5 Ginger
5
Ginger
“You want to come up? And just to cut you off before you start making excuses, I’m not asking you if you want to go to bed with me.”
Funny enough, I didn’t feel that way. And yet I was excited. I looked up at the outline of his building beneath the streetlamp while he waited for a reply.
“Honestly… I ’ve been in need of a bathroom for a while now, but I didn’t want to ruin the magic of the moment. You know, a walk at night through Paris and all…”
He laughed and shook his head. “Come on. You need some rest.”
He opened the door, and we took a narrow stairway up to the top floor. He put the key in the lock and invited me in, apologizing for the sorry state of the place and its small size. It was an attic studio with a mattress on the floor and the kitchen on the other side of the room. I say kitchen ; what I mean is a hot plate on a wooden counter someone had tried unsuccessfully to sand down and varnish. The walls were bare except for a few spots of damp, and exposed beams crisscrossed the ceiling. Rhys pointed to the door of the bathroom after leaving my backpack on a chair with threadbare upholstery.
“It flushes weird,” he warned me.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I went in.
I washed my hands and face before coming back out. When I did, Rhys was in the kitchen area boiling a pot of water. Glancing over, he opened a creaky cabinet.
“You in the mood for some noodles? I didn’t get full.”
“Sure. Nothing spicy though.”
“Nothing spicy. Got it.”
I walked over beside him and stood there shoulder to shoulder, watching the noodles go limp as he stirred them in the pot.
“What are you thinking?”
“Just how weird this all is,” I said. “Don’t you think? I mean, I was in London in my room a few hours ago. And now I’m in the apartment of some guy I just met in Paris. But the weirdest thing is…”
I wasn’t sure if I should say it. He turned, and I saw his eyes were lighter than I’d thought at first: the color of icicles. And that made me think of winter.
“Spit it out. What’s the weirdest thing?”
“I don’t even feel uncomfortable.”
“Just like home, huh?”
“I’m serious, Rhys. I feel like I’ve known you a long time, but I don’t actually know anything about you. We haven’t even told each other the basics, the stuff you have to type in when you open an account on a dating app. Hey—don’t look at me like that.” I slapped his arm when I saw his mischievous smile. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just weird that we’ve been talking for hours, and we don’t even know how old each other is or what each other does for a living. Do you have a job? Are you studying? What are you doing in Paris?”
He reached up to grab bowls off the upper shelf, and his white shirt rose up a few inches. I looked away quickly, almost wishing he’d just kept his jacket on.
“That’s what I like the most.”
“What? Not knowing?”
“Yeah. That you didn’t just come out and ask me that stuff. If the first things you’d wanted to know about me had been my job and my age, we probably wouldn’t be here.”
“No. Right. It was better for me to ask if you were a player. How magical.” We laughed. Then I thought of something. “Have you ever read The Little Prince ?”
“No, why?”
“It’s my favorite book. It was even when I was little, before I could understand it. I have a copy full of underlines, marks, and notes in the margins. I reread it all the time. One of my favorite parts is where he’s talking about adults and how they like numbers, and he says: When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, ‘What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?’ Instead, they demand: ‘How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?’ Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him. ”
“Interesting,” he whispered, serving the noodles and taking two beers from the fridge. He walked off to the mattress on the floor and set his bowl on his lap. Then he took a sip of his beer.
“You eat in bed?”
“Where else?”
I sat down in front of him.
“You can take off your shoes.”
I did it because my feet were killing me after all those hours walking. I crossed my legs and picked up my bowl. I twirled the noodles around my chopsticks as we ate, looking up occasionally and laughing for no reason. None of it made any sense, and at the same time, it meant so much… I still had beer left over when I was done eating. I took little sips and looked around, memorizing every detail. The piles of books. The stacks of records on a table full of cables and electronics. The half-dead plant on the kitchen windowsill.
“You know what I liked most about tonight?”
“You’ll break my heart if you don’t say me,” he joked.
“You’re part of it… Have you ever had the feeling that all the people who know you think you’re someone else? I mean, maybe that’s my fault. Sometimes it’s like time sets a pattern for you and you can’t change it. Like everyone thinks I’m so understanding. Oh, tell Ginger; she’ll get it. Ginger won’t get upset. And I don’t get it. And I do get upset. But I’ve spent so many years pretending to be the person others say I am, the girl who never loses her grip, who always thinks of others first… I’ve been doing that so long that I don’t know where the real Ginger is. Maybe I killed her. Maybe she’d dead and buried. What do you think, Rhys? Because I’m scared to think about it.”
I don’t know where all that came from, and all of a sudden. I just know I was thinking that since Rhys didn’t know me from Adam, it meant I could be myself in a way I didn’t allow myself to be with the people who had gotten used to the fake, stick-on Ginger, who never said what she thought, who always put other people first, the good girl who was never selfish.
“She’s not dead. She’s here, with me.”
“I think I’m going to cry again, Rhys.”
“No, please. Shit. Don’t cry.”
“Like, how’s it possible I can tell you this and not my sister or my friends? It should be just the opposite. It should be harder with a stranger. And you still haven’t told me anything about yourself, and I’ve been talking all night without stopping.”
“If that bothers you, I’ll tell you something about myself.”
“Something you can’t tell anyone else?”
