Not at all. The colors are darker and more striking in person, the contrasts starker. If Levi doesn’t see that, then she definitely hasn’t affected him or brought him any kind of peace.
“Let’s go,” Levi says, tugging hard on my sleeve. “Now.”
His hand squeezes just above my elbow, too tight, too tight. As he drags me away, I turn and catch one last glimpse of the painting as she slips out of my view. If I’d had my way, I’d have stood there for hours, holding her gaze. But no—it’s always Levi who gets what he wants. He always got to pick when we left the playground, when we were done sledding or skating or swimming. His patience would snap and Mom would collect all our things and whisk us away, always ages before I was done. I was always the one who had to suffer at those times. Mom always cut Levi’s suffering short. It was always me, watching the fun through the rear window, lower lip stuck out and quivering.
He drags me back out to the main gallery, which is far less crowded. Apparently, everyone in the entire museum has flocked to the Mona Lisa at this precise moment. Levi slows once we’re out here. He still has his so-pissed-off-it’s-unreal face on, but now that the crowds are gone, I think he’s better.
“So?” I say with a sigh. “What should we see next?”
Levi’s face softens after a few minutes, his clenched jaw loosening.
“The Egyptian stuff,” he says. “That oughtta be good, since France has such a boner for Egypt.”
I snort in laughter. “It totally does.”
The Egyptian Antiquities department occupies a few floors, one of them below ground. The rooms are still big and airy, though; light stone walls kept bright. It’s almost empty, just a few other visitors. An enormous sphinx dominates the first room.
“Egyptian faces are always smiling,” I say.
“That’s racist,” Levi monotones.
I laugh. “I mean, their art. Sphinxes and masks and gods. They always have this … smirk, y’know?”
“They’re creepy as fuck,” he says.
The sphinx smiles, face pointed straight ahead as she crouches, waiting for … something.
“Yeah,” I say. “They are.”
Levi has wandered off, up some stairs, into the rest of the Egyptian Antiquities section. I follow him, looking over my shoulder. The Sphinx still smiles straight ahead. Still waits.
Glass cases surround us on all sides in the next room, holding ancient textiles and pottery. Tall, skinny vases etched with stripes catch my eye. The plaque tells me they’re a thousand years older than Jesus. Levi is across the room, staring into another glass case. He doesn’t answer when I tell him about the pre-Jesus pots. He keeps staring.
It’s a mummy. On its back, its arms crossed over its chest. A shiver slips down my spine. I’ve always hated mummies. Loved Ancient Egypt, hated mummies. Ever since a sixth-grade field trip to a museum where my friend Katie dared me to stare at the most gruesome, badly-preserved mummy Egypt could have produced for a whole minute. My stupid, overactive imagination burned the dried skin and gouged-out eye sockets into my nightmares for years. That mummy was just a kid. I was scared, but also really sad for him.
This mummy is different. It’s impeccably preserved; its wrappings look like they could have been done yesterday. If you were to unwrap the fingers, they’d be supple and flexible, with an iron grip. Biceps are still defined, hamstrings and calf muscles still evident. Take away the glass case and this could be a person in a costume, waiting to jump up and scare us.
Except for the head, wrapped so tightly the skull looks small and painfully vulnerable. The only traces of features are slightly crumbling lumps where ears should be. Its face is concealed by a mesmerizing pattern of square, concentric folds. If there was a face, the outer squares would frame it, but the frame just frames more of itself. Does the mummy have a face? What would it look like, if I undid each pristine fold? I don’t want to know.
I rub my arms to ward away the goose bumps but skin on skin can’t cure my fear. I have become one big goose bump, one big shudder. The place is full of mummies, I realize then. Millions of them, standing around, waiting for something. So many bodies, their faces staring at me.
“Oh God, why are there so many?” I murmur to Levi.
“So many what?”
“Mummies.”
“There’s only one, Keira.”
