Beautiful Americans (20 page)

I open my mouth and close it again. I can’t do it.

“I have to go,” I say, grabbing the paper bag holding the larger chunks of expensive pottery and opening the door to the terrace so that I can empty it into the larger dumpster out there, where I’ve been putting the beer bottles so they won’t stink up the apartment.

“PJ, wait! What were you going to say?” Jay follows me out onto the terrace. “Whatever’s going on under there, whatever made you so weak at the Louvre, you can tell me about it! I promise you, I will never judge you!”

The temptation to unload on someone is too great for me to ignore. I exhale slowly, searching his eyes for a sign that this is the right thing to do.

“Jay,” I begin. “It’s so hard for me to say this . . .”

“Wait, don’t. Not yet,” Jay says. “I think we have some company out here.”

“Oh, God.” I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

Some People Cheat, Some People Steal

A
fter we fall onto the ground, I crawl over to Thomas. The short cap-sleeved black dress I got with Alex at H&M is riding A dangerously short. I’m wearing opaque black ballet tights underneath it, which I suppose was a good act of foresight, considering Thomas has been picking me up and carrying me around like an invalid all night, making sure I don’t hurt my ankle again. The other kids at the party seem surprised to meet Thomas, but I explain over and over again that he’s
not
my boyfriend—he’s my host mother’s son. We
have
to spend time together—it’s practically mandatory according to Mme Cuchon!

“
Viens ici
,” he grunts at me. “May we go onto the balcony for some time?”

I snort. I know I must be drunk because normally I would never laugh at someone’s language abilities. It is just too comical listening to Thomas, the intellectual, the prized med student and the apple of my host mother’s eye, bumble around his English.

“
Quoi
?” Thomas says, trying to look put out. “Are you making fun?”

“Thomas!” I affect astonishment. “I would never!”

“So can I take you to the balcony or no?” He pulls me up off the thick Persian carpet and hoists me onto his back for another piggyback ride.

“
Mais oui,
” I say. Thomas pushes open the French doors leading to the terrace. He adjusts a curled iron patio chair so that it faces the view of the Place de Ternes below, sets me carefully into it, then crouches on the stone floor in front of me.

I look down over the railing and spot a group of revelers, probably in their mid-twenties, raising glasses of champagne right there in the traffic circle. They had to celebrate so badly they couldn’t even wait to get to a bar.

“That’s what I love about Paris,” I say. Cars honk as they drive past the group. “Everyone lives right here in the present. Not all stuck in the future.”

Thomas listens quietly.

“I love how everyone just wants to party all the time!” I watch one of the men do a cartwheel for his friends, and the women he’s with cheer and beg for an encore.

At least, that’s how Paris feels to me. I’ve never felt like I had so much to celebrate before I got to Paris, even though I’m thousands of miles away from my family and my boyfriend, ballet is kicking my ass, I screwed up my ankle not once, but twice, and I live with a woman whose only compliments toward me have been behind my back. Yet Paris makes me feel light. It sweeps me off my feet. For no reason at all.

“Why did you come to Paris, Olivia?”

“You know,” I say, hanging on to the railing and leaning backward. “To dance at the Opera!”

“There are ballet schools all over the world,” Thomas says. “Why Paris? Why not Moscow? New York? Even Los Angeles?”

“Well,” I say. “Do you really want to know?”

“I would not have asked if I did not want to know.”

“I came to Paris because of Madame Brigitte,” I say. “Mme Brigitte runs the ballet school I go to in the hills above San Diego. She’s amazing—she’s this teeny tiny woman who used to dance with the American Ballet Theatre in New York. She grew up in Paris, in a nightclub that her dad owned in the sixties. Everyone thought that she was too wild to be a professional ballet dancer, but she lit up the stage every time she danced. After she’d been dancing with the ABT for a long time, she scandalized everyone by running away to California with a movie soundtrack composer they’d hired to score a performance. They were so in love, and one day, during a rainstorm, his car was the first in an eighteen-car pileup on the 405 right near Long Beach. Mme Brigitte went to live in San Diego with the composer’s father, who’s like Stevie Wonder. He’s blind but he plays the piano so beautifully you would never know. Mme Brigitte and her father-in-law used the money they inherited from the composer to set up a dance school.”

