A Million Miles Away

by Lara Avery

  “Are you going all the way to Paris, or will you stop in Toronto?” the man next to her asked.

  He had a French accent behind the veil of his breath. Kelsey had forgotten the way air could get trapped in airplanes. She hadn’t been on a flight since the Maxfield family trip to Costa Rica. Michelle had hated flying, and she hated sitting next to Kelsey. Every word out of her chatty mouth, her sister told her as she had put enormous headphones over her ears, was a new blanket of carbon.

  “Paris,” she answered the man politely, and turned back to the shrinking scenery, grateful that Peter had booked her a window seat.

  Now that they were gaining altitude, the pilot’s voice came on the speaker.

  “Anywhere else in France?” the man asked, over the announcement, and she turned again. His eyelids drooped over black eyes and, below those, dark crescents in his skin. He had been handsome once.

  “No,” she said, short.

  “Why do you come to Paris?”

  “To visit,” she replied.

  “A boyfriend?”

  Kelsey smiled, closemouthed, and said nothing. She tried to hide her face.

  “It is a boyfriend, I can tell.”

  “’Allo, passengers, this is your captain speaking. My name is Rhett du Pont, and your cocaptain is Nisse Greenberg. Sunny skies over the Midwest. We are expecting a clear flight all the way from Kansas City to Toronto, and from there we should land in Paris on schedule.”

  As the pilot went on, the woman in the aisle seat leaned over and gave Kelsey a wry smile, her face framed in auburn waves.

  “He gets loopy on Dramamine,” she said. “But he can’t fly without it.”

  “My dad has to take that, too,” Kelsey said, thinking of her giant father splayed into the aisle, fast asleep, while Kelsey, Michelle, and her mother giggled at his snoring.

  “But I am right,” the man said, waving his hand. “She is thinking of a young man when she looks out the window.”

  “Sorry,” the woman muttered again. “He’s not usually like this. He typically just mutters to himself about the crossword puzzle.”

  “Of course I don’t do this often! This is a special case. You must tell us about him.”

  Kelsey picked at the magazines in front of her, wondering how she could ever explain. He isn’t my boyfriend, but I do care about him. She thought of how Peter had sent her a recording of himself saying something in French before she left, stumbling over the words as he read them from a dictionary, thinking she could understand them. But it hadn’t really been meant for her.

  “There’s nothing to tell.” Kelsey shrugged.

  The man stage-whispered as he gestured toward the auburn-haired woman. “My wife claims she is not romantic. She pretends she is just a practical Midwestern American woman like you. But she knows, too.”

  The woman rolled her eyes, but she was smiling.

  “Knows what?” Kelsey said, glancing at both of them.

  “You’re in love.”

  “No.” She snorted. “No. I’m just…” She felt her eyes drift. In love. She tried to shrug it off, but for some reason, all she could think of was Peter on-screen, strumming a chord. “I’m just seeing a friend.”

  “You’ve got quite a smile on your face for someone who is just a friend.”

  “Leave her alone, sweetheart,” the woman said.

  “It will happen in Paris,” she heard the man saying to his wife. “She will have to kiss her friend in Paris, yes?” Kelsey closed her eyes, pretending not to hear.

  “She’s trying to rest,” the woman said lightly. “Let her be.”

  When Kelsey awoke, the couple was fast asleep. She will have to kiss her friend in Paris! She ran her finger over her mouth, and tried to picture Peter’s against it. It could happen, couldn’t it? They would probably be quite bad at it, considering they had never kissed before. Considering Peter was expecting someone who wasn’t her.

  She wouldn’t let him, of course. She would pull him aside and do what she had set out to do. But as she put a movie on the in-flight screen to pass the time, Kelsey noticed, for some reason, she had goose bumps.

  Kelsey wandered in a daze through customs at Charles de Gaulle, her mind still at rest, replaying snatches of dialogue from one of the movies she slept to as she crossed the Atlantic. You are, and always have been, my dream.

