Owning It

by Leah Marie Brown

  “Wahhhhhh!” Vivia sings, her mouth a perfect O, her gaze cast toward Heaven. “Did you hear that? That’s the celestial choir singing. That’s the sound Fanny hears in her head anytime someone asks her to go shopping.”

  Fanny laughs. “I think you are beautiful just the way you are, but if you want a makeover, I would be happy to oblige.”

  “Look,” Vivia laughs, standing and grabbing her sunglasses off the table, “I have an errand to run.”

  “You can’t go!” Fanny cries. “We are in the middle of a makeover.”

  “Fashion is your bag, baby.” Vivia slips her sunglasses on her face. “I’ll meet you guys at the restaurant for the gallery graduation. Just make sure our Dizzy Princess is über-glam for the ball tonight, okay?”

  Chapter 37

  Laney’s Life Playlist

  “Marry Me” by Train

  Vivia is pacing the sidewalk in front of Bâtard de Valadon in black cigarette pants and matching black jacket. Her ’80s Mötley Crüe tee and impossibly high sparkly heels transform the conservative outfit into something totally edgy. It’s totally Vivia.

  She stops pacing and mumbling to herself when she sees us approaching.

  “There you are!” she says, striding over to us. “You were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago. You’re late.”

  “Chill, White Rabbit,” Fanny says, grinning. “We will make it to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.”

  “Fanny!” Vivia’s mouth falls open. “Did you just make a pop culture reference? A Disney pop culture reference?”

  Fanny nods.

  Vivia closes her eyes, presses her hand to her forehead, and sways back and forth on her heels. “What’s happening? Am I hallucinating? Do I have a brain tumor?”

  “Ha! Ha!” Fanny says, laughing. “I watched Calder’s best friend’s daughters last weekend, and all they wanted to do was watch Disney movies. No big deal.”

  Vivia keeps her hand pressed against her forehead, but opens her eyes. “Ohmygod! I do have a tumor. I thought you just said you babysat . . . children.”

  “Shut up, you dork!” Fanny laughs, pulling Vivia’s hand from her forehead. “Besides, if I am going to be an auntie to Vivia Perpetua de Caumont’s children, I need to know the lyrics to every Disney musical.”

  “No worries there, mate. As you can plainly see”—Vivia opens her jacket to reveal her flat abdomen—“I am without bump and intend to stay that way. So you can just go back to being pop-culturally challenged Fanny.”

  Fanny told me Vivia had a little pregnancy scare earlier this year. She thought she was pregnant and due to deliver around the time of Fanny’s wedding to Calder, but it turned out she made some error when she tried to synch her iPhone calendar to her new iPad so the dates of her menstrual cycle got all jacked up.

  “Well, maybe I will be working a bump soon.”

  “Wait! What the what?” Vivia shakes her head. “Ohmyfreakinggod! Fanny, are you pregnant?”

  Fanny shakes her head. “Not yet.”

  “Not yet?” Vivia cries. “Are you sure I don’t have a brain tumor? Maybe there was a rip in the space-time continuum. Something is wrong.”

  “Technically,” I say, removing my glasses and sliding them into my little clutch, “there is no way the fabric of time could be ripped because there is no theory about time being like fabric.”

  Vivia blinks. “What are you saying? Doc Brown’s theory was bunk?”

  “Well, technically speaking, yes. The phrase ‘ripping a hole in the space-time continuum’ is a theory perpetuated in science fiction.”

  “Great Scot! What is happening here?” Vivia cries, covering her mouth with her hand. “My child-hating best friend is quoting Disney flicks and talking about having babies. You’re debunking Doc Brown’s theory about the space-time continuum. I need a drink.”

  Fanny laughs and links her arms through ours. “Let’s go then. I am pretty sure Bâtard de Valadon can accommodate your alcoholic needs.”

  “Wait!” Vivia says, turning to look at me. “Before we go in, I have something to say to you, Laney-Bo-Baney Brooks.”

  “Yes?”

