A Summer in Paris (16 page)

“Listen, I’m suddenly feeling lots perkier,” Kristy said, jumping off the bench. “I don’t want a Coke, after all. Let’s go find the Ancient Greek stuff. I understand there’s a really terrific exhibit of marble statues somewhere around here.”

So far, I’ve managed to get through this afternoon without anything deadly happening, Kristy was thinking, wiping her damp palms on her skirt. But I’d be better off keeping them both distracted. If they’re talking about Greek statues, they’re less likely to start talking about anything that’ll blow my cover.

But the pressure is really getting to me. After today, I think I’m going to have to continue to keep Alain away from the people who know the “real” Kristy Connor.

Either that, she knew, or tell him the truth. And after the night of her birthday dinner, when she had realized she was in love with him and he had told her his true feelings for her—or at least for the Kristy he
thought
she was—she was in no hurry to take a risk like that. Not now, when all of a sudden, the stakes were a lot higher than they had ever been before.

* * * *

“Hello, Mom? Is that you? Yes, it’s really me! It’s Nina!”

She hoped the nervousness that insisted upon creeping into her voice wasn’t too obvious. And Nina was nervous. After all, she wasn’t just calling her parents, three thousand miles away, to assure them she was in good health and having a good time. No, this was about something much more important.

She had thought of writing but had realized quickly that that simply would not do. It was true that up until this point, she had written her parents wonderful reports on her trip, at least once a week. They were long ones, filled with detailed descriptions of the places she had visited, the courses she was taking, the people she had met. She had mentioned Pierre du Lac, but only in passing.

But now it was time for her to speak to them in person. Not only about Pierre but also about the decision she had come to.

“You sound so close,” her mother said. “I can’t believe how clearly your voice is coming across!” Nervously she added, “But really, Nina. This must be costing a fortune.  We don’t have an international plan – ”

“It’s not that expensive,” Nina assured her, keeping the annoyance out of her voice. “Besides, there’s something special I have to tell you. Somehow, writing just didn’t seem good enough.”

“Oh, dear. There’s something wrong, isn’t there?” her mother breathed. “Nina, honey, are you all right?”

“What’s the matter? What happened?” Her father’s voice suddenly came booming over the wires as, back in Connecticut, he picked up the extension. “Nina, why are you calling? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong, Dad. Everything is fine. Really.” Nina took a deep breath. This was going to be even harder than she had anticipated.

Suddenly needing a little moral support, she glanced over at Pierre, sitting in the corner of the Rousseaus’ apartment. He mouthed the words, “I love you.” Instead of making her feel better, however, it just made her stomach tighten up a little bit more.

“Isn’t this awfully expensive?” her father was saying. “What does a transatlantic call go for these days?”

“I’m not sure,” Nina said, sounding much more patient than she was feeling. “I don’t intend to talk for a long time. But there is something special I want to talk to you about.”

At the other end of the telephone wires, her parents were silent. Nina gripped the telephone receiver so tightly that her knuckles were white.

“Mom, Dad, I’ve reached kind of a decision. I’m, uh, hoping you’ll support me in it, because I’ve given it a lot of thought ... and I know that it’s what’s really best for me.”

“Go on,” her mother said in a pinched voice.

“I’ve decided that when the summer is over, I’m ... uh, I’m ...” Nina took a deep breath and then let out a sigh. “I’m going to stay here in Paris.”

“What?”
her father cried. “You’re going to do
what?”

“I’m going to stay—”

“Nina, have you completely lost your senses?” Mr. Shaw barked. “What on earth are you talking about? What about college? Just yesterday in the mail you got your class schedule. You were even accepted into that creative writing class you wanted to take.”

“That’s ... that’s great, Dad. And, in fact, writing happens to be one of the reasons I’ve decided to stay here. I thought being on my own in Paris would give me a good chance to try doing some serious writing. Of course, I’ll get a job, too, something to support me—”

“I think I understand what’s going on here,” her mother interrupted. “You’ve met a boy, haven’t you, Nina?”

“Have you, Nina?” her father echoed.

