Two Americans in Paris

Two Americans in Paris

Julia Ritt

Copyright © 2015

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

TWO AMERICANS IN PARIS

by

Julia Ritt

She is corseted in her demeanor but there’s something about her begging to be unlaced

For a long time, I have been ok with being single in the City of Love. I have always imagined that romantic relationships in Paris should be full of glamorous drama and intensity like in movies and books. I haven’t wanted to accept romance that’s any less exciting than that. It’s not realistic, I know that—it’s just a fantasy I find very alluring.                           

But after two years at The American University of Paris, I have one summer left before I graduate. The air is warm outside the window of my tiny room and the late morning sunlight is golden against the elegant stone buildings winding toward the towers of Notre Dame. I have treasured every moment of my time here. The only experience I haven’t yet had here is the blissful, ecstatic love I see shared between couples kissing as if for the first time on every street corner. Each time I see them I tell myself that I don’t want that, not really, but the truth is: I do. Even if I find myself in a relationship full of imperfections, as relationships often are, that’s ok with me. I’m ready for anything. Or so I tell myself.

On my way to my art history class,
I squeeze between the sink and doorway to remove myself from my room and run my hand down the wrought-iron railing of my building’s spiral staircase. My patent red ballet flats are bright against the charcoal sidewalk.
Well-dressed women and men stroll by me on the street and the sun casts a stripe of dazzling white against Invalides’ gold dome. Terracotta chimneys peek up from the slate gray roofs like a field of tulips set against the bright blue stretch of sky.

I pass a couple of lovers with their hands in each other’s back pockets. The guy is tall with a thick mop of brown hair and a strong, solid build. He catches me checking him out and softly kisses his girlfriend, claiming her as his. I run my fingers through my short brown hair, an anxiety-driven habit of mine. Romance has never come easily to me.

Our class is meeting at the Invalides station, where we’ll take the RER C to Versailles. On my way to the end of the platform I bump into Professor. I took his Intro. to Western Art  class last semester and loved his brilliant, funny lectures so much I’m taking his Art History through Paris Museums class this semester. He’s also young and handsome, with a dark, scruffy beard and a uniform of skinny-but-never-tight jeans and t-shirts. We greet each other and walk toward the other students together as the train trundles into the station, huffing and snorting like a herd of wild mares.

Inside the car we choose our seats strategically. It’s been several weeks since the start of the course, and I haven’t had much of a chance to talk to the other students. This is a perfect opportunity to get to know some of them. I settle myself across from a curvy blonde girl and you. I haven’t thought much about you before, but now that I’m directly across from you, I realize you’re quite good-looking. Your hair is thick and amber-brown, your body slender but strong in its breadth. The irises of your eyes are like hot chestnuts and your upper lip and jawline are dressed in auburn bristles.

The blonde girl holds her cell phone to her ear as she chats with our classmate who missed the train. “Well, then just keep drinking,” she advises our classmate. She snaps her phone shut and explains, “She just missed the train, so now she’s on Champ de Mars drinking wine, and she has a midterm in two hours. Crazy Brazilian girl.”

You half-smile and add, “A few days ago I was at a bar and this guy just came up to me and punched me in the face. He just punched me in the face, so I punched back. My immediate reaction was to punch back. It’s what you do if you’re punched. You punch back.” You hold your hands in a loose fist, flashing the little banana-shaped cuts on your knuckles. “I was so confused and I couldn’t really understand what they were saying. The bartender translated a little for me. Apparently the guy thought I was someone else . . . he was very apologetic. He bought me a drink.”

“It’s nice that he bought you a drink, at least,” I say.

“It was.” You have our attention now—mostly mine. You tell us a more pleasant story about your weekend excursion with a group of girls to Cassis in the South of France. “We jumped into the water from a cliff, hung out on the beach. It was nice.” You nod lightly. I find myself a little envious of the young, scantily clad women in the company of your trig, handsome body. “I wanted to sleep on the beach, but the girls wanted to get a hotel room.”