  “You look fabulous.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Fanny grins, clearly pleased that the results of my miraculous makeover were worth her efforts. We spent the morning shopping for a new wardrobe, sleek slacks, pencil skirts, leather leggings, cashmere turtlenecks, polka-dotted silk blouses, Breton striped tops, a pair of pink satin pants, swingy little skirts, and a bright, colorful scarf that looks like something a grown-up artist would wear. She even let me get a slouchy cashmere beret and minidress with an ultra-mod Picasso-esque print. A neutral palette with occasional pops of color. Somehow, she managed to give my immature wardrobe a mature update while still maintaining what she called the Laney je ne sais quois.

  After our shopping spree, we headed to Fanny’s favorite salon. They wanted to cut several inches off my hair and give me the perfectly tousled, sexy bed-head look popular with très chic Frenchwomen, but I opted for a shorter, chicer version of my own style, with fringy, side-swept bangs and chin-hugging layers. Fanny gave me smoky eyes and thick, pin-up-girl lashes, and brushed Nars Orgasm blush over my cheekbones, and I hardly recognized myself.

  We walk into the restaurant, and Robert takes one look at me and whistles, waggling his shaggy eyebrows suggestively.

  “Ooo, la-la, la vache!”

  I blush. “Does that mean I look okay?”

  “Cherie,” he says, kissing both of my cheeks, “it means you look like a sophisticated, sexy French screen goddess.”

  “Merci, Robert.”

  “De rien!”

  He leads us to a long table in the atrium where the other interns have already gathered. They take one look at my chic black sheath dress, buttery-soft peacock blue leather jacket, and Amy Winehouse fuck-me pumps and burst into applause. Giorgio lets out a loud catcall. Rigby jumps up and wraps her arms around me.

  “You look amazing, Lane,” she says. “Like if you smooshed Sophia Loren and Audrey Hepburn.”

  “Thanks, Rigby,” I say, hugging her back.

  Fanny orders us bottles of champagne, and we toast to the future. Vivia entertains us with stories about her assignments with Gogirl! magazine. Rigby asks Vivia about all of the famous celebrities she has interviewed for the magazine. Vivia tells a funny story about how she slipped onto a set where they were photographing a Dolce and Gabbana underwear campaign with super-sexy male model David Gandy, and how she pretended to be the oil girl, slathering baby oil onto David’s chiseled pecs until she was discovered.

  “So what happens next?” Vivia asks. “Where will you all go, and what will you do?”

  Giorgio tells us he is going home to Bedizzano and will work part-time in his family’s business, spending the rest of his time opening a gallery.

  “I am going to New York with Julia,” Gunthar says.

  I look at Julia and see her as if for the first time. Her aura is different from what it was when we met. She is glowing.

  “A strong voman needs a stronger man,” he says, the corners of his lips twitching as he resists smiling.

  Julia laughs and kisses Gunther, “And I suppose that is you, my big Viking lovah?”

  Gunthar nods his head.

  “When did this happen?”

  Gunthar shrugs.

  “It just kinda happened,” Julia says, beaming.

  “What about you, Rigby?” Julia asks.

  Rigby throws her arm around my shoulders. “We are staying in Paris, aren’t we, Lane?”

  I nod.

  “What will you do?” Giorgio asks.

  “We are going to start an art bike tour business, leading people to places artists lived and worked. I have some money from my car insurance settlement, and my iTunes royalties keep rolling in, so”—I shrug—“why not?”

  “Everything is working out for you,” Vivia says, grinning. “Isn’t it?”

>   I think of Gabriel, and my heart aches.

  “Come on,” Vivia says, grabbing my hand. “We have somewhere to be.”

  “Where?”

  “You have a date with destiny, Dizzy Princess.”

  We follow Vivia out of the restaurant. She leads us down the street and into the square at place des Vosges, but pauses before pushing the gate open.

  “I want to talk about Gabriel and what happened in the south of France,” she says, positioning herself in front of me. “What if there’s a perfectly logical explanation for the way Gabriel behaved? What if he wasn’t upset because Alexandre asked Giselle to marry him, but because he had planned on asking you to marry him that weekend and his weasel-ass brother stole his glory?”

  I blink at her because I don’t have an answer to her questions.

