But there were only two guests left. Gabrielle was on the couch, cradling Henri’s head in her lap. Juliet rushed to them, knocking her knee into a coffee table and toppling several bottles.
“What happened?” she demanded. Her brother’s face was wan as he looked up helplessly into hers. His green eyes lacked all of their usual movement.
“Some of us went to a club—well, a warehouse thing really.” Gabrielle’s voice shook. “Henri was there with me and some of my friends. It was fine,” she said, trailing off. She looked for a long time at Henri’s face, like she hoped to revive him with her gaze. “We were just dancing. Mostly. Henri was just dancing.”
Juliet knew that if Henri wanted to stay off drugs, he needed to stay away from where they were. There was no such thing as “just dancing” to Henri.
“This guy took me aside,” Henri said, wobbling over the words. “And he had … stuff. It was like he knew everything about me. Or at least who I can turn into.”
A sudden shiver took hold of Henri and his body quaked.
“Whose apartment is this?” Juliet asked. “How did you wind up here?”
Gabrielle shook her head. “It was the same group. Henri thought it would be a good idea to go lie down somewhere anonymous until things wore off. But then there was more. We fell asleep here.” Gabrielle looked at the couch, as if making sure it was indeed where she’d fallen asleep. “And when we woke, everyone was gone.”
Henri spasmed, his body not his own. Juliet became even more certain this day wasn’t going to end with her seeing Romeo after all.
“We need to get him home,” she told Gabrielle. “Cleaned up first, though.” Henri’s clothes were stained with spills of other people’s drinks, and he smelled like an ashtray.
“And then what?” Henri asked weakly. “I pretend I didn’t use again and it just goes away?” His voice had a nastiness but Juliet didn’t let herself take it personally.
“Yes.” Juliet nodded, helping her brother to his feet. He was of slender build but right now felt like a ton of bricks the way his dead weight leaned against her. “We go home, we tell Maman that you met a girl and stayed out too late. Just shake your head if she asks about her. If she thinks you don’t like her, she won’t care.”
“Wow, I’m glad I’m not dating one of you,” Gabrielle said, but with a wistful look at Henri.
Juliet shushed her. Turning to Henri, she said, “You don’t want to be exiled, so you will let me take care of you. Maman and Papa won’t be the wiser if you just stay a bit hidden.”
Henri’s nod wasn’t just one of bland acceptance. He respected what she was saying. Juliet felt again like she had after the speech, like she was a woman at the helm of some kind of destiny.
“And we’ll find who did this,” Juliet added now, perhaps heady with power.
Henri shook his head. “I did this,” he said. “I can’t trust myself out in the world.”
As Henri moaned and turned onto his side, Gabrielle pulled Juliet into the kitchen of the dingy apartment. Juliet looked around. “Why are you the only two here?” she asked.
Gabrielle’s glazed eyes surveyed the apartment, as though she was just really noticing that for herself. “Fashion people. They make a scene and they leave the mess behind as they skip to the next new thing.” She looked impressed with her own observation. “Wow, I should be a writer when my breasts get saggy.”
Juliet scowled at her friend. Now wasn’t the time for The Gabrielle Show.
“I’m sorry,” Gabrielle said, as if reading Juliet’s mind. “I make jokes when I’m scared. I make a lot of them. I should probably look into that.”
Then, snapping back to her original purpose, Gabrielle pulled Juliet into her. “Your brother, I think someone gave him something before he took anything,” she whispered, watching to see if Henri was paying attention. “He was acting strangely. Loopy, out of sorts.”
“Did you see anyone? Did you see who might have been near his drink, or who gave him the drugs?”
Gabrielle looked guilty.
“I was in no real shape myself,” she said. “But every fashion house was there. It could have been anyone. I guess the question is, who’d most enjoy getting the best of Henri?”
The list, Juliet knew, was long, and included the name Montague.
CHAPTER 14
ROMEO
HE’D BEEN WAITING for an hour. Not even waiting. Preparing.
He’d bought food for an indoor picnic. Cheeses, bread, one of Juliet’s favorite chocolate tarts. He had music playing. Wine chilling. Candles lit.
