by Ritt, Julia
Like every happily-ever-after story, love conquers all in the end. Lise’s mother permits her to marry Colas and Alain finds happiness with the umbrella he had been happily brandishing throughout the play.
We clap for several encores, as the French nearly always do to show their appreciation for theater.
“That was great, wasn’t it?” I say. “It was so funny! I’ve never seen a funny ballet. Usually ballet is so serious.”
You nod. “It was pretty funny. I liked it more than I thought I would.”
We descend the shallow marble steps along with the flowing tide of other couples. Outside, the sunset’s dusky gold tipped with pink and lilac light is falling over the grand, charcoal-gray rooftops. Rarely have I ever experienced such a spectacle of beauty in a single evening.
We head into the métro and wait for the next train in the lavender seats. I look over at you dressed in your brown argyle sweater, pinstriped dress shirt, baggy dark brown slacks, and square-toed black leather shoes that appear to have been designed for a large duck. You have the appearance of a charming little old man but your effort in dressing up is commendable. Although I do not think you look nice, I tell you that you look nice in the hopes that you will say it back to me.
“Thanks,” you say. I frown and anxiously rub the silk of my dress between my fingers, mulling over the morality of my white lie. But then you say what I have wanted to hear from you all evening, “You look nice too.”
My cheeks beam. “Thank you!”
The métro rolls into the station and we board, sitting side by side, our bodies brushing slightly as the train moves along. Your elbow lightly nudges my waist, our knees knock for milliseconds, our shoulders rub briefly against each other. Each brush of your body against mine sends tingles through my body and hot surges of desire flows through my abdomen. My mind’s focus is fully absorbed by my skin’s heightened sensitivity. The silk chiffon layers of my dress against my abdomen and thighs are exquisitely soft. I brush my hand over the heap of silk in my lap and say, “My dress is so soft.”
“Can I feel it?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
You pinch a tuft of the silk between your fingers. As you release it, you pat my leg, your fingers extended over the curve of my thigh. A tendril of hot energy runs up my thigh and settles there. “Very soft.” You meet my gaze, your eyes glimmering with lasciviousness. I want to straddle you between my thighs, allowing the silk of my dress to envelop your torso. When I’m done with you, you will know everything about the softness of silk and my skin.
At Luxembourg we descend from the train and glide up the escalator. You stand one step above me and turn to look at me. Your eyes rove down my body. “You do look nice.”
“Thank you! It’s my McDonald’s dress. I had wanted the side panels of the bustier to be bright magenta, like the rim of a yellow-pink rose, but the closest shade the fabric store had was this hot red.” I run my hand over the red panel that lies at the side of my left breast. “So instead of looking like a rose in bloom I look like I’m wearing Ronald McDonald’s new line of couture.”
You chuckle. “Yeah, it’s kind of got that fast-food thing. The red and the yellow . . . and we’re going to eat at a diner. It’s appropriate. And the red shoes, too.”
“Hah, yup! My red shoes are my signature, though. I had to wear them!”
We stroll along the winding streets.
Although Bastille Day was only yesterday, it feels like a faded memory. You don’t seem to remember how insistent I was about wanting you to come home with me. It’s pretty funny though, that the ballet’s fool reminded me of how drunk you were last night. I tell you that when the fool held the wine, I thought “Hey, that’s you!”
“Ha, but then he gave them away. I wouldn’t do that.”
“Really?” I playfully knock my knuckles into your warm, wool-covered shoulder. “That’s awful!”
You smile with a sly, mischievous gleam in your eyes, but before you can say anything your phone buzzes in your pocket. You pull it out and snap it open. “Hey,” you say. On the other end, I can hear a girl’s voice. I can’t make out what she’s saying but she doesn’t sound happy. “I left you a message on facebook chat,” you tell her defensively. “Yeah, but it leaves it even after you log off . . . I told you, I’m going to Opéra with a friend.” You finish the conversation and return your phone to your pant pocket where it nestles against your warm thighs. “Girlfriend,” you explain.
I say nothing. I prefer not to think of the reason we can’t be together.
Breakfast in America appears as we turn down rue des Écoles, a beacon of light among shops closed for the night. Inside, we are greeted by odors of sizzling burgers, freshly made fries, and creamy milkshakes. Silver stools with rust-colored cushions are lined up along the bar, bottles of mustard and ketchup sit neatly on each table, and strings of plastic American flags hang from the ceiling. I imagine you’ll happily comment on the flags, since you often mention how much you miss America.
The hostess seats us in a booth near the back and gives us each a menu, but I don’t need to look at it. “All I want is a burger and fries. And a strawberry milkshake. My friend had one here and she let me taste it. It was amazing. Totally worth five euros.”
Your tongue slides over your lips as you gaze hungrily at the menu. “A milkshake does sound good.”
A young, pretty girl comes to our table with a notepad in her hands. She’s wearing fitted blue jeans and a tight t-shirt, the uniform of US youth. She holds herself with confidence and poise, her feminine line curving beautifully with her every movement. Her French elegance is rooted at her core. It doesn’t matter that she’s dressed in an American costume. I know you will find her attractive and a wave of jealousy heats my back. I sit up straighter, pushing my jealousy away so you do not see it.
