Matt’s moms gets a cab to her hotel after lunch. Me and Matt, we saunter down the crowded Boulevard Saint-Michel.
“So how long you plan on staying gone then?” I ask.
“You’ll be the starting cornerback at Iowa State before I return home.”
“Then you’ll be back in Montreal before the end of the summer.”
He says he’s going to stay with Juliette until he can get it all sorted out and find a place on his own. He says he’s built a lot of capital with Juliette since the madness in Villeneuve, that she all but tucks him in at night, but that he needs to be independent.
There are people everywhere all up and down the boulevard, both tourists and everyday folks. Lots of cops too, eyeing the kids hanging at the Saint-Michel fountain, the ones who look like they come from the suburbs. That’s when I notice her.
“How did it go?” Aïda says, hugging and kissing Matt when we walk up. “Salut, Freeman,” she says to me.
“Mom’s good with it,” Matt says. “Well, she’s accepting my decision anyway.”
We cross the Seine over onto the Île de la Cité and pass in front of Notre-Dame. We work our way through all the tourists milling around out front. Matt and Aïda hold hands.
“Free is leaving in two days,” he tells her.
“Really?” she says. “So soon?”
“Yep,” I say in English—curt-like, to set the tone, because I ain’t studying no tearful goodbyes. “I got things got to be done.”
We walk on with no real destination, and it’s just as easy with Aïda here as it was with just Matt and me alone. I see what it is Matt sees in her. She’s cool like that: the kind of girl you imagine as your girlfriend when you imagine yourself in a movie. And I’m thinking, Here we are in Paris, Matt’s new home.
Home.
For four months, this has been my home too. Georges and Françoise’s apartment. The cobbled streets, where me and Matt wandered, discovering new corners of the city. The Cinq Mille projects. The Beach. In San Antonio, home was the house Pops bought and that him and Mama and me and Tookie and Tina lived in. Heritage Park Huskies football was a second home—my boys, Coach Calley. It was for me what the Diables Rouges were to Moose.
Am I even going to feel that in Iowa, at State? Should I expect to? Mama, Tookie and Tina look to be in New Orleans for a while, maybe from now on. It’s kind of like there ain’t a home really for me to go back to.
Well, there’s Mama. And Tookie and Tina. In New Orleans, sure, but there for me still and all.
As much as what Matt’s doing sounds tempting, I couldn’t ever. I wouldn’t, not again. Mama, Tookie and Tina, they are my home. I need to go on and get my degree so I can make our home better. That’s how Pops would see it too.
“This quick departure,” I tell Matt. “I really am sorry to miss your birthday.”
“Well, maybe we should celebrate it early then,” he says.
“Oh, sure. Why not?” says Aïda. “We can go to the Champs-Élysées, to your Pizza Pie Factory, play a game of foosball against your bouncer friends.”
Matt laughs. “Yeah, yeah, yeah…”
He takes Aïda’s hand. “At home with Mom and Dad, when there’s anything worth celebrating, it’s always with Champagne.” He pronounces it in French—shawm-PINE. He pulls out his wallet and flashes the credit card his father gave him for emergencies. “And I still have this.”
“You ain’t eighteen yet,” I remind him. The drinking age here.
“Pretty close. What with you leaving, my birthday upcoming—I bet if I show them my passport and your plane ticket, I can convince them to let me buy a bottle.”
For real.
“I don’t doubt it,” I tell him. “I don’t doubt it one bit.”