“No, boys always have to go first in that situation.”
“Why?” he asked, dropping his hands from the pillars and coming to put his arms around my waist.
“It’s one of the rules of the universe. I think it’s on the periodic table, actually.”
“I love you, Heather. There you go. Right out loud. The whole thing.”
“I love you, too, Jack.”
“So now that’s part of us. We can’t go back. We can break up, but we can’t go back.”
“True.”
“I feel as though I’ve loved you from another life almost.”
“Me, too. Feels that way, I know.”
“We don’t have to stop falling in love, do we? We can fall deeper.”
“We will.”
“We can make our own world. We can live how we like,” he said, his lips close to my ear.
“Yes,” I agreed.
We stayed for a while longer and looked at the pillars. I liked that we didn’t know their exact purpose. I liked that we committed ourselves to one another in a spot where Jack’s grandfather once stood. It was a gorgeous little village, a perfect Italian comune on the Italian Riviera. In a way, life seemed to be beginning right in that instant, immediately after our words had passed from one to the other. Everything before it had been mere prelude; everything afterward would be Jack. We stood until a flock of pigeons circled near us and landed. They came forward hoping for handouts, their glittering necks holding the light of the sun and turning it green and blue and yellow.
Paris
33
Whatever you bring to Paris, it takes away and uses for a time, then it returns it to you. But what it gives back is altered, sometimes subtly, sometimes more noticeably, but the city guards a small part of whatever you brought and keeps it for itself. Paris is a thief. It is a smiling thief, one that lets you in on the joke but steals just the same. And you can’t resist, because it is Paris, and the city falls into darkness at ten o’clock on summer evenings and the cafés turn on their lights and the streets fill, and the scent of coffee, of perfume, of cooking eggs and onions, is everywhere. In recompense for the theft, Paris returns small, glorious pictures, beautiful moments when it gives you back the thing you brought and hints that you can have more, go deeper, if only you accept the bargain. Sometimes it is only the swell of the Seine as it throbs against its ancient bank, or the absurd open mouth of a sword swallower at Montparnasse, or the feral glint of a traveler looking to lift a wallet on a crowded train platform.
Paris is the cupped hand of a woman accepting a match light from a man at a small round table under a chestnut tree thirty minutes before a rainstorm.
*
I spotted Constance from half a block away, and my heart leaped up.
I ran toward Constance, and she ran toward me—her look as ethereal as ever—and we embraced in a do-si-do that threatened to knock us over from the weight of our backpacks. After a deep, satisfying hug, we pushed away from each other to fill our eyes with the other person, then hugged again, this time more fiercely, and some small thing that had been missing returned to me in a great, gushing relief.
“You look amazing!” I said, because she did. She looked radiant and happy, and one glance told me everything I needed to know about how her time with Raef had been.
“You do, too!” she said, nodding, and our eyes worked on one another’s, trying to send messages, to interpret everything in a mad rush to understand what the other had experienced.
“Did you love Spain?”
“I loved Spain,” she said. “And Italy?”
“It was wonderful. We only saw a little, but it was wonderful.”
“And what about Switzerland?”
It was too much to tell all at once. We realized, gradually, that Raef and Jack stood back from us, giving us a chance to catch up. We both laughed as it became clear that we had ignored the men. I hugged Raef, and Constance hugged Jack. Then for a moment we didn’t know what to do next.
“I have a line on a place,” Raef said when we settled in a small circle together, blocking too much foot traffic, it was true. “Maybe we could leave our bags with you two while Jack and I go sort things out. You said you’re okay with a cheap hotel?”
“Sure,” I said and looked at Jack. He nodded.
That became the plan. Jack and Raef walked with us to a café near the train station and left us with all the baggage. We ordered two coffees from a stringy old waiter, his white hair like a Roman’s laurel wreath around his temples. The waiter nodded and wandered off. I put my hands across the table, and Constance placed her hands in mine.
“So?” I asked.
Her eyes filled.
“He is the kindest, gentlest man I have ever met,” she said, understanding instantly what I had asked to know. “I’m so mad about him I don’t know what to do with myself. Honestly, I don’t. I keep telling myself this is nutty, this can’t be happening, but then he does something else, something so sweet and thoughtful that it knocks me over again.”
“I’m so glad, Constance. I’m so happy for you.”
“And Jack?”
I nodded.
She squeezed my hand. The waiter returned with our coffees. She spoke again.
“We went to Spain, and at first I had difficulty with the language and the pace of things. It was slow, and I felt this nervous need to keep going, to see more, but Raef worked his magic on me. I started asking myself, is this some kind of race? Is it a game where someone wins a prize by seeing more museums, visiting more cathedrals? Why hadn’t I ever thought of that before? It’s so basic and so obvious, but it wasn’t until Raef helped me see it, gave it a context, that I understood a little of what I was doing here in the first place.”
“I felt the same way,” I said. “With Jack. I had this absurd checklist in my mind, and if I didn’t notch all the squares, then I had somehow failed. I wasn’t the good tourist. I wasn’t getting full value. I don’t know if it’s an American attitude, or just one of my own. Maybe it has something to do with being a good student, but suddenly with Jack I no longer felt in a rush to get somewhere that I had never wanted to get to in the first place. Not really.”
“Raef wants me to go to Australia with him. To not go home, but to go with him instead. He wants me to meet his family.”
“Are you considering it?”
She looked steadily at me. My lovely, intellectual friend, the young woman who studied saints, merely shrugged.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s not at all what I came to Europe to do. My parents would think I’ve gone insane.”
“Have you told them about Raef?”
“I told my mom. She’s supportive but wants me to be cautious. I’ve hashed it all out in my head. I don’t have to start work until later in the fall. I could do it, go to Australia, I mean. It’s tempting. Raef has to go back for the summer sheepshearing. I think that’s what he said. The seasons are reversed, so I get confused when he talks about it.”
“You’re that serious?”
She nodded. She sipped her coffee.
“Apparently we are,” she said.