by Meg Cabot
“You got all that,” Jean-Luc says incredulously, “just from what I’m wearing?”
“Well,” I say, taking a sip of wine, “all that and the fact that you don’t suffer from feelings of sexual inadequacy, because you aren’t wearing cologne.”
He says, “I got my belt for two hundred dollars, Hugo Boss fits weird on me, socks make my feet feel hot, I run three miles a day, I hate cologne, and I make the best cheese and scallion omelets you’ve ever tasted.”
“I rest my case,” I say, and dive into the mesclun salad the waiter’s just brought us. It is loaded with blue cheese and candied walnuts.
Mmm, candied walnuts.
“But seriously,” Jean-Luc says, “how’d you do that?”
“It’s a talent,” I say modestly. “Something I’ve always been able to do. Except, obviously, it doesn’t always work. In fact, it seems to always fail me when I need it most—if a guy is ambivalent about his sexual orientation, I totally can’t tell by what he’s wearing. Unless, you know, he’s in something of mine. And like I said—Andy was a foreigner. That threw me off. I’ll know better next time.”
“Next British guy?” Jean-Luc asks, the eyebrows going up again.
“Oh no,” I say. “There will be no more British guys. Unless they’re members of the royal family, of course.”
“Wise strategy,” Jean-Luc says.
He pours me more wine as he asks me what I have planned for after I return to the States. I tell him about how I was going to stay in Ann Arbor and wait for Andy to get his degree. But now…
I don’t know what I’m going to do.
Then I find myself telling him—this stranger who is buying me dinner—my concerns about how if I go ahead and go with Shari to New York, she is going to ditch me eventually to go live with her boyfriend, since Chaz is going to be heading off to NYU to get a Ph.D. in philosophy, and then I’ll have to room with total strangers. And also how I don’t really have my degree yet since I haven’t finished (or actually started) my thesis, so I probably won’t even be able to get a job in my chosen field in New York—if jobs for history of fashion majors even exist—and will probably end up having to work at the Gap, my personal idea of hell on earth. All those capped-sleeved T-shirts, each one exactly the same as the other, and people mixing their denim rinses. It might actually kill me.
“Somehow,” Jean-Luc says, “I can’t quite picture you working at the Gap.”
I look down at my Alex Colman sundress and say, “No. You’re right. Do you think I’m insane?”
“No, I like that dress. It’s kind of…retro.”
“No. I mean about how I was going to stay in Ann Arbor until Andy was done with his degree and live at home. Shari says I was compromising my feminist principles, doing that.”
“I don’t think it’s compromising your feminist principles,” Jean-Luc says, “to want to stay close to someone you really love.”
“Okay,” I say. “But what am I going to do now? I mean, is it insane to move to New York without a job or a place to live first?”
“Oh no. Not insane. Brave. But then you seem like a fairly brave girl.”
Brave? I nearly choke on a sip of wine. No one’s ever called me fairly brave before.
And outside the dining car, the sun is still setting—it stays light out so late in France during the summer!—turning the sky behind the green hills and woods we’re hurtling through a luscious, sultry pink. Around us, the waiters are passing out plates of assorted cheeses and chocolate truffles and tiny glasses of digestifs, and over in the smoking section our fellow diners have lit up, enjoying a lazy after-supper cigarette, the secondhand smoke from which, in this romantic setting, doesn’t smell anywhere near as foul as it might coming out of, say, my ex-boyfriend’s nostrils.
And I feel as if I’m in a movie. This isn’t Lizzie Nichols, youngest daughter of Professor Harry Nichols, recent college nongraduate, who spent her whole life in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and has only been out with three guys her entire life (four if you count Andy).
This is Elizabeth Nichols, fairly brave (!), cosmopolitan world traveler and sophisticate, dining in a train car with a perfect (and I do mean perfect!) stranger, enjoying a cheese course (cheese course!) and sipping something called Pernod as the sun sets over the French countryside whizzing past—
And suddenly, in the middle of Jean-Luc’s description of his own senior thesis, which has to do with shipping routes (I’m trying hard not to yawn—but then the history of fashion probably wouldn’t light his fire, either), my cell phone chirps.
