by Mary Bowers
The little drama had held the other tourists trapped in place, an unwilling audience, or in some cases, a willing one.
Jack looked at Audrey and said, “How was it you put it? ‘Hubba, hubba?’ All of that and a hot-cha-cha. What kind of vibe did you get out of that performance, O Swami?”
“A none-of-my business vibe,” she answered tartly.
Nettie agreed firmly. “You don’t have to be psychic to figure that one out, Jack.”
“I’m going to like calling that guy by his nickname,” she told Audrey later on. “It’s so expressive.”
“It is the way you say it,” Audrey said with a grin.
Chapter 2
A bus tour of the city was planned for late that afternoon, and from the get-acquainted meeting, everybody went to their rooms to freshen up before they had to be back down in an hour for the bus.
“Well, what do you think of our travelling companions?” Nettie asked her niece. “I’m fascinated by that woman, Audrey, and Kat seems like a lot of fun.”
“Seems to me you’re more fascinated with that man, Henry,” Twyla said. “Please don’t marry him, Aunt Nettie. He’s depressing.”
“Marry him? How did you come up with that? And how could I possibly become intimate with Henry when the fascinating Jack is in the offing.” She made a comical face and was dismayed to see her niece’s eyes soften and glisten, as if she suddenly heard a chorus of angels. “Oh, no,” she thought, “do not develop a crush on that clown, please Twyla.”
“Do you think that lady is really psychic?” Twyla asked, clumsily changing the subject.
“Maybe. She didn’t say she wasn’t, but I don’t think she wanted to talk about it.”
“But Kat said she was on a TV show.”
“Yeah. Something called Weird Florida.” She looked at her niece, dead-pan.
“But it does make you kind of uncomfortable. I mean – like Jack said, is she going to be reading our minds?”
Nettie gave her a reassuring smile. “I don’t think she even wants to.”
“But will she?”
“With all the boring things everybody is usually thinking? No. I’m sure she doesn’t read minds, if she can help herself.”
“Maybe she can’t help herself.”
“Then we must think very pure thoughts when we’re around her, mustn’t we dear? As always, of course. Now let’s get ready to go. It’s almost time.”
But instead, Twyla sat down on her bed, looking defeated.
“Do you often think such shameful things that you’re horrified somebody could know?” Nettie said, sitting down by her niece, gently teasing.
Finally, Twyla lifted her face and looked at her. “I got picked last. I always get picked last.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nobody wanted to be my buddy.”
“Oh, Twyla, that doesn’t mean anything! The tour company uses the word buddy, but that’s not really what it is. It’s actually just the opposite. Danny explained we should pick somebody we think we won’t usually be hanging around with. Think of it that way.”
“Jack took Hannah. I bet he wants to hang around with her.”
“He’s too old for her, and surely she doesn’t want to hang around with him. Now come on. We’ve got to get ready for the bus tour. You want to look your best tonight, don’t you?”
Staring for a minute, Twyla said, “I don’t know why you’ve taken a disliking to Jack. I think he’s really nice. And I think the way Audrey treated him was terrible. In fact, I think the way she treats everybody is terrible. I don’t know why you like her so much, when you don’t even know her.”
“I think I understand something about her,” Nettie said. “I think she’s got something to deal with that most people never encounter, and she doesn’t always deal with it well. Her defense takes the form of offense. But I also see strength in her; I see a lot of fight, and I like that. I can’t really say exactly what it is about her, but I like her a lot, at least so far. And anybody who’s psychic is bound to be interesting.”
She gathered herself suddenly and looked at her wristwatch. “Come on, we’ve got to get a move on. We don’t want to keep everybody waiting. Powder your nose, put on some lipstick and let’s go.”
Twyla shrugged, looking defeated. “Lipstick isn’t going to make any difference. Men are more interested in girls like Daisy and Hannah – even Kat, and she’s old.”
