His father hit the Play arrow in the center of the screen and Juliet came to life. She was delivering a speech to the House of Capulet’s shareholders, and she was, well, captivating.
At once self-possessed but modest-seeming, she positively glowed as she talked about the company’s future. When they came to the end, Jean refreshed his screen.
“The commenters love her,” he said, furiously tapping the screen. “And the business reporters can’t stop talking about her. She goes to your school, doesn’t she? Of course, you wouldn’t associate with Capulet trash.”
Now Jean was looking across the seats toward Romeo. He did know Juliet. And associated with her. Intimately. Even though he knew his father had dismissed the idea of him ever talking to her—a positive of all Romeo’s previous conquests was Jean’s notion that, with so many other options, Romeo would certainly overlook Juliet—he felt for a second like his dad could read his mind, and he felt protective toward his private thoughts of Juliet.
“She’s just another girl,” Romeo said with a shrug. It was the understatement to make all other understatements sound like exaggerations.
“Clever of Capulet to have her give the speech,” Catherine piped up. “She’s very pretty and self-possessed. Modern.”
“Yes, she’s very good at this,” Jean said, shooting Catherine a dirty look as if she should know better than to say anything flattering about his rival. “Leave it to that slob Maurice Capulet to whore out his daughter like that. The son is probably too stupid.”
Romeo didn’t know whether he should feel proud that Juliet had impressed his father so, or angry that Maurice Capulet had used her, as Jean suggested. “Let me see it again,” he said, reaching for the phone.
Jean handed him the phone with a bemused look. “I never knew you cared about our competition.”
Ha, if we can just keep you from knowing, Romeo thought.
He pressed Play to start the video. An affectionate smile started to pull at his lips as Juliet stepped to the podium. Romeo knew her well enough to discern a nervous quaver in her “Hello,” though her voice came through quite strong. Even though she’d seemed quite self-assured their first time together—she knew what she wanted, always—he remembered a tiny tremor in her voice and the tiny goose bumps on her slender arms as they’d made their way to the bed.
As she continued to speak, her confidence rose. Her cheeks were flushed but not in a way that suggested anything more than warm lights and enthusiasm. She had a magnetism that came through even on the tiny screen. She radiated love and warmth, and Romeo felt almost jealous of the audience, like they were enjoying the comfort of her that he wanted to belong only to him.
What a fool he’d been, to have not stolen more time with her at the gala, or not to have seen her since then. He hoped she knew that his evening with Rosaline had been nothing.
“What do you think?” Jean asked Romeo. “We should have thought about this. The Capulets are assuring their people that the future is in their hands, and we’re handing out ice cream cones.”
Romeo wondered suddenly about his father’s business acumen. It was smart for the Capulets to show their company was in good, young hands—though Juliet had never mentioned to him that the business would be hers or that she had any role in it whatsoever.
He also wondered why his father hadn’t thought to use him the same way Maurice Capulet had used Juliet. Was Romeo not strong enough? Not smart enough to stand up and speak to the board? Juliet was a better student than he was, and he would have trusted her to run a company. God, maybe he should have run away with her to start their own business.
“I think she’s pretty great,” Romeo said. Again, it was an understatement, but at least it came closer to the truth.
His mother squeezed his arm. “You would do even better,” she said. “It’s too bad that now it would look like we were copying them.”
But Romeo didn’t know about that. Juliet would have been impressive even if he didn’t love her. How had he never paid more attention to this side of her before, realized her full power?
He was stupid—an ignorant male. He knew her, he pretended to know her, but there was so much more to know. Just because you’d found your one, felt known and like you knew, it didn’t mean that you really knew everything. Just that you could keep learning about them and only grow more amazed.
His sudden awareness of all that was left to know of her assured him of another thing: He needed to see her. Now. Or as soon as humanly possible.
Handing the phone back to his father, Romeo pulled out his own phone and started an email to the secret account. Let’s meet, he wrote. Somewhere different this time. Special. Details soon. I love you.
CHAPTER 13
JULIET
SHE’D BEEN ON the verge of fresh ire toward Romeo when his message had come, saying he needed to see her. Days had passed since she’d heard from him—that message from him that she was his only one. It had been almost a week since the gala and Rosaline. There should have been more. A rendezvous, even a reckless, short one, to prove he meant what he wrote.
Then, school and the meetings. Since the Capulet one yesterday, Juliet felt flush with her success, and she wished she could share it with Romeo.
Now, maybe she could, but she wanted something more from him. That he needed to see her, fine, it would be a lie to say that she was not excited at the prospect, even if she thought it should have happened sooner. But where, at least, was the groveling? The effects of his earlier message were still there, but that it had taken him so long to write more had left her hoping for a better invitation. After Rosaline, she merited better prose than “Let’s meet.” They might as well have been a study group.