“Okay.” His expression changed. He seemed nervous. “My dad. I haven’t talked to him for more than a year. Lots of people know that, basically all my friends do. But they think I hate him. That we had a fight over something dumb. But that’s not true. He’s always been the person I love most; it’s just that something happened…and we argued…and we said stuff neither of us can forget. We haven’t seen each other since last Christmas.”
His eyes were glowing as I bent over—I don’t know why; it just came from inside me, spontaneously—and hugged him, so tight that I almost fell on top of him. Rhys held me in his arms. I was wrong when I first met him: it wasn’t his gum that smelled of mint; it was his hair. His shampoo. The smell surrounded me as I sank my nose into his hair.
We separated slowly until our noses were touching, and he held my hand in his. The hours were slipping by.
“Look, to hell with all this sad stuff; let’s talk about something else. What do you do?”
He smiled, and his look was sweet and tender like a caress. “I’m a DJ and a composer. I make electronic music.”
“You’re fucking with me.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know; I just didn’t expect that. It’s like if you told me you were a beekeeper or something. I didn’t imagine you listening to…that kind of music.”
“I like all kinds of music.”
He got up and turned on his stereo. A song began to play, sung by one of those women whose voice feels like an embrace. Soft. Low. Rhys danced his way back to the bed. He looked silly. He didn’t care. I laughed.
“So that’s how you make your living? How old are you?”
“Now this does feel like a date.”
“Stop joking. I want to know.”
“Make a living, not really. I get by. Basically I travel, and then I stay a while in whatever city offers me opportunities. Right now I’ve got a gig at a club in Belleville for two months. After that, we’ll see.” He shrugged. “And I’m twenty-six. I hope that satisfies your curiosity, Ginger Snap.”
“No, dammit! Don’t you dare!”
“What, Ginger Snap? I like that. Ginger snaps are my favorite. You are literally one of my secret vices,” he confessed.
“I hate you right now.”
“I like you every bit as much as I did before.”
“You’re one of those people who can’t take anything seriously.”
“Maybe. You’ll have to find out.”
I sighed when I saw he was just playing along.
“Okay, your turn. Now that we’ve gotten all serious, what’s your dream?”
“My dream?”
“Or your job then?”
“Right. You’re one of those idealists who thinks I should be living my dream. I’m sorry to disappoint you. I don’t have one of those wild fantasies I have to fight to make come true. I’m studying marketing and business management. Same as Dean.”
“Were you two separated at birth?”
“Don’t start. It’s simpler than that. My father is the owner of one of the biggest cabinet companies in Britain. He does all types of designs and materials…”
“Are you trying to sell me some?”
I laughed and took a sip of beer. “I’m trying to explain why I’m studying business. The idea of running a company, I don’t know, it’s always seemed cool to me.”
“What about Dean?”
“I told you, our parents are friends. He was always going to work in the family business when school was over.”
His eyebrows furrowed. Just for a second, but I saw it, the doubt, the urge to contradict me. Then he smiled the same old smile again, the one that made me breathless if I looked at it too long. He finished off his beer and left the bottle on the floor next to our dishes. Then he lay back on the bed, bent his arm behind his neck, and looked up coolly.
“How old are you, Ginger?”
“Twenty-one. As of last month.”
He turned serious, and I felt his fingers wrap around my wrist and pull me gently toward him. I didn’t stop him. I lay there next to him, my head resting on his pillow. On the sloping wall of the attic was a round wooden window like a porthole on a ship. It was right above us, and the moon was looking at us through the glass. I shivered. I knew this was a significant moment, but I still didn’t know why. I took a deep breath. One, two, three . The music was floating in the background. His hand was on top of mine. He’d let my wrist go and was tracing circles on my skin with his thumb and following the lines of my veins.
He turned off the lights.
I was sinking down into his mattress.
Everything else, the whole outside world, suddenly ceased to matter. Because he was there. I was. We were. And a French song I couldn’t understand. And a window to the sky. And the feeling of ease, of being able to breathe. Excitement.
I closed my eyes and focused on his fingertip as it traveled over my skin.
“Rhys.” I whispered in the darkness.
“Yeah.” He took a deep breath.
“What I’m about to say is going to sound crazy, and I know it doesn’t make sense, we only met each other a few hours ago, but I promise you I’ll remember you. And even many years from now, I’ll still remember you and this night that happened out of nowhere.”
I didn’t see him smile, but I felt it.
“Okay. I hope that when you think of me in that moment, you’ve made all your dreams come true.” He covered my mouth with his hand. “Don’t laugh, dammit. I’m being serious, Ginger. I’m trying to be deep, like one of those intellectuals who spouts stupid shit that sounds smart because of who it’s coming from.”
“Sorry, you’re right.”
“Damn straight I am. A day will come when you won’t feel like you have to hide everything in front of people, you know? You’ll be able to just be yourself. It sounds easy, but it’s actually like utopia. I know the people around you push you to be different, but just tell yourself they’re numbers, like you said about the Little Prince, and they’re down on earth, not up where we are.”
“Where are we?”
He looked out the window. “Us? On the moon.”
“I like how that sounds.”
“It’s the truth. Aren’t you feeling it right now?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I feel like I’m on the moon…”
“Get some sleep, Ginger Snap.”
“I hate you, Rhys.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.”