That Night In Paris

by Sandy Barker

  As we tasted each wine and as the cheese on the platter in front of us started disappearing, I could feel myself unwinding. Tea was one thing, but was there anything nicer at the end of a long, awful day than some wine?

  Lou loved the rieslings best. “Oh my gosh, this one’s delicious!” she whispered as she tasted wine number four. “I mean this one is good, but this one. I’m going to have to buy a bottle of this.” Was Lou getting tiddly? The thought made me smile, then examine myself. I was getting tiddly. Still, being tiddly was far better than being clear-headed and thinking too much.

  When Gunther finished talking us through all the wines, he asked if anyone had questions. A few hands went up, including Lou’s. He called on her first. “This last wine is yummy. Can we buy a bottle?”

  He chuckled. “Ja, no problem. My colleagues upstairs will be able to help with that. I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

  She beamed. I leant into her. “You good, Lou?”

  “Oh yeah. That was awesome. I don’t usually do this kind of thing.”

  I was an idiot. Of course she didn’t—she was married to a man with a drinking problem. She didn’t do wine tastings or have nights out like the ones we’d had together. How had I not thought of that earlier? I gave myself another mental slap for the mounting evidence that I was a self-centred cow.

  After Gunther answered the other questions, he signalled to the team of waiters. They did the rounds with the opened but unfinished bottles. That was how I ended up with a full glass of the spätburgunder and Lou got a glass of the “yummy one”.

  Dani came up behind us. “Hey, guys,” she said. Jaelee followed closely, both holding glasses of white wine. Jae pulled a chair over from the table next to us, and Lou and I turned ours around to face her. Dani seemed happy to stand. “That was fun, yeah?” she asked.

  “It was good value for ten euros, too,” I added. “Which one did you choose?” I asked Jae.

  “The gewürztraminer. I don’t like sweet wine.”

  “Oh, I love it.” Lou.

  “I can see that,” teased Jae before taking a sip.

  “I went with the last one, the second riesling,” said Dani. “The same as you, I think, Lou. If you’re getting a bottle, I’ll share with you.”

  “Definitely.”

  “Jae? Did you want to share a bottle? I’d have the gewürztraminer, or if you liked the red …”

  “Sure. I’d rather the white though.”

  “No worries.” My inner Aussie came out to play; perhaps it was the wine.

  We ended up with three bottles of wine between the four of us. What could go wrong?

  ***

  Many hours later, and long after we should have been asleep, we were two bottles down with the third about to be opened—the sweetest one. I was well past the stage where I cared about what I was drinking more than I cared that I was drinking.

  Because we were talking about Jean-Luc.

  Lou was sitting cross-legged on the end of her bed and Jae had commandeered her bedhead, propping herself against it. I was reclining on my bed and Dani, for some reason, had opted for the floor, where she sat on one of my pillows.

  “Can I please read it?” she whined. Having exhaustively recounted the last two days—everything we’d said and most of what we did (I left out details about the sex)—we’d moved onto The Letter (note the capitals).

  “No, for the umpteenth time.” We all looked at the offending envelope, which was sitting on the bedside table between the two beds. If we’d been in a film, ominous music would have played.

  “Let’s put it this way,” said Jaelee, sounding far more sober than she likely was, “it will probably drive you crazy if you don’t. And it might not be that bad,” she added.

  “Lou. Do you need help?” I asked. She was struggling with the third bottle, and it was a good distraction from the letter. She made a face and handed it to Dani.

  Dani also struggled. “It won’t unscrew.” She gritted her teeth and finally the cap loosened. She stood to pour each of us a glass, then sat back down. I wasn’t off the hook, though. “I agree with Jaelee,” Dani said. “You need to know what you wrote. And maybe it’s not all that bad.”

  I looked at Lou. “What do you think?”

  She tilted her head in that way I’d grown to love. It meant she was considering all aspects of the situation, weighing them up. “I know you probably don’t want to hear this …”—uh oh—“… but it would be good for closure.”

  Ugh. That awful word.

