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The exhaustion didn’t hit her until they landed. She dragged herself through the airport, barely awake enough to pull her luggage in a straight line. She fell asleep in the cab and had to be shaken awake by her father.
“It’s the middle of the day,” he said as they shuffled up the stairs to their flat in the Latin Quarter. “I told you to sleep on the plane.”
Her only answer was a yawn.
The apartment was huge and beautiful with dark wood floors and soaring ceilings covered in beautiful moldings. Her father didn’t seem to notice any of it. He took off his perfectly pressed coat and tossed it onto a slipcovered white sofa. “If you stay up today, you’ll get over the jet lag. Otherwise, your body’s going to have a hell of a time adjusting to the time zone shift.”
“Okay,” she said. “Can I just take a nap then?”
“I have to make some calls,” he said. “I’ll get you up in an hour.”
He went off to do whatever business mob bosses can do in foreign countries over a phone, but when he tried to rouse her, she didn’t budge. She slept through the whole day, getting up sometime after midnight.
She woke ravenously hungry and disoriented at the darkness outside the big picture window. Padding into the kitchen of the apartment, she opened the refrigerator, but it was empty.
“Lila?” her father said, coming into the dim room from his bedroom. He looked unusually rumpled, like maybe he’d been sleeping too.
“Sorry I totally zonked out,” she said, yawning and stretching. Her fingers reached up for the ceiling and curled. She’d slept in her gloves.
He gave her a slight smile, a corner of his mouth lifting. “You hungry?”
“Starving,” she said.
“Go get dressed, then,” he told her. “Paris is beautiful at night.”
She walked back to her room and opened her suitcase. Her mother had helped her pack it, explaining that she’d better bring only nice things because people in Europe dressed differently. They weren’t slobs like Lila and her friends. They would never wear dresses layered over jeans or big clunky boots. “Don’t embarrass your father,” Mom had said, as if he cared what she wore. Don’t embarrass me was what she meant.
Lila put on a heavy camel-colored dress. With her pale skin, it made her look completely washed out. She sighed and went into the bathroom to wash her face, brush her teeth, and comb her scraggly shoulder-length blond hair. Then she put on her knee-high black boots—the ones she’d snuck into the front zipped compartment of the suitcase before leaving—and tied the laces.
Clomping out to the sitting room, she found her father waiting, reading a French paper. He put it down absently and twirled the keys to the flat around his finger. Outside, Paris was lit up and beautiful. Everything seemed familiar—reminding her of some parts of New York—but the details were wrong. It reminded her, too, of the lady in the period drama, rattling past buildings like these in her carriage. Lila looked into the darkened windows of all the shops to see displays of dresses on headless mannequins, paintings, and costume jewelry.
Each store they passed was closed.
Finally, Lila saw a cafe with its lights still on. A couple was even sitting at one of the tables, sipping espresso.
“Dad,” she said, pointing.
When they got there, the front door was locked and the closing time was listed as midnight. A clock on the door in the lobby showed that it was nearly one.
Lila’s father knocked on the door. A waiter came over and opened it halfway, speaking with slightly bored irritation. Lila couldn’t understand everything he said—just enough. The restaurant was closed.
Her father reached into his coat pocket and took out his wallet. As he did, she saw the strap under his arm and the butt of a silvery gun.
The waiter saw it too.
Her father grinned like a shark, said a few words she didn’t know, and took five hundred euros from his billfold. The door opened wide.
The money was exchanged as they were escorted inside.
“And how old is the lady?” the waiter asked her in accented English as he pulled out her chair.
“Âgé de douze ans,” she said.
Her father laughed and the waiter smiled, but stiffly, as though they were performing parts in a play.
“Very good,” said the waiter, although she knew it wasn’t. She wasn’t even sure if it was right.
As he walked off, she opened the menu. Her father leaned across the table.
