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“Did you just quote Shakespeare to a cop?” I ask.
Willem nods.
I’m not sure what’s crazier: That Willem did that. Or that the cops here know Shakespeare.
“What did you say?”
“La beauté est une enchanteresse, et la bonne foi qui s’expose à ses charmes se dissout en sang,” he says. “It’s from Much Ado About Nothing.”
“What does it mean?”
Willem gives me that look of his, licks his lips, smiles. “You’ll have to look it up.”
We walk along the river and onto a main road full of restaurants, art galleries, and high-end boutiques. Willem parks the bike in a stand, and we take off on foot under a long portico and then make a few more turns into what, at first, seems like it should be a presidential residence or a royal palace, Versailles or something, the buildings are so huge and grand. Then I spot the glass pyramid in the middle of the courtyard, so I know we have arrived at the Louvre.
It’s mobbed. Thousands of people are flooding out of the buildings, like they’re evacuating it, clutching poster tubes and large black-and-white shopping bags. Some are energized, chatty, but many more look shell-shocked, weary, glazed after a day spent ingesting epic portions of Culture! I know that look. The Teen Tours! brochure bragged that it offered “young people the full-on European immersion experience! We’ll expose your teen to a maximum number of cultures in a short period of time, broadening their view of history, language, art, heritage, cuisine.” It was supposed to be enlightening, but it mostly felt exhausting.
So when we discover that the Louvre just closed, I’m actually relieved.
“I’m sorry,” Willem says.
“Oh, I’m not.” I’m not sure if this qualifies as an accident or not, but I’m happy either way.
We do an about-face and cross over a bridge and turn up the other bank of the river. Alongside the embankment there are all kinds of vendors selling books and old magazines, pristine issues of Paris Match with Jackie Kennedy on the cover and old pulp paperbacks with lurid covers, titled in both English and French. There’s one vendor with a bunch of bric-a-brac, old vases, costume jewelry, and in a box on the side, a collection of dusty vintage alarm clocks. I paw through and find a vintage SMI in Bakelite. “Twenty euro,” the kerchiefed saleslady says to me. I try to keep a poker face. Twenty euro is about thirty bucks. The clock is easily worth two hundred dollars.
“Do you want it?” Willem asks.
My mom would go nuts if I brought this home, and she’d never have to know where it was from. The woman winds the clock, to show me that it works, but hearing it tick, I’m reminded of what Jacques said, about time being fluid. I look out at the Seine, which is now glowing pink, reflecting the color of the clouds that are rolling in. I put the clock back in the box.
We head up off the embankment, into the twisty, narrow warren of streets that Willem tells me is the Latin Quarter, where students live. It’s different over here. Not so many grand avenues and boulevards but alley-like lanes, barely wide enough for even the tiny, space-age two-person Smart Cars that are zooming around everywhere. Tiny churches, hidden corners, alleys. It’s a whole different Paris. And just as dazzling.
“Shall we take a drink?” Willem asks.
I nod.
We cross onto a crowded avenue, full of cinemas, outdoor cafés, all of them packed, and also a handful of small hotels, not too expensive judging by the prices advertised on the sandwich boards. Most of the signs say complet, which I’m pretty sure means full, but some don’t, and some of the rooms we might be able to afford if I were to exchange the last of my cash, about forty pounds.
I haven’t been able to broach tonight with Willem. Where we’re staying. He hasn’t seemed too worried about it, which has me worried our fallback is Céline. We pass an exchange bureau. I tell Willem I want to change some money.
“I have some money left,” he says. “And you just paid for the boat.”
“But I don’t have a single euro on me. What if I wanted to, I don’t know, buy a postcard?” I stop to spin a postcard caddy. “Also, there’s drinks and dinner, and we’ll need somewhere for, for . . .” I trail off before getting the courage to finish. “Tonight.” I feel my neck go warm.
The word seems to hang out there as I wait for Willem’s response, some clue of what he’s thinking. But he’s looking over at one of the cafés, where a group of girls at a table seem to be waving at him. Finally, he turns back to me. “Sorry?” he asks.
The girls are still waving. One of them is beckoning him over. “Do you know them?”
He looks over at the café, then back at me, then back at the restaurant. “Can you wait here for a minute?”
My stomach sinks. “Yeah, no problem.”
He leaves me at a souvenir shop, where I spin the postcard caddy and spy. When he gets to the group of girls, they do the cheek-cheek-kiss-kiss thing—three times, though, instead of twice like he did with Céline. He sits down next to the girl who was gesturing to him. It’s clear they know each other; she keeps putting her hand on his knee. He throws darting glances in my direction, and I wait for him to wave me over, but he doesn’t, and after an endless five minutes, the touchy girl writes something down on a bit of paper and gives it to him. He jams the slip deep into his pocket. Then he stands up, and they do another cheek-cheek-kiss-kiss thing, and he strides back to me, where I am feigning a deep interest in a Toulouse-Lautrec postcard.
“Let’s go,” he says as he grabs my elbow.
“Friends of yours?” I ask, jogging to keep up with his long stride.
“No.”