I would have slept outside with you beneath the stars, our belongings snuggled between our chests. “How long did it take to get there?” I might like to go there one day, perhaps with you.

“About two hours. It’s pretty amazing. You can just hop on a train and be far away in two hours.” You wait for the subject to catch on, but none of us respond, so you switch the subject. “Earlier today I saw these signs for the Ballet Russes.”

“The Russian Ballet? That’s probably really expensive,” I say.

“Yeah, but they are the best in the world.”

“They probably are, but there’s also Opéra and Bastille, they put on ballets and plays,” I tell you. “Much cheaper. You can go for as little as five euros. Opéra is a big, beautiful building. It’s a thing, to see a play at Opéra while you’re in Paris.”

You nod and press your lips together, your caramel irises gleaming like liquid candy.

At the Tour Eiffel stop, a middle-aged man with a paunch steps up and plays his accordion to a tune from
Amélie
. Our classmates excitedly turn around in their seats to watch him. You half-smile at first, but your expression quickly turns to annoyance as you realize that the accordion portrayed as charming and bohemian in films is, in reality, squeaky and loud.

The accordion player invites us to fill his cup with money, leaving a moment of silence behind. You pull a small book from your backpack and begin to read it. I note that the title is
Gasoline
and the interior pages are printed with short lines. I watch as you engage with the poems, unable to believe you love to read so much that you take the opportunity to do so even in between conversations with your peers. I always have a book in my purse—today it’s Proust’s
Within a Budding Grove
—but I’m not committed enough to reading to do so while around my classmates. After you have read no more than a few pages, the noise of chatter makes it impossible to focus, so you put the book away. You instead tell us another story.

“I hitchhiked across America last summer—Philadelphia to San Francisco.” You pause, savoring the pleasure you find in having the attention of those seated around you. “You meet a lot of really interesting people. Mostly lonely truck drivers looking for somebody to talk to. I spent awhile in Indianapolis, though . . . nobody in Indianapolis wanted to pick up a hitch hiker.” You cast your gaze downward briefly, recalling your frustration. “I slept on benches for three days. It wasn’t too bad. When I got to San Francisco, I got a job washing dishes for two weeks so I could buy a ticket back, ’cause I didn’t want to do all of that again. And then I came back.” You shrug your shoulders, as if your cross-country journey was no big deal.

Inspired by your story, I imagine rolling down America’s expansive, never-ending roads, watching trees merge one into the other from the car window. It occurs to me this view would also have been Lolita’s when Humbert took her on a road trip across America, and I wonder if you’ve ever read
Lolita
.

The train rolls to a stop and as we descend onto the platform, I say to you, “You know your cross-country trip reminds me of
Lolita
—the road trip part. Have you read it?”

You nod, “Yes. It’s one of my favorite novels.”

Rushes of tingly ecstasy spread through my bloodstream. To know that you love to read fine literature is, for me, an instant turn-on. Our surroundings all but disappear from my field of vision, my attention fully absorbed in our conversation.

“Do you think Humbert’s love was returned?” I ask.

“It’s never made clear. I think so, though.”

“Me too,” I say, though I don’t actually think so. Humbert robbed Lolita of her childhood and ruined her life. How could she have loved him, even if she did feel a perverted bond to him? “It’s so beautiful—the la-language,” I stutter, my nerves causing my breath to catch in my throat.

“There’s this one part where it just says ‘No . . . ’” You hold the “o” in “no,” the implications of uncontrollable desire wound through your voice.

My attraction to you is increasing with every sentence you say to me. Heat is pulsing from my neck and my words are garbled on my tongue like rubber bands. I decide to speak minimally until I am calmer, saying only what is necessary to keep the conversation flowing.

“Do you have a favorite novel?” I ask.

“Well, I can’t choose just one.”

