Anna and the French Kiss

  “Come here.” I sit him on the floor in front of my bed and grab a towel. I rub it through his dark hair. “You’ll catch a cold.”

  “That’s a myth, you know.” But he doesn’t stop me. After a minute or two, he gives a small sigh, some kind of release. I work slowly, methodically. “So where are we going?” he asks when I finish. His hair is still damp, and a few curls are forming.

  “You have great hair,” I say, resisting the urge to finger-comb it.

  He snorts.

  “I’m serious. I’m sure people tell you all the time, but it’s really good hair.”

  I can’t see his expression, but his voice grows quiet. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” I say with formality. “And I’m not sure where we’re going. I thought we’d just leave and . . . we’ll know when we get there.”

  “What?” he asks. “No plan? No minute-by-minute itinerary?”

  I wallop the back of his head with the towel. “Careful. I’ll make one.”

  “God, no. Anything but that.” I think he’s serious until he turns around with half a grin on his face. I swat him again, but truthfully, I’m so relieved for that half grin that I could cry. It’s more than I’ve seen in weeks.

  Focus, Anna. “Shoes. I need shoes.” I throw on my sneakers and grab my winter coat, hat, and gloves. “Where’s your hat?”

  He squints at me. “Mer? Is that you? Do I need my scarf? Will it be cold, Mummy?”

  “Fine, freeze to death. See if I care.” But he pulls his knitted stocking cap out of his coat pocket and yanks it over his hair.This time his grin is full and dazzling, and it catches me off guard. My heart stops.

  I stare until his smile drops, and he looks at me questioningly.

  This time, it’s my voice that’s grown quiet. “Let’s go.”

  chapter nineteen

  There it is! That’s my plan.”

  St. Clair follows my gaze to the massive dome.The violet gray sky, the same sky Paris has seen every day since the temperature dropped, has subdued it, stripped away its golden gleam, but I am no less intrigued.

  “The Panthéon?” he asks warily.

  “You know, I’ve been here three months, and I still have no idea what it is.” I jump into the crosswalk leading toward the gigantic structure.

  He shrugs. “It’s a pantheon.”

  I stop to glare, and he pushes me forward so I’m not run over by a blue tourist bus. “Oh, right. A pantheon. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  St. Clair glances at me from the corner of his eyes and smiles. “A pantheon means it’s a place for tombs—of famous people, people important to the nation.”

  “Is that all?” I’m sort of disappointed. It looks like it should’ve at least crowned a few kings or something.

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “I mean, there are tombs and monuments everywhere here. What’s different about this one?” We climb the steps, and the full height of the approaching columns is overwhelming. I’ve never been this close.

  “I don’t know. Nothing, I suppose. It’s a bit second rate, anyway.”

  “Second rate? You’ve gotta be kidding.” Now I’m offended. I like the Panthéon. No, I LOVE the Panthéon. “Who’s buried here?” I demand.

  “Er. Rousseau, Marie Curie, Louis Braille, Victor Hugo—”

  “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame guy?”

  “The very one. Voltaire. Dumas. Zola.”

  “Wow. See? You can’t say that’s not impressive.” I recognize the names, even if I don’t know what they all did.

  “I didn’t.” He reaches for his wallet and pays our admission charge. I try to get it—since it was my idea in the first place—but he insists. “Happy Thanksgiving,” he says, handing me my ticket. “Let’s see some dead people.”

  We’re greeted by an unimaginable number of domes and columns and arches. Everything is huge and round. Enormous frescoes of saints, warriors, and angels are painted across the walls. We stroll across the marble in awed silence, except for when he points out someone important like Joan of Arc or Saint Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris. According to him, Saint Geneviève saved the city from famine. I think she was a real person, but I’m too shy to ask. When I’m with him, I’m always aware of how much I don’t know.

  A swinging brass sphere hangs from the highest point in the center dome. Okay, now I can’t help it. “What’s that?”

  St. Clair shrugs and looks around for a sign.

  “I’m shocked. I thought you knew everything.”

  He finds one. “Foucault’s pendulum. Oh. Sure.” He looks up in admiration.