  Soon she was rolling her suitcase through a linoleum tunnel, a new stamp on Michelle’s passport, to the smell of bleach and the buzz of overhead lights.

  The tunnel opened into the international arrival gates, and Kelsey gasped. The giant, endless archway looked like the main hall of a castle, each groove composed of infinite windows, dropping fifty feet from ceiling to floor into miles of red carpet. Thousands of people pulling suitcases streamed backward and forward, passing shops she knew but now seemed different, as she caught French and Italian and German requests for Starbucks and sandwiches.

  “Michelle!” she heard a man’s voice cry out, and Kelsey closed her eyes tight. This was Paris. There could be many Michelles here.

  “Michelle!” she heard again, close, and she turned around.

  Peter, taller than she remembered, jogged from the center of it all. He wore a tan army-issued T-shirt and fatigue pants. Before she could get out the calm, honest “hello” that she had practiced, he was hugging her so tight her feet left the ground, and he spun her around, her face in the clean scent of the crook of his shoulder, and then, without ceremony, he set her down and kissed her.

  He tasted like salt and then nothing; there was only the feeling of his lips on hers. Kelsey couldn’t help but start to smile. When he let go, she was speechless, too aware of everything around her to say anything, let alone a rehearsed speech.

  “It’s so good to see you,” Peter said, his blue eyes now hitting her harder than they ever could through a screen.

  “You, too,” Kelsey replied.

  “What is ‘welcome’ in French?” Peter asked her.

  “It’s—” Kelsey started, breathless, pretending to fiddle with her suitcase as they walked. “Bienvenue,” she said, grateful that she had remembered the pilot’s words.

  “Bienvenue,” he said.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Kelsey should have pulled away, but now it was too late. And she was in shock, listening to him talk about their plans for the evening as they strolled through the busy airport. She tried to remove the taste of him from her lips by licking them, but, of course, it just intensified.

  Her body seemed to be vibrating with every beat of her heart.

  Two more men in fatigues, canvas bags on their backs, greeted them at the entrance to the train into the city. She would have to break the news later, at the hotel. Now wasn’t the time.

  “You found her, I see,” the shorter redhead said, and held out his hand. “Remember me?”

  “Rooster?” Kelsey asked.

  “Sam, if you don’t mind, ma’am,” he said, revealing freckles as he got closer.

  “No, he likes Rooster better, trust me,” said his companion, a lanky, bespectacled guy with caramel-colored skin.

  “I do not,” Sam said matter-of-factly.

  The other guy rolled his eyes. “I’m Phil.”

  “Hello, Phil,” Kelsey said, shaking hands all around.

  She took a deep breath as they descended into the metro, and remembered what her parents had told her before she left for the airport, pleased that she was trying to move forward from her grief. Just try to have fun, they had said. They may have been mistaken about where she would be having fun, but Kelsey took it to heart, anyway. She had to.

  She gave her biggest Midwestern smile to the severe-looking women in high heels and the old ladies with dark lipstick and the men with sculpted, curly hair who stared at the four Americans as they rode through the underbelly of the city.

  She soaked in the yellowed brick and gilded block letters of each platform, just like in the movies, trying to identify the artwork on the rows of poste
rs.

  Even the advertisements are beautiful, she found herself telling Michelle in her mind.

  That one is Edgar Degas, she thought, looking at the rough sketch of a woman stepping out of a tub on an ad for a museum called Musée d’Orsay. Next to it, women from a hundred years ago, lifting their dark skirts to reveal petticoats and calves. Next to that, the iconic tulle brushstrokes, her favorite of his before she even knew who he was: The Pink Dancers, Before the Ballet.

  Peter leaned close to Kelsey, pointing at their stop on a map, and she could feel her skin getting hot under her sweater, from all the excitement, from the pressure of what she had to tell him, or maybe just from having him around, a pair of arms and eyes and boots to go with the face she had grown to know.

  They emerged onto the Place de Clichy, at the edge of what Kelsey could only call a roundabout. Motorcycles, old-fashioned taxis, and tiny cars wound around a cement circle to their various branching roads and, in the center of it, a giant copper sculpture.

