"Ava, why did you run off like that? Was it something I did?"
"I wanted to be by myself. I'm sorry, Arnaud." We stood around the corner from Teddy's, outside the entrance to my apartment building. He'd waited out the duration of my performance at the bar at Teddy's then followed me outside. It was time to have it out.
"What do you mean, you're sorry?" His eyes searched mine. For once, I had his full attention.
"I mean – we aren't right for each other."
I'd said it. Thank God, I'd gotten what I needed to tell him out on the table before our conversation moved any further along.
"You mean you are seeing Pierre? That con bastard. I can't believe you'd fall for someone like him." Arnaud seethed, his face a mask of disgust. "He's dull, Ava. Conventional. Boring. Not like you at all."
"No. I'm not seeing Pierre. I just don't see myself with you anymore. It has nothing to do with Pierre." Okay, I lied a teeny bit. Realizing Arnaud wasn't right for me had a little something to do with Pierre entering the picture. But I wasn't about to jump into his friend's arms. Neither was I about to reconnect with Arnaud. I needed to reconnect with myself. But that was harder to explain.
"Of course it has everything to do with Pierre. We were fine before he showed up."
"No, we weren't fine. You were in Vietnam, or Thailand, or wherever, and I was here. You have no idea if I was fine or not while you were gone. That's the point."
"That's not the point. You know what my job is. I've gone on trips before and you were always okay with it. What's changed this time?"
"I've changed." I wasn't going to compete with anyone for Arnaud's affections - neither some woman from his past named Mélanie nor some turbo-charged version of myself I no longer wished to be.
"Well – what – how – what do you mean, you've changed?" he sputtered. I'd never seen him at a loss for words before.
"It doesn't matter. It just matters that I'm no longer someone who's meant to be with you." Actually, I couldn't think of anyone who might be meant to be with Arnaud. There was no other woman I could imagine being jealous of as Arnaud's girlfriend, now I knew what being with him was really like. If I continued seeing him, there'd be more loneliness. More long periods of separation. More je t'adore declarations diluted by see you when I get back ones. My heart shriveled at the thought. Whoever Mélanie was, the fact that she hadn't asked about Arnaud when she'd bumped into Pierre told me she wasn't in the market to be his girlfriend. Maybe she already knew it was an impossible job.
"Of course, you're meant to be with me, Ava. You and I are alike." He paused, apparently trying to think of some ways in which we were.
"Are we?" I didn't think so anymore. It had taken Pierre coming along to make me realize I didn't want to have to work so hard at being someone I wasn't. I just wanted to be appreciated for being not-so-clever, not-so flashy me.
"You're a performer, a star. I'm a peacock. See what I mean?"
He sure got the second half of that statement right.
"You are a peacock, but I'm not a pea hen. I'm a performer now, but I'm not sure I want to keep on being one. I 'm not star material." There. I'd breathed life into the thought that had been nagging at me for so many months. I wasn't Madonna, and I was never going to be her or anyone like her. It just wasn't me.
"Of course you are. That's what drew me to you in the first place." His eyes lit up at the thought of whatever glittering image he had of me when we first met.
"That was then, and this is now." I took off my black and white turban and tossed it in the trash.
"But what do you mean? You're a performer. It's your destiny to be a star."
"While you were away, I realized I don't want to be a star. I want to be a songwriter."
"Eh voilà. I'm a journalist, and you're a songwriter. Two writers who don't compete with each other. Parfait."
"Not parfait, Arnaud. I'm going back to New York."
"But – then what about Pierre?"
"I told you this has nothing to do with Pierre," I yelled. I needed to get back to where I belonged, that was all.
"What has nothing to do with me?" a voice chimed in.
Sacré bleu! I looked around to see Pierre standing under the streetlamp, his brown eyes trained on mine with remarkable focus.
"My decision," I said calmly, although I felt anything but calm inside.
"What decision?" Pierre asked.