  After Scott and I broke up, I’d gone to see a counsellor. I’d lasted exactly two sessions, because she kept going on and on about how I needed closure. Only, Scott lived across the world and we’d cut all ties. I was hardly going to ping him on Facebook. “Hey, Scott, how’s Helen? Can I have some closure please?” I’d cancelled the third appointment and never went back. My lack of closure went into a box inside my heart—one I never opened. Ever.

  I sighed. “All riiiiight.” I took as long to say that word as it’s humanly possible to do.

  Dani bobbed up and down on my pillow, clapped her hands and said, “Eeee,” as though I’d told her we were going to Disneyland. I glared at her. “Sorry.” She sat still, looking contrite.

  I took the envelope in my hands and turned it over. Jean-Luc had clearly been impatient when he’d opened it, as the envelope’s seam was torn and ragged. I took a slow breath and pulled the letter out. A small white card fluttered onto my lap.

  “What’s that?” asked Dani unnecessarily. I set the letter down and picked up the card.

  I thought we could start writing again. Here’s my address. Talk soon.

  Love, Jean-Luc

  Below that was his address in Paris. I gulped and gasped at the same time and ended up in a minor coughing fit. Lou stood and reached around to pat me on the back. “You okay?” she asked, her face concerned. “Here.” She handed me the bottle of water I’d barely sipped from. I drank some and the coughs subsided.

  Jae took the card gently from my other hand and read it, then showed it to Lou and Dani. “Oh,” said Lou. “Yikes,” said Dani. I didn’t bother throwing Dani another look. I put the water bottle down and stared at the letter laying in my lap.

  “I don’t think I can do it,” I said to no one in particular.

  “Here. Let me,” said Lou in her “Mama Lou” voice. I looked up and nodded weakly. She held out her hand and I gave her the letter. “I’ll read it and if you like, I’ll just summarise it, okay?” I nodded again and gulped down the lump growing in my throat.

  She unfolded the letter and seemed to skim-read to the bottom of the first page, then moved just as quickly through the second page. She turned both pages over, as if she was looking for more writing, then shuffled the pages and read back over the whole thing again. It was killing me, the waiting.

  “Lou, please, what?”

  “This isn’t the last letter, Cat.”

  “What? What do you mean?” I was frozen in place.

  “I mean, this is a sweet, newsy letter. There’s nothing about ending your friendship, or just being pen pals, or any of that. It’s just a normal letter.”

  What???

  “Let me see,” I said. She handed it over and Dani climbed on the bed and sat beside me to read over my shoulder.

  Dear Jean-Luc,

  I’m at uni at the moment, so this will be an unusually short letter, but you know me—I’ll probably write again tomorrow anyway. I’m supposed to be listening to the world’s most boring lecture. It’s about semiotics. SNORE! Actually, I think someone behind me is snoring. Anyway … If you don’t know—and you probably do, because you’re way smarter than I am—semiotics is about how signs signify stuff and words are signs or something. Ha ha! Maybe I should actually pay attention.

  Anyway … I think it’s so cool that you applied to the Sorbonne. If you get in and you move to Paris I will totally come and visit you. For real! At least I will try. Maybe at the end of the year. I could have
my first white Christmas! Does it snow in Paris at Chrissie time? Actually, you probably go home for Christmas, right? What about Lyon? Does it snow there? Someone is definitely snoring now. Oh my God, will this lecture ever end???

  Mostly I love uni. Not at this particular moment, obviously, but it’s just SO COOL! The lecturers actually listen to our opinions and we have these interesting discussions in the tutes, like we’re actual grown-ups. It’s way better than high school where you got the best marks if you just regurgitated what the teacher said. You’re so lucky you left before the HSC. I know I’ve told you before, but seriously I think my mum nearly asked me to move out. I was such a nightmare stresshead all the time.

  Anyway … I have made some cool friends. My bestie is Alison. She’s ridiculously pretty—the opposite of me, tall, thin, long blonde hair. She’s smart and funny so I don’t hate her, even though I probably should. You’d like her. You’d probably LIKE like her. No, scratch that. I wouldn’t want you going out with my bestie. That would be weird.

