Justin Kramon (23 page)

“You know, I like the way people are about sex here,” Finny said. “They treat it like it’s slightly funny. Which it is, if you think about it. I mean, in a certain way. I could get used to that.”

“Used to what?” Earl said.

“Being here, I guess.”

“Really? You could live here?”

“I think so. Why?”

Earl shrugged. “It’s just good to know. Since I’m not sure where I’m going to be.”

Finny felt a bubble of anxiety expand in her chest. What was he telling her? She looked at Earl, and caught a glimpse of the limping man behind them, who seemed unable to control his pace on the steep hill. He kept wriggling in his coat, as if he were trying to shrug it off. His feet made a quickening rhythm on the pavement—
du-duk, du-duk, du-duk
—and Finny thought of asking if he needed a hand.

But first she said to Earl, “You mean you think you might want to live here for good?”

“I’m not sure about for good,” Earl said. “It’s just, right now, I feel like I should be with my mom. She needs me more than my dad. He’s got Poplan.”

“But what am
I
going to do?” Finny burst out. “I can’t drop out of school. I just started.
We
just started. Now you’re telling me we’re going to have to put it all on hold again?”

“I’m just saying everything’s up in the air. We haven’t even talked about being a couple. We don’t even know if this is going to work out.”

“What?” Just this morning she’d been planning their life together. Though now, and suddenly, like a thunderclap on a clear afternoon, another thought struck her. “You’re not seeing other people, are you?”

“What do you mean?” Earl asked. Which told her everything she needed to know. She saw it in his face, in the scurrying confusion in his eyes, the familiar glow in his cheeks. She didn’t need to push on, and yet, against every good instinct, she did.

“I mean,” Finny said, summoning her old bluntness, “have you had sex with anyone besides me since we met at Judith’s party? Is that clear enough?”

But Earl didn’t want to fight anymore. “Yes,” he said. “I have.”

“Who?”

“A girl I knew from high school. Camille. It wasn’t serious. I didn’t realize I couldn’t—”

“It’s not about
couldn’t.”

“You’re on a different continent, Finny. I don’t see how we can—”

But she stopped him. She felt the bubble of her emotion bursting, a hot flood in her lungs, and she said to Earl, “You can’t do this to me. You
can’t
, Earl. I can’t live that way.” She was practically screaming. They’d become one of those unhappy pairs who fought in the street—something she’d told herself they’d never be.

Before Earl had a chance to answer, though, they were interrupted. The limping man, whose pace had quickened even more, bumped into Earl with his shoulder. All Finny saw of him was his bristly jaw, like some overused hairbrush. At first, she thought the man was falling, but when she reached out to grab him, he tore her purse off her arm and started to run down the street, no longer limping at all. Earl was on the ground.

“Oh my God,” Finny said, and leaned down to help Earl up. But Earl got up on his own. He started down the street, chasing the purse-snatcher.

“Hey!” Earl screamed. “Stop!
Connard!”

“No!” Finny screamed at Earl. “Come back!”

But he wouldn’t stop. The two men rounded the corner at full speed, and Finny had to run to keep up. Earl was still screaming at the man, and Finny wanted to tell him she didn’t care about her purse. But Earl was too far away, and yelling too loudly to hear. She’d seen the look in Earl’s eyes when he’d gotten up from the pavement, a kind of blind outrage, and she knew that nothing she could say would stop him. For the first time she’d glimpsed something reckless and impulsive in Earl, a piece of him she hadn’t known existed, and she found she was running as much away from that vision, those raging eyes, as toward Earl and the thief.

“Please!” Finny shouted. “Please come back!”

She followed them down the street, Earl chasing the thief, yelling,
“Mais quel connard!
Thief!” and Finny calling after Earl to come back. All of a sudden the man darted into an alleyway off the Rue de Maubeuge. “Don’t!” Finny yelled to Earl. But Earl kept going, into the dark side street. Finny had no choice but to follow.

When she made the turn, it was at first difficult to see anything. She could hear Earl’s footsteps ahead of her, and more distantly, the thief’s. She kept running toward Earl, her own feet smacking the pavement. None of them were screaming any longer; there were no other people around to hear them. The alleyway must have been made of cobblestone, because Finny’s feet kept getting turned between stones, her ankles strained. But she was a good runner; she wasn’t going to give up. She passed a dumpster. She could make out the shadows of the men ahead of her.

