The guard opened the door for me, and for a moment I just stood there, staring.
Inside the small, mostly bare room, Guillaume was sitting in a plastic chair, naked but for a pair of faded Hanes briefs, which were red with a thick white band around the waist. He had one leg crossed casually over the other and was reading a tattered copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And as if things couldn’t get any stranger, he was wearing a black top hat. A black cane with a white tip was propped against the chair.
“Allons-y,” the officer urged. Let’s go. I gulped and stepped inside. The officer slammed the door behind me with a definitive bang, and Guillaume looked up. He stared at me for a moment as if trying to place me, then blinked a few times and grinned.
“Ah, bonjour, Emma!” he said brightly, as if I had just dropped in on him in his penthouse as opposed to a security cell in the Eiffel Tower. He snapped his book shut and set it down. “You are looking lovely this morning.”
I tried to control my impulse to blush—and also my impulse to stare at his mostly naked body. “Guillaume, what on earth are you doing?”
“It’s not my fault, Emma,” he said with a casual shrug. He tipped his top hat to me and stood up lazily. I blinked a few times and looked away. After all, it was irrelevant that his was the nicest body I’d ever laid eyes on, right?
“I’m sure you’re totally innocent, once again,” I said drily. I thrust the Celio bag at him. “Please get dressed, Guillaume,” I said, still trying not to look too closely.
He looked at me for a moment then took the bag from me. He peered inside and his face lit up. “Emma!” he exclaimed. “You brought me clothes! How nice! And I didn’t get you anything! How rude of me!”
I glanced back at him. He was smiling happily, as if there were nothing in the world wrong with the present situation.
“Yeah, I’m a real angel,” I muttered. I looked him up and down. “What exactly were you doing, anyhow?”
Guillaume regarded me blankly. “I was doing a dance number, Emma,” he said.
“A dance number?”
He nodded. “Want to see?”
“Not particularly,” I said.
Guillaume smiled and shook his head. “Oh, Emma, where is your sense of adventure?”
“I don’t know,” I muttered. “Where are your clothes?”
He ignored me. “I was just seeing what it was like to be Fred Astaire. You’re American. You should appreciate that, right?”
With that, he stood, dropped the bagful of clothing on the ground, and picked up the cane.
“Guillaume—”
He held up a hand. “Do not interrupt the artistic process, Emma.”
He closed his eyes, breathed in and out, and whispered, “Zen.” Then, wearing just his red briefs and top hat, he began to do a little barefoot tap dance.
“Have you seen the well-to-do,” Guillaume began to sing loudly in a booming voice, waving his cane grandly around.
I stared in horrified awe as he pranced back and forth in the little cell, swinging his cane, tipping his hat, kicking his legs up and dancing around me until he concluded with, “Puttin’ on the Ritz!”
There was a moment of silence after Guillaume finished the song, on his knees, the top hat in one hand and the cane in the other. He looked at me hopefully, and I sensed that I was supposed to applaud.
Instead, I shook my head slowly. “You are seriously insane,” I said.
Guillaume pouted, dropping his hat and cane dejectedly to the floor. “Aw, Emma, I’m just having a little fun.”
I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “Okay, Guillaume, wonderful,” I said. “Seriously, would you put some clothes on and let me deal with this? Otherwise you’re going to be performing your next dance routine at the local jail.”
“I was going to suggest you join me,” Guillaume sulked. “You’d be great dancing with me to ‘Cheek to Cheek.’ It’s my favorite Astaire number, you know.”
“Maybe some other time,” I said. “Now please? Get dressed!”
Guillaume looked a bit disappointed, but he picked up the Celio bag, pulled out the shirt, and shrugged. “Whatever you say, Emma,” he said sadly as he began to pull the shirt over his head. I lingered a second longer than I needed to (hey, it’s not every day you get to see the world’s most handsome man in his underwear, okay?), then made my way back out to the main office, where I asked who was in charge. The Eiffel Tower security chief offered me a seat and called over the two other guards who were standing in the room.
“I’m so sorry about this,” I said after introducing myself and apologizing for my lack of French proficiency. “What happened?”