“Hey,” she says to us with an American accent.
You look up at her and grin, your eyes sparkling. “Hey,” you say, the English word both familiar on your tongue and deliciously new to the context of ordering food in Paris. You order in English.
The waitress turns to me. Although I am devout to speaking French to the French, speaking French now would feel unnatural. I follow your lead and order in English. Our orders noted, the pretty waitress glides away.
“I was going to speak in French, but after she said ‘Hey,’ I couldn’t help myself. It sounded so familiar.” You gesture with your hand to your ear and then toward where she was standing.
“It just made more sense to speak in English. It’s what the French do,” I shrug.
Our burgers and milkshakes are soon set before us. They look as perfect and scrumptious as food does in magazine editorial. Our hamburgers are layered with crisp lettuce leaves, fleshy tomato slices, and juicy meat enclosed between plump, warm buns. The French fries are medium-thick and our strawberry milkshakes are cotton candy pink.
You take a sip of your milkshake and your cheeks flush a pale pink, your eyebrows rising for an instant in delighted surprise. “That’s the best milkshake I’ve ever tasted!”
I’m glad you like it so much.” I clasp my fingers around my own glass and take a long sip, savoring the sweet, creamy drink.
Between mouthfuls, we turn our gaze on the rest of the restaurant. The other diners sit paired in couples, their lips pursued slightly while conversing in French. You look up at the flags and grin. “Look at all the American flags.”
I am delighted my prediction was correct. “I saw those flags and I knew you were going to say something about them. And there, you did!” Feeling coy and romantic, and not caring at all that what I am about to say is a cliché, I add, “I know you too well.”
“You do,” you say, rounding your lips over the “o.” You meet my gaze and I feel as though our souls are pouring out toward one another, the space between us a quickly filling reservoir. I restrain an overwhelming urge to crawl across the table and clasp your hips between my shaking thighs, place my hand beneath your rib ca
ge. My desire is so intense my thigh twitches involuntarily and my foot knocks against yours. The impact causes you to avert your eyes from mine. While you gather yourself, I take a huge bite of my burger.
“Is there anything you miss from the states?” you ask. “Besides your family and friends.”
I swallow. “No, not really. I mean, I miss my family and friends, of course, but nothing about the physical United States. New England is pretty. I’m more inclined to miss Paris, before I’ve even left!” I pause, preparing to turn the question on you. “Is there anything you miss from the States?”
“I miss my motorcycle. I miss teaching.” You pause for a moment. “Sometimes I want to teach the rest of my life, encourage my students to go to college. Even if I get just one or two to go to college, that’d be a huge accomplishment.” You sigh a little. “Sometimes I want to change the whole state of American education.”
Your last sentence makes me so giddy I want to do a happy dance, but I restrain myself. Since our first conversation at Versailles, I had hoped you would have within you a desire to reform education in America. You could not do it alone, but you have the passion, intelligence, knowledge, and charisma to spearhead a movement to make education in America equal for everyone. My belief that you could successfully do so is inexhaustible. I imagine myself as the woman at your side, giving you support and strength. To compliment your efforts, I would co-author with you a popular blog on education reform. We would be a power duo, an unstoppable force of good. Together, we could change the world.
But my imagination is sappy and unrealistic. You may never become the man I believe you could become. After all, I could spearhead a movement to reform education myself, if it were my ambition. Yet I am convinced that we could accomplish more together. Even if it were true that we could accomplish more together, it is a waste of time to fantasize about it. I refocus my mind on our present conversation. “So what is so great about America? What does America have that you couldn’t get here?”
“America has open, never-ending roads, especially out West . . .” While you wax on about America, I consider America’s highways in a new light. Previously, I took them for granted as boring and seemingly endless paths from one place to another. Now I see them also as rife with open-ended possibilities, a unique and integral aspect of the American landscape.
You stare at our waitress as she glides about the diner. “She has that girl-next-door thing. She’s so beautiful.” You look back at me. “Do you find her attractive?”
I shake my head, “No.” If you like her, I do not. “There are hundreds of girls just like her. She’s pretty, but she’s nothing special.”
“I’m going to write a poem about her when I get home.”
Jealousy grips my system with its thorny claws, inspiring in me an uncomfortably sinister desire to tear our waitress to shreds. To calm myself, I think of how my friends have told me that jealousy is proof you care. More concerning to me, though, is her ordinariness. She’s just another pretty girl. I’m pretty too, as well as intelligent, eager to learn, well-traveled, ambitious, loving, and funny. I could have someone better than you, yet despite your flaws, I adore you endlessly. I am amazing and you don’t see it. I can do no more than hope you will one day see my positive qualities as I see yours.
As we move toward the door to leave we catch one last sight of our waitress. I know that the more you know about her the faster your attraction to her will fade. “Why don’t you talk to her?”
“I prefer to admire from afar.” You are smart enough to know that your fantasy of her is priceless. It allows you to imagine her not as she is but as however you like her to be. The preservation of your fantasy is what will allow you to write a poem about her.