I took a deep breath.
"Arnaud and I are no longer seeing each other," I said, not daring to look at my former love.
I'd made more life-changing statements in the past five minutes than I had in the past five months. I was scared, but it was a good kind of scared. I had stood up for myself, for what I wanted out of life.
Pierre's eyes swiveled to Arnaud. Mine too.
"Is that your wish, then?" Arnaud asked, looking directly at me.
I nodded. No sound came out. There was no point to say anything more.
"Bon. C'est ça. Then we're done." Without so much as a glance at Pierre, he turned and walked away, his back straight, his stride jaunty.
It didn't fool me. He'd probably walked out of the life of the woman called Mélanie like that once upon a time. Then, he'd carried a torch for her forever after. Now, he could carry another one for me.
Pierre looked steadily at me. "I came to ask you something."
"Why I ran away – " I began. "I needed to – "
"Non. Not that." He cut me off, searching my face.
"Then what?"
"You know what."
"Do you mean, what's – "
"I mean, what's between us."
I nodded. Of course that's what he meant.
"What is between us?" I asked, wanting to hear him put words to what we already felt.
His hand slipped into mine as naturally as our feelings for each other had slipped into each other's hearts – without fanfare.
"Something, non?" he said, his face serious.
We stood there looking at each other a long moment. It was true, there was something between us. But now, there was something I needed to do for myself. Go where you want to be and the right man will follow. Don't follow a man, follow your dream. If whatever was between us had any legs, it would take us somewhere, down the road. Not now.
"Come on." I smiled to let him know his answer had been well-received. "Let's go upstairs." Arnaud had never bothered to visit my place. We had always gone to his.
Inside my flat, I poured Pierre a drink.
When he put it down, I picked up his hand with both of mine and looked at it carefully. It was strongly-built with squared off fingers and hairy knuckles. Unlike Arnaud's artistic hands, it looked down-to-earth, no-nonsense. Not much like a mathematician's hands either. But definitely hands that might belong to a French military officer. Or someone's husband or father.
Our embrace was warm and sweet, free from past hurts, firm from the solid friendship we had built over the past few weeks. And then we kissed.
It was dazzling, but I'd been dazzled before. What I hadn't been before, was grown up. Now, I was. If Pierre wanted to pursue me, I'd be receptive. But he'd have to follow me, because I now knew where I was going. And I was going to need some time to get over Arnaud.
"So tell me about going back to New York," he said, when we stopped kissing. We sat side by side, his hand covering both of mine, clasped in my lap.
"I need to be where I belong," I told him.
"Are you sure you don't belong here?" he asked.
"Yes. I'm sure. Paris is beautiful, but it will never be my home."
He nodded in understanding.
"I know the feeling."
"You do?" I was surprised.
"Yes."
"But you're French. How could you understand how it feels to be a foreigner here? Always learning new things, but always at a disadvantage to whoever I'm learning from."
"I know the feeling well."
"How could you?"
"I'm not from Paris. I'm from the provinces."
"But so many French people come here to live from the provinces."
"They do, don't they?" His smile was rueful.
"Like Arnaud." And Jean-Michel before him.
"Yes. They make their peace with the city."
I thought of both Arnaud and Jean-Michel. They led isolated, single lives in tiny studio apartments. It was a big-city lifestyle, not dissimilar to the way thousands of people lived back in Manhattan. But I belonged in Manhattan. And there were plenty of people who met each other and made lives together there. Not as foreigners, but as New Yorkers. Paris was different. If you weren't Parisian to begin with, you never were.
"And wouldn't you make your peace with the city?" I asked.
"If that's what I wanted."
We kissed again, this time more passionately.
"So what do you want then?" I continued.
He shook his head. "I don't know yet. But it's not living in a certain place I most want. It's being with the right person."
"The right woman?" It was a bold question, but the friendship we had built gave me the confidence to ask it.
"Exactly."