It was that standard kind of romantic in a way he knew Juliet didn’t necessarily covet, but he’d wanted to do something for her in that cheesy lovestruck sort of way. These were the kinds of gestures he’d never made for his other girlfriends. No, not girlfriends. Trysts.
He wasn’t sure how to show Juliet she was different. That he intended to be with her for a long time. Not a long time. Forever. He was only eighteen, but he’d lived enough to know that there was nothing he wanted more than her. That was part of the impetus for renting a real home for them and not just a hotel room. It seemed more grown-up, a way to say that someday they’d be the ones with the home.
And now came a cryptic message that she couldn’t make it. What was “something important”? To him, there was nothing as important as being with her.
Walking through the apartment, he envisioned again how he’d planned to greet her, how he’d wanted to take her by the hand to the blanket he’d set up. He was going to pour her wine, serve her food, demonstrate in gestures what he never felt his words could say. Now that she wasn’t coming, he felt like an idiot. Or like this was karma. Women had tried to prove they loved him with gestures that went beyond the bedroom, and he’d never really bitten. Was this the tables turning?
He held his phone in his palm, staring at the screen. He wrote back a simple message, No problem. Hope things are okay. Then he dialed Jim.
As soon as his new friend answered, Romeo asked him plaintively, “Have you ever boxed?”
* * *
A half hour later, Romeo was waiting at le Sports Club, a dingy gym in the Twentieth, a working-class arrondissement. He’d learned to box in the air-conditioned, fluffy-toweled confines of his father’s gym, located in the very different Eighth. (The club catered to the very rich, and a single glass of Scotch cost as much as a yearlong gym membership somewhere else.) He’d trained with a former pro, who flattered Romeo and never swung too hard.
It was fine to learn in that gentle manner. But now, when he wanted to box, he came here, where the other clientele didn’t care who he was and literally pulled no punches. Romeo was sweating as he pummeled a speed bag, waiting for Jim.
The distinctive roar of a Triumph tipped him off to his friend’s arrival. How many bikes did this guy have?
Jim pulled open the smoked-glass door and looked around, evidently not expecting Romeo to have invited him to a place like this. It gave Romeo some satisfaction to not be exactly as Jim expected. It wasn’t just bike-collecting Americans who had edge, he felt like saying. His need to impress Jim while also knocking him down a peg, he realized, was a sign that he genuinely wanted Jim’s friendship.
Jim lifted a hand in that sort-of wave guys did that seemed to exist as a gesture only to prove to other guys that yes, you were here but no, you weren’t all girly and excited about it. Romeo returned the gesture, his not-wave saying, Yeah, you’re here. Doesn’t matter. But he was glad to see Jim. And Jim had come a decent way to hang out on short notice. Responding to life—good and bad—like it didn’t matter to you was a hard-and-fast rule of being a guy. It kind of stunk.
“Thought I had the wrong place,” Jim said, pulling off his usual leather coat and tossing it haphazardly over the ropes. “You really work out here?”
Romeo shrugged, like he hadn’t chosen this dingy place at least partially for its shock value. “A couple years now.”
Just beyond the training
ring was the weight-lifting and workout area, where Romeo had been practicing the speed bag moments ago. He was glad to see the weights being used by Iago and Rolf, two regulars who were rumored to be members of rival street gangs. That he was here at the same time as potentially dangerous individuals had to show Jim he hadn’t done the rich-boy thing of renting the place out (going the edgy-but-safe route).
He asked himself again, Why do I care so much what Jim thinks?
“So, you’re probably a lot better than me, then,” Jim said, actually sounding a little nervous. “Is there a reason our first hang is so you can kick my ass?”
Romeo hopped into the ring, feeling confident. “Let’s box first, then talk.”
“Opposite of how girls do it, isn’t it?” Jim said, grinning.
The first time Romeo had hit anybody he’d been six years old, at a public garden with his nanny. A bigger kid had pushed him off a swing into some gravel. He’d swung and connected and it had felt good. Up until then, the only physical contact he’d ever had was affection: smothering hugs from his mother, doting caresses from his nanny, help with all his grooming and dressing from the Montague staff.
