“Feel better,” Veronika sighed with a sympathetic frown.
“Aww, that’s too bad, Ms. Levit. Feel better,” Paz mocked from her seat. When I looked at her, she met my glare straight on, sending a chill, as if a battalion of tiny-legged beetles, down my aching spine. Suddenly, I remembered her much (locally) acclaimed work in the school’s last year’s production of Macbeth.
Chapter Twelve: Vision
“It’s in Père Lachaise Cemetery, which is located in the 20th arrondissement. You can take the number three line train and come out when you arrive at Gambetta station,” Claude instructed, circling things in red pen on a complimentary map. Veronika, Ofir, Jordan, and Liam all listened intently, following Claude’s manicured finger as he traced it along Metro lines.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Jamie asked when he saw me push the button for the elevator. “You’ll be okay here all by your lonesome?”
His smile was kind. Open. Endearing would probably be the most appropriate adjective to use to even attempt to describe it. There was enough danger and innocence in there to melt me right where I stood. I wanted so much to melt. My eyes wandering, I looked down to steal a peek at his left hand in order to remind myself exactly how wrong it all was—how inappropriate it would be for me to melt.
“Oh yeah, I’ll just drink some tea, take a nap, take a shower…well, perhaps not in that order,” I joked, embarrassed by my own unnecessarily detailed itinerary. “You guys go ahead. I’d say have fun but you’re going to a cemetery.”
He nodded, that cruel smile still on his face. Holding my gaze a fraction of a second longer than one would deem proper given our circumstance, he then took a step back, away from me. He walked this way—backward, his gaze slow to leave mine—until he reached his charges and took over the map.
Before the elevator doors could close with me inside, I shut my eyes, thinking of Jamie’s smile imprinted in my mind’s eye—its cupid’s bow, the shade of its flesh….
~ ~ ~
My hair wrapped in a starchy white towel, I sat at the desk by the grimy, wet window of room 666, contemplating my worthiest Words with Friends alternatives. I had a Z and J, but very few vowels to do much of anything with them, let alone win. With a sigh at the predicament, I tried to make out the Eiffel Tower in the distance, but the fog was too thick.
Just as I was about to rub my newly naked ring finger for comfort, my Skype ringer bubbled and Jess’ screen-name began to dance in front of me. I took a sip of my rapidly cooling tea and picked up on the last ring.
“I was about to say, I know you’re online, bitch—you just played with Javier! He messaged me saying that you played the word ‘goy’ and he wondered if it’s personal,” Jessica laughed.
She always laughed hard—violently, even. She had this tendency of throwing her head back, exposing her trachea, and then snapping suddenly back to face you. Her thick, perpetually straightened hair was as stiff as a cheap wig.
“Yes, yes, I’m here. Living it up, glamorously, in France,” I said grandly, gesturing to the beige walls and all the anonymous hotel-room-artwork around me.
“Why are you sitting in some once-upon-a-time white robe and a makeshift turban when it’s like, what, three in the afternoon Paris time?” she leaned into the camera to ask. She looked professional enough in her colorful scrubs, with a nametag on her lapel, her photo on it akin to a mug shot.
“I needed a nap. A delicious, two-hour nap I hadn’t taken since I was like five years old,” I shrugged.
“You had to fly all the way to Paris for that?”
“I’m pretty sure I have the flu, or some kind of virus, in any case,” I tried to justify. My nose tended to swell hideously with any kind of upper respiratory issue, so I could only imagine what I looked like on Jessica’s screen.
“Ah,” she gasped as she grabbed a can of Lysol from her desk (which was the nurse’s station at a New York premier pediatric hospital) to spray the camera.
I laughed unexpectedly loudly then, slapping my knee, relishing the burn it left on my skin. When a tear rolled out of my eye, I spoke. “I moved out. For good, this time,” I said, flicking my tears off my cheeks and nodding for conviction. “I left George.”