I stop to take a breath, embarrassed by how much I’ve been talking.

“Is the academy prestigious?” Thomas asks me, sipping his red wine. The way he’s leaning in toward me makes me all of a sudden feel like he really does find this the most fascinating thing he has ever heard.

“Oh, no,” I laugh. “That’s why I came here. My mom wanted me to switch to a more institutionalized program. She thought it would help me get a scholarship. I thought I wouldn’t be able to bear it, leaving my family, learning ballet from someone new. But my mom really did think it would be the best thing for my future. I thought,
Well, if I can’t be with Mme Brigitte, then I at least want to be in her city.
”

It dawns on me how much Paris has captivated me. Now, even though I sometimes ache to be with my family and Vince, I haven’t for a long time doubted my decision to come here. My mom was right. This was the very best thing for my future, no matter how much it hurts to be away from California. I’m learning so much.

“Olivia,” Thomas breathes. “
Tu es si belle ce soir.
” He rests his head in my lap like a little boy. His curly hair looks golden in the lantern light on the terrace. Once again, I’m struck by how young and innocent Thomas seems, while also so wise. For being so smart, so driven, so infatuated with school, Thomas is playful and joyous. He closes his eyes. His eyelashes are long and dark.

“You think?” I ask nervously.

“
Tu es toujours si belle
,” Thomas says softly. “You’re ravishing.”

His eyes still closed, I lean down toward his smooth face. Something pulls my lips toward the soft skin of his cheek, his forehead, the tip of his nose. With each soft, tiny kiss, Thomas makes a low, hungry noise in the back of his throat.

I’m almost to his mouth, stained purple from the cabernet he was sipping as he carried me around the living room. I open my lips the tiniest bit and exhale. Thomas shifts, lifts his head, straightens up, and suddenly I know he wants to kiss me. The moment of expectancy is so flawless I don’t want it to end.

Finally. We kiss. He’s on his knees, at the same height as me sitting in the patio chair, and we kiss and kiss and kiss. My fear of what’s happening keeps the rest of my body stiff, removed from him, until I can’t take that anymore either. Soon I can’t keep my hands off him, clinging to his thin frame, running my fingertips through his silky hair and down the back of his neck.

We’re not just goofing around any more.

“I shouldn’t be here,” I murmur, though I can’t remember why not.

Then I do.
Oh, Jesus, what I have I done?

I pull away from Thomas.

I remember Vince and me lying side by side in his single bed in the UCLA dorms, promising to save ourselves for each other, for when I get back from Paris. We didn’t just mean save ourselves for sex—we meant
everything
.

I recoil from Thomas. I can’t look at him. Thomas takes my face in his hands.

“What’s the matter?
Qu’est ce qui s’est passé?
” Tears of shame roll down my cheeks.

“Olivia!” I hear the creak of the sliding glass door to the Marquets’ kitchen opening. PJ stands frozen in front of us. Jay is behind her, but when he sees me in Thomas’s arms, his eyes widen and he goes back inside.

“Olivia,” PJ repeats. “I—I’m sorry . . . What happened to Vince?”

“PJ!” I struggle for breath.

“Who’s Vince?” Thomas asks, letting go of me. “
Qu’est ce que tu racontes?”

I rush to PJ’s side, shivering in my sleeveless dress. “Please don’t tell anyone what you saw. Can you promise?”

PJ nods at me. “Yeah, sure.” She can’t look at Thomas.

“Who is Vince?” Thomas asks again, still confused, though growing more perturbed.

“
Vince est mon petit ami,
” I tell Thomas plainly, so ashamed of myself I could break down and sob. “In California. We’ve been dating for two years.”

“Oh,” Thomas says. “I better get my friends and go then. Thanks for telling me.”

He rushes by me. I reach out to stop him, to explain better, but he shrugs me off.

It doesn’t matter. I don’t know how to explain it anyway. I’ve never lost myself like that before.

PJ puts down the dishpan. “Let’s stay out here for a minute. Get our bearings.”

We stand next to each other, looking over the balcony at the clear night.

“I can’t believe I thought this party was going to fix everything,” PJ says sadly. “What a disaster.”

