But none of that would ever happen. Because, and at the last minute, too, I'd lucked into an escape clause-the clause that contained my safe word. Well, there had been this other story, you see, that had slipped in-almost parentheticallybetween my year with Mr. Constant and these five days with Jonathan. And I hadn't told Jonathan this story. I almost had, when he'd told me about the hacker. I might have, you know, if he'd noticed that I had something to tell him. But he hadn't, and I hadn't, and I was glad of that now
Not that it was a story I could easily imagine telling him. It had a hero, for one thing-an unlikely one, who'd hacked through tangled vines of information to win an unobstructed view of the girl imprisoned in her tower. And who somehow-through the deliberateness and patience and innocence of his gaze-had broken the spell that held her thrall.
And I don't even like fairy tales, or swords or spells or sorcery, or any of that redundant archetypal stuff. But by that last day in Paris, I'd admitted to myself that-like it or not it was mine, this ultimate, unfinished story. It had chosen me, and I would have to have a hand in shaping it, giving it a little more wit and originality. I knew that I didn't want to tell this story to Jonathan. I wanted to keep it, to live it-well, to see if I could make a life out of it, anyway. And that's how I knew it was time to go.
The First Day, Earlier
CARRIE'S STORY, TOO
-'d settled into the seat of the train from Paris to Avignon. I was glad I was next to the window, because I thought I might be too nervous to read. This is it, I thought. The first day of the rest of my life.
I hoped Jonathan would like the clothes I'd bought in Paris. I'd gone there directly from Greece, the day they'd taken off my collar and cuffs and Mr. Constant had given me the money-more than a hundred thousand dollars, including a credit card. He'd been nice that last day, removing his glasses and trying to having a real conversation with me in his office.
"I enjoyed the year," he said, "and I've always thought you were a nice girl. I'm not so sure about that Jonathan, though, you know."
"Well, I'll have to see," was all I said.
He supposed I would. He wished me luck, but unfortunately, he was a bit pressed for time at the moment. He had an interview scheduled-a new young economics genius he hoped to hire. It wouldn't be easy to replace Stefan, who was training at that very minute, happy at last in the dressage ring. Tony'd left two weeks ago, for New York, to try to make it as a dancer.
Well, I said, I wish you luck, too, Mr. Constant. He'd need it, I thought-or maybe it would be Annie who'd need it, to impose some form and discipline onto Stefan's fierce adoration. We shook hands, and I turned to go. Oh, just one more thing, I said. I'd borrowed a book from his library....-
"Keep it," he said.
I wasn't sure I'd remember how to use money, but it didn't turn out to be a problem. I needed clothes to go see Jonathan in, and I started spending recklessly-going to snooty, ultrahip shops that charged a thousand francs for a tiny black T-shirt that would leave a little line of skin above the top of your skirt. It had been fun the first few days, in a numb, giddy, slightly autistic way, and then I'd calmed down a little and realized how alone I was. I hadn't wanted to admit to myself how difficult it would be to be free and on my own, even in Paris with a virtually bottomless credit card.
I phoned my friend Stuart in Berkeley.
"I'll pay for your plane ticket, I'll pay for everything," I said. "Please, I need to see you."
He could tell, when I came to meet him at the airport, how overwrought and slightly hysterical I was, and how much I needed to talk. We must have hit every cafe in the city, talking nonstop for the five days he was there, and I could feel myself slowly calming down. I began with all my war stories from the year with Mr. Constant-but the conversation gradually evened out, because he had a lot of stuff to work through too. His boyfriend, Greg, had a job offer in Maine, and he was probably going to take it. And somehow, the two of them were determined to make this arrangement work. I was pretty impressed, though all the stuff about relationships was kind of a foreign language to me. And we spent hours, poring over Jonathan's letter together.
"Mr. Constant was right," Stuart said, for about the millionth time, his last day. "That's a spoiled, selfish letter. Look, you've had your adventures. It's time to come back to Berkeley. Come on. You can sleep on our couch. If you'll read the other chapter of my dissertation, you can have the bed and we'll sleep on the couch."
