Oh God. I have to order food from him, while being completely starving but not wanting to look like a huge fatso who routinely shoves twenty whole crêpes into her mouth. But it’s either that or go hungry. I hate girls who are afraid to eat in front of boys.
I was that girl around Jacques. Screw it. I’ll eat what I want.
Hot Crêpe raises an eyebrow. That’s as close as he comes to “Hi, welcome to Crêpes Pour Vous, how may I help you?”
“Hi, um … bonne soir.” I smile. My cheeks are on fire. I glance at the menu and realize I have no idea what I want to eat. “Um …”
Hot Crêpe turns back to the radio, dialing past some droning French talk show.
“Take your time,” he mutters in a thick accent.
It looks like I’m going to have to, because there are so. Many. Choices. Dessert crêpes, slathered in whipped cream and strawberries and chocolate and, God help me, Nutella. Savory crêpes, with all manner of meat and cheese, egg, and delectable-looking sauces. What’s a girl to do? Hot Crêpe’s lip curls in frustration as the radio imports only static. I’d hate to have that scowl turned on me.
“What do you think?” I ask Levi.
“I just want a plain one,” he says. “No, four plain ones.”
“Plain? No topping or anything?”
He nods.
Hi, handsome crêpe maker, I’d like four crêpes. Nope, nothing on them. Just four plain-ass pancakes for my weirdo brother.
This is always the way with Levi, every time we go out to a restaurant. He’s too shy to talk to waiters, so Mom or I have to explain exactly how plain he wants his food—which is very plain, but with an inexplicable amount of pickles. There’s always an embarrassing ordeal if an order comes out wrong. Levi will huff and puff, moan loudly, and as recent as two years ago, he would even cry or collapse on the ground. What if that happens here? He’s already curling his lips, looking at the dirty linoleum floor. I don’t know if my fledgling French can properly explain Levi.
I take a deep breath. What Levi wants, Levi has to get, or I’ll never hear the end of it. And there’s no Mom here to handle a tantrum. I step up to the counter. The boy is washing his hands at a tiny sink.
“Bonjour,” I say. “May I please … um, avoir quatre crêpes, plain? Avec … avec rien …”
He glances up from the towel he wipes his hands with. One eyebrow raises almost imperceptibly. “Speak English. It will be easier on everyone.”
Uh. “But I need to practice my French.”
He lifts a corner of his mouth. I guess that passes for a smile.
“Practice on someone else.”
My skin tingles. He keeps drying his hands like this—this insult—is nothing to him.
“I want four totally plain crêpes, all on one plate, and then one Nutella crêpe. Please.” Screw dinner. I’ll skip right to dessert. Vive la France.
The jerk just shrugs.
I shake—in anger or anticipation—as Crêpe Jerk performs his art. He pours batter onto the hot plate, then swirls a little wooden tool in a circle to spread the batter paper-thin. He uses a metal spatula to flip the crêpe in one quick motion, making it look effortless.
He makes Levi’s, folding and stacking them concentrically on a plate, then he makes mine, slathering it with Nutella. I have to actively stop myself from slobbering. He hands me the plates and his dark eyes gaze at me across the sugar-dusted chocolate. Despite his new nickname, Crêpe Jerk, I swoon a little bit.
I pay, grab plastic knives and forks, and sit down with Levi. Crêpe Jerk goes back to fixing his radio, scowl in place.
As angry as he made me, commanding me to speak English, I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to fall head-over-heels in love with him. If this was a movie, that would have been our disastrous first meeting with awful first impressions. It’s classic, circa Pride and Prejudice. I’ll keep coming back to this restaurant, and we’ll have witty repartee and pretend to hate each other. Then we’ll share a few tender, illuminating moments, and then it’ll be time for me to leave Paris. Somehow I won’t be able to get in contact with him to tell him I’m going, so I’ll leave him a letter telling him how I’ve always loved him since the first time I met him. In French—and my written French is much better than my spoken French. He’ll be so moved and overwhelmed by his love for me that he’ll follow me to the airport to pledge his everlasting love. Then I’ll move to Paris to be with him. Happily ever after. Cue end credits.
