughs. “It is luxurious, no arguing about that. But I thought we’d get something a little more private. And less… stuffy.”
When we park in front of the hotel, I understand what he means. Ours is small, three stories, built from enormous stones with those narrow, deep windows—a plaque by the door says the building is nearly three hundred years old. I crane my neck, gaping at its narrow, steep roof with the wind vane shaped like a crescent. The ivy that covers the entire side wall is yellowed but still strong. It looks like a fairytale.
Or like it might be haunted.
Emmanuel comes up behind me and puts his hand on my waist, cool, confident, mindless of the fact that we’re in the middle of the street where people are still walking in spite of the cool weather. He leans over and I turn my face up for a kiss; he lingers, his lips exploring mine, tracing the underside of my upper li
p with his tongue, flash and it’s gone. No one even turns to look. It’s glorious.
“Don’t worry.” Emmanuel reaches over and picks up my duffel from the sidewalk. “It’s much more modern on the inside.”
In the lobby, a fire crackles in the fireplace, the real thing as far as I can tell. Emmanuel gets the keys and we take the grand, winding stone staircase to our room on the third floor.
“You didn’t have to do all that,” I say when we get to the door at the very end of the hallway. “I can imagine what a place like this costs. Especially on the long weekend.”
“I booked it the same day I promised to bring you here,” he admitted. “So no arguing. Enjoy.”
The suite has a slanted ceiling, with thick wooden beams holding up a platform where I see an enormous bed piled with pillows. A spiral staircase leads up to it. On the other end is a huge fieldstone fireplace with a pile of logs in an elegant metal grate, ready to light up. The back wall is pretty much one huge window, with a sliding French door leading to a terrace outside. Below, I can see the lights of the city, all its convoluted streets below an endless dark sky.
“This is…” I choke. I’ve never been in a place this nice before. When I rented my loft, it was the top of luxury by my standards. And the best hotel I can remember is a hokey little place my family stayed at when we went on vacation to Florida when I was fourteen.
“It has a spa outside. If you want, I can start it.”
I mutely shake my head. “This is amazing, Emmanuel. This is just way, way too—”
Too good. For someone like me. It’s weird, but tears sting my eyes at the thought.
“If you don’t like it, that’s too bad, because it’s ours for the entire weekend.” He playfully elbows me in the side.
I turn around, throw my arms around his neck and kiss him, hard, for a good five minutes. “No one’s ever done anything like that for me. Ever.”
He breaks away, lands a gentle kiss between my eyebrows. “You have your whole life ahead of you, you know.”
“That’s not funny.”
“What? You really think I’m the only guy who’s ever going to want to shower you with luxury?” His soft laugh tickles my ear. “I’m just one lowly contender. There are guys out there who will want to offer you the stars and the moon.”