Prancing around like a recently birthed foal, Matthieu gets my measurements and writes them down. “
Très, très, très beau
,” he coos at me, tiny droplets splattering from his lisp. “Hehe,” he snickers as he gets closer and closer to my crotch. “
Vous etes nerveux?
Don’t be!”
A lump rises in my throat.
“Alex?” I call out toward the sales floor. “Alex, can you hear me?”
Matthieu finds this absolutely hysterical. “
Alex
?” he mimicks me. “
Où est Alex
?”
Just as Alex reappears in the doorway to the men’s fitting rooms, Matthieu deftly slides his hand between my legs and gives my nuts a quick tweak.
“Alex, help!” I shriek, buckling over. Matthieu has never seen anything so funny in his life. He slaps his knee and holds his stomach, shrieking in that horrible, high-pitch girlish laugh.
I grab our bags and hightail it back to outerwear.
“What was that?” she hisses in amused confusion. “You could’ve gotten to at least second base with that guy—right here, right now. He’s been watching you the whole time we’ve been here! I thought you wanted some action in Paris—I thought you wanted to catch up to your friend in Amsterdam.”
“Alex,” I say, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice. “I am not interested in meeting people that way. Thank you for your . . .
concern
, but that’s not what I had in mind when we decided to get Parisian boyfriends!”
As usual, she’s not listening. She leaps forward toward a rack she hasn’t seen yet, letting the coats hanging from it engulf her. “Zack . . . oh my God . . . I think I found it,” she moans from within the pile of fabric.
Alex has
definitely
found the perfect winter coat. It’s a divine Dior berry-red wool coat with big, round black buttons. Almost retro-looking, the top is fitted, with a round collar, and a tied belt around the waist. The bottom opens into several pleats, emphasizing her curves and making her look like a bright red hourglass. The effect is a mix of quirky, trendy, and good taste—in other words, it is pure Alex.
“How much is it?” I demand to know, truly curious. Alex routinely spends more at the Galeries Lafayette than I did on the down payment for my truck last fall when I turned sixteen.
I stare at the coat, waiting for Alex to answer. I’m also suddenly overcome by thoughts having nothing to do with the Dior coat. Something about Matthieu, the way my gut heaved when he touched me, made me think of what it would be like if Jay had seen that. My mind ran to Jay instinctively, to his shorn hair and sheepish smile. I could see him making a face like, “Matthieu was crazy. What can you do about it?
C’est la vie
.” That’s just what Jay’s like—so easygoing and sure of himself.
I open my mouth, slowly feeling myself about to say what I’ve just realized. “Alex . . .”
She mistakes me for trying to talk her out of the coat. “I can’t tell you how much this coat costs. But I have to have it.” A saleswoman comes over and asks Alex if she’d like to take the coat.
“
Oui
,” Alex says, cradling the red wool crepe in her arms lovingly. “
Je le voudrais. C’est parfait
.”
The saleswoman leads Alex to the cash register. Alex aimlessly slips on a Swarovski crystal bangle bracelet, admiring it for a moment as she waits to sign her credit card slip.
Suddenly Alex looks over at me, still wandering around in the coats. There is panic and also anger in her eyes.
“Get over here,” she says loudly. “I need you. This woman is babbling too fast for me.”
The saleswoman addresses me calmly. “
Parlez-vous français?
” she asks me.
“
Oui
,” I say. “What’s wrong?”
“Her card was denied,” the woman says in French. “Does she have another card?”
“Do you have another card?” I ask Alex. “That one isn’t working for some reason.”
Alex is enraged. “No, I don’t have another card!” she yells at me. She folds her arms over her chest and blows her side-swept black bangs out of her eyes. “That one does work, you idiot! We just used it all over the store, remember?”
“Hmm,” I say, recognizing the signs that Alex is on the verge of a meltdown. This is something that must be avoided no matter what. For the good of everyone, everywhere. “Sometimes the bank will put a hold on a card if you spend too much in one day—they might think someone stole it and went on a shopping spree. You should put the coat on hold and come back after you clear it up with your bank. Sound good?”
Alex shoves her hands in her pockets. “Fine,” she says shortly. “Let’s just go.” Apparently she’s no longer interested in a hot chocolate.
