Beautiful Americans (25 page)

I wash the dishes I used in the sink, drying them with an old dishrag and setting them back into the cupboards. I hear bells of laughter from the dining room, M. Lafontant and M. Marquet gloating over their success during the hunt today.

“Would you men like some more wine?” I hear Mme Marquet ask them. “I’ll have to go down to the cellar to get it. Marie did not bring out enough for our dinner.”

“I’ll come with you,” Mme Lafontant tells her. I hear them scoot their chairs back, and their shoes clack the floor as they come toward the kitchen, behind which are the stairs to the Marquets’ wine collection. I duck into the shadowy china closet, hiding among the dishes used by Marquets over hundreds of years, each imprinted with their initials. A curtain hangs between the kitchen and me, and as Mme Marquet and Mme Lafontant pass through, I can hear them talking softly.

“So what happened to
l’americaine
?” Mme Lafontant asks Mme Marquet. “I thought she was in the Dordogne with you this weekend.”

“Ah, Penelope,” Mme Marquet responds. “She’s upstairs. I told her to make herself scarce tonight. The men would be falling over themselves trying to impress her if she ate with us.”

Mme Lafontant laughs. “How do you stand it? Such a young, pretty girl in such close proximity to your husband. Doesn’t it make him wild?”

My mouth hangs open. M. Marquet is an old man! That’s revolting!

“It’s miserable,” Mme Marquet confesses. “But he knows he can’t touch. Besides, it makes him appear quite the benevolent patriarch to his voting public. Taking in American brats so they can learn the beauty of French culture. It promotes his image as a harbinger of cross-cultural interactions! The citizens of the Dordogne are so zealous for tourist dollars, they will do anything to kiss American ass.”

“You really think it’s worth it?” Mme Lafontant says as they go down the stairs to the cellar.

“If it would help my husband get more votes, I’d let Carla Bruni come and live here,” Mme Marquet jokes. “In fact, it probably would help!”

I creep out from behind the curtain and stand at the top of the stairs to keep listening. I never understood before why on earth the Marquets had signed up with the Lycée to take on an American student. Now I see it’s to make M. Marquet’s image more family friendly!

“How is she behaved?” Mme Lafontant asks.

“Oh, you know,” Mme Marquet says. “We let her do what she wants.”

I hear them coming back up the stairs and scramble out of the kitchen and back to my room.

I guess this means staying for winter break shouldn’t be that hard to accomplish.

DECEMBER

I
’m sitting in a hard wooden desk behind Jay in history class at school. We’re reviewing for the Final Comp, now that the test is only two weeks away. He’s so close to me I could reach out and stroke the back of his lovely brown neck.

And I
never
would!

Not unless . . . not unless I
knew
he hadn’t been freaked out by what Alex blurted in the McDonald’s in Lyon. And to know
that
for sure, I’d have to actually come out and ask him.

I
never
would.

I wonder if Jay is worried that his scholarship won’t be renewed. I know I personally would just be hung up to dry if he didn’t get his 90 percent.

Watching him now, hunched over his French history textbook, taking notes on Mlle Vailland’s epic lecture on Louis XIV and the
Ancien Régime
, I can almost understand why Alex would think it was better to have my crush out in the open. Not knowing what Jay thinks of me is torture.

When Alex stormed off to go smoke after her scene at the McDonald’s in Lyon, I went back to the table to eat the rest of my cold sandwich and soggy fries. When I sat down, Jay sympathetically clapped me on the back and asked if everything was ok. Was he trying to tell me he understood? Had he, oh God, heard what Alex said, and was he trying to tell me that it was ok?

Since we got back from the trip, I’ve agonized over that moment, that hard, friendly thump of Jay’s hand against the back of my cardigan, the genuine caring in his voice. If I could only figure out what he meant. If only I knew if I had a chance with him or not.

It’s too risky. Not knowing is better than knowing the awful truth, if Jay turns out to be straight, or worse yet, gay but doesn’t like me back. Then I won’t have anyone but myself—the geeky, awkward kid from Memphis—to blame.

 

U r not geeky!
Pierson gchats me later this evening. Urarock star. U r MEGACOOL!

Hehe. Hannes always says that. MEGACOOL. LOL.

Tell JAY that, not me, I type back.