  The sign is written in French, so I wait for his explanation. It doesn’t come. “Yes?”

  St. Clair points at the ring of measurements on the floor. “It’s a demonstration of the earth’s rotation. See? The plane of the pendulum’s swing rotates every hour. You know, it’s funny,” he says, looking all the way up at the ceiling, “but the experiment didn’t have to be this big to prove his point.”

  “How French.”

  He smiles. “Come on, let’s see the crypt.”

  “Crypt?” I freeze. “Like, a crypt crypt?”

  “Where’d you think the dead bodies were?”

  I cough. “Right. Sure. The crypt. Let’s go.”

  “Unless you’re scared.”

  “I didn’t have a problem at the cemetery, did I?” He stiffens, and I’m mortified. I can’t believe I brought up Père-Lachaise. Distraction. Quick, I need a distraction! I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. “Race you!” And I run toward the closest crypt entrance. My pounding feet echo throughout the building, and the tourists are all staring.

  I. Am. Going. To. Die. Of. Embarrassment.

  And then—he shoots past me. I laugh in surprise and pick up speed. We’re neck and neck, almost there, when an angry guard leaps in front of us. I trip over St. Clair trying to stop. He steadies me as the guard shouts at us in French. My cheeks redden, but before I can try to apologize, St. Clair does it for us. The guard softens and lets us go after a minute of gentle scolding.

  It is like Père-Lachaise again. St. Clair is practically strutting.

  “You get away with everything.”

  He laughs. He doesn’t argue, because he knows it’s true. But his mood changes the moment the stairs come into view. The spiral staircase down to the crypt is steep and narrow. My irritation is replaced by worry when I see the terror in his eyes. I’d forgotten about his fear of heights.

  “You know . . . I don’t really wanna see the crypt,” I say.

  St. Clair shoots me a look, and I shut my mouth. Determined, he grips the rough stone wall and moves slowly downward. Step. Step. Step. It’s not a long staircase, but the process is excruciating. At last we reach the bottom, and an impatient herd of tourists stampedes out behind us. I start to apologize—it was so stupid to bring him here—but he talks over me. “It’s bigger than I thought. The crypt.” His voice is strained and rushed. He won’t look at me.

  Deflection. Okay. I take his cue. “You know,” I say carefully, “I just heard someone say that the crypt covers the entire area underneath the building. I was picturing endless catacombs decorated with bones, but this isn’t so bad.”

  “No skulls or femurs, at least.” A fake laugh.

  In fact, the crypt is well lit. It’s freezing down here, but it’s also clean and sparse and white. Not exactly a dungeon. But St. Clair is still agitated and embarrassed. I lunge toward a statue. “Hey, look! Is that Voltaire?”

  We move on through the hallways. I’m surprised by how bare everything is.There’s a lot of empty space, room for future tombs. After exploring for a while, St. Clair relaxes again, and we talk about little things, like the test last week in calculus and the peculiar leather jacket Steve Carver has been wearing lately.We haven’t had a normal conversation in weeks. It almost feels like it did . . . before. And then we hear a grating American voice behind us. “Don’t walk behind him.We’ll be st
uck here all day.”

  St. Clair tenses.

  “He shoulda stayed home if he was so afraid of a couple stairs.”

  I start to spin around, but St. Clair grips my arm. “Don’t. He’s not worth it.” He steers me into the next hallway, and I’m trying to read a name chiseled into the wall, but I’m so furious that I’m seeing spots. St. Clair is rigid. I have to do something.

  I squint at the name until it comes into focus. “Emily Zola. That’s only the second woman I’ve seen down here. What’s up with that?”

  But before St. Clair can answer, the grating voice says, “It’s Émile.” We turn around to find a smug guy in a Euro Disney sweatshirt. “Émile Zola is a man.”

  My face burns. I reach for St. Clair’s arm to pull us away again, but St. Clair is already in his face. “Émile Zola was a man,” he corrects. “And you’re an arse. Why don’t you mind your own bloody business and leave her alone!”

