The Travelers

by Chris Pavone

  “So let’s get back to our interview, Mr. Rhodes. Tell me,” Elle says, leaning forward, elbows on table, “about your childhood.”

  “Well, Ms. Hardwick, I was born a poor black child.”

  A burst of surprised laughter escapes her. “We don’t hear a lot of references to The Jerk in Australia.”

  “I’m surprised you hear any.”

  “Well, I do get out, every so often.”

  “And we’re all grateful for it.”

  “Are you, Will Rhodes?” She arches that eyebrow.

  “Yes. I think I am.”

  They stare at each other, holding gazes for a time-stopped eternity, before she breaks the spell. “So where are you from? How far has your life traveled to arrive here at this table, with me?”

  Will takes a sip of wine, swirls it on his palate, pretending to do a bit of his job before returning his attention to something that’s not.

  “Nondescript upbringing in St. Paul, Minnesota. Do you know where that is?”

  “Hmm. Do I fly over it on my way to New York?”

  “You fly over everything on your way to New York.”

  “Well then, I know exactly where it is.”

  “I graduated from a Midwestern university with negligible employment-related skills and a fortune’s worth of student debt. Does this go on in Australia? Borrowing for university?”

  “Of course. Are you still broke then? Uni couldn’t have been that long ago.”

  “You flatter me.”

  “I suppose I do, Mr. Rhodes.” That sly grin again, something more than a little playful. This is a dangerous woman here.

  “Well, to be honest, Ms. Hardwick, I never did dig out from that financial hole. I’ve moved sideways in my debt structure. Excavating new subterranean passages, like a whole ant colony of interconnected financial obligations that bears a passing semblance to solvency around a fundamental core of what is, in essence, bankruptcy.”

  Will never believed that writing would make him rich, but his extreme level of unrich has come as a shock, and it’s possible that in a few years his job may no longer even exist. Not even Chloe is aware of the full extent of Will’s—of their—financial woes. When they first started dating, Will was so ashamed of the sorry state of his affairs that he refused to acknowledge to himself that there was any problem at all; he just surged forward. Matters improved when they started living together, sharing expenses. But Will is still carrying an embarrassing load of consumer debt, and he has found himself unable to come clean to his wife.

  “That’s a truly sad story, Will Rhodes. Très triste.”

  “This is what keeps me up in the middle of the night. Spirals of self-doubt and fear, and this recurring nightmare that I’ll end up living in a trailer park in north Jersey, alone and destitute on my deathbed, frothing-at-the-mouth resentful that no one ever suggested I learn Mandarin, or code-writing, or, I don’t know, trusts-and-estates law.”

  He’s not sure why he’s unburdening himself on this stranger. Actually, he is sure, but he doesn’t want to admit it to himself, so instead he keeps talking. “On the plus side, these fears are what impel me out of a sleepless bed to my computer, where I churn out three hundred words here, a thousand there, sometimes an overblown modifier-laden three thousand, which I deliver triumphantly with an envelope packed with expense receipts. I’m at my most productive when seized by financial panic in the middle of the night.”

  She bites her lip, perhaps biting back a flirtatious response, substituting instead a flirtatious look. “So tell me, Will Rhodes, what is it that your wife does for a living?”

  Ouch. Will wonders if Elle is purposefully shifting the mood, dragging reality to intrude on this fantasy. Or is she trying to accomplish something else, something more subtle? Yes, Will, I know you have a wife, but I don’t care.

  Again, she arches that eyebrow. God damn, he loves that arched eyebrow.

  This Elle Hardwick, she certainly looks like a woman who’s going to wreck his marriage.

  —

  The guy from Saveur has moved down to sit across from Elle, next to Bethany the publicist whom Will has met at a half-dozen things, and now next to Will is a jovial lecherous Scottish chef named Callum, and everyone roars at the winemaker Bertrand’s joke, and it’s all fun in the way that these things can be fun, plus tonight there’s been a sexy stranger at Will’s side, a woman who either wants him badly or has spent the evening pretending to.

