Frankie in Paris

by Shauna McGuiness

  “How are we getting there?” I asked. She looked at me incredulously, noting that I had not yet risen from my seat.

  “Well, I—”

  I didn’t let her finish. “We’re taking a cab. I will pay for it if I have to.”

  “Fine!”

  “Fine.” I was relieved that she didn’t try to talk me out of it, but annoyed that I would be footing the bill. I had hoped that she would say something along the lines of, “Oh, don’t be silly, I’ll pay for the ride.” Sometimes I’m a slow learner.

  I paid the server. It seemed that my grandmother was finished with providing meals for me, as well.

  ***

  A sleek black Mercedes Benz pulled up to the curb, with a beautiful blonde woman wearing dark sunglasses behind the wheel. Several diamond tennis bracelets clung to her right wrist, and a giant leather Gucci bag slumped on the seat next to her.

  “Cherchez-vous un trajet?” She wanted to know if we were looking for a ride.

  “Oui!” Nodding furiously and opening the rear passenger door, I slid into the backseat. The interior was tan leather and smelled fantastic. So much better than “new car” smell at the carwash.

  “What do you think you are doing?” Lulu planted herself at the curb and wouldn’t budge.

  “I am taking this ride.”

  “But it doesn’t even say taxi on it or anything. How do we know that—”

  “In zee car, Lady!” ordered our chauffeur.

  Lulu reluctantly got in and closed the door. The driver took off like a competitor in the Indy 500!

  “What is your destination?” Her English was flawless, but I could hardly hear her over the squealing tires.

  "We’d like to go to the Eiffel Tower.” Lulu was right. Not even a small sticker signifying that this was public transportation.

  She quoted us a price, which was comparable to around twenty American dollars.

  “Deal.” I nodded my head and Lulu sighed. I could practically read her mind: I was never going learn to bargain for anything.

  What followed was the wildest ride that either of us had ever experienced. You know those spy movies where the driver is being chased by—insert your government agency here—and he/she zips between buildings, on top of sidewalks, tipping fruit carts, etc.? This ride was more creative and infinitely scarier, speaking as a passenger.

  I witnessed more middle fingers rising toward our vehicle than any other ride in history. People screamed at us, spewing profanity in their native languages. She ran over a small tree with her bumper, and I could not imagine how the sleek black car remained, well, sleek and black.

  Lulu was totally beside herself. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and she clutched her alligator bag on her lap with so much force that her knuckles were drained of blood. I was pretty sure that she was praying, but her lips were barely moving.

  “So, ah, what’s your story?” I shouted over the sound of the roaring engine and squealing tires. At the moment, the driver was squeezing between two cars parked on the street, like a motorcycle might do. Or a bicycle. Something much smaller than a Mercedes Benz. I held my breath because I was sure that we were going to get stuck in between them. Wedged in, like—well, I don’t know what, but it would be a tight squeeze.

  “C’est mon petit ami. He is a bastard! He used my money to take her out to dinner! For zee past two years!” Looking over her shoulder at me, she narrowly missed a pole. "Twelve years! This is what he does to thank me for twelve years of my life!” A quick Mon Dieu! escaped from her mouth, as our two side wheels jumped over a curb and back down again.

  “Let me guess,” I was beginning to worry a bit; Lulu was still praying, “this is your boyfriend’s car?”

  “Oui! This is his car and I am going to drive it into the ground!” she growled, letting out a maniacal cackle and making a hard left onto a new street. A group of students heard her coming and jumped out of the way.

  “Lovely,” I said under my breath.

  “I’m going to make some money, first, since he spent all of MINE on HER!”

  “Do something, Francesca!” Lulu screeched.

  “Like what?”

  “Well,” she yelled, “like, stop this car!”

  “It’s too heavy!” I squealed in horror.

  “Move some of the stuff she keeps on hitting, then—"

  As if on cue, our frenzied driver smacked into a silver garbage can.