I catch myself smiling at him and I have to remind myself that none of that has happened yet.
He looks up and sees me staring. I drop my gaze to my crêpe, cut a dainty piece, and eat it like a lady. I look back up. His lips twist in a smile, like Levi’s sometimes do, but this isn’t a smile trying to hide gleeful laughter. This is a cruel, mocking smile, exactly like Jacques’s.
Another cook comes out of the back room. He speaks a flood of rapid French, something about something that’s lost, with some curse words thrown in. Crêpe Jerk replies, then whispers something. His eyes slide over to me. Cook #2 looks at me too, wearing the same smirk.
They laugh. I hear them drawl a couple of words in a way exaggerated American accent. Bun-joor.
“Quatre crêpes avec rien,” the hot one says, over-pronouncing every word, using a q-sound and pronouncing the s’s, which I didn’t even do.
I look down at my plate. I should hurl it at them right now, splatter the Nutella all over their stupid grins.
“Do you like your crêpes?” I ask Levi, just to keep my mind off them.
“Mhmm.” His mouth makes smacking noises. He’s never been able to control his gross eating sounds. “They might be better if they were thicker.”
“Then they’d be pancakes.”
“Maybe I just like pancakes better.”
Oh God, I hope the French idiots didn’t hear that. Just what I need, more fuel for their fire. American kids who complain that crêpes aren’t like Betty Crocker pancakes.
As I watch, Levi lifts his crêpes to his mouth with his hands. His knife and fork lie abandoned on the tabletop.
“Levi, use your cutlery!”
Words Mom has cried a bazillion times. I recognize that, but it doesn’t stop me from lunging forward and shoving his knife and fork toward him.
He glares. “Why? Mom isn’t here.”
“There’s such a thing as table manners here.” Please don’t give them another reason to laugh at us, I add silently.
He fumbles his fork and almost drops it. I reach over and cut his crêpes into pieces for him. Just like Mom does, like he’s a perpetual child, never going to grow into a functional adult.
“There,” I say. I let my knife clatter against my plate when I’m done. “Now eat them.”
He holds his fork in his fist and stabs the crêpe pieces, shoving them in his mouth and only swallowing when he can’t close his mouth anymore.
The Crêpe Losers are laughing even harder. I have maybe a bite and a half left, and a smear of Nutella on the paper plate. I feel apathetic toward it.
“Come on, Levi,” I say, standing up. “Let’s go.”
My brother grabs the last few bites of his crêpes—in his hands—and follows me out the door. The losers don’t see fit to lower their voices anymore. Before we’ve gone completely, I catch the words “la p’tite dame et le gros.” Accompanied by more laughter, of course.
The little lady and the fat one. Le gros. One adjective to encompass a whole person.
The French language can be so cruel.
I always hoped—naively, I guess—that the French were above making fun of someone for something as stupid as their size. I hoped Jacques would be one crappy exception to a rule of French magnanimity. I always thought they’d pick on table manners or fashion sense before they stooped as low as weight. Levi has three strikes there. No table manners to speak of, tear-away athletic pants and oversize hoodie, and he’s awfully large.
I hate myself for caring what those guys think. I hate m
yself for wanting Levi to conform so I look better in front of—ugh—cute guys. I’ve made sacrifices for guys so many times, and for what? So I could be uncomfortable but deemed worthy in the eyes of losers who make fun of strangers?
I’m horrible.
We wander after we leave Crêpes Pour Vous. The street is lined with restaurants, and I can see the glowing, happy diners through the windows. I feel like I need to move, run wild, shake off the dust of who I’ve always been. Wipe the crêpe shop jerks from my mind.
“So?” Levi mumbles. His crêpes are gone, a couple crumbs clinging to his lips. “What do we do now?”
The sun has only just set. The lights of Paris come alive around us. A slight breeze raises the hairs on my arms. It’s our first night in Paris. We should find an adventure.
