Chasing Paris Page 23

  THIRTY-THREE

  “I

  don’t want to go home right now,” Amy said as Will guided her through the bar’s exit. “April is going to yell at me for drinking.”

  “If you go home any later, she’s going to yell at you for being out so late,” Will answered. “And she’s going to yell at me for keeping you out so late.”

  “You’re not keeping me out. I want to be out. If anything, I’m keeping you out.”

  Will’s eyebrows rose in agreement. He looked around. Some people milled around outside the bar. Further down the street, more people were milling around, probably in front of another bar. “If you don’t want to go home, what do you want to do? I think you really need some food.”

  “I’m not hungry. Let’s go that way,” she said, pointing down the street toward the park. She began walking, and Will followed. “When I want to get away from whatever is gnawing at me but I don’t feel like sitting at a coffee shop, I go down here. There’s a park bench that I’ve taken over as my own. Sitting there,” she sighed, “it feels like you can see the whole city.”

  Will put his hand on Amy’s shoulder to slow her momentum. She stopped walking.

  “What? You don’t like parks?” she asked.

  His eyes were toward the sky. “I want to show you something.”

  Amy looked in the direction of his gaze.

  “See that?” He pointed upward. “The bright one? It’s Jupiter.”

  Amy looked at the shining planet and then at Will. She smiled, almost skeptically. “How did you know that?”

  Will shoved his hands in his pockets and began walking. Amy followed.

  “I took an Astronomy class my first year of college. I hadn’t thought too much about it lately, but I just ran across an Astronomy book in a bookshop, and it all came back to me.”

  With her eyes still to the sky, Amy continued to follow Will.

  “Ah. What other planets are visible this time of year? Are they aligning for anything special?”

  Will looked back at Amy. Her hair hung about her face, tangled from dancing. Mascara was smudged under her eyes, and her skirt had twisted itself a couple inches out of place. She turned around, still moving forward, her mouth hanging open a bit.

  He smiled. “Saturn’s out there, but it’s not as visible as it was earlier a couple months ago. Venus is visible right after sunset.” He waited for her to catch up. “They might be aligning for something. Professor Hollings said they were.”

  Amy drew her eyes from the sky. “He said what?”

  They continued walking, now side by side.

  “He said the planets were aligning. He said it was fate that I would find you.”

  “Really? That sounds like Professor Hollings. That’s why I loved his classes.” As they neared the park, Amy pointed to a bench in the middle of the lawn. “There’s my bench.”

  They cut across the grass toward it.

  She continued, “I grew up believing in all the wonderful stories that I read, and the entire time I was in college, people teased me about it. They said that those stories were just stories—they weren’t going to get me a job or help me buy a house. I’d be better off as an Econ major. They said that it was silly to care about those stories. But Professor Hollings believed in those stories like me. He was like my dad. He kept me going.”

  They came to the bench and sat down.

  “Oh yeah?” Will said.

  Amy nodded, looking out to the street. She used both hands to comb her hair way from her face. Half of it fell right back to where it began. “My dad is a Professor of Classics—so he’s the one who got me into those old stories in the first place. April and I grew up hearing Greek and Roman myths as bedtime stories. When other kids were reading Goodnight Moon, we were listening to Echo and Narcissus. By the time we were in grade school, my dad had us reading children’s versions of Shakespeare plays instead of Ramona Quimby books. I loved A Midsummer Night’s Dream before I knew what love was.” Amy looked up at the sky. “Where is Jupiter again?”

  Will took her hand and pointed her finger toward the white speck far to the east. “Right there.” He held her hand toward the sky for a moment.

  She smiled. When their hands dropped back to the bench, she said, “April couldn’t stand all the stories my dad shared with us. She couldn’t wait to get away from them. But I loved them. I wanted to be them. I wanted to grow into them.”

  A breeze whistled through the trees.

  “Have you? Grown into any?” Will asked.

  Amy thought for a moment. “I don’t know. Not yet.”

  The breeze blew again, harder. Amy shivered.

  “What was your favorite? Which story did you love the most?”

  Amy looked back up to the stars. “A story by an old Roman poet, Ovid. It’s called Baucis and Philemon, but I always call it The Linden and the Oak.”

  Will smiled. He hadn’t thought of that story in years.

  Amy pushed her hair away again and said, “There was an old married couple who loved each other so much that they couldn’t bear to live a second without each other. One day the Gods Jupiter and Mercury decided they wanted to see how things were going with the humans down below. So they disguised themselves as weary travelers, and they paid a visit to a little town. No one was nice to them—they knocked on door after door looking for shelter and a little food, only to have each door slammed in their faces. Finally, they came to Baucis and Philemon’s house. These two people had been married for ages, and they were very old and very poor living in a little cottage without much of anything. I know it’s cliché, but all they had is love. They invited the travelers in and threw a meal together. And as they bustled around the kitchen, adding a little extra water to the soup and searching for another crust of bread, they chatted away with their guests. Even though Baucis and Philemon didn’t have much, no one noticed because their kindness outweighed everything else.”

