Wanderlust

by Lauren Blakely

  It’s what my parents told me this weekend over Skype.

  It’s what Allison said in a text. You’ll be fabulous!

  It’s what my co-worker Jeanie from Texas said in an email. You will be a rock star!

  It’s what I desperately want to believe, and so I give myself thirty extra minutes for the commute, and I head for the metro.

  When I walk down the steps, it’s not just crowded. It’s like a vacuum-packed bag of coffee grounds. The platform is stuffed with people, shoulder to shoulder, jostling, squeezing, working their way to the front of the crowd as a train slides into the station. As I make my way through the sardines, I have to make a decision—push forward into the train that’s clearly eaten too much at Thanksgiving, or turn the hell around and catch an Uber.

  Duh.

  I hightail it away from the rumbling train, because as much as I want to be a Parisian, I don’t want to show up at work sweaty, stinky, and covered in the scent of half a million others because I’m damn sure that’s how many people are on that train.

  I’ll just slink away and slide out of here.

  “Excusez-moi,” I mutter. “Pardon.” I wedge myself between two suited guys, sliding through, and then bump past a sturdy woman carrying a large box. I blink—mostly in admiration. She’s a tough dame, navigating this mess.

  I’m pushing against the crowd, gripping my purse tight to my body like it’s a baby in a Björn, and beyond the rows of heads I can see the steps. Almost there.

  Then, a sharp, stinging pain radiates from my left foot.

  “Oh crud,” I mutter.

  I try to lean to my right foot, but there’s no room, and all I can feel is this stabbing sensation in my instep. That’s when I realize my great mistake.

  I am a magnificent idiot.

  I’m wearing flip-flops in the city, and someone just stepped on my foot with the hard sole of a shoe.

  A few minutes later, I make it out of the crowd, hopping around. My foot is bleeding.

  I really need a male nurse with a Band-Aid right about now.

  With an oh-so-very-attractive Little Prince Band-Aid plastered on my foot—incidentally, the Little Prince is a licensing whore; he’s on everything—I open the door to my Uber ride, and the driver whisks me away to my new offices in the 7th arrondissement. I peer at my foot, studying it. All things considered, I don’t think the little licensor has ever looked so dapper as he does next to a pair of Jimmy Choos.

  I’ll be at work shortly, with only a Band-Aid as proof of a little morning struggle. I sink into the leather seat as the car weaves through the streets.

  But then something crazy happens when a car drives in morning rush hour.

  It’s called . . . wait for it . . . traffic.

  I curse. I mutter. I tap my foot. I peer out the window as if I can make all the honking Peugeots and Saabs and Audis disperse by sheer force of will.

  Doesn’t work.

  I look at the time. It’s eight-fifty-five, which means I’m going to be late on my first day. I fish around in my purse for my cell phone, and fire off a quick text to Marisol.

  I’m so very sorry. Stuck in traffic. Be there soon.

  I tuck the phone away then stare out the window like a dog, watching the beautiful buildings pass by at the pace of escargot.

  At last, the car pulls up to the curb of a busy block, and I thank the driver and get out. Briefly, I lift my gaze and stare at the office building in the business-y section of the 7th arrondissement, swing my gaze to the street sign, then heave the heaviest sigh in the history of Europe.

  I’m on Boulevard Bosquet.

  And my office is on Rue Bosquet.

  I punched in the wrong street name in Uber.

  I groan. I frown. My shoulders sag.

  A skinny man walking past me tosses a rueful smile in my direction. “It’s Monday,” he says, knowingly.

  At least, I think that’s what he said.

  Ten minutes later, I make it to the offices of L’Artisan Cosmetique, making me fifteen minutes late, and fifteen tons irritated with myself.

  Griffin waits in the lobby. He wears dark slacks that fit well, leather shoes, and a crisp, white button-down shirt. His jaw is smooth, with a freshly shaven look. Briefly, I imagine him in front of his bathroom mirror, running a blade over his jaw. There’s something so sexy about a man with only a towel wrapped around his waist staring into the mirror as he shaves.

