by Jessica Pan
But once you get over yourself, it is a place full of chance and surprise. You simply have to take your ego out of the equation.
I can’t believe I won’t be coming back here.
So now, ten thousand dollars richer and with all my belongings in boxes, I am ready for Paris and ready to immerse myself in film. Also, I’m starting to think that money is the first thing a writer needs. Maybe the only thing a writer needs.
Before I head to Paris, I’m reverting back to the college years and taking summer break in Milwaukee just like the old days.
And yet everything is starting now....I can feel it.
Love,
Rach
MAY 26
Jess to Rachel
First of all, writers are notoriously broke! Haven’t you ever read Hemingway or George Orwell or Charles Bukowski or ANYTHING EVER? And second of all, that money—Jesus Christ, that is a lot of money to suddenly get! Although if you go off of those writers’ precedents, you are going to definitely spend all of that money on booze and women and possibly horse races.
That’s really exciting, though! I know it’s money for damages, but I feel like saying congratulations! So, congrats! Did you know that now you could buy six thousand bowls of Chinese noodles?
Well, you’re leaving New York and it’s Astrid’s final week in Beijing. Last night she threw an over-the-top going-away party in a Chinese courtyard with an open piano where our friends played songs for her. She wore a long, flowing green dress and fluttered from group to group.
At around 3 A.M., we snuck off alone to revisit the old tables where we used to sit with Maxwell before he left. We laughed a lot, but it was also sad. I think in the past Astrid would have tried to make me come back to the United States with her, but she now understands that I need to stay in China. For the first time in our relationship, I don’t know when I’m going to see her again.
All I know is that I’m definitely staying here for a little longer. Last week, I finally had my dreaded mystery meeting with Victoria. We went for dim sum, and she told me that she was quitting the magazine.
My first reaction was to feel sad, and then abandoned. As in, how could you do this to us? We were just getting to be good friends and we both cared about our little family magazine so much and now she’s leaving it and me? I felt sad to lose her, although her decision has nothing to do with me. She wants to move back to New York—is there a rule that when one New Yorker leaves, another one has to take her place?
During our lunch, I was so distracted by all of the above feelings that it didn’t even occur to me what this meant. She finally had to spell it out.
“So, do you want my job?”
I was surprised—but it’s finally sinking in. Do I want to be the managing editor and have final say on every decision regarding the magazine? Do I want a pay raise? Do I want to drink coffee out of a mug that says “Boss”?
You know I do. She leaves in two weeks, and I’ll be taking her job, if upper management allows.
Suddenly, without Astrid here and with the news of Victoria’s departure, I really feel like I’m on this adventure alone now. It’s exciting but it’s also starting to feel increasingly lonely.
You’ll be home by the time you read this. You better write me, because we have important things to cover before you leave for France. For instance, can you arrange a stopover in Beijing en route to Paris and perhaps during this stopover, bring me a bra from America that fits? Every single one here is so tight that it doubles as a corset.
Keep me posted.
All my love,
Jess
YEAR TWO
Three Months Later
SEPTEMBER 7
Rachel to Jess
I’M IN PARIS!!!!!
I’m in Paris. I keep saying this to myself. Not out loud, though. It still feels like a strange dream. I’m writing this from a café around the corner from my house and am surrounded by retired men smoking heavy cigars. They are the only people around in the middle of an afternoon on a Tuesday.
In the cab from the airport to the city, I stared out the window: first at naked women on billboards, and then at the open-air markets, before reaching a grand boulevard with lots of identical white mansions. Finally, my driver pulled up to my building, on a street so narrow that cars park halfway up the sidewalk. My landlady had left a key for me under the mat, and I giddily sprinted through a courtyard to see my studio apartment. The floors are wooden and there’s a bed on a loft upstairs. It’s just beneath the eaves, so I have to duck to get into it. I flopped down on the bed and stared at the angled ceiling that was one foot from my face. Then, I immediately started sneezing, so I suspect a cat used to live here, but I don’t care. I am in Paris. I am not in my nursery in New York anymore.
The downstairs has huge windows that open out onto the courtyard. Initially, I loved this, but actually it means that my neighbors can see directly into my apartment. Unless I’m sitting at the small desk in the tiny loft, everyone can see me eating cereal in my underwear. Yesterday, I was repeatedly trying to shove my giant suitcase into a small closest and eventually resorted to kicking it as hard as I could when I looked up to see a French couple peering in from the courtyard.
Even though, like New York, Paris has loud traffic and filthy streets, there are also little neighborhoods that are quiet and residential pockets tucked away down little streets right next to huge monuments like the Bastille. I can’t hear any street noise from my apartment, just the footfalls of my neighbors and their light bickering (but since it is in French, they still seem charming). Every day, I walk by a little old lady in my courtyard who always seems to be pruning her tomato plant.
I live in the Marais, which is on the Right Bank of the Seine. The older buildings in the Marais are built with beige-gold brick, and have huge ancient windows. Down the main street near my house, there are cafés with awnings—it’s true, just like the Parisian stereotypes—as well as bakeries. Oh my God, the bakeries! I’m trying to limit myself to one almond croissant per day, but resistance is futile.
