Jennifer DuBois - Cartwheel

“For the weekends,” Lily added.

Beatriz shook her head. “God knows what kind of characters you’ll meet.”

She was imagining alcohol consumption, no doubt, illicit drug use, various unnamable and unknowable extravagances at the home of Sebastien LeCompte. And so Lily added, “This is just for extra money. For books. For travel,” even though it hadn’t occurred to her until that very moment to travel anywhere farther than she’d already gone.

After starting at Fuego, Lily began to see less of Sebastien. He often texted her in the evenings—oblique and faux-literary missives that seemed to always begin mid-conversation—and she’d glance at them while working and somehow feel that she’d already responded even when she hadn’t. After coming home late she’d scroll through all the communiqués she’d missed, shielding the light from Katy’s sleeping face, and resolve firmly to answer them the next day. But in the morning she’d be racing to her classes, guzzling the dregs of the instant coffee that Katy had made, and she would forget again. Finally, one Friday night—after some negotiating and bidding and counterbidding—Lily agreed to go over to Sebastien’s for a drink. It had been nearly a week since she’d last seen him.

They had planned for ten, but Lily did not begin walking across the lawn until ten-thirty. Underneath her flip-flops, the grass smelled vernal and sweet. She knew Sebastien would never mention her lateness, and she took a terrible delight in knowing this fact and exploiting it. It was the kind of thing a boy would do.

At the house, Lily knocked on the door with her knuckle—using that gargoyle thing seemed to be a concession to affectation that she did not wish to make—and Sebastien opened the door quickly. Behind him, the house smelled musty, and Lily wondered when he had last left it. The must, the dark, the unnerving declivity to the floors—why had all of this seemed so tragically romantic once?

“Well, hello ,” said Sebastien. “You’re a vision for sore eyes.”

“You look nice,” said Lily. He did. He was wearing a jacket. And sometimes Lily liked to irk Sebastien by saying dull things. It was a habit she found herself falling into—the more he wanted to talk in the abstract, the more she found herself commenting on the softness of his hair, the radiant greenness of the trees. Was she trying to get him to like her less? She had to wonder.

But to her surprise, Sebastien actually blushed lightly and tugged at the ends of his coat. “Well. I do try. And how have you been filling the many hours since I saw you last?”

“Oh, you know,” Lily said, wrinkling her nose and stepping into the house. “This and that.”

“The rigorous demands of the intellectual life, I suppose.”

“Yes.” Lily leaned in and kissed him, feeling the warmth of his cheek, the sturdiness of his clavicle. He would be so lovely if only he would stop talking. “It’s all very draining. As you yourself know, of course.”

“Of course,” said Sebastien. He retreated to the kitchen, returning a moment later with two glasses of something amber.

“And as it happens,” Lily said brightly, taking her glass, “I got a job.”

“A job!” Sebastien set down his drink. “How adorably plebeian of you!”

For some reason, Lily had not wanted to tell Sebastien about Fuego. She’d thought he might see through it somehow; after all, a person as fake as Sebastien had to have some otherworldly insight into other people’s vagaries. But as soon as Lily walked in the house she’d realized, with a gnawing anxiety, that she had not thought to generate any backup topics of conversation, and could not quite think what else they would manage to discuss.

“A job!” said Sebastien again, clinking his glass against Lily’s. “Workers of the world, unite!”

Lily had known he would react this way; provoking this exact mockery was the conversational favor she was doing for both of them, and the fact that it had worked made her both pleased and sad.

“It seemed like a good way to get to know the city better,” she said, taking a sip of her drink. Whatever it was made her feel like a very old man.

“A plucky young lass, just trying to make her way in the world?”

“Something like that.”

“I certainly hope you haven’t resorted to selling your rare charms on the street.”

“I’m a hostess at Fuego.”

“How very prerevolutionary France of you!”

“I think they’ll make me a waitress after a bit.”

“Well, shoot for the moon and you’ll land amongst the stars, you know. People were always telling me that in high school, and just look at me now. Am I not a truly serious and substantive adult?”

Lily kissed him again, just to make him stop talking. His mouth tasted clean. “No,” she said. “Even if we are drinking brandy. Are you trying to be?”

“Not often,” he said, and kissed her back, more earnestly. Sometimes Lily could almost feel his heart beating through a kiss, though that was probably impossible. She pulled away and stuck out her tongue at him.

“Do you even know what you mean half the time?” she said.

“I do not,” he said regally. “And that, I like to think, is part of my own rare charm.” This made Lily kiss him one more time and take his hand—which was rough and boyish and vaguely callused, though she couldn’t think what he might possibly do to make it feel that way—and lead him toward the bed. She suddenly knew that now they would sleep together. She had never decided to, exactly, but she had also never decided not to, which was, under the circumstances, a kind of decision. And he was, after all, a very dear boy, if only he wouldn’t say so much nonsense.

On the bed, they wrestled for a bit until the moment came when Lily usually put the brakes on things; this time, she did not, and Sebastien pulled her hand to him. She gave a tentative stroke. She always forgot how hard these things were, and how quickly they got that way—she felt a little startled, every single time. She was still holding her brandy with the other hand. She put that down. Her heart was hammering out its fear now—forget the bravado, okay, she admitted it, she still got nervous about this stuff. This was going to happen, she realized. She was young and single and living in Latin America, and she had an outstanding collection of condoms. This is what she was here for. Her teeth were nearly chattering. Sebastien was kissing her. He took off his pants and his shirt and he started in on hers, all the while looking deeply grave. Lily wished he knew that he didn’t have to look that way. He was on top of her, then inside her. His entry was unremarkable. Afterward he looked at her with that wondering, faltering gaze of his and said, “I love you.”

Lily had been weaving her fingers through his chest hair—she secretly liked it, though she knew she had to pretend to other girls that she didn’t—but now she stopped. This theater—this feigned vulnerability of his—made something within Lily go stony and sour. She did not want or expect him to love her, of course, but she did not understand the use of this phrase as performance art, either; it made her feel uneasy and a little insulted, though she could not think quite why.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “I’m sure.” She laughed wryly to give herself a moment to figure out what to say next. She would have to settle for something idiotic. “So.” She sat up and began twisting her hair into a ponytail. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. Why is your house like this?”

“Like what?” said Sebastien. Lily was not looking at him—she was busying herself with her hair—but she could hear in his voice an emptiness, an echoing distance, like he was speaking from the bottom of a canyon.