13 Little Blue Envelopes (18 page)

“We didn’t know,” Ginny said. “We only found out afterward.”

He sat down next to her again on the other page of the book, then swiveled around to have a better look at it.

“What do you think this is?” he asked. “Hang on.”

He leaned in close to the carved letters.

“Come have a look at this,” he said. “Turn around.”

Ginny turned herself around halfheartedly and looked down.

“What?” she said.

“It’s Shakespeare, in French. It’s bloody
Romeo and Juliet
.

And if I’m not mistaken . . .” He glanced over the writing for a moment. “I think this is part of the crypt scene, where they both die. I’m not sure if this is romantic or creepy.”

He picked at the carved letters with his finger.

“Why did you ask me how she died?” Ginny said.

“Don’t know,” he said, looking up. “It just seemed like a rele -

vant question. And I figured it had to be something . . . well . . .

long term. It seems like there was a lot of planning involved with the letters, the money. . . .”

“Did you only want to be around me because of the money?”

He sat up, crossed his legs, and turned to face her directly.

“What exactly does that mean?” he asked. “Is that all you think I was interested in?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I just asked you.”

“The money was nice,” he said. “I liked you because you were mad. And you’re pretty. And pretty sane for a mad person.”

185

On hearing the word
pretty
(twice, in fact), she drilled her eyes into the carvings. Keith reached over and lifted her chin. He gave her a long look, then slowly slipped his hand behind her neck. Ginny felt her eyes closing, a kind of melting all over her body, and then the sensation of being guided down into the fold of the book next to him. But this time, unlike with Beppe, it wasn’t unwelcome or weird. It was just warm.

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she noticed the light trying to seep in under her closed eyelids. A strong, tightly directed light.

“That can’t be good,” Keith said again, his mouth still pressed against Ginny’s.

A surge of panic ran through Ginny. She sat upright and straightened out her T-shirt. There was a figure of a man standing at the base of the monument. Because he had a flashlight trained on them, it was impossible to see who he was or what he looked like. He spoke to them quickly in French.

“No parlez.”
Keith scratched at his head.

The man turned the flashlight toward the ground. Once her eyes recovered from the glare, she saw that he was uniformed.

He beckoned them down. Keith threw Ginny a grin and slid down, seemingly delighted by the turn of events.

Ginny couldn’t move. She tried to dig her fingers into the stone, to clutch onto the shallow letters carved there. Her knees were frozen in a half bend. Maybe the policeman wouldn’t see her . . . maybe he was dumb or near blind, and he would think she was part of the sculpture.

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“Come on!” Keith said, much too cheerfully for her comfort.

He guided her down by the elbow and hoisted up her backpack.

The man walked them down a path, lighting the way with his flashlight. He made no attempts to speak. He led them to a small round guardhouse, where he picked up a walkie-talkie.

“Oh my God,” she said, burying her face in Keith’s chest to block out the view. “Oh my God. We’re getting arrested in France.”

“We can only hope,” Keith said.

Rapid French. She heard the walkie-talkie land on the desk and pages being flipped in a book. Jangle of keys. Electronic bleeping noise from some kind of sensor. Then they were moving again. She didn’t know where, because she decided just to keep her eyes shut and her body tucked in close to Keith’s.

There would be phone calls to New Jersey—maybe they would put her on a plane home right now. Or maybe she was going straight to a Parisian jail filled with French hookers with their cigarettes and fishnets and accordions.

Creaking noise. Movement. She clung tighter to Keith, digging her fingers into his arm.

They stopped.

“You can open your eyes now,” he said, carefully pulling her fingers back from his arm. “And I’d really like to keep this, if you don’t mind.”

187

The Best Hotel in Paris

They were on the sidewalk, and she was still gripping his arm, just not as tightly.

“We’re not arrested?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “It’s
Paris
. You think they arrest people for kissing? Were you worried?”

“A little!”

“Why?”

He seemed genuinely puzzled.

“Because we just got stopped by the French police for public indecency or desecrating graves or something!” she said. “We could have been
deported
.”

“Or asked to stop trespassing by the watchman.”

They walked along the quiet street of closed-up shops. A neon clock on the outside of a store told them it was just after eleven.

“Oh my God,” she said. “I missed curfew. I’m locked out.”

189

“Oh, dear . . .” He pulled a metro ticket from his pocket.

“Well, have a good night!”

“You’re leaving me?”

“Come on now,” he said, jauntily throwing his arm over her shoulders. “Would I do that to you?”

“Probably.”

“Come back with me if you want. There’s some room on the floor.”

The train to where Keith was staying was a suburban commuter train, and that train wasn’t running until the morning. He dug his hands into his pockets and smiled.

“So,” she said, “what now?”

“We walk around until we find somewhere to sit. And if we like the sitting place, we lie down.”

“On the street?”

“Preferably not
on
the street. Preferably on a bench. Maybe some grass. Although, this is Paris. No telling what the millions of little dogs have been doing in the grass. Bench, then. Railway stations are good. I know you said you aren’t rich, but now would be a good time to use your secret supply of cash and get us a room at the Ritz.”

