We ordered oysters. We ordered escargot. Everything Meredith suggested, I responded with a hell yeah. The booze made me hyper. My foot was jostling, a motor without an off switch. And I drank to calm myself, as much as I drank to keep myself revved.
“This food is amazing,” I told her, though even Spaghetti-Os tasted good when I was drunk.
The waiter came to offer dessert, and Meredith and I gave each other a conspiratorial look. Two more cognacs, please.
It was well past 11 when the check arrived, and we had burned through half a pack of cigarettes. I threw my credit card on the table without even looking at the total.
“I can’t let you pay for all this,” Meredith said, and I winked at her. “Don’t worry. I’m not.”
We tumbled into a cab. And here is where the night starts to stutter and skip. I see Meredith in the cab, the bundle of her scarf around her face. It’s cold, and we are huddled together now, too drunk to care about our thighs pressed against each other. Good friends now. Old friends now. I see the red blur of the meter, a fuzzy dot in the corner. The baffling matter of euros. What the fuck are all these coins?
I’m pretty sure Meredith says, “I’m going to walk home from your hotel. I need the fresh air.” We must have hugged good-bye. I had such a good time. Let’s do this again. But that’s not how it happens in my memory. In my memory, we’re standing there, talking, and then—she’s gone. Spliced from the scene. November leaves scuttling down the empty sidewalk near midnight in Paris. And I turn toward the rotating glass door, and I walk inside.
That tall guy behind the concierge desk. I’ve seen him before.
“How was your evening, mademoiselle?” His voice is almost comically low. A basso profundo, my mother would say.
“Excellent,” I say. No slur in my voice. Nailed it. Slick floors like this can be dastardly in heels, and I’ve suffered a few spills in my time. Walking along, perfectly upright, and then boom. Face against the floor. I wave to the concierge, a good-night parting. Nice people here. Look at that: I made it all the way through the lobby without a slip.
And then the curtain descends. You know what happens next. Actually, neither of us does.
I USED TO have nightmares I was thrust onstage in the middle of a play, with no clue what I was supposed to say. In another version of the dream, I memorized lines for the wrong play, and nothing I said synced up with the characters onstage. I would wake up in my bed, collarbone slick, sheets in a noose around my legs. Later I discovered these were textbook anxiety dreams, which made me feel comforted, but lame. Even my subconscious was a cliché.
I used to tell myself, when I woke from those dreams, spooked and fog-brained: This could never happen. People never get to opening night without knowing the name of the play. This is just a catastrophe scenario, fired off by neurons. It isn’t real. And yet, when the curtains opened up in my mind that night in Paris, and I was in bed with a guy I didn’t even remember meeting, this is what I said:
ME: I should go.
HIM: You just said you wanted to stay.
It’s strange to me how calm I remained. I was still wrapped in the soothing vapors of the cognac, no clue where I was but not particularly concerned. I’ll figure this out.
I was pretty sure this was my hotel. I recognized the swirly brown carpet, the brushed-steel light fixtures. The bed had the same fluffy white sheets. But the oddest ideas drifted through my head. I thought maybe this guy was my boyfriend. I thought maybe he was the man I came to Paris to interview. It was like coming out of a very deep sleep and dragging the upside-down logic of dreams into real life. As though I woke up kissing a pillow, but the pillow happened to be slightly balding with kind eyes.
The panic started when I noticed the time. It was almost 2 am.
“Shit, my flight leaves in a few hours,” I said.
Actually, the flight wasn’t until 11 am, but I understood there was not nearly enough time between then and now. The awfulness of my circumstances began to dawn on me.
I dug my tights out of a ball at the foot of the bed and slapped my bra on so fast the eyeteeth were crooked. I hopped and stumbled as I zipped up my boots. I was knocking over things, shit clattering behind me. Sensation was returning to me in stages. Strange body parts felt sore. Later, it would sting when I peed.
“This was fun,” I said.
He was lying in bed, one arm stretched out as though I were still in the cradle of his arms. His hand lifted in the casual, shrugging gesture of a person who hasn’t been given a choice.
“Good-bye, I guess,” he said.
I closed the door, and the click of the lock’s tongue in the groove brought me such relief. The sound of a narrow escape.
I was on my way to the elevator when I realized: I did not have my purse.
WHEN I SAY I did not have my purse, I didn’t give a shit about my actual purse, a black vinyl bag with stitching that had already started to unravel. But I did not have my wallet. I did not have my passport. I did not have my money, my driver’s license, my room card, the keys to my loft back in Brooklyn.