“Under the bed,” she whispered, “is a dead body.”
“It only smells that way,” Simon told her. “I checked.”
“I don’t see your gift.”
“It’s where gifts always are: under the pillow.”
She turned in his arms and kissed him.
“If I stay really close to you,” she murmured, “then I can only smell you. And you smell wonderful.”
“Go get your gift.”
She pulled back and looked at him. He looked boyish in his pleasure.
She walked to the bed and lifted the closest pillow. An envelope. She reached for it and glanced at the front. A drawing of the Eiffel Tower. A good drawing, with an artistic flair.
“Did you draw this?” she asked.
“One of my many talents. And you thought I was only a good lay.”
“Wow,” she said. “An artist.”
“A French artist.”
“Drawing the Eiffel Tower doesn’t make you a French artist, my love.”
“Open the envelope.”
She did. Inside were two business-class plane tickets to Paris.
She turned toward him, her eyes wide.
“You can do this?”
“I can do this.”
“How?”
“A business trip. It doesn’t matter. We leave the day school ends for you.”
“I have teacher meetings. No-yes. I’ll cancel everything. We’re going to Paris!”
She threw herself into his arms.
“You’ll help me find a hotel. I didn’t know which neighborhood, I didn’t know whether you would want something grand or something intimate. I want to know all these things about you. I want to eat in wonderful restaurants without worrying about who will see us.”
“I’ll teach you French. We’ll talk dirty in French in bed with each other.”
“I’m terrible at languages.”
“I’ll be your French tutor.”
“You don’t talk dirty in English.”
“That’s just because I can’t catch my breath.”
“Say ‘Undress me’ in French.”
“Déshabille-moi.”
“Say ‘Fuck me.’ ”
“Baise-moi.”
“Say ‘Devour me.’ ”
“Dévore-moi.”
“Say ‘Don’t ever stop.’ ”
“N’arrête jamais.”
“Say you’ll come with me to Paris.”
“Je t’aime.”
Nico and Josie reach the top of the tower. Josie takes a deep breath and finally allows herself to look out. She was glad for the elevator ride, but she kept her eyes closed as she was whisked to the top.
Now she looks out, way out. The observation tower is crowded with people who all seem to be speaking at once-a jumble of languages and sounds. She walks slowly, unsteadily, to one window. She feels as if she’s not yet landed, that her legs need to keep climbing. She’s got sea legs, miles above the sea.
When she reaches the window she takes in a lungful of air and then holds it. It’s as if she doesn’t want to let go of what she sees. All of Paris is spread before her, from the heights of Sacré-Coeur, down along the banks of the Seine, out to the farthest reaches of each arrondissement. The clouds swirl around her, at eye level, and every once in a while the city disappears and she’s heaven-bound. Then a gust of wind pushes away the cloud and, like magic, Paris sits at her feet.
She looks straight out into the sky and sees what Simon must have seen in his small plane. Clouds, sky, space. It’s enormous and infinite and thrilling.
“Take me,” she had said when he told her how he loved to fly.
Now she knows. Now she has a piece of him that was missing. He loved this: the wild space of it, the changing possibility of clouds and sky, the power of height.
“Thank you,” she says to Nico when he comes to her side.
He stands next to her for a long while, both of them silent, both gazing out into the sky.
Josie remembers the weight of Simon’s body after they would make love. They would fall into each other, wrapping themselves as closely into each other’s bodies as possible. “Come closer,” he would say. “Yes,” she would say. After losing themselves during sex, they would land, and they needed to take away all the space between them.
Did he die in the sky? Did something happen in the plane while it flew through the sky? Is this what he saw before he died? Or did he come to earth and die when the plane crashed into the hard, unyielding ground? Did he and Brady know they were going to die? Did they hold each other and wait for it to happen?
“Take me,” she had said to Simon.
He left without taking her.
She makes a sound and Nico puts his arm around her.
The clouds move in and surround them. They can no longer see the city below. They’re wrapped in silvery black clouds, cocooned in space.
“I love it,” Nico says finally. “My tower. My Paris.”
Simon had said he’d come over to Josie’s cottage after dinner. He told his wife another client was in town, that once again he needed to stop by the guy’s hotel to buy him a drink and talk up tomorrow’s meeting. When the doorbell rang Josie thought Simon was early. She ran to the door, threw it open, and saw her father standing on the porch, flowers in his hand.
“Dad!”
“I’m disturbing you?”
“No, of course not. I’m just surprised.”
“Your old man was in the neighborhood.”
She ran dates through her mind-it wasn’t her mother’s birthday, their anniversary, the anniversary of her death.
“You don’t need an excuse,” she said. “Come have dinner with me.”
“Dinner? I don’t need dinner. I just need a little time with my girl.”
“I’m eating, Dad. You want time with me, you have to eat, too.”
She stepped aside and let him pass. He clung to his flowers as if he had no intention of giving them to her.
“Smells good in here,” he said, heading straight to the kitchen.
“I gotta make a call, Dad. Pour yourself a glass of wine. I’ll throw in the pasta in a second.”
“Pasta. Wine. I should come more often.”
She smiled and kissed him. He seemed smaller. No, she was used to standing on tiptoe to kiss Simon.
She walked into her bedroom and closed the door. She had to reach Simon, to tell him not to come. He’d be home, having dinner with his wife and Brady. She’d call on his cell phone but still, it was risky. She had to do it-she didn’t want him showing up with her dad here.
She dialed his number. It rang and rang. She hung up and texted him: Call me.
They were careful about text messages-too easy for his wife to pick up the phone and find the revealing words.
She waited a few minutes, pacing in her room. It was rude to leave her dad alone after he had driven all this way. Simon was probably in the middle of dinner. She’d try him again later.
She found her dad in the kitchen looking for a vase.
“Up here,” she told him, and reached above the refrigerator for the tall glass cylinder. “They’re beautiful.” Blue irises. Her mother loved irises. Again Josie tried to remember what day it might be-not Mother’s Day or her father’s birthday. Something made him get in the car and drive an hour and a half to drop in. She didn’t have a clue.
She took the flowers and placed them in the vase, filled it with water. She set the vase on the windowsill, next to her kitchen table. “Nice,” she said, pleased. “You’ve never brought me flowers.”
“Someone should spoil you,” he said.
The phone rang. She leapt at it.
“Hey, you,” Simon whispered in her ear.
“Mr. Reed. Thanks for calling me back. I need to talk to you about your son’s college choices. He and I met a few days ago and I promised I’d chat with you.”
“Well, thank you, Ms. Felton. Very responsible of you.”
“But my father just dropped in for a visit. Let’s talk about this another time?”