  Nothing on the romance front. The guys here are kind of dumb and a bit too ocker for my taste. I don’t know if you remember but ocker means super blokey and macho, only it’s fake macho, just stupid really—like a bunch of ten-year-olds running around being dicks. It makes me miss you. A lot. If ANY of these guys were like you, I would have had a boyfriend ages ago.

  Anyway … I have to go. He’s FINALLY finished. Yayyyyyyy!

  Catchya later.

  Love, Cat xxxxxxxx

  I stared numbly at my name followed by—I counted—eight kisses. I blinked a few times and eventually looked at Lou. “It’s not the letter.”

  “No.” Dani and Lou spoke in unison.

  “I want to read it.” Jae had been patient and I handed it to her.

  “It’s so sweet,” cooed Dani.

  “He said he read it a hundred times.”

  “Aww.” Dani, the romantic.

  We sat in silence while Jae finished reading it. Well, nearly silence. There was the sound of Dani topping up everyone’s wine glasses.

  I took a tentative sip from mine and watched Jae over the rim, her face set with concentration. She bit her top lip, then her bottom lip. She frowned, then made a little sound like, “Hunh.” Finally, she looked at me.

  “You realise what this means, right?”

  “No.” Panic, panic, panic. “What?”

  “You were in love with him too.”

  “What? What do you mean? No, I wasn’t.” As I protested, Dani said, “Ohhh,” and Lou said, “I did wonder about that.”

  Jae came and sat next to me. “Here.” She pointed to the paragraph about the ocker guys. “No one measured up. You only wanted him. And there was the part about you not wanting him to be with Alison.”

  I read back over the last part of the letter. Then the very large penny dropped from an incredibly great height.

  I had been in love with Jean-Luc.

  And I might be again.

  “Oh, bollocks.” This time I said it out loud.

  Chapter 19

  “Can we please talk about something else? Anything else?” I glanced between them and they peered back at me. Lou’s eyes narrowed a little, but I could handle Mama Lou. It was coming up on midnight and we were due on the coach at 8:00am. I needed to sleep, but I knew if I didn’t get the whole “Jean-Luc” situation out of my head, I’d end up staring at the ceiling until the wee hours.

  “Amsterdam!” I said a little too loudly for the small room.

  Jaelee went back to her position on Lou’s bed. “What about it?” she said, stifling a yawn.

  “What are you looking forward to?” I donned an expression of fake enthusiasm, like a nursery teacher trying to get small children excited about something mundane.

  Lou answered, “Well, I’m actually going to see my family.”

  “Oh, cool,” drawled Dani.

  The fake enthusiasm vanished. “I didn’t know you had family in the Netherlands.” Why hadn’t she told me that? Or maybe she had but I’d been too busy obsessing about my trainwreck of a love life.

  “Oh, I thought I’d mentioned it. Hang on, maybe I didn’t. Well, anyway, we’re Dutch on my dad’s side and his first cousin lives in Rotterdam. I’m staying with her and her husband. Oh, and her kids are our age, so that’ll be cool.”

  “Wait, so you’re staying with them?” asked Jaelee. “Are you leaving the tour early?”

  Great questions, Jaelee. How had my bus bestie failed to reveal such important information?

  “No, I’ll finish out the trip, but when you go back to London on Friday, Dad’s cousin, Mila, is picking me up from the hotel. I fly straight to Vancouver from Amsterdam on Monday.”

  “That’s awesome,” said Dani. Her excitement about Lou’s plans was annoying me senseless.

  “So, we have to say goodbye on Friday morning?” I asked, a slight edge in my voice. A whole day less with Lou. I was deflated. I almost wanted to go back to talking about Jean-Luc. Almost.

  “Yeah, but we still have two more days together.” She smiled brightly at me, which made me feel even worse. She had something to look forward to over the weekend. And then my thoughts flew to Jackson and the pending divorce and the heinous mess she had waiting for her back home in Vancouver. I was being a cow—again. To Lou, whom I loved.

  On impulse, I got up and gave her a hug. It was a little awkward, because she was sitting and I was standing, but when you feel a wave of love for someone, you should act on it.

  “Okay, that’s our cue,” said Jae.

  “You don’t have to go,” I said. Yes, I needed sleep, but now I had something else to fret over. I’d be staring at the ceiling for hours.

