Just One Day(73)

“No, seriously. All Dee has done is help me. It’s almost embarrassing.”
“Stop with such nonsense. D’Angelo is both brilliant and blessed with the road life has taken him on. But it’s not been easy for him. In his four years of high school and one year of college, you are the first friend from school he’s ever talked about, much less brought home.”
“You two are talking about me, aren’t you?” Dee asks. He puts an arm around each of us. “Extolling my brilliance?”
“Extolling your something,” I say.
“Don’t either of you believe a word!” He turns around to introduce a tall, regal girl with a head full of intricate twists. “I was telling you about Tanya.”
We exchange hellos, and Sandra goes off to fetch some more cobbler. Tanya reaches out to free my hair from its clip. She fingers the ends and shakes her head, clucking her tongue the same disapproving way Dee so often does.
“I know. I know. It’s been a year,” I say. And then I realize it has. A year.
“Was it short or long?” Dee asks. He turns to Tanya. “You have to make her look just the same. For when she finds him.”
“If I find him,” I clarify. “It was to here.” I point to the base of my skull, where the stylist in London had cut my hair to last year. But then I drop my hand. “You know, though. I don’t think I want the bob.”
“You don’t want a haircut?” Tanya asks.
“No, I would love a haircut,” I tell her. “But not a bob. I want to try something totally new.”

Thirty
Paris
It takes approximately thirteen hours and six time zones for me to freak out.
It happens when I stumble into the arrivals hall of Charles de Gaulle airport. All around me, other passengers are being greeted by hugging relatives or drivers with signs. I’m not being met by anyone. No one is expecting me. No one is watching out for me. I know I have people out there in the world who love me, but right now, I’ve never felt so alone. I feel that flashing sign click on over my head, the one that used to read TOURIST. Only now it also reads WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?
I pull my backpack straps tighter around my chest, like they could hug me. I take a deep breath. I pick up one leg and put it in front the other. A step. I take another. And another. I pull out the to-do list I made on the plane. Number one: exchange money.
I go to one of the many foreign exchange bureaus and in halting French ask if I can exchange my dollars. “Of course. This is a bank,” the man behind the counter answers in French. I hand over a hundred dollars and am too relieved to bother to count the euros I get in return.
Next on the list: find youth hostel. I’ve mapped the route, a train to the city, then a Metro to the Jaurès stop. I follow the signs for the RER, the train to central Paris, but it turns out I have to take an airport train to get to the RER station, and I go the wrong way and wind up at a different terminal and have to double back around, so it takes me almost an hour just to get to the airport train station.
When I get up to the automated ticket machines, it’s like facing off against an enemy. Even with choosing English as the language, the instructions are bewildering. Do I need a Metro ticket? A train ticket? Two tickets? I feel that neon sign over my flash brighter. Now it says WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE?
I open the guidebook again to the section about getting into Paris. Okay, one ticket will get me into Paris and transfer to the Metro. I look at the map of the Paris Metro. The different lines knot together like snakes. Finally, I locate my stop, Jaurès. I trace the RER line to the airport to the transfer point and realize with a start that it’s at Gare du Nord. Someplace familiar, someplace to tie me to that day.
“Okay, Allyson, no way through it but through it,” I tell myself. And then I face the ticket machine, shoulders back, like we are competitors in a duel. I punch the touch screen, feed it a ten-euro note and then it spits me back some change and a tiny ticket. A small victory against an impassive opponent, but I am flush with satisfaction.
I follow the throngs to the gates, which work like the Tube gates, though it turns out, it’s much easier to get through them when you’re not lugging a giant suitcase. Ha! Another enemy foiled.
In the Metro/RER interchange beneath Gare du Nord, I get lost again trying to find the right Metro line, and then I misplace my little ticket, which you need not only to get out of RER but into the Metro. Then I almost get on the Metro going the wrong direction but figure it out right before the doors close and jump off. When I finally arrive at my stop, I’m completely exhausted and totally disoriented. It takes about fifteen minutes poring over the map just to figure where I am. I take a half dozen more wrong turns until I hit the canals, which is the first sign that I’m in the right area.
But I still have no idea where the hostel is, and I’m exhausted, frustrated, and near tears. I can’t even find the hostel. And I have an address. And a map. What in the world makes me think I can find him?
But then just when I’m about to lose it, I stop, look out at the canals, and I just breathe. And my panic subsides. Because this place, it feels familiar. It is familiar, because I’ve been here before.
I fold up my map and put it away. I breathe some more. I look around. There are the same gray bicycles. There are the same stylish women, teetering across the cobblestones on heels. The cafés, crowded, as though no one ever has to work. I take another deep breath, and a sort of sense memory takes over. And somehow I just know where I am. To the left is the park with the lake where we met Jacques and the Danes. To my right, a few blocks back, is the cafe where we had crêpes. I take the map out again. I find myself. Five minutes later, I’m at the youth hostel.