  Leave her alone, alone, alone! His shout echoes through the crypt. Euro Disney, startled by the outburst, backs into his wife, who yelps. Everyone else stares, mouths open. St. Clair yanks my hand and drags me to the stairs, and I’m nervous, so scared of what will happen. Adrenaline carries him an entire spiral up, but then it’s as if his body has realized what’s happening, and he abruptly halts and dangerously sways backward.

  I steady him from behind. “I’m here.”

  He squeezes my fingers in a death grip. I gently march him upward until we’re back under the domes and columns and arches, the open space of the main floor. St. Clair lets go of me and collapses onto the closest bench. He hangs his head, like he’s about to be sick. I wait for him to speak.

  He doesn’t.

  I sit on the bench beside him. It’s a memorial for Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who wrote The Little Prince. He died in a plane crash, so I suppose there aren’t any remains for a tomb downstairs. I watch people take pictures of the frescoes. I watch the guard who yelled at us earlier. I don’t watch St. Clair.

  At last, he raises his head. His voice is calm. “Shall we look for a turkey dinner?”

  It takes hours of examining menus before we find something suitable.The search turns into a game, a quest, something to lose ourselves in.We need to forget the man in the crypt.We need to forget that we aren’t home.

  When we finally discover a restaurant advertising an “American Thanksgiving Dinner,” we whoop, and I perform a victory dance. The maître d’ is alarmed by our enthusiasm but seats us anyway. “Brilliant,” St. Clair says when the main course arrives. He raises his glass of sparkling water and smiles. “To the successful locating of a proper turkey dinner in Paris.”

  I smile back. “To your mom.”

  His smile falters for a moment, and then is replaced with one that’s softer. “To Mum.” We clink glasses.

  “So, um.You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but how’s she doing?” The words spill from my mouth before I can stop them. “Is the radiation therapy making her tired? Is she eating enough? I read that if you don’t put on lotion every night, you can get burns, and I was just wondering ...” I trail off, seeing his expression. It’s as if I’ve sprouted tusks. “I’m sorry. I’m being nosy, I’ll shut—”

  “No,” he interrupts. “It’s not that. It’s just . . . you’re the first person who’s known any of that. How . . . how did ...?”

  “Oh. Um. I was just worried, so I did some research. You know, so I’d . . . know,” I finish lamely.

  He’s quiet for a moment. “Thank you.”

  I look down at the napkin in my lap. “It’s nothing—”

  “No, it is something. A big something. When I try talking to Ellie about it, she has no bloody clue—” He cuts himself off, as if he’s said too much. “Anyway. Thank you.”

  I meet his gaze again, and he stares back in wonder. “You’re welcome,” I say.

  We spend the rest of dinner talking about his mother. And when we leave the restaurant, we keep talking about her. We walk along the Seine. The moon is full and the lamps are on, and he talks until it’s as if he weighs an entire person lighter.

  He stops. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  I breathe deeply, inhaling the pleasant river smell. “I’m glad you did.”

  We’re at the street we’d turn on to go back to the dorm. He looks down it hesitantly, and then blurts, “Let’s see a film. I don’t want to go back yet.”

  He doesn’t have to ask me twice. We find a theater showing a new release, a slacker comedy from the States, and stay for the double feature. I don’t remember the last time I laughed so hard, and beside me, St. Clair laughs even harder. It’s two in the morning before we get back to the dorm. The front desk is empty, and Nate’s light is off.

  “I think we’re the only ones in the building,” he says.

  “Then no one will mind when I do this!” I jump onto the desk and parade back and forth. St. Clair belts out a song, and I shimmy to the sound of his voice. When he finishes, I bow with a grand flourish.

  “Quick!” he says.

  “What?” I hop off the desk. Is Nate here? Did he see?

  But St. Clair runs to the stairwell. He throws open the door and screams. The echo makes us both jump, and then together we scream again at the top of our lungs. It’s exhilarating. St. Clair chases me to the elevator, and we ride it to the rooftop. He hangs back but laughs as I spit off the side, trying to hit a lingerie advertisement. The wind is fierce, and my aim is off, so I race back down two flights of stairs. Our staircase is wide and steady, so he’s only a few feet behind me. We reach his floor.