“I think she’s about my age, actually.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way. Besides, you’re comfortable being your age. The way you wear your hair and your clothes – you’re age-appropriate. Kat tries to look like a teeny-bopper, but I’ve gotta admit, she’s still got the figure for it. I can’t compete with that.”
“You can’t if you don’t even try,” Nettie said, exasperated. “I love you, honey, but nobody’s attracted to a wet noodle. Get up and put on a little make-up. After the bus tour, we’re going for a group dinner, and you always need a little more color for evening light. Right now, you’re all washed out.”
She waited for the reaction. Tough love didn’t always work with Twyla, but Nettie was running out of tactics. Fortunately, this time it did work, and Twyla got up off the bed and wiped her eyes.
“You’re right,” she said. “After all, Jack’s not even in their league. He’s in my league. Maybe he’ll be smart enough to figure that out before the tour is over.”
It wasn’t the reaction Nettie had hoped for, but it was something.
Chapter 3
They found most of the tour group already waiting outside the hotel’s front entrance, blocking the sidewalk. Everybody had their little blue boxes hanging around their necks and their earbuds at the ready, waiting for Danny to begin broadcasting.
Twyla saw Lauren and made a beeline for her. They began to talk happily.
Nettie quickly located Kat and Audrey and made her way toward them. Audrey had been talking to Hannah and Daisy, and as Nettie got near she heard the word “Hubba.”
“Anyway, I’m sorry,” Audrey was finishing. “I meant to embarrass Jack, not you two.”
They laughed. “We actually thought it was funny,” Hannah said. “And don’t be so hard on Jack. He’s not so bad. Sometimes the loud ones are like that because deep down inside they’re insecure.”
“Doubtful, in Jack’s case,” Audrey groused, “but that’s very nice of you. I’ll try not to go after him again, but I’m not promising anything. He’s the kind of guy who gets my hackles up just by being there.”
Kat gave her a disapproving look. “Don’t be like that, Audrey. Jack seems like a very nice man. Are you going to be cranky for the whole tour?”
“Probably,” Audrey said.
Danny interrupted by calling for a buddy check. Nettie looked around for Henry and when she saw him, she caught her breath. He was standing on the other side of the group, just a half-step behind everyone else, and he’d been quietly watching her. His gaze was so directly settled on her that it seemed as if he’d been studying her for a long time. Something about his impassivity suggested a mask. He lifted his chin to acknowledge her, and she gave him a little wave. His expression never changed.
“Okay, everybody’s here,” Danny announced. “Let’s go.”
People fiddled with their earbuds and straggled into a loose line behind their guide.
The street the hotel was on was too narrow for the bus, so they had to take a short walk to meet it. As soon as they came out of the narrow street, the top half of the Eiffel Tower was visible over rows of five-story townhouses. The tourists gazed at it dumbly, as if it had popped off a subway poster and magically unfurled in the sky. Then, following Danny like obedient ducklings, they looked where he pointed, admired the architectural features, and made an effort to remember the cafés and markets he recommended.
* * * * *
The bus wasn’t going to be full, so they spread out. The women decided to grab window seats instead of sitting in twos, if they could.
That left the men, who had stood aside for the ladies to board first, with their choice of females as seatmates, a result the ladies didn’t think about until it was too late.
Jack studied the layout and fixed his gaze on Kat, then sat down beside her at the same time he was saying, “Mind if I join you?”
“Not at all, but don’t you want a window seat?” Kat said, as brightly as always. “There are still some open.”
“I can see just fine from here,” he said, gazing at her steadily.
Grayson Pimm walked past them, looking around as if the bus smelled bad. He dropped heavily into a window seat and angled himself in such a way that there was no room for another person to sit beside him. Lauren had been waiting for him in a seat not far behind the driver. When Grayson sat down by himself, she turned her head back around and lifted it bravely.
Jack poked his head right up against Kat’s and whispered, “Love the man-bag that guy carries. Isn’t it simply divine?”