I was sure she already knew—Javier had surely already told her, elated, never losing faith, but Jess made a show of considering this as if it were brand new information. I knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t sure whether to believe me, to question me, or to bring up all the other times I’d claimed to have had left for good, only to be back within a week. Perhaps, if nothing else, these ten days in Europe would push me over my established record.
“Good. George was only a stepping-stone for you. You can do better,” she finally replied. “So, any hotties on this trip? And, by the way, the next time you flee the country, can you shoot me more than a one-liner as you board the plane or whatever?”
I sipped my tea, flipping momentarily back to our game, figuring it’d give Jessica enough time to change her mind and question me about my decision after all. But she didn’t bite. I wasn’t sure if it was because she didn’t believe me or because she did.
“Hello?! Earth to Helen! Hotties? In Paris?” she demanded, waving her hands in front of the screen, the ocean between us causing a slight delay, pixelating her movements, slowing them down in a disorienting way.
“I’m rooming with one,” I admitted with a giddy smile that took me by surprise. That familiar feeling of a crazed butterfly trapped in my belly was back—the insect was flapping its wings in a painful, sadistic way.
Jess choked on the coke she was drinking.
“What?! Do dish! But please, pretty please, tell me it’s not a student…although, seventeen is the age of consent in New York, right? Is it in Paris? Oooh, I’m so excited!” Jess was suddenly animated, as alive all the way on a distant continent as if she were sitting right in front of me. “Oh my God, is that why you’re spending all your time at the hotel over there instead of, I don’t know, shopping or something? Ooh, is he there? Is he in that bed behind you? Is he naked?”
Jess was unstoppable. It was specifically this wired energy of hers that drew me to her in that junior high school cafeteria years ago. She removed a pencil from behind her ear and proceeded to gnaw on it.
“I’m in my hotel room because I am sick, I told you. And it’s raining metaphorical cats and dogs here. Paris is not so cute in the rain when you have a fever, let me tell you,” I chuckled, blowing my nose with demonstrative purpose.
“Okay, no offense, but I don’t care about your snot, okay? I get enough here, thanks. Now, what about that roommate hottie?” Jessica impatiently waved me on.
I scratched my head underneath the towel, estimating how much of a smile I could allow myself given the timing of my own breakup (let alone the strip of metal on Jamie’s finger) before my best friend of almost two decades would consider me silly. Or worse.
“I don’t know what to say, Jess. He’s a guitarist, teaches vocals and gui—”
“Okay, whatever, e-mail me his resume later. What does he look like?” Jessica groaned as she popped open a bag of chips. No gestational diabetes diets for this one.
“He’s kind of tall, skinny—too skinny, I think—”
“Well, for all of George’s musculature, he is a pretty shitty human being, if you don’t mind my saying so,” Jess rolled her eyes. To her credit, she’s been the most patient of my few remaining friends, which, I suppose, isn’t saying much. Jessica never held back on her opinions of George, but she didn’t wag her finger at me every time I went back to him either. She never verbally acknowledged my idiocy. What else are friends for? Javier was up there, too, of course, though for an entirely selfish reason and from far away.
“Right, well, let’s see, what else—he has longish hair—below his chin, closer to his shoulders, I guess. He has dark brown eyes. Full mouth—”
“Oh, you’re paying attention to his mouth?! Mama like!” Jess gushed. I
hoped that the Internet connection would do its best to obstruct the appearance of burgundy on my cheekbones. “So is he Russian, finally? Or Jewish, at least? I think your almost decade-long experiment in intermarriage demands that you start listening to your much better looking friend right about now,” she stated, matter-of-factly. Though just like me, Jess was born in the suburbs of New York, to immigrant parents, there was no ambiguity in her allegiances.
I pulled the whitish towel off my head and let my damp hair fall down my back.
“Not exactly. He’s mixed—Portuguese and Turkish,” I reported carefully, momentarily ashamed of the fact that describing such a pedigree to Jess made me even giddier than the memory of the shape of Jamie’s lips. Surely liking such exoticism made me seem worldlier than ever, but did my self-awareness negate that, somehow?