Right now it just started drizzling and the Frenchmen at the café are glaring up at the sky and the waiter is glaring at me. My impression that I could order one latte and stay at a café writing all day was disproven yesterday when, after half an hour, a waiter walked by and slipped the bill on my table. When I paid, he took away my coffee, my spoon, the sugar, and my tablecloth. So much for Hemingway, who made it seem in his stories like you could sit here forever and not be bothered.
Now everybody is darting around with their umbrellas and it reminds me so much of an Impressionist painting. Are you rolling your eyes right now? But it does!
Soon, I’ll be taking cinema classes with a group of about a hundred other students, mostly French students. You know the stereotype of French people being aloof? Now imagine French graduate students studying film. I’m a little anxious about it. I still have a few more Xanax left from my time in New York. I don’t know yet if I will need them, but it’s comforting to know I have them in case of a panic attack.
Today I went to an appointment with my new research advisor for my film program at the Sorbonne. Except I showed up forty-five minutes late; I’m still so confused about Paris’s curvy streets and metro strikes. My supervisor, Pierre, has a very French manner: He keeps a totally stone-cold face even while listening to jokes, and laughs only after you are finished.
I haven’t had a conversation in French in years, unless you count my French exam, and in front of Pierre, I rambled on and on in broken French, trying to get a read on him until I trailed off into a spiral of misconjugated verbs. Finally, he sits up and responds after I’ve managed to stop myself from talking.
“Rachelle, the first thing you have to know about French academia is that you are the only one worried about your thesis in August, more than a year before it’s due.
Then Pierre rather bluntly suggested that I work on my French. Agreed.
We then discussed the parameters of my project, which are not coincidentally also reflected in my life: the haunting of the younger self, or “the younger double.” That is, when in a film a character comes face-to-face with him- or herself as a child.
If I came face-to-face with myself as a child, this is what I would say: “Rachel, start working on your French now. And a hard-on is not a kind of hammer, so stop pretending that you know what it is at slumber parties. Also, invent Facebook.”
I thought about this on the walk home, among other things. My younger self did always love Paris. While walking past the ruins of a medieval church, I realized that I’d anticipated finally arriving in Paris for so long and, now that I’m here, I feel deliriously happy but also a little lonely. This city must be shared! Come and explore Paris with me! We will discover Chinese-French restaurants and I will show you where Sabrina took place, and we will drink sweet minty tea at Middle Eastern cafés.
I know so much is going to happen here, but I don’t know how. It feels like Paris is full of so many adventures just waiting to be had.
For now, I’m waiting for the rain to stop before I venture out again.
Love,
Rachelle
SEPTEMBER 12
Jess to Rachel
WHERE ARE YOU NOW
I THINK I AM DERHIKNKER THAN I HEVE EHVER BEEN
SPANSH BAR PARYT
I JUST KISSED A 41-YEAR-ODL. DANIEL CRAIG! DANEIL CRAG!
OH GOD. OH GOD. MY HEAD. ACHES. GOING TO GO THROW UP. SERIOUSLY GOING TO [PUKEKWJFS. I HEVER DRIVE THINK MUCH!
THIS IS WHAT I REMEMBER ABOUT PARIS:
SMELLS LIKE URINE
XOX
SEPTEMBER 12
Later that day
Rachel to Jess
JESS!
When he was our age, we were five. Hahaha.
More details, fewer capital letters, please.
R
SEPTEMBER 13
Jess to Rachel
Oh God. Oh God. Why? Why. So hungover.
My hangover is infinitely worse because I live in a country where you can’t drink the tap water. Just lying in bed, thirsty, licking my parched lips, dreaming of water, trying to will water to appear in my bedroom. I finally dragged myself out of bed to run into a corner shop and bought three gallons of bottled water. And a box of cookies. And something called Pejoy, which are sweet, crunchy breadsticks covered in dark chocolate mousse.
Whatever, you’d like it.
I get drunk so rarely these days and this is why. THIS IS WHY.
And it was sangria. I got that drunk on sangria.
Here is what I remember.
I met this guy at a Spanish bar with Victoria because all of my other friends were at a party I was not invited to: George’s housewarming. I remember talking to a Canadian expat who told me that I “spoke English surprisingly good for a Chinese girl.” Then he asked how long had I been studying English. As I was replying, “I’m an American, jackass,” a man, who’d overheard the exchange, interrupted. In an English accent he said, “No, but how does a Yankee speak English so well?”
And that’s how I met Ray. I get to say he looks like Daniel Craig, because I secretly thought it while we were talking and then Victoria grabbed my arm and whispered into my ear, “What’s with James Bond?” Vindicated.
I just remember finding out his age and being surprised. I’ve never dated outside my age group before and it confuses me to be attracted to somebody who was born when the Beatles were still together. He was born before the first moon landing. And he was ten when Post-its were invented. Of course, I only know this because I figured out what year he was born (1967) and have been trying to put that into context.