“I believe it’s a Frye,” she told him frostily. “I think it’s gorgeous. When I admired it, he mentioned that he’s in the habit of carrying it on business.”
Jack mashed into her again and said, “We ain’t here on business. I mean, seriously? He’s the only guy here with a purse.”
Audrey, sitting directly behind Kat, arched an eyebrow but didn’t murmur over the seat. Later, she seemed to be thinking.
Across the aisle, Nettie observed all this and shook her head. Then she looked out her own window and prepared herself for the sights of Paris.
* * * * *
“By the time we were going down the Champs Elysees, he was practically groping my thigh,” Kat said to Audrey as they walked down the street toward their dinner restaurant after disembarking the bus.
“He was probably just feeling insecure,” Audrey said lightly.
Kat, who thought ladies who swore were just trash, indulged herself in some low language and followed Audrey into the restaurant. “We are not sitting at the same table as that man,” she said in a harsh whisper.
And they didn’t. They quickly headed to the table at the far end of the room as Jack and his friend Charley took the first table they came to. Grayson and Lauren joined the two men, and Twyla quickly seated herself next to Lauren. That incidentally put her next to Jack, and after chattily greeting Lauren, she shied and blushed at him.
Watching them narrowly, Nettie took the last open seat at that table, between Charley and Grayson. Jack had quickened at her niece’s obvious bashfulness, and Nettie observed this warily. She hadn’t brought her niece to Paris just to have some geezer to break her heart.
Eric and Ashley wandered up and asked Audrey and Kat if they minded if they joined them, and with obvious relief, Kat said yes. Eric and Ashley seemed nice – bland, but nice – and throughout the meal, Eric dominated the conversation with restaurant talk, grading the performance of the waitstaff (superb), the food (excellent), the table settings (very nice), and the cutlery (top-quality; expensive – he even quoted the price for them). He got technical about what should be used for steaks as opposed to fish, and as he droned on about the advantages of resin handles versus wood, Audrey leaned over and asked Ashley what she’d thought of the bus tour.
“Paris is beautiful, isn’t it?” the pretty Texan said. “And so historic! I mean, all the sights you’re used to seeing on TV, and in the old black-and-white documentaries about World War II, when the Allied forces paraded down the Champs Elysees. I always try to pick out my grandfather, and of course, I can’t. He was one of the G.I.s who helped liberate Paris, and marching through the Arc de Triomphe is something he never forgot. When we went around it today, I tried to imagine what it must have been like – the cheering crowds and the waving flags, everybody hysterical with joy.”
“And you’d be shocked at how many steakhouses use knives with plastic handles,” Eric rumbled. Kat, her chin resting in her palm, gazed at him and shook her head in deep dismay.
Flicking a glance at them, Audrey noted that Kat’s thighs were safe: both of Eric’s hands were visible above the table. This didn’t eliminate the possibility of footsies, but Eric’s mind seemed to be wholly absorbed by cutlery and besides, his wife was sitting right beside him.
Damn good-looking guy, Audrey thought, but holy cow, what a bore. She turned back to Ashley and said, “My dad was in the war, too, but he never talked about it.”
Ashley continued with her grandfather’s memories of Paris.
At Nettie’s table, one of the waiters was instructing Jack on the correct way to approach the escargot. Whipping out a dangerous-looking implement, he demonstrated the ritual of opening the shell.
“Looks like something for clipping off fingers,” Nettie commented.
Twyla paused with a forkful of salad in the air, watching Jack with womanly flutterings, and when he finally speared the poor morsel, she seemed to find his performance impressive, even macho.
The next course arrived. Jack had ordered his steak rare, and Twyla gazed at him wide-eyed as he cut into the pink meat and forked it into his mouth with his left hand, the way sophisticated diners on the Food Network did.
As her niece fell steadily under the spell of the tour group menace, Nettie became more and more anxious.
At Henry’s table, Daisy and Hannah realized they had made identical menu choices and giggled about it.
