Just One Day(14)

There are a couple of doors, so I go to the first one and knock on it. It opens to a small room with a metal desk, an old computer, a pile of papers. Willem’s backpack is there, but he’s not. I go back in the hall and hear the sound of a woman’s rapid-fire French, and then Willem’s voice, languid in response.
“Willem?” I call out. “Hello?”
He says something back, but I don’t understand.
“What?”
He says something else, but I can’t hear him so I crack open the door to find a small supply closet full of boxes and in it, Willem standing right up close to a girl—Céline—who even in the half darkness, I can see is beautiful in a way I can never even pretend to be. She is talking to Willem in a throaty voice while tugging his shirt over his head. He, of course, is laughing.
I slam the door shut and retreat back toward the stairs, tipping over my suitcase in my haste.
I hear something rattle. “Lulu, open the door. It’s stuck.”
I turn around. My suitcase is lodged underneath the handle. I scurry back to kick it out of the way and turn back toward the stairs as the door flies open.
“What are you doing?” Willem asks.
“Leaving.” It’s not like Willem and I are anything to each other, but still, he left me upstairs to come downstairs for a quickie?
“Come back.”
I’ve heard about the French. I’ve seen plenty of French films. A lot of them are sexy; some of them are kinky. I want to be Lulu, but not that much.
“Lulu!” Willem’s voice is firm. “Céline refuses to hold your bags unless I change my clothes,” he explains. “She says I look like a dirty old man coming out of a sex shop.” He points to his crotch.
It takes me a minute to understand what she means, and when I do, I flush.
Céline says something to Willem in French, and he laughs. And fine, maybe it’s not what I thought it was. But it’s still pretty clear that I’ve intruded upon something.
Willem turns back to me. “I said I will change my jeans, but all my other shirts are just as dirty, so she is finding me one.”
Céline continues yapping away at Willem in French, and it’s like I don’t even exist.
Finally, she finds what she’s looking for, a heather-gray T-shirt with a giant red SOS emblazoned on it. Willem takes it and yanks off his own T-shirt. Céline says something else and reaches out to undo his belt buckle. He holds his hands up in surrender and then undoes the buttons himself. The jeans fall to the floor and Willem just stands there, all miles and miles of him, in nothing but a pair of fitted boxer shorts.
“Excusez-moi,” he says as he brushes past me so close his bare torso slides up against my arm. It’s dark in here, but I’m fairly certain Céline can tell I’m blushing and has marked this as a point against me. A few seconds later, Willem returns with his backpack. He digs in it for a rumpled-but-stain-free pair of jeans. I try not to stare as he slips them on and threads his worn brown leather belt through the loops. Then he puts on the T-shirt. Céline glances at me looking at him, and I look away as though she’s caught me at something. Which she has. Watching him get dressed feels more illicit than seeing him strip.
“D’accord?” he asks Céline. She appraises him, her hands on her hips.
“Mieux,” she says back, sounding like a cat. Mew.
“Lulu?” Willem asks.
“Nice.”
Finally, Céline acknowledges me. She says something, gesticulating wildly, then stops.
When I fail to answer, one of Céline’s eyebrows shoots up into a perfect arch, while the other one stays in neutral. I’ve seen women from Florence to Prague do this same thing. It must be some skill they teach in European schools.
“She is asking you if you have ever heard of Sous ou Sur,” Willem says, pointing to the SOS on the shirt. “They are a famous punk-rap band with strong lyrics about justice.”
I shake my head, feeling like a double loser for not having heard of the cool French anarchist whatever justice band. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak French.”
Céline looks disdainful. Another stupid American who can’t be bothered to learn any other languages.
“I speak a little Mandarin,” I offer hopefully, but this fails to impress.
Céline deigns to switch to English: “But your name. Lulu, it is French, non?”
There’s a small pause. Like at a concert in between songs. A perfect time to say, ever so casually, “Actually, my name is Allyson.”
But then Willem answers for me. “It’s short for Louise.” And he winks at me.
Céline points at my suitcase with a manicured purple fingernail. “That is the bag?”
“Yes. This is it.”
“It is so big.”
“It’s not that big.” I think about some of the bags other girls brought on the tour, the hair dryers and adapters and three changes of clothes per day. I look at her in her black mesh tunic that stops at her thighs, a tiny black skirt that Melanie would pay too much for, and suspect this knowledge would fail to impress her.
“It can live in the storage room, not in my office.”
“That’s fine. Just so long as I can get it tomorrow.”
“The cleaner will be here at ten o’clock. And here, we have so many extra, you can have one too,” she says, handing me the same T-shirt she gave Willem, only mine is at least a size larger than his.
I’m about to open my suitcase and stuff it in, but then I visualize the contents: the sensible A-line skirts and T-shirts that Mom picked out for me. My travel journal, the entries I hoped would be breathless accounts of adventure but wound up reading like a series of telegrams: Today we went to the Prague Castle. Stop. Then we saw The Magic Flute at the State Opera House. Stop. Had chicken cutlets for dinner. Stop. The postcards from Famous European Cities, blank because after I’d mailed the obligatory few to my parents and grandmother, I’d had no one left to send them to. And then there’s the Ziploc bag with one lone piece of paper inside. Before the trip, my mom made me a master inventory of all the things to bring and then she made copies, one for every stop, so each time I packed, I could check off each item, to ensure I didn’t leave anything behind. There is one sheet left for my supposed last stop in London.