by Sarah Hina
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
a speciaL EXCERPT
Quickly, I scout the long promenade below. There are masses of humanity down there, and too many wear brown. Yet instantly I spot him, brown hair and blazer, pulling away from me. Perhaps it is the fact that he moves purposefully, while the others linger. My heart is squeezed by the idea that I will lose him. He is already near the exit, his steady stride stretching the distance between us like a rubber band about to snap. Damn his speed. Must he be that anxious to leave, knowing he’s left me behind? My foolish expectations winter with the chill at his back, and I start to wilt. There, he’s gone. My grip on the rail slackens, and I go limp.
“Promise me you will not jump.”
The shock of him, standing at my elbow and wearing a crooked smile. I immediately start to hiccup.
“Your jacket”—hic—“is gray!”
“Your eyes are blue.”
The French, of course, are famous for their seductive powers. One should really keep her guard up around them. He didn’t, after all, admit that my eyes are a pretty shade of blue, or some variation on the theme. It doesn’t matter. He could have said my eyes were the color of dried cement, and the same giddy glee would have throbbed through my bones. It is the look, not so much the words. And that look is international.
“I am Mathieu,” he says, extending his hand. He moves toward me but stops. I can tell he’s not sure about the cheek kissing—that I, as an American, might think it too forward. This consideration touches me, even as I lament the absence of those lips upon my ready cheek.
“Daisy,” I say, looking down.
I take his hand, waiting for a muffled guffaw, an ironical smile. But his hand is warm, and he presses mine lightly, letting it linger.
“Daisy, would you like to share a cup of coffee with me?”
Surprised, I look up. Our hands are still clasped, each reluctant to let go. He gestures toward the café behind us.
And that is when I start loving Paris.
Accolades for
PLUM BLOSSOMS IN PARIS by Sarah Hina
“Plum Blossoms in Paris is a feast for the senses, filled with all the magic of Paris, and everything else a reader could want—heartache, adventure, romance, lost art treasure and enough surprises to keep the pages turning. A true vacation for the mind—and the heart. I loved every moment of it.”
—Susan Wiggs (December 2009)
“When a spunky American and a charming Frenchman, both fleeing painful pasts, collide in Paris, a headlong romance is inevitable. But what’s a girl to do next? In Plum Blossoms in Paris, author Sarah Hina serves up a delicious, intricate, up-and-down love story seasoned with generous dollops of passion, philosophy, and wry humor.”
—Noelle Sickels, author of The Medium, Walking West, and The Shopkeeper’s Wife
DEDICATION
For Paul
Published 2010 by Medallion Press, Inc.
The MEDALLION PRESS LOGO
is a registered trademark of Medallion Press, Inc.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment from this “stripped book.”
Copyright © 2010 by Sarah Hina
Cover design by Arturo Delgado
Edited by Helen A Rosburg
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-160542126-1
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply indebted to my agent, Jeffery McGraw, of The August Agency, for his tenacity, his handholding, and his knowledge and passion for good and smart books. His colleague, Cricket Freeman, also provided excellent support and guidance. I am very grateful to the editorial team at Medallion Press, including Helen A Rosburg, Emily Steele, and Lorie Popp, as well as Ramona Tucker, for their friendly professionalism and tireless efforts to make the novel shine. I also want to thank Christy Phillippe, who acquired the book for Medallion, Arturo Delgado, for his lovely cover art, and James Tampa, Medallion’s director of art and production.
My friendship with Jason and Aine Evans was invaluable during the rewriting process, and I will always be grateful for their help and enthusiasm. I’d also like to express my appreciation for Courtney and Tony Xenos, two friends who have shared in the joys of this journey and made my life fuller. All of my blogging buddies (you know who you are) deserve big hugs and smiley-faced emoticons.
I am happy to thank my mom, Judy Harmon, for giving me her unconditional love and support, and my dad, Bill, who provided me with an early love of literature and the discipline to follow through on my dreams. My siblings, Katherine and John, are equally important in my path, and I thank them for their great examples and cheerleading. My wonderful children, Caroline and Alex, have been very patient with Mom’s computer addiction, and I love them for that, and much more.
Lastly, I would like to single out my husband, Paul, without whom this book would not have been written. You’ve given me Paris, and so much more. From my heart, I thank you.
In Paris, everybody is an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.
—Jean Cocteau
Nowhere is one more alone than in Paris … and yet surrounded by crowds. Nowhere is one more likely to incur greater ridicule. And no visit is more essential.
—Marguerite Duras
You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese in Paris? They got the metric system. They wouldn’t know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is. They call it “royale with cheese.”
—Jules to Vincent in Pulp Fiction
Chapter
1
When he told me he no longer loved me, I fell to my knees. I know. Even I was conscious of caving to melodrama as I collapsed toward the pea-puke, paisley carpet.