  Amy shifted toward Will and smiled at him, her eyes growing wide. “Here’s the good part. When everyone sat down to eat, Baucis and Philemon noticed the wine jug they’d been drinking from never seemed to get empty. They suddenly realized their visitors weren’t weary travelers—they were Gods—and they were horrified that they’d just served these Gods watery soup.” Amy laughed. “The Gods explained that no one else in the town had been kind to them, so they planned to punish everyone with a great flood. Only Baucis and Philemon would survive. On top of that, the Gods promised to grant the old couple a wish.” She stopped herself, thinking. “Wouldn’t it be incredible if the Gods offered you a wish? What would you wish for if you could wish for anything?”

  Will reached toward Amy and pushed a stray curl behind her ear. “Probably what Baucis and Philemon wished for.”

  Amy sighed a drunken sigh. “They did have good ideas for wishes. And they couldn’t pick just one, so they asked for two. First, they asked to be guardians of the temple built to worship the Gods. And second, they asked that neither of them live longer than the other. They had spent almost their entire lives together, and they didn’t want to live even one moment without each other. The Gods granted them both wishes. They spent the rest of their days as guardians of the temple. And one day—the final day—Baucis saw Philemon slowly transforming into a tree, and Philemon saw the same thing happening to Baucis. They looked at each other, knowing what was happening and saying goodbye. One turned into a linden tree and the other turned into an oak. And as legend has it, the trees still stand before the temple, entwined for all eternity.”

  Amy cocked her head to one side and smiled a sideways smile. “And that’s it. My favorite story.”

  Will listened to the breeze for a moment before speaking. “When you took Professor Salt’s class on John Milton and you had to read all that Ovid poetry, you weren’t assigned Baucis and Philemon, were you?”

  Amy shook her head. “I grew up hearing that story because of my dad. Did you read it with Professor Salt?”

  “No. But I
remember it from my sixth grade reading book. Well, I remember the sixth-grader version of it. I always liked it too.”

  Amy chuckled. “You could have stopped me—you didn’t have to let me tell you the whole story if you already knew it.”

  “It was good to hear again. It had been lost in the back of my head for years.”

  Amy smiled toward the stars. “Lost stories are good to remember. They—” She straightened up and fixed her eyes on the bench.

  “Amy?” Will asked after a moment of silence passed. “What’s wrong?”

  “You know,” she said slowly, “I just figured it out. I lost a book before I met you.” She paused, mentally retracing her steps. “You know, the book that I thought I lost at the coffee shop? The one I thought you were bringing back to me? I wasn’t at the coffee shop when I lost it.” She paused again. “I was sitting right here. I put the book beside me when I was looking for my notebook—and then I got distracted by Miles. And then I left it here.”

  “What book was it?”

  “Oh, it was called East of Eden. By John Steinbeck. I’ve read it a thousand times.” She stared at the bench. “I guess it’s gone now. Time to go get another copy.”

  Will smiled. “Did you write in its margins?”

  Amy tried to stop a smile from crossing her face but couldn’t. “Of course.”

  “Good.” His smile morphed into a sideways grin. “It’s a pretty damn good book.”

  Amy nodded. Silence filled the space between them.

  “I know. So you’ve always liked stories, haven’t you? Baucis and Philemon in sixth grade, East of Eden later on—is that why you became an English major? Because you like stories?”

  “I became an English major for the girls. There’s probably five girls for every guy in an English class.”

  Amy’s eyes grew. She pushed Will’s shoulder. “That’s why you became an English major, really?”

  “Yeah. Remember the old Will I told you about earlier? Girls were his motivation for everything. But a guy has to be far more charming than I am to get those girls to help him write English papers. I stuck around, despite having to do my own homework, and professors like Hollings and Salt won me over. In the end, the professors and the stories kept me there. And I’m glad they did.”

  Looking toward the street, Amy somehow felt warm in the cool morning air. After a moment she turned to Will and said, “What a beautiful night. Thank you.”

  Will winked at her and then pulled out his phone to check the time. “We need to get you home.” He stood and held out his hand to help her up from the bench.

  As they headed across the park, Amy looked over her shoulder at the bench. “We came with nothing, and we leave nothing behind.”

  ***

  “It’s almost three o’clock in the morning.”

  Amy looked up from the sink where she was washing her face and found her sister standing in the bathroom’s doorway. Sleep clung to April’s eyes, and she kept them half-closed to keep out the bathroom’s bright light.

  “Oh,” Amy said, grabbing a towel to dry her face. She watched April disappear from the doorway and down the hall.

  “Miles came by,” April muttered, only loud enough for Amy to hear. “He said he wants you to call him. Now. He doesn’t care what time it is.” April stopped in the middle of the dark hallway, sensing her sister’s eyes peeking around the bathroom door. “It doesn’t matter where you were, but, where were you? When we got back from having coffee, you were gone.”

  Amy didn’t answer. She hung up the towel, and by the time she went to turn off the bathroom light, April had disappeared.

  She walked down the dark hallway and opened her sister’s bedroom door. Faintly she could see April’s lumpy outline against the queen-sized bed. Amy kicked off her shoes and lay down next to her sister.