I snatch it up, thinking it must be Shari at last.
But the caller ID says Unknown Number. Which is weird, because no one Unknown has my cell number.
“Excuse me,” I say to Jean-Luc. Then, ducking my head, I answer. “Hello?”
“Liz?”
Static crackles. The connection is terrible.
But it’s unmistakably the last person in the world I want to hear from.
I don’t know what to do. Why is he calling me? This is terrible. I don’t want to talk to him! I have nothing to say to him. Oh dear.
“Just a minute,” I say to Jean-Luc, and I leave our table to take the call in the open area beside the sliding door to the next train car, where I won’t disturb the rest of the passengers.
“Andy?” I say into the cell phone.
“There you are!” Andy says, sounding relieved. “You have no idea how glad I am to hear your voice. Didn’t you get my calls? I’ve been ringing your mobile all day. Why didn’t you pick up?”
“I’m sorry, did you call? I never heard it ring.” This is true. Cell phones don’t work in the Chunnel.
“You have no idea what I’ve been through,” Andy goes on, “coming out of that horrible office and finding you gone like that. The whole way home, I kept thinking, What if she’s not there? What if something happened to her? I tell you, I must really love you, eh, if I was that scared something might have happened!”
I give a weak laugh. Even though I don’t feel like laughing. “Yes,” I say, “I guess you must.”
“Liz, Christ,” Andy goes on. Now he sounds…tense. “Where the fuck are you? When are you coming home?”
I gaze up at what looks, in the slanting rays of the sun, like a castle on a hillside. But that, of course, is impossible. Castles don’t sit out in the middle of nowhere. Even in France.
“What do you mean, when am I coming home?” I ask him. “Didn’t you get my note?” I left a note for Mrs. Marshall and the rest of Andy’s family, thanking them for their hospitality, and a separate note for Andy, explaining that I was very sorry, but that I had unexpectedly been called away and would not be seeing him again.
“Of course I got your note,” Andy says. “I just don’t understand it.”
“Oh,” I say, surprised. I have excellent penmanship. But I was crying so hard maybe my handwriting was shakier than I’d thought. “Well…like I said in the note, Andy, I’m really very sorry, but I just had to go. I really am—”
“Look, Liz. I know what happened this morning at the Job Centre upset you. I hated having to ask you to lie like that. But you wouldn’t have had to lie if you’d just kept your mouth shut in the first place.”
“I realize that,” I say. Oh God, this is awful. I don’t want to do this. Not now. And certainly not here. “I know it’s all my fault, Andy. And I really am sorry. I hope I didn’t get you into trouble with Mr. Williams.”
“Well, I won’t lie to you, Liz,” Andy says. “It was close. Very close. But…Wait a sec. Why are you calling me Andy?”
“Because it’s your name,” I say, moving out of the way of some people who’ve come through the sliding door from another car and are looking for an empty table.
“But you never call me Andy. You’ve always called me Andrew.”
“Oh,” I say. “Well, I don’t know. You just seem like more of an Andy to me now.”
“I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” Andy
says in a rueful tone. “Look, Liz…I know I made a fuck-all of everything. But you didn’t have to leave. I can fix this, Liz. Really. Things didn’t get off on the right foot between us, but everyone feels gutted about it, especially me. I’m done with Texas Hold’em…I swear it. And Alex has given up his room—he says you and I can share it. Or, if you like, we can go somewhere else…somewhere we can be alone. Where was it you wanted to go? Charlotte Brontë’s house?”
“Jane Austen,” I correct him.
“Right, Jane Austen’s house. We can leave right away. Just tell me where you are and I’ll come fetch you. We’ll patch things up. I’ll make it up to you—all of it—I swear it.”
“Oh, Andy,” I say, feeling guilt-ridden. Jean-Luc, over at our table, is paying the bill to make room at the table for the new passengers who’ve come in. “That just…I mean, it won’t be possible for you to come fetch me. Because I’m in France.”
