Beautiful Americans (18 page)

To save time at the register, I select the dress I want in exchange for the boots before I attempt to return them. It’s a black wool shift, cut loose around the body, with a tie around the neck and a very short skirt. I grab a pair of cream-colored, lacy wool tights to go with it, then make a beeline for the cash desk so I can get the hell out of here—I wasted too much time trying to decide between the black dress or the brown one . . .

With a hard smack against my right cheek, I find myself running face first into Sara-Louise, standing there in the middle of Chloé like she shops there every day. She’s with Mary, the tattooed, punky girl from L.A. with the short, choppy black hair, and Sara-Louise’s host-sister, Anouk, whom I met at their party.

“Well, hi there, Alex!” Sara-Louise greets me cheerfully, her South Carolina drawl filling up the otherwise hushed boutique. Mary smiles at me politely, and the host-sister looks me up and down, somewhat suspiciously.

“What are you guys doing here?” I demand, taken entirely off guard. “You don’t shop here!”

Mary snorts. I didn’t
mean
to sound so snotty.

Sara-Louise looks toward her host-sister. “Anouk is applying to fashion schools for college next year. We came here to get some inspiration for her portfolio. What are you getting?” Sara-Louise delves into the big bag I’m carrying with the boots in it. “Aren’t those the boots you wore to school last week?” she asks. “Are you returning them? For this dress?” She holds out the dress to get a better look. “Oh, but Alex, these would be so cute together. Don’t return the boots—just get the dress and wear them as an outfit!”

Mary and Anouk nod their agreement.

“Shhhh!” I look anxiously toward the salesgirl, who’s starting to have a line form in front of her. “No!” I say, pulling away from them suddenly. “I have to return these boots. I don’t need any more pairs of boots.” I stick out my leg to show them the French Connection riding boots I’m wearing. “See?”

Luckily the salesgirl is too busy to put up a fight about the already-worn boots. She throws me for a loop when she says something in French I don’t catch. Too afraid to find out what it was by asking her to repeat herself, and definitely not about to admit that I didn’t understand, I just smile and nod. Whatever it was, she does the transaction quickly and ushers me into a fitting room, as I am already wriggling out of my jeans to get the dress over the sheer grey C+C California long sleeve tee and into the tights and pull my boots back on. Sebastièn’s sweatshirt, worn unzipped over the dress, makes me look delightfully disheveled, like an Abercrombie model. My mom would call this “high-low,” the fashionista term for the way French women wear couture with clothes from the discount rack. It’s such a hard thing to master.

At exactly 5:03 P.M., I pop out of the cab I’ve hired to buy me some time (thus spending the twenty euros I needed to fund my cigarette and coffee habit for the rest of the week) and race into the Champs de Mars, the Eiffel Tower looming overhead.

The carousel is deeper into the gardens that run between the
Tour Eiffel
and the
Ecole Militaire
than I remember. As I run along the sandy paths that outline the eighteenth-century style grounds, I swallow hard, recalling times I had come here as a small child, small enough that I even think I was once here with my dad, whom I always pretend that I have no memory of at all. The Carousel of all places . . .
why
did I choose the Carousel for a rendezvous with George? I haven’t been here since I was a pigtailed, bilingual toddler in a pink Sunday dress surrounded by admiring French grandparents, aunts, uncles. The Carousel makes me feel the opposite of flirtatious, the opposite of outgoing. It makes me feel like a shy little girl again.

“Alex,” I hear George’s deep, measured voice from a shadowy bench near the Carousel. “You’re late.”

I flip around.

“Hey,” I say, biting my lip. I had wanted him to see me in a different way—less frazzled, less harried.

George pats the bench next to him. In the fading evening light, I can see he’s wrapped up in a navy-blue hooded wool toggle coat and a grey beanie with a brim over his dark eyes. His expertly tied ribbed scarf makes him look almost French.

He’s hopelessly handsome. I almost can’t sit down next to him for fear of ruining this perfect moment of him wanting me. I gingerly take a step forward, examining him examining me.

“I’m not gonna bite you,” George pledges. “Well, I won’t bite
hard
.”

I stand in front of him, still tense.

“You promise?” I ask. “I’m not coming any closer till you promise.”

“Get over here,” George cajoles me.

