In the Bag (21 page)
As Solange spoke, Coco was letting herself in the apartment.
“Here,” I said, handing the phone to Coco. “Someone wants to say hello.”
I watched Coco talk on the phone. Her eyes looked tired. Sadder. Older. Something was definitely bothering her, but I didn’t dare ask without risking another meltdown.
While she talked to Solange, I lit candles in the living room and finished preparing our dinner: ratatouille crepes, flash-fried spinach, rocket greens salad, and half a baguette.
“Would you like a small glass of wine with dinner?” I asked Coco when she was off the phone. “There’s a bottle in the fridge that Solange left for us.”
“Mom, you know I don’t drink.”
“I know and I’m glad. But since you’re going off to college in the fall where students have been known to drink, I thought you might want a little taste of—”
“I
said
I don’t want any,” she snarled. Her moral smugness felt like a slap in the face.
“That’s fine,” I said. I poured myself a glass of wine, ate my dinner, and thought about Andrew.
He called for the third time at almost midnight. I took the phone back to the bedroom with me.
“I know it’s the height of rudeness to call this late,” he said. “But I have to tell you something, and you’re going to think I’m a complete idiot when you hear this.”
Oh God, here it comes. He’s married. Or he’s seeing someone else. Or he’s gay. Or he has herpes.
“Go on,” I said, closing the bedroom door and bracing for the worst. My chest was already tight. I felt a familiar anger rise up inside me.
“You know when we were talking earlier?” he said.
“Uh-huh.” I put my free hand on my heart to remind it to keep beating.
He paused. I could hear him breathing heavily. “About romance and . . . handwritten love notes and . . .” He paused again.
“Yes?” I said crisply. I hated my tone, but I could feel myself pulling away from him just by the hint of what was coming. I was an expert at walking away from things. People. Jobs. From any situation, really. I was already leaving him in my mind.
“Um, well, I wanted to, er, explain . . .” He was stumbling.
“Look,” I said, forcing myself to fake a smile so I didn’t sound as angry as I felt. “We don’t have to do this. It was great meeting you and spending the evening together, but it doesn’t have to be anything more than that.” I manufactured a light laugh. “You don’t have to
break up
with me, for God’s sake. We were never even together.”
“No,” he said. “Wait. Stop. I’m terrible at this.”
“Then just
tell
me what’s on your mind,” I snapped. “Top of mind, as the therapists say.”
“Okay then,” he said softly. “You. You’re on my mind. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”
“
Seriously?
” I felt my whole body relax.
“Yes,” he said. “And not only that, you’re gentle on my mind, too. Wait—is that too corny to say?”
“No.” I couldn’t help smiling, and this time it was real. My chest muscles relaxed. “So do you have to pay Jimmy Webb a royalty every time you filch one of his lines?”
Now it was his turn to laugh. “That’s a John Hartford song. And he’s dead.”
“Oh,” I said. “Too bad.”
“He was a St. Louis boy,” he said. “If ever you come to town, I’ll show you Hartford’s star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.”
“Maybe I’ll do that sometime.”
“I hope you will,” he said. “Good night, Daisy.”
“Good night, Andrew.”
I
slept till noon. I thought Dad would be pissed, but he wasn’t.
“Hey, buddy,” he said when I found him downstairs in the hotel restaurant. He was drinking coffee and reading the
International Herald Tribune
. “Sleep okay?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Great,” he answered, folding the paper. “Do you want to get something to eat here, or shall we get out in the real world?”
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care?” he asked. He was smiling with his mouth, but frowning with his eyebrows. “You
have
to care. That’s your job in life: to care about something. Or someone. That’s even better.”
He was sure in a banner mood.
“Let’s walk over to the Plaza Mayor,” Dad said.
“Okay.”
“And then we’ll hit the Prado,” Dad continued. “I’d like to see the Velázquez paintings. And you like the ones by Hieronymus Bosch, remember?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And then I thought, if you still wanted to, we could take another look at the postdigital show together,” Dad said. “I’d really like to hear your thoughts on the exhibit, especially the gaming installations.”
Gaming installations? What the hell was he talking about?
“Okay,” I said, nodding.
“And then,” Dad said, standing up from the table, “we’ll find a great place to have dinner. Maybe hear some music? That sound okay to you?”
“Sure,” I said.
Fine. Whatever.
I didn’t care one way or the other what we did.
“This’ll be great,” Dad said. “So why don’t you make a stop at the business center before we head out for the day, and then we’ll—”
“Not necessary,” I said.
Dad looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said with the certainty that comes with defeat. “There’s just . . . nothing there for me.”
M
om decided we should spend Thursday afternoon at the Rodin Museum.
“You’ll love this place,” she told me, all jolly and smiley, as we walked to the Metro. “It’s in a lovely old mansion where lots of nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists rented space to live and work.”
