by Anne Heltzel
That’s when I know it. It’s so obvious, I almost laugh. The way she looked at me in the hallway. The way she’s looking at me now.
“Charlie and I dated for three years,” I say aloud, not because there’s any point to it, but because I want to see her reaction. Red splotches are appearing on her cheeks. “We talked about marriage.” We hadn’t, really—I’m nineteen and he was twenty, for Christ’s sake—but now that I’m watching her react, I can’t stop myself. It’s like orchestrating a multicar collision—one designed for revenge. The feeling makes me heady, and I have to grip the podium tighter for support.
The words escaping my mouth are saccharine. I know if Charlie could see us (which he can’t, because I know there’s no heaven and thus no more Charlie), he’d make a gagging noise in the back of his throat and accuse me of being melodramatic.
“I really believe I’ll be promised to Charlie in my heart forever,” I conclude a minute later. I know I’ve provoked tears because I can hear the sounds of noses blowing and muted sobs, and I have to control the instinct to roll my eyes. I train my eyes on her; she looks like some kind of ghoul under those jet-black bangs and that wavy, messy bob. I wait for her to crack. To bolt upright and run away. The challenge hangs there for a minute; but she stares back at me, unflinching despite the horror written all over her face. She’s tougher than she looks. I return to my seat and face front, forcing myself not to turn back. This weird, lightheaded feeling washes over me, like I was just two seconds from fainting up there.
As soon as the minister says some final words and invites everyone to a luncheon immediately following the service, I allow myself to turn halfway around in my chair as though I’m reaching for my purse. I look for her. She’s not there. But the door to the foyer is just now swinging closed.
I run in the direction of the exit as fast as I can in my suede booties.
When I reach the foyer she’s not there. I push through the glass-paned door and into the courtyard and trip over the cobblestones as I whisper a string of shits to myself—how could she have disappeared so quickly? And then I spot her by the big, gated door that leads to the street. Twining yellow and pink roses stretch around the door frame. She’s tugging on the handle like the tourist she probably is, and I almost laugh when she actually kicks the door with her prissy black pump. She mutters something under her breath as I approach.
“You have to press Porte,” I go. “See, right here.” I indicate the button on the stone wall to the left of the door. She moves toward it but I’m too quick. I step in front of the set of buttons—Lumière being the other option—and block them with my body. “It’s weird, the way doors work here,” I continue. “They’re all the same. High-tech security. Serious stuff.” I reach for my black leather tote and rummage for a cigarette. She’s standing there, arms crossed over her chest, looking a mixture of angry and frightened. She still hasn’t said anything. “Want one?” I extend the pack toward her. One of us has to make this less awkward, and it looks like it’s going to be me.
“I don’t smoke,” she says in an American accent. It confirms my suspicions—an American like me, but without the international experiences that have rendered my own accent difficult to place. “Can you please step aside so I can go?” Her jaw is tight and her eyes are cloaked in dark circles. Far away she looked exotic and devastated. Up close she just looks tired and snotty.
“No,” I mimic her. “I cannot.”
“What do you want?”
“I can only guess from the way you were staring in there that you didn’t know about me,” I say matter-of-factly.
“What are you talking about?” she says, but her eyes dart downward. She knows—she must, after my speech. I peer at her closely before I continue, giving her a minute to be upfront. I’m not sure what game she’s playing.
“You’re the other girl,” I say, when it becomes obvious she’s determined to be silent. “I always knew he was cheating,” I continue. “I just can’t believe you had the balls to show up here. Oh . . .” I finish, deliberately trailing off. I’m sure she can’t know how calculated my words are. She’s definitely the sheltered type. “Don’t tell me you were in love with him.”
“Charlie was my boyfriend,” she hisses, almost defensively. “Of course I loved him. I don’t even know who you are.” I didn’t think she could shock me; now my blood runs cold. I knew Charlie had a thing with another American girl when he was spending the summer at NYU the year before. I’d even suspected maybe there’d been one or two more incidents. But someone he was serious enough about to consider his girlfriend? Not possible. I’d have known.
