Frankie in Paris (11 page)

Only a few bites of her meal were missing from
her plate.

Waiting until most of the audience had filed
out the door,
 
Mr. Annoyed slammed the
empty champagne bottle down in front of me, making Lulu open her eyes.

“Oh dear,” she yawned.
 
Then she realized where she was sitting.
 
“Oh dear!”

“Come on, Lulu, let’s go find the Metro
station.
 
I have your bottle.”
 

I grabbed her purse and my bags and helped her
out of her seat.

It took her a few minutes to wake up, but she was
completely awake by the time we reached the Arc de Triomphe.
 

So much larger than I had imagined, it had been
there at the end of the Champs-Élysées all day, and I hadn’t noticed it.
 
Lights were focused on it, and I could see
all the beautiful carvings.
 
Likenesses
of soldiers and angels holding trumpets spilled down the sides.
 
Names were inscribed in it as well.
 
Large enough for a bi-plane to fly right
through the center, it was enormous.
 
It
was almost two hundred years old, having been commissioned by Napoleon
Bonaparte.

I was in awe, but sensed that Lulu needed to
get back to the hotel.
 
Holding her free
arm, we maneuvered the steps down into the Charles de Gaulle Metro
Station.
 

***

The car that we chose was almost empty, and we chose
seats a few rows down from some young men.
 
They were being goofy, singing what sounded like French drinking
songs.
 
I doubted that they had been
drinking two hundred dollar champagne. One of them held a large water bottle,
and I suspected it was full of something other than the intended product.

For a moment it looked like Lulu was going to
fall asleep again, but instead she began to sing:
 

“
Frère
Jacues,
Frère
Jacques,

Dormez-vous,
dormez-vous?

Sonnez
les matines,

Sonnez
les matines,

Din,
din, don! Din, din, don!
"

Then
she continued in English:

“Are
you sleeping, Are you sleeping,

Brother
John, Brother John?

Morning
bells are ringing,

Morning
bells are ringing,

Ding,
Ding, Dong! Ding, Ding, Dong!”

Cheers
of encouragement sounded behind us.
 
I
sat with my back to them, hands in my lap.

“This
is fun,” Lulu said.

“Fun,”
I echoed through gritted teeth.
 
About as
fun as the time I had my wisdom teeth removed. Even though I was a product of
evolution and only had three, getting them pulled was
this
kind of fun. It was fun, and it started with a capital F.
 
Kind of like another word I wanted to
shout.
      

Only
that word had four letters.

***

The
ride seemed to last forever.
 
Eventually,
Lulu returned to her snoring state.
 

One
of the boys came over and sat next to me. With long brown hair pulled back into
a ponytail and dark brown eyes, he looked like he could have been a movie
star.
 
He looked a lot like Johnny Depp,
actually.
 
That’s Johnny Depp from

He
was wearing blue jeans and a tan flannel shirt.
 
And Doc Martens.
 
I was such a
sucker for those boots.
 

Good-looking,
but inebriated, he sat too close.
 

“
Bonjour
,” he smiled.
 
I could smell the liquor on his breath.
 
The alcoholic fumes that he and my
grandmother were expelling made me pray that no one lit a match.
 

I
nodded my head.

“
Parlez-vous
français
?”

I
made the international symbol for “a little” with my hands.

“You
are American?”
 
he asked.

“
Oui
.”
 

“I
would have thought you Italian, but your companion was singing in English.”

“Yes,
she was, wasn’t she?
 
Sorry about
that.
 
It’s been a long night.”

“What
made your night so long?”
 
He seemed to
struggle to find the words, but his pronunciation was spot on.

“We
just got out from The Lido.”
 
I wasn’t
sure why I was giving him this information, but it felt so good to talk to
someone who wasn’t losing their mind or three sheets to the wind.

“You
saw it with her?”

“Yes,
my grandmother.”

He
chuckled, and his friends looked in our direction, curious.

“Why
don’t you drop her off, then join us?
 
We
are going to the
—
" he
searched for the right word “the clubs, tonight.”
 
Damn
those French lips.

“I
can’t, sorry.”
 
Giving him a tired smile,
I shrugged.

“You
can.”
 
His fingers walked up my arm.
 

I
didn’t like it.
 
He was acting more
familiar by the second, and it made me uncomfortable.

“I
have a boyfriend.
 
He wouldn’t approve.”

“He doesn’t have
to know.
 
You can tell him that you and
your
grand
-
mère
returned to the
hotel and got a good night of sleep.”
 
Under
hooded lids, his eyes tried their best to seduce me.

“
Merci, non.
 
Bonne nuit
.”
 
I turned to look
out the window.

After
he returned to his friends, they all laughed. It wasn’t kind laughter, and it
made me feel that I had made the right decision turning down his offer.
 
