Just One Day

market.”

“How much do you think I’m worth?” I ask, amazed at how quickly fear has become fodder.

He looks me up and looks me down, appraising me. “Well, it would depend on various factors.”

“Like what?”

“Age. How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

He nods. “Measurements?”

“Five feet four. One hundred and fifteen pounds. I don’t know metric.”

“Any unusual body parts or scars or false limbs?”

“Does that matter?”

“Fetishists. They pay extra.”

“No, no prosthetic limbs or anything.” But then I remember my birthmark, which is ugly, almost like a scar, so I usually keep it hidden under my watch. But there’s something oddly tempting about exposing it, exposing me. So I slide my watch down. “I do have this.”

He takes it in, nodding his head. Then casually asks, “And are you a virgin?”

“Would that make me more or less valuable?”

“It all depends on the market.”

“You seem to know a lot about this.”

“I grew up in Amsterdam,” he says, like this explains it.

“So what am I worth?”

“You didn’t answer all the questions.”‘

I have the strangest sensation then, like I’m holding the belt to a bathrobe and I can tie it tighter—or let it drop. “No, I’m not. A virgin.”

He nods, stares in a way that unsettles me.

“I’m sure Boris will be disappointed,” I add.

“Who’s Boris?”

“The thuggish Ukrainian who’s going to do the dirty work. You were just the bait.”

Now he laughs, tilting his long neck back. When he comes up for air, he says, “I usually work with Bulgarians.”

“You tease all you want, but there was a thing on TV about it. And it’s not like I know you.”

He pauses, looks straight at me, then says: “Twenty. One point nine meters. Seventy-five kilos, last time I checked. This,” he points to a zigzag scar on his foot. Then he looks me dead in the eye. “And no.”

It takes me a minute to realize that he’s answering the same four questions he asked me. When I do, I feel a flush start to creep up my neck.

“Also, we had breakfast together. Usually the people I have breakfast with, I know very well.”

Now the flush tidal-waves into a full-on blush. I try to think of something quippy to say back. But it’s hard to be witty when someone is looking at you like that.

“Did you really believe I would leave you on the train?” he asks.

The question is oddly jarring after all that hilarity about black-market sex slavery. I think about it. Did I really think he’d do that?

“I don’t know,” I answer. “Maybe I was just having a minor panic because doing something impulsive like this, it’s not me.”

“Are you sure about that?” he asks. “You’re here, after all.”

“I’m here,” I repeat. And I am. Here. On my way to Paris. With him. I look at him. He’s got that half smile, as if there’s something about me that’s endlessly amusing. And maybe it’s that, or the rocking of the train, or the fact that I’ll never see him again after the one day, or maybe once you open the trapdoor of honesty, there’s no going back. Or maybe it’s just because I want to. But I let the robe drop to the floor. “I thought you got off the train because I was having a hard time believing you’d be on the train in the first place. With me. Without some ulterior motive.”

And this is the truth. Because I may be only eighteen, but it already seems pretty obvious that the world is divided into two groups: the doers and the watchers. The people things happen to and the rest of us, who just sort of plod on with things. The Lulus and the Allysons.

It never occurred to me that by pretending to be Lulu, I might slip into that other column, even for just a day.

I turn to Willem, to see what he’ll say to this, but before he responds, the train plunges into darkness as we enter the Channel Tunnel. According to the factoids I read, in less than twenty minutes, we will be in Calais and then, an hour later, Paris. But right now, I have a feeling that this train is not just delivering me to Paris, but to someplace entirely new.

Four

Paris

Immediately, there are problems. The luggage storage place in the basement of the train station is shuttered; the workers who run the X-ray machines the bags have to pass through before they go into storage are on strike. As a result, all the automated lockers large enough for my bag are full. Willem says there’s another station that’s not so far from here we might try, but if the baggage handlers are on strike, we might have the same problem there too.

“I can just drag it behind me. Or toss it into the Seine.” I’m joking, though there is something appealing about abandoning all vestiges of Allyson.

“I have a friend who works in a nightclub not so far from here. . . .” He reaches into his backpack and pulls out a battered leather notebook. I’m about to make a joke about it being his little black book, but then I see all the names and numbers and email addresses scrawled in there, and he adds, “She does the books, so she’s usually there in the afternoons,” and I realize that it actually is a little black book.

After finding the number he’s after, he pulls out an ancient cell phone, presses the power key a few times. “No battery. Does yours work?”

I shake my head. “It’s useless in Europe. Except as a camera.”

“We can walk. It’s close to here.”

We head back up the escalators. Before we get to the automatic doors, Willem turns to me and asks, “Are you ready for Paris?”

In all the stress of dealing with my luggage, I’d sort of forgotten that the point of all this was Paris. Suddenly, I’m a little nervous. “I hope so,” I say weakly.

We walk out the front of the train station and step into the shimmering heat. I squint, as if preparing for blinding disappointment. Because the truth of it is, so far on this tour, I’ve been let down by pretty much everywhere we went. Maybe I watch too many movies. In Rome, I really wanted an Audrey Hepburn Roman Holiday experience, but the Trevi Fountain was crowded, there was a McDonald’s at the base of the Spanish Steps, and the ruins smelled like cat pee because of all the strays. The same thing happened in Prague, where I’d been yearning for some of the bohemianism of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But no, there were no fabulous artists, no guys who looked remotely like a young Daniel Day-Lewis. I saw one mysterious-looking guy reading Sartre in a cafe, but then his cell phone rang and he started talking in a loud Texas twang.

And London. Melanie and I got ourselves completely lost on the Tube just so we could visit Notting Hill, but all we found was a fancy, expensive area full of upscale shops. No quaint bookstores, no groups of lovable friends I’d want to have dinner parties with. It seemed like there was a direct link between number of movies I’d seen about a city and the degree of my disappointment. And I’ve seen a lot of movies about Paris.

The Paris that greets me outside Gare du Nord is not the Paris of the movies. There’s no Eiffel Tower or