by Alix Nichols
“Kes, please—” she began.
“I’m in love with you.”
She shut her mouth and just stared at him. When she could no longer bear the intensity of his gaze, she focused on a spot on the wall.
He framed her face with both hands, urging her to look at him again. “Ma belle, I need you to say something back.”
She held his gaze. “You won’t like it.”
“Say it anyway.”
“OK.” She hesitated. “Do you want the short answer or the long one?”
“The long one.” He gave her a faint smile. “I think I already know what the short one is.”
“Nothing has fundamentally changed since we met in Deauville. All the reasons why I didn’t want us to date at the time are still valid.” She spread her arms in a vague apology. “I am who I am, and you are who you are. Besides, I don’t do the whole love thing anymore. I suck at it, and it’s pointless to persist in doing what you’re bad at.”
A sadness she found unbearable filled his black eyes.
“Let me add a footnote.” She took his hand and kissed it. “You are a fascinating person. You’re intelligent, funny, and humble for someone with your looks.”
He rolled his eyes as if to say, oh please.
“I mean every word. You’re freaking gorgeous, Kes. Just looking at you turns me on, even in public. It’s embarrassing, actually.” She paused and then added. “And you’re hands-down the best lover I’ve ever had.”
A slow, satisfied smile spread across his face.
He gathered her to him and planted a kiss on her forehead. “I can work with that.”
* * *
Amanda shut the door after the deliveryman left and stared at the package. It consisted of two things: a medium-size cardboard box and a white ceramic pot.
The pot contained a magnificent orchid.
She opened the box and retrieved two big illustrated books: one about orchids and the other about spiders. At the bottom of the box was an envelope with a typed letter inside it.
A Woman’s Guide to Love, Part I
Introduction: Some women decide they are through with love because they “suck at it.” If you, dear reader, are one of them, this guide will help you relearn it. If you have loved once, you can love again, and you can have more luck the second time, provided you do it the right way. What’s the right way, you may ask? It’s to love a man for who he is and not for whom you imagine or want him to be.
Note: Throughout this guide, “man” is used in a broad sense to denote any individual who may become the object of a woman’s affection. The term, therefore, covers women (should you, dear reader, be so inclined), lawyers, and Gitans.
Rationale: As with any big task, the best approach is to start small. We recommend practicing on a houseplant. Orchids are perfect for that purpose. Unlike cacti and some other easy plants, they need regular care to survive.
Instructions:
1. Read the orchid book delivered with this guide to familiarize yourself with the technicalities.
2. Place your orchid somewhere visible.
3. Water and tend it regularly as advised in the book.
4. Think of it when you’re away. Admire it when you’re around. Try to develop empathy and affection for it.
Bonus points: If you happen to have a nonvenomous arachnid in your bathroom, please don’t kill it. Perform the actions described in Step 4 and talk to it. Spiders are extraordinary creatures. Did you know the silk they make is the strongest material in the world? Read the spider book.
~ ~ ~
We count on your goodwill and cooperation.
Stay tuned for Part II!
The second page was a short, hand-written note.
Meet me in front of the Grand Rex movie theater at eight. You’ll see something special tonight. Please call if you can’t make it.
She glanced at the clock on the wall. There was no need to call—she’d make it. She’d even have enough time to unwrap the orchid and find a visible spot for it.
“I hope your ‘something special’ is better than an episode of Josephine, Guardian Angel I was going to watch on TV tonight,” she said, spotting him in the crowd in front of the Grand Rex.
“You won’t be disappointed,” he promised.
“Which movie are we seeing?”
“No movie tonight. Our show is a ten-minute walk from here at the Théâtre des Variétés.” He grabbed her hand. “We better get cracking.”
“So,” Amanda said, falling into a stride next to him. “I got your package.”
“Good.”
“You’re plagiarizing my guide.”
He knit his brows in fake indignation. “Absolutely not. I was simply inspired by it.”
“Hmm.” Amanda pinched her lower lip. “I could maybe manage to keep the orchid alive, but honestly, you’re asking too much with regard to Christophe.”
“You’ve given that spider a name, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “It would be murder if you bug-sprayed it.”
“Why does it matter to you?”
“Two reasons. First, I don’t believe in killing living creatures unless they’re a threat to you or your loved ones. Which Christophe isn’t.”
“So you keep telling me.”
“He’s in the spider book—I’ve marked the page.”
She gave him a sidelong look. “What about your second reason?”
“I want you to practice on a more . . .”—he sucked his teeth—“challenging life-form than an orchid before you graduate to me. Something that isn’t naturally and easily lovable. I considered sending you a toad, but then I remembered you had Christophe.”
“Let me get this straight.” Amanda stopped walking, released Kes’s hand, and folded her arms across her chest. “Your plan is to get me to love you—the right way—by having me water an orchid and talk to a spider. Right?”
“More or less.”
“Kes, that’s the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard of.”
“Not so fast.” He tut-tutted. “It’s designed to work in conjunction with the brain-torching properties of my left shoulder.”
