Graduates in Wonderland (18 page)

Right now, I'm at the National Library. Most days I come here to study with Jacques and Marc in the philosophy reading room and I cart my books over from film and media studies. The rooms are deathly silent. People frown at you when you sneeze. It is a VERY SERIOUS place, where Jacques and Marc pull out copies of Derrida and Foucault, and I pull out old movie magazines. Right now, they are sitting across from me with their noses stuck in their computers.

They're both a little older than me, and they love talking about movies and books and also my mistakes in French. It feels like what I imagine having older brothers is like. Do they make fun of your taste in movies and give you book recommendations and also sometimes get you drunk?

Sometimes Tall Sasha meets us outside and we stand on the steps shivering with Jacques and Marc, making conversation over our thick black vending-­machine espressos.

Things changed so quickly—­I remember attending a seminar here my first week of school and just thinking what a big, empty place the library was and how Paris was so lonely.

I see these guys all the time and Olivier comes out a lot with us too. I've figured out that he is not dating anyone, he is not gay, and he always tries to take the seat next to me. Because he's currently between jobs, we meet for coffee with Sasha about three times a week.

I can't help but feeling like Olivier's trying to get me alone.

“You like horses? Do you want to go to the races sometime?”

(Jacques cuts in.) “Yeah, let's all go to the races!”

Or

Me: I can't wait to see this movie.

Olivier: I've been looking forward to it too! We should go.

Marc: Great! How's Tuesday?

I know we're moving toward something, but at a painfully slow pace.

Most nights end like this: We're all standing around in a group, deciding where to go next, when Olivier takes my hand.

And kisses my cheek.

And waves good-­bye.

Sasha brings him up and nods at me knowingly. I haven't confided in her, but she knows I love him. How do girls always know?

Also, the writer, Lee, wrote back to me again. He's now halfway through my novel and he sent me an honest e-mail about how important it is to write books that people will actually read. He told me about his early novels, and the books that made a big splash in the literary world, and the difference between them. He wrote that no matter how beautiful the language and the characters are, we read fiction for stories—­which is what my book lacks. He added that the word
novel
means
new
, which is what mine needs to be.

Lee's leading a writer's colony in Canada over the next month but will get back to me on the second half as soon as he can. Meanwhile, I'm trying to interpret what his feedback means for my future writing. Writing a plot-­based story is so not what I learned in any class. “Write characters,” I've been told. “Write what you know
.
”

He says, “All literature is longing.”

To me this means every character is driven by desire, but I'm still mulling this over.

Sometimes I want to give up and just write a romance novel.

Love,

Rach

APRIL 2

Jess to Rachel

Um, I don't know how to tell you this, but I must do it quickly. I am typing furiously before Isla and our intern come back into the office from lunch.

I have a thriving online relationship with my intern. Oh God. I just turned twenty-­four. I should know better. What am I doing? Oh God. Omigod.

There. It's out there. Now you know and now it cannot be stopped.

Cons: Could lose job? Least professional editor ever?

Pros: This could be great fodder for the plot of a romance novel you are going to write.

His name is Sam Singer. Through my company's online messaging system, we began discussing upcoming articles, which then broke off into questions about our own personal travels, and then escalated into making light jokes about our colleagues. Then, a thousand messages later, he's telling me he thinks the bandanna I wear in my hair is cute.

This is not standard boss/intern territory, right? The typical intern job description does not include calling the boss cute, does it? If it does, this definitely explains why all of my summer internships led nowhere.

Other than the intricacies of flirting via instant messenger, here's what I have learned:

Before Sam arrived in Beijing, he spent a month backpacking through India and from there he flew to Nepal to climb Mt. Everest. I'm going to let that sink in for you. He climbed Mt. Everest!

He is from a specific part of Northern England that makes him a “Mackem.” Whatever the hell that means. His accent sounds more Irish than English to me; it has a melody to it. His sentences dip low and then end high.