“What about all these?” I point around at all the bemused Egyptian faces, cat’s eye makeup and mischievous eyes. Sarcophagi. Even the word is terrifying. And there are so many. Around every corner, another vessel meant to hold dead bodies. They may not have bodies inside them, but I can’t convince myself I’m not entirely surrounded by death—it’s in the walls, under the floor. I swear there are ghosts walking among us. I turn around, but having the mummy at my back only raises more chills. Across the room, a giant Anubis’s pointed, grotesquely sly face leers. He holds a staff, points it at me, like he’s casting a spell that’s making me feel tight, small, like my lungs are canisters that don’t contain the air they should. The walls close in. My head feels strained and tired and liable to collapse.
I have to get out of here.
“Keira, where are you going? Hey!”
I’m in a different room. I’ve turned too many corners. Levi shuffles behind me, like I’m leading him somewhere useful. I enter another room through an arched doorway—I’m sure this is the room we first entered—but it’s another wrong turn. Through the windows I can see the quadrangle outside and the lights of the Louvre against the black sky and oh my God, we can’t get out. What if we’re stuck? What if we die here?
Levi almost joined these bodies two months ago. Levi wanted to join these bodies.
I can’t breathe. I’m on the floor now, in a corner, not sure how I got here.
“Keira?” Levi’s voice is part of the fog. He’s standing above me. I try to make words, but with no breath I just … just …
“Come on, Keira, God!”
Now tears blur my vision. The words won’t come so the tears jump to replace them, like that will do a goddamn thing to help.
“Mademoiselle? Monsieur?” a man says. “Est-elle OK?”
Levi doesn’t speak French; he can’t answer. He’s awkwardly silent, but his eyes are alive, alive and full of worry. The man who asked the question looks between the two of us, confused, backing away like he’s going to leave us here.
“Help!” I gasp. “Exit, exit … sortie?”
He points. A red exit sign blinks just above us.
Levi moves in that direction, grabbing my arm to tug my frozen body off the floor.
Walking, letting Levi lead, I start to relax. Holy shit, what just happened to me? My whole body burns, hums, tingles. Shock numbs my fingertips and toes. What was that?
Why were the ancient Egyptians so obsessed with death? So obsessed with some afterlife, where they would supposedly need their withered-up bodies and jars of intestines. That’s not what death is, passing through a veil and coming out the other side to party with the ancestors or whatever. Death is permanent. Death is absolute. Death is inescapable, even when you devote every moment to stopping it from entering your mind.
We don’t say anything as we leave the Louvre, climbing the staircase that surfaces inside the above-ground glass pyramid. My weakness, my sudden inability to function—it all goes unspoken. I feel heavy, and I realize how jet-lagged I am, with too few hours of sleep. Not helping.
Once we’re outside in the enormous courtyard with the wind whipping around us, my body loosens. I’m still vibrating, but I can breathe here. I can admire the Louvre’s façade, lit up like it might have been in its past life as a royal palace. We sit down on a bench to admire the glass pyramid as it sparkles against the sky.
“Overrated,” Levi says. “Waste of space.”
I want to launch a counter-argument, but exhaustion has caught up with me and adrenaline and fear have worn me even thinner. And I secretly think he might be right.
We wander back t
o the metro and drag our tired bodies through the streets to Hoteltastique. It’s only when we’re stumbling back to our room that I realize Levi never let go of my arm.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Levi wakes up before me. He has the TV blasting. The room is full of ripe, late-morning sunlight. I feel like my body is less than substantial; someone could reach right through me. I’m so hungry I could eat the comforter off the bed, hotel germs included.
“I need to brush my teeth,” I say, getting out of bed and heading straight for the bathroom. “And then we need to eat. Like, yesterday.”
I dig our toiletry bag out of my suitcase and head into our tiny bathroom. I set up my moisturizer and cleanser on the little shelf along with my toothbrush. Levi’s toothbrush goes on the other side, far away from mine—if he uses the wrong one, he’ll literally puke.
Levi has set out his medications. Three bottles and a little pill tray, the days of the week labeled, pills all ready to go. I recognize them all from Mom’s flashcards but couldn’t name them if you paid me. I check to make sure the right amount of each pill is in each slot and wonder if they are the only things keeping him here.