“Do it,” I say. “Promise you’re not going to hurt me.” I’m teasing him, but it comes out weird. What I said, the way I said it, lingers between us.

All of a sudden, George jumps up and tackles me, throwing me over his shoulder. I yelp joyfully and pummel his back upside down with my fists. “Put me down!” I howl.

He twirls me around. “Tell me you’re sorry for being late!” he taunts me. “You kept me waiting for so very long.” He lets me slowly slide down off his shoulder so that we’re standing upright face to face, still wrapped in each other’s arms. “I missed you,” he says when our eyes are finally at the same level.

His arms still around me, we sit back down on the bench. I nestle my head into the crook of his shoulder. “However did you pass the time while you were waiting for me?”

“I did some deep thinking,” George deadpans. “Thought about the meaning of life.”

“What’d you come up with?” I can’t resist that clean, soapy smell of the back of his neck.

“Sex,” George murmurs into my hair. “It’s the only thing that makes sense in this messed-up world.” George slips his icy bare hand up my skirt and lingers on my upper thigh.

I’d just been closing my eyes, letting the events of this afternoon slip away, feeling my body melt into George’s, loving just sitting next to him. But George must have had other things in mind. I gaze up at him. His brown eyes meet mine, twinkling with warmth and good humor and sex appeal.

God, he
kills
me!

Looking around us for onlookers and finding no one at all interested in us, I slide up onto George’s lap, his two hands firmly placed on my hips. I kiss him with the full force of my passion for him. I’m trying to tell him so many things without words—to be nice to me, that I know he likes me best of everyone, that I want to make love to him over and over again, but never while drunk in some stranger’s bedroom.

The Champs de Mars starts closing down around us—the Carousel turns off its creepy circus music, the darkness sweeps over the park toward the glittering
Tour Eiffel
.

Nibbling my lips, George gets it. Doesn’t he? He’s promising to be everything I want him to be. Lightly rubbing his finger over my tights and underwear, he’s moaning a little bit, wanting me as much as I want him. I feel like we are in our own little world.

A bright flashlight in my eyes stuns me into remembering that it is
not
just him and me right now—a park official stands over us, shouting at us suddenly to scram.

“
Soyez prudents!
” he says, spraying us with a shower of his disgusted saliva.

I scream out in fear, then explode into giggles when George starts laughing beneath me. Lifting me off his lap, we run together toward the gates of the park, propelled faster by our breathless laughter.

Everybody Needs Somebody

“W
e trust you, Penelope,” Mme Marquet says as she hands me the house keys Friday morning before I leave for the Lycée. It’s almost as if she
knows
I’m about to have a party this weekend. After these past few weeks of not being able to figure out a way to get out of it with Zack and Alex—not to mention all the people they’ve invited.
A small get-together,
I correct myself, hoping the distinction will matter to her if I ever get caught—
though I will never, ever get caught. Fate could never be that cruel to me.

All day on Friday, I obsess about all the ways the Marquets could find out about the party. During PE, I’m so wound up, I run around the track again and again, trying to clear my head and calm myself down.

Olivia calls me before she goes to bed Friday night, checking on me like she often does. “You’ll never guess what I did this afternoon.”

“What?”

“I went to dance class!” she whispers. “Mme Rouille was pissed.”

“Olivia!” I scold her. “You shouldn’t be dancing on your ankle.”

“I know,” she says, sounding guilty. “It’s actually killing me right now. My mom would freak if she found out. She doesn’t even know I hurt myself. I made Vince promise not to tell her.”

I laugh. “I can’t believe I’m having a party tomorrow night. Can I cancel it?”

“No!” Olivia protests. “You cannot. It’s impossible. Everyone would just show up regardless.”

I hardly sleep. I’m stuck. This party is going to happen, no matter what I do.

“It’s after ten, Penelope,” Mme Cuchon scolds me in front of the glass pyramid entrance to the Louvre the next morning. “You were told to be here at 9:30.”

“Yeah, so sorry,” I tell her, out of breath from running all the way from Les Halles metro station. I look over at Olivia, perfectly punctual as always.

