A train — the third since Serena stormed off — pulls into the station, and a pair of drunk guys in suits stagger onto the platform, looking like they’ve had quite a night. One of them has a bottle of beer in one hand and is holding a mistletoe over his head with the other, looking for someone to kiss, even though there’s nobody in range. His friend doubles over with his hands on his knees, like he’s about to throw up. The first guy sees this and offers him the bottle, like it is some kind of medicine. It’s the kind of tableau that I would normally try to photograph, but my hands don’t even twitch, much less reach for my camera.
I have not moved from this seat since Serena left, but I don’t know if it’s because I simply don’t want to, or because I am incapable. My nine-hour friendship with her has apparently been destroyed, but I am pretty certain we’re going to have to see each other again at some point — she left her things at my dorm, after all. She never actually took the spare key, so if she comes back, and I’m not there, she’ll have to try to explain who she is and hope whoever’s at the front desk will believe her story. Or she will have to hope that someone can track me down. Either way, it’ll be awkward for her. And afterward, assuming we are reunited, I just know that she will find a way to blame me for that, too. Because Serena seems able to get mad at me very, very quickly. To be fair to her, I do know it was out of line for me to expect her to leave that bistro (I may have overdone it, talking up my “better” place). I knew, as it was happening, that she had a reason to be angry with me.
But don’t I have a reason to be angry at her? I have wasted the entire day, at the expense of my project! Monsieur Deschamps is going to fail me.
And I also think she knew exactly what she was doing when she called me “selfish.” I am not my father.
I watch the guy with the mistletoe guide his drunker friend along to the exit, wondering how this day — which didn’t promise all that much to begin with — somehow managed to go even worse than I expected.
I know it’s not really Serena’s fault. She did more than enough to accommodate me — even changing her plans so that I could show her the Dugarry exhibit. She cannot have wanted to take such time out from her Romance Tour, but she did it. Because she is a decent person. This day was going well enough until …
Martine. Martine, charging back into my life at the worst possible time, creating upheaval as she always does.
She told me she’s over it. That’s what Serena said. Could I have misread Martine in the bistro? What if I wasn’t seeing the calm before a storm but just … calm? Now, suddenly, I find the energy to spring out of my chair and march toward the exit, walking so quickly that I catch up with the drunk guys in suits, who shout insults at me when I bump into them.
I cannot believe I’m heading back to Maison d’angle. Martine has already ruined one project of mine and may have helped “finish off” another. But maybe we do need to talk.
If she has moved on from the feelings that our breakup left behind, I would like her to tell me how she did it.
*
Maison d’angle is very busy by the time I return. Even Didier’s hair has lost some of its structure. The chatter of the patrons is so loud, I can almost feel it around my ears, but when Martine sees me lingering by the welcome desk, all that noise seems to be sucked away as she just … stares at me. Have I made a terrible mistake? I gesture to her. Can we talk?
She’s holding two dishes, standing over a table for two. She puts the food down with a smile, shares a few words with the customers and then walks over to me. I have a little freak-out — what if she thinks I’ve returned because I want to get back together? That I’ve dumped the American girl and am now making some big, romantic gesture? Am I going to upset her all over again?
But there’s no hope in her eyes. Only confusion. And maybe … embarrassment?
“Jean-Luc, what are you doing back here?”
“I need to talk to you,” I tell her. “Can you take a break?”
She raises her eyebrows and jerks her head in the direction of the very crowded bistro.
“I know this is inconvenient,” I tell her, “and I am sorry. But this is very important. It would mean a lot to me. To you, too, I think.”
She pauses. “Okay … Go around back. I’ll see you in the alley, but I can talk for a few minutes only.”
“Thank you.”
I walk back onto the street, then around to the alley behind Maison d’angle. Martine keeps me waiting just long enough that I start to wonder if she’s going to leave me out here to get hypothermia, as some kind of revenge, but the back door opens and she comes out, shrugging on her peacoat.
“What do you want?” she asks, her pale face like a ghost in the alley.
For a second, I can think of nothing else except how strange it feels to be alone with Martine, face to face and a few feet away from each other, making very intense eye contact in the dark.
“Are you really not angry anymore?”
We have one of those long, drawn-out silences that I used to dread. I fight the urge to look away from her, seeing that her face fills not with anger or hysteria but with pity. Sympathy. “I’ve moved on. You should try it.”
I stay quiet for so long that she sighs, annoyed.
“You make me wonder if you don’t want me to move on or something.” Does she think I might like the idea of her being upset? I know our fights sometimes got personal, hurtful, but she should still know me well enough to know that I do not enjoy seeing her miserable.
