Page 26 of Just One Day (Just One Day 1)

“How do you know that’s not real?” he teases. “Okay, this happened to me. Last year when I was in Berlin, I missed my train to Bucharest and caught a ride to Slovakia instead. The people I rode with were in a theater troupe, and one of the guys had just broken his ankle and they needed a replacement. On the six-hour ride to Bratislava, I learned his part. I stayed with the troupe until his ankle got better, and then a while after that, I met some people from Guerrilla Will, and they were in desperate need of someone who could do Shakespeare in French.”

“And you could?”

He nods.

“Are you some kind of language savant?”

“I’m just Dutch. So I joined Guerrilla Will.” He snaps his fingers. “Now I’m an actor.”

This surprises me. “You seemed like you’d been doing it a lot longer.”

“No. It’s just accidental, just temporary. Until the next accident sends me somewhere new. That’s how life works.”

Something quickens in my chest. “Do you really think that’s how it works? That life can change justlikethat?”

“I think everything is happening all the time, but if you don’t put yourself in the path of it, you miss it. When you travel, you put yourself out there. It’s not always great. Sometimes it’s terrible. But other times . . .” He lifts his shoulders and gestures out to Paris, then sneaks me a sidelong glance. “It’s not so bad.”

“So long as you don’t get hit by a bus,” I say.

He laughs. Then gives me the point. “So long as you don’t get hit by a bus,” he says back.

Five

We arrive at the club where Willem’s friend works; it seems completely dead, but when Willem pounds on the door, a tall man with blue-black skin opens up. Willem speaks to him in French, and after a minute, we’re allowed into a huge dank room with a small stage, a narrow bar, and a bunch of tables with chairs stacked on them. Willem and the Giant confer a bit more in French and then Willem turns to me.

“Céline doesn’t like surprises. Maybe it’s better if I go down first.”

“Sure.” In the hushed dim, my voice seems to clang, and I realize I’m nervous again.

Willem heads to a staircase at the back of the club. The Giant resumes his work polishing bottles behind the bar. Obviously, he didn’t get the message that Paris loves me. I take a seat on the barstool. They twirl all the way around, like the barstools at Whipple’s, the ice-cream place I used to go to with my grandparents. The Giant is ignoring me, so I just sort of spin myself this way and that. And then I guess I do it a little fast, because I go spinning and the barstool comes clear off its base.

“Oh, shit! Ow!”

The Giant comes out to where I am sprawled on the floor. His face is a picture of blasé. He picks up the stool and screws it back in, then goes back behind the bar. I stay on the floor for a second, wondering which is more humiliating, remaining down here or getting back on the stool.

“You are American?”

What gives it away? Because I’m clumsy? Aren’t French people ever clumsy? I’m actually pretty graceful. I took ballet for eight years. I should tell him to fix the stool before someone sues. No, if I say that, I’ll definitely sound American.

“How can you tell?” I don’t know why I bother to ask. Since the moment our plane touched down in London, it’s like there’s been a neon sign above my head, blinking: TOURIST, AMERICAN, OUTSIDER. I should be used to it. Except since arriving in Paris, it felt like it had maybe dimmed. Clearly not.

“Your friend tells me,” he says. “My brother lives in Roché Estair.”

“Oh?” Am I supposed to know where this is? “Is that near Paris?”

>I shake my head. “It’s useless in Europe. Except as a camera.”

“We can walk. It’s close to here.”

We head back up the escalators. Before we get to the automatic doors, Willem turns to me and asks, “Are you ready for Paris?”

In all the stress of dealing with my luggage, I’d sort of forgotten that the point of all this was Paris. Suddenly, I’m a little nervous. “I hope so,” I say weakly.

We walk out the front of the train station and step into the shimmering heat. I squint, as if preparing for blinding disappointment. Because the truth of it is, so far on this tour, I’ve been let down by pretty much everywhere we went. Maybe I watch too many movies. In Rome, I really wanted an Audrey Hepburn Roman Holiday experience, but the Trevi Fountain was crowded, there was a McDonald’s at the base of the Spanish Steps, and the ruins smelled like cat pee because of all the strays. The same thing happened in Prague, where I’d been yearning for some of the bohemianism of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But no, there were no fabulous artists, no guys who looked remotely like a young Daniel Day-Lewis. I saw one mysterious-looking guy reading Sartre in a café, but then his cell phone rang and he started talking in a loud Texas twang.

And London. Melanie and I got ourselves completely lost on the Tube just so we could visit Notting Hill, but all we found was a fancy, expensive area full of upscale shops. No quaint bookstores, no groups of lovable friends I’d want to have dinner parties with. It seemed like there was a direct link between number of movies I’d seen about a city and the degree of my disappointment. And I’ve seen a lot of movies about Paris.

The Paris that greets me outside Gare du Nord is not the Paris of the movies. There’s no Eiffel Tower or fancy couture stores here. It’s just a regular street, with a bunch of hotels and exchange bureaus, clogged with taxis and buses.

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