That’s when I see it: a poster in a bus shelter, with the words Louvre La Nuit! Remove the L and it sounds like ouvre la nuit, “open the night.” Words that are now stuck in my head.
“Levi,” I say, pointing to it. “There. That’s where we’re going. The Louvre.”
CHAPTER TEN
The metro stop is called, very appropriately, Palais Royal Musée du Louvre. The station empties directly into the underground lobby of the Louvre. My low mood from earlier has reversed. Now I’m giddy.
“Holy shit,” I say, laughing. “Levi, this is it. This is the Louvre.”
“Yeah, duh,” he murmurs. His eyes travel up the famous inverted pyramid that dominates the lobby to the night sky overhead.
The room is rosy and dark like a fancy cocktail reception. People crowd around, taking pictures and posing. A man holds a giant iPad aloft, filming the whole lobby. Two girls, faces pressed together, hold a phone at arm’s length. They tilt their heads this way and that, staring at the screen, puckering their lips just right. It takes them a good minute before they actually take the photo, and then they examine it, delete it, and retake it.
I reach for my camera and realize I left it on the desk in the hotel room. I only have my cell phone. I take that out and—
Levi rolls his eyes violently. “Ughhh, don’t take pictures with that thing. If you turn into one of these fucking losers, I won’t talk to you all fucking trip.”
“It’s the Louvre, Levi. I’m going to want memories.”
“So remember it. We have these things called brains, Keira, that can remember things. You should try using yours.”
My phone sits, enormous, in my little pale hand. I’m not a phone addict by any means, but I take pictures of things that are important. This? The Louvre? Important! And he’s going throw a fit about it? To get through this with no tears, no stomping feet, no shouting, I’m going to end up sitting in my bedroom someday thinking, “I once went to the Louvre” and having nothing to prove that fact to myself. Memories will fade and someday this night will feel like a dream.
It’s that and make Levi happy, or trade my brother for photographs.
I shove my phone to the very bottom of my bag and we get in line to buy tickets. He’s right: if I see the Louvre entirely through my cell phone’s camera lens instead of with my own eyes, I’ll regret it.
Whether it’s artistic and architectural beauty overload or the jetlag, the Louvre already feels like a dream and I’m walking through fog. Some people meander about the corridors, some stride forward purposefully. According to the museum map that somehow ended up in my hands, there are approximately one million wings and exhibits we could go to, and they all sound fascinating: Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities. Egyptian Antiquities. Near Eastern Antiquities. A section dedicated to the history of the Louvre itself, where you can descend into the earth to see what remains of the old palace’s moat. The Denon wing, full of Caravaggios and Rembrandts and one very special da Vinci.
That perks me up. I poke Levi and point to one of the signs with Mona Lisa’s silhouette, showing the way to La Joconde, as she’s called in French. “Shall we go find her?”
He shrugs. I take that as a yes.
The Louvre has long fascinated me—I know, me and the rest of humanity—but I’ve always refrained from buying one of those massive books with pictures of the entire collection. I wanted to be surprised when I finally got here. When we enter a cavernous hall via an infinite staircase, stone arching impossibly high overhead, it’s all made worth it.
A storm-gray statue holds court at the top of the stairs. An angel, judging by her wings, although she’s missing her head and arms. Her chest is thrust forward, her dress billowing behind her in the wind. I have to convince myself that she’s carved in stone and real wind isn’t flowing through fabric. She’s dazzling.
The crowd parts around her, and people flow to the left or right, pausing to look but mostly passing by. I step forward—I have to at least find out her name.
WINGED VICTORY, the sign says. THE GODDESS NIKE. FOUND ON THE GREEK ISLAND OF SAMOTHRACE.
“Like the running shoes,” Levi says in his signature monotone.
I roll my eyes.
There’s a glass case near the sign, holding a beat-up hand and a few crumbled pieces of stone.
“It’s supposed to be her right hand,” Levi says, reading the plaque. “And some of her other fingertips. How the hell do they know that? She doesn’t have arms!”
“Found on the same site eighty-seven years later,” I read.
