Paris: The Memoir(39)

I pulled the door shut and sat on the toilet without taking my jeans down, waiting, taking one deep, quiet breath after another, trying to think through what was going to happen next. After a while, Mrs. Meathead pounded on the door and said, “Hurry up.”

I braced my hands on the toilet seat, breathing, waiting until I saw her eye at the crack in the stall door.

“What are you doing?” she said.

Here’s the thing about dancing in a really crowded club: There’s so little room to do anything, you end up basically jumping up and down for hours, which gives you the thigh muscles of a kangaroo. Without really thinking about it, I pulled my knees to my chest and kicked the door with both feet. She staggered back and fell to the tile floor, moaning sort of a wet, blubbery sound.

I just ran. Out the door. Down the concourse.

I heard her behind me, screaming for her husband, but I had a head start. By the time he started chasing me, I was halfway down the concourse. I bounded onto an escalator before I realized it was coming up, and I needed to go down. Too late to change lanes. I leaped out over the stairs, skipped like a stone, stumbled, found my feet, and kept pounding toward the one safe haven I could think of.

The Hilton.

Conrad Hilton was ahead of his time. In 1959, air travel was cutting edge, marketed with high fashion and art cross-promotions. Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol did commercials for Braniff with stewardesses in Pucci uniforms. My great-grandfather turned travel upside down, building a luxury hotel right there at SFO. You could fly in, live your best life, and fly out again without ever leaving the airport. Papa was a young man at the time, and he loved that hotel, because it was always full of pilots, stewardesses, and jet-set people from all over the globe.

“The hotel lounge was the Tiger-a-Go-Go,” he told me. “They had a team of dancing girls called the Tiger Kittens. Buzz and Bucky did a song about it. It was a big hit.”

The song actually peaked at number 104 on Billboard, but it makes for a cinematic moment in my head: I see myself tearing down the concourse with Mr. Meathead chasing after me to the driving rhythm of Buzz and Bucky’s surf rock anthem: “Tiger! Tiger! Tiger-a-Go-Go!”

The concierge looked up when I bolted past the front desk, screaming, “My boyfriend is trying to kill me! Get me in a taxi!”

A good concierge doesn’t ask questions. He hustled me out to the curb and into a waiting cab. The baffled driver started to ask, “Where—”

“Just go! Just go!”

He peeled out.

Tiger! Tiger! Tiger-a-Go-Go!

As we sped away from the hotel, I peeked over the back of the seat and saw Mr. Meathead on the curb, looking like he was about to have a heart attack. The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror. I was giggling and crying, high on adrenaline, and so happy to be free.

“Take me to the downtown Hilton, please.” That felt as close to home as I could get. When he pulled up in front of the hotel, I said, “Be right back. I gotta run in and get money from my boyfriend.”

“Yeah, right,” he huffed.

I went in and crossed the lobby at a quickstep trot, trying not to look like I was running away. (Unicorn trot!) I ducked around a corner and took off running again, out the back door and up the street. I ran, walked, ran again, holding my hand against a stitch in my side. After a while, I sat on a bench. I had no idea where I was and had no money, but I was free, fighting tears of joy.

After a while, I went into a phone booth and toggled the switch under the receiver. When the operator came on, I gave her my parents’ phone number.

“Mom! Mom . . .” I was crying before she had a chance to accept the charges. This was only the second time I’d heard her voice since I was taken.

“Paris, where are you? What have you done?”

“Mom, please,” I sobbed. “You have no idea what’s happening here. There’s like—I got beaten up—they’re crazy—I don’t want to go to this place. Please, let me come home.” As I pleaded for my life, I could tell she didn’t believe me.

“Paris, calm down. It’s all right.”

“I’ll never go out again. I won’t lie. I won’t go to clubs. I hate clubs! Mom, I just want to be home. I’ll do good in school. I’ll do anything you say. I’ll be good, Mom. I’ll be good, I swear.”

“Paris, calm down. It’s okay,” Mom said. “Of course, you can come home.”

“Thank you.” I closed my eyes and slumped against the wall of the phone booth, desperately weary, desperately grateful. “Thank you, Mom. I’ll be so good. I promise.”

“Just stay on the phone with me. Stay right there.”

I was happy to do that. All I wanted was her soothing voice in my ear.

“Everything’s okay, Paris. Just stay with me while we figure this out.”

It’s cute how I kept forgetting that my mom is way smarter than me.

Apparently, after I ran the first time, my parents had a wiretap put on their phone, knowing that if I bolted again, I would eventually call, and they would be able to trace it.

I felt a firm hand on my shoulder and looked up to find a police officer standing there.

“You need to come with me, miss.” He took the phone from me and said, “Mrs. Hilton? This is Officer—yes. I have her. Yes, ma’am. Will do.”