  “So you’re married?” Callum asks.

  “Mmm,” Will says. “I am indeed.”

  At the end of the table, a megalomaniacal chef is making a big show of opening a jeroboam, a big bottle of a big wine, cackling and feral, like a drunk French hyena.

  “There’s a lot of temptation.” Callum inclines his head at Elle. “Isn’t there, mate?”

  Will doesn’t answer.

  “How do you resist?”

  “With great difficulty,” Will says, rising. “Excusez-moi.” He pats the guy on the shoulder, walks away, a bit unsteady on liquored-up legs on squishy grass.

  Inside, it’s too bright. Will’s pupils, accustomed to the candlelit night, are slow to close up here in the house. The drapes are too purple, the tiles in the bathroom too blue. His face in the mirror is splotchy and stubbly, his eyes shot with red lines. He has been drinking now for—what?—seven hours. It’s surprising how much of his job is about staying up very late, drinking alcohol, with strangers. Maybe that’s all jobs.

  He splashes his cheeks with cool water, trickling into his eyes, onto his lips. It feels good. He dries his face, pushes back his hair, adjusts his tie. He stares at himself in the mirror, searching his eyes for his resolve, alone at a party, far from home, without his wife.

  His wife. If only she were here, taking his hand under the table, as she does, just their secret for a few seconds, I’m here, I’ll be here later, I’ll be here tomorrow, that’s what a wife is. But she’s not here, not now.

  Will never knew what exactly ruined his parents’ marriage, but they ended up loathing each other, hostilities were open, they referred to each other in the third person—“Please tell your father to come inside”—in the other’s presence, occasionally screaming. Then when Will was eleven, Dad died. Rumors eventually reached Will—Mom driven to alcoholism, Dad to serial philandering. But these were the symptoms, not the illness.

  He’d been too young to have ever had any conversation with his father about this. And when he was mature enough, he could never bring himself to ask his mom. So Will’s imagination festered, conjuring dozens of scenarios, of reasons why a couple could be driven to hate each other so much. He told himself cautionary tales. Promised himself that whatever it was, he wouldn’t do it. That he himself would grow old with his own wife, would die at her side, and along the way he’d avoid all the pitfalls, overcome all the obstacles. And that if he somehow failed, he’d admit it, and he’d end it. He’d rather be divorced, rather live with a failed marriage in the past tense than with a shitty marriage in the present.

  And yet here he is.

  Will takes a deep breath. He opens the door, and there Elle is, just like he knew she’d be, waiting for him, leaning against the wall, face turned down but big blue eyes turned up, appraising him from the cool remove of her enviable genetics.

  This is the situation that he has both desired and dreaded. What’s he going to do?

  One of Will’s main fortifications against adultery has been that men always have to make the first physical move. Women may drop innuendo all night, but none has been willing to initiate the physical encounter.

  Until now. Elle takes the step that separates them, and raises her hand, and places her thumb on his cheek, fingers on his neck, and as she begins to pull his face to hers, there’s a brief period when Will can still halt it, he can avert his face or pull back, keep his mouth closed or put his hand up, but he doesn’t do any of these things, he allows it to happen, at first halfway reluctant but then unrestrained, and for a min
ute or two—how can you measure?—they stand in the short hall next to the washroom in an ancient château in southwest France, very late at night and very far from home, melting into each other.

  Then voices—it sounds like Bertrand, with that sommelier—and Elle pulls back, stares at him hard for a second, wordlessly extending a promise. She blinks, and he reads in that blink her reiteration: yes, I’m yours, take me.

  —

  At the end, only a handful of people remain; that’s what makes it the end. They stagger along the pebbled path toward the taxis, drivers leaning on hoods, eyeing passengers with the superiority of sober people accommodating inebriated ones.

  “You’re staying at the auberge, aren’t you?” Elle asks, slowing her pace, creating distance between the two of them and the others, public privacy.

  “I am.”

  “What’s your room number?” she asks. Quietly, without looking at him. Their heels are crunching on the stones. The plastered Scot stumbles, rights himself, none too steadily.

