“Trick question. It’s two women.”
“Look, can we not do this now?” I say. “It’s been a long day.”
The drinks arrive, and Yael makes a toast. “To you and your father,” she says.
“And to you,” I say.
We clink our glasses together, and she takes a sip of her wine. “So, you have a boyfriend back in New York?” she asks.
“I thought you don’t discuss personal stuff.”
“I don’t discuss my personal stuff,” she says. “So out with it—boyfriend?”
I look away. God, everyone in this room seems happy tonight. “A friend is all he is, I think.”
“But you want something more?”
“To be honest, I didn’t have time to think about it,” I say. “All this happened just after I met him.”
“Things will be normal again,” she says. “Then, maybe.”
It’s a stupid thought, the idea of anything being normal again, but I smile back at her as if it weren’t. “And you?” I ask to change the subject. “It’s a two-way street.”
“Not a chance,” she says.
“So tell me, I don’t know—the last time you were in love. Something that’s completely over. No harm in that.”
Yael laughs to herself in a sad sort of way. “I’m learning nothing is ever completely over.” Then she takes a sip of wine and sighs. “Fine. But I’m warning you, it’s sappy and pathetic.”
“I’m all about sappy and pathetic.”
She looks away thoughtfully. “Ten years ago—no, longer. One of my first jobs right out of training. I was working surveillance with another agent. We were in Budapest. Have you been?”
“To Budapest? No.”
“One of the world’s perfect cities. Hard not to fall in love there,” she says, eyes focused on the butcher-paper tablecloth, wine glass hanging languidly between her fingers. “He and I spent a lot of time in parked cars together, looking out of windows in dark apartments together. And there it was, despite all the rules against it. I fell in love with the guy I was working with.”
“And did anything happen?”
Yael shakes her head. “No. Not so much as a kiss.”
“Why not?”
“First of all, he was married. Also, from another country’s service. Very bad combination.” Her mouth is smiling, but her eyes are sad, like the memory of him can’t decide which way it wants to go.
“Maybe someday you’ll meet again,” I say hopefully. “Who knows.”
“Who knows,” she repeats in a way that means there’s not a chance in hell.
The waiter appears carrying a platter holding our c?te de boeuf—a single enormous slab of dead cow flesh, its surface black and still sizzling. He slices the meat into ribbons, and blood wells from within it, forming red lagoons on the plate. I consider turning vegetarian on the spot. But Yael digs in, and so I take a small, tentative bite. It’s delicious.
When Yael is finished eating, she leans back and rubs her stomach. “I have to use the ladies’ room,” she says, and excuses herself from the table.
The waiter reappears and tops off her glass of wine. I sneak the glass closer and take a sip. It’s cheap stuff, and it tastes like overripe cherries and dirt and goes perfectly with the meat. I down the rest of it and signal the waiter for another. He smiles at me as he refills the glass. “Soyez prudente,” he says. Be careful. I drink it down to the level it was when Yael left the table and slide the glass back into place just as she reappears.
Yael pays the check, and we head out. The wine has left me feeling warm, and I know in a while I’ll be sleepy and a little buzzed. The neighborhood is still crowded with what looks like all of evening Paris—couples with arms thrown over each other, friends in tight, inseparable knots. They weave in and out of doorways, the restaurants and bars packed. What would it be like, I wonder, to come here when the world wasn’t crushing me with its weight? Like one of the darker, more interesting corners of heaven, I suppose.
“You all right after the wine?” Yael asks me. “Not feeling too sloppy, I hope. Have to keep your tactical awareness up.”
“No,” I lie. “I’m fine. How did you…?”
“Waiter told me,” she says. “Even allies spy on each other.”
I repeat the rest of it in my head: For a time when they’re not.
Yael places her hand on my arm and stops me. “I have a bladder like a mouse,” she says. “Let’s stop here so I can use the bathroom again.”
We’ve drifted out of the neighborhood we’d been in, the charming Paris-Brooklyn hybrid, and the bars and restaurants here are louder, seedier. The one we’re standing in front of has a neon sign that says LA CHèVRE MAIGRE. The skinny goat. There’s loud and very bad French speed metal pouring from the door.
“Let’s find a little café somewhere,” I say.
But she pulls me in anyway. A tough crowd has gathered for the performance. Bikers in leather vests, guys with shaved heads and tattoos on their faces. Bodies shake violently, drunk and furious at the world. They’re squeezed together around a small stage where a band is hammering away at their instruments. It’s hard to make out faces and details through the thick cloud of cigarette and pot smoke, but I can see there are very few women.
“You can hold it,” I say to Yael, just loudly enough to be heard over the music.
“Don’t be such a child,” she says. “Wait at the bar.”
She disappears down a dim hallway, while I cross my arms and try to hide in the shadows. It’s only seconds before a few men start circling. A guy with blond hair clipped short and a grimy denim jacket shoulders through them.
“Out slumming it with Mom tonight?” he says in French. His breath smells of beer and cigarettes.
I ignore him, or try to, but he’s a wall of meat looming over me and it’s hard to pretend he doesn’t exist. There’s easily an eighty-pound difference between us, and where the hell did Yael go?
The guy braces his arms to the wall on either side of my head. He’s tall and heavy with a round pink face that reminds me of a horrible pig. I duck under his arm and steer down the dark hallway to find Yael. He calls out after me, “Where you going, little princess? Back outside to hang with the fags?”
I push through the door of the women’s room. It’s a filthy closet with the walls painted black and a single lightbulb hanging naked over a dirty sink. My boots slide through a wet pool of something on the floor as I head for the only stall, calling Yael’s name. But it’s empty.