Who cared? Not me. I couldn’t wait to get back to Chicago. The trip had been such a disaster. It was actually my worst vacation ever.
I studied the people on the Metro. Two college-age girls in scarves were talking and laughing about something.
Annoying.
A woman was holding hands with a young boy who had green snot dripping from his nose.
Disgusting
. A couple of professional-looking men were on their way to work. One guy seemed to be checking out Mom.
One hundred percent gross!
I hated Paris. The smug people. The fussy food. The stinky Metro with its B.O.-y smells. And once we got to the Rodin Museum, I hated that, too.
“You’ll enjoy this,” Mom said, handing me a study guide to all the sculptures.
Well, I didn’t. And for the record, the sculpture I hated most was called
The Kiss
. It was a marble sculpture of a naked man and woman right as they’re about to kiss. I didn’t hate it because it made me think about Webb. We really didn’t kiss at all, other than the two little cheek pecks he gave me when we met at the train station. Those weren’t real kisses. It was just a corny greeting. And he didn’t kiss me
once
after that. So basically his desire for me evaporated, beginning the moment we met face-to-face.
The more I stared at
The Kiss,
the more I thought about Webb. The guy in Rodin’s sculpture is totally zoned out, like he’s about to kiss the woman, but he doesn’t want to. He’d rather be reading his book. I hated
The Kiss
and people who kissed and everything about kissing.
I even hated Rodin. I couldn’t believe the museum included sculptures by Camille Claudel. She was Rodin’s student and mistress, which just goes to prove that pervy teachers have been around forever. Actually, her work was pretty good. But Rodin apparently dumped her when she started going crazy. Her family eventually committed her to an insane asylum where she lived for decades before dying alone.
Quelle
charming.
The only thing I liked in the whole museum was a sculpture I found outside in the garden. It was called
Balzac
and was this huge creepy sculpture of some famously cranky writer I’d never heard of. According to the guide, when Rodin unveiled the sculpture in 1898, Parisians booed it. But I liked it. I especially liked Balzac’s sinister-looking Dracula cape and his crazy I-don’t-give-a-rat’s-ass-what-people-think-of-me expression. He looked like how I felt.
I sat in the grass staring at Mr. Balzac and wondering how long it’d be before my mom tried to commit me to an insane asylum. It would be completely typical of her, but also completely unfair. At least Camille Claudel got to have sex before she went to the loony bin and died.
Dr. Guillotin was right. A sharp blade to the neck could be an act of mercy.
W
ebb and I were back at the Crystal Palace when I felt my BlackBerry vibrate.
“I’m going to take this outside,” I told Webb. “I’ll meet you back in here.”
“Okay,” he said neutrally. He seemed bored by the show. Maybe seeing it once had been enough. I couldn’t disagree with him.
The call was from Solange.
“If you’re going to tell me there’s a problem with the exhibit,” I said, “I won’t believe you because I’m here now, and everything’s perfect.”
“Of course it is perfect,” she said. “Thanks to you. I am calling about something else. Something more important.” She sounded serious. “Daisy.”
I stopped breathing. “Is something wrong?”
“Wrong?” she said. “Just the opposite. You two are more
right
for each other than any couple I’ve ever seen in my life.”
I exhaled. “She seems great.”
“No, Andrew,” Solange corrected. “She does not
seem
great. She
is
great. Have you Googled her? Do you know what a
star
she is in Chicago? Wherever she works becomes the hottest restaurant in the city. She has the golden touch. She is incredible. Do you know how incredible she is?”
“I’m learning,” I said.
“Listen to me,” Solange pressed on. “Daisy has not shown this much interest in a man for years. I do not know what you said or did to her, and I do not want to know. But whatever it is, she is interested. And if you are interested—which you would have to be crazy
not
to be—you must act quickly. She rarely takes time off work. But she left her job last week and—”
“Yes, she told me about that—” I started to say.
“What she did
not
tell you is that she will have offers from ten restaurants waiting for her when she gets back to Chicago. And then she will throw herself into a new job, and work eighty hours a week, and—
pouf
—you will have missed your chance.”
“Are you saying I should—”
“What I am
saying,
” she said, as if speaking to a child, “is that if you want her, you must see her before she leaves Paris.”
“But I think she’s leaving Saturday. And I’m in Madrid till then.”
“I am not telling you how to do it,” Solange said impatiently. “I am just telling you what must be done.”
“Yes, boss,” I said, smiling. “Hey, I wanted to ask you about something. Did you know there were protesters on opening night?”
“Don’t get me started on that. When I found out about them, I tried to arrange a meeting with their leader—Abraham or Moses or Ezekiel. I was going to offer to curate a quilt show for them for free if they would promise
not
to make a scene at my show. I was prepared to create a website, a Facebook page, some YouTube videos of their women making quilts. Of course it is the women who do all the work. This is always the way in misogynist organizations.”