“You’re delusional,” I tell her. I suck at my cigarette and wait for the smoke to calm me. It doesn’t. The girl’s face turns into two faces and then a blurry blob before my line of vision. These are angry tears. I always cry when I’m pissed off. “Charlie and I dated for three years.”
“We were together for a year,” she tells me in an uncertain voice. “We just had our anniversary.”
“You say that like he’s still alive.” I’m testing her, trying to gauge if she has the same suspicions I do.
“That’s ridiculous,” she snaps back, her eyes narrowing. “Of course he’s dead.”
I’m taken aback by her vehemence. There’s a silence. There’s the sound of her breathing hard, of me expelling more smoke. I breathe it in. I breathe it out. I hope when it leaves my lungs it’ll take my pain with it.
“When?” I want to know. I have to know.
“When what?” She’s stopped sniffling and is mopping her mess of a face with a tissue.
“When did you celebrate?” Charlie went water-skiing with some friends the second weekend of July. He’d canceled on a concert with me and I’d tried not to be angry. But it was an important concert, Vampire Weekend. Neither of us even liked them anymore, but it still meant something to me.
“July twelfth,” she says. “We met up in Milwaukee.”
I slump against the wall.
The first concert Charlie and I went to together was Vampire Weekend. That night, we had sex for the first time in a little room behind the sound pit. We could be as loud as we wanted because the music drowned us out; and the cacophony actually wound up forming a weird kind of silent bubble between us. It was the same sensation as when something’s so cold it’s hot—your body no longer knows how to sort out the sensations. Actually, that’s how I always felt around Charlie.
Charlie’s friend Derek hooked him up with the room, back near where the bands get ready. Derek’s dad owns a record label, and it wouldn’t be the first time he’d hook us up. The room was tiny but Charlie decorated it with posters of all my favorite bands: the New Pornographers, Vampire Weekend, M83. There was a row of chocolate-frosted cupcakes lined up on a table in the shape of L+C. There was a bed in the corner with a huge fluffy blue blanket and a bottle of champagne resting on the table next to it.
“It’s your eighteenth,” he told me softly. “I thought you deserved something special.”
I turned from him, grabbed one of the cupcakes, and took a huge bite.
“Thanks for the cupcakes,” I told him, trying hard to make my voice sound cool and aloof. “Not sure what you think is going to happen on that bed, though.”
“I know exactly what’s going to happen,” he said. Then he lifted me up before I could stop him, and I got cupcake frosting all over my shirt, and he carried me over to the bed and dumped me down on top of a mountain of pillows. He grabbed the cupcake from my hands and ate the rest, licking his fingers. Then he was over me, and I was tasting chocolate frosting on his tongue and wondering how the hell I got so lucky with Charlie Price. From the beginning, he picked me, not the other way around. After we first met, he never let me go. I’m still wondering exactly why—why me—every single day.
3
Aubrey
I could leave now. It wouldn’t be hard; when the fairy-elf slumped down to the ground, her frame no longer obscured the exit button
. But the way she reacted right now, going from tough girl to helpless in less than five seconds—it scares me. I can’t feel bad for her. I can’t. I feel bad about so many things that I think I’ll never feel okay again.
I push the button. I hear the lock click. I tug at the handle and it yields to my grasp. But my feet are rooted. I feel myself turn back. I watch myself kneel next to her.
“Are you okay?” I ask. She’s let her cigarette slip from between her fingers to the ground, where it burns the edge of a blade of grass. She doesn’t answer but her eyes droop closed, and I panic. She’s so pale, so thin.
I put my hand on her shoulder. I don’t even remember her name.
“Hey,” I say. “Are you all right?” For all I know, she has anxiety attacks or a weak heart or something. She nods slowly.
“I just need a second,” she mutters. “But don’t go anywhere. Please.”
“Okay,” I say. But I can see a few other mourners congregating in the foyer. Soon they’ll wonder what we’re doing.
“Actually,” I say, “let’s get out of here.”