Farther down the alley was a small light, encased in what looked like the head of an old-fashioned streetlamp. It illuminated an orb of alleyway, and Finny could see that the street dead-ended just beyond the light, at a cement wall with some graffiti on it. She knew now that they were headed for a face-off with the criminal. Earl was gaining on him. The man was slowing his pace. There was nowhere else to run.

The man was nearly to the lit-up spot at the end of the alleyway. Finny heard the
tok-tok
of his shoes on the pavement, echoing in the tight space between the buildings. Then, suddenly, the man opened a door that Finny hadn’t seen, next to the light, and ran inside.

“Okay!” Finny screamed to Earl. “Okay!” It was all she could think of, and she was too out of breath to get out more than a couple of syllables. She figured that here Earl would have to give up.

But instead Earl yanked open the door that the man had disappeared behind. He ran into the building, still chasing the man.

Finny was coming up on the lighted patch herself. She considered giving up, going back. Why risk herself? But she couldn’t leave Earl that way. It would be too much to bear if something happened.

The door was painted red, and it squealed when Finny opened it. Above the lintel there was a tiny sign, which you couldn’t have seen if you hadn’t known exactly where the door was. In bright red letters the sign said:
La Maison des Fantaisies.
A brothel, Finny thought as she went inside.

The first room she entered was square, about the size of the dining room and kitchen in her mother’s house. The room was painted the same red color as the sign outside the door. It was very warm, and there was an odor of burnt almonds. There were chairs and couches of various shades of red, and six or eight people were sitting reading magazines like in a doctor’s office. The people—both men and women, which made Finny question her idea that it was a brothel—looked normal enough. They wore dresses and suits, leggings for the women, scarves or earmuffs piled in the seats next to them. One man had on a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up. Finny saw Earl darting past a door on the far side of the room. He was yelling
“Au voleur!
Stop!” but no one seemed to be paying attention.

Finny ran through the room, then down the hallway Earl had run down. The hallway was painted white, and had a tile floor like in a hospital. Here there was an astringent smell, as of bleach or some cleaning product. Earl ducked into one of the rooms, where he must have seen the thief running, and in a moment Finny followed.

But when she got there, Earl had already moved on. It was a cream-colored room that seemed to be set up like a classroom. There was a portable blackboard in one corner, stocked with chalk and erasers. A woman in a too-large tweed coat stood at the board asking questions of a very small man—he could have been a midget—who was seated at a child’s desk in front of the board. The man was wearing a schoolboy outfit, short pants and a starched shirt. He had a satchel tucked under his chair.

“Quelle est la capitale du Nicaragua?”
the woman questioned, tapping a piece of chalk against the board so that the tip crumbled.

“Bogotá?”
the man answered.

“Non!”
the woman screeched. Then she slapped the man across the face.

“Huit moins cinq,”
the woman said.

“Quatre?”
the man answered.

“Non!”
the woman screamed, and knocked him out of his chair with a blow to his shoulder. The woman looked pleased by the result.
“Vous êtes un mauvais élève!”
she said. She kicked him in the ribs, and he moaned with satisfaction. Neither glanced in Finny’s direction. A pickpocket would never get caught here, in the confusion of these rooms.

Finny ran back into the white hallway. She heard scuffling in a room ahead of her, to the right. “Earl?” she said. “Earl!” She was afraid he’d caught up with the thief, that they were fighting, or maybe the criminal’s friends were attacking Earl. She just wanted to get him out of this crazy place. She ran to the room where the sounds seemed to be coming from and she opened the door.

Inside the room, a very pale young woman was lying naked on the floor, her arms and legs splayed like she was making a snow angel. She lay on a rug the color of a fresh wound. She was almost sickly thin, her stomach sucked under a pronounced rib cage, her arms as brittle-looking as twigs. She had something like bread crumbs dusting her chest. And next to her—the part that Finny could hardly believe—was a live swan. The bird was enormous, probably four feet tall with its neck extended, and brilliantly white. Its eyes were encircled with black, giving it an angry, determined look. The swan craned its neck and nibbled a few bread crumbs off the woman’s chest. It didn’t walk toward her, and Finny saw that there was a small collar on the bird’s neck, fixing it in place. When the swan’s beak touched the woman, she giggled like a small child.

