“But really, why should any of that matter? In the grand scheme of things?” Ofir asked, quieter.
I sighed when we finally reached the landing and looked up at the dramatically lit cathedral in front of us. Engulfed in white light, it stood majestic, dwarfing us—a damp, foreign gang who’d come to worship at its foot without knowing why (Nicole wasn’t there to tell us). Somewhere behind me, I heard Paz’s shrill little giggle. She was, probably, a good forty steps below. I imagined her clinging to Jamie’s oversized jacket, pretending to need it for balance.
“Do you want to go back to Israel, is that it? Do your parents know you’re thinking like this?” I asked carefully, breathing deeply to try to overcome the piercing pain underneath my ribs. I could feel the lactic acid burn right through my slack muscle.
“My God, it’s not like I’m contemplating suicide, Ms. Levit. I just think I can do something more important with my life, that’s all. But, to answer your question—no. They left Israel to give me a better life, away from the conflict and all that. They want me to be happy, fulfilled, and all that nonsense,” Ofir rushed to defend. “So I’ll probably just stay and dance. Whatever.”
My fingers dug into my flesh, the pulsating in my rib still there despite my even breaths.
I didn’t have the heart to look at the kid; I wasn’t capable of his bravery.
“If you say so,” I shrugged, my eyes on the sheer sheet of water all around us, my head heavy and tired. The weather was not on our side—the rain continued to whip the ground and fill our shoes. The view that was advertised as spectacular from the height of the hill was really all smog and muted lights now.
“Sweet Levit, child, I am too old for this,” I heard Abbott whisper in my ear. He must’ve snuck up behind me when I wasn’t looking, his wet steps camouflaged by the whistles of Paz’s heels. “Don’t you dare say it—this is just as much of a surprise to me as it must be to you, my darling, I’m just so youthful,” he added, louder, coming around to stand at my side. He threw his arm around me and squeezed me into him, leaning his head on top of mine, our wet hair catching.
Grateful, I stayed in his arms without so much as pretending to want to wiggle free. It startled me how much I needed that squeeze.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Stephanie rummaging through her linen tote bag, which appeared to be full of plastic Ziploc bags; containing what—I could not make out. The two seemed like an impossibly incongruous couple.
Chapter Fourteen: Fantasy
The underground tunnel connecting our Metro station to our hotel echoed our steps. All its shops closed, the place would be eerie were we not a large (and obnoxiously loud) group. Captive, the long, empty hall of yellow-tiled walls reluctantly listened to our harsh American accents, anxiously seeing us to the glass doors that led inside the hotel lobby. Surely it couldn’t wait to be rid of us in hopes of reclaiming its slumber.
When we were almost there, mere steps away, we heard music thump out of one of the closed doors along the way, the bass of it shaking the ground under our feet. Before we could stop him, Liam pulled the obviously heavy door open. The noise spilled into the snoozing hall, waking it fully and irrevocably.
“It’s a club!” he screamed over the electronic beat as Jamie wrinkled his nose (presumably at the poor sound quality).
“Yes, genius, it’s a club!” Paz screamed over him. “I guess the main entrance must be on the other side—from the street.”
A bouncer (who appeared smaller than his job description would likely prefer him to be) filled the doorway before another child of legal drinking age in Europe could lose his or her mind over the prospect of getting inside a club without needing a fake ID. Refusing to acknowledge Liam’s English, the man listened, grudgingly, to Paz’s high school French; before he answered and pulled the door decidedly closed, he looked the girl up and down, resting his eyes somewhere in the vicinity of her chest for a few extra long beats.
“You have to be eighteen to get in and they are open until two in the morning,” Paz reported when the door was shut and the lazy hall continued to pulse, lightly.
“He also said there is a fifteen Euro cover charge,” Abbott corrected. When the group exhibited nothing but cautious smiles, he spoke again. “Don’t look at me! You’re free to do as you like, but bedtime is still eleven.”
“Mr. Abbott, it’s 10 P.M. now!” Wisdom whined, sticking out her phone so he could see the time.
