buddies” after that, a horrible thought in Jeremy’s mind. Unlike most men he knows, Jeremy has always wanted love with his sex. When he knows someone in bed, he wants to know her out of bed. And when he loves her in bed, well, the rest should follow.
And here is his daughter-at twenty, beautiful and lost-looking for sex. Jeremy knows that men prey on this kind of girl and it terrifies him.
“I’m going to meet some friends,” Lindy says, “at the Champ de Mars. They’re having a picnic.”
Jeremy remembers his imagined picnic with Chantal. Now his feet press up against the wedges of cheese, tomatoes, olives. What happens next? he wonders. When Lindy leaves?
She stands up, leans over and pecks Jeremy on both cheeks.
Lindy dashes off. Did she say something rude? Should he even ask for a translation?
“She is a beautiful girl,” Chantal says.
“Thank you,” Jeremy says foolishly. For of course he has nothing to do with her beauty. “I’m sorry if-”
“No, it was fine,” Chantal says.
He doesn’t even know what he was going to apologize for, and now it has passed. Lindy is gone. The teacups are empty. The girls have eaten their cookies. Even, somehow, the bill is paid.
Chantal has led them down to the Seine and while they stroll through the Musee de la Sculpture en Plein Air, a garden with modern sculptures dotting the landscape, they don’t talk about art but about love.
“Earlier this morning I was thinking about Lindy’s first love,” Jeremy says. “A river guide in Costa Rica.”
“How romantic,” Chantal tells him.
“Oh, it turned from romance to heartbreak in a day,” he explains. His mind jumps to sex with Dana last night. Pain, love, lust-sometimes it’s a package deal.
“So tell me,” Chantal says, “about your first love.”
“My first love?”
“Please. I’d like to hear the story.”
And so he tells her, in easy French, since all the words slip off his tongue-yes, it’s the language of romance- while they linger by the river. A photographer is taking pictures of an Asian couple in their wedding clothes. A little girl in a pink dress with a bouquet of flowers hides behind the bride. It’s a charming scene, with the stone walkway, the languid river, Notre Dame looming beyond them on the Ile de la Cite. The air is thick with humidity and time seems to have slowed down.
“I met a girl at summer camp. I was thirteen. She was sixteen and much, much taller than I, with hair that fell to her waist. She wore it in one long braid that lay on her back like a thick rope. She was a swimmer and I would watch her race across our New Hampshire lake, and I thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world.”
“Was it love? Or-” Chantal says the words:
“What does that mean?” he asks.
“When you yearn for someone. They’re unattainable. But you can’t get them out of your mind.”
“A crush,” Jeremy translates. “So when does a crush become love? When you attain this girl?”
Chantal shakes her head with a sly smile on her face. “One should never attain the object of a crush.”
“Why not?”
“You will be disappointed. A crush is about desire. It’s not about love.”
“But how do you know until you’ve tried?” Jeremy asks.
The bride and bridegroom lean toward each other and when their lips touch, the photographer snaps a photo and the flower girl giggles.
“I know a place for our picnic,” Chantal says.
They walk along the Seine, leaving the photo shoot behind. Jeremy tells her his story.
“One day, toward the end of the summer, a girl came up to me and told me that Sarah liked me. Sarah, the object of my affection. I was out of my mind with excitement. I planned to kiss her that night. I wouldn’t talk about it with the other boys in my bunk who boasted about their meager fumblings in the dark-this was love of a higher order. I had waited for weeks, watching her, learning her every stroke. I knew how many twists on her braid, I noticed when a new bathing suit didn’t match up with her tan line.”
“A romantic,” Chantal says.
“A fool,” Jeremy tells her.
“We’re almost there,” Chantal says.
The stone walkway follows the edge of the Seine. Their bags bump against their legs as they walk. Chantal’s pace quickens. This is not the way they usually stroll-slowly, effortlessly, meandering around corners. He lengthens his stride to keep up.
The river is high from days of summer rain. Someone at dinner last night said that there was a threat of flooding, and the conversation turned to Hurricane Katrina. At home, Jeremy had been quick to accuse the Bush administration of doing everything wrong, but here, among Europeans, he is oddly defensive. He found himself arguing that it is impossible to protect a city built below sea level, and he thought to himself, even as the words slipped from his mouth: What am I saying? Do I even believe this?
Later, on the walk home, before the fight, he told Dana, “I’m not sure what that was all about. With these foreigners I find myself rethinking everything I took for granted.”
“In Paris, it’s still embarrassing to be an American,” she said.
“That’s not it,” Jeremy said. “I mean, I was thinking about it in a brand-new way. What I said made sense to me. I wasn’t just making excuses.”
She wrapped her arm around his waist and pressed her head into his shoulder. “I’m tired,” she said. “Sometimes it’s hard to be so sure of myself all the time.”
“You?” he said, and kissed the top of her head.
“Especially me,” she told him.
The water of the Seine licks the side of this low road. Jeremy doesn’t see anything ahead that might provide a spot for a picnic, if that’s what Chantal is looking for. Halfway across the river, on the Ile Saint-Louis, long stretches of riverbank provide sunbathers a place to stretch out. Jeremy glances at the darkening sky. He imagines the almost naked boys who are lying on the grass at the edge of the island running for cover in a thunderous moment.
But Chantal is not headed for the bridge, which is on the higher road. And Jeremy doesn’t ask her plan-that has been one of the delights of his days with Chantal. He gives it all up to her. She leads the way in conversation and in their peregrinations through the city. So why is he feeling anxious all of a sudden? It’s not as if they’re lost. It’s impossible to imagine that they’ve run out of things to talk about or sights to see.
But there’s nothing ahead, just a long stretch of road. They walk, quickly, Chantal’s low heels clicking on the cobblestones.
Jeremy remembers the story he was telling-the girl at summer camp-and feels a rush of relief. They are in the middle of a conversation. He can find his way back after all.
“That night, at camp-” he says, but Chantal interrupts him, something she never does.
“Wait a moment,” she tells him. “We’re almost there. Save your wonderful story.”
Jeremy worries-it is not a wonderful story. It is barely a story at all. The girl didn’t show up, the other girls teased him, and he avoided the lake for the rest of the summer. Why did he choose to tell this story at all? First love? He could have talked about Dana, because of course, even though there were plenty of girlfriends along the way, she was the first to claim his heart.
She has stopped walking and stands there, her arms open. Jeremy looks around. There is no patch of grass, no tree to sit beneath, nothing that bears noticing.
Until Chantal steps toward the river and then keeps going, down a few steep stairs and onto a short plank.