When we finally reached our station, I was
relieved.

“Lulu,
you have to wake up.” I gently shook her shoulders. “This is our stop.”

I
guided her off of the train as the boys waved through the window.
 
One threw kisses in our direction.
 
I stood watching until they disappeared into
the shadows.

***

The
late hour was conducive to all kinds of questionable public behavior, and it
was a slow, grueling trip along the dark, cobblestone streets.
  

For
the first time on our trip, I honestly felt a little afraid for our
safety.
 
I could hear screaming, and I
couldn’t tell if it was in jest.
 
A young
woman swayed to the beat of distant music, a cigarette hanging from her
lip.
 
She was wearing a purple peasant
skirt and a white blouse, but the blouse was unbuttoned to the waist, and she
wasn’t wearing a bra.
 
Her eyes were
closed, and she didn’t seem to notice, but the group of men standing across
from her sure did.

We finally came to the now familiar door of the Hôtel de
Lutèce
.
 

Henri
was at his post.
 
When he saw Lulu he
shook his head. “Wild night,
non
?”
 

 
“
Oui
.
Wild.”
 
He covered his mouth in mock
horror.
 

Lulu
was practically sleepwalking, so I pulled her onto the elevator, off of the
elevator, then to our room and used my key to open the door.

I
planted her on her bed, and she seemed more alert.
 
“Thank you, dear,” she said.

Dressing
in her emerald pajamas and washing her face, Lulu looked like a little old
woman leprechaun.
 
I was surprised that
she had the energy to get herself ready for bed, and she was deep into her
dreams by the time I finished taking my turn in the bathroom, her small arms
wrapped around the champagne bottle.

I
was so full of pent up frustration and irritation that I wanted to break
something.
 
The curtains began to swirl
into a twist of fabric, and my bedspread lifted up toward the ceiling and
scrunched into a tight ball.
 
I needed to
do something to turn my evening around, fast.

It
was nine in the morning at Rich’s house.
 
I could have called him, but I didn’t want to go outside by myself this
late.
 
With the way that my day had gone,
I was sure that someone would drive by in an unmarked car and throw me in the
trunk.
 
I would be forced into a life of
prostitution or sent to some other country to do free labor.
 

I
didn’t even like doing the housework that my parents made me do.
 
The thought of cleaning some stranger’s
bathroom was not at all appealing.
 
Not
to mention the prostitution part, which was probably more likely.
 
Honestly, I’d rather travel to Russia on
vacation with Rich on our honeymoon, someday, than have to live there and work
with other kidnapped women.

Not wanting to tempt
fate, I decided to write a letter.
 
A
small stack of Hôtel de
Lutèce
stationary was
piled on the desk near our window.
 
I
beckoned a sheet of it to my bed and then called the city guide to use as a
table.
 
Sitting on the bed with my legs
folded over each other, with my chin in my hands, I began to write.
 
The pencil lifted up into the air and began
to swirl across the page in neat, even cursive.

***

Dear Rich,

I hate it here.
 
I want to go home RIGHT NOW.
 
You would never believe how awful this day
has been. We wandered around, providing entertainment for the general public,
as always.
 
I had to eat snails, and Lulu
got drunk and yelled at everyone at the dinner show
—
which, by the
way was a topless production.
 
She sang
on the Metro and some freaky guys tried to pick up on me.
 
I never want to come to France again. I
don’t know how I will last for the next two days!
 
At the rate we’re going, we’re sure to injure
someone or destroy something.
 
The Eiffel Tower
will be lying on its side when we’re through with it! I still don’t have any
Docs. I was so close, too. I wish I were at home, with you. I wish we had gone
on a European holiday.
 
What was I
thinking, coming here with her???

Wish me luck,

Frankie

P.S.
 
I haven’t used your money yet.

***

I
 
licked the envelope closed.
 
I debated bringing it down to Henri, but
decided to make the trip downstairs.
 
Too
amped to sleep, I just needed to get out of the room.

***

Henri
was wearing reading glasses and had a book on top of the counter, which he
promptly hid when I approached.

“Did
you tuck her in?”
 
He looked at me from
over the spectacles.
 
His eyes were kind
and warm, like melted chocolate.

“Yes.”

“No
offense intended,
Mademoiselle
, but
you look
très
terrible
.”

“Yeah,
well I feel
très
terrible
.”
 
I exaggerated my French accent and Henri snorted.

“What
are you reading?”

“Eet
eez a book about gardening.”

“And
do you garden,
Monsieur Henri
?”

“Oui.
 
I have
un
petit jardin
at my home.”

“Do
you have children?”

“
Oui
.
 
One girl and one boy.
 
Ages six
and eight.
 
They help me harvest.”
 
He smiled.