“Correct, my darling. And this means that, if you go now, you have about an hour to—”
“I’m surprised a club would even be open this early,” Sage interrupted with a coy shrug. Murmurs of agreement could be heard.
Tired, I leaned against the wall of the club and looked over at Jamie. How Turkish did he look, really? And what was so offensive about that fact to Jessica, anyway? He stood with his hands in his jacket pockets, either patient or bored. Before I could open my mouth to bid my goodnight, he spoke.
“Abbott, it’s Saturday. We don’t have anything on the itinerary until tomorrow evening. Why not give them until midnight?”
Abbott made a show of considering this: he exchanged knowing looks with the seemingly mute Stephanie, he shrugged, he even scratched his head and pushed his glasses further up his nose.
“Okay, you know what—you make a good point, Mr. Sola. But just for today, kids! I’m calling your rooms at midnight tonight, but I don’t want to have to stay up on your account every night, so don’t make me regret this,” he finally said, taking Stephanie’s hand to begin to pull her away from us and toward the hotel. “I don’t feel comfortable letting them be unsupervised that late at night, let alone inside a club, so keep an eye on them, would you, Jamie?” he called when he was half way through the door.
By the time Jamie was able to gather his lips from the satisfied grin they’d slid into, Abbott and his girlfriend were already at the reception desk. Abbott turned over his shoulder to wave me on, expecting me to follow, but I stalled, unsure.
A contrived cough was all that was able to leave Jamie’s throat before Paz was at his sleeve, pulling at it.
“Oh, this is great, Mr. Sola—you get to come with us,” she chirped, beaming up at him with her porcelain looking, perfectly white teeth. Perhaps the Terranovas had invested into a nice set for their rising star, I thought.
I pushed off of the wall I’d been leaning on; Abbott was still looking, watching.
“All right, first of all, not all of you are indeed eighteen, so Aisha, Olivia, Megan, Sophie, Riley—you’re all going upstairs,” I ordered, suddenly collected, so rarely in charge. The girls whined but filed past me. “Feel free to call room-service. It’s on me. The cap is $10 each though, so take it easy,” I called after them, allowing myself a brief smile. I work more than six hours a day, Jessica!
Before I could make it through the door, myself, I felt a hand on my shoulder. A rush spired its way up my spine at the realization that the long fingers gripping the damp material of my coat were Jamie’s.
“So, it looks like I’m stuck babysitting again. Want to come with this time?” Jamie asked as his wet hair swayed over me—thin black tresses almost making contact with my skin.
“Oh, no, I can’t,” I smiled nervously, my voice breaking. “I’m still not feeling all that well,” I added, pulling my back a little straighter. I cleared my throat, but his hand continued to lie steady, unmoving on my shoulder.
“Ms. Levit, come on! We’re all going to change and get right back down here in ten minutes. It’ll be fun! Please come with us!” Veronika begged as she jogged past me, followed by the rest of the girls who were too busy squealing to pay me much attention; only Paz’s eyes rested on me before demonstratively shooting away to Jamie.
Slowly, Jamie’s hand slid down my arm.
“Okay, why not,” I tried to match the girl’s giddy delivery, my gaze still on Jamie’s hair, stoutly ignoring Paz.
“I’ll wait here with the guys,” he called when Veronika pulled
me through the door.
“Me too,” Paz added.
I looked for Abbott in the lobby, but he was already gone.
~ ~ ~
I sat on the edge of one of the velvet couches lining the perimeter of the evidently less than classy establishment with my legs crossed. As the loud music groaned, vibrating through the club’s floor, its walls, and even the furniture, the black light above me was busy picking out lint on my black cigarette pants and my black turtleneck. I nursed my ginger ale and kept my eyes mainly on Paz (who could be seen most often shimmying around Jamie in her thigh high boots). Only occasionally did I look away from her gyrating body to do a sloppy headcount of the other kids scattered throughout the place.
“Can you believe her?” Veronika’s voice startled me despite being heavily muted by the synthesized beats; she had to scream in order for me to hear her at all. “Just look at her,” she grumbled, motioning to Paz, who was now at the bar—next to Jamie, of course. “She already had like four drinks—which is legal here, of course, but still! It’s like she won’t relax until she is literally in his pants!”