  When he sees me, he smiles, then his smile disappears. “You okay? You look flustered.”

  I hold up a hand, like a stop sign. “I can’t even today.”

  He laughs. “‘I can’t even’ doesn’t translate.”

  “They haven’t figured out how to express the ultimate frustration yet? Well, the French need to get on that, stat.”

  “I’ll send a note to the International Consortium of Idioms and Internet Sayings,” he says, walking me to the elevator.

  “Have you been waiting for me this whole time?”

  He nods. “But I kept myself busy with some Spanish crossword puzzles.”

  I shake my head, frustrated. “I tried to be a half hour early. Instead, I have a Little Prince Band-Aid and an inability to distinguish between rue and boulevard.”

  “Ah, yes. It’s a trick we use to ferret out you Yanks. Is it working?”

  “Quite well, it seems,” I say, then step into the elevator with the handsome man.

  Nerves crawl up my throat. “I’m so pissed at myself for being late.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re adjusting to a new country.”

  I sigh. “All the more reason to be on time,” I say as I stab the button for the sixth floor.

  As the doors close, Griffin lifts his chin and looks me over. “You smell pretty.”

  A grin takes over my face. He’s speaking my language now. “Thank you.”

  “It smells like . . .” His voice trails off, and he shakes his head. “Can’t place it.”

  “Lilacs,” I supply.

  He snaps his fingers. “That’s it. I have a terrible nose. Ever since the hospital, I think.”

  I furrow my brow. “What? Were you really a nurse?”

  He curses under his breath. “No. Sorry. Didn’t mean to be a downer.”

  “You’re not a downer at all. I’m curious now, though.”

  “Someone in my family was in the hospital for a while. Passed away. But we’re all fine,” he says, fixing on a cheery grin. “Now, did you bring a lunchbox and a sandwich for your first day?”

  I shake my head, unable to segue into this playful zone so suddenly. Not with this lump in my throat from that news. “Griffin, you don’t have to just wipe it away,” I say as the elevator slows. I wrap a hand around his forearm, trying to comfort him. “You don’t have to be tough for me.”

  “Ah, but I do. Because this is your day, and I’m fine. I want you to have a great day at work.”

  I peer at him. “I know, but it sounds like you went through something.”

  He raises his chin. “Let’s focus on you, Joy. That's why I’m here.”

  I sigh, but I understand fully. We don’t always want to talk about hard things. In fact, we don’t often want to at all. Sometimes work is much easier to zoom in on.

  Just in case though, I try one last time. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  I try to put his comment out of my mind.

  When I make it to the offices, Marisol is waiting for me. I’m nearly blinded by her beauty. She’s tall and white-blonde, with cheekbones carved by goddesses. She’s even more stunning in person than she was over Skype—that’s how we did the interviews.

  “So good to meet you officially,” she says, a warm smile on her face.

  “I’m so sorry I’m late.”

  “Don’t think twice about it,” she says. “Let me introduce you to your team.”

  She escorts me to the lab where I’ll be overseeing the fragrance chemists, and that’s when my translator truly
comes in handy.

  “I’m so thrilled to meet all of you, and I’m very much looking forward to working with each and every one of you, and helping L’Artisan grow and improve and expand its reach,” I say.

  Griffin instantly converts everything I say into French, though I suspect most of the team understood my brief intro. That’s because most French businesspeople speak solid English, so when Marisol first told me she was looking for a translator, I asked why we’d need one. As a French company, L’Artisan Cosmetique has only done business in French previously, she explained, and so all its chemists are accustomed to solely speaking in their native tongue. Sure, plenty of them know enough English for me to sit down and gab about the weather and popular movies over a Nicoise salad. Saying “hello” and “nice to meet you” is easy-peasy, too.

  But being able to discuss the finer details of chemical formulations that make household products smell like a spring breeze is entirely another matter.

  I’m not equipped to say those technical terms in French, obviously.

  And it’s too risky to assume they’ll understand the precise specifics of the new production processes that I’ll share with them in English.