“Well, sah-some of your favorites, then.”

“William Borrough’s
Naked Lunch
, is one, Jack Kerouac’s
On the Road
. . .”

“
Naked Lunch
sounds familiar,” although as soon as I have said so, I realize I am probably thinking of Manet’s
Lunch on the Grass
.

“Yeah, it’s great. It’s this crazy, awful, drug nightmare.”

Your description makes it clear to me I haven’t yet read this book, although your interest in it automatically makes me interested as well. I make a mental note to seek it out.

“So what is your major?” I ask.

“English, but I’m in this independent study program. I also teach and minor in education. I teach kids in the poorer areas of Philadelphia where they need good teachers. All the good teachers go to private schools,” you scoff. “Those kids don’t really need the good teachers.”

“That sounds nice.” I’m glad to hear you’re passionate about education, although I believe
all
students need good teachers, regardless of their social class.

“It is. I would ride my motorcycle to school and walk into the classroom, throw my aviator sunglasses onto my desk, put my feet up, and say ‘Welcome, class.’” You smile, relishing your image as a cool young mentor for your students, but your face turns serious as you consider your next thought. “You’re this random white guy and they don’t take you seriously. They look at you and they don’t care what you have to say about literature. So one day I went off on this spiel about how literature is about the human condition and each and every one of them is a human and can benefit from reading.” You stand up straighter as you speak, gesturing in front of you as to your students, reliving for my benefit the moment that caused a momentous and positive change in your classroom. “It was intense, epic. They listened to me after that.”

“That’s so amae-amazing that you can do that.”

We turn down a colonnade of trees, the leaves’ shadows casting patterns across our shoes, aligned in stride.

Bubbles of desire are flooding my abdomen with an ache both familiar and excitingly new. I haven’t spoken to a man my age worth speaking to in an unbelievably long time. My words are stuck in my mouth, tripping on the way out. You must think I’m a bumbling idiot. That won’t do at all. I must calm my overloaded nerves, gather myself together. You’re clearly interested in speaking to me and if you’ve noticed that I’ve been stuttering you haven’t shown it. My mind is filling with plans of everything we could do, everywhere we could go, everything we could discuss, all the food we could eat, all the drinks we could drink, all the love we could make. In the space of a moment you have become the heart of my summer in Paris.

“All the girls were in love with me.” You look to me with a flirtatious gleam in your eyes.

“Hah, I bet they were!”

At the crosswalk bright light cuts across our eyes. Cars zip by and masses of tourists wander toward Le Château de Versailles whose long limbs stretch down the courtyard like a giant Egyptian cat. We pass through the iron gates tipped with gold fleur-de-lis and peddlers come into view, arrayed across Versailles’ large cobblestones like darts on a dashboard. “One euro! Postcard! Postcard!” they shout. Chintzy key chains dangle from their jacket linings.

Turning the same sort of questions I asked you on me, you ask, “How is the literature program at AUP?”

“It’s pretty good. The Comparative Literature program is one of the better programs here, which is part of the reason I’m in it. I mean, you take what’s good. Plus, being in Paris is totally worth all the student loan debt. My dad tried pointing out that Harvard’s tuition is the same as AUP’s. I told him that Harvard’s not in Paris.”

“Hah. Are you worried about paying the loans back?”

“All the time. When I get too stressed out about the loans, whether I’ll find a job in publishing when I’m done with grad school, and so on, I have my mom put my cat, Athena, on Skype. Watching my mom pet my cat always calms me down.” Just the thought of my mink-soft Siamese back in Ohio is soothing. “What’s the independent study part of your program like?”

“For the first half, I have to read two hundred novels—the English canon,” you say. “Well, they call it that, but there’s Russian Lit. and stuff in there too. Then I meet with my professors for lunch to discuss what I’ve read and I write papers. I take regular classes too. For the second half I have to write a novel. But I’m also taking regular classes.”