  “She’s too fast for me!” I couldn’t anticipate where she was going in time to remove items from our path.

  Turning a corner in a way that seemed impossible, she drove so fast that it was almost as though the car would have to bend to get around at the speed that she was moving. I pitied all those poor, formerly beautiful cobblestones. They would all have black tire marks on them now.

  Not a moment too soon, she pulled to a very quick stop at the curb in front of the Eiffel Tower.

  Lulu’s head whipped back, and she opened her eyes.

  “Pay me, s'il vous plaît.” The woman pulled her glasses down to her nose, revealing beautiful—but completely lunatic—turquoise eyes. Licking her very French lips, she turned and thrust her palm into the back seat.

  I handed her the money, then realized that my grandmother had already exited the car.

  Before I had even completely closed the rear door, the crazed driver squealed away from the curb. The natural force of inertia made it swing closed as she made a U turn in the middle of a crowded intersection.

  My grandmother grabbed my arm and took a deep breath.

  “I feel woozy,” she said.

  I could relate. My boots had never felt more like lead weights, as I bent over at my waist and held my knees while I took a deep breath.

  ***

  The sun had almost completely gone, leaving everything in shades of purple. When I stood up and turned around, I was stunned by the beautiful sight before me.

  La Tour Eiffel. It looked like a gigantic Christmas tree—tall enough for God, Himself, to plop the star on top.

  This might have even been worth Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

  From where I was standing, it looked like the structure went up and on forever. There was a line of people waiting to buy tickets to board the elevator. The sign above them was labeled Pillar Nord.

  Without consulting my nauseous grandmother, I decided that we would be taking the elevator, not tromping up the many hundreds of steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower. I’m sure she was getting tired, and my boots felt heavy, but that wasn’t really my motivation: I didn’t think that I could stand to have her nagging me the whole way up about my transportation choice and my lack of bargaining skill.

  Tourists milled everywhere. Night had stretched its cloak around us, but I could still make out the Seine River flowing next to us. Artists, packing up for the evening, traveled with easels under their arms. Such a romantic scene.

  If you were with the right person.

  “That woman was completely insane,” Lulu finally spoke.

  “Yeah, I would have to agree with you on that one!” We looked at each other and broke into laughter. Hers was high pitched, and mine sounded desperate, but it felt really good to laugh together.

  Gently guiding her toward the queue, we became part of it. As we got closer to the ticket window, I could see a bust of a man. It was Gustav Eiffel. I stared at the bronze nose and lips, thinking that this was The Man, as far as Paris was concerned. Actually, that might be a stereotype. Maybe it was only the rest of the world that equated his work with being the epitome of all things Parisian.

  A rack of postcards stood near where we were, and I thought of Ginny and her sticky fingers. I watched Lulu very closely to make sure that we didn’t have a similar problem. When it was our turn to order tickets, I told the man in the window that we needed to purchase two for each level. This meant four tickets. The total came to around fifty dollars, and Lulu almost lost her mind.

  “Why is it so expensive? Can’t we just walk?”

&nb
sp; “Look up, Lulu—do you think that you could walk all the way up there?”

  She huffed and puffed for a moment, but the people behind her began to get a bit surly, so she slowly handed the clerk a wad of money. Counting it, he found us a few francs short. I quickly reached into my bag and supplemented our payment, and the tickets were handed to us at the bottom of the window.

  Only a couple dozen people waited to board the elevator, so it wasn’t a horribly long line. From what I had been told, this was a blessing, since tourists sometimes end up spending hours waiting for their trip up. Lulu did not see it this way.

  “Why is there such a long line?”

  “Actually, I’ve heard of people waiting for hours to get to the top. I think we’re pretty lucky,” I said.

  “Well, I’m hungry and I don’t know how long I can wait.”

  I guess that's what happens when you refuse to eat dinner.