“You’re WHAT?” Andy sounds a bit more surprised than is necessarily flattering. I guess he doesn’t consider me fairly brave, the way Jean-Luc does. At least, not brave enough to get to France on my own. “How did you get there? What are you doing there? Where are you? I’ll join you.”
“Andy,” I say. This is terrible. I hate confrontations. It’s so much easier to walk away than it is to have to explain to someone that you never want to see them again. “I want…I need to be by myself for a bit. I just need some time alone to think.”
“But for God’s sake, Liz, you’ve never been in Europe before. You don’t have the slightest idea what you’re doing. This isn’t funny, you know. I’m really worried. Just tell me where you are and I’ll—”
“No, Andy,” I say softly. Jean-Luc is coming toward me, looking concerned. “Listen, I can’t talk right now. I really have to go. I’m so sorry, Andy, but…like you said, I made a mistake.”
“I forgive you!” Andy says. “Lizzie! I forgive you! Just—listen. What about the money?”
“The…what?” I am so stunned I nearly drop the phone.
“The money,” Andy says urgently. “Can you still wire me the money?”
“I can’t talk about that right now,” I say. Jean-Luc has reached my side. He is, I note, really very tall—taller, even, than Andy. “I’m so sorry. Good-bye.”
I hang up, and for a second or two my vision swims. I would not have thought it possible to have any tears left, but apparently I do.
“Are you all right?” I hear—since I cannot see—Jean-Luc ask gently.
“I will be,” I assure him, more heartily than I actually feel.
“Was that him?” he wants to know.
I nod. It’s feeling a little hard to breathe. I can’t tell if it’s because of my barely repressed tears or Jean-Luc’s proximity…which, given how often the swaying of the train occasionally causes his arm to brush mine, is considerable.
“Did you tell him you were here with your attorney,” Jean-Luc wants to know, “and that he was busy drawing up your demand for your blow job back?”
I am so shocked by this I forget about not being able to breathe. Instead I find myself grinning…and the tears mysteriously drying up in my eyes.
“Did you let him know that if he can’t see fit to return your blow job immediately, you will have no choice but to sue?”
Now the tears in my eyes are from laughter.
“You said you can’t tell jokes,” I say accusingly when I’ve stopped laughing long enough to catch my breath.
“I can’t.” Jean-Luc looks grave. “That was a horrible one. I can’t believe you laughed.”
I’m still giggling as I collapse back into my seat beside him, feeling pleasantly full and more than a little sleepy. I struggle to stay awake, however, keeping my gaze on the window on the far side of the car, just behind Jean-Luc’s head, where the sun—still not quite sunk—seems to be silhouetting another castle. I point at it and say, “You know, it’s so weird. But that looks like a castle over there.”
Jean-Luc turns his head. “That’s because it is a castle.”
“It is not,” I say drowsily.
“Of course it is,” Jean-Luc says with a laugh. “You’re in France, Lizzie. What did you expect?”
Not castles, just sitting there for anyone to see by train. Not this breathtaking sunset, filling our car with this rosy light. Not this perfectly kind, perfectly lovely man sitting next to me.
“Not this,” I murmur. “Not this.”
And then I close my eyes.
The so-called Empire dresses worn by women at the dawn of the nineteenth century were often as sheer as today’s nightgowns. To keep warm, women wore flesh-toned pantaloons, made of stockinette (a closely woven cotton) and reaching all the way to the ankles or to just below the knee. This is why, when seen in paintings of the era, women in Empire gowns often appear to be wearing no underwear at all, though the idea of “going commando” would not actually occur to anyone for at least two more centuries.
History of Fashion
SENIOR THESIS BY ELIZABETH NICHOLS
Chapter 11
We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.
—E. M. Cioran (1911–1995), Romania-born French philosopher
I wake up to someone saying my name and gently shaking me.
“Lizzie. Lizzie, wake up. We’re at your station.”