  Even the traffic is influenced by art, she took note for her sister.

  Their hotel was nearby.

  Soon, everything might fall apart, and Kelsey dreaded it. Especially here. It shouldn’t happen here, where it was midday, the sun at the highest point in the sky, bouncing off red awnings and wet stones and linen on tables, beneath the twisting streetlamps, and windows that opened onto narrow streets lined by balconies.…

  “Coming?” Peter called to her from ahead, holding out his hand.

  She nodded and followed the group down one avenue, then another, then back the other way for a wrong turn, and finally to a building marked only by the number painted above the doorway.

  “Okay,” Peter said, glancing at the directions he had printed out. “40 Rue Nollet.”

  He rang the bell.

  Inside, they found a steep wooden staircase and a wizened caretaker, whose tiny frame disappeared into her apron.

  “C’est ici,” she said after four flights, pointing to a thick white wooden door.

  She led them inside to find two large beds, and a window from ceiling to floor, opening to a small iron balcony.

  “Merci. Enjoy,” she said, and exited.

  Phil and Sam tossed their canvas bags onto one bed and stretched, taking in the view of the city.

  “One room?” Kelsey said, turning to Peter.

  “Nice and cozy,” Peter said, winking. Then he whispered, “Sorry. This city ain’t cheap.”

  “That’s okay,” she replied.

  As she watched Peter peel off his army T-shirt to don civilian clothes, she was also grateful that she wouldn’t have to talk her way out of doing whatever it was that Michelle and Peter would do in a bed alone.

  She was blushing. Again.

  The close quarters would make it difficult to have any private conversation, though, let alone the one they were meant to have. But deep down, Kelsey was grateful to put it off.

  Soon, the four of them set out on the metro to find a shop called Shakespeare and Company, at Peter’s request.

  Sam took some convincing as they hung on to a metal bar for balance, huddled among the passengers. “I’m not shelling out euros to see Shakespeare, no way. Can’t understand that crap. Never could. Might as well pay to watch a soap opera in Spanish.”

  Peter laughed, his hand on Kelsey’s back. “It’s a bookstore, Rooster. Where all the American writers used to hang out in the 1920s. Hemingway’s favorite.”

  The street they searched for, it turned out, was right across the river from Notre Dame Cathedral. When she saw it, she drew in a breath. The cathedral was gigantic, of course, but the late-afternoon light made the small shadows just as important as the enormous towers, emphasizing the structure’s tiny curves and faces and leaves. Never before had Kelsey seen a building that asked so much of those who looked at it. Every inch had been carved into something else.

  Inside the bookstore, Kelsey found a quiet, hidden corner to collect her thoughts. The wet-wood smell of old books arose from all sides. She knew nothing of the history of this place, but she could feel it in the silence. She was a stranger to everyone except herself, and now that she was alone, she found she didn’t care. The boys were just as in awe. The beauty of Paris had made words unnecessary.

  Between the shelves, she spotted Peter, absorbed in a large book with bright images.

  “Peter,” she said quietly.

  He looked up, and searched for the sound of her voice. When he saw her, he smiled. “Look what I found,” he said.

  As she approached, she noticed a leaf bud from one of the trees had gotten caught in Peter’s hair. When she removed it, for some reason, she couldn’t bear to toss the leaf on the floor. She pocketed it.

  “Your book on Andy Warhol, the one you have in your room,” he said, pointing at an image of the artist in black and white. “But in French.”

  Michelle’s book. Kelsey had paged through it a few times, when Ian had told her to look him up, and when she was composing her first letter to Peter.

  “Tell me what it says,” he said, his mouth lifting at the corners hopefully, his eyes washing over her.

  Kelsey’s mouth went dry, and she looked at the pages full of random syllables, which might as well have been completely blank.

  “It says…” she said, letting out nervous laughter. Her game was up. The words came out of her, clumsy. “It gives his birth date and says he was a great artist, that his work is not snobby or hard to understand.”

  “Is that really what it says?” he asked, his eyes narrowing, playful.

