Page 50 of My Super Sexy Spy
ME:Oh… and yeah, I did screw the guy. Not Charlie Hunman….the other guy. Who I decided is sneakily hot. AND he had a dick piercing!
LEIGH:Holy shit!
There was a long pause before she added a question
LEIGH:And so…did he make you like it? Sex, I mean. Not the piercing.
A smile played around my lips as I thought about all my previous sexual experience and compared that to Liam.
ME:Uh, yeah. He did. And both, actually.
LEIGH:Good. You deserved a good boning. Listen, I have to run. Where are you headed to next in Paris? Please tell me the Louvre.
ME:Not quite. Right now, I’m just enjoying walking around. I want to stop at the Pont des Arts. It used to be a lock bridge, but not anymore. I wrote an article about it the day they removed the locks.
LEIGH:I remember. You cried for all the love lost in the world.
ME:It made me sad.
I waited a few moments, but there was no response. She did say she had to run, but I hadn’t realized it would be so abruptly. I checked the time and did the math and realized it was ridiculously early in New Mexico, but I knew enough about her strange job hours not to question it.
Bolstered by the thought that there was someone out there in the universe who cared about me marginally, I pulled up a map on the computer and plotted a route to the bridge. I realized I wasn’t that far away, so I left the café with a new sense of purpose.
Walking faster than I had earlier, I stopped when I reached the base of my destination.
Le Pont des Arts.
The Lock Bridge.
That romantic place where people would come to attach a padlock on the bridge railings to seal their love and throw the key into the river to mark its permanence.
The locks were long gone now. Removed by the government for the pesky reason that the weight of so many locks was causing the bridge to fail. Such a silly reason to destroy the solid bond of love for so many, but there it was.
Practicality even in Paris.
I walked over the arch and stopped midway. Imagined how many others had stopped on this very spot with their hearts in their hands. Ready to pledge a permanence of feeling to the world.
Whether the stories ended happily or not, the feelings and emotions declared on this bridge had been real. Poignant.
Something I’d never let myself come close to feeling.
Because my mother as an addict? My father a ghost? Because I’d seen on the streets how some people would victimize the unfortunate? For all those reasons, and possibly others, I’d locked myself off from the rest of the world.
Now it seemed like there was no more hiding.
Glancing toward the edge of the bridge, I saw a vendor stand selling all manner of locks. A way to at least buy one and toss away the key even if you couldn’t fasten the lock to the bridge anymore. I looked at the purse in my hand, which contained cash, an Amex and something else I’d felt when Gino had handed it to me.
Wandering toward the vendor’s stand, I studied the locks and found one that I thought suited. I passed the old man a few euros and he handed me back a Sharpie.
Of course.
Beth and Liam
I wrote it and felt a wave of sentimentality overtake me, since I was never going to see him again, then I pushed it aside. Now wasn’t the time to get maudlin. I had to keep my head on straight and not be completely oblivious to what were still the facts.
I’d been kidnapped to Paris, so the American government didn’t know where I was. Liam didn’t know where I was. Hopefully, Gino was right, and Dmitri didn’t know where I was. But Marta, who I didn’t entirely trust, did know where I was.
It was time to crawl out of the miasma of my father’s revelation. Time to think about next steps and proactive actions instead of reactive ones.