“Eeeww, Turkish?!” Jessica shrieked before muffling herself with her own hand.
“Yes, Jessica. You were excited by the mere notion of this man just seconds ago, so what’s with this racist shit?” I snorted.
Jessica dropped her bag of chips on the desk in front of her without saying anything. I saw her wave hello to someone passing by before she wiped her hands with a napkin and came back to face me.
“Racist? I’m racist now? Oh get off it, Helen! Give me a break, will ya? Just because I’m more in tune with my heritage, just because I have a certain, I don’t know, vision for my family and my community—that doesn’t make me racist. Look at how successful you are with your ‘we are all the same on the inside’ crap! Your ex-fiancé pulled your goddamn hair so hard, he was left holding a few strands of it when my Max finally ripped him off of you. And what did you do to deserve that, by the way? You so much as dared to tell him that you thought he had enough to drink at a bar!”
Jess’ gray eyes were opened chillingly wide and peering into the screen’s reproduction of mine. With every word she spit out, my heart pumped an extra time, stalling my brain, leaving me scrambling for a response that wouldn’t send a pregnant woman into early labor.
“Right…,” I managed (probably unconvincingly), suddenly dizzy, unsure as to the swift turn in our conversation. I felt my eyes fill of their own volition. “I’m not entirely sure what’s going on right now. He’s an asshole, sure, but I hardly believe it’s because he’s Serbian—”
“Oh, fine, whatever, Helen. Jesus! Right, I managed to almost forget—you’re just so ‘open-minded’ and therefore always ‘morally’ right. It takes more guts to call things for what they are, you know that, right?! At least I hope you do, because otherwise, what the hell do you teach those poor kids over there?!” Jess puffed as I sat watching her face grow splotchy, half-expecting to see hives. Her air quotes were grotesquely exaggerated.
“Honestly, what is happening right now? I called you out on a racist comment, which I was pretty sure was a joke anyway. Why does this have to turn into this weird debate all of a sudden? You asked me about a guy—” I tried with a smile as defensive as it was desperate before I was interrupted.
“Ugh, go fuck yourself, Helen. I am so done with your bullshit. Fine, I’m the asshole! I’m okay being the evil, racist, ignorant ‘traditionalist’ so long as you get to stay on your bogus high horse,” she fumed, rubbing her belly too aggressively. “Are you happy now?”
I listened to my heart rattling inside and watched myself lose my last real friend as if from the side—an audience member more than an active participant. This is surely what people mean when they speak of outer body experiences, I thought.
In front of me, the rain pounded on the Eiffel Tower facing window; now that I squinted through the increasingly adrenaline-fueled mist, I could just make out its outlines. Only Javier was left. Maybe I should’ve gone straight to Seville then and there.
“Jessica, what are you doing? What is this about? Because it can’t be about…this,” I attempted again, bewildered. “You’re surrounded by sick children and scared parents—keep it down,” I tried joking, then, hoping that maybe joking would take us back to mere minutes ago.
“Yeah, you just care so damn much, don’t you? You’re right though—I do have to go. I have a job to do. This may come as a surprise to you, but some of us work more than six hours a day. Not all of us have our boyfriend’s mommy and daddy picking up the tab. Although, I guess neither do you anymore…for at least the week that you’ll be out of the country, anyway, because, of course you’ll be back! Of course you’ll be back! You’re not done using him like you do everyone else,” she sneered.
“What? Use—”
“Oh, don’t even dare start that shit with me! You claim to be so smart and independent, but you’ve used every man along the way to get where you are…which isn’t even that far, I may add,” she laughed unnaturally. “Case in point: you’re lonely, scared, and homesick—you do Javier so he can hold your hand the entire summer. You screwed the man up for life, whether you know it or not, though God only knows why he’s so hung up on your highness…. Anyway, and then when you’re in need of a place to live rent-free so you can pretend to be a great success—enter George! What’s his real name, I forget? Goran, right?”