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Found on the same site, fits in place …”
“How would it fit in place?” he says. “She doesn’t have arms!”
“Levi, it’s simple science. They could obviously carbon date the stone and find out it’s a match.”
“Do you even know what carbon dating is?” Levi asks.
I don’t. But he doesn’t have to know that.
“Levi, it’s the Louvre,” I say. “They wouldn’t exhibit anything if they weren’t completely sure it was authentic.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s the Louvre. It’s only the most famous museum on the planet!”
“Yeah, which means they could display tons of fraudulent artifacts and no one would question them,” he says. “Everyone would just swallow the Kool-Aid like good little art-worshipers. Idiots.”
I wonder if he realizes that it hurts me when he insults groups of people that include me. It was easy to shake off when we were young and he was being the typical little brother, hating everything I liked. Now that we’re almost adults, sometimes it feels like it might be real.
I grab his sleeve and steer him away.
The rest of the Louvre is nothing like that vast hall, all stone, showcasing one spectacular piece of art. Now we’re in a world of gilded moldings and frescoes by geniuses. Paintings litter the walls. We continue on a fast track to the Mona Lisa’s room because any time I stop to look at something for more than a second, Levi growls deep in his throat like an animal. It hurts my heart, having to stride past paintings and statues I want to lose myself in.
Now I understand how Mom feels, having to bypass beautiful things. This is Mom’s book club, trips to the gym, her time playing Stones of Zendar. These are the things she covets in antique stores or even just the clothing section at Target, where she routinely buys new blouses and returns them the next day to use the money for other things—like Levi’s medical bills, now. She must feel like her whole life is one big sacrifice.
I bypass a wall-sized Caravaggio and my heart wants to break out of my chest and leap toward it.
There’s a huge bottleneck in the doorway to the Mona Lisa’s room.
“What do you like about the Mona Lisa?” I ask Levi as the human traffic blocks us.
Levi shrugs. “I guess it’s that Leonardo da Vinci painted it. He’s probably the biggest genius who ever lived.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “But the painting itself?”
“I dunno. It looks nice. And it’s just really famous and stuff.” He frowns down at me out of the corner of his eye. “What else do you want me to say?”
/>
“What else do you want to say?”
“Nothing.” He stands up on his tiptoes. “Oh my God, did everyone just forget how to walk?”
“Shh!” I hiss.
“I want them to hear me, then they might move …”
My brother, giving everybody one more reason to hate American tourists. I wince an apology at a slick, suited man who shoots him a look. I wish I could tell everyone “he has autism or something,” but I don’t want to write him off with one word, like he isn’t a full person. I don’t want to be Dr. Pearson.
It takes twenty minutes to get close enough to see the painting. Levi groans and growls and stamps his feet the whole time. “God, can’t we just go?” he complains.
“Don’t you want to see it?”
“Not this much!” Someone brushes past him and Levi glares after them. “Ugh, it smells in here. Like rusty nails and farts.”
I snort. He frowns deeper.
“Hang on just a bit longer, okay? We’re almost there.”
And then I catch a glimpse of the Mona Lisa through the crowd, still twenty feet away, and I understand the reason for the traffic jam. Her knowing smile stops you in your tracks. Beautiful isn’t the word. It’s more like …
“Elle m’arrête,” a French woman says to her companion, laughing.
She stops me. She arrests me. Yeah. Arresting is the word. I imagine all the history that must have passed her painted eyes. She stared for years into the eyes of da Vinci, then for centuries into the eyes of her royal buyers and countless caretakers. Then the eyes of thieves, then, finally, people who came from around the world just to see her. Millions of eyes, it must be. Maybe even billions.
What effect will those painted eyes have on Levi? If he feels any of the awe I feel … I imagine the frown lines melting away. Those brown eyes losing their anger and frustration. His face taking on an air of peace, for once.
“Can you see her?” I whisper to Levi.
I look up at him. He peers over the tops of peoples’ heads with a disinterested grimace. “It’s exactly how it looks in pictures.”
Maybe in Paris Page 7