The salesgirl gives us a forced, polite smile and wraps the coat in tissue paper to put it in the on-hold shelf. “
Au revoir
,” she calls after us, ever mindful of her manners. The French always are.
Back on the Boulevard Hausmann, under the twinkling lights of the storefront window displays, Alex dangles her wrist in front of me with a sharp peal of laughter. “Look!”
“Alex!” I burst out. “Are you kidding? Did you
steal
that?” The bracelet doesn’t even look like something Alex would normally wear. It’s shiny and cheap-looking, like something a freshman cheerleader would wear with her Macy’s ball gown to the Winter Formal.
“From right under the salesgirl’s nose!” Alex giggles. “Serves her right. I mean, what an embarrassing inconvenience she caused just now! She’s too much of a ditz to figure out how the credit card machine works—when I can barely wait another
minute
to get my new coat. When I go back for it, I seriously hope her supervisor is there so I can get her fired.” Alex stares ahead, her pretty face drawn hotly into a fierce scowl.
This was the same way she was talking about George earlier this afternoon—intensely, a little crazily.
“Hey,” I say, pointing. “Your coat’s in the Christmas display.” We hadn’t seen it on our way in, but the mannequin in the window is wearing the red Dior coat with a pair of sparkly silver ice skates. The back of the display is wallpapered in old-timey black- and-white photos of couples—shadowy silhouettes of men and women kissing, holding hands, dancing in the Paris streets.
There’s not a single photo of two men or two women. All the romance, all the luxurious happiness, is saved for hetero couples.
Alex clasps her hands in front of her, like a little girl in fervent prayer. “I want that so much,” she whispers.
“Me, too,” I whisper back, though I can’t say for sure what is it that we each want, nor do I have any idea how long it might take to get it.
As the first snowflakes of winter fall onto the darkening Paris streets, Alex whimpers and pulls her thin jacket around her. It’s just a tiny flurry, but I pull her toward me, as if she was my girlfriend like in all those old photos in the display, and hold her protectively close as we walk to the metro station near the Opera, with all its lights blazing in the hazy night.
13. ALEX
Chasing Fate Through the Champs de Mar
I
want to die. Seriously. I feel like throwing myself off the Pont de Neuf. I tear apart my manicure in the computer lab after school, angrily picking and biting my red nails and reading over my mom’s horrible email again and again.
TO: Nguyen, Alexandra
FROM: Braun, Caroline
Dear Alex,
Imagine my shock when American Express called me to report that the card had been stolen. Imagine my humiliation when I told them that no, the charges were not accrued by some petty thief on a retail binge but rather my teenage daughter, let loose on the Boulevard Hausmann, the Rue de Rivoli, and of, course, the avenue Montaigne. Are the other 16-year-olds on your program doing as much damage at Colette as you are? I have a feeling they aren’t. How could they be? There’s probably nothing left to buy after you are through picking the racks.
I’ve closed the account until you can prove yourself to be a more responsible spender. As for your meager checking account, which to my surprise has been almost drained since you arrived in Paris, I won’t cut off your access to that. Really Alex! How dare you run through your money for the entire year so quickly?
I’m extremely disappointed in you. I had really expected better.
CAB
Is she deranged? I don’t understand. My mom has
been
to Paris. She has
lived
here. How can she be so obtuse as to not comprehend the basic bottom line for a life in Paris?
I only went to Colette once! And that was because
she
told me about it. And I didn’t even get all the things I wanted. Just the most necessary stuff, the two-tone Repetto ballet flats and this little necklace in the shape of a skull that I wanted for
Toussaint
, the French holiday the day after Halloween. Zack and I had spent the day roaming the
Cemetière Père-Lachaise
and spooking each other from behind the graves. It was important that I be nicely accessorized for the occasion.
Really, Alex!
I mimic her in my head as I recall her email for the hundredth time since I read it. Since when does she of all people care about overspending? That’s how it works—my absent father sends a ridiculously large child support check to my mom, which my mom hands over to her accountant to pay my bills. That is how it has always been. I get no father and no home life to speak of; instead I get a huge wardrobe and all the cosmetic treatments I want. I was always perfectly happy with this arrangement, and now suddenly my mom wants to reassert some authority into my life this late in the game?