"I can't," I said. "You know I have to see this thing through. And anyhow, I've made so many corrections to the chapter I've been reading that it'll take you a year to get it into shape. Good, though."
It was good. And I'd enjoyed adding my opinions. It had been fun, all the arguments and discussions we'd been having. I'd miss him. I put my arm around him, and he squeezed my waist.
"So what'll we do this afternoon?" I asked. We had reservations for a fancy farewell dinner, and we'd figured we'd go dancing later in some clubs he knew about.
"I need notebooks," he said, "sexy French stationery. A good Waterman pen. I mean, we're in the world capital of office supplies, you know."
We wound up spending more in the papeterie than we would that night in the restaurant. And I cried when he kissed me good-bye at the train station early the next morning.
But, as the train started to fill up. I realized that I was actually feeling pretty good. I pulled out one of the new notebooks I'd bought, and the Waterman pen. And the book I was reading. I wanted to copy down some words whose eighteenth-century usages I wasn't sure of. Five days with Stuart had brought back some of my pedantic old habits.
It was an interesting book. Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson. All four volumes and two thousand unabridged pages of it, that somebody had left in Mr. Constant's library. I probably wouldn't have begun it, except that I'd been so sick of reading stacks of downloaded pages. But now that I was reading it, I was glad I'd picked it up. And surprised by what I'd found, too, and increasingly involved in the narrative alternations of female and male voice-eighteenthcentury gender impersonation-the male voice a funhouse of narcissistic projection.
I had some breakfast in the dining car, my nose still in Volume IV, and stumbled back into my seat, overturning the open briefcase at the feet of the guy next to me. An English translation of Sade's Justine tumbled out, as well as a bunch of notebooks. I murmured that I was sorry, as he scrambled to put the books away, repeating several times that it was "no problem."
"That a good book?" he asked, in English. He was American. A student, maybe. I didn't know if I really felt like having a conversation right then. Yeah, and if you believe that, well, there's a bridge halfway across the Rhone that maybe I could sell you. The truth is I would have talked to anybody who'd listen-the last few days with Stuart had shown me how utterly starved for talking I was. Poor guy, I thought, turning toward him and taking a deep breath, he tries a cheesy pickup gambit, and in return he gets a lecture on Samuel Richardson and the Deconstruction of Gender. Tough, I thought. He asked for it.
He hung in, though, following my argument and even asking some good questions. He hadn't read much, but he had a logical mind, keeping me honest about stuff I was pretty much spouting off on-the-fly.
"And the female voice?" he asked. "What keeps it so grounded?"
I frowned. "Well," I said slowly, "Richardson would have given you a religious answer. But I'd say the opposite. I think she prefigures a kind of modern, secular autonomy. I mean, even though she couldn't legally own anything, she always owns her body and soul. You never doubt that."
"I think that she pissed off the Marquis de Sade, with her groundedness, her reasonableness," I added. "So when he parodied her in Justine"-I nodded toward his briefcase-"he did her voice, like the big bad wolf doing Little Red Riding Hood's grandma, in a kind of moral falsetto. He made her goody-goody, namby-pamby. And-this was a smart, deconstructive move-he gave her a narcissistic streak. I mean, Justine obeys more for effect than to save herself, or to save other
s. She gets off on what a good girl she is-she's as much an admiration junky as Richardson's Mr. Lovelace."
And I could understand that, I thought. But then, I seem to have an affinity for fables of domination, the ones that interrogate the dark side of what it means to be material, autonomous, and individual, and that career dizzily between Richardson's impossible pieties and Sade's equally impossible tableaux of total satiation. And I realized that I hadn't said anything for a while.
"Still," I continued, trying to pick up the thread of my argument, "Sade was a big fan of Richardson's, which might seem surprising, but...."
I wondered, suddenly, if I'd embarrassed him by bringing Justine into the discussion like that. I mean, some people are secretive about reading pornography. I hadn't meant it that way, of course. I'd just wanted to talk about the books, the writers. But you never know what people think is okay to talk about. And I'd been cut off from normal conversation for so long. My voice trailed off uncertainly.