He has dark brown hair and light hazel eyes. He has a grin that makes him look just like a young, slightly crooked Tom Cruise. When he smiles at me with one eyebrow raised, I know I am not strong enough to ignore my attraction to him. Why must his eyebrows have the ability to do that?? What evolutionary purpose does this serve except to make women want to throw themselves at raised-­eyebrowed men?

Okay, I guess that is actually a pretty good evolutionary purpose. I just figured out the answer to my own question while typing this. Well played, Evolution.

Unfortunately, I can't technically see him without blatantly turning my chair around to look at him. Why must Isla sit between us? She's already as thin as a rail, but since I can't directly stare at Sam throughout the entire workday, I need her to be entirely invisible as well. That way, I can see what Sam is doing, what the back of his neck looks like, and if he's looking at me. This is not too much to ask, is it?

While chatting online, we are the funnier, wittier versions of ourselves. In person, our conversations are stilted, hindered by the constraints of work etiquette. We ended up in the elevator together yesterday and it was very awkward—­he rambled on about taking A-­levels in French and then I blurted out something about you in Paris. We work on the twenty-­eighth floor, and as the elevator slowly rose, I tried to salvage the conversation by asking to see what he was listening to on his iPod.

Rachel. This is what I saw. I saw Ryan Adams. Paul Simon. Damien Rice. Kings of Leon. Bright Eyes. Jeff Buckley. Carole King. Then, I saw Joni Mitchell's entire album
Blue
.

My immediate reaction was, “Oh, he is not straight.” He often wears pink button-­down shirts and his clothes always seem freshly ironed. But when he holds my gaze, it makes me suspect that he likes me.

My magazine held a launch party at a hotel last night, and I spotted Sam across the room. We kept our distance amongst our colleagues, but I noticed that he wore a T-shirt instead of his usual buttoned-­up shirts. At the hotel bar, Isla leaned over to say, “Holy shit. Look at Intern Sam. He has muscles. I can
see his chest muscles
.” I just blinked at her, trying to give off an aura of professionalism. She has no idea. Also, if she goes for him, I will kill her.

I thought the flirtation with Sam was all just in good fun, but when I stood in the elevator this morning, waiting for the doors to open into my office, I felt my heart racing. It's too late. I'm in deep. My heart has decided.

He's only in Beijing for another five weeks before he travels through Southeast Asia. Then he moves to Australia permanently.

What do I do, Rach? Go with my instincts and behave rashly? Have a fling with my intern? Act mature and end this before it has begun?

Am I going to make a huge mistake?

Here's a hint: probably.

Love,

Jess

P.S. According to Sam, I am twenty-­six, instead of twenty-­four. I wanted to retain some veneer of authority so I pretended to be older than him. This is how it begins. WEB OF LIES.

P.P.S. No, Jacques and Marc are not acting like older brothers. Brothers make you sit in the middle seat during road trips and they will always try to bribe you with chewing gum. Don't fall for it!!! Then they grow up, marry nice women, and suddenly start cooking dinner for you. This almost balances out all the false gum bribing and forced middle-­seat sitting. Almost.

APRIL 15

Rachel to Jess

Jessica! You are really pushing the boundaries of being a boss. Obviously I am riveted, though, so I must know more! And are you going to have to write his reference?

Also, you keep saying he looks like a crooked Tom Cruise, and I don't even know what that means. His face is sideways?

I've been going out to lunch with Olivier because he doesn't work very far away, although the library boys tag along. I'm starting to really like him. Today, our thighs kept grazing each other's during lunch. However, I didn't understand the waiter at ALL. At all. Then the waiter asked if I spoke French and Olivier goes, “A little.” I hit him on the thigh hard. And he laughed.

Wherever this is going, I wish it would hurry up and get there.

In other news, as I'm sure you've heard, Astrid just left after visiting for a weekend, while on her way to Norway. I took her to my favorite spots and on Saturday we ended up at Shakespeare and Company, the famous English bookstore on the Seine, for a book launch party. It was a book about mysticism, so they set up mini tents around the bookstore: a gypsy who tells fortunes, a woman who reads tarot cards, an I Ching demonstration, and so on.

