Lisa Unger - Die For You

“Izzy?” I heard him say as I turned and moved quickly through the door and flew down the stairs as fast as I could. I knew him. He was a good egg, wanted things orderly, still thought the world was black and white, just like his mother. He’d tell-but he’d hesitate, just because he was a boy, because he liked the idea of being in on a secret. With luck, I’d be gone before anyone tried to come after me.

A HUNDRED YEARS ago Marcus and I were in Paris. For our first anniversary, he’d surprised me on a Thursday with tickets to leave the next day. We joked that we’d probably saved about a thousand dollars in pre-trip shopping-but I made up for it once we arrived.

“He did what?!” my sister shrieked when I called her. Her delight rang over the line and I knew he’d climbed a rung in her estimation, which filled me with childish pleasure. “That’s soooo romantic. Oh, I love Paris!”

“Dude, you’re making me look bad,” Erik complained when we were all on speakerphone together.

“Yeah, really bad,” said Linda. But I could hear the smile in her voice. They’d had their share of romantic trips and enviable moments. And now they had kids, as Linda liked to say. Romance is a pizza delivery and a bottle of wine after Emily and Trevor go to bed .

We stayed in a small, intimate hotel near Jardins des Tuilleries on the tranquil rue Saint-Hyacinthe and passed our days shopping, eating, drinking, fairly skipping through the streets of that magnificent city. I spent my mornings writing in a small café, ensconced at a tiny table in the corner, the competing aromas of fresh bread, coffee grinds, and cigarette smoke mingling in the air with lively conversation and the clinking of cups and silverware, while Marcus slept until nearly noon.

In the evenings, we dined slowly, lingering for hours over beautiful meals, then visiting nightclubs, dancing and drinking, returning to the hotel to make love. I don’t remember even the tiniest disagreement on that trip, but maybe that’s revisionist history. Maybe we argued over what sights to see, or whether we could afford more than one Hermès scarf, or where to go for dinner-all the normal negotiations of living a life together, that might blow up into something bigger. But I don’t remember anything like that.

On the other hand, there are some things that come back to me now, moments I hadn’t given much thought to then. He said he’d never been to Paris, that my surprise was secretly a gift for himself, too. But he seemed strangely at ease on its streets, as if he knew his way around.

“Are you sure you haven’t been here before?” I asked, my nose in our guidebook. He navigated the Metro with ease, quickly found exactly the café or shop or museum we were searching for, while I might as well have been on the moon.

“Maybe in another life,” he answered. There was something solemn to his tone that caused me to look up from my reading. But he was smiling when our eyes met. He pointed to his temple. “Smart. You married a very smart man.”

The truth was Marcus always seemed to know where we were or how to get to any destination. He had a mind for navigation, an uncanny internal GPS. I might wander lost and confused, even in my own city, turned around after a ride on the subway, unsure of east and west. Not Marcus. Not ever. It was annoying, how he was always right, but I found myself relying on it. A man like Marcus was the reason other men didn’t ask for directions.

Our last night in Paris, we were returning to the hotel, both of us a bit glum that the trip was coming to a close.

“One more,” Marcus said, grabbing my hand.

A narrow stairwell led down beneath the sidewalk. An electric strain of music seemed to waft up from the darkness. It was late. We had an early flight.

“Why not?” he said when I hesitated. “This time tomorrow we’ll be home.”

The damp stone staircase ended at a heavy wooden door. When he pulled it open, sound and smoke came out in a wave that pushed us back, then washed us in. Soon we were one with a throbbing mass of bodies that seemed to pulse in unison with the dance beat. We made our way to the bar, where Marcus shouted something at the pierced and scantily clad young woman who leaned in to take our drink order.

I normally don’t like crowds, overwhelmed as I become by details, energies, expressions on faces. But I felt oddly centered, able to coolly observe my environment. I could tell it was a local haunt; it lacked that Parisian self-awareness of its place in the dreams of the rest of the world. There was something gritty and slapdash about it, as though you could come back tomorrow and it might be gone. The chic, lithe Parisians I’d been staring at in envy for days in high-end shops and restaurants were replaced by an alternative set, tattoo covered and glinting with metal in odd places, nipples and tongues, eyebrows. I watched an androgynous couple make out near the door, a woman moving slowly to some internal beat, her eyes pressed closed. On a small stage, three men with identically styled dark hair and black garb were surrounded by electronic instruments and computers; they seemed to be the origin of the sound, though they were as grim and stone-faced as undertakers. I turned to comment to Marcus, but he was gone. I peered through the crowd and saw the back of his head as he moved toward the bathrooms. He must have yelled to me and I didn’t hear him over the din. There was a fresh drink on the tall table beside me which I assumed he’d left for me-something bitter and heavily alcoholic. When nearly twenty minutes passed, my drink gone, my interest in the scene around me dwindling, I headed in the direction I’d seen him disappear.

When I saw him, he was standing with a woman-she was emaciated and pale, with features too sharp, too angular for her to be quite pretty. She was talking to him heatedly, and he was looking around, clearly uncomfortable. Just as I approached them, she reached out and touched his face. I saw him grab her hand and push it gently away. She looked so injured, so confused, that I felt my heart clench for her.

He turned away and almost ran right into me.

“What’s going on?” I asked. It was quieter away from the stage but I still had to yell.

“Some crazy woman thinks she knows me. I can’t convince her otherwise,” he said, grabbing my arm. “Let’s go.”

“Kristof, please!” she yelled after us. “Please.”

He didn’t turn back to her, just hurried me toward the door. I felt some kind of primal tug to look at her again. She was yelling something I couldn’t make out.

“You don’t know her?” I asked him when we were outside. I felt oddly shaken, a slight tremble in my hands.

He was already walking away, came back and grabbed my hand. “No,” he said with a scowl. “Of course not.”

“The way she touched you-” I said, and found I couldn’t finish. From where I stood, I would have thought them lovers. Her touch was so intimate-her eyes so desperate. I stood rooted, not willing to follow him. I kept an eye on the door, wondering if she’d come out after us. I saw his eyes drift there, too.

“Isabel, she was high,” he said, tugging at me, his hand still in mine. I resisted, made him move back closer to me. “She called me by another name. You heard it yourself. She was clearly unwell or at least impaired.”

I found myself studying his face. His expression was earnest, even amused. His eyes were wide, brow lifted. He matched my gaze and then finally dropped his eyes to the sidewalk.

“Okay, you caught me,” he said, lifting his hands. “I have a girlfriend here in Paris. This whole trip was just a ruse so that I could rendezvous with her this last night-while you stood a few yards away.”