  “Well,” he says. Our conversation halts for the first time in hours.

  I look past him. “Um. Good night.”

  “See you tomorrow? Late breakfast at the crêperie?”

  “That’d be nice.”

  “Unless—” he cuts himself off.

  Unless what? He’s hesitant, changed his mind. The moment passes. I give him one more questioning look, but he turns away.

  “Okay.” It’s hard to keep the disappointment out of my voice. “See you in the morning.” I take the steps down and glance back. He’s staring at me. I lift my hand and wave. He’s oddly statuesque. I push through the door to my floor, shaking my head. I don’t understand why things always go from perfect to weird with us. It’s like we’re incapable of normal human interaction. Forget about it, Anna.

  The stairwell door bursts open.

  My heart stops.

  St. Clair looks nervous. “It’s been a good day. This was the first good day I’ve had in ages.” He walks slowly toward me. “I don’t want it to end. I don’t want to be alone right now.”

  “Uh.” I can’t breathe.

  He stops before me, scanning my face. “Would it be okay if I stayed with you? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable—”

  “No! I mean ...” My head swims. I can hardly think straight. “Yes.Yes, of course, it’s okay.”

  St. Clair is still for a moment. And then he nods.

  I pull off my necklace and insert my key into the lock. He waits behind me. My hand shakes as I open the door.

  chapter twenty

  St. Clair is sitting on my floor. He tosses his boots across my room, and they hit my door with a loud smack. It’s the first noise either of us has made since coming in here.

  “Sorry.” He’s embarrassed. “Where shall I put those?”

  But before I can reply, he’s blabbering. “Ellie thinks I ought to go to San Francisco. I’ve almost bought the plane ticket loads of times, but it’s not what Mum would want. If my father doesn’t want it, she doesn’t want it. It’d put too much additional stress on the situation.”

  I’m startled by the outburst.

  “Sometimes I wonder if she—Ellie—if she, you know ...” His voice grows quiet. “Wants me gone.”

  He never talks about his girlfriend. Why now? I can’t believe I have to defend her. I line his boots beside my door to avoid looking at him. ??
?She’s probably just tired of seeing you miserable. Like we all are,” I add. “I’m sure . . . I’m sure she’s as crazy about you as ever.”

  “Hmm.” He watches me put away my own shoes and empty the contents of my pockets. “What about you?” he asks, after a minute.

  “What about me?”

  St. Clair examines his watch. “Sideburns. You’ll be seeing him next month.”

  He’s reestablishing . . . what? The boundary line? That he’s taken, and I’m spoken for? Except I’m not. Not really.

  But I can’t bear to say this now that he’s mentioned Ellie. “Yeah, I can’t wait to see him again. He’s a funny guy, you’d like him. I’m gonna see his band play at Christmas. Toph’s a great guy, you’d really like him. Oh. I already said that, didn’t I? But you would. He’s really . . . funny.”

  Shut up, Anna. Shut. Up.

  St. Clair unbuckles and rebuckles and unbuckles his watchband.

  “I’m beat,” I say.And it’s the truth.As always, our conversation has exhausted me. I crawl into bed and wonder what he’ll do. Lie on my floor? Go back to his room? But he places his watch on my desk and climbs onto my bed. He slides up next to me. He’s on top of the covers, and I’m underneath. We’re still fully dressed, minus our shoes, and the whole situation is beyond awkward.

  He hops up. I’m sure he’s about to leave, and I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed, but . . . he flips off my light. My room is pitch-black. He shuffles back toward my bed and smacks into it.

  “Oof,” he says.

  “Hey, there’s a bed there.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “No problem.”

  “It’s freezing in here. Do you have a fan on or something?”

  “It’s the wind. My window won’t shut all the way. I have a towel stuffed under it, but it doesn’t really help.”

  He pats his way around the bed and slides back in. “Ow,” he says.

  “Yes?”

  “My belt. Would it be weird ...”

  I’m thankful he can’t see me blush. “Of course not.” And I listen to the slap of leather as he pulls it out of his belt loops. He lays it gently on my hardwood floor.