A Second Chance at Paris

by Cole McCade

  He’d done it anyway.

  After years of battles, negotiations, diplomatic soothing, even bribes, he’d managed. He’d even brought his publisher in on it, so they wouldn’t complain about losing their cut of the profits.

  And look where that had gotten him. The sixth book had been handled by translators the publisher contracted—translators who took a few too many liberties and applied far too many broad-sweeping stereotypes to strip what made Violet Violet, turning her subservient, obedient, everything Violet Sparks was not.

  Localization for culture and context was one thing. What the American translators had done was an insult to that culture; an insult to the heart of the series, and he’d rather eat the costs than ship his books with such damning messages on their pages. He’d have them re-printed using a more reliable translator on his own dime. One way or another, he’d make it happen.

  Even if he had to do it while racing the deadline for book seven.

  He’d pulled off tight deadlines before. The third novel had been stolen in three a.m. snatches in hotel rooms during a global book tour, staying awake by dint of strong black coffee and chasers of bourbon. The fifth? Written while seeing his older sister through an ugly divorce, with her kids hanging on him like monkeys and not a moment of peace.

  He’d made do. The writing had been easy, then. The words came like fire, rushing through him in a torrent, until his fingers burned like torches setting the pages alight. But lately that fire had dimmed to a flickering ember; he hadn’t written a word in two weeks.

  The reason why waited on his desk: an innocuous sheet of cardstock. The invitation. He’d first thought nothing of it. High school reunions were a nuisance, though Drake promised it would be good publicity. He practically had the headlines printed. World-famous author returns to dazzle high school hometown!

  But Ion had no reason to return to Bayou’s End. It had barely been home for four years. His parents and sisters had followed their Roma wanderlust to a dozen other Rockwell-esque hamlets worldwide. Last he’d heard the only one still in the States was Zoraya, who’d put down roots in New York after graduating NYU. So showing up in Bayou’s End for a promo opportunity was pointless.

  He didn’t give half a damn about publicity. All that should matter were the words. The work. The story.

  If not for her.

  The real Violet Sparks. The girl who’d inspired every word. She’d haunted him throughout his career, eventually becoming the heroine of a half-dozen NY Times bestselling novels. Her name hadn’t been Violet, but she’d always made him think of the flower: slender, delicate, yet so bold, so vivid. There was a strong chance she’d be there, and as his gaze trailed riverboat lights across the Seine, he wondered for the millionth time about the woman she’d become.

  He’d tried to find her, more than once. But after high school she’d vanished, her trail not just going cold but disappearing entirely. He’d often wondered what she’d done with herself; if she was anything like the girl he remembered, vivacious and independent and utterly irrepressible. No one had ever matched up to her memory.

  “Mr. Blackwell?” an American voice said. Female. Sharp, with that accusatory inquisitiveness only reporters had. “You’re a hard man to track down.”

  He closed his eyes, took a deep sip of bourbon, then exhaled. “I don’t do interviews.”

  “Really? Because I thought you’d want to comment on the anti-feminist propaganda you’re spreading with the foreign editions of your books.”

  He ground his teeth. He wouldn’t defend himself with useless excuses; he hated the press, how they twisted everything to make headlines—then demanded accountability for crimes they’d manufactured. Not all were bad, but the syrupy smugness in this woman’s voice told him she was one of the vultures more interested in a scoop than the truth.

  “I have no comment,” he said.

  “This article’s going to print tomorrow, whether you comment or not. You could make it a little less damning.”

  “I’d hate to cut into your sales.”

  “There’s that biting Blackwell tongue I’ve heard about.”

  She moved to his side and looked out over the city. Petite. Curved. Hair dyed vixen-red, and a sort of painted-on sexuality that said she got her way by using her amply displayed cleavage to get information. Not his type, though when she caught his eye she reached into her purse with a slow smile and withdrew a business card.

  “Evelyn Madigan. I’m in Paris for a few days. Thought I’d see the sights.” She offered the card. “If you change your mind.”

  Ion barely flicked the card a glance before walking away.