I shake myself. Can’t let my mind go there. I can’t get scared.
“We should go to McDonald’s,” Levi says in the next room.
“We’ll find a café or something,” I call back. “I didn’t come all this way for McDonald’s.”
“I don’t want Frenchy-French food,” Levi murmurs. “I just want hashbrowns.”
“Come on, Levi,” I sigh. “We’re going to have a real French breakfast and that’s that.”
I shower. Levi doesn’t. He’s starting to smell, but I don’t want to provoke him any more than I already have. Because he’s crying as we leave the hotel.
Not crying, exactly. Death-glaring and surreptitiously wiping his eyes. I don’t care; I’m not giving him what he wants this time. I want to cram myself full of something heavy and gourmet—sausage, eggs, bacon, that kind of breakfast.
I’m so hungry I can’t really concentrate on finding that, though. All the bistros in our neighborhood are either still closed or serving lunch food. I stalk the streets like a zombie hunting for brains. Or Eggs Benedict.
Just kitty-corner from our hotel, we pass an open doorway and I smell it: baking bread.
I barrel inside, attracted like the north to the south pole of a magnet.
The bakery’s glass case is chock full of heaven. Marzipan blobs, sugared and shaped like animals. Cookies of every shape and size, filled with jam, shaped like flowers, dipped in dark chocolate. Huge discs of puff pastry, encrusted with cinnamon and sugar and shaved almonds and a million other delicious things. Bouquets of baguettes, some still steaming, filling the air with the sweet, enveloping scent of bread. And, of course, the croissants: shining with butter, piled on top of each other like they’re just clambering to be chosen. The young woman behind the counter smiles indulgently at us. Her cheeks are as round and red as literal apples, punctuated by dimples on either side of her mouth. She raises her eyebrows in a question.
“Deux croissants, s’il vous plaît,” I blurt out to her. “Deux croissants and … and … a baguette, and one of those cookies with the jam, and one of those chocolate-dipped ones, and one of those big round things.”
Her eyes widen and she waves her hands. “Je m’excuse,” she says. “My English is not the best.”
Whoops. And here I am, spewing English all over her counter.
“Pardonnez-moi!” I say, trying to make it sound like I’m pouring my heart and soul into the words. I know how it feels to have a language you’re just learning come flying at you.
She smiles, blushing. “Qu’est-ce que vous vouliez?”
What would I like? I point and try my hardest to read out the names on the placards in perfect French. Baguette is easy. Croissant is a little strenuous on my accent. Pain aux raisins, the big flat disc coated with glaze and raisins, is freaking hard.
She wraps the baguette in paper and puts each item onto a beautiful china plate, not into a flimsy paper bag like Starbucks. Paris has one-upped you again, Seattle. She arranges the items on a big wooden tray, and while she does it, she looks up at me and smiles, her eyes crinkling. I can just feel joy pouring out of her. Definitely beats the bored baristas.
I take out a handful of Euros but she waves her hand.
“After, pay,” she says. “First, enjoy.”
We sit down at a table built into the shop’s bay window. The old glass warps the Parisians walking by. A couple people glance toward the open door of the bakery, but no one comes in.
When I take the first bite of a croissant, my heart despairs for all the billions of people on earth who are not eating this particular croissant right now. It’s more than flaky and buttery; it’s silk made of dreams, melting against my tongue.
I devour the first in mere seconds and reach for another. Tears spring to my eyes and I laugh, spluttering pastry flakes everywhere, when I discover the chocolate at its center. Chocolate! In a croissant! What could be more marvelous?
Levi shoots me a have you lost your mind? kind of look, which just makes me laugh harder.
“Izzogud!” I blurt out around my mouthful of deliciousness.
Levi’s eyes crinkle into slits as he chews. His shoulders spasm.
He’s laughing.
