Chapter 2 January 1995 Lily Jacobsen—Job Applicant #2
As we scoped out Frenchmen, I joked that we should contact Guinness to find out if Mary Louise or I held the record for crap dates.
“It would be a tie,” she told the others.
“What was your worst date?” I asked her.
She stiffened. “I don’t want to talk about it. And you shouldn’t write about my failures.”
I wanted to argue that the dates weren’t failures—those guys were jerks, and it wasn’t her fault. But when she used that stilted tone, I knew not to argue.
An author’s apprenticeship is a million words.
I wrote during every spare moment—on the bus between tutoring sessions, on nights that Mary Louise spent with one of her on-again, off-again boyfriends.
I’d planned to write a romantic comedy, but the novel had too many disappointing first dates and false starts.
Though it meandered more than I’d intended, the plot was coming along.
I couldn’t say the same about my career.
After graduation, it had taken months of sending out résumés to finally receive job offers.
Mary Louise worked as a receptionist at an upscale American dental clinic, while I was hired at Wall Street English.
Teaching corporate jargon was not how I envisioned my career.
Each time I entered the classroom, my middle-aged students winced.
The bankers insisted that my English class was a “hostile takeover” of their beloved French.
The realtors complained that they were forced to “speak le business” in order to kowtow to international clients snatching up the best Parisian properties.
I’d been certain my love of language would win them over, but after twelve months and fourteen days of their steaming resentment, I accepted my failure.
Resigning had been a relief. To cover my share of the rent, I tutored enthusiastic pupils after school and on Saturday mornings.
With the freedom to write during the day, I’d told myself it would take two months to polish my novel, and two more to sign with an agent. That was a year ago.
In Paris, almost everyone I knew wanted to publish a book. We came from Perth or Birmingham or Fargo with our Fitzgerald dreams and Hemingway aspirations, certain that the City of Light would nourish us.
Outside the university cocoon, Mary Louise and I soon learned that Paris was a big city like any other.
Expensive. Agitated. Aloof. Even years after our arrival, she and I still shared a studio on the fifth floor of an old building.
There was no elevator, but the steep servants’ stairs kept us in shape.
If we peered out into the courtyard through our only window, we could look down on rich people—the portly CEO who brought home a gorgeous man every Friday night, the heart surgeon on the fourth floor whose lips were always pursed.
It wasn’t much of a view, but we told ourselves it didn’t matter, we had all of Paris.
Our linoleum flooring was peeling, and the brocade wallpaper had bald spots, but we covered them with Mary Louise’s pastel painting of the Eiffel Tower.
Her other canvases leaned against the walls.
My manuscripts and accompanying letters of rejection were stacked in the corner.
We used the pile as an end table; coffee rings stained the cover page of French Kisses, the chronicle of our misadventures with Parisian men.
“We write to taste life twice,” Ana?s Nin said, and I took the adage to heart.
Today, on the way home from my final tutoring session of the day (triplets with wealthy parents), I splurged on some flowers for Mary Louise to commemorate the fourteenth, the date of our arrival in France.
Marcelle, my favorite character in The Library Card, insisted that if you keep a bottle of champagne in your refrigerator, you’ll always find something to celebrate.
Life is hard, so it’s vital to mark each victory.
Thus, on the fourteenth of each month, Mary Louise and I commemorated our rebirth in Paris, our French-iversary.
Recently, she’d been withdrawn. We’d known each other since kindergarten, and for the first time in our lives, I couldn’t discern what she was feeling.
We ended up having what I called wordless fights: we’d talk until she retreated behind a wall of silence.
Was it something work-related? Mary Louise didn’t love answering phones in the dental office.
When I suggested finding a better job, she retorted that the money was good.
When I asked if she and her ex-boyfriend had a fight, she told me to mind my own business.
Maybe she was still down because of what that obnoxious art dealer said about her paintings. Or maybe it was last night.
We’d attended our friend Paloma’s going-away party.
Despite the sangria, the gathering felt like a funeral.
She was leaving us for a job in Miami. Since she could only take two suitcases, she divvied up her Parisian life, bequeathing books to me, an easel to Mary Louise, pans to Mireille, a futon to Yuka.
