by Hazel Hayes
I sat down on the bed with one shoe on.
‘Oh.’
‘I have to work late. I wish I didn’t.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said, trying and failing to mask my disappointment. I reminded myself that this was what I had signed up for when I flew to Paris unannounced.
‘Do you want to go without me or shall I cancel the reservation?’ he asked. The thought of eating alone in a romantic restaurant was almost too much to bear.
‘Cancel it please.’
‘I really am so sorry, angel,’ he said, and I could tell he was. ‘We’ll have a nice day out tomorrow, I promise.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘See you later?’
‘Yeah, I won’t be too late.’
I felt like I was trying to swim, but something kept pulling me back under by the ankles.
After we hung up I lay staring at the ceiling for a while. I thought about cleaning my makeup off and climbing into bed, but the prospect was pretty depressing. Ten minutes later I found Tim’s number and dialled it.
I doubted he’d remember me, or that he’d be free at such short notice, or that he’d want to see me if he was. In fact, I thought, I should just hang up now. But it was too late. The phone was ringing. He answered.
‘Now there’s a blast from the past!’ Tim bellowed when I told him who it was.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s been a while all right.’
‘How’d you get my new number?’
‘Ciara gave it to me when she heard I was in Paris,’ I said, sheepishly. ‘I hope that’s okay?’
‘Of course it is!’ said Tim, chuckling. ‘It’s nice to hear an Irish accent.’
‘I know the feeling.’
‘So what brings you to Paris?’ he asked.
‘Just visiting my boyfriend. He’s working out here for a bit.’
‘Ah, right,’ he said. ‘Well, do you fancy a pint some night?’
Lovely as ever, I thought.
‘Actually, I was sort of wondering if you’re free tonight?’
I winced as soon as the words left my mouth. I felt like I had just thrown a ball in the air and was hoping it didn’t hit me on the way back down. The silence on the other end of the line didn’t help.
‘Sorry, the signal’s rubbish,’ came Tim’s voice after an excruciatingly long pause. ‘Did you say you were free tonight?’
‘I did, yeah.’
‘Perfect!’ he said, ‘I’m just about to head out with a few mates if you want to join us?’
I exhaled for the first time since he’d answered the phone.
‘That sounds great.’
I followed Tim’s directions and found myself outside a dingy-looking bar down a back alley in the Latin Quarter. I can’t remember the name of the place now – I think it had something to do with cows. Inside, Tim and his friends were huddled around a small table in one corner, and a string trio were setting up across the room. The place was all dark woods and purple walls and strings of multicoloured lights.
Tim stood up when he saw me and hugged me tightly.
‘It’s so good to see you,’ he said. I felt a bit guilty that I’d forgotten about him until that call with Ciara.
He introduced me to his friends, Rob, Manon and Claudine who, together with Tim, were maybe the most gorgeous collection of humans I had ever seen. Rob had bushy black hair and a beard to match; Manon was short but striking, with beautiful brown eyes and bright-red lips; and Claudine was a tall, full-figured blonde who glided, swan-like around the table to greet me. They each gave me a double kiss, then resumed their fast-paced French chatter. I stared on helplessly until Tim realised I had no idea what they were saying.
Rob and Manon were fluent in English and could easily switch between the two languages, but Claudine didn’t speak a word of it and so things needed to be translated back and forth. Sometimes Tim acted as a go-between, leaning in to explain things in my ear, or leaning the other way to tell Claudine something in French.
There were two half-full bottles of wine on the table and Tim was quick to pour me a glass.
‘Are you enjoying Paris so far?’ he asked.
‘I think so,’ I said, and he looked at me quizzically.
I found myself telling Tim that I’d come to Paris to surprise Theo but it hadn’t quite gone to plan. He nodded sympathetically as I spoke, then told me he was moving to Berlin next year to be with his girlfriend; they only saw one another every few weeks, he said, and it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t believe how effortlessly we had slipped into such honest, open conversation about our relationships, and it was nice to talk to someone else who knew how difficult long distance could be.