“Oh my God,” Finny said, hardly believing what was happening. She felt as if she were in some kind of demented dream.

She stumbled into the hall. For a moment she did nothing but breathe, look at the floor, and try to collect her thoughts. And then she looked up. Ahead of her, unbelievably, she saw the man who had taken her purse. He was running toward her. She realized now that he was only a boy—fifteen or sixteen, maybe—with some early stubble on his chin. The limping must have been an act he’d perfected to catch people off guard. He had wide, excited brown eyes, and he was breathing heavily, as if he couldn’t get enough air.

“It’s okay!” Finny called to him. It was the first thing that popped into her mind. She didn’t even realize that he probably didn’t understand her, probably spoke only French. She just had the urge to comfort, assuage.

In a second Earl was coming around the corner, chasing the boy. They were both headed right toward Finny. She didn’t know what to do. Should she put her arms out and stop the boy? Or scream, which didn’t seem to have much effect in this place. Or should she just let him go and grab hold of Earl, make him stop? But before she had a chance to make a decision, the boy kicked open a door in the hallway marked
Sortie
in green letters, and ran into the street. Earl chased him. Finny followed Earl.

Outside it was cold again. She was in another alley. This was a different door from the one they’d come in. Finny saw her breath in the cold air. Ahead of them was a major street, Finny wasn’t sure which. There was some kind of street fair or celebration going on. A swarm of people moved along the road, which was too crowded for cars to pass. Music was playing, drums and horns. The people were eating sweets out of paper bags. Finny knew that if the boy made it to the crowd, they’d never find him.

But here something else unexpected happened. The boy simply tossed the bag onto the pavement, waved to Earl with both hands as if to say,
Okay, you got me
, then jogged off into the crowd. Finny let out a long breath, relieved that their chase had ended. She almost hoped the boy had taken some money for his trouble.

Earl was picking the bag up off the pavement when Finny reached him.

“What just happened?” Finny asked. She was out of breath. Sweat ran down her sides. Her throat was dry and felt scratched, like she’d swallowed a mouthful of steel wool.

“That was the craziest place I’ve ever seen,” Earl said as they stood there in the alleyway, panting. Then Earl said, “Check to make sure everything’s there.”

Finny opened the bag. Money, keys, credit card, passport. It was all there.

“Nothing’s missing,” Finny said.

Earl had a small grin on his face.

“Jesus,” Finny said.

“What?”

And then she punched him in the chest.

“Ow,” Earl said.

She punched him again.

“Ow.
What?”

“Don’t do stupid things,” Finny said. She was nearly frantic, with worry and rage and panic and relief. “You hear me? I don’t care about my goddamn purse.”

“I thought you’d want—”

“Don’t,”
Finny said.

“Okay,” Earl said. “I’m sorry.”

And then, in spite of herself, she was hugging him, crying into his chest, her tears soaking the spot where she’d punched him a moment ago. “Oh my God, Earl,” she sobbed. “I can’t even tell you. I thought he’d kill you.”

Earl was stroking her hair. “I did it for you, Fin. I thought it’s what you’d want.”

“I know,” Finny said.

They didn’t talk any more about their living arrangements during the trip, or about how exclusive their relationship was. It was as if their conversation before the purse-snatching hadn’t happened. Finny was just so relieved that everything was okay, that they were alive and safe and enjoying each other’s company. They were affectionate with each other, stopping to kiss in the street, touching the other’s arm or hand when they were sitting in restaurants. In the mornings their love was, if anything, more vigorous, more urgent.

Then, out of nowhere, the trip was over. Finny was packing for her plane ride back to the States. She was flying into New York, because it turned out to be cheaper on the return trip. She was going to stay with Judith for the night. Earl cried while Finny was zipping up her bag, and then Finny started to cry. They had dinner with Mona in a restaurant she liked near the Gare du Nord. Ate foie gras, since it was a special occasion. Finny liked it spread on toast, with the little fruits and nuts they gave her. They drank too much wine, and Mona began to cry, too, more heavily than anyone, saying how much she’d miss Finny and how she hoped she would come back soon. Earl had to comfort her. Finny understood that he must not have shared all the details of his social life with her. He hugged his mother and looked at Finny over her shoulder, signaled that it was time to be heading back. Like a father with a young daughter.