Even as she rode the high of her presentation to the shareholders, Juliet’s anger was still piqued at the whole Romeo and Rosaline thing, and it was made worse by the fact that she couldn’t even ask him what had gone on. To be a girlfriend who had no access to her lover was starting to make her wonder if they really had anything together. Did he really mean that “now and forever” stuff or was it just a way to keep her around? Did he love her for the secret, or because it was real?
She told herself it was the latter. To be held by Romeo was all the proof of his love she required. It sounded silly, but they didn’t have a connection—they were connected. Her soul found purchase on his. He was her safe place, even though he made her feel miles above the ground.
But when would Romeo be brave enough to step forward and say they were together?
Since the gala, Juliet had wanted to say something. Not just because of Rosaline but because, well, what were they hiding for? She knew. She did. She looked around her room, filled as it was not only with comforts but with tokens and memories of her very comfortable life. On her bookcase were the old editions of fairy-tale books she used to collect, her father bringing her back a different version from every city he visited. On her vanity were silver-framed photographs of her and her parents skiing in the French Alps and aboard the Capulet yacht. Tucked into the corner of her mirror was a strip of photos of her and Henri, curling at the edges. They’d taken them at an arcade in London, where they’d gone on a whim when Henri graduated from high school.
She didn’t want to be disowned. But she had to wonder, would her family really disown her over a boy? True love seemed like it should be harmless. But her father’s words always echoed: “Juliet will do what’s good for the company.”
She was the apple of her father’s eye and she enjoyed her hold on his heart, but did it mean that she would always have to rein herself in?
Surely, love couldn’t mean only doing what would rock no boats, cause no harm, make a person feel smaller, rather than bigger.
It should have made a person courageous and brave. Maybe it was time to ask him point-blank: Was Romeo keeping her at bay just so he could meet her in hotel rooms while he took models to fancy parties? Or was he too scared to really risk anything for her? Both options galled her.
“Are you going to be the boss, little girl?” Lu Hai said with a touch of amusement.
Juliet started. Her nanny could sometimes be so silent, Juliet forgot she was there.
“No,” Juliet said. “I just need to take care of some business.”
“Well, that’s how you get to be the boss,” her nanny said, going back to her tidying. If Juliet ever did rise to the helm of Capulet, Lu Hai would be one of her deputies.
A light knock came at the door. Its irritating cadence could only mean it was Hélène. Juliet supposed she should be grateful for the warning knock, at least.
Lu Hai swung open the door, not bothering with a greeting. Even though Hélène didn’t really want to raise Juliet herself, she had always treated Juliet’s nanny as an intruder. But then, Hélène treated the entire household staff with a polite distrust.
“You’re wearing a lot of makeup” were the first words out of Hélène’s mouth on seeing her daughter. Really, Juliet wasn’t wearing much at all—though she had taken extra time this morning, because even with her anger at Romeo, a part of her felt guilty, too: She’d woken up from yet another dream about Jim that made her blush just to think of it. It was the manifestation of her anger at Romeo, she’d reassured herself, not really believing it.
“It’s not much,” Juliet said. Thinking of Jim and Romeo, she couldn’t meet her mother’s eyes.
“It looks heavy,” Hélène said. “But maybe that’s just your face.”
Her mother’s nasty comments toward her came whenever Hélène herself was feeling less than her best. And indeed, Hélène looked drawn and tired. She wore worries the way other women wore oversized earrings. Juliet would have asked her mom what was wrong but knew better. Nothing upset Hélène more than knowing someone knew she was upset.
“I’m meeting Gabrielle,” Juliet lied, mentally pulling together what Metro lines she’d need to take to get to the apartment building in the Eighteenth Arrondissement. She’d been surprised Romeo had wanted to meet somewhere as fashionable and tourist-friendly as the village of Montmartre, but the apartment, he’d said, was empty, the couple he’d rented it from having just left on a monthlong trip to South America. Juliet had looked up the ads for the spot herself, and there was something almost grown-up to her about staying in a home instead of a hotel.
“Oh, Gabrielle,” Hélène said. “She’ll surely be wearing more makeup than you.”
“That girl’s more overdone than a Mardi Gras float,” said Lu Hai, who hadn’t liked Gabrielle since the model had literally looked down at her and said, “I had no idea they made people so short.”
“Have you heard from Pierre?” Hélène asked with less interest than was typical for her nosier questions. When her mother was in particularly irritating form about Juliet’s lack of a boyfriend, her questions practically reached inside Juliet’s brain to rifle around for the truth.
“A few messages since the gala,” Juliet said. She wasn’t lying. In the days since the gala, he’d checked in on her and even sent her a link to a slideshow of images from the gala where their photo was featured. They were standing with half a foot of space between them. Two slides later were Romeo and Rosaline, the model pressed close to Romeo’s side. “He’s very sweet.” Another truth. She couldn’t fault Pierre for trying.
“Sweet,” Hélène tutted. “The poor boy should know you’d like him better if he were less sweet. Probably if you couldn’t have him, you’d be in true love.”
Juliet rankled at the comment, because it struck so close to part of her truth. She opened her mouth to protest but Hélène was already moving about the room nervously, stopping to look at the photos of Henri and Juliet.