He got into fights sometimes, even now, but most guys at nightclubs didn’t want to get into it too badly with a Montague. Partly because of his reputation and the entourage of guys who came everywhere with him and partly out of fear of the lawyers on retainer with one of Paris’s oldest and most known families. (Not to mention whatever other sorts of wrath and ruin that family could rain upon someone who harmed them.) Even Benny hung back when they came here.
Jim, however, treated and punched Romeo like his equal. His first hit was square in Romeo’s shoulder and sent him back toward the ropes. Then came another, from the other side, in quick succession.
Romeo bounced back to the balls of his feet, delivering a right hook to Jim’s side. The guy was solid but the punch still sank deep—Romeo could feel it—and Jim stumbled back.
But he recovered his footing, his form solid, and parried back with a punch that Romeo caught with his glove.
It was the fairest of fights, and Romeo realized he was grateful for that day in Petite Asie, when he and Juliet had nearly been caught. He’d gained, somehow, a real friend out of it.
Jim knocked him back with a punch, forcing a burst of air from Romeo’s lungs. The pain rang though him, but in the way he needed. He was sick of carrying around that hollow hurt in his chest, that wonder if Juliet was done with him. How perplexing that she could seem to want him so much but then just abandon him like that.
But his heart’s ache was at least temporarily forgotten as he and Jim grappled. Every hit, bruising or not, felt good, pushing that empty feeling out of him.
It was something like love, when someone would hit you because you needed it.
They went on like this, throwing punches, hitting the ropes but not falling, until they were both sweating and panting.
Neither one was going to knock the other one out, so Romeo put his hands in front of him and said, “Let’s take a break for that talk.”
“Good idea,” Jim said, and he didn’t press the notion that they’d been having a match. He obviously didn’t need to win. It showed he was as secure in himself as Romeo was.
In the back room of the boxing gym were a few card tables and folding chairs. Illegal card games went down here on the weekends and some nights. Romeo had played in a few. There was also Mathilde, a fifty-something woman with pillowy lips and breasts who poured her homemade whiskey into tumblers for members like Romeo and their guests.
She brought the drinks and offered Jim a smile that simmered with promise—Romeo had turned down her offers to “make a man of him,” not only due to Juliet but also because he already considered himself one. Jim smiled back at her and gave her an appreciative glance, but he, too, didn’t drool for her. Benny had, but that was Benny.
“It’s Juliet,” Romeo said as he swigged a burning sip of whiskey. He probably should have asked for water, but he was waiting for Jim to do it first.
“I would have guessed,” Jim said, taking his first swallow of Mathilde’s concoction. He didn’t flinch, Romeo noted.
“How come? Because she’s too good for me?”
Jim slugged back more whiskey. The guy could no doubt hang. “Well, that,” he said, but in a way that made it clear he was joking. “I don’t know. I’ve never really been in love before, but I would think it’s hard to love someone you can’t really be with. Like, you want them all the way but it’s not even an option.”
Romeo swirled his own drink in his glass. This guy had just arrived at the core of Romeo’s heart. “Yeah, and then you think you’re going to be with them, and they bail on you.”
Now Jim pulled a face, as if to say, That’s rough. He signaled Mathilde.
She bounced over and leaned down on the table so both boys could see deep into the crevasse of her cleavage. “De quoi as-tu besoin?”
Jim took a final sip of his whiskey and Romeo feared he’d order more. But instead, he said, “Two waters. My liver just aged twenty years with that.”
“Sweet boy,” Mathilde said, with some disappointment, as she went to fetch the waters.
“So, you think I’m hopeless?” Knowing that Jim wasn’t made of steel made Romeo feel somehow safer owning up to his pathetic broken heart.
Jim shook his head. “I’m sure you’re not,” he said. “Let me guess. Girls usually make things easy for you.”
“Yeah, maybe too easy. How’d you guess?”
