What's Mine and Yours(40)
“My father is Colombian.”
“Nice,” she said. “Well, look us up. We’re called Mega Fuerza. Come and see us play.” The girl finished retouching her makeup and left. It was only when she was gone that Noelle admitted to herself that she was in trouble. The vomit had confirmed what she already knew, and so had looking at Alexandra, her sweat and radiance, her lean torso. Noelle wasn’t the same. Something had shifted inside her.
Duke was waiting for her outside the bathroom, clutching another soda and lime. He looked nervous. “Take me home,” she said, and they headed out into the night, their ears still throbbing.
Duke led the way through the dark, unfamiliar downtown. Noelle wondered whether she’d come to school here, or whether she’d be able to go away, much farther. Duke wasn’t the kind of boy who would follow her. He’d stay in his church and meet a girl, work some job, buy a house on the west side. He’d take off his studded bracelets, cut his hair, and live out the life he was always going to have lived.
Noelle wanted more. She wanted to be far away from Robbie, who was here and then wasn’t. She wanted away from her mother, who held up hateful signs and pretended not to hate, who had married Hank but still gave money to Robbie, held on to their old house. She was weak, small. Noelle wanted to be different. She wanted to live in a big city. She wanted to have friends who spoke Spanish. She wanted to order coffee from a coffee bar. She wanted to make things, to be around people who made things. She wanted out of the basement, a room of her own, where she could bring home boys, maybe even a girl, like the one from Mega Fuerza. She didn’t know what she’d do, or where she’d live, but she could go anywhere, be anything. If she could leave now, she would. She didn’t want to see how things would go at Central.
“Noelle.” Duke was calling to her. She snapped back to the warm night, his cool, soft hand. “Are you okay? You only had one beer.”
He was a sweet boy, and what they had for now was good and easy. Before they got home, they’d pull off somewhere, make out in the car. They’d put their tongues in each other’s ears. They’d go at it until he came, one way or another. He was her first boyfriend, but she’d found ways to do this, with her hands, her mouth, climbing on top of him. It made her feel competent, powerful. She could make him moan. She could make him say her name.
“Noelle,” he said again, still worried.
She smiled at him and kissed his knuckles. “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just a little thing.”
7
September 2018
Paris, France
The café was modern, an oddity on this street in the eleventh arrondissement. It was brightly lit and industrial with concrete walls and floors. A glass wall separated the front of the shop from the back, where the bakers were molding dough, folding and beating, brushing butter onto croissants. Nelson sat by the window and watched them slide trays from the oven. The café had a euphoric name, something like La Bonne Espérance, and it was tucked into the corner of a frantic boulevard not far from the Bastille. Noelle would have liked the shop, its polish and grit. He thought of her as he looked out on the street.
The neighborhood wasn’t as picturesque as the ones closer to the Seine, the rue de Rivoli. Out here it was all bus stops, two-euro crêpe stands, eyeglass shops, and pharmacies, a green square where children kicked around a soccer ball. Nelson could see the column of the Bastille, a quarter mile away, towering green and gold. The bronze nude atop was a man, winged, a torch in one hand, a broken chain in the other. A star over his head. Le Génie de la Liberté, The Spirit of Freedom. Nelson remembered enough of his college French to know that génie meant “spirit” and not “genius” in this case, which he appreciated since he didn’t believe in genius. There was only luck and social capital, as well as capital capital. It was true even for him, his career, but what did it matter? He was here.
Rumor was that the café was black owned. He ordered a beignet and a coffee, turning down the espresso for drip, un café américain. Even across an ocean, he couldn’t deny his roots.
The beignet was airy and fat, sugar dusted. He bit into the soft dough, the tart smear of raspberry jam, sifted clean of seeds. It was simple, perfect. There were many arts that weren’t considered arts but should have been. He ate with his eyes shut. He didn’t notice Jemima had breezed in, until he heard the scrape of a stool across the floor.
“What’s the matter? Are you crying?”
“Just communing with the dead,” Nelson said, and when she tilted her head at him, questioning, he went on. “Never mind. I was having a meditative experience.”
“Sure,” she said, flipping over the menu. “Whatever. Do they have real food here or just pastries? It’s almost lunchtime, you know.”
Jemima was dressed like a Parisian teenager in a silk floral dress and white sneakers, her bangs cut straight across her forehead. She had coffee-colored hair and olive eyes, a cell phone she kept glued to her palm. She had worn purple eyeliner every day he’d known her, today included. She was twenty-four, and Nelson was fairly certain this was her first job.
She asked him how he’d spent the morning, and Nelson said he’d gone for a walk in the gardens, then a run. After his shower, he caught a taxi here to the eleventh for a coffee, dessert.