Page 39 of Thorn

“No, still asleep. She gave me two-hundred euro. Should I give it back? She might really need it.”

…

“I’ll stick it in her bag. I don’t think she would take it from my hand… Yes… Okay. I will.Merci, Maman. I’ll see you in the morning.”

And that was it. For another twenty minutes there was the soft music and the rumble of the tires. At one point, Juliette felt a rustle by her feet, and she slit her eyes to see what was happening. Jean-Luc, with his eyes on the road, was leaning toward her with the euros in his hand, trying to shove the bills into the front pocket of her back pack.

She had to stifle a sob.

It wasn’t the money. It was the kindness. It was a young man who wasn’t willing to profit from a fellow human being in distress.

And in that moment, she remembered elephants.

Juliette didn’t know if this was a second real memory where she’d been standing there watching them, or if this was something she’d seen on TV. But it seemed very real. A lame elephant cow couldn’t get up the bank from the watering hole. One elephant reached out her trunk and they wrapped together. Another went behind the disabled cow and pushed. Up she went.

However Juliette had come across that image, she remembered at the time that she’d clutched her hands to her heart, incredibly moved. When she was home again, she’d ask her father if she’d ever been around elephants, maybe something to do with her studies or job as a veterinarian’s assistant, Juliette thought as she swallowed down her emotions.

Home. Back to her little house with Toby. And her dad. He would be so surprised and so confused by what had happened to her. But she should tell him right away. He would know what to do and keep her safe. And she’d let him know, somehow along the way, that it didn’t matter to her that he was gay. She didn’t need to know the “hows” or “whys” of his relationship with her mom. She just wanted him to be happy. In a world where horrible things happened, people really should grab at what joy they could.

Jean-Luc pulled to the curb at the airport and set the gear in park. He reached out and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, giving her a little shake. “We’re here,” he said.

Juliette pretended to rouse herself and look around. She smiled at him as she released her seat belt. “Sorry I wasn’t good company. It’s been a rough day.”

He swallowed and nodded.

“Merci beaucoup.” Juliette gripped the strap of her backpack with one hand and unlocked the door with her other.

He still had his hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay? Do you need help getting inside? Is there anything I can do?”

She could tell he was doing his best to extend himself for her but protect her anonymity – to not give away that he knew, if not who she was, at least what she was, a woman on the run.

Her lower lip trembled a bit as she looked out at the crowd of people busily getting to where they needed to go. She turned back to him. “No,ca va, I think I’ll be okay from here.” She climbed out.

He reached her crutches out to her.

“Merci, Jean-Luc.” And she shut the door.

Now what?

Juliette knew from books and movies that there were cameras all over the airport. So as she’d moved out of Jean-Luc’s car, she’d pulled her hoody back in place over her hair and had purposefully ducked her head. She stood in place as she watched Jean-Luc’s car move out of sight. Squatting on the cement walkway to retie her shoe, she dropped her knees for stability in order to get her backpack over her shoulders. That was a mistake. She couldn’t get back up. She floundered there a couple of times, before she decided to crawl over to the cement planter and use that for stability. On all fours she started the crawl, dragging her crutches behind her.

Tsking followed by an “oolala-lalala!” came before two sets of hands, one on her right and one on her left, lifted her to her feet. An older couple with frowns on their faces looked back at her. “What is the matter here? Are you all right?” the man asked in Arabic.

“Yes, thank you,” Juliette replied with a moment of relief for speaking a language that came so much more fluidly to her than French. Her dad had said that her mom had insisted that Juliette’s first and most proficient language be Arabic and that she be raised in the Muslim faith. Her dad, an atheist, didn’t really care one way or another. After all, he was away at work all day, and it was her mother who had the job of raising their child. Juliette’s mother had been Kuwaiti. She and her mother spoke Arabic together and switched to French when her father was in the conversation, which wasn’t all that often, he’d admitted to her, somewhat abashedly.

“What are you doing on the ground?” The woman adjusted her hijab.

Juliette attempted to laugh. “I bent to tie my shoe and couldn’t get back up on my crutches.”

“Are you all right now? Shall I go find a porter with a wheel chair?” She shook a motherly finger at Juliette. “You should not have a heavy backpack when you’re on crutches, no wonder you toppled over.”

“Yes, this is true, but under the circumstances…” Juliette adjusted the crutches under her arms and hoped she hadn’t made a spectacle that would be flagged by security. She didn’t want to answer anyone’s questions. “Thank you. Have a nice evening,” she said. And before the couple could entwine themselves into her misadventure, she started off toward the doors of Charles de Gaulle.

Inside, she went directly to the ladies’ room. She hung the pack on the hook and took a moment to relieve herself. From that position of seclusion and relative safety, she started to scroll through student backpacking sites looking for cheap places where she could hunker down.

She found three that might meet her needs. They were all listed as small individual rooms with a sink and bidet. A communal bathroom was available in the hall. All three had pay-as-you-go showers available on premises. They catered to student and other low-budget travelers. Continental breakfast was included. Pictures showed a plate with a section of a baguette, a hard-boiled egg, a triangle of cheese, and a bowl of coffee. These motels looked clean and reputable enough for safety. But when she read over the criterion for staying, Juliette found that one was fully booked until the end of the month and the next required a passport from those travelling from outside the EU. The third though, said that identification was not required if a two-hundred-euro returnable deposit was made.

Juliette tapped the phone button and put her finger in her ear.

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