We stroll along Saint-Germain until our paths fork. You press your chest to mine, the fuzzy wool fibers of your sweater nuzzling my bare upper chest. As you pull away, your scruffy facial hair grazes my neck and your warm breath brushes against my cheeks. My pulse thumps like a rabbit foot and thick shots of hot honeysuckle race through my veins. For a second I think you might lean in to kiss me, but you step back.
You ask me to call you when I get home rather than text, since your last cell phone bill was over ninety euros from texting. I know you only ask because you want to avoid another big bill, but the added intimacy of hearing your voice before I go to bed thrills me.
Inside my box, I stand at my window and call you.
“Thank you for calling,” you say.
“No problem,” I say.
You pause. “It’s so nice to hear your voice. Instead of the texts.”
“Hah. It’s nice to hear your voice, too.”
We chat about our final tomorrow and wish each other a good night.
CHAPTER 18
She is building a crystalline forest. It cannot shatter. She won’t let it.
Unlike for our midterm, I don’t study to get an A so I can impress you. I want an A purely for myself.
In our classroom at AUP, I slide into a seat in front of you. I listen to you energetically turning around in your seat behind me as you address anyone who pays you attention. The version of yourself that you present to nearly everyone else—obnoxious, immature, cocky—is not a version of you I find at all attractive. It annoys me. I quietly prepare my desk for the exam.
Professor passes out the teacher evaluation forms and steps out of the room. Since the form is anonymous, I decide to write down what you had suggested I tell Professor—how brilliant and excellent a teacher I think he is and that if he weren’t married, I would marry him. I still don’t think it’s appropriate to convey this to Professor, even anonymously. He’ll almost certainly know I wrote it. I’m risking my entire relationship with him, maybe even undermining his work as a teacher, by writing all this. Your insistence that my sentiments should be perceived by Professor as flattering impels me to do it.
You lean forward, and I can feel your heat at my back. I think you might say something I want to hear, but instead you hand your teacher evaluation form to me and say, “Hey, you wanna bring this to the front of the room?”
I am disgusted you would take advantage of my feelings for you just so I’ll do some menial task for you. I look down at your form, which hardly has anything written on it. “No, you do it. And you barely wrote anything on it!”
“Yeah, I don’t think these things are very important.”
“But you’re a teacher! You should think these things are more important than anyone.”
You shrug and strut casually past me, your sandals shuffling across the floor, carrying your form to the table at the front of the room.
One of our classmates brings the evaluations to the registrar’s and Professor returns to the classroom.
Before we officially begin the final, I recall I can’t make it to see the latest Harry Potter film with you and Lady this afternoon as we had planned. Also, I want to see the film with just you. I lean back and whisper to you, “Hey, do you mind if we don’t see Harry Potter today with Lady? I have a huge paper I still need to finish writing. Can we go tomorrow instead?”
You nod, “Sure.”
The classroom settles as we prepare to answer complex questions about the various roles of art in modernity. I carefully construct my essays, drawing on my knowledge from class, fashion magazines, and the other art history courses I’ve taken.
I edit my exam and hand it in to Professor, leaving you writing away at your desk. Unlike at our midterm, I no longer think you are a more dedicated student than I am. You just take longer than me to complete your exam.
CHAPTER 19
She is soaring on felicity’s gilded wings, inscribing lunar lullabies in the shadows of your shoulder blades
I wake up earlier than usual, refreshed and energized. During all the time prior to our meeting, I have slept in as late as possible, struggling to persuade myself to put my feet on the floor and subsequently pushing myself to accomplish the day’s goals. Now, even the most mundane tas
ks are pleasurable. I hum my way through the winding streets of Paris, blissfully content with the whole world while slipping postcards in the mail, dropping all my borrowed books off at the library, and collecting mail from my university mailbox.
My final errand for the morning is to slide my final paper for my Literary Theory course under my professor’s door. In doing so, I complete my undergraduate studies. I beam, ecstatic to have successfully completed my degree.
Outside of the building I stand next to one of the green benches, too excited to sit, and call you. Before we see Harry Potter this afternoon, I know you have to stop by AUP to pick up your laptop. I called at the perfect time, you say. You’ll be here soon.
I focus my gaze on the ivy-lined path where you will soon appear. I could read a book or listen to music but the anticipation consumes me. Several other young men and women pass by and I mistake each of them for you until their features reveal themselves to be so unlike yours, with a slide of long dark hair, a scruffy beard, or ice-blue eyes. I am so enraptured by the allure of seeing you imminently that I am hallucinating your image onto other people, just because they are also human.
While I wait, I count the seconds that turn to impossibly long minutes. Finally, I hear the sound of your sandals shuffling along the sidewalk. As you walk toward me the air around you appears to shimmer and all the bells in my body sound. A three-quarter smile brightens your face upon seeing me and happiness radiates from my soul. You are my beloved king, the path a runway for your supermodel saunter.
Without even greeting you, I blurt out, “I just turned in my last papers!”
“So you’re officially graduated?” you ask. I nod, grinning. You grin back, mirroring my happiness. “Does it feel good?”
“It feels wonderful.” Although I would never admit it aloud, part of my happiness is attributed to sharing this moment with you first—before I even share it with my family.