Why don’t U tell Jay that? Pierson counters. Why don’t u tell him u like him? Give him a list of all your great qualities. Tell him there’s no better offer in town. Just see what he says . . .

Easy for you to say, I sulk. Now that you’re in raptures with Hannes, you forget how hard it is to make a move. Any move.

Maybe HE’s the one who’s shy. Maybe U have to make the first move, because if u don’t he never will. I roll my eyes at Pierson’s grinning avatar. But I know he’s right.

 

Even though I’m a basket case about what happened in Lyon, I can’t hold a grudge against Alex. She won’t let me.

“Alex, I told you I needed some space from you,” I endeavor to blow her off during PE one afternoon. Mme Cuchon had gotten wind of the fact that we’d not been to one PE class this term and basically blackmailed us with failing the Final Comp if we didn’t at least go take the end-of-the-year fitness evaluation.

Mary and Sara-Louise are recording our scores as we do basic exercises like push-ups and pull-ups and crunches, keeping time with a stopwatch. I can’t really get away from Alex, since she’s lying right next to me on the wrestling mat, grunting as she does her crunches.

“Haven’t you had enough time away from me? Don’t you miss me?” Alex asks. “I miss you.”

“It hasn’t even been a week since I told you that,” I remind her.

The stopwatch beeps. “Time!” Sara-Louise calls. The way she says it, it sounds more like
Tam
.

Alex wriggles over to me. “Cut it out, Zack,” she demands. She sits up on her elbow and looks at me gravely. “This is getting ridiculous.”

I roll over and start doing some push-ups. “I don’t have to talk to you.”

“But Zack! It’s almost my birthday. My seventeenth,” she whines. “I wanted you to get dressed up with me and sing Stevie Nicks to me all night.
Just like the white-winged dove, ooh, ooh, ooooh,
” she sings campily. She knows it’s one of my favorite songs. “You know, ’cause I’m at the edge of seventeen?”

“Oh, you’re on the edge, alright,” I retort. “And I’m fixin’ to push you over it.”

“Good lord!” Sara-Louise cries in frustration. “I’ve had enough of this, you two. I don’t know what Alex did to you, Zack, but I’m sure it was par for the course. Stop acting like such a little bitch and get over yourself !”

Sara-Louise is standing over me, her hands on her hips. Besides PJ, she’s the tallest girl in the class, and she’s about twenty pounds heavier. From this angle, she’s a little scary. “Y’all are gonna do what my brother and I do whenever we need to work somethin’ out—leg wrestle!”

“Awesome!” Mary approves. “Good one. Go!”

“Yes!” Alex says. “Let’s do it. I will leg wrestle you for your forgiveness.”

Once again, I’m struck by the irony of the situation. I’m surrounded by three girls who want to wrestle, and I’d rather run naked down the Champs Elysée wearing nothing but Alex’s red Christian Louboutins.

“Ugh,” I say. “Fine. When I kick your ass will you leave me alone?”

We lie down side by side, toe to head. “One, two, three!” we count along with Mary and Sara-Louise, kicking our legs toward each other. On the third count, we interlock our legs and try to flip the other one over.

Well, Goddamn. Alex is strong. She has me doing a somersault in three seconds flat.

“Best of three!” I protest. But she does it again the second time, too.

“You’re beat, bestie,” she says, jumping up and embracing me. “We’re friends again! Aren’t you so happy?”

I hug her back. “I think, actually, that I might very well be.”

Alex wanted to have her birthday dinner at one of the trendiest, hardest to get into spots in Paris—
L’Atelier
on the
Rive Gauche
. As we all know by now, what Alex wants, Alex gets, so here we are, about to be feasting on chilled octopus and squash foam and feeling not the slightest bit satiated by the ridiculously small portions. Or at least that’s what I expect, from the descriptions of the other restaurants Alex tells me about in New York.

Alex gets everything she wants—except having George at her seventeenth birthday party. Apparently, when Alex extended the invite to George earlier this week, George said, “We’ll see.” When she texted him this afternoon to see for sure if he would be there, he texted back a taut Can’t make it. Have a great one! I thought Alex would have broken down into tears from his dismissal, but she managed to keep her head up.

