Josie feels lighter on her feet. Somehow she has a second wind and the steps seem easier to scale. There is more air, a lighter breeze passing through. She loves the feeling of air on her neck.
“Today I will decide,” she calls up to Nico.
“About the tower?”
“About Provence,” she says. “Whether I will lose my mind completely and run off with my tutor.”
“This is a good place to lose one’s mind,” Nico tells her.
They met in a motel off Highway 101, a half hour from their homes. It was a little dangerous-Simon told her he didn’t have time for a long drive. He was getting sloppy. He had called her from his house a few days before, late at night, when his wife was sleeping. Ten minutes into the conversation, they heard a click and then Brady’s voice, “Hello? Dad? You on the phone?”
“I’ll be off in a second.”
“It’s one in the morning.”
“Brady, go back to bed. I’ll be up soon.”
“Who you talking to?”
“Germany. It’s a business call. Please don’t interrupt us any more than you have.”
Brady slammed the phone down.
This time Simon said, “I won’t know anyone there. It’s a dive. I need to see you.”
“I know people who stay at dives,” Josie said.
“Please, Josie. I have something to give you.”
She called off a meeting with the Honor Society, which was planning a graduation tea.
“We only have a week till graduation,” Alicia Loy whined. “We have to meet now.”
“Alicia, it’s a damn tea,” Josie said, regretting it the minute the words were out of her mouth. “I can’t do it. I told you. I have an emergency.”
She arrived at the motel. It was worse than a dive-it looked abandoned and ready for demolition. She parked next to Simon’s Audi and knocked on the only room that was lit.
He opened the door and pulled her in, closing the door behind her.
“Don’t breathe,” he said. “It smells like someone died in here.”
“How romantic.”
He held her pressed against him, her back to his chest. He lowered his head and kissed the top of her head.
“On the bed,” he whispered, “is a gift.”
She looked at the wool blanket, the gray sheets, the lumpy pillows. She could see where the bed sagged in the middle.
“Under the bed,” she whispered, “is a dead body.”
“It only smells that way,” Simon told her. “I checked.”
“I don’t see your gift.”
“It’s where gifts always are: under the pillow.”
She turned in his arms and kissed him.
“If I stay really close to you,” she murmured, “then I can only smell you. And you smell wonderful.”
“Go get your gift.”
She pulled back and looked at him. He looked boyish in his pleasure.
She walked to the bed and lifted the closest pillow. An envelope. She reached for it and glanced at the front. A drawing of the Eiffel Tower. A good drawing, with an artistic flair.
“Did you draw this?” she asked.
“One of my many talents. And you thought I was only a good lay.”
“Wow,” she said. “An artist.”
“A French artist.”
“Drawing the Eiffel Tower doesn’t make you a French artist, my love.”
“Open the envelope.”
She did. Inside were two business-class plane tickets to Paris.
She turned toward him, her eyes wide.
“You can do this?”
“I can do this.”
“How?”
“A business trip. It doesn’t matter. We leave the day school ends for you.”
“I have teacher meetings. No-yes. I’ll cancel everything. We’re going to Paris!”
She threw herself into his arms.
“You’ll help me find a hotel. I didn’t know which neighborhood, I didn’t know whether you would want something grand or something intimate. I want to know all these things about you. I want to eat in wonderful restaurants without worrying about who will see us.”
“I’ll teach you French. We’ll talk dirty in French in bed with each other.”
“I’m terrible at languages.”
“I’ll be your French tutor.”
“You don’t talk dirty in English.”
“That’s just because I can’t catch my breath.”
“Say ‘Undress me’ in French.”
“Say ‘Fuck me.’ ”
“Say ‘Devour me.’ ”
“Say ‘Don’t ever stop.’ ”
“Say you’ll come with me to Paris.”
Nico and Josie reach the top of the tower. Josie takes a deep breath and finally allows herself to look out. She was glad for the elevator ride, but she kept her eyes closed as she was whisked to the top.
Now she looks out, way out. The observation tower is crowded with people who all seem to be speaking at once-a jumble of languages and sounds. She walks slowly, unsteadily, to one window. She feels as if she’s not yet landed, that her legs need to keep climbing. She’s got sea legs, miles above the sea.
When she reaches the window she takes in a lungful of air and then holds it. It’s as if she doesn’t want to let go of what she sees. All of Paris is spread before her, from the heights of Sacre-Coeur, down along the banks of the Seine, out to the farthest reaches of each arrondissement. The clouds swirl around her, at eye level, and every once in a while the city disappears and she’s heaven-bound. Then a gust of wind pushes away the cloud and, like magic, Paris sits at her feet.
She looks straight out into the sky and sees what Simon must have seen in his small plane. Clouds, sky, space. It’s enormous and infinite and thrilling.
“Take me,” she had said when he told her how he loved to fly.
Now she knows. Now she has a piece of him that was missing. He loved this: the wild space of it, the changing possibility of clouds and sky, the power of height.
“Thank you,” she says to Nico when he comes to her side.
He stands next to her for a long while, both of them silent, both gazing out into the sky.
Josie remembers the weight of Simon’s body after they would make love. They would fall into each other, wrapping themselves as closely into each other’s bodies as possible. “Come closer,” he would say. “Yes,” she would say. After losing themselves during sex, they would land, and they needed to take away all the space between them.
Did he die in the sky? Did something happen in the plane while it flew through the sky? Is this what he saw before he died? Or did he come to earth and die when the plane crashed into the hard, unyielding ground? Did he and Brady know they were going to die? Did they hold each other and wait for it to happen?