Danny, the odd man out, had filled a seat at that table. Gazing at the two lovely women, he said, “After I saw you together, I double-checked my list to see if you two weren’t sisters. You’re going by your maiden name now, right?” he asked Hannah.
Hannah froze. Her chin lifted. Unfortunately, Danny had already turned to Daisy and didn’t notice. He asked if she had the same maiden name, Sorenson. “Or maybe you’re cousins?”
“We’re no relation,” Daisy told him. “I’ve never married, and Hannah and I met for the first time yesterday.”
“Oh,” Danny said, just beginning to wonder if he’d blundered. “The head office warned me that your name on the list wasn’t going to match your passport. Garden, right? Hannah Garden? And after what you said this morning about ending a long-term relationship . . . .”
“Are you having the escargot?” Margery smoothly asked Henry.
“Not on your life,” he answered. “Salad and steak for me, and you can keep the pudding.”
“Mousse is a notch up from pudding, you know,” Margery said.
“It’s pudding,” he said flatly. “It just has more air in it.”
“I’ll take you up on that, if you’re serious.”
“Be my guest.” He looked back across the table, at Daisy and Hannah. “Let me guess. You two are having the salad, the salmon and the fruit tart. No snails for you girls.”
“Sorry, detective,” Hannah said, sitting back slightly for the plate of snails to be set in front of her. The waiter asked if she needed help opening the shells and she told him no, grabbing the finger-clipper device like a pro.
Margery turned to Henry. “You were a detective?”
“Retired,” he reminded her, “and apparently I’m already getting rusty.” He indicated to the waiter that he wanted the red wine, not the white.
A short distance away, Nettie occasionally stole a glance Henry’s way, but never caught him looking at her. It disappointed her somehow. At least with Jack dominating the conversation at their table, there was no need for her to engage in small talk. Instead, she found herself watching Grayson and Lauren Pimm, across the table.
“If I am not mistaken,” she thought, “I see a divorce in progress. It’s much worse than Lauren led Twyla to believe, unless she’s just in complete denial. They’re both drinking too much wine and not eating enough food, and they haven’t said a word to one another. And they’re both sneaking glances at the other tables.”
She wondered just where they were looking, but the way she was sitting it wasn’t easy to look around, and with Jack going on and on and on about a business trip he’d ma
de to China some twenty years before, she decided the Pimms were just wishing they’d sat somewhere else.
* * * * *
When they arrived back at the hotel and the group began to break up, Jack had the nerve to ask Twyla if she’d like to find a bistro and have a nightcap.
“Twyla is tired,” Nettie told him, at precisely the same time her niece said, “Yes, I’d love to.”
Stiff and staring, Nettie said, “You’d better come up to the room and get a jacket, then, dear. It’s getting cool out.”
“It’s lovely out,” Twyla said. “I don’t need a jacket.”
“I’ll keep her warm,” Jack said, shocking Nettie to the core and conducting her niece briskly out of the hotel lobby. To Nettie it looked a snatch-and-grab operation.
“Want to join them?” Charley said to Kat.
“I’m not sure they’ll appreciate it. I’ve been watching them all night, and there’s something going on there, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, Jack’s a sport. The more the merrier is his motto. Come on.”
Never one who needed to be asked twice, Kat abandoned Audrey without a backward glance and went off with a married man.
Nettie was still standing before the front desk, blinking and pouting when Audrey came up and quietly said, “Let the young ‘uns have some fun.”
Snapping around, Nettie said, “He’s my age if he’s a day. The old goat.”
“Come on, Nettie, he’s not some weirdo she met on the Internet. And he can’t grab her and make a run for the border; their passports are locked up in their room safes. Besides, she’s, what, forty?”
“Forty-five,” Nettie said automatically.
“Well, it’s about time she had some fun and made some mistakes, isn’t it? I seem to have been left behind in a cloud of dust, too. Come on up to my room and keep me company for a while. After all, you’re not going to bed until he brings her back, right?”