“You look stunning,” I tell her at the restaurant. Besides George, the only other friend of hers that can’t be here is PJ, and I think Alex was a little relieved by her absence, to tell the truth. As much as Alex recognizes that she has no reason to dislike PJ, really, I don’t think she can wrap her head around the idea of being friends with someone that disarmingly gorgeous.

Crowded around our table are me, Olivia, Sara-Louise, and Mary. I’d been too afraid to ask Alex to invite Jay—too afraid he’d say no, and also too afraid he’d say yes.

Alex told all the girls (and me!) to wear all black on her birthday, so that no one at the restaurant would know that we’re in high school. Alex has on a high-necked lace number with little black suede booties, and her hair is piled on top of her head like a
fin de siècle
Gibson Girl, with loose tendrils falling romantically around her beautiful face.

“Thank you,” Alex says into my ear. “I hope you have a
great
time tonight. I owe you, after what I did in Lyon.”

“Thanks, Alex,” I say, sincerely.

The waiter fills our glasses with an expensive, delectable Merlot. “Tell him we all want the prix fixe,” Alex says to me. The waiter, used to rich girls with bad French, understands her. I don’t have to translate for her like usual.

“To the birthday girl!” I raise my glass and clink with everyone else’s.

“And to Olivia running off with the Paris Underground Ballet Theatre!” Alex chimes in. Her eyes are wet with feeling. “To leg wrestling!”

“To new friends,” Sara-Louise says warmly, squeezing Mary’s hand.

“To new challenges,” Olivia adds with a big smile. Her ankle is finally fully healed, and she’s wearing new patent leather high-heeled pumps with her black pleated miniskirt and tights for the occasion. Her hair is pulled back in a French twist. This is the most grown-up I have ever seen her look.

“To new places,” Mary says, gesturing around us at our adopted foreign city. Alex has given her the skull necklace she got at Colette, seemingly out of pure generosity, or because Mary always seems to have an extra cigarette, and lately, Alex doesn’t seem to have any.

“To realizing our goals,” I say for lack of a better toast. I’m thinking of the Final Comp coming up, and also Jay.

“I’ll say,” Alex agrees heartily. “Starting . . .
now
.” As if to illustrate her point, she winks suggestively at the team of waiters serving our dinner.

“My friend thinks you’re cute,” she tells one of them. “You should give us your number.” When the waiter returns, he slips a folded piece of paper with his name and digits on it into Alex’s hand.

“Did he realize you meant your
male
friend?” I snort.

“Of course he did,” Alex says, but then she’s suddenly not so sure.

We all tuck happily into yet another hopelessly modish dish, this time a tiny bowl of soup with chicken ravioli in it and crème fraiche poured into each bowl individually at the table. It might be the most wonderful soup I have ever had. Then there’s a miniature filet mignon resting on a bed of arugula and peppers, dripping with a tangy sauce with notes of orange and garlic, two things I never thought I’d find on the same plate. I chuckle to myself, contemplating the bill. Good thing CAB is so bighearted with that black Amex!

The next waiter who comes over to clear the dishes and the remnants of our bread basket is a hot South Asian guy with brilliant white teeth and a tendency to rest his left hand saucily on his hip in such a way that his sexual orientation doesn’t keep us guessing.

“This is Zack,” Alex says suddenly, interrupting the other girls’ conversation. The waiter and I lock eyes until I blush.

“I’m Rajiv,” the waiter says with a slow, sexy grin. “If you want, you all should stick around after we close the bar.”

The five of us exchange grins. Rajiv brings over the crowning glory of the birthday dinner—a light lemon layer cake filled with raspberry and vanilla crème and lemon-thyme sorbet. I strike one of the matches from the matchbook sitting in the ashtray on the table and hold it up so Alex can blow it out.

“Make a wish!” Sara-Louise prompts her.

“I wish you’d all stay and get wasted with these waiters and me tonight!” she says.

Sara-Louise, Mary and Olivia beg off, but I’m down. We all kiss and hug and wish Alex a happy birthday again.

“I’m so glad y’all made up,” Sara-Louise tells me. “Get home safe!” I usher the girls into a cab and head back inside. L’Atelier is about to close. It’s nearly midnight.

The waiters sing French pop songs with the radio as they break down all the tables. Drinking wine at the bar, Alex claps her hands.

“Shots!” she cries. “
Prenons des verres!
”