"Yeah, you were saying?" he asked softly.
"Oh, nothing," I said. "Sorry if I was talking your ear off." I had embarrassed him, I guessed. He looked nervous. I smiled apologetically and made a show of turning back to my book.
"Oh, no," he said, "no, go on, it's interesting." He said it slowly, making it a four-syllable word. And then neither of us seemed to know what to say. The silence got a little unsettling, and he bit his lip, nervously.
I noticed it then, the space between his front teeth. The gold-rimmed glasses, wavy hair, aquiline nose. Cute, actually, in a nerdy kind of way....-
"Oh, no," I gasped. "You!" And I'd been worried I'd embarrassed him.
"I'm sorry," he said quickly. "Really truly. God, I'm so sorry. I know there had to be a better way to do this, but you have to believe me, I've thought about it for a year and I haven't been able to figure one out."
How could I have not recognized him? The waiter, that first night, the one Mr. Constant had shown me off to, "next time, she's your tip." And we'd eaten in that restaurant a few other times, and he'd given me to the waiters (he'd often done that-once or twice to a chef, too, when the food was really special), but this waiter hadn't been there any of those times. I'd thought about him, too, I remembered. Yes, I'd even been a little disappointed, I realized now, shamefaced and angry.
"I suppose you think I owe you a fuck," I said sharply. "Well, okay, we can use the WC at the end of the car. Come on.,,
I must have spoken more loudly than I'd intended because the people in the seat ahead of us swiveled their heads around, looking eager and amused and curious. I guessed they understood English, or at least, what fuck meant.
Meanwhile, the guy, the waiter or whoever he was, was looking terrified. "Oh, no, please," he whispered in a mortified voice. "Oh, god, no, that's not what I want. Oh, shit, well of course I want to, but... please, Carrie...."
He knew my name. Well, of course he did. I could hear Mr. Constant's voice, "It's nice to watch you, Carrie." And, yes, of course, "Avignon, March 15," too. He knew my name and he knew where I was going. And I could remember his hands, too, how they'd felt on my breasts, my ass.
"Okay," I said, doing my best to stay calm. "I'll ride the rest of the way in the dining car or in the WC or whatever. No, even better, I'll just get off at Lyon. But first, just tell me why you're following me, you creep."
"Listen," he said, softly, "working that private room is always an amazing experience. The tips are great and the women, well ...I hadn't known there were women like that. And I especially wanted to work there that night, because I knew that Edouard Constant had reserved the room."
"You know who he is?" I asked stupidly.
He looked surprised. "Well, he's, uh, famous," he said, trying to cover up his astonishment that I didn't seem to know this. "Anyway... the women are amazing-but not like you were. I kept watching you-well, you know that, I knew you could tell, I wished I could be cooler about it, but....-And, well, by the end of the evening, I'd learned something. I mean I'd learned everything. Or it seemed that way to me anyhow About this whole other dimension to sex. Things that had never made sense to me-perverse sex, fancy sex. It had always sounded stupid, redundant. But I knew you weren't stupid, and I watched you, and I got it. Like when I got calculus, maybe. I could see how sex could be like a story-one that built up slowly, and kept you guessing, and maybe had a trick ending. I could see the humor of it too, and the irony. The infinity of permutations, the endless redefinitions to one more point of precision, and the limit-well, I think if you know what you're doing, maybe you never reach the limit..." and he trailed off, seeing something, I thought, that I couldn't see. Maybe it was some complicated curve plotted against a pair of axes, or maybe it was me, in the restaurant, in my punk Roissy dress.
"It was an education," he continued. "I mean, I've been reading all this porn since then, but it just confirmed what I learned from you that night. Of course, the problem with that was that I also fell in love with you. It was the cognitive jolt, I suppose-I tend to get the physical stuff all scrambled up with important mindtrips-I mean the first woman I ever fell in love with was my seventh grade algebra teacher."
I laughed and he bit his lip again, amazed, I guess, at how much he'd told me without taking a breath.
"And I also thought you were incredibly beautiful," he added softly.