Apparently, neither of us could see how wrong we were for each other.
“You hurt me,” she says. “You took everything I tried to give you, dropped it and ran away. The more I tried to close the distance between us, the faster you ran.”
I look at the cobbles. “I know … I really am sorry. About everything that happened.”
“And what are you even doing here with me right now? You have a nice girl in your life, and you’re here talking to the ex that you did not want to be with. Why?”
“I … I don’t know.”
She reaches out and lightly grabs my elbow — a prompt that I should look at her. Her face is soft, understanding. Her voice is, too: “Because you want to be forgiven. I know you, Jean-Luc — I’ll bet that, no matter how good a time you have had with this American girl, you have still picked fights with her. Right? It’s because you need people to prove to you that they do want you around.”
She is looking right into my eyes, unblinking. A look of this intensity sometimes makes me edgy, but now … Now, she looks concerned, almost tender. “You do all of this to get what you want, and the minute anyone starts making an effort to show you they do want you, you run. I was tired of having to chase you all the time.”
I don’t know what to say to that, even though there’s a lot I could say. I wish I could have made clearer to her that all those times I picked fights were not just about me testing how much she wanted to be with me. I think a part of me was excited by the thought that she might one day tell me to go to hell, so I would have a motivation to improve myself …
A motivation I’ve felt sometimes today. And why would that be?
“I’m sorry, Martine … I’m sorry I hurt you.”
She just smiles — which makes it weird when she says: “You did hurt me. But I’m going to be okay. In fact” — the hand on my elbow slides up to my shoulder, friendly, appreciative … platonic — “you might have done me a huge favor. Because I got sick of crying after about a week, and then I applied for a bunch of internships — you know, to keep myself occupied — and I got one.”
“That’s great.” I really mean it.
“It’s only a small designer in Le Marais. But I am learning so much, and it’s a great experience. Plus, I’m, uh, going on a date tomorrow.”
I try not to look surprised, but I can see from the way she rolls her eyes that I have failed. She laughs.
“His name is Laurent, and he’s a medical student.”
Now I don’t even bother trying not to look surprised. “A medical student? That …”
“Does not sound like my type?” she asks, taking a step back from me. This whole conversation is much more formal than I’m used to with Martine, but I have to admit — I kind of like not being tense all the time. “I think that is where you and I were always wrong, you know? I used to look at love like kind of a jigsaw puzzle, that you needed two pieces that were similar enough to fit together. It was only when I found that in you that I realized, we were too alike. Put us together, we just make the same shape, only bigger. But when you put two very different pieces together, they form something new.”
This is the first conversation we’ve had in a while that’s not going to end with one of us storming off. My heart hasn’t felt this light since Martine and I first got together, back when …
“I did love you, you know?” I tell her. “I … don’t want you to think I never did.”
Her smile doesn’t waver, but her eyes do glisten a little, and she pulls her hand back. “Thank you …” Then, she gathers herself and points at the camera I kind of forgot was still on me. “Is that your project for Monsieur Deschamps? Can I see?”
I take the camera off my neck and hand it to her, almost laughing when I realize this will be the first time she’s ever held it. For various reasons, I didn’t really trust her not to throw it when we were together.
Martine liked to make it clear what she thought of bad art.
She flicks through the photos I’ve taken today, and I brace myself for her to offer faint praise.
“They’re wonderful …” she breathes.
I was not expecting this response. “What did you say?”
“I think they’re lovely … especially the ones of Serena.”
“Oh, those were just for fun,” I say, as she hands the camera back to me. “They’re not for the project.”
She smirks. “But I’d say more than half the photos are of her. It’s like she is the project … a documentary of you falling for Serena.”
“I haven’t fallen for her!” My voice is loud, the walls of the alley throwing my words back at me as if rubbing my face in my own lies. “She’s completely wrong for me …”
Martine just smiles as she hands me my camera. Then she leans forward and kisses me on the cheek. “Different pieces, Jean-Luc.”
She turns around and walks back into the bistro, leaving me alone in the dark alley, holding my camera, which feels heavy with … Serena.
Serena, the reason I left the dorm room at all this morning. The reason I found the will to start my project over properly, rather than try to salvage what I could from the crap I’d so far put together. Serena, who sees things in my work that even I don’t notice.
A smile is breaking out on my face — I can’t remember a time I was ever happy to lose an argument with Martine, until now.
Serena is the project.
And then I’m running out of the alley, toward the Metro. I have to get back to my dorm — right now!