  “What happened?” April said, her eyes still closed.

  Amy remembered something Lizzie had said to Eva over fifty years ago. Channeling her grandmother, she whispered back, “I met a guy tonight.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Go brush your teeth.”

  “Don’t you want to hear about the guy?”

  April moaned. “Not particularly.”

  “Don’t you even care that I met a guy?”

  April felt herself reeling in a state of semi-consciousness. “What happened?” she asked, fighting off wakefulness.

  “I went to a bar with Will.”

  “And you met a guy there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Will.”

  “Will? The one you went to the bar with?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. We danced.”

  “Did you do anything that you’re going to regret tomorrow?”

  “No. I have a boyfriend.” Amy giggled. “He was a perfect gentleman.”

  “If you’re going to wake me up in the middle of the night with some story, have the decency to brush your teeth beforehand.” April took the pillow from beneath her head and slammed it over Amy’s head.

  “We were dancing,” Amy said, her voice muffled underneath the pillow. “And I realized he is the missing puzzle piece.”

  April waited for more. When nothing else came, she found herself climbing toward clearer consciousness. “What do you mean?”

  “When we were dancing and I wanted to tell him something, it was so easy to lean into him.”

  “Oh, Amy.” The tone of April’s voice dropped in warning.

  “I mean, he’s the perfect height.”

  April pulled the pillow off Amy’s face and tucked it under her head. “Oh, Amy,” she repeated.

  “But what I mean really,” Amy said, her words slowing dramatically, “is that he knows what I mean before I even say what I’m thinking. And he knows all the great stories I know. He knows Baucis and Philemon. No one else knows that story. Miles doesn’t know that story.”

  April agreed silently, not realizing in her sleepiness that was what she was doing. “Baucis and Philemon. Right.”

  Amy yawned. “He has really nice arms. And he even knows East of Eden.”

  “Are you going to call Miles?”

  “In a minute.” She felt so tired. Her limbs had turned to lead. “I’ll call him in a minute. Just give me a minute.”

  April gave herself over to the sleepiness, and soon dreams swallowed the words Amy had left hanging in the air. In the morning, however, when she awoke to find Amy asleep, crumpled into a ball on the corner of her bed, she began to understand what her sister had said.

  ***

  After Will walked Amy home, he jumped into his truck and headed toward the freeway. He thought about Lizzie’s story. He thought about Amy’s story. He thought about his story. And he thought about the point at which all three stories converged.

  He reached for his cell phone and dialed Jocelyn’s phone number. When she picked up, her voice was low but her words were fast.

  “Will?” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  He almost chuckled. Even now, months after they had broken up, she still answered the phone with the same greeting when he called in the middle of the night. “Hey Jos. Everything’s fine.”

  “Then why are you calling me?”

  Will took a deep breath—almost a sigh. “Because,” he said, “I didn’t really treat you well when we were together. I sort of knew it then, but I didn’t know how to change. Now I’m starting to get it. And I wanted to apologize.”

  “Have you been drinking? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. More fine than you’d expect.”

  Jocelyn was silent for a moment. “Well, thanks for calling.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t hang up and blow me off. I really want you to know that I’m sorry.”

  “Will, that’s great,” she yawned. “But you couldn’t have waited until morning?”

  “My epiphany didn’t com
e with magical intelligence. Sorry.”

  She laughed softly, tired.

  “Jos, we’ll never get back together, will we? And we’ll never really be friends, right?”

  He could almost hear her shaking her head through the phone. “No, we won’t.”

  “I guess that’s why I wanted you to know that I’m really, truly sorry. I’ll never have the chance to make it up to you—so you’ll just have to accept my apology.”

  “Will,” she said, “Don’t be sorry. Just be nice to the next girl who comes around.”

  An image of Billy surfaced in his mind. Don’t you let her make the same mistakes that Lizzie made, he had said.

  “That’s the plan,” Will said to Jocelyn. “That’s the plan.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  A

  voice echoed somewhere in the back of Amy’s mind. It was female, and it was familiar. But there was something else about it that drew Amy from her slumber—something urgent in its tone.

  The bedroom door swung inward, and Amy’s eyes shot open. She saw her sister in the doorway with a phone to her ear. She looked around. Why was she curled in a ball at the edge of April’s bed? Why was her head pounding?

  “Amy, Miles is on the phone for the fourth time this morning. I told him you were asleep, but he said if you don’t talk to him right now, he’s coming over.”

  Amy sat up and rubbed the inner edges of her eyes. “Miles?”

  April leaned against the doorframe and nodded. “Yep,” she said, half into the phone, half to Amy. “Your boyfriend, remember? The one who tried to tell Mom yesterday that you were going through Lizzie’s stuff.”

  Amy closed her eyes and tried to shake the fog out of her head. “Tell him I’ll call him later.”

  April nodded. “Amy says you’re a loser.” She turned toward the kitchen and disappeared from Amy’s sight. “She’ll call you later. Goodbye.”

  Amy slid out of April’s bed and pulled her hair away from her face, stretching her arms along the way. “Thank you,” she called down the hallway.