THIRTY-TWO
Kezia
Were her eyelids really that much more diaphanous than Nathaniel’s? A blare of rectangular light streamed directly onto their faces. Yet he slept soundly on his border of the bed, one representative of each appendage touching the floor. Her head hurt. She focused on the pain, waiting for it to give her more information, to tell her if it was originating from one temple or both. Both. Good. Not a migraine. Nathaniel had stolen the duvet. She slowly pulled it back, sliding it out from under his armpit. She watched the gentle slope of his nose, politely defying gravity, the mixed directions of his wheaty hair, the rouge crop of gray whiskers, the dimpled chin—asymmetrical so as to prevent it from too closely resembling an ass.
He snorted in his sleep and covered his eyes with his arm. She had to be at Claude the cloisonné manufacturer’s office in an hour. She gathered her clothing for the day, mercifully unsoiled by exploding face lotion, and brought it with her to the bathroom. She didn’t want to risk Nathaniel seeing her change, towel tented over her like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
She tried to work Grey and Paul’s shower but couldn’t figure out how to get the removable showerhead to stop and the overhead one to start so she just passed the silver baton from one hand to the other.
“I have nice breasts,” she said to the mirror as it cleared of steam. “J’ai une bonne derrière. C’est totalement fucking ridiculous.”
She raised her arm and began speed-knocking on an invisible door. Were those the beginnings of dinner-lady arms? She leaned forward and looked at her eyes. Were they begging for some specialty cream? Inside the medicine cabinet, she found stretch-mark lotion and a box of paracetamol. She tried to read the box, to confirm that it wasn’t a box of diuretics. Looked safe enough. There was Braille on the package. There was Braille on every box of everything in France. On the snacks she and Grey bought at the gas station, on the tissues, on the tea. Which led her to the only logical conclusion: Americans hate their blind people.
“Pancaaaakes,” Nathaniel muttered into the sheets when he heard her return.
“Maybe Paul will make you some crêpes.”
Nathaniel lifted his head, alarmed by the sound of someone who had been awake for hours.
“Do you know your head’s being humped by a banana peel?”
“Ha-ha.” She touched her hat, a wide-brimmed Jane Birkin number that Rachel had given her last Christmas.
It was a nice gift but it wasn’t her color. Being blond, she could get away with canary yellow from the neck down, but a hat put too fine a point on the source of clashing. She remembered thinking: I’d have to be in Paris to get away with this.
“Where are you going in that thing?”
“I have a meeting.”
“That’s dumb.”
“I’m here for work. With a purpose. Not because Hollywood is too oppressively glitzy and I’m having a belated quarter-life crisis.”
“I blew past having a specific brand of crisis when I hit thirty.” He flipped over. “Now I’m just generally in crisis.”
“You?” she snorted. “Give me a break.”
“Hey, can I ask you something? Would you watch a show called Surf ’s Down?”
“Hmm.” She tried to look like she was mulling it over. “Yes, I like it.”
“Crap.”
“Is that the name of a show you’re working on?”
“No, it’s the name of a show this douchebag is working on.”
“Then I hate it. It sounds like a laundry detergent. Okay, if Grey asks, I’ll be back before dinner.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do all day?” He sat up, leaning on his elbows.
“It’s Paris. Wander around. Let Paul take you on a gastro-tour of Paris. You know he’s dying to. Go to a museum. Go read a book in the Luxembourg Gardens. Be a flâneur.”
“C’est quoi, ça?”
“Idling dandy.”
He ruffled his hair and the sheet slid down to the bottom of his torso. They had never shared a bed before. Standing there with her head cocked to one side, sliding in earrings, it was bizarrely intimate. He reached for his phone.
“Oh, God.”
“What?”
“God.” He scrolled.
“God what?”
“I just got an e-mail from Victor.”
“Finally!” She stopped moving. “What does it say?”
“Well, you can stop freaking out, because he’s alive . . .”
“Did he tell you he lost his job?” She made a sock puppet gesture for the phone. “Let me see.”
“I’m reading.”
“Did he tell you he got in a fight with Caroline?”
“Here.” Nathaniel forked it over.
------- Original Message -------
Subject: Hey
From: Victor Wexler <vbwex@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, May 9, 2015 10:16 pm
To: <nathaniel@nathanielhealy.com>
Hey, man–
Good to hang at the wedding. I have a question and feel like you might know the answer. Do you remember when our professor—I am blanking on her name—freaked out about The Necklace and started speaking in tongues? (one tongue, I guess). Do you remember why? Also if you know if Guy de Maupassant had kids?