“RER,” I mouth to her. In an attempt to cut my trip to a reasonable amount of travel time this morning, I’d paid extra for the RER regional train from Etoile station, right near the Arc de Triomphe. What I hadn’t realized is some of those trains come only once or twice an hour on weekends. I’d waited in the drafty train shaft, kicking myself for nearly forty minutes. I’m a stressed-out, sleep-deprived wreck.

“
Alors
,” Mme Cuchon continues. “Now that Penelope has joined us, let’s begin our tour of the famous Musée du Louvre.”

Mme Cuchon’s second in command at the Lycée is Mlle Vailland, who does double-duty as our extremely enthusiastic teacher of French and European history. Mlle Vailland raises a red flag bearing the Lycée’s logo into the air above her head.

“Follow me!” she cries.

We trudge along behind her. Jay catches up with me.

“Hey, partner. Before you got here,” he tells me, “Mlle Vailland said that she’d take us to see the famous stuff before we work on our projects.”

“Oh,” I say. “Cool.”

“You excited about the party tonight?” he asks.

I undo the elastic holding back my ponytail and shake out my hair. “Not sure,” I say. “That’s weird, right?”

Jay chuckles. “No way. Parties are high stress situations for the host. But I’m sure it will be great. I, for one, plan on having an excellent time. Just don’t let me miss the last metro home—I don’t live in your neighborhood.”

The Paris metro stops running at midnight. Does Jay really think people are still going to be at my apartment that late?

“Look,” Jay says. He nods at the crowd gathered in front of a painting. It’s the
Mona Lisa
. Velvet rope barricades keep the tourists at bay. The room is already full of people snapping photos of probably the most famous painting on the planet.

“Oh, my God!” I exclaim. “She’s miniscule!” I stare at her stealthy little smile, wondering what her secret was, anyway.

“Come on,” Jay says, heading for the front of the crowd. “Let’s take photos of all these crazy people.”

Jay has a beat-up old digital camera. He snaps some close-ups of the tourists gawking at the
Mona Lisa
, their mouths agape, their kids looking bored and sleepy next to them. He does a slide show for me as Mlle Vailland lectures us about da Vinci. The pictures are hilarious. He even caught some kid picking his nose and wiping it on his little sister’s jacket. I can’t stop cracking up. It gets so bad that all Jay has to do is make a funny face and I know exactly which picture he’s impersonating.

Mme Cuchon glares at us, which just makes us laugh harder.

Finally, after standing on my tiptoes to try and get a good look at the famous works Mlle Vailland is telling us about, the
Venus di Milo
and the
Winged Victory of Samothrace
sculptures, Mme Cuchon lets us disperse to work on our projects.

The info desk in the lobby directs us to the third floor to see the bulk of the Ingres paintings on view. Through the maze of the galleries, Jay takes me by the hand. I raise my eyebrows, but don’t let go.

There’s a whole room of Ingres. The walls of this gallery are painted pastel green. Skylights illuminate the portraits with natural light, making the colors appear almost iridescent. I don’t know if it’s the bright light of the room, but suddenly I feel faint, like I need to put my head between my knees.

“PJ!” Jay says, steadying me and helping me to a wooden viewing bench in the middle of the gallery. “Are you okay?”

I’m quiet for a long time. “This is the Louvre, huh?”

“Um,” Jay says, his brow furrowed in alarm. “I better go find Mme Cuchon.”

“No, don’t,” I say. “Just . . . let’s sit here for a minute. Look at the paintings.”

“Okay.” Jay reaches over and unwraps the scarf from around my neck. “Aren’t you hot? No wonder you were about to pass out.”

“We’re really here,” I say, folding my scarf and placing it in my lap. “This is the Louvre. I can’t believe I’m really here in Paris. For real. I’m surrounded by paintings that Ingres painted, that da Vinci painted. There are Rembrandts in the same building as me right now. I sort of never thought I would actually get here.”

Jay nods. “I know what you mean. It feels fake, right?”

“Yes,” I say. Standing up again, I’m less wobbly on my feet. I walk over to one of Ingres’s nudes,
Le Grande Odalisque.
The peachy expanse of the model’s back curves just so, bending enough to reveal the side of her breast without making the portrait feel voyeuristic. “She’s exquisite. Portraits are my favorite. I love studying the expressions on the faces of the subjects, the way the models hold themselves.”