She giggled. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes.” He glanced at his watch. “We really need to hurry.”
Ten minutes later they were seated in the second row of a small, dimly lit room. They had entered the theater too quickly for Amanda to take in the different posters adorning the façade and figure out which show they were about to watch. She looked around. The audience was a hodgepodge of well-dressed couples, unkempt tourists, and extravagant-looking families. In short, they were too heterogeneous to determine if the piece was going to be a Greek tragedy or a rock concert.
Kes gave her hand a light squeeze. “You’re about to find out. Patience, ma belle.”
At that precise moment, three stout men in black shirts climbed onto the stage and settled in the right-hand corner. Two of them sat down and placed their acoustic guitars across their laps. The third one remained standing.
The room went quiet, and the guitarists began to strum a soulful ballad. Their music rose and fell, the tempo escalating from gentle to feverish and back to gentle again. The third man nodded at the musicians and began to sing in Spanish.
Amanda marveled at the haunted beauty of his voice.
A few minutes later, a circle of light illuminated the middle of the stage. A slender young woman stood there in a long, form-hugging dress that flared out at the hem. Head high and eyes closed, she absorbed the beat.
“Flamenco?” Amanda mouthed, turning to Kes.
He smiled and whispered. “The best Gitan flamenco company in Andalusia.”
She nodded and turned back to the stage.
The woman was now clapping her hands in perfect harmony with the music. She had no castanets or fans that you saw on postcards. A few moments later, her foot began to tap and her hips and arms to move with a restrained passion that was more sensual than the most shameless carnival samba.
And then she
launched into a full-fledged dance.
Amanda watched, mesmerized as she took in the dancer’s olive skin and shiny black hair pulled into an elegant knot at her nape. She admired the woman’s supple body and the frenzied stamping of her feet, marveling at the arresting grace with which she arched her back. At some point during the dance, the woman stopped tapping. She straightened her back and spread her arms, pushing them up and back, elbows high—like a seagull’s wings.
“Olé, Pilar,” the musicians cheered.
She rewarded them with a dazzling smile and resumed her dance.
Amanda glanced at Kes and felt a pang of absurd jealousy pierce her heart. This Gitan woman—Pilar—was so much like him, full of color and life. Next to this woman, Amanda felt too gray, too lethargic.
Pilar and Kes.
She silently rolled the two names on her tongue. Two stunning, permanently tanned Gitans. They’d make such a perfect couple. They’d set the world on fire.
Stop it.
She shouldn’t allow ridiculous, self-destructive thoughts to invade her mind. Pilar probably didn’t know Kes from a bar of soap. Kes admired her only as an artist. Despite the dancer’s colorfulness and passion, he wasn’t enamored of her.
He was enamored of Amanda.
And I’m not in love with him.
Amanda’s heartbeat slowed, and the lump in her throat began to dissolve. By the end of the show, she had managed to convince herself that even if Kes became crazy about Pilar, it would be totally OK.
Because he wasn’t Amanda’s boyfriend.
He was her sex friend and pastime companion.
And above all, he was a footloose Traveler leaving town before the end of the month.
* * *
Chapter Twelve
In the Maze
~ ~ ~
A Woman’s Guide to Perfection
Guideline # 12
The Perfect Woman knows how to manage her mother.
Rationale: Unless your mother is a Perfect Woman herself, she’s likely to be one (or more) of the following: interfering, indifferent, domineering, uncaring, caring too much, too present, too absent, too extravagant, too boring, _____ (please fill in with your own grievances).
A word of caution: While mothers come in handy, especially in times of financial trouble and newborn babies, they have a knack for driving us mad like no one else. In extreme cases, the only solution short of complete and irrevocable breakup of diplomatic relations is to move to New Zealand.
But then you’ll never be a Perfect Woman (see Guideline #5, The Perfect Woman lives in Paris).
Permissible exception: Do ask your mother for advice if you are 100 percent sure she won’t tell her entourage (hence, the whole world) about your little pickle.
Damage control: Vary the frequency of your calls and visits to reward your mother for good behavior and punish for misdeeds.
~ ~ ~
An afternoon in Disneyland Paris had seemed like such a good idea.
With Manon’s permission, Amanda left work early. Kes met her at the RER station, and they boarded the train to Marne-la-Vallée—a Parisian suburb that hosted the theme park.
The trip took two hours because some moron had left a suspicious-looking backpack at one of the stations.
By the time they got to Disneyland, it was already four. The wait times for the best attractions and the heat forced them to make pragmatic choices, such as foregoing Amanda’s favorite Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster.
“What about the maze?” Kes asked, pointing at Alice’s Curious Labyrinth. “The wait shouldn’t be more than twenty minutes.”
“Sure.” Amanda perked up. “I have a great sense of direction. Stay close behind me, and I’ll get us out in no time.”
“I tried this one a long time ago,” Kes said. “It’s trickier than you’d expect.”
She grinned. “The harder the better. I enjoy a challenge.”
Forty-five minutes later, Amanda began to suspect she might have underestimated the difficulty of this particular maze. They kept bumping into the same card soldier that yelled “off with their heads” no matter which way they turned.