“Why, yes, as a matter of fact. I wrote you about him. His name is Pierre du Lac, and you’ll never believe—”

“Now that’s just great,” Mr. Shaw said. “You’re going to throw away your college education, your whole future, for some ... some French boy you’ve got a silly crush on.”

“It’s not like that!” Nina found herself doing precisely what she had promised herself she wouldn’t do: exploding. “You just don’t understand! Pierre and I love each other! And that’s only part of it. Don’t you see? I want to live here! I love it in Paris. I belong here. It’s ... it’s not like Connecticut, and it’s not some boring, sleepy little town. And the Sorbonne is filled with exciting people who are really interested in doing something with their lives.”

“Nina, this is utterly ridiculous,” Mr. Shaw said. “You’re talking like a child. I thought you knew better than to lose your head over some stupid boy. Now listen to me. You’re coming back with the other students from your school, just as we’ve planned all along, and that’s final.”

There were tears in Nina’s eyes, but her voice sounded controlled as she said, “No, Daddy. This is one time when I know what I really want. I know I’ve never gone against your wishes before, not even for the smallest thing. I took the courses you wanted me to take in school; I applied to the college you wanted me to go to.... I even decorated my bedroom to suit you and wore clothes that you approved of.

“But I’m not a little girl anymore. This time I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to stay in Paris.”

* * * *

“I have the best news, Pierre!” Nina announced in her flawless French.

It was two days after her triumphant phone call to her parents—her “declaration of independence,” as she now thought of it. Since then, she had been walking on air. But she had been doing even more than that: she had been making plans.

Now, as she threw open the door of the art studio, almost bursting with her good news, she found Pierre exactly as she had expected to find him: standing at his easel, paintbrush in hand, taking advantage of the last rays of the late afternoon sun. Set up in front of him on a wooden straight-back chair was a vase of wildflowers, vibrant shades of purple and blue and yellow. Directly behind it was the backdrop he had made by draping blue fabric across the back of the chair.

Nina glanced over at the setup, noting that the arrangement of flowers was actually rather ordinary. On Pierre’s canvas, however, it looked magnificent.

But she was not here to be an art critic.

“It’s really wonderful news,” she went on, crossing the room. “See if you can guess.”

“I know,” he said, depositing his brush in a glass jar of turpentine. “You had lunch today with a publisher who is begging you to let him publish your first novel—whenever it is finished.”

Nina giggled and threw her arms around Pierre. “No, that hasn’t happened yet.”

“Not yet, but someday.” Pierre frowned. “Let me see ... I know! You stayed up all night and wrote the first chapter of your book.”

“Pierre, maybe I’d better just come right out and tell you,” Nina said with a sigh. “Otherwise, this could take all day.”

“Believe me, there is no other way I would prefer to spend a day, other than talking to you. Unless, of course,” Pierre added with a sly grin, “I could spend the whole day kissing you.”

“Not now, my sweet.” Gently she pushed him away, then pranced around the room in front of him. “Guess again!”

“I’ve got it! You have decided to become a ballerina.”

“No.” She stopped dancing and folded her arms across her chest. “Pierre,” she said, her face flushed, “I found myself a place to live!”

In response to his puzzled expression, she went on, “You see, I can only stay with the Rousseaus until the end of the month. That was the original plan, after all. Anyway, when I decided to stay in Paris after the summer is over, I knew I had to find an apartment. I mentioned it to the Rousseaus, and it turned out that Madame Rousseau has a sister with a town house not too far from here.

“And,” she continued gleefully, clapping her hands, “Madame’s sister will be thrilled to rent me the top floor! I haven’t seen it yet, but she says there’s a bathroom up there, and while I won’t have my own kitchen, I can use the woman’s any time I want. She’s hardly ever around, since she works for Air France and is always traveling ... So?” Nina threw her arms out, as if she were asking a question. “What do you think?”

He stared back at her, blinking. “It sounds too wonderful to be true. When do I get to see it?”

With a twinkle in her dark brown eyes, Nina reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a shiny gold key. “Is the prospect of seeing my first apartment enough to drag you away from your painting?”

“Nina,” he replied, coming over to her and taking her arm, “have I ever been able to say no to you?”