“Wouldn’t want to cause a scene,” she says, not bothering to look up.
“Parisians don’t like scenes,” I agree, and she laughs a little, even though it’s not funny. I hold out my hand and she accepts it. The bones of her fingers feel frail as I pull her to her feet. We step through the door—which I can barely open, it’s so heavy—and onto Rue de Buci. It’s my first time in Paris since I was little, and everything is substantial and impressive, from the towering wooden doors to the thick metal posts that line the sidewalks.
I feel faint with Charlie’s betrayal, even though I shouldn’t. I have no right to be; and I don’t know how Charlie can still surprise me. I glance at this girl’s face and all I can see is a slideshow of him and her: kissing her, laughing with her, scooping her up in a big hug, balancing his muscular frame on top of her fragile one. My imagined idea of the two of them together is happier than the reality of him with me ever was. I turn without a word and set off toward the metro. I need to get away; that’s the only thing in my head. Technically, I can’t feel like a victim without also being a hypocrite. But that’s the funny thing about feelings—they don’t make any sense, they just are.
“Wait!” she calls after me. I hear her running to catch up, but I cross the street just as the light’s changing. I look back to see her dodging traffic and feel my mouth fall open.
“Are you insane?” I ask when she catches up to me. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Listen,” she says, out of breath. “I’m guessing you’re not heading to the funeral luncheon, right? Let’s go sit at a café for a bit.”
“I don’t want to sit anywhere with you.”
“I’m not the one who screwed you over,” she points out. Apparently she’s gotten over her wilting damsel moment. “He obviously treated both of us like crap. Don’t you want to know anything?” Her breath emerges in loud gasps that seem disproportionate to her stature. “I, personally, want to know what other bullshit Charlie fed us.”
“Okay,” I say after a moment’s hesitation. “But I can’t stay long.”
“I know a place this way,” she says, gesturing westward with her chin. The cobblestone street is packed with people and lined with shops of every kind: boulangeries with mille-feuilles and precariously stacked pastel macarons in their wide window displays; ice cream carts with miniature red and blue awnings; corner cafés with cheerful wicker chairs outside, front-facing so customers can people-watch; and flower shops boasting bouquets in every hue imaginable. There are a million options.
“There’s a tea salon right here.” I catch sight of a little Invader tag, just one example of the street art I’ve been seeing all over Paris since I arrived—something I’d love to photograph any other time—above the salon’s awning. Charlie’s other girlfriend looks at me like I’m crazy.
“I don’t want tea,” she says. “I need a drink.”
I have a funny feeling that this girl and I would have been friends under different circumstances.
She leads me into a café: outside it has the same furniture as the rest of the cafés lining the street; but inside there are just a few red leather booths and some wooden tables. It feels like we could be anywhere in the world . . . except Paris, where aesthetics are celebrated and nearly everything is elaborately decorated.
“Bonjour, mesdemoiselles,” says the waiter. I merely smile and nod, but the fairy-elf breaks out in flawless French:
“Bonjour, monsieur. Une table pour deux, s’il vous plaît?”
“How do you know French?” I ask once we’re seated. She shrugs, fiddling with a beautiful gold ring with a blue stone—real sapphire, if I had to guess. She twists it above her knuckle as she talks, alternately biting her thumbnail.
“I’ve done a lot of traveling. Plus I spent most of high school in Europe. Took French and Spanish and Portuguese and Latin in school. Anyway. I’m Lena. What’s your name?”
“Aubrey,” I tell her. It’s funny that we went this long without exchanging names. Lena. I’ve definitely never heard the name before, coming from Charlie. She laughs, but it’s a little flat.
“You’re Aubrey?” she says, incredulous. “Jesus.”
“What?”
“So you’re the ‘good family friend,’” she says, using air quotes.
“Is that really what he said?”
“Oh yes.”
“I’ve never even met his parents.”
