Chapter Nineteen
So, my suspicions were right – Emmett is rich.
‘Fuck me,’ I say. He’s in a hotel on a wide boulevard.
He has a doorman. Poor guy is standing there, sweating in a long coat and hat.
The reception looks to be carved entirely from marble, and while my case looked enormous in my tiny room, it seems positively minuscule in Emmett’s cavernous hotel suite.
‘It’s a bit over the top,’ he says.
‘A bit? It’s like a palace. Did you have a rich uncle we didn’t know about? Did he die and leave you everything?’
Emmett at least has the decency to look embarrassed. He mumbles something about investments and won’t meet my eye. But this isn’t normal, is it? For people without generational wealth? For people who work in the charity sector, even doctors?
I’m acting as if I’ve never so much as seen a hotel room before. I’m throwing open cupboards, peering out the window at the street below. It doesn’t feel real.
Emmett has his list of Earl’s paintings out again. There’s a neat tick next to The Weight of Light and Longing for Human Connection.
But we still have Montmartre in Motion, The Juxtaposition of Life and Death and The Rubicon, the mystery painting of the blue door.
‘Which ones did you want to go to today?’ I ask Emmett, running my fingers across all surfaces and thinking that this quest still feels as flimsy as fuck.
‘I thought we could take a turn around the neighbourhood, since Montmartre is close by, and then maybe go to the spa. We still have tomorrow for the graveyard and it’ll give the Deathers a chance to figure out where the blue door is. If they manage it.’
I’ve never been to a spa. They’ve always seemed a bit pink and fluffy for my tastes. But this hotel is all rich darkness, so maybe the spa will be the same.
Emmett’s still standing by the door, watching me. He’s so still, it’s unnerving.
My phone buzzes, the medicine alarm.
‘Sounds great,’ I tell him, walking around the bed to get my case. This could so easily be a ‘just one bed’ thing, but the just one bed is massive – it’s like a small country. Plus there’s a couch that’s bigger than my bed at home.
‘I’ll just wheel my case into the bathroom and then we can go walk, then spa. I’ll need to buy a bikini to wear in there.’
‘I’m sure we’ll find something.’
‘Great. Great.’ I don’t know if I’m mentally prepared to see Emmett, my friend in the spa. Hopefully they’ll give him a massive robe to wear – a head to toe one that covers everything.
But my chest is feeling increasingly tight.
Like there’s an elastic band around it. I’m half out of breath and it’s not even thoughts of Emmett in swimming shorts that’s doing it.
Everyone assumes that you feel heart failure in your heart, but it’s not that.
It’s your lungs that mostly give up the ghost.
In the bathroom, I open my case, organise my pills for the rest of the day, and then bury the bottles under a chaotic mountain of stuff.
When I come out of the bathroom, I can, weirdly, hear myself. I think that I’ve gone mad for a second, and let’s be honest, Paris would be an excellent place to go mad, but my voice is coming from Emmett’s phone.
‘In this episode of the Art of Dying, we’ll be looking at Neoclassicist Jacques-Louis David. This guy was a true Deather in his day. Heavily involved in the French Revolution, David painted the well-known ‘Death of Marat’, so it’s no real surprise that…’
Emmett is pressing at his phone, frantic.
‘Sorry,’ he says, as my voice cuts off finally. ‘It was an accident.’
‘You accidentally searched my blog and played an old video?’ I’m standing in the doorway of the bathroom still.
‘Something like that. You sounded great. I love that you’re doing this.’
I shake my head. I want to be annoyed, but there’s no fight, no nothing left. ‘Just leave it, Emmett. Please.’
He puts his phone in his jacket pocket and holds his hands up.
‘Okay, it’s away. I won’t listen again.’
I let out a breath. I don’t talk about the fact that I’m dying in every episode, rarely in fact.
But one glance at the comments will show it.
There’s always some argument about the fact that since I could get a transplant, I’m not technically dying.
And then the Deathers who like to philosophise about whether we’re all dying.
I have a Buddhist follower who’s been telling us quite a lot about anicca, the idea that life is impermanent.
So yes, I might not talk about my death all the time, because who wants to do that?
But it’s just overwhelmingly death-centric.
‘Thank you.’ Hopefully, Emmett got fractionally more stupid during our years apart.
Otherwise, my behaviour doesn’t exactly come across as normal.
‘Shall we walk?’ I should rest, especially since my chest is so tight, and my ankles feel puffy in my boots as I struggle to get the zip over them.