* * * *

The apartment on the top floor of Madame Rousseau’s sister’s house was even better than what Nina had been expecting. It consisted of two good-sized rooms plus a bathroom, all on the third floor of a narrow brick house no more than half a mile away from Pierre’s art studio. The rooms were bright and airy with large windows and pale green walls. There were even a few pieces of furniture: a sagging couch and a table in the front room, a bed and a large wooden dresser in the other.

To some people, it probably wouldn’t have looked like much. But to Nina, it was heaven on earth.

“Pierre, this is fantastic!’ she cried, walking back and forth between the two rooms, still barely able to believe her good luck. “I’ll make this room a combination living room and study. I’ll get a big wooden desk for that corner over there, so I can work in front of that big window. I’ll get something serious-looking, the kind of thing a writer would use. And I’ll make this smaller room in the back the bedroom. I’ll make it come alive with pastels. I’ll fill it with wonderful fabrics and rag rugs and vases of fresh flowers....”

“Don’t forget the paintings,” Pierre said.

“The paintings? What paintings?”

“Why, my paintings, of course. The ones I’m going to create for you. If you’d like, you can line your walls with them.”

He was only half-teasing as he added, “Of course, I do have an ulterior motive.”

“You do?” Nina blinked. “What’s that?”

“I want you to think about me all the time.”

Nina’s confused expression melted into a smile.

“Ah, Pierre,” she said, throwing her arms around his neck, “I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

As they strolled back to the Rousseaus’ to return the key Madame had lent her, Nina grew more pensive.

“Now almost everything is in place,” she said, jamming her hands deep inside the pockets of her jeans.

“Almost?” Pierre seemed surprised. “And here I was just thinking about how impressed I was that you’d already taken care of every detail.”

“Almost
every detail.” Nina frowned. “I still need a job. I know finding one won’t be easy, since it’s not that simple for a foreigner like me, someone without French citizenship, to get working papers.”

“Hmmm.” Pierre was pensive. “How much money do you think you’ll need to make?”

“I think I’ll be able to live on very little. The rent that Madame’s sister is charging me is such a small amount. I think that more than anything, she’s just happy to have someone staying in her house since she’s away so much. And my expenses will be low. I can eat cheaply, and it’s not as if I have expensive art supplies to buy, the way you do....” She glanced over at Pierre. “Any ideas about what kind of job I could get?”

Pierre shook his head. “I am afraid not. But don’t lose heart. You still have some time left before the summer ends.”

Nina didn’t reply. She was too busy thinking, Yes, there’s still
some
time ... but not very much.

And she knew perfectly well that without a job-some kind of job, any kind of job—her dream of staying here, of living in Paris, would simply fade away, gone before it had ever become a reality.

“Kristy! Wait until you hear what has happened!”

There was a jubilant expression on Alain’s face when Kristy came out of her last class of the morning and found him out in the hall, waiting for her. His green eyes were shining, and the smile on his face was so big and bright that it made his entire face light up.

“What is it? Alain, what happened?” His excitement, she was finding, was contagious.

“Oh, Kristy. I do not know where to begin.”

“Can’t you just come right out and tell me?”

Alain’s smile faded into a frown. “Well ... I would like to, but it is not quite that simple.”

“What are you talking about, Alain?
What is
not so simple? Now I’m really confused.”

He hesitated for a moment before saying, “Kristy, I think you had better sit down. Come, let us go get some lunch. I will tell you then.”

The ten minutes between the time Alain announced that he had some important news to tell her and the time that the two of them were finally sitting on a bench in a small park near the Sorbonne, holding croissants filled with ham and cheese, seemed endless to Kristy. She had no idea what Alain had to tell her, but she had the sneaking suspicion that what was good news for him might well turn out to be not such good news for her.

“We’re sitting down now,” she said impatiently, ignoring her sandwich. “Now tell me, before I scream.”

“All right. But I have to go back a little bit. Kristy, I told you back when you and I first met that I was interested in geology. And I believe I mentioned that my parents have never exactly been supportive of the idea of me following a career studying rocks.” He made a face as he said, “They have always had more ... shall we say, predictable plans for me.”