Feeling a strong case of vertigo coming on with the strobe light, I gripped my sweating glass.
“Are you jealous, Veronika?” I screamed.
The girl jumped back, answering entirely too quickly, her reaction knee-jerk. Rookie mistake.
“No, of course not! That’s gross! I know some girls talk about him like that because, frankly, he’s younger and cuter than anyone else at school, as far as only the male teachers are concerned, obviously, but still—no. I’m definitely not into that.”
She spoke rapidly, exerting lots of effort trying to make sure that I heard her, her face alternating colors—red, white, blue, pink. I tried to squint against the psychedelic lightshow to study her closer. Her bob was heavy and flat—in need of a deep, thorough conditioning. Her sweater was stretched out at the elbows, its stripes hanging loose. Her pencil-skirt hit her awkwardly below the knee, where her pleather boots met with the hem; her skinny calves swam inside them. It was incomprehensible to me how a girl with so much musical talent could be this clueless about self-presentation. Maybe college would help.
“I—”
“And don’t say that I protest too much or whatever,” she scoffed, returning to her straw, sipping water without any ice like the true European that she was. I could’ve sworn her eyes glistened, but it was probably just the seizure-inducing lights.
“Where are you going to college, Veronika?” I screamed, trying to steer toward a conversation less dangerous than one about Jamie Sola’s attractiveness. Abbott did always speak of boundaries.
She didn’t answer.
I felt my back pocket vibrate and wiggled in my seat to wrestle my phone out of my tight trousers. By the time it was finally in my grip, the call was missed and my call log read a missed call from George. I pulled on my straw, filling my mouth with an unnecessarily hearty amount of my now flat ginger ale before I could calculate the local time in New York. The sound of glass shattering broke the concentration that subtracting six hours required of me in my congested state, at that hour of night, and my eyes shot away from my phone and up to the bar.
In the dim light, I could just make out Paz hanging on to Jamie’s sleeve, apparently seeking solace, or struggling to remain standing (or both), while Jamie seemed to be waving off some middle-aged man whilst helping the girl stand on her own two feet. I jumped up from my seat, but my boots stuck to the floor of too many spilled drinks; I tried to move, but my legs were too heavy to do what my brain was instructing them to do.
“What happened?” I yelled as my shin met the edge of the coffee table between us.
I saw no attempt at a response. Before I could ask again, Jamie grabbed ahold of Paz’s blouse and dragged her out of the club, using the exit that led to our hotel; her body loose, Paz didn’t seem to mind. Once out in the institutional light of the corridor that lacked any sort of actual character, Parisian or otherwise, he threw her off, letting her bounce off the yellow wall without remorse.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
His voice, having not yet adjusted to the relative quiet of the hall, was loud, if a little hoarse.
Only mildly frazzled, Paz gathered her voluminous hair into a haphazard bun, considering a response.
“What are you talking about? Big deal! This happens to me every other weekend in New York,” she defended, obviously more than a little tipsy.
“What happened?” I asked again, only quietly this time. The rest of our charges were slowly joining us, trickling out one by one, upping and lowering the volume of the techno bass coming from the other side of the wall with every yawn of the door.
“What happened?!” Jamie mocked. “I’ll tell you what happened! This girl thinks she’s some big shit, that’s what happened! She flirts with these middle-aged assholes, accepting drinks from them, shaking her boobs at them. And, when I refuse one for her, when she’s clearly had too many as it is, she tells them I’m her jealous ex-boyfriend! Then one of them grabs her ass and I have to get her out of there,” he reported, rattled and animated. “What the hell were you thinking?!” he screamed, again, in her direction.
Paz threw her head back, accidentally hitting the tile behind her, and laughed a drunken laugh. She slapped her thigh on her shaky return to an upright position.
“Oh my goodness, it was nothing I couldn’t handle, Sola, relax,” she sighed. “Just admit it—you are, in fact, jealous,” she peered at him as she hugged her waist, unapologetically pushing her breasts up.
