Life, Only Better

  I asked myself why I’d given it up. They were nice, my tales of trailers—and they saved me the shame of adding my idiotic efforts to all the ones art had already inspired. Why was I selling yo-yos instead? Why was I calling myself Choubi_angel and writing moronic comments punctuated by ridiculous emojis?

  Why hadn’t I gone yet to visit the stables of the Het Loo palace in Apeldoorn, to admire Queen Wilhelmina’s pretty little watercolor paint box and her white funeral carriage? Why :-( :-/ :’-(?

  I learned to live without calls or texts, without messages or voicemail. Without the security blanket of a “yes” or “no.”

  I learned to deal with the ennui of my day-to-day existence, and even to find a kind of pleasure in it. Before you knew it I’d be making jam and embroidering. I was distracted. I rambled around. I thought about . . . well, about this guy who’d gone away for the weekend with a little bit of me slung over his shoulder. I wondered how old he was; if he was introverted, well-educated, curious; if he’d tried other numbers before my father’s; if he’d scrolled through my photos, his thumb stroking the screen of my phone. I wondered if he’d flipped through my address book, looked at the head shot on my ID card or the one on my driver’s license, where I still had a shaved head (and was dressed entirely in funereal black, of course)—or the one on my student ID, where I looked like I was on my way to take communion at La Madeleine. I wondered if he’d found my Hello Kitty condoms, my under-eye concealer, my four-leaf clover, my secrets . . .

  Was he dissecting the contents of my bag right then, even as I thought about him? And the ten thousand euros; had he counted it? Was he planning on helping himself to a commission for services rendered? Would he pretend to be surprised? What’s what? There was an envelope, you say? Don’t ask me, I didn’t touch anything. I expected that, actually, because if he’d found my bag right after I left the bar, why hadn’t he caught up with me in the street? I hadn’t been walking very fast, after all; I’d had two mojitos in my belly and my whole life ahead of me . . .

  Why?

  Was he slow? Preoccupied? Some kind of weirdo? And where had he been sitting? Why hadn’t I noticed him—after all, I loved nothing better than to people-watch while slowly getting tipsy . . .

  A long, quiet, restless Easter weekend in an apartment I used to love but couldn’t bear to live in anymore, hours spent in silence and reconciliation while waiting for a rendezvous I was both obsessed with and indifferent to.

  It was the first time in years that I’d dreamed of my mom, seen her with her hair down and heard her voice. That gift was worth ten thousand euros and just as many tears, and if I’d known, I would have lost her bag a long time ago . . .

  12.

  Of course, looking back I can see that the trouble started on Tuesday at around . . . one o’clock, I’d say.

  I could ask myself, innocent flower that I am, why I spent so much time making myself pretty, creaming and gelling and spraying and powdering. Why I put on a dress, and then changed into trousers, and then back into a dress again, and why I made sure to have smooth skin and bare arms and red lips that day.

  Yes, Mathilde, why?

  Tyranny. The tyranny of the embittered. I was pretty because I was cheerful, and I was cheerful because I was happy. It didn’t actually matter that much that my guardian angel was a man (as far as I knew) (a guy, Pauline had repeated; “a guy found your bag in the bar where you’d been”); you could have told me an old lady had found it, or the runtiest little weakling, and I’d have gotten ready with the same care. It wasn’t him I was honoring by going into the city in a short little skirt; it was life. Life and its rare goodness, and the spring, and reunions. I was pretty because I was grateful.

  Mathilde . . .

  Okay—fine, yes, I was also pretty because it was a date. Made over the telephone, yes, and self-serving, yes, but serendipitous.

  It was a date that had fallen out of the sky, with a human being who was immediately desirable—a date in Paris, near the huge fairy-tale hall built by Emperor Napoleon I, at teatime, for reasons of integrity.

  I was pretty because it was a hell of a lot more exciting than some online date; I mean, shit!

  There, now you know everything, Doctor.

  I stopped to buy flowers near the Parc Monceau. I put them in my bike basket and made up for the delay by pedaling faster.

  A bunch of pink peonies for the stranger who had put me back on track.

  13.

  Okay, okay, okay . . . so according to my thirdhand information—it was like a game of telephone, the most random and least reliable method of communication on earth—he, the guy, hadn’t said “at five o’clock”; he’d said “at around five o’clock.” I tried to keep that in mind, since it was already past 5:30 and my flowers were starting to wilt.

  I didn’t recognize any of the servers, and I couldn’t keep myself from coming up with a worst-case scenario: no one was ever going to come; it was all a practical joke, a hoax; some pervert’s revenge or maybe a new attempt by my dad to humiliate me. Or the evil stepsisters’ first act of retaliation.

  Someone was making a fool out of me. I was being punished for being so frivolous and then so gullible. All my castles in the sky were being smashed. Everything was rigged against me. Again. Someone had left a negative comment on my wall. I’d been tagged. My website and forums had been hacked. Some fucking troll had taken my bag and my IDs and my things and my roommates’ cash, and my last few illusions about life along with it. Or he . . .