"And you?" What is it you most want?" He tucked me into his side, then stroked my chin, affectionately, like a father.
"I want to be bien dans ma peau. In a place where I belong. Where I won't be a foreigner forever."
"You're smart, Ava."
"And?" Sam had told me the same thing. Maybe it was time to believe them both.
"I like smart women."
"I think you already told me that," I said, remembering our feather-light conversation on the grounds of the officers' club a few weeks earlier.
"Non. I told you I liked your smart questions."
"Oh."
"And that I like you."
"Oh."
"So go back to New York, smart girl. Take what you learned here and make it work for you where you belong."
"Pierre, you're a mind reader. That's exactly what I plan to do."
"Then may I help you with your plans?"
I looked at him surprised. Suddenly, we were having a very grown up sort of conversation.
"But how would you do that?"
"I'd come visit you in New York, for a start."
"You would?"
"Yes. I would. And then we would see what the next plan is."
The smile on my face sprang directly from my innermost depths.
"I would love that," I said without thinking, meaning it as naturally as the words tumbled out of my mouth. It was easy to talk with Pierre about anything, everything – even the future.
"I would, too," Pierre said. "And now, I'm going to leave so you can get some sleep and be fresh to make more plans tomorrow."
"Where are you staying?" It didn't seem likely he'd remain at Arnaud's.
"I got a room at the officers' club this afternoon."
"And when are you leaving Paris?"
"Hopefully around the same time you leave for New York."
"Let's make that happen," I said, laughingly. I didn't need to know where he was going back to. It was enough to know I would see him again soon – in New York.
The next day, I went to Rue Scribe near Place de l'Opera, where the principal airline offices were located, and booked my return flight to New York.
John, the Englishman whose apartment I'd been staying in, was returning shortly after Christmas, to resume both his gig at Teddy's and teaching English to the aeronautical school students. I tidied up his small place, and by late afternoon, met Pierre again.
"So when are you leaving?" he asked, kissing me four times on the cheek and then once on the mouth.
"This Friday." It was still early enough in December for me to have caught a seat before the Christmas travel season began. "How about you?"
"This Friday, too. Right after I say good bye to you at the airport."
The man knew how to make a plan.
We spent the next two days taking long walks, deep in conversation and not noticing the gray chill of a Paris December in the least. Then it was time to go.
On Friday morning, Pierre picked me up by cab at my flat, and we nestled next to each other on the long ride out to Charles De Gaulle airport. I wasn't sad. Looking into his steady brown eyes, I knew we would see each other again soon. Meanwhile, I had plans to plant myself again in New York, this time in a non-performing capacity. I'd heard from a regular at Teddy's that the United Nations hired scores of administrative workers for each of its annual General Assemblies. I would go there the following Monday to fill out a job application. If Albert Einstein had been able to come up with his theory of relativity while working in a sleepy Swiss patent office, then I could pursue a career as a songwriter while holding down a job as an international civil servant. An administrative position at the U.N. would be predictable and unexciting. I could hardly wait.
At the airport, I quietly leaned into Pierre's chest as we stood in front of the international departures gate.
"Remember, Ava. Take what you learned here and make it work for you where you belong."
"I will." It was nice to feel understood. I looked forward to getting to know this man who liked my songs and liked me. But in my own time, on my own turf. I kissed him hard, then walked through the gate without looking back.
Twelve hours later, I was out on the sidewalk, blinking in the crystal blue brilliance of a cloudless December day in New York. I had said adieu to Paris but the lessons I'd learned there would stay with me forever.
I stepped off the curb and raised my hand to hail a cab.
***
Find Paris Adieu's sequel Black is Not a Color at online retailers or at http://lrd.to/Blackisnotacolor.
Find the complete 2-book boxed set The Ava Series at online retailers or at http://lrd.to/avaseries.
I look forward to continuing the story of Ava Fodor's journey of self-discovery with you.
- Author Rozsa Gaston