Our group had been through bad grades, a pregnancy scare, bouts of homesickness, and more and more goodbyes.
Though Paloma promised to return, Mary Louise and I knew that Paris was a trampoline town—once students bounced, they were gone for good.
“Another one bites the dust,” Mary Louise said glumly as we trudged home.
Our social circle was tightening like a noose around the neck. Soon, our friends would all be gone. A thought bubbled up inside me: maybe Mary Louise thought we should leave, too; maybe she was unhappy because she didn’t want to be here anymore.
Now, I stared at the bouquet of mimosas I’d bought for her. If only she’d tell me what was wrong, I could fix it. If only she would confide in me.
Arriving home, I dumped my messenger bag onto the floor, next to sheets of paper and bits of charcoal. I grinned at the half-formed figures that Mary Louise had drawn. This was a good sign. After she’d pitched her artwork to Parisian galleries, she quit painting.
“What do you think?” I heard her say. She stood in the doorway, probably returning from the bathroom down the hall, which we shared with a Turkish journalist and an Italian singer. She’d braided her curly red hair in a crown, so it wouldn’t get in her face as she sketched.
Peering at the drawings, I saw her father, snuff crammed in his cheek, and could practically smell the grease on his shirt after a long day at the garage.
“You captured him perfectly.”
She shrugged. Maybe my praise didn’t mean much.
I proffered the mimosas.
Mary Louise looked at me askance. “What’s this?”
She had to ask? For our French-iversary five months ago, she’d signed us up for a group lesson on how to do le cancan at the Moulin Rouge.
When I tried to raise my leg above my head like the dancer showed us, I tumbled backward onto the foam mat.
Mary Louise joined me there, her belly laugh echoing throughout the theater.
“Something to celebrate the fourteenth,” I replied.
“Oh! I guess I forgot.”
She put the flowers in our only vase while I spooned some Carte Noire into our French press.
I poured the milk, she the coffee, and we curled up on the futon with our mugs.
She reeked of cigarettes, which meant she had a new boyfriend, and that he was French.
I recalled Julien, who arrived exactly an hour late for every date, as if his watch were set on Greenwich time.
Or Louis, a creepy fashion photographer who took pictures of her while she slept.
The one thing the men seemed to have in common was their smelly Gitanes cigarettes.
I bawled her out every time they stunk up our studio.
Consequence: It had been a while since she’d introduced one of her dates to me.
I hated that she smoked. I resented her secrecy. But fights about both had led nowhere, so I kept my mouth shut.
“I’ve been wanting to tell you something,” she said.
Your latest guy? What’s his name, Romain or Pierre? I wanted to tease, but lately she’d been so sensitive that I didn’t dare. As I sipped my coffee, I gauged her tone. Concern. “Did something happen at home? Is your sister okay?”
She gnawed on her bottom lip, probably weighing her words. “I’m moving out.”
“What?” My hands started to tremble, so I set my mug on my stack of manuscripts.
Café au lait sloshed over the rim, turning the type into a milky gray cloud.
The announcement had a similar effect on me, blurring my emotions and stirring up questions: Where was she going, and when? Why was she leaving me?
Coffee continued to creep across the page, taking with it any meaning.
On any other day, I would have jumped up and dabbed the manuscript with fistfuls of napkins like an EMT performing CPR.
After all, my words were my life. But now…
I sat frozen as Mary Louise sopped up the mess with a cloth.
I wanted to tell her not to bother, that the draft was lost, the mood ruined.
A month ago, she’d mentioned apartment hunting, but I hadn’t realized she was serious.
“When are you moving out?” I didn’t intend to sound angry. “When?” I demanded in a softer tone.
She wouldn’t meet my eye. “As soon as you can make rent.”
Mary Louise earned good money, and could afford to live on her own, unlike me. I loved teaching teens with my part-time tutoring gigs, but the pay barely covered my share of rent and food.
“What changed?” I turned away, focusing my attention on the bookcase so she wouldn’t see how upset I was. No need for her to feel as bad as I did.
“I need more space. We both do. Everyone our age is either getting married or getting their own place.”
Since when do we care what “everyone” is doing?