A Million Miles Away(36)
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Kelsey should have pulled away, but now it was too late. And she was in shock, listening to him talk about their plans for the evening as they strolled through the busy airport. She tried to remove the taste of him from her lips by licking them, but, of course, it just intensified.
Her body seemed to be vibrating with every beat of her heart.
Two more men in fatigues, canvas bags on their backs, greeted them at the entrance to the train into the city. She would have to break the news later, at the hotel. Now wasn’t the time.
“You found her, I see,” the shorter redhead said, and held out his hand. “Remember me?”
“Rooster?” Kelsey asked.
“Sam, if you don’t mind, ma’am,” he said, revealing freckles as he got closer.
“No, he likes Rooster better, trust me,” said his companion, a lanky, bespectacled guy with caramel-colored skin.
“I do not,” Sam said matter-of-factly.
The other guy rolled his eyes. “I’m Phil.”
“Hello, Phil,” Kelsey said, shaking hands all around.
She took a deep breath as they descended into the metro, and remembered what her parents had told her before she left for the airport, pleased that she was trying to move forward from her grief. Just try to have fun, they had said. They may have been mistaken about where she would be having fun, but Kelsey took it to heart, anyway. She had to.
She gave her biggest Midwestern smile to the severe-looking women in high heels and the old ladies with dark lipstick and the men with sculpted, curly hair who stared at the four Americans as they rode through the underbelly of the city.
She soaked in the yellowed brick and gilded block letters of each platform, just like in the movies, trying to identify the artwork on the rows of posters.
Even the advertisements are beautiful, she found herself telling Michelle in her mind.
That one is Edgar Degas, she thought, looking at the rough sketch of a woman stepping out of a tub on an ad for a museum called Musée d’Orsay. Next to it, women from a hundred years ago, lifting their dark skirts to reveal petticoats and calves. Next to that, the iconic tulle brushstrokes, her favorite of his before she even knew who he was: The Pink Dancers, Before the Ballet.
Peter leaned close to Kelsey, pointing at their stop on a map, and she could feel her skin getting hot under her sweater, from all the excitement, from the pressure of what she had to tell him, or maybe just from having him around, a pair of arms and eyes and boots to go with the face she had grown to know.
They emerged onto the Place de Clichy, at the edge of what Kelsey could only call a roundabout. Motorcycles, old-fashioned taxis, and tiny cars wound around a cement circle to their various branching roads and, in the center of it, a giant copper sculpture.
Even the traffic is influenced by art, she took note for her sister.
Their hotel was nearby.
Soon, everything might fall apart, and Kelsey dreaded it. Especially here. It shouldn’t happen here, where it was midday, the sun at the highest point in the sky, bouncing off red awnings and wet stones and linen on tables, beneath the twisting streetlamps, and windows that opened onto narrow streets lined by balconies.…
“Coming?” Peter called to her from ahead, holding out his hand.
She nodded and followed the group down one avenue, then another, then back the other way for a wrong turn, and finally to a building marked only by the number painted above the doorway.
“Okay,” Peter said, glancing at the directions he had printed out. “40 Rue Nollet.”
He rang the bell.
Inside, they found a steep wooden staircase and a wizened caretaker, whose tiny frame disappeared into her apron.
“C’est ici,” she said after four flights, pointing to a thick white wooden door.
She led them inside to find two large beds, and a window from ceiling to floor, opening to a small iron balcony.
“Merci. Enjoy,” she said, and exited.
Phil and Sam tossed their canvas bags onto one bed and stretched, taking in the view of the city.
“One room?” Kelsey said, turning to Peter.
“Nice and cozy,” Peter said, winking. Then he whispered, “Sorry. This city ain’t cheap.”
“That’s okay,” she replied.
As she watched Peter peel off his army T-shirt to don civilian clothes, she was also grateful that she wouldn’t have to talk her way out of doing whatever it was that Michelle and Peter would do in a bed alone.
She was blushing. Again.
The close quarters would make it difficult to have any private conversation, though, let alone the one they were meant to have. But deep down, Kelsey was grateful to put it off.
Soon, the four of them set out on the metro to find a shop called Shakespeare and Company, at Peter’s request.
Sam took some convincing as they hung on to a metal bar for balance, huddled among the passengers. “I’m not shelling out euros to see Shakespeare, no way. Can’t understand that crap. Never could. Might as well pay to watch a soap opera in Spanish.”
Peter laughed, his hand on Kelsey’s back. “It’s a bookstore, Rooster. Where all the American writers used to hang out in the 1920s. Hemingway’s favorite.”
The street they searched for, it turned out, was right across the river from Notre Dame Cathedral. When she saw it, she drew in a breath. The cathedral was gigantic, of course, but the late-afternoon light made the small shadows just as important as the enormous towers, emphasizing the structure’s tiny curves and faces and leaves. Never before had Kelsey seen a building that asked so much of those who looked at it. Every inch had been carved into something else.