AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Willem reaches under me and pulls out a small metal chisel.
“We should find somewhere else to stay,” I say. “Not with Céline.”
“Shh.” Willem quiets me with his lips.
Later, after we have taken our time, exploring every hidden crease of each other’s bodies, after we have kissed and licked and whispered and laughed until our limbs are heavy and the sky outside has started to purple with predawn light, Willem pulls a tarp over us.
“Goeienacht, Lulu,” he says, his eyes fluttering with exhaustion.
I trace the creases of his face with my fingers. “Goeienacht, Willem,” I reply. I lean into his ear, push the messy bramble of his hair aside and whisper, “Allyson. My name is Allyson.” But by then, he is already asleep. I rest my head in the crook between his arm and shoulder, tracing the letters of my true name onto his forearm, where I imagine their outlines will remain until morning.
Thirteen
After a ten-day heat wave, I’m used to waking up sweaty, but I wake up to a cool breeze gusting through an open window. I reach for a blanket, but instead of getting something warm and feathery, I get something hard and crinkly. A tarp. And in that hazy space between wake and sleep, it all comes back to me. Where I am. Who I’m with. The happiness warms me from the inside.
I reach for Willem, but he’s not there. I open my eyes, squinting against the gray light, bouncing off the bright white of the studio walls.
Instinctively, I check my watch, but my wrist is bare. I pad over to the window, pulling my skirt around my naked chest. The streets are still quiet, the stores and cafés still shut. It’s still early.
I want to call to him, but there’s a church-like hush, and to disrupt it feels wrong. He must be downstairs, maybe in the bathroom. I could sort of use it myself. I pull on my clothes and tiptoe down the stairs. But Willem isn’t in the bathroom, either. I quickly pee and throw water on my face and try to drink away the beginnings of my hangover.
He must be exploring the studios by daylight. Or maybe he went back up the staircase. Calm down, I tell myself. He’s probably back upstairs right now.
“Willem?” I call.
There’s no answer.
I run back upstairs to the studio we slept in. It’s messy. On the floor is my bag, its contents spilling out. But his bag, his stuff, is all gone.
My hearts starts to pound. I run over to my bag and open it up, checking for my wallet and passport, my minimal cash. Immediately I feel stupid. He paid for me to come over here. He isn’t going to rip me off. I remind myself of the tizzy I got myself into yesterday on the train.
I run up and down the stairs, calling his name now. But it just echoes back to me—Willem, Willem!—like the walls are laughing at me.
Panic is coming. I try to push it away with logic. He went out to get us something to eat. To find us somewhere to sleep.
I go stand next to the window and wait.
Paris begins to wake. Store grates go up, sidewalks are swept. Car horns start honking, bicycles chime, the sound of footfalls on the rainy pavement multiply.
If stores are open, it must be nine o’clock? Ten? Soon the artists will arrive, and what will they do when they find me squatting in their squat like Goldilocks?
I decide to wait outside. I put on my shoes and sling my bag over my shoulder and head to the open window. But in the cold light of day, without wine emboldening me or Willem helping me, the distance between the second floor and the ground seems like an awfully long way to fall.
You got up, you can get back down, I chastise myself. But when I hoist myself onto the ledge and reach for the scaffolding, my hand slips and I feel dizzy. I imagine my parents getting the news of me falling to my death from a Paris building. I collapse back into the studio, hyperventilating into the cave of my hands.
Where is he? Where the hell is he? My mind pinballs through rationales for his delay. He went to get more money. He went to fetch my suitcase. What if he fell going out the window? I jump up, full of twisted optimism that I will find him sprawled underneath the drain pipe, hurt but okay, and then I can make good on my promise to take care of him. But there’s nothing under the window except a puddle of dirty water.
I sink back down onto the studio floor, breathless with fear, which is now on an entirely different Richter scale than my little scare on the train.
More time goes by. I hug my knees, shivering in the damp morning. I creep downstairs. I try the front door, but it’s locked, from the outside. I have the sense that I’m going to be trapped here forever, that I’ll grow old and wither and die locked in this squat.
How late can artists sleep? What time is it? But I don’t need a clock to tell me Willem has been gone too long. With each passing minute, the explanations I keep concocting ring increasingly hollow.
Finally, I hear the clank of the chain and keys jangle in the locks, but when the door swings open, it’s a woman with two long braids carrying a bunch of rolled up canvases. She looks at me and starts talking to me in French, but I just spring past her.
Out on the street, I look around for Willem, but he’s not here. It seems like he would never be here, on this ugly stretch of cheap Chinese restaurants and auto garages and apartment blocks, all gray in the gray rain. Why did I ever think this place was beautiful?
>That’s what I see before my eyes when I think of this day.