Oh dear. What was I going to do with this sweet nutcase? He was nice though, I thought, he really was. And when you've lived a year in the land of Sylvie and Stephanie, it's sort of pleasant to hear yourself called "incredibly beautiful," even if you know it's arrant nonsense.
"Anyhow," he continued, "when Constant said `Avignon, March 15,' it soldered a whole new set of connections into my brain. I've been planning this trip all year. I was gonna plant myself in the Place d'Horloge all day and maybe tomorrow and then I was gonna tell myself, `Okay, Daniel, you can forget about her now.' I didn't think we'd be on the same train or anything. I didn't really believe you'd be here at all. And then I didn't get out of work last night until like two A.M. So I got to the station this morning figuring that if you had been here I'd already probably missed you and, my God, there you were, on line to buy your ticket. I got in line a few people behind you and then those people changed plans or something and got out of line and I was right behind you. I was really worried-I was afraid to be quite so close to you, you know. But you didn't notice, you didn't recognize me well, you had your face buried in Clarissa, anyway-and I just held my breath and hung in there, and... and here I am. I guess they sell the tickets in order of seats. I'm sorry, Carrie, really. I didn't mean to scare you. But I've thought about you all year. I had to come. But I won't bother you after today. Please believe me. I promise."
"I believe you," I said. He's not a nutcase, I thought. He's just got his nerves a little too close to the skin. Like I do.
"Why'd you leave the restaurant?" I asked a little peevishly, as though I thought he owed me a fuck.
"Well, I had to go back to work," he said. "That wasn't really my job. I was just traveling, hanging out, working illegally before my real job started. I know people at that restaurant. The tips are great even if you don't get to work the private room. But that night, though-well, it turned out they really needed me that night. One guy was sick and another one was in a major crisis with his girlfriend. He was so grateful that I could take his shift. Anyhow, I work in Paris now. Research. Cognitive science. Neural networks."
Cognitive science and neural networks, I thought. And in his spare time, he seems to have worked out quite a fair understanding of my basic sexual modus operandi. Smart. No, not just smart. Really smart. I looked at him for a while. Except for Stuart, of course, he was the first person I'd really looked at since I'd left Mr. Constant's. Cute enough, I guessed, if you were willing to stretch your judgment a little-if you liked him, as I seemed to. Your basic okay male shoulders, hips and thighs in black jeans, white T-shirt, and a leather jacket. The jacket looked familiar. Not bad, I thought, but a li
ttle sloppy in the shoulder seams. And the zippers are too shiny, the whole thing a little too stiff and new looking. I realized it was sort of a knockoff of the one I was wearing. Well, after all, he hadn't been paid as well as I'd been this last year. Still, I was touched by its stiff, new look, thinking of him buying it to look tough in, for me. Anyhow, under the jacket everything seemed to be more or less in place and okay. Nothing special, though, except I liked the gap between his teeth.
We were pulling into Lyon now. I guessed I wasn't getting off the train. So I told him...well, I didn't have time to tell him everything, but I told him a lot. About my year, and about Jonathan. He nodded seriously from time to time. At first I was relieved that he wasn't horrified, but as my story continued, his lack of response began to trouble me a little. I mean, even Stuart had looked a little green around the gills when I'd told him some of the heavier stuff. Daniel just didn't look surprised enough, and he didn't ask any questions either. Of course, now I know that he was afraid to say anything that might give away that he'd hacked the association's online system. He'd been a little ashamed of it (though pleased that he'd figured out how to-he'd never hacked anything before, it's not something he's interested in). And afraid of what I might think of him for knowing so much about my body-the association maintains amazing statistics, including closely calibrated measurements of how much pain and penetration you can tolerate. And he couldn't imagine how to tell me about some rather obsessive viewing of a sevensecond clip of me crossing the finish line at the Hudson River Rainbow Races-he watched it something like four hundred times the night he broke in. Which he thought I might find a little weird (as though anything could have been weirder than actually running that race). And he worried about having violated my privacy, too, even if he'd intended the break-in as a labor of love, and an act of derring-do. So he just kept quiet until I finished what I had to tell him.
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