  Will can barely stand it, how much he wants this woman. And who would ever know? Who?

  He would. He already feels crappy about that kiss, crappier with each passing second. He’s not a guy who does this, who succumbs to this cliché. Oh, Will Rhodes? Of course he had an affair with a beautiful Australian on assignment in France. How could he not?

  “Listen, Elle.”

  She stops walking. “You’re kidding.” Elle is staring at him, mouth open in shock, affronted. Will wonders if this woman has ever before been rejected.

  “I’m married.”

  “Marriage has nothing to do with this, Will. Nothing.” The appalled look slides from her face, replaced with bemused resignation. “Though I guess I’m not the married one, am I?”

  Will is pretty sure this question is rhetorical, and he doesn’t want to make a fool of himself by answering.

  “Have it your way,” she says. She resumes walking, and he lets her take a couple of steps before he joins. “Or, rather, don’t have it.”

  If this is the end of it, if this is all, everything will be just fine. Beautiful stranger, foreign country, one late-night drunken kiss. Who cares? He’ll get over it. No one will know.

  ST-ÉMILION

  “I’m sorry,” Elle says. “I was out of line.”

  Will looks up from his plate, silky ham and soft bread with salted butter, fresh berries, the spoils of a European breakfast buffet, similar everywhere but for the regional additions, the herring in Scandinavia, the baked beans in England.

  “No, I’m the one who’s sorry.” Is he apologizing for rejecting her? For missing out on an experience? Both? “Join me?”

  She’s less put-together in the morning, as everyone is. No makeup, hair tied back, baggy tee shirt, jeans. She looks more real, here in the breakfast room in bright daylight, a real person with real feelings, not an impossibly sexy stranger at a glamorous party, where she was more of an idea, an ideal, than a reality. This is no goddess. Just a mortal woman who if she really tries can look fantastic, especially in candlelight.

  “Look, I—no, let me finish—I’m sorry, Will.” She takes a seat. “I’m not like that. It was just that I felt such a…connection, last night. Didn’t you?”

  He nods.

  “And the truth is, I’m in a relationship too. I’m not married, or even engaged, but we might…” She trails off, staring at a spot in the distance, the rough plaster wall. “I just didn’t want last night to end. And that’s what happens next, isn’t it? Kissing?”

  Yes, he thinks, that certainly is what happens next.

  “But I know better, this morning. And thank God you knew better, last night.”

  “I’m not sure better is the right word.”

  She smiles, maybe blushes. She leans toward him. “It was fun, wasn’t it?”

  So they spend the morning together, the odd familiarity of two people who met and kissed last night, uneasy glances, a long walk on the paths among old roses, a drive into town for a predictably unsuccessful attempt to find a replacement charger for Elle’s phone.

  And then, suddenly, heartbreakingly: “I’ve a plane to catch.”

  Will wonders if it makes any sense to drive her to the airport. Is that the type of relationship they now have? He doesn’t want to overstep the boundary, to ruin something good with something not. But he has never been here, isn’t sure where this boundary is.

  He kisses her on the cheek. There: that’s the boundary.

  But then right away he crosses it, leaving his lips on her skin for one second, and two, and ten, for far too long. But she never pulls away. She continues to make it clear that she isn’t going to be the one who stops.

  When he finally leans away, she sighs, looks him the eye, “Bye-bye” in a melodic voice, which is one of the many things he adores about this woman he didn’t know yesterday, and will probably never see again.

  ST-JEAN-DE-LUZ

  Will pokes around the old town’s whitewashed rusticity, the crescent beach, the striped deck chairs and faded umbrellas, the distinct sense that this place used to be chic, but that was a world war ago, maybe two. There’s always charm to faded glory, but also the melancholy of a moment past, a perfection irretrievably lost.

  He occasionally realizes that he’s grinning, that he looks silly, smiling to himself like a simpleton. But he can’t help it, his mind keeps darting back to that arched eyebrow, those smiling dimples, that delicious kiss. How did this happen? So quickly?

