I can see what he’s doing. He’s changing the scenery, changing the subject. And I get that, in some way, he needs to do this. So I let him. “Like traveler’s pin the tail on the donkey?” I ask.
Willem gives me a quizzical look. His English is so good that I forget not everything computes.
“Is this about accidents?” I ask.
He looks at me, and for half a second, the mask slips again. But then just like that, it’s back in place. It doesn’t matter. It slipped, and I saw. And I understand. Willem is alone, like I am alone. And now this ache that I can’t quite distinguish as his or mine has opened up inside of me.
“It’s always about the accidents,” he says.
Nine
I pick a doozy.
Using the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey strategy, I close my eyes and spin in front of the Metro map and land my finger on the benign-sounding Château Rouge.
When we come out of the Metro, we are in yet another Paris altogether, and there’s not a chateau, rouge or otherwise, in sight.
The streets are narrow, like in the Latin Quarter, but grittier. Tinny, drum-heavy music blares out from the shop windows, and there’s such an onslaught of smells, my nose doesn’t know what to breathe first: curry coming out of the patisseries, the ferric tang of blood from the giant animal carcasses being trundled through the street, the sweet and exotic smell of incense smoke, exhaust from the cars and motos, the ubiquitous smell of coffee—though there aren’t so many of the big cafés here, the kind that take up an entire corner, but more smaller, ad-hoc ones, bistro tables shoved onto the sidewalk. And they’re all packed with men smoking and drinking coffee. The women, some wearing full black veils with only their eyes showing through the slits, others in colorful dresses, sleeping babies tied to their backs, bustle in and out of the stores. We are the only tourists in this area, and people are looking at us, not menacingly, but just curiously, like we’re lost. Which we are. This is precisely why, on my own, I would never in a million years do this.
But Willem is loving it here. So I try to take a cue from him and relax, and just gape at this part of Paris meets Middle East meets Africa.
We go past a mosque, then a hulking church, all spires and buttresses, that seems like it landed in this neighborhood the same way we did. We twist and turn until we wind up in some sort of park: a quadrangle of grass and paths and handball courts sandwiched in between the apartment buildings. It’s packed with girls in head scarves playing some version of hopscotch and boys on the handball courts and people walking dogs and playing chess and sitting out for a smoke at the end of a summer afternoon.
“Do you have any idea where we are?” I ask Willem.
“I am as lost as you are.”
“Oh, we are so screwed.” But I laugh. It feels kind of nice to be lost, together.
We flop down under a stand of trees in a quiet corner of the park under a mural of children playing in the clouds. I slide off my sandals. I have tan lines made from dirt and sweat. “I think my feet are broken.”
Willem kicks off his flip-flops. I see the zigzag scar running up his left foot. “Mine too.”
We lie on our backs as the sun throws shadows down between the clouds that are really starting to roll in on the cooling breeze, bringing with them the electric smell of rain. Maybe Jacques was right, after all.
“What time is it?” Willem asks.
I shut my eyes and stick my arm out for him to see. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
He takes my arm, checks the time. But then he doesn’t let go. He examines my wrist, rotating it forward and back, as if it were some rare object, the first wrist he has ever seen.
“That’s a very nice watch,” he says finally.
“Thank you,” I say dutifully.
“You don’t like it?”
“No. It’s not that. I mean, it was a really generous gift from my parents, who’d already given me the tour, and it’s a very expensive watch.” I stop myself. It’s Willem, and something compels me to tell him the truth. “But, no, I don’t really like it.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. It’s heavy. It makes my wrist sweaty. And it ticks loudly, like it’s always trying to remind me that time is passing. Like I can’t ever forget about time.”
“So why do you wear it?”
It’s such a simple question. Why do I wear a watch that I hate? Even here, thousands of miles from home, with no one to see me wearing it, why do I still wear it? Because my parents bought it for me with the best of intentions. Because I can’t let them down.
I feel the gentle pressure of Willem’s fingers on my wrist again. The clasp opens, and the watch falls away, leaving a white ghost imprint. I can feel the refreshing breeze tickle against my birthmark.
Willem examines the watch, the Going Places engraving. “Where are you going, exactly?”
“Oh, you know. To Europe. To college. To medical school.”
“Medical school?” There’s surprise in his voice.
I nod. That’s been the plan ever since eighth grade, when I gave the Heimlich maneuver to some guy who was choking on his lamb shank at the next table. Dad had been out front, answering a call from the service when I’d seen the guy next to us go purple. So I just got up and calmly put my arms around the guy’s diaphragm and pushed until a piece of meat arced out. Mom was beyond impressed. She’d started talking about my becoming a doctor like Dad. After a while, I started talking about it too.
“So you’ll take care of me?”
His voice has the usual teasing tone, so I get that he’s joking, but this wave comes over me. Because who takes care of him now? I look at him, and he makes everything seem effortless, but I remember that feeling before—a certainty—that he is alone.
“Who takes care of you now?”
At first I’m not sure I said it aloud and, if I did, that he heard me, because he doesn’t answer for a long time. But then finally, he says, “I take care of me.”
“But what about when you can’t? When you get sick?”
“I don’t get sick.”
“Everybody gets sick. What happens when you’re on the road and you get the flu or something?”
“I get sick. I get better,” he replies, waving the question away.
I prop myself up on my elbow. This weird chasm of feeling has opened in my chest, making my breath come shallow and my words dance like scattered leaves. “I keep thinking about the double happiness story. That boy was traveling alone and got sick, but someone took care of him. Is that what happens to you when you get sick? Or are you alone in some gross hotel room?” I try to picture Willem in a mountain village, but all I get is an image of him in a dingy room. I think of how I get when I’m sick, that deep sadness, that aloneness that strikes—and I have Mom to take care of me. What about him? Does anyone bring him soup? Does anyone tell him about the green trees against the sky in the spring rain?