She said nothing.
“Relax,” I said. “We’re out of the world for forty-eight hours. Let’s enjoy ourselves. Worrying isn’t going to get us anywhere. We’re in Paris.”
She nodded. I watched her face. Watched her try to get past it. Her eyes were expressive in the candlelight. It was like she had troubles in front of her, maybe piled high into stacks, like cartons. I saw her shoulder her way around them, to the quiet place in the back of the closet.
“Drink your wine,” I said. “Have fun.”
My hand was resting on the table. She reached out and squeezed it and picked up her glass.
“We’ll always have North Carolina,” she said.
We ordered three courses each off the fixed-price page of the menu. Then we took three hours to eat them. We kept the conversation away from work. We talked about personal things instead. She asked me about my family. I told her a little about Joe, and not much about my mother. She told me about her folks, and her brothers and sisters, and enough cousins that I lost track about who was who. Mostly I watched her face in the candlelight. Her skin had a copper tone mixed behind pure ebony black. Her eyes were like coal. Her jaw was delicate, like fine china. She looked impossibly small and gentle, for a soldier. But then I remembered her sharpshooter badges. More than I had.
“Am I going to meet your mom?” she said.
“If you want to,” I said. “But she’s very sick.”
“Not just a broken leg?”
I shook my head.
“She has cancer,” I said.
“Is it bad?”
“As bad as it gets.”
Summer nodded. “I figured it had to be something like that. You’ve been upset ever since you came over here the first time.”
“Have I?”
“It’s bound to bother you.”
I nodded in turn. “More than I thought it would.”
“Don’t you like her?”
“I like her fine. But, you know, nobody lives forever. Conceptually these things don’t come as a surprise.”
“I should probably stay away. It wouldn’t be appropriate if I came. You should go with Joe. Just the two of you.”
“She likes meeting new people.”
“She might not be feeling good.”
“We should wait and see. Maybe she’ll want to go out for lunch.”
“How does she look?”
“Terrible,” I said.
“Then she won’t want to meet new people.”
We sat in silence for a spell. Our waiter brought the check. We counted our cash and paid half each and left a decent tip. We held hands all the way back to the hotel. It felt like the obvious thing to do. We were alone together in a sea of troubles, some of them shared, some of them private. The guy with the top hat opened the door for us and wished us
I knew it wouldn’t be right. But we were already AWOL. We were already in all kinds of deep shit. It would be comfort and consolation, apart from whatever else it would be.
“What time in the morning?” she said.
“Early for me,” I said. “I have to be at the airport at six.”
“I’ll come with you. Keep you company.”
“Thanks.”
“My pleasure,” she said.
We stood there.
“We’ll have to get up about four,” she said.
“I guess,” I said. “About four.”
We stood there.
“Good night then, I guess,” she said.
“Sleep well,” I said.
I turned right. Didn’t look back. I heard her door open and close a second after mine.
It was eleven o’clock. I went to bed but I didn’t sleep. I just lay there and stared at the ceiling for an hour. There was city light coming in the window. It was cold and yellow and hazy. I could see the pulses from the Eiffel Tower’s party lights. They flashed gold, on and off, somewhere between fast and slow and relentless. They changed the pattern on the plaster above my head, once a second. I heard the sound of brakes on a distant street, and the yap of a small dog, and lonely footsteps far below my window, and the beep of a faraway horn. Then the city went quiet and silence crowded in on me. It howled all around me, like a siren. I raised my wrist. Checked my watch. It was midnight. I dropped my wrist back down on the bed and was hit by a wave of loneliness so bad it left me breathless.
I put the light on and rolled over to the phone. There were instructions printed on a little plate below the dial buttons.
“You awake?” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
“Want company?”
“Yes,” she said.
I pulled my jeans and sweatshirt on and walked barefoot down the corridor. Knocked at her door. She opened it and reached out her hand and pulled me inside. She was still fully dressed. Still in her skirt and sweater. She kissed me hard at the door and I kissed her back, harder. The door swung shut behind us. I heard the hiss of its closer and the click of its latch. We headed for the bed.
She wore dark red underwear. It was made of silk, or satin. I could smell her perfume everywhere. It was in the room and on her body. She was tiny and delicate and quick and strong. The same city light was coming in the window. Now it bathed me in warmth. Gave me energy. I could see the Eiffel Tower’s lights on her ceiling. We matched our rhythm to their rhythm, slow, fast, relentless. Afterward we turned away from them and lay like spoons, burned out and breathing hard, close but not speaking, like we weren’t sure exactly what we had done.
I slept an hour and woke up in the same position. I had a strong sensation of something lost and something gained, but I couldn’t explain either feeling. Summer stayed asleep. She was nestled solidly into the curve of my body. She smelled good. She felt warm. She felt lithe and strong and peaceful. She was breathing slow. My left arm was under her shoulders and my right arm was draped across her waist. Her hand was cupped in mine, half-open, half-curled.
I turned my head and watched the play of light on the ceiling. I heard the faint noise of a motorbike maybe a mile away, on the other side of the Arc de Triomphe. I heard a dog bark in the distance. Other than that the city was silent. Two million people were asleep. Joe was in the air, somewhere on the Great Circle route, maybe closing in on Iceland. I couldn’t picture my mother. I closed my eyes. Tried to sleep again.