  Her voice trailed after him; he ignored her and headed for the door, pausing at the bar to leave the tumbler and a tip. He was wasting time. He had a book to write and a dry well. He needed inspiration, which rarely found him in the bottom of a drink. It was out in the city, the streets, the sounds and scents of the world.

  Maybe even in Bayou’s End.

  He stepped into a night turned indigo by city lights reflecting from the underbellies of clouds. The March breeze brought the Seine’s crisp scent, and the multilayered aromas of the city: people, food, a million things that had once been exotic but now meant home. He’d fallen in love with Paris over ten years ago, when his junior honors class had taken a field trip to France. His parents had the Roma need to wander, modern nomads with their kumpania wagons replaced by RVs and Range Rovers and houseboats, but Ion…Ion had known, even then, that he’d found the city that would be his forever.

  The lights on the water dazzled; the Eiffel Tower thrust against the horizon, a bright spear. Historic buildings shouldered against housing developments so modern they bordered on outré, dotted with glowing exterior lights along streets limned by golden lamps. Reflections swam in the Seine like fireflies darting beneath violet-dark glass. He’d walked along this street so many times, each time chasing the fading memories of adolescence. He almost expected to see his history teacher walking down the sidewalk ahead, chiding the students in his mouse-quiet voice to hurry, hurry, they’d miss their boat.

  And she had been there, with her free, easy strides and smile that said she knew something he didn’t. And the way she’d looked at him, that night…

  Sprawling avenues took him across Pont Saint-Louis to the riverside. Docks stretched their tongues into the water, next to booths advertising midnight boat tours down the Seine. He’d taken the tour every night for weeks, paying for multiple rides and staying out until dawn, trying to find the spark to ignite the firestorm of words caged inside. Every night he’d ended up just watching the water, remembering a night years past, his mind blank of all but circling thoughts about the reunion—and a curiosity that burned stronger than his creative fire.

  Let it go. Forget her.

  A line stretched along the sidewalk, all couples or groups. He barely made the cutoff for max occupancy, and probably would have had to wait if the ticket teller, Jean-Paul, hadn’t recognized him.

  “Monsieur Blackwell,” Jean-Paul said with a sympathetic smile, scratching his peppered stubble. “Here again, are you? The book is not going so well, oui?”

  “The book is not going at all.” Ion passed his bank card across the counter. “Unless it’s in one ear and out the other.”

  Jean-Paul chuckled. “You look into the Seine like a fisherman looking for the one that got away. The words are not there, my friend.” He tapped his barrel-shaped chest, over his heart. “They are here. All stories start here.”

  Maybe, Ion thought. But my story started here.

  Jean-Paul stamped his ticket and shooed him onto the dock. Ion stepped aboard the long, multi-leveled tour boat. The deck swayed underfoot. While the tourists explored the lower levels and exclaimed over the view, Ion climbed to the upper deck and breathed in the fresh, tangy scent of night over open water.

  Someone else was already there.

  A slim figure stood against the railing and looked over the water. Ion stopped on th
e top step, gripping the stair rail tight enough to hurt, heart pumping so hard his chest seized, flooded, as if swollen with a torrent of blood. His vision blurred, wavering between past and present: the same skyline, the same night, the same stars, the same girl watching the water with an innocent raptness that had transfixed him. Joyous wonder had shone through her face, and he’d struggled to capture it in words ever since. Sometimes he thought Violet Sparks had been born that night…and had remained with him for years, waiting for him to tell her story.

  The girl at the railing turned. Not a girl, but a woman—a woman too old to be his Violet even after aging ten years. The aristocratic chisels of her face and lean, wiry body hinted at a woman in her mid-forties. She called out in French, voice rich with warmth and laughter. A man emerged from the behind the wheelhouse and went to her with open arms. Their lips met, and Ion looked away. It wasn’t her—and even if by some miracle it had been, she wouldn’t have been here alone.

  No one ever came here alone, except him.

  These tours were for lovers, families, friends whose every touch and shy, stolen glance hinted at more. Only he came here chasing a nonexistent dream, and a woman who might be nothing like the girl he’d known.

