After Zandra is done, she lies down on the campus grass, looking up at the sun. I walk over to her.
“I have to thank you for helping out with this,” I say. “It’s not part of your job.”
“This is the best part,” she says, propping herself up on her elbow. “My goal is to become a creative director, and this feels very similar. Besides, I know I chose a job where I just sit in front of a laptop all of the time, so it’s nice to be out of the office.” She plucks out a few pieces of grass, shredding them before she looks back up at me.
“I should, uh, tell you that I only vaguely remember what we talked about at your apartment. I remember singing Amber’s Luck. I remember telling you that I wanted to move on from our past. But…the details are a bit hazier, so I hope I didn’t say anything too weird or uncomfortable.”
“Zandra, all you need to know is that you know how to make a conversation interesting,” I say.
She smirks. “If you wanted a boring woman, there’s a few on Hollywood Boulevard.”
I incline my head. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
The members of Shadow Tradition try several different speeches as the cameras film them. I know I told them that’s what they should do, but I can see the cost of film and the wage of the crew quickly accumulating. Zandra must notice because, after my arm tenses on their sixth reshoot, she leans toward me.
“Remember this is to save your company from a bad reputation,” she whispers. “You can’t earn back a good reputation.”
“That’s just another thing to worry about,” I say. “What if we do this whole ad and it doesn’t change anything?”
“Then we break into Tunest’s headquarters and change their coding, so their app only plays the sound of Martin Ludden saying his company name. Or burn it down. Whatever you feel like.”
I can’t suppress a smile, thinking of Tunest’s owner, Martin, dealing with endless complaints about his voice replacing every song. “That is brilliant.” I watch the first few people approaching the band, their faces lit up with excitement. “Keep that idea on the backburner.”
Zandra’s t-shirt knot has come undone, making the shirt seem baggier than it was before. I try to shake the desire to put my hands under it, to feel her warm skin, the way her chest rises and falls with her breath, and the way her body reacts to my touch.
It might be easier to put the past down than desire, but, for the two of us, the past and desire are intertwined.
She bumps her hip against me. I realize that I’m smiling—genuinely, truly smiling—and everything feels lighter than air inside me. It reminds me of the reckless joy in Paris. I’d thought I’d been influenced by the idealistic atmosphere of the city and the fact that I was in a new place with minimal responsibilities, but the feeling is back again.
It’s Zandra. It always has been.
******
6 years ago
If I’d imagined French police while I was in Britain or the United States, I wouldn’t have taken them seriously, but as I sat in the tiny room in that rigid chair, staring up at the surveillance camera for nearly an hour, I decided one thing: French police were assholes.
The door opened. A woman stepped in. She had to maneuver herself strategically because the room was so small, it was hard to not be in the way of the door, the table, or the two chairs. She set down a Styrofoam cup of coffee in front of me. I wondered if caffeine led to more confessions.
“I’m sorry if this room isn’t very comfortable,” she said, a faint accent making her voice seem smoother. “Considering there were four of you to question and we have two men we’re questioning about a bar fight, we needed to be creative with our room space.”
“I understand,” I said. “Is it possible for me to talk to Zandra? The woman with dark hair?”
“No,” she said. “She’s very busy talking to my partner.”
I could sense all the manipulation she was creating, but I couldn’t see the exact strings that she was pricking into my body to turn me into her puppet. If I’d been less nervous, less concerned about Zandra, and not in a foreign country, maybe I could have thought more clearly.
“Someone told you your rights, correct?”
“Yes. Zandra’s not to blame for any of this,” I said, leaning forward in the chair. “I didn’t tell her everything. She thought everything was legal.”
“What exactly did you do that wasn’t legal?” she asked. I sat back into the chair. My parents would kill me if I were arrested and they’d kill me twice for getting arrested in another country. They’d have to fly here. They’d have to deal with international law. They’d have to set down their expensive champagne at some swanky party to deal with their shitty child.
The policewoman gave me a sympathetic smile. “It’s understandable that you wouldn’t want to talk. But someone is going to talk; we have three other people who were in the Louvre. How confident are you that none of them are going to take a deal and make the rest of you look like…what do they call it in America? Fools.”
I didn’t know Oliver or Marina that well. I was certain they would throw me under the bus to save their skin and, worse, they would do the same to Zandra. In all likelihood, they’d hurl both of us onto the train tracks to get a deal to save both of them. And it wouldn’t be an honest story they’d tell. It would paint Zandra and me as manipulative villains who dragged them into the Louvre. It’s the only way they’d get a good deal.
Like Zandra, I’d dealt with rich kids. I knew how they thought.