  “What if he didn’t come back to your room that night because he was über-pissed at weasel-boy and didn’t want you to see him all raged-out and shit? What if he just wanted to take some time to pull his shit together so he didn’t ruin your trip?” She narrows her gaze. “Do you think those are plausible what-ifs?”

  “Sure.”

  She steps aside, and I am able to see into the park. The square is usually empty at this time of night, but crowds have gathered around the fountain, which is surrounded by easels with artwork on them.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Come on,” Vivia grabs my hand. “Your fairy godmother has been wearing her wand arm out working magic for you.”

  We walk through the gates and follow the gravel path leading to the fountain at the center of the park. Fanny and Vivia stop walking and smile at me.

  The crowd parts, and my heart skips a beat, my cheeks flush with serious flushy-crushy heat.

  Gabriel is standing by one of the easels. His black hair is hanging over one eye, but I can see that he is staring at me.

  “Your Prince Charming is waiting,” Vivia says, putting her hand on my shoulder and pushing me toward the crowd. “Go get ’im, Dizzy Princess. Your happily ever after is waiting.”

  My Amy Winehouse pumps sink into the gravel, and my knees wobble, but I keep walking until I come to the first easel. There’s a large framed photograph on the easel. I look around the circle and see that there are framed photographs on each of the easels. Gabriel’s photographs. There is a black-and-white shot of the bench we sat on during our first date, not too far from where I am standing. I walk to the next easel and look at a photograph of the sandwich stand where we went for lunch on our first date and many dates since then. I move around the circle, staring at photographs of the places we visited throughout our relationship—special places, our places—until I come to the last shot. I don’t recognize this place. It’s the inside of a church, with gleaming pews and intricate stained-glass windows.

  I turn around to find Gabriel standing behind me, a bouquet of daisies in one hand and a black velvet ring box in the other.

  He hands me the bouquet of daisies and then gets down on one knee. He flicks open the velvet box.

  “Delaney Lavender Brooks, ma fleur,” he says, holding the box out to me. “Will you make me the happiest man in the world and say that you want to marry me?”

  The crowd goes wild.

  “Gabriel,” I whisper, “get up.”

  He shakes his head, and a lock of his black hair falls over his cheek. “I am not going to get up until you answer me. Will you marry me, Laney?”

  “You can’t be serious?”

  “Why not?”

  I look around, beyond the crowd, to the beautiful seventeenth-century buildings surrounding the square and then back at Gabriel.

  “You don’t want to marry me, Gabriel,” I say, my cheeks flushing with a new wave of heat. “You’re punctual, focused, and successful. You’re the sophisticated son of a distinguished family, and I am . . . Laney Brooks, late all of the time, forgetful, scattered Laney.”

  He stands up and puts his hand on my waist, looking into my eyes.

  “I love scattered Laney. Don’t you love me?”

  “Of course I love you. I am, like, way, way over the moon and back again in love with you.”

  He smiles, and my heart does a somersault.

  “I don’t care if you are late all of the time, as long as you are coming home to me, and I don’t care if you’re forgetful, as long as you don’t forget to kiss me hello every time you see me.”

  “You’re serious? You really want to marry me?”

  “Totes,” he says, grinning. “What about you, ma fleur? Do you want to marry me?”

  “Are you kidding?” I say, throwing my arms around him. “Did Samantha want Jake to pick her up from the church in his shiny red Porsche? Did Andie want Blain to kiss her outside the dance? Of course I want to marry you. You’re my OTP!”

  He kisses me, and the crowd cheers.

  Cue cheesy, synthesized end music, and roll credits, please. The gawky, goofy, middle-class girl is about to ride off into the sunset with the boy of her dreams.

  Laney’s Biking (or Walking) Tour of Artistic Paris

  Jardin des Tuileries

  If you could pull a Doctor Who and travel back in time to nineteenth-century Paris, you would probably encounter Édouard Manet in the Tuileries gardens. In Manet’s time, the Tuileries was the hang spot for Bobos, the foule élégante, and anyone hoping to see and be seen. The fashionable set would sip coffee in the cafés, lounge on yellow-painted deck chairs, and admire posters tacked to one of the many kiosks positioned throughout the gardens. Manet immortalized his fave hang spot in Music in the Tuileries Gardens. An interesting side note about the Tuileries: It is reported that a ghost haunts the gardens. Called the Red Man, he is believed to have been Catherine de Medici’s executioner and confidant. Worried that he knew too many of her dastardly secrets, old crafty Catherine had him executed in the gardens. Marie Antoinette and Napoleon claimed to have seen the Red Man. Spiritualism, particularly the belief that the spirits of the dead haunt the world unseen, was huge in the nineteenth century.