I open my eyes with a start. I’d been dreaming about New York—of Shari and me moving there, and finding no better place to live than a cardboard refrigerator box on some kind of highway meridian, and my having to get a job folding T-shirts—miles and miles of capped-sleeved T-shirts—at the Gap.
I am startled to find I am not in New York but on a train. In France. That is stopped at my station. At least if the sign outside the window, silhouetted against the night sky (when did it get so dark out?), which says Souillac, is any indication.
“Oh no,” I cry, hurtling out of my seat. “Oh. No.”
“It’s all right,” Jean-Luc says soothingly. “I’ve got your bags here.”
He does. My wheelie bag is down from the overhead rack, and he passes me the handle, along with my carry-on bag and purse.
“You’re fine,” he says with a chuckle at my panic. “They won’t leave with you still on board.”
“Oh,” I say. My mouth tastes awful, from the wine. I can’t believe I fell asleep. Had I been breathing on him? Had he smelled my disgusting wine breath? “I’m so sorry. Oh. It was so nice to meet you. Thank you so much for everything. You’re so nice. I hope to see you again someday. Thanks again—”
Then I barrel from the train, saying, “Pardon, pardon,” the French way to everyone I bang into on my way out.
And then I’m standing on the platform. Which appears to be in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of the night.
All I can hear is crickets. There is a faint scent of woodsmoke in the air.
Around me, the other passengers who got out at the same time I did are being greeted by excited family members and escorted to waiting cars. There is a bus purring nearby that other passengers are climbing onto. The sign in the bus’s windshield says Sarlat.
I have no idea what Sarlat is. All I know is the town of Souillac isn’t much of a town. It appears, in fact, to be merely a train station.
Which is currently closed, if the locked door and dark windows are any indication.
This is not good. Because, despite the numerous messages I left informing her of my arrival time, Shari is not here to pick me up. I am stranded on a train platform in the middle of the French countryside.
All alone. All alone except for—
Someone beside me clears his throat. I spin around and smack—almost literally—into Jean-Luc. Who is standing behind me. With a big grin on his face.
“Hello again,” he says.
“What—” I stare at him. Is he a figment of my imagination? Can blood clots form in your legs on trains and then travel to your brain? I’m almost sure not. They are f
rom the air pressure in planes, right?
So he really is here. Standing in front of me. With a long, extremely bulky gray garment bag in his hands. As the train pulls away.
“What are you doing here?” I shriek. “This isn’t your stop!”
“How do you know? You never even asked where I was going.”
This is totally true, I realize belatedly.
“But—but,” I stammer, “you saw my ticket. You knew I was getting off at Souillac. You didn’t say you were, too.”
“No,” Jean-Luc says, “I didn’t.”
“But…why?” I’m suddenly seized with a horrible thought. What if charming, handsome Jean-Luc is some kind of serial killer? Who woos vulnerable American girls on foreign trains, lulls them into a false sense of trust, then kills them when they get to their destinations? What if he’s got some kind of scythe or garrote in that garment bag? He totally could. It looks awfully bulky. Way too bulky to be a suit jacket or hemmed trousers.
I look around and see that the last car in the parking lot is pulling away—along with the Sarlat bus—leaving us alone on the platform. Totally alone.
“I wanted to tell you I was getting off at Souillac,” Jean-Luc is saying when I am able to focus on him, and not my complete and utter lack of recourse if he starts trying to kill me, “but I was afraid you’d feel embarrassed.”
“About what?” I ask.
“Well,” Jean-Luc says. He’s starting to look a little sheepish in the bright glare of the streetlamp, around which moths are throwing themselves about as noisily as the crickets are chirping. Why does he look sheepish? Because he realizes he has to kill me now and I’m probably not going to like it? “I haven’t exactly been honest with you…I mean, you thought I was just some random stranger on a train you could pour out all your problems to…”
“I’m really sorry about that,” I say. My God, what kind of person would kill another person just because she told her life story to him on a train? This is totally unreasonable. All he had to do was pull out a book and pretend to read or something, and I’d have shut up. Probably. “I was very upset—”