She heard the bed creak as Simon rolled over and let out a groan.
“What are you doing down there?” he mumbled.
“Just grabbing my things.” Nita tried to make her voice sound nonchalant as she knelt on the floor and pulled her thin sweater over her head.
Despite their actions last night, she was embarrassed to have him see her now without her clothes. She squirmed into her jeans while remaining seated on the floor and out of his view.
Simon poked his head over the bed until he made eye contact with her. “Are you going somewhere?” he asked.
“I should go back to my place,” she said.
“Your place?” he asked. “I thought you were done with Mathieu.”
She rose to her feet, bringing her hand to her forehead, trying to ease the throbbing she felt behind it. “I am. Er, I was. I just—I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Simon scampered up from the bed, the sheets bunched around his waist, and came closer to her. “What’s wrong? Is it something I did?”
She shook her head.
“Nita, what is it? Please tell me.”
His eyes bored deep into hers, and she had to look away. “We shouldn’t have done that last night. You’re with ?lise. And this, what we did, makes me no better than Mathieu with that girl,” she said softly toward the floor.
“You are nothing like him,” Simon said, his jaw tight. “Please don’t think that.”
She shook her head again. “We let alcohol interfere with our friendship.”
Simon sighed. “Maybe we needed it to prove we shouldn’t just be friends. I will call ?lise today. Tell her we shouldn’t continue our relationship.”
She met his eyes, knowing she was unable to give him what he wanted. She didn’t deserve someone like him after the choices she’d been making. Decisions he knew nothing of and would never respect if he did.
“Simon, I’m sorry. I need to go back and either work things out with Mathieu or get my things and go. But I can’t continue to rely on you to bail me out of this mess.”
He wrapped the sheets more tightly around his waist so they wouldn’t drop when he let go and put his hands on her shoulders. “We don’t have to move into anything, but you don’t need to run back to him just to get away from me.”
Her heart sank at him even having that thought. “I’m not trying to get away from you. But I need to figure out where my life is supposed to go, and right now, I don’t have any idea where that is.”
She grabbed her purse, confirming the photographs of Sophie were still in the inside pocket. As she moved into the living room, she saw the dried wine still on the floor and felt bad leaving him with that mess, but she knew she had to get out before he convinced her otherwise.
She walked slowly down the Paris streets, taking in the tourists passing by her and the shop workers loitering on the streets for cigarette breaks. She had grown up feeling like she was never going to be the perfect, dutiful Indian daughter her parents had hoped for. She had known she was different from the other girls. But she had never realized that she was capable of such disgusting acts as what she had just done. It was more than even she had thought she had in her. She reminded herself of the Gujarati proverb “Even in Kashi, crows are black.” She had heard the saying many times as a child but had never been to Kashi until a few months before her engagement. In that holy city, she had joined the throngs of Hindus who flocked there to bathe in the Ganga River, hoping to cleanse herself of the dark thoughts that had always surrounded her, so she could be pure for the man she would eventually marry. She’d observed the crows while she was waist deep in the river, holding her mummy’s hand as they waded in. Some birds had circled over the river while others rested on wooden posts, cocking their heads at the humans as if the people were intruding on their home.
Here she had been in the city she’d dreamed of as sacred, and now she had fully felt the weight of those words as she realized that, like a crow, she would be black no matter what city or country she was in. She wondered if this darkness had always been inside of her and Paris had just unleashed that beast, or if Paris and her dreams for a different life had created the monster. She no longer saw any good inside of her. The emptiness in her now made her realize that the unhappiness she’d felt in India was only the tip of the iceberg. She wondered if she had been so evil in a past life that this one was her penance. Whatever the reason, a part of her felt she deserved what was happening to her. A part of her wondered if she would ever feel joy or light again. Had she even earned that right? A part of her knew that the best thing she had done for her daughter was take that darkness away from her.
“You’re back.” Mathieu sounded relieved and smiled as she closed the front door to their apartment behind her. “It’s not just to get your suitcase, is it?” His eyes flickered with worry.
She tossed the keys onto the counter and sat across from him at the bistro table. “You said you wanted to talk yesterday, so talk.”
He nodded, as though he understood he had one chance.
“I do not expect you to forgive me in a single day, and you were right that things had gotten very difficult for us. The drugs were too much. We came together because of a shared love for our craft, and I want to get back to that place.” He gestured to his easel and rose to bring her the canvas from it. “I’ve started painting again.”
Nita looked at the portrait he had started of her, sitting in the bistro, the day he had approached her and they had gone to the Luxembourg Gardens for the first time. She couldn’t help but smile as she thought about that day.
“It’s nice,” she said, not knowing what else there was to say about a painting of herself.
“I have a beautiful subject,” Mathieu said, smiling fondly at her. “I was worried about you last night. Where did you go?”
Nita said the only thing she could think of and the thing she should have done in the first place. “Le Canard Volant.”
Mathieu nodded. “I don’t want to worry for you like that again. Please come home, and we will find a way to work through this. I will sleep here until you are ready.” He gestured toward the sofa.
Exhaustion took Nita’s body and mind. She didn’t have better options, especially now that she’d ruined her friendship with Simon.
“I will stay for a couple nights, and we can see what makes sense from there.”
Mathieu could not contain his smile.
“But you are sleeping on the sofa,” Nita added.
39
SOPHIE
2019
The next day Sophie brings Cecile a cup of tea while she sits at the reception desk.
“Could I speak to you for a minute?” Sophie asks.
Cecile sips the tea and nods. “Of course. What do you need? Is it about the young man who was here yesterday?” Her eyes light up at the possibility of romantic intrigue.
Sophie heads toward the purple couch where she sat with Cecile the day they met, and Cecile follows her. Sophie takes a deep breath.
“No, it’s not about him. I was not honest with you before,” she says softly.
Cecile straightens her shoulders and puts the tea on the stained coffee table. “About what?”