  46 rue Laffitte

  Café de la Nouvelle-Athènes

  In the nineteenth century, 46 rue Laffitte was the home to Café de la Novelle Athènes, a wicked popular meeting place for impressionist painters. Degas, Matisse, Valadon, Manet, and Van Gogh frequented this café, where they would sit at one of the long tables and get a little hammered on wormwood—aka absinthe, an addictive, hallucinogenic green alcohol poured over sugar cubes. Edgar Degas chose Café de la Novelle-Athènes as the setting for one of his most famous paintings, The Absinthe Drinker, depicting a neatly dressed, slightly dejected woman zoning out, a half-consumed glass of absinthe on the table in front of her. The café was transformed into a strip club in the 1940s and was a popular hangout for Nazi soldiers. It was demolished in 2004. Today an apartment building stands in its place.

  171 boulevard du Montparnasse

  La Closerie des Lilas

  In the early nineteenth century, La Closerie des Lilas was merely a humble open-air café situated in a garden of lilacs. By the end of the century, it would become a meeting place for artists like Modigliani, van Dongen, Man Ray, and Picasso. Cézanne and Émile Zola often met under the café’s wide green awning to discuss their works in progress. Today the tables in La Closerie bear plaques engraved with the names of its most illustrious patrons.

  46 rue du Bac

  Maison Deyrolle

  It was here, in this tiny taxidermy shop, crowded with stuffed animals, preserved skins, insects, and botanical specimens, that Salvadore Dalí and other surrealists gathered to discuss their philosophical views on politics, society, and art. Deyrolle was also one of the filming locations used by Woody Allen when he shot his movie Midnight in Paris.

  14 rue Clauzel

  Père Tanguy

  In the nineteenth century, Julien-François Tanguy owned and operated a small paint-supply shop at 14 rue Clauzel. Often, starving artists would exchange their paintings for supplies. Soon Tanguy had a
warehouse full of paintings, some by artists who would go on to become crazy famous. Vincent van Gogh was one of those starving artists. He painted the rotund, bearded “color grinder’s” portrait in exchange for supplies. Today you can see Van Gogh’s Portrait of Père Tanguy at the Musée Rodin, located at 77 rue de Varenne.

  6 rue de Furstenberg

  Home and atelier of Eugène Delacroix

  This pretty, three-story brick building with glossy green doors was once the home and studio of Eugène Delacroix, the most important and colorful painter of the French romantic movement. Delacroix moved from rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette to rue de Furstenberg in 1857 because it was closer to Saint-Sulpice; earlier that year, Delacroix had been commissioned to paint the interior walls of the church. Delacroix lived and worked at this location until his death in 1863. The building was saved from destruction in 1929, when a group of artists banded together to form a society for the preservation of Delacroix’s “sacred abode” and the promotion of his inspired works. Today it is a museum dedicated to Delacroix.

  77 rue de Miromesnil

  Caillebotte’s Crib

  The wealthy impressionist painter Gustave Caillebotte lived at 77 rue de Miromesnil, and his studio was located on the top floor. Caillebotte’s family purchased this home from Baron Haussmann, the ambitious prefect who gave Paris a massive face-lift, pulling her out of the Middle Ages and into the Belle Époque by renovating her parks, roads, buildings, and public works. Caillebotte painted one of his most famous pieces here. The Floor Scrapers depicts three shirtless men, hunched over as they scrape the dark varnish from Caillebotte’s new studio floor. Caillebotte commissioned the floor scrapers to remove the dark varnish because artists appreciate light, and studio floors are rarely dark. Caillebotte also painted Young Man at the Window, a beautiful, bright portrait of his brother staring out a window from a corner room overlooking the intersection of rue de Miromesnil and boulevard Malesherbes.