Two Americans in Paris (29 page)

I will think of Paris more fondly for having met you here and I will miss you in ways I cannot fathom. I hope you will miss me, too. Being the finest companion possible so that you would want to see me when we’re back in the States has been my goal since it became clear we probably wouldn’t have sex this summer. I am determined that our friendship continue until it becomes possible for us to share not only a bed but our lives.

Because I perceive the future of our friendship and the possibility of our future relationship to rest on whether you will miss me, I decide not to leave this to question. So I ask you, quickly and nervously, “Are you gonna miss me?”

You pause to think over it for a moment. “I will.” You nod lightly.

I am so relieved I make a joke of it. “I’ll miss you too. Probably.” I laugh.

“Probably. Hah.”

The 82 bus rolls up and we board. We sit quietly, absorbed in our thoughts as we watch the streets roll by.

In your bedroom, you lie on your bed and chat with Padd. I’m so enthralled by the spread of your body across your bed, I hardly hear a word you say.

Padd’s gibing you about your feminine taste in music catches my attention, though. It gives me an opportunity to come to your defense. “Doesn’t he have feminine taste in music?” Padd asks me.

You look to me to confirm your masculinity. Your taste in music spans many genres, from Taylor Swift to Jay-Z to Peter and the Wolf to Pulp to Regina Spektor. You especially love women’s voices, which increases your masculinity rather than detracting from it. Your love for women is unparalleled. “Feminine? No. You do like a lot of female singers, though.”

“Yeah, but not feminine.” You glare at Padd as if to say, “See, you’re wrong.”

You pull up The Eels’ song “My Beloved Monster” on YouTube. “Here, you’ll probably like this,” you say to me.

“I love this song!” I say.

You grin. “I thought you would.”

You scamper off to take your shower. While you are away, I play “My Beloved Monster” on repeat, feeling a part of you remains with me while you are nude and wet a couple yards away. Padd sniggers, sighs, and grunts every time I hit replay.

You return from the shower, your skin sparkling with moisture, your chest gloriously bare. This is the first time I have seen you shirtless and the sight makes my heart thump harder. Blood flows rapidly to my nether regions. I am hot and cannot stay in this room much longer without pouncing on you. In any case, I need a shower too. “Would you mind if I took a shower?”

“Go ahead,” you say.

“Which towel should I use?” I hope there will be no choice but to use yours.

“You could use my towel but I haven’t washed it in awhile. Since I’m leaving, I haven’t bothered. Here, I have this one too.” You hold out a pink and yellow towel.

I immediately recognize it. “Ew! We laid on the Champ de Mars on that on Bastille Day! I think I’ll just use your towel, if you don’t mind.”

“Okay. Just don’t smell it!”

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” I assure you, but I am lying. Of course I will smell your towel. I cannot resist the allure of inhaling the fresh palette of your odors.

There are two towels in the bathroom, one blue and one butter yellow. The blue one is dry and crusty-looking—definitely Padd’s. The soft, damp yellow one is yours. I remove my clothes and carefully hang them on the wall.

In the shower I wash off the sweat and dirt built up on my body during our afternoon outing. There’s no soap (only college boys would have no soap!), only tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner, so I use a little shampoo as soap.

I emerge from the shower feeling as slinky as a jungle cat. I grab a handful of your towel and nudge it from its hook. With trepidation I lift it to my nose and inhale deeply. The apples of my cheeks beam up. Your towel smells like you: pinched pine needles, baby powder, and spring soil after three days of rain. I pat my body dry, mingling your odors with mine. I tug my clothes on over my damp body. I feel so relaxed and I am aching for the opportunity to take my clothes back off in a room alone with you.

I sit on your bed and cross my legs in a futile attempt to contain my lust. You walk in from the kitchen and stand in profile in front of me, still enticingly shirtless. You arch your back into a seductive line. Your faded blue jeans gap several inches in front of your flat abdomen, exposing the navy blue waistband of your underwear. Milk is dripping like sap from my thighs. Resigned to my arousal, I uncross my legs and let the slippery lining of my skirt slide between my legs.