Stunned-­looking people kept emerging from the fortune-­teller's tent exclaiming about his talents, so Astrid and I stood in the long line to have our palms read. Astrid went into the tent first and emerged half an hour later. She didn't even tell me much about what they talked about, but said he mentioned her having a lucrative career. Then I took my turn.

The fortune-­teller wore a ruffled shirt and a gold earring. He didn't say anything to me, but just studied my palm. He stared at it silently for at least two or three minutes. Then he let it go and looked at me.

“Romance is vital to your life,” he said.

“I did just meet someone,” I told him.

He nodded. “All I know is that you will have one dominant love in your life, which will be very happy, and to which you'll devote yourself completely. But right before that, you will have met somebody who you think is the person for you. He is not.”

“So is the guy I just met The One or the one before The One?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Does my hand say when I will meet The One?”

He looked back at me.

“It's not a calendar,” he said. “I don't know.”

Okay, so then I felt dumb, but wasn't he the one claiming he could read my future on my palm?

I mumbled thanks and pulled back the curtain to find Astrid. We went out next door for drinks and shivered together under a malfunctioning heat lamp as we drank red wine and watched the boats go along the river. I sat stunned for a while, while Astrid brought me back to earth by joking about the way the fortune-­teller might have been mistaken for a pirate in other circumstances, given his costume. I looked at her handbag and told her his “lucrative career” tip-­off about her might have been obvious by her designer purse.

I hadn't seen Astrid for two years and we talked about this a lot. She told me that it seems like I'm finally learning how to be more proactive and take things less personally and we discussed how you are starting to think long-­term about your future. Of all of us, she feels the most scattered. While most people are narrowing their options and focusing on one thing, she still wants to be everything. She's in law school, but she wants to take acting classes and make documentaries, as well as start her own business. She talked at a million miles per hour.

Even though I know all of this stuff about her life, and it feels so far from mine, Astrid feels like the same person I knew at Brown, just amplified. She both is and isn't the Astrid I knew before, and though I love her just as much, I have these fleeting moments where I feel like I hardly know her at all. You want to become an actress? When did this happen?

I wish I'd had more time with the fortune-­teller. In addition to his vague advice about The One, he also talked about my having a creative career. Does that mean I should keep going with film? Or that writing will eventually take over? Or some combination of both? I should have asked him when I had the chance.

Maybe it just means that he thought I looked “arty” and spoke accordingly.

Love,

I Paid Twenty Euros for a Man in a Ruffled Shirt to Tell Me Someone Loves Me

APRIL 22

Jess to Rachel

Why are you guys doing things like visiting fortune-­tellers? Did we ever do this before? Also, I want to come. I want to hang out under heat lamps with you and Astrid and discuss our destinies. But I know what you mean about Astrid changing—­I think I saw glimmers of it when we were in Beijing together and she was working three completely different jobs at once. I love her but I can't keep up with her because she always has a new life plan and a new life philosophy that she wants me to embrace. This month the plan is buying a mountain chalet and the philosophy is Dostoyevsky-­based.

Whatever
you
do, don't get drunk and ask Olivier if he thinks he's The One or the one before The One. Promise me.

However, do as I say, not as I do.

I couldn't stand the mixed signals from flirting anymore, so I invited Sam to a friend's going-­away party, and he showed up at the bar at 2 
A.M.
, completely drunk. At work, he is polite, almost
too
polite, responsible, and very buttoned-­up, but tonight he became the online persona I've been flirting with for the past few weeks. When he showed up at the party, he was loose and carefree and greeted me with a big hug—­the first time we've ever touched.

We sat alone in a corner talking and quietly making fun of everyone else at the party. If true love isn't sitting in the corner with someone and gossiping about everybody else while they press their leg against yours, then I don't know what is.