The craziest thing she’d ever done was to move from rural New Mexico to urban Phoenix to attend college to be a nurse.
Maybe she should try something even more crazy than that.
Dree swung her legs as she sat on the tall chair under the gaze of the enormous, cross-legged Buddha that dominated the room. The tiny gold lampshades on the wrought iron chandeliers looked like flying-wish paper lanterns floating around it.
Thumping music drove the Parisians to scream their conversations and dance in the aisles.
Perfume and alcohol drifted in the air.
Around her, people spoke the languages of the world. Dree heard a lot of French, of course, because she was inParis,plus snatches of German, Spanish, and other languages from all over.
Ones that sounded like Arabic.
Ones that sounded like nothing she’d ever heard before.
And two women speaking English.
English that was accented from the South or West of the US.
Down-home English.
Okay, hearing down-home English in the middle of the Buddha Bar in Paris wasweird.
The two young women sitting next to her at the bar peppering their speech withy’allsand too many verbs.
Dree couldn’t help herself. She needed to talk tosomebodyto get her mind off of how quickly her entire life had gone to Hell, so she leaned over and asked them, “Y’all from the States?”
The two women laughed, leaning back and sloshing their drinks.
The little brunette said, “Yep! I’m Roxanne, and this-here’s Gen. How do you do?” She stuck out her hand to shake.
Dree grinned at them and shook their hands. “I’m Dree Clark, from New Mexico.”Originally.“Where’re y’all from?”
“Georgia!” Roxanne said. “But my husband and I live in L.A. Gen-here is from Texas, but she and her husband live in London. He’s from England.”
“That’s so cool!” Dree said, smiling and pretending to sip her gin and tonic to make it last longer. “I’ve never been to London. This is my first time in Paris. This is my first time anywhere outside of New Mexico and Arizona.”
“Then you’re just getting started!” Gen said. She was a honey-brunette and was sipping a tall, fruity-looking drink. Dree hoped it was non-alcoholic because Gen was visibly round with middle-late pregnancy. Dree refrained from asking Gen about her drink because Dree wasn’t on duty and didn’t have to be a finger-wagging nurse every minute of her life.
Still, after they got to talking, Dree was relieved when Gen ordered, “Another one of these raspberry spritzer mocktail-thingies. No booze.” Dree thanked every saint that had ever ascended to heaven because she’d seen the horrific effects of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome on babies in the NICU and pediatric emergency room where she worked.
Roxanne asked Dree, “So, are you traveling with friends, or your parents, or somebody?”
“Nope. Just me.” Dree didn’t elaborate.
“Oh, did you come to Europe to ‘find yourself?’” Roxanne made air quotes with her fingers. Her pale pink manicure was pretty.
Dree tried to laugh. “More like to lose myself.”
“Making a change in your life?” Roxanne asked her.
Dree sucked in a deep breath to yell over the music. “Yeah. Some changes. Some pretty big changes.”
Roxanne stirred her drink, something pale in a martini glass that looked like it might be a lemon drop. “What kind of changes?”
Dree fluffed her bobbed, blond hair. “Well, I cut my hair yesterday. It used to be down to my waist.”
Long hairs trailed over her knuckles. She’d missed a few when she’d hacked at her hair with surgical scissors in the hospital bathroom. She broke a too-long strand between her knuckles to hide it.