You lie at the head of your bed with your head against the wall. You stare at me with mischievously bright eyes. You know you are torturing me with your half-nudity and are thoroughly enjoying it.

While we chat, you add my name after a line of speech for emphasis. I adore hearing you say my name. You draw out the sounds, the mms humming in your vocal chords, like if my name were Em. I say your name back to you flirtatiously. I feel as though I am holding you in your entirety in mouth as I say your name, just as the Narrator of Proust’s
In Search of Lost Time
feels when he says the name of his first great romantic love, Gilberte.

Although you haven’t said anything directly that might suggest you have changed your mind about cheating on your girlfriend, you haven’t been this flirty with me since we first began spending a lot of time together. Perhaps there is yet hope you will want to come home with me tonight, or at least kiss me goodnight.

I lie back on your bed. A lump of clothing pokes into my back. “I’m lying on your stuff.” I reach beneath me to remove the lump. It’s a black t-shirt. I unfold it. The word “Paris” and the Eiffel Tower are scrawled across it in a swirl of neon yellow, green, and blue. I wrinkle my nose and look up at you, my eyebrows raised questioningly.

“It’s for my girlfriend. She likes touristy stuff. Because she’s an
idiot
,” you explain. “The other night I was Skypeing with her and she was mad that my status was about missing my best friend in Philly. She said ‘Why don’t you miss me?’ so I made the little kissy faces.” Even though I know you are physically intimate with your girlfriend, your reminding me of it is so painful that I wince, but you don’t appear to notice. You continue your story, “She said ‘You’re an asshole.’”

“You know, I haven’t heard you mention her in any other context than her being angry.”

“She is just an angry person,” you sigh.

I doubt your girlfriend is “just an angry person,” but do not press the subject further.

You put a shirt on and we return to the street, on our way to the métro.

I fondly think of your underwear, which I saw for the first time ten minutes ago. “I like your . . . boxers? Briefs?”

“Boxer-briefs.”

“Oh, boxer-briefs,” I picture them on you, then off.

I think forward to having drinks with Professor. I am so grateful we are meeting him one last time before we leave. He is so wise and our meeting him will create perfect bookends to our time in Paris, since we met in Professor’s class. “I’m so glad we’re meeting Professor for drinks. I’m sure he’s looking forward to it too. Professor likes me.”

“He may like you, but he loves me.”

“He loves me too!”

“He may love you, but he loves me more.” You grin cheekily.

I playfully punch your shoulder. “That is not true! He responds to my emails. Without my emails we wouldn’t be doing this.”

“But I’m the one who suggested it.”

“That’s true. We work well together.”

You switch the subject. “I think Professor’s going to bring his wife.”

“I don’t think so.” I shake my head. “Why do you think he would?”

“I don’t know. It just seems like he would.”

“Well, we’ll find out in about half an hour.”

Deep inside Le Marais, we walk down rue de Bretagne in the cloak of shimmering twilight. We soon come upon Le Progrès, the café where we are meeting Professor. Nearly all of the outdoor tables are filled with people enjoying drinks and chatting under the glow of soft yellow lamplight. The scene reminds me of Van Gogh’s
Café Terrace at Night
.

We quickly determine Professor isn’t here yet. We sit at a table with room for three. While we wait, we each order a beer, which are soon set before us. The beers are the color of citrine and have the lightness of Hoegaarden with an undertone of licorice-honey. Within a few minutes Professor arrives.

We greet him and as he settles himself at our table. He orders a beer for himself as well. His eyes glow brightly behind his red-rimmed glasses. It’s so good to see him. I like to think that one day you and I will be as well-read, witty, experienced, and well-traveled as him. I hope, too, that should we ever be married, our marriage will be as happy as I perceive Professor’s to be. “Thank you so much for meeting us.”