They were going in circles.
Kes didn’t complain. He just followed her between rows of neatly trimmed hedges, chuckling from time to time at the popping card figures and nonsensical signs. Until suddenly, Amanda couldn’t hear him anymore.
She turned around. Standing a couple of meters behind her, he stared at something on the hedge wall and beckoned to her. She backtracked, expecting to have a laugh at another stupid sign. But it wasn’t a sign he was inspecting. It was a hole—and a rather big one, at that.
He winked at her and nodded toward the opening. Then he bent down and squeezed himself through it. She followed, wriggling her body to avoid the protruding branches.
On the other side was an alley they hadn’t explored before.
Five minutes later they saw the exit.
Amanda sighed with relief. But as they left the labyrinth behind and headed out of the park, irritation took over.
“It’s just so like you,” she said without looking at Kes. “It’s what you do—you find shortcuts and take the easy way out.”
He frowned. “Sometimes, yes. But not always. And anyway, what’s wrong with that, provided I don’t break any laws?”
“I didn’t say you were breaking the law. But you are breaking the rules. We weren’t supposed to get out of the maze through a hole in the shrubbery. We were supposed to find the path that leads to the exit.”
“I’m not familiar with that rule.” He shrugged. “Did you see it written anywhere?”
“No, it’s an unspoken rule—a shared understanding.”
“Well, it isn’t shared by me.” He gave her a conciliatory smile. “Consider this: in the book, Alice uses a rabbit hole as a portal to get into Wonderland. It’s only appropriate that we use a hedge hole to get out of it.”
She considered it. The bastard did have a point.
On the RER ride back home, Amanda scanned the business pages of her paper and then checked her e-mail to see if she’d received any Google Alerts about ENS or Julien Barre.
“Good news or bad news?” Kes asked, pointing at her phone.
She closed her e-mail and dropped the phone into her purse. “No news.”
He put his own phone into his jeans pocket. “His head will roll, you’ll see.”
“You’re bloodthirsty today.” Amanda smirked. “I guess that’s what happens when you spend time around the Queen of Hearts.”
He chuckled.
“I had an e-mail from my mother,” she said.
He waited for her to continue.
“Vivienne wants to take me to dinner on Wednesday night.”
He looked her in the eye. “Don’t turn your mom down on my account. I can be at your place on twenty minutes’ notice, as late as you want.”
“It’s not only that.” She stared out the window. “I just don’t feel like seeing her these days.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “It’s complicated.”
He sat back. “I love complicated stories.”
“She’ll pester me about waitressing again, as if I didn’t know or wasn’t trying hard enough. Then she’ll bug me about you.” Amanda wrinkled her nose. “And while she’s at it, she’ll keep pressing right where it hurts. Like she always does.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t.” She sighed. “You can’t, unless you have a parent who’s like that.”
He thought about her words. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right. It’s tough to have a mother who claims she loves you but always says things that bring you down.”
“Have you told her this?”
She shook her head.
“Have you ever told her how much her opinion matters to you?”
She startled. “Why would I? It doesn’t.”
“Of course it does.”
“What
are you, my shrink?” Amanda pushed her hair back. “Enough about Vivienne. Let’s talk about you. I’ve been wondering what ‘Kes’ means for ages.”
He smiled. “No idea. But I’ll google it right away.”
He pulled out his phone and tapped. “OK. Let’s see. In the Punjabi language, Kes means the uncut hair and beard of Khalsa.”
“Who’s Khalsa?”
He glanced at his phone. “Khalsa refers to all Sikhs who’ve been initiated.”
“Right.” She narrowed her eyes. “So, it could be a man or a woman—we don’t know.”
“No, we don’t.” He manipulated his phone some more. “I have another lead. KES is the abbreviation for the Kenyan shilling.”
She grinned. “So, which one did your parents name you after—a bearded woman or a currency?”
“I think my parents just liked the sound of it.”
“Fair enough.” She leaned in. “There’s something else I’ve been wondering.”
“Shoot.”
“Why do Gypsies enjoy the Traveler lifestyle so much? Doesn’t everyone need a place they can call a home?”
“What’s a home to you, Amanda?”
“My apartment.” She paused, thinking. “And Paris.”
“OK. Well, to Gypsies, a home isn’t a house with walls and a roof. It isn’t a city or even a country. It’s the clan. Home is people, not a place.”
She sat back and stared out the window until the train entered an underground tunnel.
“You’re too quiet,” he said. “Should I be worried?”
She turned to him. “When exactly are you leaving?”
“In a week’s time.”
She nodded.
“Will you come with me?” He took her hand in his. “Las Vegas is an amazing place. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”
“Are you crazy? I’m struggling to keep my bank account in the black.”
“Is that your only objection?” His eyes lit up. “It’s not a problem at all. I make enough money to cover all our expenses and pay your mortgage while you’re traveling.”
“You’re insane.”
“Quite the contrary, I’m rational.”
She shook her head. “I’m not a parasite.”