And isn’t that a nice image? The last great indignity. Dying with puffy ankles.
‘Okay, let’s walk.’
I keep going, and as we begin to wander through the streets of Montmartre, it’s hard to worry about my ankles.
The wide open boulevards make it hard to worry about anything at all.
We pass a woman in sky-high heels walking seven dogs, and a group of teenagers who all laugh and talk loudly.
A couple kiss against the railings, practically pornographic for the middle of the day. It’s so busy.
The Place Saint-Pierre is filled with artists and musicians.
There’s so much life here, it’s confronting.
I’m used to keeping my head down, blocking out the world with music, so it’s taken me a while to adjust to hearing and seeing everything.
I’m full of every colour, reminding myself that whatever happens in the future, I’ll be grateful for these days.
‘It’s easy to think of Earl and Sebastian here,’ Emmett says. I agree, this is the sort of place that Earl would have loved. Full of people.
We climb the steps to the white church slowly.
And when Emmett offers me his arm, I take it.
I silently curse that there is so much climbing in Paris, but the views at the top are worth it.
Inside is everything you’d expect from an old Parisian church, dark and gold and moody.
I think how much easier it might be if I believed in this version of an afterlife.
Not that I believe in nothing, but what I have is intangible and ill-defined.
We stop in a café as I’m exhausted. Emmett goes to order baguettes while I reply to some Deathers. There’s a message from Darth Painter.
DarthPainter: Paris suits you Luna. I hope you’re having a brilliant time.
TheArtofDying: I am, thanks Darth. It’s stirring up a lot too, from the past.
Darth isn’t online, so instead of waiting for a reply, I hit record for another video.
‘Welcome Deathers, to Montmartre,’ I talk into my phone, recording a live blog.
‘I mentioned in my last video that Spencer studied in Paris and fell in love with these streets. He always said that there was no city in the world like it. I’ll link his Montmartre piece in the comments.
He was still heavily influenced by Expressionism in this work, so the lines are distorted and the brushwork is mixed, but it’s emotionally intense.
Earl loved people; he always talked about how interesting people were.
It’s natural, then, that he’d be drawn to painting places with so many people from all walks of life.
I think it says something too, the fact that in his final years, he painted Paris, the place he learned to love art. ’
I talk some more about Earl’s time at art school in Paris.
‘This time had such a seminal impact on his work. Earl liked to mix different styles, experiment. He never subscribed to one school of thought. And you can see that in Paris. And like in Paris, the mixture really worked for Earl, it kept his art interesting.’
I see that Emmett is coming back, so I wrap it up.
‘And that’s all I’ve got time for. Have a great day, Deathers. And remember, bonus death points for anyone who figures out where the blue door might be.’
I finish recording and hit upload. Almost immediately, my phone pings. Mae.
Mae: Nice video. You are so falling in love with Emmett during this great romantic quest you’re on.
Me: Thanks. And no, I’m not. It’s a platonic quest.
I have to keep my message to Mae short because my hands don’t appear to be working properly anymore.
Mae: Heard that before.
Me: I don’t want my heart broken again.
Mae: Hate to break it to you sis, but your heart is already fucked. Go live a little. What’s the worst that can happen?
I’d die of a broken heart, with a broken heart. The most tragic (if slightly poetic) death ever.
Mae: What’s that quote? People who don’t learn from the past are idiots? Tell him you’re poorly, tell him you love him stupid.
Me: That is not a quote.
Mae: Should be.
‘Hi,’ I say to Emmett as he finishes weaving his way through tables, tray laden down with carbs, the Rue Saint-Rustique in the background.
‘Hi,’ he smiles, putting the tray down. It looks delicious, but my appetite is non-existent.
‘What do you think Earl wanted us to feel, coming here?’ he asks.
I look around at all the people.
‘Maybe he thought we’d become hermits when we were older and he wanted to remind us that there’s a world full of people out there.’
Emmett laughs. ‘He wasn’t wrong, for me at least.’
I sigh. ‘Nor me.’
‘Do you think that’s why we were so intense when we were younger? Because we just didn’t like other people?’
I’ve always acknowledged how intense my feelings were for Emmett. I don’t know that I really ever believed that he felt the same way. He never told me that he loved me, though I was sure I loved him.
‘I mean, maybe. We were pretty codependent back then.’
Emmett laughs.
‘Just a bit.’
‘I think we both wanted something good in our lives.’
He nods. ‘It terrified me.’
‘It scared me too. How much I loved you. Even if I didn’t admit it at the time.’