“Yes. I just got back from Switzerland, like, an hour ago,” he says.

“Wow. Thank you for meeting us so soon after your trip!” I say.

“It’s not a problem,” he assures us. “How was your day?”

“I tried to get him to go to Chartres with me.” I glare at you. “But he wanted to do ‘nothing, but something, but nothing.’ So we did that. We took the twenty-nine bus through Paris, sat in a garden.”

“Chartres is very beautiful,” Professor says.

“I tried to get him to go,” I repeat.

“She did try,” you sigh.

Professor redirects the conversation. “Has your French improved while you’ve been here?”

I nod, “It has.”

“How did you do it?” Professor asks.

“Just going out, being out more.” I motion my hand in a circle. “My work on the Beckett project—going to French libraries and really
using
my French. That really helped.”

“Is it good?” Professor asks you, referring to my French.

You nod. “I need her. Your eyes adjust their focus on me. “She translates everything for me.”

A new thought occurs to you and you look at Professor. “I was talking to my program coordinator who lives here. She just had a kid. She told me they have programs in France to exercise and tighten a woman’s vagina to help her get back into shape after she gives birth. Your eyes widen with excitement. “The couple is almost equally as important in France as the mother-child in the States.”

“Paris is a very couple-y city,” Professor says.

“I don’t know.” You shake your head. “I had a lot of alone time. I found it very nice to be alone in Paris. There’s a solitude to it.”

“But we’ve spent most of our free time together this past month. Like all of it!” My nostrils flare like a provoked bull. I made it my goal for us to spend as much time together as possible. I thought I was successful, but based on what you have just said, your memory of your summer here excludes me. You look at me with a single raised eyebrow as though you have no idea what I am referring to. My anger gathers like a fire ball in my core, emanating heat. My eyes narrow, my lips part slightly, and I stop breathing.

“Do we need a time-out?” Professor asks.

“No.” I release my fury for the sake of decency and steer the conversation in a different direction. I am upset with you for not recognizing how much time we have spent together, so the subject I choose is purposefully unflattering to you. “He thought you were going to bring your wife with you,” I say to Professor, my tone playful to lighten the mood.

“What, and play show and tell?” Professor laughs, gesturing to the area beside him where she might have sat.

You nod bashfully. “Yeah, I thought you might.” You quickly search for a new subject so as to not linger on your incorrect prediction. “I don’t think there’s more value in one job than another.”

Professor giggles. “Of course there’s more value in one job than another.”

“I would shovel shit as long as I had my free time and my books,” you say.

“But shoveling shit is very tiring,” I point out.

“That’s true,” you say.

“Have you shoveled shit?” I ask. You nod. “On my friend’s farm. We were ten or twelve.”

“I’ve shoveled shit. For my Horse Management class in high school it was part of the . . .” I pause, my buzzed mind searching for the correct word, but I only come up with “thing.”

“The experience?” Professor offers.

“Yes, the experience.”

Professor laughs, shaking his head. “I’ve never shoveled shit.”

We look down at our empty beer glasses. We decide to order a bottle of the rosé, which Professor says is very good here. It arrives in a bucket of glittering ice and Professor pours us each a glass. Its chill is refreshing and tastes delicious, with notes of cantaloupe and grapefruit, a hint of litchi.

You raise your finger to your lip and point to Professor. As you speak, your voice conveys clear indignance. “One night we were walking home and she comes out and says, ‘You know, if a girl is going home and it’s late, you should ask her to text you when she gets home so you know she got home alright.’”

I catch on that you are using Professor as a sounding-board for your questions and quandaries that he, our wise, hip teacher, may provide insight into. Before Professor can say anything, I respond to you with my own explanation. “Yes, but it gives you a social advantage to know to do that. My friend from New York would always ask me to call him or text him when I got home to make sure I had gotten home okay. It made me feel safe and cared for and the gesture was very simple. Any girl you do that for will be impressed. It also makes you not an asshole.”