And the way she signs her emails with her initials, “CAB,” as if I’m a distant acquaintance as opposed to her only daughter! It used to make me laugh when I was little, that my mom was a cab, a yellow taxi we took home from Bloomingdale’s after a long day of shopping. Caroline Anne Braun, who never changed her name to Nguyen when she got married, so she never had to change it back when her husband left her.
Zack always refers to my mom in hyper-deferential tones—he calls her
the Countess, the Queen, your lady mother
, always while using his most effeminate fake British accent. I wonder what he’d think of the grand dame cutting off my livelihood. I imagine him taking my face in his hands in mock sympathy.
“Darling!” he’d cry, and everyone would hear. “Whatever will we do? How can we possibly keep up with the Joneses without the black Amex?”
I roll my eyes at this possible state of affairs. That’s never going to happen because I’m going to keep the whole thing on the down low until it works itself out.
This is
so
my mom. Volatile personality, extreme changes in temperament. All the reasons my dad left her, probably. I just need to wait it out and hold my tongue.
Swallowing my pride, I punch a reply into my Blackberry.
SO SRY 4 INCONVENIENCE W/ AMEX. LET’S DISCUSS WHEN U COME 2 FRANCE 4 FASHION WEEK. ILU, AGN
It makes my blood boil to think that if the American Express fascists had waited just
ten
minutes for me to find the Dior coat before freezing my account . . . then right now, I’d be wearing it as I dash down the Rue du Faubourg-St. Honoré toward the Chloé store. I’d be
warm
. Instead I’m wearing a sweatshirt that belongs to my host-brother, who’s eight, layered under my Marc Jacobs jacket. I pray to God I don’t run into anyone.
I’m not exactly shopping right now. I’m capitalizing on previous gains.
This afternoon, I left Zack in the computer lab and went straight home to mope on my bed while listening to the mix Jeremy made for me. On it is my favorite moping song, “Just Like Jesse James,” by Cher. Jeremy put it on there to be funny, but Cher’s bombastics suit my mood more often than you might realize.
With my oversize Bose headphones on, I didn’t hear my Blackberry go off—it was only when I got up to hunt through the piles of crap strewn all over my room for my cigarettes that I saw the red light flashing that I had a new text message.
I could have done a back flip when I saw that the text was from my George!
LET’S HANG OUT, the text read—simple enough. Locating my cigarettes on top of my bookshelf, I lit one with one hand while simultaneously texting George back with the other.
Sure, I thumbed into my Blackberry. Champs de Mars, 5pm?
SWEET, was the response five minutes later as I frantically tore apart my closet in search of something cute enough—and warm enough—to wear outdoors now that I’ve suggested Champs de Mars. The park is just a few minutes from my apartment—a perfect meeting point that should give me plenty of time to get ready.
Regarding my closet, I realize there’s obviously nothing in here at all suitable for my first real date with George.
In the back of my closet is a pair of black stacked heeled Chloé boots with adorable snap detailing on the back of the ankle. Trouble is, they only had my size in black—and now whenever I put them on, all that flashes through my head is
Aldo’s.
Don’t ask me how my eight-hundred-dollar boots somehow remind me of the dreaded mall chain store, beloved by suburbanites and Texan twins everywhere, but there you go.
I sucked on my cigarette and thought quickly.
If I can get to Chloé by four, return the boots for store credit, select a new dress to wear by 4:30, change into it in their dressing rooms, and grab one of those sidewalk vendor pashminas to wear over the dress and my jacket, I can be sexily perched onto a carousel horse in the middle of the Champs de Mars by 5:05, when George will surely wander up late, as all boys tend to do.
Digging under my bed (where I always put my receipts in a box for emergencies like this—my mom taught me to never,
never
throw your receipts away), I found little eight-year-old Sebastièn’s brown sweatshirt. How did
that
get here? Stained, but possibly cute in a boho-chic layering way that might come in handy in this suddenly frigid late fall weather. I grabbed it, shout a flustered goodbye to my host mother, and run toward the Cambronne metro stop.
Please please please let Chloé take these stupid made-in-China boots back!