  “I’m beat,” Jae replied. She stood and stretched her clasped hands behind her, like someone who did yoga all the time, or a ballerina. “I’m taking this with me,” she said picking up her glass.

  “Right behind you,” said Dani, even though she looked like she wasn’t going anywhere.

  Jae left our room and Dani sipped her wine. “Uh, Dan? Is everything all right?” I asked.

  “Mm-hm.” She drank some more wine and pulled at a thread hanging off the bottom of her cigarette pants.

  I shared a look with Lou and she was clearly as baffled as I was. “Is it Jason?” Lou posed the question lightly, then took a sip of wine. I saw her close her eyes for a second as she savoured it.

  “What? Oh, no. That’s old news. He hooked up with that girl, Joanne. You know, the one from New Zealand?”

  “How did I miss that?”

  “You’ve been busy,” said Lou. I wasn’t sure if that was a dig or not.

  “But when?” I asked.

  “At the last stop,” said Dani matter-of-factly. “Didn’t you see them at the party last night?” I hadn’t, no. My “good friend” karma was going into deficit, and fast.

  “And you’re okay with it?” Lou sounded dubious. I was dubious. They’d been so cute together, and how on earth did Jason have time for two romances on such a short tour?

  Dani waved it away, as though shooing a fly. “No,” she said with a laugh. “I really don’t care. He wanted to sleep with me and I was like, meh. I mean, he’s cute, and I liked him enough to kiss him, but how would we even do that? It’s not like we get private rooms.” She’d mentioned that before and I had to agree. “Anyway, he was totally cool about it and then he moved onto Joanne.”

  “Huh.” Lou and I said it at the same time. I caught her eye and we shared a smile.

  Dani stared at the carpet. “Dani, spill,” I said. “It’s not Jason, so what is it?” Mama Lou was not the only one who could dish up tough love.

  She sighed. “I don’t want to bug you guys. It’s nothing, really.”

  “You’re literally sitting on our floor sighing. Out with it.”

  She looked up at me with those big grey eyes with the precisely drawn eyeliner flicks. Then she looked at Lou, who nodded encouragingly. “It’s Nathalie, my best friend.” I kne
w her best friend was Nathalie, because I surrogate-hated Nathalie for what she’d done to Dani.

  “And?” Even Lou was getting impatient.

  Dani’s bottom lip starting quivering. She bit it and took a breath. “There are wedding photos on Facebook.”

  “Oh. Well, that sucks,” I said, “Sorry, Dani.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not why I’m upset. Well, yeah, I mean the photos are upsetting, but the worst part is that it wasn’t only the two of them—at the wedding.”

  “Wait, but you said she was eloping? That still means the same thing, right? Going somewhere to get married, just the two of you?” Lou and I telepathically communicated over Dani’s head; I wasn’t the only one who was confused.

  “That’s what she told me.” Bitterness crept into her voice. “But no. Her mom and dad were there. Her brother and his girlfriend were there, and they only just started going out! And there were two other couples there. People I don’t know, and I know all her friends and all her family, so I’m not sure why Nathalie was completely fine with strangers being at her wedding, but she didn’t want me there.”

  Her lip had stopped quivering. She was no longer upset—she was furious—and I couldn’t blame her.

  “And the worst part is, I’m going to have to see her and say congratulations and all the other things you’re supposed to say, like, ‘Oh, how was it?’ and smile and suck it up! It’s fucking bullshit. I bet she doesn’t even know the photos are on there, because she didn’t even post them. Someone else did, then tagged her. So, not only do I have to be all nice about her eloping, which is a super shitty thing to do to your best friend since high school, I’m going to have to ask why there were random people at her fucking wedding when I wasn’t allowed to go.”

  “Sorry, Dan,” I said again, putting my hand on her shoulder in solidarity. There was no moral ambiguity in the situation. Bitchface Nathalie was lucky we’d never meet, because I would berate her until she cried.

  “Dani, it totally sucks that she did this to you. You don’t deserve that,” said Mama Lou, channelling Counsellor Lou. “We love you. You have us, okay?” Dani chewed on the inside of her mouth.