After that, we somehow got talking about the World War II museum, and I struggled to describe the enormity of emotions I’d felt there, or the cloud that lingered over me afterwards on the lawn. My hands opened and clenched in front of me as I searched for the right words to make him understand, but just as I was about to give up, I noticed Tim nodding at me empathetically, his eyebrows collected in a scowl.
‘I’ve been there three times,’ he said, ‘and I still can’t figure out what keeps bringing me back.’
I wondered how we’d worked together for over a year but never become friends.
‘I saw the Mona Lisa today,’ I announced, excited to tell Tim about the unexpectedly emotional experience I’d had. He was about to respond when Claudine muttered something under her breath. I asked Tim what she’d said.
‘She says you didn’t,’ said Tim.
‘Didn’t what?’
‘You didn’t see the Mona Lisa,’ he said.
‘What?’
I looked at Claudine in complete confusion and she casually began to rattle off information in French, which Tim translated for me.
‘Apparently,’ said Tim, half listening to her and half talking to me, ‘the real Mona Lisa is too precious to be put on show. So the one they display is a fake.’
‘But all that security …’ I said.
‘Une illusion,’ said Claudine, with a nonchalant wave of her hand. I was still processing all this when Rob chimed in.
‘A Russian woman threw a mug at her once,’ he said.
‘At who?’ I asked, thinking for a moment he meant Claudine.
‘The Mona Lisa.’
‘A Russian woman threw a mug at the Mona Lisa?’
Rob just nodded at me.
‘What happened?’ asked Manon.
‘It smashed on the glass,’ said Rob, matter-of-factly, and Manon rolled her eyes.
‘Oui, bien sûr, mais pourquoi?’ asked Manon. ‘Why would she do this?’
Rob shrugged and sipped his drink. This was apparently all he had to offer.
‘It’s called Stendhal Syndrome,’ said Tim, and everyone turned to look at him.
‘Bullshit,’ said Manon. ‘You have just made this up.’
‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘Some people can’t handle the experience – it’s like overdosing on positive emotions or something – they get dizzy, or hallucinate, or go totally bonkers and attack the art.’
Manon wrinkled her forehead in disbelief, then went to the bar for more wine, while Tim repeated what he’d just said in French for Claudine. She laughed dryly – presumably at the thought of all those nutters chucking mugs at fine art.
Drink and conversation flowed all night, and I just about managed to keep up with both. After my fourth or fifth glass of wine I realised I hadn’t eaten since lunch; there was talk of going somewhere for food but then the band struck up and we remained, entranced by the magnificent sounds they produced as their fingers and bows slid deftly across their instruments. I had never heard jazz played live before, but here it was, at once melodic and discordant and chaotic and harmonious. The music seemed to seep through me, oozing into every pore, filling me to the brim until I felt like I might overflow. Claudine caught sight of me, my face transfixed in a silly smile, and she leaned across Tim towards me.
‘C’est sublime,
non?’ she said. I didn’t need a translator for that. I just nodded, still smiling, my eyes never straying from the band. Tim placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it gently as though to say, it’s okay, we’ve all been there. I felt completely at ease.
By the intermission the place was heaving with people and I had to elbow my way through the crowd to get to the bar. When I stood up, the wine hit me and I heard Theo’s voice in my head reminding me to rehydrate. I downed a pint of water and brought more back to the table in a jug, but the damage was already done; I was drunk. The rest of the evening is patchy, but I remember the band refusing to play an encore, and an unassuming woman in a white dress taking to the mic for a roof-raising, a cappella rendition of ‘La Mer’.
At some point there was a lengthy conversation at our table about death, the only part of which I can recall is Rob’s assertion that we are all reincarnated as the animal we most detest.
‘That’s why there are so many wasps,’ he said, deadpan, and we all laughed. I’ll never know if he was joking or not.