  I tried to calm down. Maybe he was just late. Or there’d just been a misunderstanding, and we were supposed to meet on Wednesday instead of Tuesday. Or maybe Tuesday of next week?

  I sat down anyway, in the same place as the other day, and behaved myself. At first I acted natural—as in, I read a romance novel and waited for some intruder to startle me out of my reverie with an “Ahem,” embarrassed but there. But I couldn’t stick to my Sleeping Beauty role; I found it impossible to sit still, and stared desperately at the front door looking ugly and Photoshopped and pathetic.

  I jumped every time someone passed me, and sighed when they ignored me. Fifteen more minutes and I’d try to call Pauline again. Not my dad, though. He could go to hell.

  One waiter who was a little more attentive than the others finally noticed my frenetic fidgeting.

  “Are you looking for the restrooms?”

  “N—no,” I babbled. “I’m meeting . . . I mean, I’m waiting for someone who . . . ”

  “The purse, right?”

  I could have kissed the big idiot right on the mouth. He must have sensed that, because he looked slightly uncomfortable.

  “Um . . . he . . . he left already, right?”

  He leaned against a column to my left, bent forward slightly, and addressed an invisible bench seat hidden on the other side. “Hey, Romeo. Wake up; your chick is here.”

  I turned very slowly. Not because I was intimidated, but because I was horribly embarrassed—mortified, even—by the realization that he had been so close to me for so long.

  He must have been sitting in the same spot the other time too, hidden in the shadows. That seemed kind of uncool, actually. It’s bad manners to hide from ladies, young man.

  I turned very slowly because it suddenly occurred to me what he might have—must have—overheard the other day. My meeting with my roommate; her “discreet” envelope; her complaints about my big mouth. The way I’d politely reassured her and then made fun of her two minutes later, imitating her on the phone to Marion. And . . . oh God . . . the telephone. All the hookups and one-night stands and the snickering about crabs. And . . . my panties. And the blow jobs. Oh God. Help.

  I turned, gritting my teeth and looking around for some hole I could crawl into and hide before he woke all the way up.

  But he was still asleep. Wait, no; he wasn’t. Because he was smiling.

&nbs
p; He was smiling with his eyes closed. Like a cat. A big tomcat, up to no good and happy about it.

  The Cheshire Cat, straight out of Mathilde in Fuckupland.

  “See? He was right here! Well, I’ll leave you two alone, okay?” said the waiter, edging away.

  Gulp.

  14.

  After a few seconds that seemed to last forever (but which gave me enough time to think Well shit foiled again he’s ugly and fat he has a cowlick he’s dressed like a redneck he shaved just before coming here and he cut himself twice he bites his nails he smells weird and I don’t see my bag), he opened his eyes.

  He looked at me in a really strange way, as if he were taking aim at me, or secretly challenging me. Then he rubbed his eyes, pulled out an eyelash, and closed his eyes again.

  For fuck’s sake, I thought. He isn’t just ugly; he’s drunk too. Or he just smoked some pot. Yeah, that’s it. He’s totally stoned, the loser.

  I leaned over quietly to see if my bag was by his feet, in which case I would grab it and get the hell out of there as fast as I could, leaving him to his leafy pleasures. But no, nothing but a pair of filthy black loafers with round toes, like police shoes, and striped white gym socks.

  Oh, girlie.

  How have you sunk to this?

  Well, I wasn’t going to stick around to watch him crash out while I counted his scratches. I turned and picked up my book, waiting for my . . . what did I call him? “Unexpected”? “Heaven-sent”? . . . date to deign to acknowledge me.

  Ten minutes went by and I was still reading the same line of text.

  I must be losing my mind. What was I doing there? Who had I been waiting for? Who was this guy screwing around with me?

  I put down my book and picked up the flowers. I was out of there.

  “Mathilde?”

  Then, very distinctly:

  “Mathilde . . . Edmée . . . Renée . . . Françoise?”

  My ears pricked up. I quirked an eyebrow.

  “Can I buy you a drink, ladies?”

  A comedian. Just my luck.

  Well, at least I knew he’d actually had my ID in his hands. That was something, anyway.

  When I didn’t respond, he unzipped his jacket and I saw my bag against his chest. He didn’t say anything else; just put both hands flat on the table and stared at them, then lifted his chin and looked me straight in the eyes:

  “Sorry; I got up really early this morning. Are you coming?”

  15.

  I sat down across from him.

  We had a staring contest that lasted about a minute, and I lost. “Were you there on Friday?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “No.”

  “Did I wake you up?”

  “Are those flowers for me? That was nice of you.”

  He took the bouquet out of my hands and held out my bag in return. It was warm. I hugged it to my chest . . . and came alive again.

  My own instinct, and everything about him—his weight and his homely face and his smile, and the little cut that was like a brown comma just under his right ear, and his dumb sense of humor and the way he politely hid his yawns behind his big catcher’s mitt of a hand—told me, without a doubt, that he hadn’t stolen anything from me. And at the same time I was thinking that, I also realized that I wasn’t thinking about the envelope, but about all the rest. About me. My deeper self, my trust in mankind. All the punches I’d taken on the chin at an age people think of as innocent, which had shaken me up but not disfigured me.