On the d.l.
“What the fuck?” Kezia sat and let the phone fall in her lap. “What the fuck?”
“Don’t ask me. He’s the ward of your state, not mine.”
“This is from two days ago.”
“Whoops.”
“He blows me off and then he writes you?”
“And what’s with the keeping it on the down low? Keep what on the down low? I hate it when people ask you questions so that you have to ask why they’re asking. How long does it take for a dead hooker to decompose? No reason.”
“Who is this French person?”
“This French person,” Nathaniel snickered, “is like the French O. Henry.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t help me.”
“Guy de Maupassant. He wrote Bel Ami and a couple of famous short stories. One about a fat French whore and, of course, ‘The Necklace.’”
“I don’t know it.”
“Yes, you do. You probably read it in some anthology that also had ‘The Lottery.’”
“I don’t know ‘The Lottery,’ either.”
“Have you always been functionally illiterate?”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
“Seriously, I could have sworn we went to the same college. And you’ve never read ‘The Lottery’? Really? It’s like The Hunger Games only shorter and better. This town gathers and draws names from a hat and eventually you find out it’s to see who they’ll stone to death.”
“Thanks for ruining the ending.”
“It’s ‘The Lottery’! Guess what happens at the end of Titanic? Just guess.”
“I know a shit-ton of things that you don’t know, Mr. Salutatorian.”
“‘The Necklace’ is about this woman who’s on the cusp of French society and her husband gets her an invitation to a party and she’s a real bitch about it because she doesn’t have any jewelry to wear. So she borrows a priceless necklace from her rich friend, but when she goes to take it off at the end of the night, poof: it’s gone.”
Kezia gasped.
“See? Famous story. It’s, like, the world’s most perfect short story. Anyway, the woman tells her friend that she broke the clasp and needs to get it repaired.”
“I deeply empathize with this person.”
“But what she actually does”—Nathaniel was almost giddy— “is buy a replacement necklace. And it ruins her life because she has to pay it off by becoming a chimney sweep or some shit.”
“Why didn’t she just tell her friend she lost it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because any woman who could afford a necklace like that would have had her jewelry insured.”
“I have no idea. I’m not fluent in jewelry.”
“Really? That’s weird because I could have sworn we went to the same college.”
“Anyway. I didn’t write it and it’s a million years old. It’s famous for the twist ending. The last line is the rich lady revealing that the necklace was fake.”
“Oh, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Probably not. Dead puppies are sadder. Dead puppies all tied up in string. Victor knows the story, too. It was in that class you dropped out of. Oh! And then Henry James published a tribute short story to the original but it’s about a fake necklace that turns out to be real. All very confusing. Why do you look extra pale?”
Kezia reached up and touched her throat, playing with the chain she had just put on, putting it in her mouth, letting the metallic taste seep into her tongue. What exactly had Victor told her? Something about a diamond necklace with a big sapphire that he thought was an emerald?
“Because of the necklace.”
“Huh?”
“He wants to know if the real necklace is real.”
“The real necklace is fake. Unless you’re talking about the Henry James story, in which case the fake necklace is real. Actually, all of the necklaces are fake all of the time because all of the stories are fiction.”
“That’s why Caroline wanted to have lunch with Victor. Because I told her what he had told me, about what Felix’s mom showed him. I didn’t realize. That’s why he needed a new passport. That’s, oh shit—”
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s too long a story but maybe don’t reply to him yet. Or do. Or, no, don’t. I have to go. We can talk about this when I get back.”
“Okay, Mom.”
Kezia left the apartment, bunching the runner in the front hall, keeping her head down on the narrow steps. She had been half-listening to Victor’s babblings on the beach. What was he going on about? Johanna had Nazi war crime spoils underneath her bed? There’s this necklace, except it’s not there. She paused on a landing. The riddle universe was black and white: So how does a necklace exist but not exist? How is it fake and real at the same time?
If anyone was supposed to watch out for Victor, she was. She was falling down on the job. Though one thing that was always true of Victor was that he didn’t have much follow-through. The idea of him getting curious and staying curious was pretty much impossible. He was probably in Sunset Park right now, watching some shark documentary or whatever it was that Victor watched, eating noodles, forgetting the necklace, forgetting her.