  He moved to the railing, watching the shoreline recede. Maybe it was time to give up that dream. No woman could live up to the ideal he’d painted; he could ruin himself searching for her. He’d heard too often of writers driven to the brink by their obsessions, tortured geniuses whose madness produced the definitive works of their time.

  He’d have to pass on that aspect of fame.

  He knew what Drake would say: use this. Milk it. He alone knew how Violet had come to exist, and he’d been desperate to broadcast the story for years. A publicity event, showing the world everything Ion locked away in the secret halls of his mind. He’d said it would sell more books by painting him as this romantic, tragic figure, boosting his sex appeal off the charts.

  Sex appeal sells, Drake had said. If you think little girls are the only ones buying your books, you’re crazy. Their mommies want a little more than a bedtime story. They want those bedroom eyes on the book jacket. They’ll want to be the woman you’re looking for.

  And Ion had refused. Some things were too personal.

  He leaned against the railing and watched the water. Jean-Paul was right; he spent too much time looking for answers he wouldn’t find. Looking for someone who would never be here again. Time to move on. Make a fresh start.

  But as the boat slid like silk through the water, he watched the older couple from the corner of his eye. Watched how she leaned against her husband, hand on his arm, the weathered gleam of her wedding band’s finish betraying its age. He would move on, he thought. But not yet. Not now. He had one more Violet Sparks books in him.

  Then he would finally let her go.

  * * *

  Maybe, Celeste thought, four-inch heels weren’t the best choice for an international flight.

  She’d wanted to step off her flight looking like a cool, polished business professional, but she was having second and third and twentieth thoughts about that when her toes had turned into one big mass of blisters by the time she settled in coach. She could practically hear her mother chiding, Just like your father. Genius IQ, zero common sense. Honestly, sweetheart, can’t you try to stay grounded?

  She tried. She also tried to take off her shoes, until Stewardess Barbie informed her—with a syrupy plastic-surgery smile—that her knockoff Jimmy Choos were a threat to international security. It took a rum and Coke and four Tylenols to dull the throbbing, and by takeoff her feet had gone up three shoe sizes.

  She distracted herself by watching the stars. The view was her favorite part of flying; a night sky unfiltered by smog or city lights. Just her and the endless heavens, stretching above a field of clouds whose blue shadows became a strange and mythic sea.

  That sea lulled her to sleep. Eighteen hours of fitful dozing later, she woke to different stars, manmade and bright: Paris, stretching below in a river of lights. The pilot’s voice piped over the intercom. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are on approach to Charles de Gaulle Airport, and should be landing within twenty minutes. If you’ll please observe the fasten seatbelt signs…”

  She tuned him out. Tuned everything out, from the taste of sweaty gym socks in her mouth to her sleep-crusted eyes to her pulsing feet. Outside, Paris was a constellation of glowing colors, lit so vividly she could hardly breathe for the clutching in her chest.

  The first time she’d seen it, she’d been sixteen and swept away by the idea of Paris. The romanticism. The beauty. The brimming possibilities in her naïve little teenaged mind, with Ion just two rows ahead, unaware that in her head he was starring in her very own teen movie—where the handsome, brilliant, utterly unattainable popular boy finally noticed the awkward, freckled science club geek was the girl he’d always wanted. She’d thought her heart would explode as she’d watched the city unfold in lines of incandescent fire, and realized the iridescent blue of the evening sky was the same intense color as Ion’s eyes.

  She could have sworn she’d outgrown that—especially when she remembered, with bittersweet amusement, the flight back. She’d sulked from takeoff to landing. Ion had barely looked at her the entire trip. The popular boy had, in fact, been utterly unattainable. He hadn’t been the first crush Celeste had watched from afar, but he’d been the last. She’d done her best to forget him in college, while forgetting she’d ever been a girl called Hairy Mary Haverford.

  Yet the tight flip in her stomach remained the same. The ache in her heart remembered Paris. Remembered the first time she’d seen this skyline. She’d been so vulnerable, so innocent. She was older now, yet still those lights could fill her with the thrill of anticipation, and make her yearn for the bright promise on the horizon. Something good would happen for her here. It had to.

