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“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?”
He laughs, a big loud belly laugh. “No. It is in New York. Near the big lake.”
Roché Estair? “Oh! Rochester.”
“Yes. Roché Estair,” he repeats. “It is very cold up there. Very much snow. My brother’s name is Aliou Mjodi. Maybe you know him?”
I shake my head. “I live in Pennsylvania, next to New York.”
“Is there much snow in Penisvania?”
I suppress a laugh. “There’s a fair amount in Penn-syl-vania,” I say, emphasizing the pronunciation. “But not as much as Rochester.”
He shivers. “Too cold. Especially for us. We have Senegalese blood in our veins, though we both are born in Paris. But now my brother he goes to study computers in Roché Estair, at university.” The Giant looks very proud. “He does not like the snow. And he says, in summer, the mosquitoes are as big as those in Senegal.”
I laugh.
The Giant’s face breaks open into a jack-o’-lantern’s smile. “How long in Paris?”
I look at my watch. “I’ve been here one hour, and I’ll be here for one day.”
“One day? Why are you here?” He gestures to the bar.
I point to my bag. “We need a place to store this.”
“Take it downstairs. You must not waste your one day here. When the sun shines, you let it shine on you. Snow is always waiting.”
“Willem told me to wait, that Céline—”
“Pff,” he interrupts, waving his hand. He comes out from behind the bar and easily hoists my bag over his shoulder. “Come, I take it downstairs for you.”
At the bottom of the stairs is a dark hallway crowded with speakers, amplifiers, cables, and lights. Upstairs, there’s rapping on the door, and the Giant bounds back up, telling me to leave the bag in the office.
There are a couple of doors, so I go to the first one and knock on it. It opens to a small room with a metal desk, an old computer, a pile of papers. Willem’s backpack is there, but he’s not. I go back in the hall and hear the sound of a woman’s rapid-fire French, and then Willem’s voice, languid in response.
“Willem?” I call out. “Hello?”
He says something back, but I don’t understand.
“What?”
He says something else, but I can’t hear him so I crack open the door to find a small supply closet full of boxes and in it, Willem standing right up close to a girl—Céline—who even in the half darkness, I can see is beautiful in a way I can never even pretend to be. She is talking to Willem in a throaty voice while tugging his shirt over his head. He, of course, is laughing.
I slam the door shut and retreat back toward the stairs, tipping over my suitcase in my haste.
I hear something rattle. “Lulu, open the door. It’s stuck.”
I turn around. My suitcase is lodged underneath the handle. I scurry back to kick it out of the way and turn back toward the stairs as the door flies open.
“What are you doing?” Willem asks.
“Leaving.” It’s not like Willem and I are anything to each other, but still, he left me upstairs to come downstairs for a quickie?