I offered my forehead like a fallen prayer to the floor, and when my new roommate, smiley Selena, came in, that’s where she found me—nose to spit, prostrate with misery. She took the scene in, and since we never had much to say to one another (her bumper sticker cheeps, Abstinence Rocks!), she just as efficiently turned to leave. I never appreciated anyone’s callousness so much in all my life.
Where was the mysterious lover, the dumper, in all of this? Five hundred miles away, numbing his nerves with alcohol—or so I want to believe. He could have been taking a nap, jacking off, or studying for a test.
It was not within my power to know. I should have mentioned, from the start, that he was a slippery, sucker-punching coward. He broke up with me, in spite of a six-year relationship, by e-mail. A nice, clean channel of cyberspace, where messy conflict does not compute. He apologized for this, of course.
I know I should tell you this myself, but I’m afraid the sound of your voice might prevent me from speaking the absolute truth. I know you would only want me to be honest; I respect you too much for anything less.
I felt very respected by that chummy, conjugal semicolon. So respected, I nearly vomited on Selena’s pile of Cosmopolitans stacked neatly against the couch.
After a moment, or a lifetime, I looked up. My laptop blinked sanguinely at me from the coffee table. The mouse was grimed up with powdered cheese from the chips I still tasted. There were other artifacts of a familiar life—my favorite coffee mug (Naturally Selected to be Awesome!), a worn Neuroscience textbook, a framed picture of Irene and me swooning for Bono, and the latest untouched offering from my father—W. Somerset Maugham’s A Razor’s Edge. But I mostly just saw Andy’s words. In brutal black and white.
I felt assaulted. But, if I’m honest, also the faintest exultation. My body, unaccustomed to anything but the paperwork of living, flickered to life. My stomach bubbled. Senses sharpened. I was conscious of the smallness of my hands braced, like bird’s feet, across the carpet, as my lungs tugged for more oxygen. The room’s molecules swirled in a chaotic dance while the faint scent of chemicals floated off my lab jacket and scratched at my nose.
None of it could save me. Destruction can be the spark for a rebirth by fire, but I knew that all my body’s heightened defenses couldn’t keep me from just feeling burned. Not reborn.
Yet something was different. Andy didn’t love me anymore.
He was my high school sweetheart, even if the preciousness of that term seemed all wrong for us. We were brainy, self-absorbed, and, okay, innocent of the world’s demands when we started datingat sixteen. He read all of my haikus in The Spartan Pen and never quite laughed. I went to all of his basketball games and never quite slept. We were nearly as ambitious for our relationship as we were for THE FUTURE. We both enrolled at Ohio State because he couldn’t afford Princeton, and we shook our heads over lesser high school couples who splintered within one year of college. After he was bounced into Harvard Medical School from the waiting list, I settled for Case Western Reserve University’s Neuroscience Program and shot him off to Cambridge with a smile and all the goodwill I could afford. I swallowed my pride, though it choked a little. We suffered through one year apart, and though we were too busy to spend any substantial part of the summer together, I was confident we were happy and satisfied. I felt settled. Thoughts of a ring had drifted through my head lately—a sweet tonic to the institutional boredom of lab work. But I didn’t allow myself to linger over those daydreams. I wasn’t going to be a girl about it.
Okay, I lingered on it long enough to decide on a PhD at Harvard after a summer wedding and a honeymoon in Europe.
Just. That. Long.
We were a match, a team, a mission. Andy and Daisy. Daisyandandy.
I don’t know how to be alone, I confided to the carpet, where I saw myself scattering into a thousand paisley pieces. Like a tree robbed of all its leaves, I was all nerves and no color.
Outside, the October air whispered, then shouted. I shivered.
It was the season of my discontent.
Chapter
2
I’m not terribly comfortable on my knees.
And so I struggled to my feet, brushed myself off, and fled back to the lab. My second home. The microscopes and slides, my extended family.
By the time I got there, the building was abandoned. Even Dr. Choi—a man so enraptured with work that he has been known to whistle “The Surrey With the Fringe On Top” while euthanizing turtles—appeared to have retired to his wife and five kids. I sequestered myself in the small fluorescent microscopy room and trolled through images that have soothed me before. But this night was different. In lieu of a beautiful, mysterious order, total anarchy flapped through my brain. I couldn’t decipher designs. I couldn’t see the familiar patterns connecting the inner ear hair cells, those precise instruments of spatial orientation we research. My mind kicked with too much stimuli, and my eyes unfocused in surrender. Eventually, I shut down the computer, throwing the room into darkness, except for the red lights blinking on the microscope’s instrument panel.
Which, because our minds claw meaning from sense, led me to sex.