We continued arguing about inconsequential things. I remember feeling my face and body turn bright red from the alcohol and after a particularly heated debate about who spoke Chinese better, I remember shouting, “I’ll call you when I’m forty!” as I went off in search of more sangria.
Remember how you once told a group of people we’d just met that you wished you could follow me around, apologizing for all the tactless things I say? I really wished you had been there to do that.
I pushed my luck and made another joke about Ray being old. Then he found out I worked for a family expat magazine.
Ray: “See, you’re such a baby that you only report on babies.” I couldn’t come up with a good rebuttal. While lying in bed just now, I came up with a great one. Here it is:
“Go pick on someone your own age.” Right? Right?
So there.
Anyway, he’s English. Why do Englishmen have so much sway over me? It’s not just the stupid accent...is it? I hope I am not this vapid. Evidence seems to support this theory, though, despite the huge differences in personality among them. Why do I have a feeling they have ruined me for all other men?
But Ray’s the complete opposite of George. If George was a hilarious, sweet schoolboy who has a few more years of growing up to do, then Ray is a sexy man who smells like aftershave and is also kind of mean. He is probably also the guy who used to pick on the Georges of the world. He always seems to be sort of leaning back with a satisfied expression on his face.
At 2 A.M., the bar began to empty, and when I stepped into the bathroom I saw that my skin had become even more fiery red from the alcohol and my eyes were bloodshot. Not a good look.
I waved good-bye to Victoria, but when I headed out into the street to hail a cab, Ray appeared from nowhere, grabbed me back, pulled me toward him, and kissed me. Then he placed his card into my coat pocket and said, “I’ll see you next weekend.”
Only older men have the confidence to be this aggressive. I hate that it’s working. But it’s working.
After my physical ambivalence toward George, the electricity I felt with Ray was all the more potent.
Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and George Clooney are all older than forty.
Rach, what do I do, what do I do? Is this completely pointless?
But I must not think about this now. Tomorrow begins a busy week at the magazine before we go to print. It is also Victoria’s last week and I need to hire my replacement since I am officially taking her job as managing editor. I sifted through a stack of applications, but it feels strange to be in charge of someone else’s future. Especially when I’m nursing a hangover.
I just checked and right now, it’s evening in Paris. I imagine tree-lined streets and accordion music. I imagine girls wearing scarves, sitting with their long legs crossed over each other, rows of high heels and red lipstick. They drink wine with pursed lips and say things like, “Sacre bleu!” I want to be sitting there with you! I want to visit you so much—I have a feeling that Beijing and Paris are complete opposites in many ways.
Right now, I can see flocks of Chinese women also carrying umbrellas, even though it’s sunny and hot. Chinese women want their skin as white as possible. Whereas Westerners lie in any patch of sunlight they can find, Asian women run from it like vampires fleeing their imminent death.
Which is exactly what I did when I stepped into the bright light this morning.
Love,
Jess
P.S. Just remembered best part of Beijing. McDonald’s delivers here. I could have gorged on a delicious mixture of fat and preservatives to restore my sad hungover body, rather than stale chocolate breadsticks. Does Paris have this wonderful service??
P.P.S. Oh God—the Big Mac was invented the year Ray was born.
SEPTEMBER 18
Rachel to Jess
What, did you just Google “people in their early forties”? And then “things that were invented in 1967”? You
don’t need water. You need to close your computer and get out of your apartment!
First of all, it’s very French to have an older lover (think of Le Divorce), so it’s like you’re actually being very Parisian in Beijing. No French maître d’ ever makes the American mistake of asking, “And what will your daughter be having, sir?” They always err on the side of assuming that it is a May-December romance.
I know I can’t stop you from pursuing something that’s already begun in your mind, but my advice is to tread carefully. It’s suspicious that a good-looking, witty, employed older man is single, isn’t it? Or am I just being too cynical? What’s happening with Ray now?
I’ve officially begun my film studies program here. But I did not get off to a very good start. The first class I went to was an exercise in humiliation. The professor looks around the room, crammed full of students.
Professor (in French) says, “No, no, no. No. Maximum of ten people in this class. There must be fifty of you here. I shall decide who belongs. Please state your name and what you think the plasticity of cinema means, and how it applies to your proposed thesis subject.”
She turns to me, front and center. “Go on, mademoiselle.”
At this point, I was still processing the sentence containing “maximum of ten people.” What I said is untranslatable, but roughly, it went something like this:
“Me? Oh. Oh no, sorry, is hard. Plasticity...quality of plastic. Form. My thesis is un-in-determinable?” At this point, I was trying to think of the conjugation of “is” into “will be” and was totally stumped, as I felt fifty pairs of French eyes on me.
She cut me off with a slice of her hand through the air.
“If you’re registered for the class, I can’t stop you from taking it, but you will not do well with French like that. Next!”
I waited for break, which doesn’t come until an hour later, and I glowed red with shame the whole time. Then I snuck out to the balcony for a cigarette. A girl who looks like a friendly elf (tiny, feathery blond hair) came up to me.