  Kelsey’s hands were in fists in the pockets of her jacket. She met his eyes. Maybe now was the time. She swallowed, trying not to let her voice shake. “No,” she said. “I’m bullshitting you.”

  Peter closed the book, and replaced it on the shelf. “I’m sure it’s close enough,” he replied. He took her in his arms, her cheek to his chest, and she could feel his voice come through his body and into hers. “Right now, you could tell me the sky was green and I’d believe you.”

  Kelsey slipped out of his embrace, pretending to browse, trying to resist the look on his face, the look that said he wanted to kiss her again. “But the sky’s not green. And that’s not what the book says. That’s not the truth.”

  From behind her, Peter said quietly, “I like anything that comes from you. That’s truth enough for me.”

  Kelsey hid a smile, but she wasn’t sure who she was hiding it from anymore. She let him take her hand and lead her through the shelves, where Sam and Phil waited for them outside.

  They took the train home.

  After catching the sandwich shop down the street from their hotel before it closed, they had a dinner of ham and cheese on baguette near the square, in a jet-lagged haze, watching the passersby.

  They bought a bottle of wine at a corner store and brought it back to their hotel room, where they drank out of paper cups and played blackjack until the three soldiers on Afghanistan time were exhausted.

  Peter and his friends reminded her of long, jokey nights with Davis, watching him and his fraternity brothers shoot guns on the screen of a video game. Unlike the boys with her now, after they turned off the TV, they were done. Every time she thought of Davis, she sighed. Yet another reason why she shouldn’t be in Paris, let alone kissing another guy in Paris. She had told him she was having a “phones off” sorry-I’m-such-a-bad-friend weekend with Gillian and Ingrid, which is where she should be, really, all things considered. But it’s not like she would have felt better, or less sad, or more like herself if she were at home. She was trying her best just to be there. And, well, being there wasn’t hard.

  Kelsey was still wide-awake, but she got into her pajamas anyway, suddenly self-conscious enough to wait until Sam was done using the bathroom. Normally, she would have tossed her shirt aside, no matter the company. Kelsey and her body were one, and she wasn’t ashamed or scared of revealing it.

  But this wasn’t Davis, who had seen and touched pretty
much everything. This wasn’t an audience of hundreds of anonymous faces, watching her writhe around in a costume. This was Peter, who cared so deeply about the little things. Who opened his heart to her.

  Judging by how moved he was by a song or a circle in the middle of a Kansas prairie, her bare back might just send him reeling.

  When she came out of the bathroom in a T-shirt and shorts, Sam and Phil were already snoring. One lamp, beside the bed, remained lit.

  Peter approached her in his boxers, and put his hands on her waist, tucking his fingers under the hem of her shirt. He was so close she could see the blonde hairs on his skin. Maybe he wasn’t as prudish as she thought.

  Kelsey seized up.

  He must have sensed she was feeling shy, so he took a step back.

  He kissed her on the cheek, and turned to switch off the lamp. Kelsey took the opportunity to jump into bed, under the covers, her face toward the wall. Her cheek was burning.

  “Hey,” he whispered as he lay beside her. “Today was crazy.”

  “It was,” she said, swallowing.

  “Tomorrow will be great,” he said, shifting his weight closer.

  “Mm-hmm” was all Kelsey could get out.

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  She waited for the sound of Peter’s deep breathing to breathe herself, silently begging the universe over and over, for what she wasn’t sure. For a lot of things. For everything to be okay. For Michelle, wherever she was. And for the kind soldier beside her to be all right.

  Above all, for that.

  As far away as it seemed right then, the thought of Peter safe and happy granted Kelsey peace, and she fell asleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Iron beam after iron beam fell past Kelsey’s eyes, and between the lattice, Paris grew smaller and the sky grew bigger. As the Seine River lengthened, the green of Champ de Mars unrolled in a graceful U shape. Her stomach flopped. They were getting higher. Peter held her hand tight, catching her eyes, laughing at the absurdity of a dozen nations squawking together in one elevator.