“My aunt was broke here,” she said, almost defensively. “She lived on the floor of a café, behind the bar.”

“I was joking,” he said. “Relax.”

They walked along in silence until they stumbled on one of the more major parks—a real one this time.

“You know where I think we are?” Keith said. “The Tuileries.”

Normally, she would have been terrified to come into a park 190

at night, but after having just been caught by the police in a dark graveyard, the wide avenues and moonlit white fountains didn’t seem very alarming. It was hard to see where they were going, but they could follow the crunching noise their footsteps made in a long gravel path they were walking along.

They came to a large circle in the path. There was a fountain in the center and benches all around.

“Here we are,” Keith said. “Our hotel. I’ll have the bellman take up our bags.”

He dropped Ginny’s bag down on one of the benches and settled down with his head on one end of it.

“Down pillows,” he said. “Sign of quality.”

Ginny stretched out in the opposite direction. She stared up at the dark outline of the trees above them. They looked like shadowy hands reaching for the sky.

“Keith?” she asked.

“Yeah?”

“Just checking.”

“Still here, mad one.”

She grinned.

“Think we’re going to get mugged and killed?”

“Hope not.”

She wanted to ask something else, but before she could think of what it was, she was asleep.

Ginny heard a rustling by her head, but her body had no desire to move. She had to will her eyes to open. She glanced at her watch. It was ten. Ginny reached over to shake Keith by the shoulder. He had his arms folded and tucked in tight over his 191

chest, and he looked so content that she didn’t really want to wake him.

She pulled herself upright and looked around. People were milling around in the park now. No one seemed to pay them any notice. She quickly reached up and rubbed at her face, trying to get rid of any sleep or slobber. She checked her braids as well. They seemed more or less intact. Aside from the fact that she felt a little sticky (which she guessed was something you had to expect after sleeping on a bench all night, though she couldn’t really say why), she was in pretty good shape. Total cleanliness had become such a distant reality that her whole perspective on the matter had changed.

Some of the other people in the park were walking dogs or just strolling. No one seemed to care that they’d been using the bench for a bed.

Keith stirred and sat upright slowly.

“Right,” he said. “Where’s breakfast?”

They found a little café down the street that had a huge pile of pastries in the window. Soon, they were sitting in front of three cups of espresso (all Keith’s), a café au lait, and a basket of pain au chocolat.

When he wasn’t shoving pastry into his mouth, Keith filled Ginny in on all the news on the show.

“We’re just finishing up here,” he said, “then we’re off to Scotland as soon as we get back. Oh, blimey, that’s not the time.”

He stood up.

“Look,” he said, “sorry . . . but I have to get back. Have a show to do this afternoon. Drop me a line. Let me know how it’s going.”

192

He reached over and grabbed her hand, then produced a pen from his pocket.

“Might as well keep it up,” he said, writing a few words on the back of her hand. “My IM.”

“Okay,” she said, unable to hide the dropping in her voice.

He grabbed his bag and was out the door. Her body instantly felt heavy. She was alone again. Who even knew if she would ever go back to England and see Keith again?

Automatically, she reached down into the front pouch of the backpack and pulled out the envelopes. The rubber band was growing slack now.

The cartoon on #9 was drawn in dark ink. There was a small drawing of a girl with braids in a skirt in the lower-left corner.

Her shadow was long, running on a diagonal across the entire width of the envelope.

She pulled out her notebook.

July 7

10:14 a.m., café table, Paris

Mir,

Keith was HERE. In PARIS. And HE FOUND

ME. I know it sounds impossible, but it’s true, and it’s
really not that magical of an explanation. But what matters is that we made out in a graveyard and slept on a
park bench.

Just forget it. No way this can be explained on paper.

Will require telling in person with lots of gestures. Suffice it
to say that I totally love him, and he totally just walked out
of the door of the café and I may never see him again . . .

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and I know that sounds like a great movie ending, but in
life, it just sucks.

I want to follow him. I want to go where his show is
and just lie on the sidewalk outside so he can trip over me.

Okay? That’s how pathetic I am now. You should be
thrilled.

I know I have no right to whine. I know that you are
still in New Jersey. Please know that I think of you 75

percent of every single day.

Love,

Gin

194

#9

#9

Dear Ginny,

Know why I like the Netherlands so much?

Because some of it shouldn’t even be there.

True story. They constantly keep the sea at bay, and they create new land through drainage and moving dirt around. Water cuts all through the country—and canals slice through Amsterdam. It’s a miracle that they keep the place afloat.

You have to be pretty clever to pull that off.

Plus, it shows a lot of determination.

It’s not surprising that the Dutch also changed painting forever. Back in the 1600s, the Dutch could paint pictures that looked like photographs.

They captured light and movement in ways that had never been known before.

These are also people who like to sit around and smoke and drink coffee and dip fries in

mayonnaise.