  After listening to her complain, on and off, for about twenty minutes, we were on our way to the first level. The elevator didn’t seem very substantial for the trip that we were making. I mean, this was The Eiffel Tower! It was one of the tallest structures in the world, and it was over one hundred years old. I almost felt as though the box we were in could detach and fly to the ground at any second.

  No one else seemed to have my concerns.

  Lulu began to unwrap a mint from a roll of green and white speckled breath mints. Dinnertime! The fresh scent filled the small space.

  The doors opened, and everyone spilled out like beans out of a beanbag sack. They were in awe of being on France’s postcard darling and seemed to only take a few steps out of the lift before they stopped and stared.

  “Keep moving!” Lulu called out, in her singsong voice.

  I found a spot for viewing the city. It was magnificent: night had fallen, so everything below was touched with light.

  Paris looked like a super complicated assignment from a Lite Brite toy, the kind where you stick the colored plastic pins into the black board, then turn on the lights to see what you’ve created.

  Little sparkles beamed off of the moon and bounced along the Seine. Actually, they must have been pretty big sparkles if I could see them from way up there. Reflections of the moon—the same one that Rich could see from home.

  Lord, how I missed Rich. I needed his strong arms and crinkly blue eyes to experience this with me. I covered my ring and pretended that it was Rich’s hand, instead of my own.

  Again, I couldn’t help but imagine what being on this adventure would have been like with him, instead of her. He would have pulled me close, and we would have laughed as we tried to identify the sparkling landmarks below.

  “Je t’aime,” I would have professed my love to him, in only the most amorous language, ever.

  “Je t’aime,” he would have reciprocated, wrapping his black leather-clad arms around me. He would have leaned towards me and—

  “Alright. Let’s go to the next level.” Lulu was standing less than two inches away from me, looking straight up into my face.

  “Okay, Lulu.”

  We produced our tickets at the elevator. The crowd was much smaller on the way to the top. It wasn’t really the top—no one was allowed up that far. The tip-top was used as a radio and TV tower, so we were slowly lifted as high as touristly possible. Gnawing on the cuticle of my pinkie finger, I thought that I might be a little claustrophobic. Or maybe afraid of heights. In any case, a stall on the way to Heaven might not have been the best place for me.

  Gasping for air with my eyes closed, I pushed some people out of the way when the doors slid open. I could feel Lulu putting an arm around my waist.

  “Are you alright, Francesca?”

  “I-I think so. It just seems so ... high up!”

  “Well, that’s because it is high up.”

  It seemed like things were pretty stable, so I nodded my head and peeked out of one eye. The tower didn't feel like it was going to fold in half, or anything: I reminded myself that it had been standing there for a really long time and millions of people had been right up where I was standing.

  Smoothing my newly shortened bangs—because I could tell that they were perpendicular to the monolith we were visiting—I began making a snack of my thumb.

  My grandmother moved to the edge to get a look at the city. I tentatively took small steps, now munching on the side of my knuckle. It was beautiful. Really, truly, one of the most lovely things that I had ever seen. A bit windy and cold way up there—a nice change from the past few days of tropical climate. Miles and miles of green trees spread out below, like miniature bunches of broccoli. Churches, homes, museums—all for our viewing pleasure. But damn, we were a bit too far up in the air for my taste.

  Lulu lifted her arm and wiggled her fingers through the safety bars. She was standing on her toes, trying to get some height. I should have offered to pick her up, so she could see better, and I thought that I could probably do it—but I decided not to find out.

  Why does she keep waving her arm through the bars?

  My stomach plummeted, just as I had feared that elevator might. She was dropping something. Lulu was throwing something from the top of La Tour Eiffel!

  “What are you doing?” I hissed. I wondered how large the security room at this national monument was.

  “Didn’t you ever do this when you were little? I used to do this from the top of the building where my father worked.”

  What is she doing?

  “Here, you do one.” She handed me a penny.