  Ergo, Griffin is here to ensure that we don’t accidentally blow up our lab while testing a lavender-scented body lotion. Though, to be fair, the most likely candidate for combustion would be hair spray.

  Incidentally, I invented a new scent for one back home, and it smells like a song. Every time I spritz some on my locks, I want to break out my microphone and belt upbeat pop tunes.

  “Bonjour, Charles,” I say to a young man who looks like he graduated from college last week.

  “Hello, Joy,” he says, his voice a little wobbly, perhaps from nerves. “Welcome to France.”

  “Thank you. I hear you’re working on a cutting-edge new formulation for a lip balm concentrate,” I say, then explain more of the details of his formulation. “I look forward to checking it out.”

  His brow furrows for a moment, and I can see the cogs turning, but once Griffin does his thing, Charles is smiling and nodding.

  “I look forward to that, too,” he says.

  I shake hands with a woman about my age, with fine porcelain skin and a nervous smile. “Nice to meet you, Adaline.”

  “And you.”

  Then, I dive into the nitty-gritty, sharing my overall approach to best practices that I fine-tuned back in Austin.

  And seriously, Griffin sounds delicious speaking French on my behalf—even better when he says words like prototype, and formulation, and molecule measurements. That just gets all the combustion inside me going.

  “And if I say anything inappropriate, it’s all his fault,” I joke, and I garner a few laughs before he translates. More laughter comes once he does.

  “And if she says anything funny, it’s all my fault, too,” he adds in English, then he glances at me, and when no one’s looking, he winks.

  Like we have a secret.

  And we kind of do.

  Griffin is so fast that the language barrier hardly slows us down the next day in the fragrance lab. It’s a little funny, too, to hear everything I say about calculations and mixes in his accented voice.

  But when I explain how I want to approach a revamp of a body spritz for women, Charles asks a question before Griffin translates.

  Charles has the name of the molecule wrong, though. I share the correct one, and Mr. Sexy Chemistry makes it sound better in French.

  Charles nods. “Je comprends maintenant.”

  I understand now.

  Me, too! I award myself a point for understanding Charles the first time around, even though that was a very simple sentence. But hey, I have to start somewhere.

  We’ve set up the schedule so Griffin’s here in the mornings, which is when I work with the others in the lab, and he also attends meetings with the other department heads and me. That turns out to be super helpful because when one of the marketing gals says to her colleague before the meeting starts on Wednesday that the mini chocolate tarts on the table are the worst she’s ever had, Griffin whispers in my ear and warns me from taking one.

  Now that’s the kind of help I truly appreciate.

  But I also like when he’s not here with me. When I’m alone with my work in the afternoons. I like it when I don’t have to talk, too. Somehow, that’s easier.

  Silence is a language I comprehend with crystal clarity. When I inhale a formulation of jasmine for a new face cream, the scent transcends words. It evokes memories of peaceful days and private gardens. I don’t need to reword or paraphrase the smell of relaxation because it’s a state of mind, a place I want to visit.

  Here in the quiet of my own thoughts, I take that trip.

  The first week cruises by, and I’m busier than I ever was at home. My brain is tired, but the kind that feels like a good workout, as if I’ve been using every muscle in it for cerebral exercise. I’ve been trying vainly to understand what everyone’s saying, but all I manage are words here and there. I’ll key in on a verb—ooh, that means to buy—or a noun—someone mentioned the waste bin—but by and large, I’m floating in a sea of incomprehension. When I return to the office after lunch, the receptionist greets me in French then English, but as I walk down the hall, everyone is talking in their language.

  I wish I understood them. I wish Griffin were here to translate the chocolate tart gossip.

  Not because I’m a nosy nelly. Though, a little bit of me is.

  I want to understand them because I feel blind. Deaf. Mute.

  I’m operating at half power, with switches in me turned on and off. A fuzziness lingers in my head when I walk into a bakery, the grocery store, the cinema.

  I get by. But words and phrases float over me. They’re darkness—they’re clouds. No matter how pretty they are, they don’t light up my day.