“I’m not exactly a stranger to it,” Jim said with a smirk. “I’m not saying I’m much of a catch or anything, but I always feel like the less I care, the more they like me. It’s sad, really.”
“I can’t not care about Juliet,” Romeo said. “That would be like not breathing. Excuse the incredibly lame analogy.”
Mathilde arrived with the waters and placed them in front of her charges. “There’s nothing more beautiful than heartbroken boys,” she said. Romeo and Jim squirmed at the odd compliment.
“What I’m trying to say, in my own equally lame way, is that I think you and Juliet are something special,” Jim said. “Let me talk to her for you. After I kick your ass in the ring. I’m feeling a little too in touch with my soft side.”
Romeo stood up. “Yeah, it would be great if you could talk to her for me.” He punched his fist into his palm. “I’ll try to leave your mouth so you can still form words.”
CHAPTER 15
JULIET
WHAT WAS IT about something going dreadfully wrong that made her feel so close to her brother? Since his relapse, Henri had been counting on Juliet to keep him on the straight and narrow. Or at least the straight.
They’d spent the weekend in the family’s screening room, watching old black-and-white movies projected across the whole of one large wall. The curtains were drawn and they were still in their pajamas on Sunday. Strewn on the floor around them were old magazines and several board games they’d played a lot as kids.
Lu Hai had been in a few times to tidy up, most of the time being as unobtrusive as possible. Juliet knew that Lu Hai was checking on Henri, but the nanny had the sense to let Juliet be the one in charge. Henri would bristle if he thought his latest woes would get back to his parents.
Right now, he was idly flipping through the Netflix menus, looking for something that featured his screen crush, Audrey Hepburn. His ex, Caroline, looked a great deal like Audrey, if Audrey had traded her cigarette pants and ballet flats for leather pants, oxblood lipstick, and tight white T-shirts.
“Sabrina, non,” Henri said, scrolling through his choices. He looked the very picture of louche, his ash-blond hair just disarrayed enough to be fashionable, his chest bared beneath a loose gray robe worn over his charcoal-colored silk pajama pants. Even in duress, the corners of Henri’s mouth edged up in a smirk. If she didn’t know him so well, Juliet would have agreed he had a hard time taking anything seriously.
“Roman Ho
liday, I hate that ending. Breakfast at Tiffany’s?” Henri exhaled a plume of smoke that danced over the paused black-and-white image of Givenchy-clad Audrey on the screen. The door at the far end of the room opened enough to let Lu Hai slide through, clutching what had to be their fifth delivery bag of sushi from Côté on Rue Marbeau. Their daurade sashimi was Henri’s favorite and the ultra-thin pieces of tataki salmon made Juliet’s mouth water. They’d each consumed one of everything on the menu by now. The copious servings of wasabi seemed to be helping Henri transfer the withdrawal pains to a more healthy form of suffering.
“More fish and no vegetables in sight,” Lu Hai said, setting the containers of food on the low coffee table and clearing the old ones. She examined the bottles of Orangina as she tossed them into the plastic bag.
“There’s edamame,” Juliet said, flinging off her blanket and reaching for the container of spicy tuna rolls. “And fish is good for me. Brain food.”
“Yes, and you have school tomorrow,” Lu Hai said. She ventured a glance at Henri, who’d skipped over the classics to search Kristen Stewart movies. Juliet was hardly a fan but she’d allow it, given Henri’s condition. “Are you going to be ready?”
Juliet knew that Lu Hai’s question was code for, Will Henri be ready?
“Oui, Henri is going to help me and read my essay on Voltaire.” If it weren’t considered beneath their family to take such a job, teaching would have suited Henri, Juliet thought. He was a passionate reader and learner.
“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do,” Henri said, putting on some Japanese horror film that Juliet could tell she would hate.
“For now, we just need him not to be guilty of doing anything bad,” Lu Hai whispered to Juliet. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on him.”
Juliet squeezed her nanny’s hand. “I know.”
* * *
On Monday, Romeo’s response was still bothering her. His response to her bailing had been that terse little email. No problem. Hope things are okay. Was he angry? Where was the I love you?
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