  “What do you want to drink?”

  After he’d placed the order we stared at each other silently again like a couple of china figurines.

  If we’d been a couple of virginal Mormons having contact for the first time, it would have been positively torrid. After a moment I ventured, awkwardly:

  “Is your name really Romeo?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s Jean-Baptiste.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you disappointed?”

  “No.”

  Talk about snappy dialogue.

  I thought about paintings I’d seen of Saint Jean-Baptiste—or rather, of his head on a silver platter, and I saw him. All he was missing was a sprig of parsley in each nostril.

  The thought made crazy laughter bubble up inside me. I forced it down and managed to keep it to a mere smile—and not a moment too soon. The fact that such an ordinary guy had unsettled me this much annoyed me.

  “Are you so happy because you’ve got your bag back?”

  “Yes.” I kept smiling.

  Our drinks arrived; a tea for me (my good resolutions) and, for him, a double espresso into which he carefully stirred two or three lumps of sugar. Maybe four.

  “Do you need to build up your strength?”

  “Yeah.”

  We drank in silence.

  He looked at me.

  He looked at me for so long that it started to bother me.

  “Do I remind you of someone?”

  “Yeah.”

  Okay . . .

  Bloody hell, this date was a lot of work. And I didn’t particularly want to make conversation with him at all. I was uncomfortable; I felt like he was memorizing me, and his inappropriately studious expression made him look idiotic. I was actually starting to wonder if he might be a little . . . you know, rough around the edges. As in . . . delayed. Removed from the mold too soon. His mouth hung open slightly, and I expected him to start drooling any minute.

  God knows I tried, anyway—the air was crisp; Paris was big; the tourists were everywhere; the pigeons were flapping . . . I gave him plenty of decent opportunities to have a conversation, but he wasn’t even listening to me. He was lost in silent ecstasy somewhere, and I felt a little like the holy grotto of Lourdes, minus the Virgin and the rosary.

  Boy, good thing I’d put on my pretty lingerie, right?

  I don’t know what finally snapped him out of his daze, but all of a sudden he shook himself, glanced at his watch, and groped for his wallet.

  “I have to go.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was relieved. But then, I had to make sure I hadn’t been wrong. I love humanity and all, but I’m slightly careful anyway, just out of habit. He must have read my mind, because he looked at me differently just then, with a kind of . . . contempt.

  “See that briefcase?”

  I hadn’t noticed it actually, but sure enough, a slim, pale case stood next to his right leg.

  “Look.” He indicated a thin chain connecting the handle of the briefcase to one of his belt loops. “There’s nothing as valuable in there as what’s in your bag, but well, for me it’s worth a few months of my salary anyway . . . ”

  He was quiet. I thought he’d lost his train of thought somewhere along the way, and I was going to say something stupid to ease the tension, but then he said, very softly, fiddling with the chain’s links:

  “See, Mathilde . . . if you really care about something in life, do whatever it takes not to lose it.”

  Wait a minute . . . what kind of nutjob had I gotten myself mixed up with here? A lunatic? A preacher’s son? A Jehovah’s Witness disguised as a country bumpkin, with a briefcase stuffed with apocalyptic tracts and ridiculous prayers?

  Of course I was dying to know what he was carrying that was so precious, but knowing that would have been way too good for his ego, and . . . and why was he talking to me like we were best friends, anyway?

  “Can you guess what this is?”

  Oh God. Help. The game was on. Cape, accessories, and everything.

  “A pillow?”

  He didn’t laugh. Or maybe he hadn’t heard me. He put the briefcase on the table, twiddled a code, and turned it to face me, opening the lid.

&nb
sp; Now that, I hadn’t been expecting. He closed the case and stood up.

  How can I say this? That big, baby-faced guy with the cow-like expression and the limited vocabulary was walking around with a briefcase full of knives.

  He was Rambo. I just hadn’t recognized him.

  He was already at the bar, paying our tab.

  Christ. I got up too.

  All of this was well and good, but I wanted to count my damn money!

  He held the door open for me and blocked it just as I ducked under his arm. Not for long; half a second, or a quarter of a half-second; just long enough to pretend he’d tripped over his shoelaces and lost his balance and stumbled slightly against the nape of my neck. Barely. Hardly for a second. In the time it took me to be offended we were already outside. But I’d felt the lukewarm tip of his nose against the bone jutting out at the very top of my spine.

  I was too anxious to be done with the whole thing to bother telling him off, and disentangled myself quickly.

  No coy little games with a guy as gullible as this one. Good riddance to him and his fucking knives. Back to the jungle with you, Cheetah, bye-bye.

  Still, I didn’t want to leave him on a bad note. He’d never know it, but I owed him a lot.

  So buck up, little Madonna of the world’s losers; buck up. Say cheese to the nice man. A few nice last words to finish this up; it won’t kill you.

  “Your jacket,” I said. “It has an unusual scent.”

  “It’s deer. Deerskin.”