  The last time Will felt this way was after his first evening with Chloe, whom he’d known for years but only vaguely until their proper first date, a magical night. The next day he was walking back from a tedious lunch with someone who was frustratingly non-Chloe, beaming there on West Forty-third Street, when through his self-involved fog he heard, “What the hell are you so giddy about?” It was his old friend Dean, blocking the sidewalk.

  “A girl,” Will had said, unnecessarily. There’s only one reason that men walk around looking like that. This was a half-decade ago.

  Will returns to his hotel room overlooking the pool that hangs over the cliff. He lies in bed with the laptop in his lap, and works up his notes from yesterday and last night. His narrative arrives, inevitably, at the detail he’s been saving for last, another delayed pleasure.

  He Googles Elle Hardwick, first for images, a handful of smiling-for-the-camera snapshots, all local to Australia, including a blood-rushing bikini pose on a beach, sunglasses, cleavage, a tanned tight tummy, hip cocked. Oh good God.

  He takes a bracing dip in the cool pool, then tries to call his wife.

  —

  After a nearly perfect dinner—oysters, sea bass, Meursault, galette—in a nearly perfect dining room with a view of the sun sinking into the Atlantic, Will returns to his nearly perfect room. He hammers out the remainder of his notes, then starts turning slapdash sketches into grammatically complete sentences, into complete paragraphs, into a full story about food and wine and springtime in southern France.

  But his mind keeps returning to Elle. He fights the urge to search for her again, to text her, to call her, to get on a goddamned plane and find her. Because in that impossible universe where he can live other realities, he’d like the other one to be here, in this other place, with this other woman.

  PYRÉNÉES-ATLANTIQUES

  The little Fiat whines on the steep ascent, climbing away from the coastline into the sere ragged mountains, sun-bleached and forbidding. He spends an hour visiting with a retired French pilot at his farm, being introduced to each goat by name. He has lunch with a Basque nationalist in a lively partisan bar, a loud game of pelota on the wall outside, soccer on the television. Conversation isn’t easy through an ad hoc interpreter from the Basque into Spanish, a language in which Will is far from fluent. He’s not sure how much he has understood.

  Will continues driving into the mountains, the signs of civilization increasingly sparse, quiet little villages where everyone is somewhere else exce
pt the dogs and old people. He listens to the reassuring progress reports from the GPS that he’d unpacked from Inez’s nylon case, a label-maker’s strip glued to the backside, PROPERTY OF TRAVELERS. RETURN TO LOCAL BUREAU.

  He turns off the main road, bumps along a narrow rutted lane that follows the banks of a stream, curving and climbing, potholes filled with puddles from an earlier downpour, weather he missed down at sea level. The going is slow.

  “Arriving at. Destination.”

  The hamlet is tiny, a dozen structures, none commercial, clustered near an oxbow in the stream.

  He walks to a pump on the side of the street, pistons the handle, eliciting a gush of water. He cups his hand and takes a sip, cold and clear and perfect. He snaps a picture of the pump, painted an incongruous shade of pink, recently.

  Will walks to the stream, wide and shallow and filled with rocks. A footpath runs along the banks, and Will follows it upstream, toward the tall mountains, blue against the low late-afternoon light, the sinking sun on the far side. He can’t hear any sounds other than natural ones, the rushing water and the birds, a goat in the distance, a braying horse.

  His mind drifts back to Elle, to that overpowering sense of infatuation, of mutual attraction, of an uncontrollable force that one day isn’t there and the next day suddenly appears, undeniable, irresistible. What is it that makes one person love another? Is it the shape of her face, the elegant curve of her long neck, the purely physical? Is it the arch of her eyebrow, the way she leans forward to listen, the dimples when she smiles? Is it the dimples themselves? Why the hell would anyone love face indentations?

  Is it what she says, or how she says it? Is it the things she believes, or the things she knows, or how she reconciles the difference? Is it her jokes? The music and books she likes, how she dances? Who she thinks she is, who she wants to become? Is it any of those things? What is a person, and why does one fall in love with another?