I can’t stop laughing, either. I move on to one of the jam-filled shortbread cookies, which is covered in a glaze so smooth and soft it makes an audible pfff sound against my teeth. Next I tear into a baguette, which you’d think would be boring because it’s just plain bread, but it’s the sweetest, fluffiest bread. Like marshmallows in bread form.
Of course, one cannot simply eat this much pastry without almost becoming sick. By the time we’ve cleared all our plates, both Levi and I are groaning as we collect every last crumb with our fingers.
“That was amazing,” I splutter, leaning back in my chair, thankful for yoga pants. “Sheer, unadulterated amazingness. Wasn’t it amazing?”
“Yeah,” he admits. “Better than anything you ever made.”
I blush. Last year, I went through a baking phase where I tried out complicated French recipes I had no business attempting. Let’s just say it was a miserable failure. Levi complained for a week about the lingering stench of my very-brûlée crème brûlée.
I go back to the counter to pay the woman for our garden of earthly delights. While she’s counting back my change, I want to tell her to keep the change as a tip. Is tipping encouraged or frowned upon in France? I guess I didn’t memorize that part of the travel books.
I fumble out the words “do you want to keep the change?” in French. Her mouth pops open. Her already rosy cheeks flush even harder.
“Ahh, non!” she blurts out. “Non, non, je ne peux pas.” She presses the coins into my hands and holds hers up afterward, waving them profusely.
“Pardon,” I murmur, lowering my head. “I—I didn’t mean to …”
“Non, non,” she says again. “I mean simply … you must keep your money.”
I smile. “Thank you so much. Everything was delicious.”
Her eyes crinkle again. “Merci à vous.”
We stagger back onto the street, narrowly missing a fancy-looking business man, young and bald, who glances into the pâtisserie but walks on.
All of Paris lies before us now.
“Well?” I ask Levi. “What should we do today?”
I can’t tell if he’s scowling or just squinting in the sun.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Something.”
“Should we go somewhere awesome?” I reach into my travel purse for some of the brochures we picked up at the airport.
A lot of them are brochures for museums. Musée D’Orsay, le Centre Pompidou, Museum of This, Museum of That … I flip past those. So not in the mood for museums after last night. That leaves us with tours. The Loire Valley. A day trip down south, to the glass-blue Mediterranean Sea. A day tr
ip to Holland. A day trip that takes you through Flanders Fields and to all the war memorials and famous sites of battles. This interests Levi.
“It’d be cool to see trenches,” he says.
Maybe that would draw Levi out of his shell a bit. I imagine him maybe meeting some veterans, men who were there for all the historical events he watches documentaries about. Maybe he’d ask them questions and care about their answers. I’d be able to text Mom something happy.
And then I remember all the blurry black-and-white photos they showed in history class. Blown-apart bodies camouflaged with mud and the hollow, empty gazes of soldiers. I shiver. Trenches would get under my skin even worse than mummies.
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“That’s like, the one thing I wanted to do here.”
“What about Versailles, or the Eiffel Tower?”
“I want to see war stuff.” He sticks his hands in his hoodie pocket, glaring.
“Well … there is the war museum, Les Invalides.”
He looks at me and raises an eyebrow. I take it as my cue to pull out my guidebook. I read off a couple of the exhibits, names of cannons and guns I couldn’t care less about, until this: “The Tomb of Napoleon?” I blink to make sure I read that right. “Holy crap. Let’s go see Napoleon’s tomb!”
“Huh.”
“Does that mean yes?”
He nods. “Let’s go visit Napoleon Bonaparte. I’m sure he’ll be very glad to see us.”
“Welcoming and accommodating,” I agree.
We emerge from the depths of the Invalides metro station into “oh my God”-worthy territory. The Seine is on our left, flowing lazily under the Pont Alexandre, the most glorious bridge in existence. It’s a wide, low expanse of white stone, all celebratory white pillars and crests and stone garlands. The gold statues on either end pose on giant pedestals. They sparkle in the sudden flashes of tourists’ cameras. Beyond the bridge is a huge avenue with pristine grass on either side, stretching toward the gold pantheon, the dome beneath which Napoleon rests.
Maybe in Paris Page 8