“What are you talking about, Paz?” he challenged through a flush we could all see taking over his hollow cheeks.
To keep up with all this, my head had to turn quickly right to left and back, as if I were watching a tennis match. I wasn’t sure who was winning and considered looking to my fellow audience members for a clue, but they all looked too engrossed in what was unfolding before them to notice me at all. Only Veronika looked victorious.
“Paz, are you okay?” I asked, ignoring my phone as it began to vibrate in my hand.
“Ooh, is that your fiancé, Ms. Levit? Still telling that lie?” Paz sneered at me, laughing out loud again, pointing at my phone. Amused by her own joke, she waddled over to Jamie, tripping over her heels before falling into his arms.
“Enough, Paz!” Jamie screamed, pushing her back. His voice sent an echo down the tunnel.
“You sure you mean that, Sola?” she murmured huskily, reaching for his belt, her nimble fingers slipping right inside.
I heard Veronika gasp—she quickly sucked in air and held it there, as if stocking up for a rainy day. Dumbfounded and breathless, myself, I watched as Jamie grabbed Paz by the forearm and expertly fished her hand out of his jeans in a flash of a second. He glared into her heavily lined and mascaraed eyes.
“Listen to me carefully, Paz,” he finally spoke, holding all of our breaths now. “Do not ever, ever, in any country, try that again. You do not get to touch me or try to play out any fantasy you may have involving me.”
His chest heaved heavily with each inhalation and exhalation as he let go of the girl’s arm with force. A quick survey of Paz’s classmates revealed that he seemed to be the only one breathing at all. I winced when I realized that I’d been biting the inside of my cheek all this time; I could already taste copper.
“Guys, it’s fifteen to twelve. Let’s go before Mr. Abbott calls your rooms and we all turn into pumpkins,” I broke the standoff after I swallowed my own blood.
I waved everyone in the direction of the hotel, my eyes glued to Jamie, who eventually returned the stare over the top Paz’s hair.
Chapter Fifteen: Stupid American Pig
“You really think you’re a terrible teacher?” Jamie laughed. It was full, his laugh—smooth and velvety. I think that was the first time I’d ever really heard it. When he was serious, he had the raciest pout on him, but when he laughed, his mouth opened gloriously wide, unabashed,
unafraid. “You must be joking—they all rave about you. Ever since I first started at Talents, I’ve been hearing about this ‘awesome Ms. Levit.’ Finally, I had to look you up in a yearbook. I’m sure you’re going to win that ‘Teacher of the Year’ thing they have all the seniors voting on.”
“Not a chance!” I smiled, blushing. “Whatever you heard can be easily explained by the fact that I am the only history teacher under forty over there, so there’s no real competition, at least in the department.” I never could help but qualify. “You looked me up in the yearbook?” is what I wanted to ask but the words refused to leave the confines of my mouth.
Paris was still gray and rainy the next day, but three missed calls from George (and no word from Jess) were enough to make me not want to spend another day inside my generic hotel room. Instead, I took what I hoped was the recommended dose of my French cold medicine, wrapped my scarf twice around my neck, buttoned my coat all the way up, and braved the autumn in the spring. The drizzle made me squint.
Having nothing on the official itinerary until dinner, no one had anyone to answer to that Sunday morning—not the students, not the chaperones. Abbott and Stephanie, for example, decided to sleep in, as I was informed when I called them from the hotel lobby that was full of our disoriented students at ten in the morning.
“Sweet Levit, you’re a big girl—figure it out,” Abbott had muttered when he picked up on the fourth ring. “We meet Nicole back here at five, that’s all you need to know. Whatever any of you do before then is not my business.”
“Okay, thanks for your help, Mr. Mentor,” I’d grumbled, immediately flushed like a child at the sound of a reprimand. “How was Paz last night, by the way?” I had then asked in an attempt at an elegant recovery.
“What do you mean?” Abbott sounded at once awake. Perhaps he was a more responsible chaperone than he liked to seem.
“She got piss drunk at the club last night. Made a scene. Whatever. Just wondering how she sounded last night.”
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