  As I leave on Friday, my mind drifts to a book I read years ago where a blue-haired girl is gifted languages by her adoptive father every year on her birthday. It’s a fantasy tale, but nevertheless by the time she’s eighteen she speaks many languages.

  And she doesn’t have to learn them.

  The gifts he gives her simply turn a switch in her brain. She shifts from not understanding a word to comprehending each one.

  Lucky bitch.

  I want that magic pill.

  When I near my flat, a bus rumbles past me, and I stare in its direction, trying to read the billboard on the side of it. A giraffe wears a red trench coat, and the only word I can make out is art.

  Because it’s the same freaking word in both languages.

  I try and I try and I try, but the letters swirl and dance, and it’s as if I’m at the eye doctor, squinting at the EFGD in the eye test but seeing only squiggles.

  When the green bus rolls away from the stop, a cloud of fumes sprays from its exhaust. Coughing, I rub a hand over my eyes.

  I resume my pace, turning the corner of my block. I blink. Something feels funny in my eye. Like a bug or a piece of dirt. I rub again as I pass the café where I met Griffin for coffee. When I look at my curled fingers, there’s a filmy circular lens on them.

  I stop in my tracks, spin around, and look for a window. Something to peer into as I pop my contact lens back in. But it’s already drying in my hand.

  I consider jumping in frustration Rumpelstiltskin-style, but instead I woman up in the middle of the sidewalk, holding my eyelid open, and pop that bad boy back in my eye.

  Ouch.

  It hurts going in dry like that.

  But I’m near my flat, and I have contact lens solution.

  Eighty-four steps later, I correct myself.

  Since I don’t take my contacts out every night, it slipped my ever-loving mind to bring contact lens solution to France, and this eye hurts like the dickens.

  I trudge back down the steps, around the corner, and to the pharmacy.

  As I scan the shelves, it’s as if I’ve hit a brick wall. I don’t know the words for co
ntact lens solution. I don’t know how to find the solution because EVERYTHING LOOKS DIFFERENT HERE.

  That means I’m going to have to go to the counter and do that thing I detest. Fail.

  I’m going to fail at speaking the language. I’m going to fail at accomplishing this most basic errand.

  My confidence frayed to a thread, I make my way to the counter and ask for contact lens solution in a hideous amalgamation of broken French and English.

  The quizzical look on the pharmacist’s wrinkled face tells me I’m botching it. I take a deep breath and try again. Pointing to my eyes, leaning my head back, acting out what I need. Soon enough, he understands me.

  When I’m back at my flat, I rinse the lens and put it back in. I pour a glass of wine and head to my roof. Sighing deeply, I flop down in the chair as the pink sunset tugs the sun beneath the horizon. As I take a sip, twilight starts to settle in, casting the city in a soft, pale light from the Seine all the way to Sacré Coeur.

  There’s so much I love about Paris, and yet it feels even more foreign than when I first landed here more than a week ago. I’m like a fish trying to swim upstream, but I don’t know which way the currents will pull.

  From my vantage point, with buildings bathed in a warm, gentle glow, everything feels possible. But I know that once I venture down the stairs and beyond the pink door, it’s like a battlefield on the streets. Of beauty and frustration.

  I’m going to need more than charades to survive in this city.

  I reach for my phone.

  * * *

  Joy: I’m drinking wine on my rooftop. It sounds perfect, but I still miss you.

  * * *

  Allison: I’m on my lunch break eating at In-N-Out Burger. If you’re jealous of me you’re crazy, even though it is In-N-Out.

  * * *

  Joy: The one American food I miss.

  * * *

  I switch gears and track down the email of a perfume blogger I connected with in Austin through an online forum of other scent-obsessed gals. An American living in Paris, Elise has become an Internet friend, and when she learned I was moving here, she told me we must get together. She’s been traveling for work but said she’d return this week, so I send her a quick note and then gaze at the skyline, wondering what everyone else is doing on a Friday night here in Paris while I’m all alone.