I nod in gloomy agreement. Down the street, we can see some of the partygoers headed home. From here I can make out the Texan twins, dressed in jeans and matching checkered pea coats and black berets. Following them closely behind are George and Drew, their loud snickers audible in the stark, moneyed calm of the seventeenth arrondissement.

“Rot in hell, you filthy beast! You animal! You prick!”

A vicious, bloody scream erupts from the balcony next to us—the balcony that leads to the Marquets’ master bedroom. The kind of scream that can only come from a woman scorned, her anger lubricated by hard liquor.

Alex has burst forth from the empty bedroom, yelling ferocious, ugly epithets at George as he heads down the street, away from the party. You can barely understand her for her slurred, frenzied speech and the hoarse sobs bubbling in her throat. In one hand is a large, almost empty bottle of Maker’s Mark whiskey, and in the other is, of course, a lit cigarette, which Alex is waving around like she’s possessed.

The last time I saw Alex, she was sporting a slinky brown jumpsuit, but she’s changed into something else. Her feet are bare, and hanging off her slight, curvy body is a silver sequined tank dress with a full chiffon skirt splayed out around her, the armholes of the bodice large enough that we can see her strapless lace bra beneath it. A long rope of pearls is wrapped around her neck, bouncing off her torso as she contorts with fury. “You preppy asshole! You loser! You monster!”

With a fresh venomous shriek, Alex hurls the Maker’s bottle over the balcony, and it shatters cleanly onto the Place des Ternes below.

“Alex! There are people down there!” I screech. Sure enough, the group of friends I’d been watching are now all watching Alex and laughing their tails off.

When she grabs the crystal tumbler and hurls that over, too, PJ and I gather our wits all at once and scream for her to stop.

We race through the throngs of people still left in the Marquets’ living room, who are starting to float out onto the terrace and the master bedroom to watch Alex’s antics in glee.

“Leave her alone!” I yell as people heckle her. Alex is too out of it to understand she has an audience, and that George can’t even hear her anymore. He’s long gone by now.

PJ wrestles Alex back into the bedroom and onto the Marquets’ king-size bed, pinning her down with her elbows and straddling over her convulsing body. I slam the doors to the balcony.

“He left with that bitch! With that slut!” Alex screeches. “With that nasty Texan dumpster . . . that trashy hose beast . . .”

Mascara runs rivets down Alex’s splotchy face. I grab some tissues and wipe her runny nose, dab at her heavily lined eyes. It’s useless. She’s a mess.

“Tell Zack to clear the party,” PJ orders. “We’ve got to get her out of here before she pukes. Let’s call a cab and get her home.”

“I’m not going home without him!” Alex screams.

“Oh, yes, you are, Alex, you are going home right now,” PJ says, unpinning her off the bed shoving her into my arms. Pushing her through the last of the partygoers and out of the double front doors, we get her down the stairs, watching her heaves for signs of actual puke. One thing about Alex—she usually can hold her liquor down, for what it’s worth.

PJ and I push Alex into a cab. I have to sit on her to get her to be still. PJ fingers the tufts of fabric coming out from beneath me.

“This belongs to Mme Marquet!” PJ wheezes unbelievingly. “Alex, how
could
you? Are you
trying
to get me in trouble? Do you really hate me that much?”

At her wit’s end, PJ bursts into tears. “I can’t believe you, Alex! You are so selfish . . . you’re totally out of control. . . .” Her whole body shaking with fury, she can’t go on.

“It’s Alexander McQueen,” Alex mumbles from behind me. “It’s
mine
now.”

I can see PJ resisting the urge to pull me off of Alex and slap Alex across her pretty, streaky face.

“I knew you were a bitch under all that fakery, Alex, I knew it!” PJ hisses. “Look at you, stealing a dress—”

“PJ,” I beg her quietly, terrified this is going to break out in a catfight. The cab driver is obviously scared of the same outcome—he keeps looking back at me in the rearview mirror with a mix of terror and unbridled curiosity. “Just let her keep it for the night. She’ll bring it back to you in the morning—she’ll pay for express dry cleaning if she has to. Just let her be. Okay? Please, PJ?”

“Fine.” PJ closes the cab door.

I move off of Alex’s lap and hoist her up into a semi-upright position. “That’s it, Alex, just go to sleep,” I say soothingly, letting her rest her head against my shoulder.