  And one day she’d watch her father’s face light up as he watched this skyline rise from the clouds—seeing it with new eyes, as if for the first time.

  She smiled to herself, collected her carry-on, and somehow walked off the plane without limping. The baggage claim wasn’t far, and with her luggage piled on a trolley and the customs officials placated, it didn’t take long to find an English-speaking cabbie. Twenty minutes later she’d checked into her hotel, stumbling over her limited French the entire time. She barely remembered how to ask where the bathroom was or request directions to the American Embassy, but she managed to say merci beaucoup as she passed a few Euros to the bellhop and stepped into her room.

  Her eighth-floor suite offered a stunning view of the Seine. She would never forget the first time she saw the river arcing through Paris’s streets; the school chaperones had taken the students on a midnight riverboat tour, after an exhausting afternoon exploring Notre Dame Cathedral. Celeste had taken pictures all day, and had only had one shot left. She’d watched the river for nearly an hour, alone on the top deck with her camera ready, waiting for the glassy sheet of violet-and-gold water to reflect the stars just right.

  Now she smiled and touched the windowpane, watching the bright-lit boats cruise by. Coming here had been a good idea. High school hadn’t been all bad, and at least she’d have the memory of Paris to hold her up when she went home for the reunion.

  Home. She should call home. No—no, she shouldn’t. Ophelia was fine and her father didn’t need her nannying him. What she needed was to soak her feet. She stripped and ran herself a steaming bath, easing into the water to wash off the travel dirt and soothe her aching toes. But her thoughts drifted back to the Seine, and she wondered if it was too late to catch one of the last tours. After sleeping eighteen hours on the plane, she wasn’t tired—and she was in Paris. No chaperones this time. Nothing stopping her, as long as she didn’t oversleep tomorrow.

  She dried off and dressed in comfortable jeans and her favorite hoodie; her feet felt much better in soft socks and sensible hiking boots. She clipped her damp hair back in a ponytail and di
dn’t bother with makeup. She didn’t have to look like a slick corporate consultant or respectable academic tonight. Tonight, she was just another tourist.

  With her room keycard, cellphone, ID, and debit card in her pocket, she headed into the night. Her hotel was situated away from the central tourist areas, but the restaurants she passed promised they accepted Visa and American currency, messages chalked in English and French on sidewalk blackboards. Rich scents lured her. She watched the sky, spread with stars like a scattering of sparkling sand, and let her feet follow the river. A mirror galaxy drifted at her side, within the Seine’s winding walls. She wished she’d brought a camera. The night sky over distinctive silhouettes of French architecture…memory would never do it justice, and her camera phone sucked.

  She stopped at a dock, paid her fare, and stepped onto the boarding ramp. The boat was mostly empty. Her watch said she’d been walking for two hours without even feeling her throbbing feet. She hesitated on the ramp. This late at night maybe she should catch a cab, go back to the hotel, and sleep.

  But one breath of sweet river air changed her mind. She slipped onboard and beelined for the stairs to the upper deck. She’d loved it up here, as a girl. Back then she’d had the deck all to herself. The class trip had been in January; everyone else had stayed on the lower deck, out of the chilly winds. In those few minutes alone she hadn’t been Hairy Mary Haverford, knobby-kneed scarecrow and geek extraordinaire. She’d just been a nameless girl, spreading her arms to the sky and remembering how to dream.

  She found a spot on the prow and watched the city glide by. Sometimes, she missed that girl. She’d lost her somewhere between unlocking the intricate mysteries of contact lenses and flat-irons and skin care, until her hair obeyed her command and her freckles were just a golden glimmer against pale skin—and she’d abandoned her entirely when she’d finished her doctorate and officially become Dr. Celeste London, Astrophysicist, Ph.D. When she wore her pencil skirt and suit jacket and tucked her pen into her neatly twisted hair, she could almost believe the professional woman in the mirror had never been Mary Celeste Haverford at all.