Since Andy was my high school boyfriend, as well as my lone college and postgraduate lover, my sexual history is, well, limited. There’s a benefit to monogamy, of course: even if you suck, your partner, equally clueless of anything outside your distorted fish-bowl, isn’t likely to complain. I’ve often thought it similar to my short stint as a pianist, where my indulgent mother smiled at every missed cue, all along believing me to be the next Art Tatum. Once I played at my school recital and suffered the tight smiles and forced applause, I realized how sweetly delusional she was. And I understood that experience was essential to discovering the truth. That’s why I repeat experiments several times, always hoping to arrive at the same conclusion. Dr. Choi calls me The Machine. I try to take it as a compliment.
However, since Andy was even jealous of my perfectly healthy obsession with Daniel Day-Lewis (I begged Andy for months to don the Last of the Mohicans loincloth—big mistake to sacrifice one’s fantasy for parody), wider sexual experience was not an option. And that was all right with me. Andy was a considerate, if inarticulate, lover, and the two of us had come a long way from the first furious rubbings in the backseat of his Toyota Corolla.
Sitting in the blackness at the lab, pierced only by the red alarm of those buttons, I once again ached for those inexperienced hands on my body. His naiveté made me feel like a goddess, and as a seventeen-year-old male, he was obliged to worship at my altar.
“What is that crease right there?” he asked once, his adoring eyes fixed somewhere below my Wonderbra.
I peered down doubtfully. “What?”
“That crease, between your belly button and hip.” He ran his hand across the skin and marveled at the hollow.
It was rather remarkable. “You mean above the iliac crest?” I winced. Nothing dilutes the poetry of a thing more than naming it.
But Andy took no notice. He only had eyes for that moonstruck flesh. “Yeah. It’s like the one spot in the world where I could lay all my dreams.”
Okay, he didn’t say that. Andy wasn’t one for purple prose. But his eyes told me. I’d never felt lovelier in all my life, or more desired. We hadn’t even had sex yet, but it didn’t matter. He loved my body, and I loved him loving it.
Why did he stop? What led him astray?
I kneeled my head on the microscope panel and cried steel tears. Free-falling, I looked for answers in a lab that had always provided them. For the first time in a too lucky life, I came up with nothing but myself. The only thing I knew for certain was that I needed a soft place to land. A new place to look.
Down the long hall a door creaked open, then closed with a bang.
My neck lifted and tensed.
Footsteps followed. Then, whistling. George Gershwin, as interpreted by Dr. Choi. The notes soared and sank. Like a careless breeze.
“An American in Paris.”
Almost unconsciously, I started humming along. And then stopped.
Paris …
Paris.
A word that could split the night. Even this night.
“Paris.”
It felt good on my lips, too. In fact, they very nearly stretched into a smile.
I stood and started to pace my cage. My thoughts couldn’t pull me hard enough now.
I would take my honeymoon. I would wrench myself from the soggy ashes of this despair. After all, what remained for me here? I scanned the tight room, its silent weight of expectation anchorin
g a suddenly windy spirit. All this cold equipment was hatched from a desire to penetrate the truth—objective truths. Those tiny, impersonal mysteries supporting and binding us all. It’s noble work, and I’ve been proud to be part of it. But am I to spend my entire life, lids pressed against the microscope, never turning those powerful lenses around on myself?
No.
I braced myself on the desk and sucked a deep breath. Pouring clean air into my lungs.
Andy was the catalyst. But I would be the experiment. And what better laboratory for a girl in darkness than the shimmering City of Light?
“Daisy? What are you doing here so late?”
Dr. Choi sounded eager, in spite of the hour. Clearly, I wasn’t the only weirdo.
“Have you been examining those slides again?” he asked, unruffled by the fact that he was talking to my back.
I turned to face him, trying to offer a very human smile … of apology.
The slides would have to wait. This Machine had sprouted wings.
So, eighteen hours and one reprieve later, here I am. Sitting with my feet firmly planted on the floor of an Air France plane, nervously awaiting Toronto’s signal for liftoff.
It must be Paris. Daisy Miller, my namesake, went to Rome, but that was her fatal mistake. Rome is dead. It’s a city for archaeologists, for looking back. I’m looking forward. And though Paris, as Gertrude Stein eloquently put it, “was where thetwentieth century was,” I hope it will suffer this belated member of the Lost Generation. I already see myself sliding, like a seraph (for I am not quite real), into the Panthéon, bypassing the tombs of Hugo, Voltaire, and Rousseau, seeking the resting place of my own torchbearer: the indelible Marie Curie. I do not consider much beyond this, having only a rudimentary idea of the city cobbled from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a Rick Steves travel show, and Moulin Rouge. I’m sure there’s more, but if so, it must be buried under the sad refrain of an Edith Piaf chanson. All I know is that Rick Steves can run circles around a city in the time it takes my mother to torch her crème brûlée.