  My grandmother was dropping pennies from the third floor of the Eiffel Tower!

  Being a theater-minded individual, I was never very good at math or science (no offense to those freakish theater people who also happen to have a talent for math and/or science) —but I knew that the velocity of something that size, shape, and weight could possibly cause some damage if it connected with a human being down on the ground.

  “Oh, my God! You can’t do that!” I tried to grab her hand, to pry the little coins away from her.

  Artfully eluding me, she zipped one way—then the other. She was actually pretty quick, doing a funny little jumping dance, like a jig, trying to get away from me. It couldn't have been choreographed better! People were beginning to notice our scuffle. Finally, I caught her elbow with one hand and twisted her arm behind her back with the other. For a moment, I forgot that she was my grandmother, a senior citizen. Mercifully, I returned to my senses before hurting her.

  “No more! This is ridiculous!” Once I let go of her, she lifted her chin, haughtily.

  Betty Day, AKA Lulu, that impish brat of advanced years, turned away and quickly shuffled back to the bars. Turning to look at me—taunting me, damn it—she reached that short arm through the bars and let go of a copper colored disc, then leaned forward to witness her handiwork.

  With every ounce of psychic strength that I could muster, from the very tips of my beloved black boots to the top of my fashionable French haircut, I stopped the penny in mid-air: catching it before it reached the second level. My whole body heaved with the power that it took to halt that coin. Beads of moisture gathered under my new bangs and dripped down the sides of my face. Pain blossomed above my left eyebrow, and I wondered if I might have given myself an aneurysm.

  Gritting my teeth, I concentrated until the penny began to rise back up to us—slowly at first, beginning to spiral as it gathered momentum. It flew back through the bars and pinged her on the forehead, landing in her upturned palm.

  I had better aim than I would have thought.

  “Who is the adult here, Francesca?” Technically, we were both adults, but that didn’t occur to me until much later.

  “That’s what I want to know! Who is the adult here? And for God’s sake: why do you call me Francesca? It isn’t even my name!”

  “I don’t know,” she said quietly, gripping the returned penny in her fist.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know why I call you Fr
ancesca. I just always have.”

  “Whatever.” Here comes another panic attack. Two in one day—that can’t be normal.

  “I need to be away from you for a while. Please, please don’t throw any more money off of the building. I am going back to the hotel.”

  “You can’t be out here at night, all by yourself.”

  “Watch me.”

  Striding toward the elevator, I nodded at the attendant, who opened the doors for me. I folded my arms across my chest and leaned against the cool wall. The doors began to close, when a small arm stopped them, and its owner stepped inside.

  She stood on one side of the car, and I stood on the other, like boxers in a ring. We didn't make eye contact, or any sound, at all. All I could hear was the attendant breathing.

  Reaching the esplanade, I quickly exited and she followed me. I stood on the curb, waiting for a taxi—fervently praying that the black Mercedes would not pull up—and one finally pulled over for me.

  This one had a sign on top of the vehicle, which was illuminated from the inside. A legitimate cab. As I slid into the seat and began to tell the driver where I wanted to go, an unwanted passenger slid into the seat next to me.

  Studying the back of the driver’s head, I didn’t acknowledge my grandmother. Our chauffeur had grey hair and a small brown mole on his left ear. He was wearing a gold necklace, but that was all I could discern from my angle.

  ***

  We arrived at the Hôtel de Lutèce, and she paid for our ride.

  Without thanking her, I got out of the car from my side and hustled into the building, not holding the door open for Lulu. It almost hit her—I could hear her reaction behind me—but she caught it in time.

  Henri looked at me with a curious expression on his kind face, but I held up one hand to let him know that I was not available for socializing that evening.

  People exited the elevator, and I stepped in after they came out, punching the button, hoping to save myself from another uncomfortable ride. Luck had deserted me: this time, she stared at me with her hands on her hips, but I did my best to pretend that she wasn't there.