Eventually we all got up to dance, throwing ourselves about to a barrage of nineties pop classics being piped through the bar’s shitty speakers. I wore myself out and then breathlessly stumbled back to the table to find Claudine sitting on Tim’s lap, totally engrossed in whatever he was saying. I felt as though I was intruding on some intimate moment and was about to leave when Claudine caught my hand and pulled me into Tim’s lap with her. We were each sat on a leg, facing one another, and I was incredibly aware of my ass on Tim’s thigh.
‘You’re very beautiful,’ said Claudine.
‘Oh. Thank you,’ I said.
Tim said something to Claudine in French and she pouted.
‘I just told her you have a boyfriend,’ explained Tim, and I nodded even though I didn’t fully understand; was she trying to set me up with Tim?
‘She says she’d like to meet him,’ said Tim.
‘My boyfriend?’
Claudine nodded.
‘Okay,’ I said, and I took out my phone to text Theo. I think my plan was to ask him to meet us at the bar, but I never got that far because Claudine grabbed the phone out of my hand, opened the camera and held it up to take a photo. Tim leaned back, not wanting to be part of it, but I don’t think she meant to include him anyway; Claudine pressed her cheek against mine and took a selfie of us, me smiling broadly and her smouldering down the lens. Then she hit send and I watched the photo pop up in a message to Theo.
Within seconds, Theo replied: ‘You made a friend!’
I looked at Claudine then, unsure what to say back to him, and she kissed me. Quickly and softly and completely unexpectedly, she kissed me on the lips, then pulled back and looked at me mischievously. For the second time that night I didn’t need a translator to know what she was trying to tell me.
Tim stared at us, mouth agape, then, like a man who just accidentally wandered into the lingerie department, he politely made his excuses and left.
Claudine and I were standing now, facing one another. She gestured for me to send another message and I felt like a bundle of raw nerve endings as I lifted the phone again and watched my fingers type.
‘I made a friend! Can I keep her?’
‘Where would she sleep?’ Theo replied.
‘I was hoping she could sleep with us,’ I said, with two winky-face emojis. I still can’t quite believe I did that.
‘Haha,’ was all he said, and I wasn’t sure whether we were being serious, but a minute later he replied again saying, ‘All right! I’m on my way back to the hotel now.’
‘Okay, see you soon,’ I said, and put my phone away.
I couldn’t say for sure what my thought process was at this point, or whether I was thinking at all, but I remember feeling very bright, as though a light had just switched on inside me. The veil between me and the world had lifted and suddenly I felt naked, exposed and dazzlingly visible.
We gathered up our bags and coats and Claudine marched off towards the toilets ahead of me. The way she did it reminded me of someone, but by the time I caught up to her I’d already forgotten who. She pulled me into a cubicle with her and I remember wondering whether she planned to pee in front of me. That would be weird, I thought, since I didn’t even pee in front of my own boyfriend. But instead she locked the door and kissed me again, more forcefully this time, pushing her body hard against mine so that my shoulders smacked against the locked door behind me.
When Claudine pulled away, I took in the sight of her perfect, porcelain face, and I was overcome by the urge to destroy it. I didn’t want to hurt her; I just wanted to smash her pretty face in. That was a weird thought. I didn’t like that thought at all. So I pushed it away and with that, I became aware of Claudine’s hands squeezing down the front of my dress and grabbing at my breasts. Suddenly, the room was spinning, or I was being spun around, I couldn’t tell which. Claudine kicked the toilet seat down behind me and, with both of her hands on my hips, she lowered me onto it. Then she knelt down in front of me and gently separated my legs.
The bassline of some distant song came thudding through the ceiling. I looked down at Claudine, kneeling before me on the grubby, tiled floor, and wondered what the hell was happening. Did I want this? I wasn’t sure I did. My body was betraying me, reflexively responding to the situation while some other part of me floated up and out of myself, regarding the whole scene from above. Something about it looked wrong, like a beautiful knockoff, flawless but nonetheless fake. No, I wasn’t sure I wanted this at all, but still, when Claudine placed her fingertips on my chest and eased me gently backwards, I let her.
