“That’s it? That’s all I get?” he teased.
I felt my defensiveness melting away at this surprisingly charming and decidedly not-dangerous side of him. With Vincent’s encouragement I told him about my old life in Brooklyn, with Georgia and my parents. Of our summers in Paris, of my friends back home, with whom I had, by now, lost all contact. Of my boundless love for art, and my despair at discovering I possessed absolutely no talent for creating it.
He prodded me for more information, and I filled in the blanks for him on bands, food, film, books, and everything else under the sun. And unlike most boys my age I had known back home, he seemed genuinely interested in every detail.
What I didn’t tell him was that my parents were dead. I referred to them in the present tense and said that my sister and I had moved in with our grandparents to study in France. It wasn’t a total lie. But I didn’t feel like telling him the whole truth. I didn’t want his pity. I wanted to seem like just any other normal girl who hadn’t spent the last seven months isolating herself in an inner world of grief.
His rapid-fire questions made it impossible for me to ask him anything in return. So when we finally left I reproached him for it. “Okay, now I feel completely exposed—you know pretty much everything about me and I know nothing about you.”
“Aha, that is part of my nefarious plan.” He smiled, as the museum guard locked the doors behind us. “How else could I expect you to say yes to meeting up again if I laid everything out on the table the first time we talked?”
“This isn’t the first time we talked,” I corrected him, trying to coolly ignore the fact that he seemed to be asking me out.
“Okay, the first time we talked without my unintentionally insulting you,” he revised.
We walked across the museum’s garden toward the reflecting pools, where screaming children were celebrating the fact that it was still hot and sunny at six p.m. by splashing around ecstatically in the water.
Vincent walked slightly hunched over with his hands in his pockets. For the first time I sensed in him a tiny hint of vulnerability. I took advantage of it. “I don’t even know how old you are.”
“Nineteen,” he said.
“What do you do?”
“Student.”
“Really? Because your friend said something about your being in the police force.” I couldn’t help the trace of sarcasm in my voice.
“What?” he exclaimed, coming to a complete stop.
“My sister and I saw you rescue that girl.”
Vincent stared at me blankly.
“The girl who jumped off the Carrousel Bridge during that gang fight. Your friend escorted us away and told us it was a police procedure.”
“Oh, he did?” Vincent muttered, his expression assuming the hardened look it’d had the first time I met him. He thrust his hands back into his pockets and continued walking. We were getting closer to the Métro stop. I slowed my pace to buy a little more time.
“So what are you guys, undercover cops?” I didn’t believe it for a second, but tried to sound sincere. His sudden change in mood had intrigued me.
“Something like that.”
“What, kind of like a SWAT team?”
He didn’t respond.
“That was really brave, by the way,” I insisted. “Your diving into the river. What did the girl have to do with the gang fighting under the bridge, anyhow?” I asked, digging further.
“Um, I’m not supposed to talk about it,” Vincent said, studying the concrete a few inches in front of his feet.
“Oh yeah. Of course,” I said lightly. “You just look really young to be a cop.” I couldn’t stop a facetious smile from spreading across my lips.
“I told you . . . I’m a student,” he said, giving me an uncertain grin. He could tell I didn’t buy it.
“Yeah. Okay. I didn’t see anything. I didn’t hear anything,” I said dramatically.
Vincent laughed, his good mood returning. “So . . . Kate, what are you doing this weekend?”
“Um . . . no plans,” I said, silently cursing my reddening cheeks.
“Do you want to do something?” he asked, with a smile so charming that my heart forgot to beat.
I nodded, since I couldn’t speak.
Taking my silence as hesitation, he added quickly, “Not like a formal date or anything. Just hanging out. We can . . . take a walk. Wander around the Marais.”
I nodded again, and then managed to get out, “That would be great.”