That gives her some satisfaction, I can tell. “You know, I was always suspicious of you. I never met you and I’ve met everyone else, and yet he insisted you were this good friend from childhood, a neighbor or something from Paris. Jesus, he was full of shit, wasn’t he?” It’s almost too much to process. My whole body hurts, like I’ve just finished working out. I’ve felt guilty for so long about the wedge that had started to drive itself between me and Charlie. And now to realize maybe I should have been angry, too . . . that all the blame shouldn’t have been on me . . . I’m surprised by how much it hurts. “You’re dating a jazz musician, you know.”
“What?” I’m completely confused now. Charlie was hopeless with music. He couldn’t even sight read when I played the piano.
“Not true? Doesn’t surprise me. That’s just what Charlie told me. Apparently you’re dating a jazz musician and the sex is—”
“STOP,” I say, louder than I mean to. She stops, her jaw dropping open. A few people glance our way. “I’m sorry,” I say, quieter now. “That’s just—I can’t believe he’d make something like that up. About me. His family friend.”
“Tell me,” she continues drily. “What about my fake identity? Let me guess: I used to be his babysitter? I’m banging a tattoo artist?”
“No,” I tell her, shaking my head. “I’ve never heard of you. He never mentioned your name.” The second I say it, I regret it.
“Fuck you,” she says clearly, just as the waiter is bringing us our menus. Her face has gone white. She pushes her chair back, moving as if to leave.
“Lena! Stop.” My voice is high and nervous. I feel terrible; I didn’t mean to hurt her. I find myself reaching for her arm—we’re reversing roles now; it’s me after her. “I’m sorry—” I catch myself. I don’t want to talk to this girl, because I don’t know what I might say. Still, I know how bad she’s feeling, because I’m feeling just as bad. It makes me want to be careful with her. I find myself holding her gaze. I try to let her know that way that I really am sorry—for both of us. The whole situation is like some nightmare I can’t pull myself out of. She sighs and lets herself sink back into her seat.
“Goddammit,” she says. “Fucking Charlie. I dated him for three years. I never cheated on him. I could have,” she says. “But I never would have done that.” I swallow hard against my guilt. The waiter is back to take our order. He’s dressed in black with a white apron, and he holds his pad aloft, pen poised and ready. “Whiskey on the rocks,” she tells him in
English now; I guess her “flawless French” is only situational. “Un double, s’il vous plaît. Elle prend un verre de vin blanc,” she says, clearly ordering wine for me. “Do you want anything to eat?” she asks me. I shake my head. To my surprise, she orders herself a croque-monsieur.
We sit in silence for a minute and then the waiter’s back with a glass of white wine for me and her whiskey and a sandwich slathered in cheese. I watch Lena take an enormous bite of her sandwich, then another and another—like she hasn’t eaten in months. I’ve always been the opposite: when I’m sad, I can’t eat at all.
“I just can’t believe he never mentioned me,” she says again between bites, and I realize all of a sudden what a blow that would be.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “He probably just knew I’d get paranoid. I’m not an easy person to date.” I’m mostly being nice, but there’s some truth in it; I’ve always been quick to jealousy. I heard somewhere once that the ones who are most jealous are the ones who have something to hide.
“That asshole,” she says, her voice low. “Charlie could be a real jerk sometimes, but I never, ever would have thought he was capable of this.”
I clench my jaw. The Charlie I fell for was sweet and thoughtful, almost to a fault. He was always a gentleman . . . until he wasn’t anymore. Just before he disappeared, I’d started to blame the darkness in our relationship on myself—on naiveté. On never really getting to know him the way a person should know someone she wants to love.
“Oh, he didn’t show you that side of him?” She lets out a bitter laugh, mistaking my silence for disagreement. “Lucky you. Listen, Aubrey,” she says then, leaning toward me. There’s a dangerous spark in her eyes. “Don’t you want to know who Charlie really was? Think about it. You and I could probably talk all day about his lies. But what else was he lying about that we don’t even know? Charlie’s dead,” she says. I catch a glimmer of doubt in her eyes. Her voice rises in pitch, sounding false. “I’m fucking angry. I want to know everything. Every single lie he ever told.”