Her mouth found me and my whole body shuddered, my palms flying out and planting themselves firmly into the walls either side of me for stability. I thought of the four metal feet at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower, hoping this thought would ground me as my back arched and my head rolled sideways, my brain lolling about inside it like a broken compass. A bright light blazed within me. Everything was spinning around me. And for a moment I was convinced that the toilet I was sitting on might actually be the centre of the universe.
I wanted it to stop. I wanted everything to stop.
I sat up and Claudine pulled back, looking up at me with concern in her eyes.
‘We should go,’ I said, touching her cheek softly, not wanting to be unkind. ‘We should go to the hotel now.’
I turned up to Theo’s hotel room with Claudine in tow, like a cat with a dead mouse between its teeth. Theo opened the door and stood there, immobile at the sight of us.
‘Hello,’ said Claudine, and before Theo could say anything she stepped forward and kissed him, placing her hands on either side of his face and holding him there as he kissed her back, reluctantly at first, then with more vigour. My stomach turned a little to see this but when Claudine let go and pushed past Theo into the room, he looked at me and it was like he could see the light that I felt. I stopped in front of him and he kissed me, almost aggressively, biting at my lip and planting a hand on my lower back to pull me closer into him. When he looked at me again, it was like he had just seen me for the first time. I could live a lifetime on nothing but that look.
Inside the hotel room something changed, as though we’d all been listening to the same ear-splitting music, which had suddenly been cut off, leaving only silence. Theo poured us all a drink, then he stood a few metres away from us sipping on his. We had inadvertently formed an awkward triangle.
‘How long have you lived in Paris?’ Theo asked Claudine, but she just looked at me helplessly.
‘She doesn’t speak much English,’ I said.
‘Oh, right,’ said Theo.
His tension and uncertainty were contagious, and we all waited quietly for someone else to do something. I felt nauseous. I had to fight the urge to be sick.
In the end it was Claudine who made the first move, but as she stepped towards Theo, he downed his drink and made a dash for the minibar.
‘Would either of you
like another?’ he asked. We both shook our heads.
A few more excruciating minutes passed before, finally, Claudine picked up her bag and coat. She looked at us both expectantly, maybe hoping we’d tell her not to go. I looked at Theo.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘It’s getting pretty late so maybe we should just …’ Then he stopped talking and opened the door for her instead. When Claudine hugged me goodbye, I whispered in her ear that I was sorry. She kissed me on both cheeks as she had when we met earlier that night. Theo shook her hand on the way out.
‘Wow,’ says Maya, ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’
‘Nobody was expecting that,’ I say.
We both sit back in our chairs, a half-demolished cake in front of us.
‘We had a threesome once,’ says Maya. ‘Darren and I.’
‘How was that?’
‘Fine.’
I nod.
‘Did you and Theo talk about it?’ she asks, and I laugh.
‘Kind of.’
Maya looks at me in confusion and I have to gather myself before saying this next bit out loud.
‘We had sex after she left,’ I say. ‘Theo asked me to tell him all about what happened with Claudine. And I did. I left some bits out so as to maintain the allure, of course, like me wanting to smash her face in and thinking a toilet was the centre of the universe.’
‘And?’
‘And he came. And then he fell asleep. And I went to the loo and threw up a lot.’
Maya’s head drops into her hands and she lets out a long sigh.
‘Yeah,’ I say.
‘Did you come?’
‘No,’ I say.
‘I meant with Claudine,’ says Maya.
‘Oh. Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘That’s upsetting.’
‘Yes, it is,’ I say. ‘On so many levels.’
I woke up before Theo the next morning. My skin felt two sizes too small, like it had somehow shrunk in the night, and my skull seemed to be crushing my brain like a vice. I took some painkillers and got in the shower, turning the temperature up until the water practically scalded me.