I interrupted only by gasping. There was no real comeback I could summon of myself on command. Her words echoed inside my brain, louder on each loop. My jaw flexed. The chronology she was reporting resembled my life, sure, but this was only a circumstantial case she was presenting. She had to know that.
“By all means, you go back to your Turkish pretend-boyfriend over there in Paris before running back to George in the end of it all. May as well have fun, right? Choke on a baguette while you’re at it.”
Before I could force a sound out of my swollen throat, she ended the call, leaving me hot but for the wet hair on my shoulders.
“Umm,” I mumbled when it was too late.
I stared at my letters in my Words with Friends game with Jessica a few long minutes before, with a trembling hand, I finally passed my turn.
Chapter Thirteen: Self-fulfillment
Ofir had just a slight hint of an accent left. When I’d first started at Talents, though he was only a freshman, because he was a straight ballet dancer, he was known by (and to) everyone. In addition to that fairly unique characteristic, he was a handsome boy with the saddest puppy eyes and the most perfect of postures (all square shoulders and narrow hips). All in all, he was difficult to miss. His accent was thicker back then, but with no one to practice his Hebrew at school, it had slowly smoothed out its phlegmy edges and was now simply an undeniably New York one.
As we elbowed our way through the damp crowd, Ofir held his umbrella over my head, having kindly offered to share it. We both did our best not to touch as we climbed the many steps up to the Sacré-Cœur, but when, my mind still reeling after my imploding conversation with Jessica, I stumbled on a cobblestone and had to grab ahold of his sleeve for balance, I was glad to have him at my side.
That was it. There were no understudies, no swings for Jessica’s role. Yes, yes, of course there was (and always would be Javier), I knew, but his friendship was of a different breed—it was contingent. He’d just been patiently waiting for his turn, as if I were a carousel ride, I reminded myself. He wouldn’t even want me listing him and Jessica in the same breath anyway.
The offending factor for Jessica was simply that Jamie was part Turkish? This was more than a little upsetting or disappointing—this was maddening. And I hadn’t even gotten to the married part yet.
“Excited to graduate, Mr. Galush?” I asked Ofir in the effort to make cognizant conversation in between my labored breaths, shelving Jessica if only for a minute. “I’m excited to watch you fulfill your destiny as a dancer.” I was trying really hard.
“Ha! Yeah, well, we’ll see,” Ofir replied in his signature tone, which always managed to leave a trace of sarcasm in there without necessarily intending to. If you weren’t familiar with the kid, you’d think he was being condescending, but it was really just Ofir being himself; he said good morni
ng with the same nonchalant cool.
“Weren’t you offered the full ride at Juilliard or something?” I puffed through a tight chest.
I’m slim. Always been. I like to credit a combination of factors for this: between George always trying convince me that I was never quite round enough for him to feel truly secure in our relationship, and the paralyzing fear I’d been harboring for as long as I can remember of gaining a pound if I ever ate after 7 P.M., I’d been able to remain in the same youthful shape pretty much since college. Still, I was clearly not in shape for all these stairs, even with my daily bike rides. It’d only deteriorate further without them now, I feared.
“Close enough,” Ofir chuckled, that thin layer of irony forever present in his voice finally finding itself in context. “Honestly, Americans place an overstated emphasis on the word ‘ambition,’ or even ‘passion.’ ‘Self-fulfillment’ is peddled in every self-help book like a damn drug or something. But some things are just bigger than that—bigger than an individual. I mean, who cares if I’ll ever be in ‘Swan Lake’ at the Met?”
“Well, gee, I certainly hope you didn’t write any of this on your college application. And I do! I care! Especially if that gig should come with free tickets and a backstage tour for your favorite high school history teacher,” I admonished, playfully slapping his arm.
He laughed. His laugh, though deeper now, was still as childish as ever. I remembered first hearing it when, in the early weeks of our acquaintance, I’d returned his exam booklet to him with my correction of his “horniculture” to “horticulture.” I’m still convinced that it could not have been a simple typo; I suspect it was more Freudian in nature.
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