Chapter 27

27

Jonathan

I do not like lying to Eva but I also do not really have a choice. It makes me feel disgusting—more disgusting than usual. But it would not be safe to tell her the truth, and it would also probably be a turnoff.

I told her about the bullet because she is going to see the scar. I mean, I hope she is going to see the scar. But I painted myself as the good guy because I do not want to scare her away.

I just want to have sex with her. Just one more time. Then my head will be clear. Then my obsession will end. It is what everyone needs. What the whole world needs. For us to have sex.

I should do it as quickly as possible but I stupidly brought her to the most epic of restaurants. We are strung now somewhere between the fourth and fifth course, in an almost meditative state. There is farm equipment hanging from the ceiling and every so often her eyes drift up, as if she senses that it might come tumbling down over our heads.

"This was a bad idea," I say. It has been hours. Hours in this restaurant, and I wonder if I did it because I wanted to mimic those hours on the train, as if I wanted to bring us back to the moment when I fucked it up, so I could fix it.

She told me in the car that she was going to sleep with me anyway. I appreciate her directness. But now we are both stranded here, trapped inside my plans, as ancient wheels creak overhead.

"What was?" she says.

"This," I gesture to the empty restaurant. "I should have just brought you to my hotel. I should have just taken care of you."

"Where are you staying?"

"Paris. Currently." I am keeping an eye on Mas. He has bought a house outside Bordeaux with a faulty foundation. He will need to tear down significant portions of the property to repair it, and the permit process is holding him up. I have made myself a promise that I will not follow him, but that does not mean I cannot watch him go. "What about you?" I ask her. "Where have you been?"

She gazes up at the ceiling as she lists countries. "Ireland, Germany, Greece, Portugal…" She looks holy when she is looking up, like an icon. A saint. I want to beg her to forgive me. For what? For what I am about to do.

"Can you come sit here, please?" I ask.

We are seated across from each other now. She on a chair. I on a bench that was wrenched from some chapel.

She smiles. "Why?"

"Because I want to touch you." God bless being direct.

She lifts herself languidly from her chair. She is a little fearless—a little too fearless. She sits herself right down on my bench, so close that I am the one who moves away.

I want to touch her but not so much, not all at once. It is overwhelming. I have been cooking her for so long that she burns. I need to take her in slowly. Blow on her first.

I reach out and brush her hair behind her shoulder. I start to take my hand back but find that I cannot. Instead, I wind the rope of her hair around my fist and tug once, lightly.

"I thought about you a lot," I say again. That is an understatement.

"I thought about you, too," she says. I flinch. I mean, God forbid that she should actually like me. That is the last thing either of us needs.

"I looked for you," I say. "In the market." I do not tell her I was there almost every day for weeks, months. Sometimes more than once a day. I do not tell her that I was obsessed, magnetized, dangerously in lust. That I would jerk off thinking about her, waiting for it to stop working, for her to leave my system. She never did. She was like a charm. She worked every time.

"I guess you don't really need me," she says. "If you didn't find me."

"Were you ever there?"

"No. I had to leave."

"To go where?"

"Anywhere. I had to find a place where no one knew me. Where I could be a tourist again." Her words tighten my jaw. "It wasn't about a destination; it was about going . And about not going. Not going home." It is like she is reading from my script. "Do you know what I mean?"

I know exactly what she means, but I find that I cannot admit it. It is a simple answer. All I have to say is yes.

I cannot say it.

Instead, I run my fingers now lightly along her neck, over her collarbone. I can see her blood pumping in her carotid artery. I can feel exactly how nervous she is: not nervous enough.

"I want to be honest with you," I say. "I think we should have sex again, and then separate. I don't want to lead you on. Or trick you. Or…" I drift off, like my mind cannot tell my mouth what else.

She looks unhappy—of course she does—and I want to tell her I do not mean it. I want to promise her I cannot help it, that I am trying to protect her, to save her from me. But then she does the unexpected: She smirks.

"I can make you come in nineteen seconds."

I laugh. "Why would you want to?"

She kisses me first. It scares me. I do not like not to shoot first. But her mouth over mine is so overwhelmingly pleasant, so perfect, so pure, that I forget all that for a moment. I let all that go.

There is nothing as exquisite as finding the thing you were looking for: your lost sunglasses, your car keys. Anything you ever thought you had lost, thought was gone, now suddenly back, now in your hands. Now real again. When you had made up your mind that you would never see it, would live the rest of your crushing life without it. Would never taste it in your mouth, feel its breath against your tongue, suck its neck, bite its earlobe.

"The fifth course."

We fumble apart. Gestalt is standing over us, perfectly French in his being unbothered as he lowers the next course onto our table.

He smiles mysteriously, as if he is the hands for us, too, guiding us along on this mystical journey called a meal.

"Salad," Eva says. She is right. Thinly sliced vegetables. Bright green lettuce.

"How many more courses do we have?" I say after Gestalt has vanished again.

"I think two? The cheese and then the dessert."

"I don't think I can make it. Can you?"

She sighs deep in her belly. Then takes up her fork and her knife. "We have to. This is France."

—

We make it to the end of the meal. We survive. All we have to do is make it back to Paris, but there is a problem. I do not want to go back to Paris. I do not want her anywhere near Mas. I have this ridiculous fear that we will run into him, as if Paris is a small town. And he will see on my face how much I like her. And I will quietly die.

"I was thinking," I say as we leave the restaurant, "we could get a hotel room somewhere nearby…" I know she said in the car that she would fuck me, but I hope I am not being presumptuous.

"Sure," she says. "I'm up for an adventure— Wait." She suddenly grabs my hand. It disarms me how she does it—so thoughtlessly, like we have been holding hands off and on our whole lives. "We should go back to Versailles."

"Sorry?" I think it is closed now. I think everything is closed now.

"Bet you we could get in there—the gardens, at least. I think the French are very laissez-faire about security. Wouldn't it be cool to come inside the Hall of Mirrors?"

"I think the last people who came there lost their heads."

"Exactly. Sexy. " Her fingers are threaded through mine. Her hands are warm. Her smile enigmatic.

Who the fuck is this girl? I know she is not "Eva," although we never touched on that in our conversation. I was not about to admit how much I worked to track her down. Besides, we are just going to have sex and then separate. I do not need to know her life story.

She is obviously someone who sneaks onto trains and into palaces.