“Have you heard from Henri?” She looked right at Juliet like she expected Henri to be hiding behind her back.
“I haven’t seen him since the shareholders’ meeting,” Juliet said. Henri had excused himself from the postmortem by saying he had to meet a friend. There’d been a moment of awkwardness between them. Juliet felt strange that she’d done so well at her speech and enjoyed it so much. And she’d never even asked Henri how he felt about it.
But the advantage to Henri was that the excitement over Juliet’s success yesterday had allowed him to escape without a lot of questions. Usually his abrupt vanishings set both parents on edge, given his past, but they’d been so focused on the positive press following the meeting, they’d been fine letting him go.
“Well, he didn’t make his appointment yesterday,” Hélène said. “And he’s not answering his phone. When you see Gabrielle, check with her, please.”
Henri’s appointments were his Narcotics Anonymous meetings. They weren’t as anonymous as they were for other people, since the House of Capulet sent a representative to ensure Henri made it inside the building. Gabrielle ran in some of the same party circles Juliet’s brother used to frequent, with models and socialites, and occasionally Henri tried to have a social life. Thus Hélène’s belief that the model might know her son’s whereabouts.
“I will,” Juliet lied, suddenly anxious to get out of this house and to the Montmartre apartment.
“I know,” Hélène said, patting Juliet tentatively on the shoulder, like it was a trick she’d learned in Mothering School that she hadn’t quite mastered. “Because you are our good little girl.”
Juliet, “good little girl” that she was, didn’t disagree.
* * *
She decided to take the car and driver part of the way to Montmartre, getting out near the Pompidou, where she’d claimed she was meeting Gabrielle. Then she could ride the Metro the rest of the way to Romeo.
She was nervous and jittery about what she would say. She’d read in some dumb magazine of her mother’s that you should visualize what you wanted the outcome of a thing to be and you might get your desire. But she could only see as far as the argument: Romeo protesting, taking her in his arms, kissing her. The world around them slipping away.
But if she always let the world slip away when she was with him, how would they ever be a part of it?
Still, when she tried to imagine their big reveal—what, would Romeo trot her out in front of his parents at a family dinner? Would she bring his mother a hostess gift? Here are some Ladurée macarons to make up for years of our families hating one another?
Why did that seem remotely possible? It was, in some way, what she wished could happen. If she could just get past Romeo’s passionate embrace and reassurances that he loved her and no other, maybe she could make it so.
Or maybe the kisses and reassurances would have to be enough.
Her driver stopped in front of the Pompidou, and Juliet sprang from the car, eager now to get to her train.
The museum plaza was swarming with people, many of them funneling into the building through the almost-exotic set of tubes that contained escalators zigzagging up the sides of the structure. If they were a normal couple, Romeo and Juliet would probably come here like other kids their age, posing for selfies as they rode up, Romeo’s arms wrapped around her shoulders possessively.
Maybe someday, Juliet thought, running toward her Metro stop. She checked her phone quickly before descending the stairs. There was a message waiting.
A text from Gabrielle.
Need you to come now. It’s Henri.
She gave an address in the Ninth. It was a financial district but it had pockets that were residential, and not all of them great.
It was not like Gabby to text with no joke, no smiley face, no friendly dig at Juliet’s supposedly good-girl life. And it was about Henri. If he’d been missing and he was with Gabrielle, it might mean he hadn’t been able to resist the temptations of an unhealthy crowd.
Juliet navigated to the secret account and wrote a short message to Romeo: Something’s come up. Something important. I can’t make it. I’m so sorry, my love.
Reluctantly, regretfully, she left it in the drafts folder, as they always did, hoping he would know to check it.
Because she wasn’t meeting Romeo any longer, and because she felt the urgency in Gabrielle’s message, Juliet hailed a cab and asked it to take her as far as the Printemps department store. She would walk the rest of the way. It wasn’t far, and if the cabbie recognized her, she couldn’t risk him being the type to supplement his income by selling a story about Juliet’s mysterious stop.
When she arrived, sweaty in her long sleeves, she double-checked the address on her phone. The gray building was somewhat nondescript, especially for Paris. Its utter plainness made it stand out.
It was a corporate housing apartment that seemed designed precisely so no one would want to stay too long. The lobby was as drab as the exterior, as if to remind residents that they were just here to work and nothing more.
Juliet signed in as Beatrice Rien (French for “nothing”) with the indifferent guard, purposely writing in an illegible scrawl when she added the apartment number she was visiting. She took the elevator to the ninth floor.
The door to 907 was partially open and she pushed in. The apartment wasn’t large, but the lack of much furniture made the space look bigger. A party had obviously been held here recently. The room was strewn with half-empty beer bottles, glasses containing dregs of dark red wine, liquor bottles lying on their sides. Stale smoke hung in the air, making the room taste like what gray looked like. Someone had been sick in the middle of the action. Or so suggested the noxious odor that saturated the air.
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