On the headboard, in the bedspread, all over the canopy. On the curved arms of the fussy chairs flanking the bed, on the wainscoting and wallpapering, in the two gigantic chandeliers that hovered symmetrically down from—you didn’t even have to guess it—gold sculptural carvings in the ceiling.
“That’s the door,” Emily was saying to Michael, “that she escaped through on the night the palace was invaded!”
“Too bad,” muttered a low voice from beside Layla, close enough to keep her in the same semi-electrified state she’d been in since this morning.
Since she’d been beingfriendswith Griffin.
Looking at him so no one would be looking at her.
They met in the hotel lobby this morning, a few minutes before Michael and Emily’s careful itinerary had suggested: That way, when the rest of the party arrived to set off on their grand Versailles adventure, Layla and Griffin could already be carefully arranged on one of those weird sofas, feigning an amiable, casual chat, two friends forged from an unexpected derailment the night before.We’re so sorry we never made it back for the dinner!they would say—or, rather, Layla would say, since despite this entire ruse being Griffin’s idea, he clearly had no meaningful experience at making excuses for himself—We got caught up trying to find me something different to wear, andthenone of my shoes broke, and then we figured we wouldn’t make it in time for the restaurant reservation…
She hadn’t really needed the excuses: Their very presence was enough to please Robert and Manon endlessly (“Oh, we weresoworried!”), to unite Emily and Michael in sagging relief, to even have Jamie and Samantha offering sheepish words of apology to them both (“It was completely fine, I promise,” Layla said gently, to a still-wan-looking Samantha, while Griffin had managed a gruff, practically clenched-teeth “No problem”).
She would’ve liked to be able to say,That won’t work, your minimalistNo problem; she would have liked to have been able to tell him that his acting skills were far too subpar—nonexistent, really—for this new plan to support Michael and Emily to ever have a hope of working.
But the problem was, it was, apparently,No problem.
Because everyone seemed to be buying it.
Everyone seemed to be doing better.
They sat together on the train out of Paris—forty minutes thatLayla thought she’d have to tick off like acts of torture she’d survived—but it had passed unexpectedly quickly, and not because she’d done a bang-up job of fake chatting with her fake new friend. Instead, it had been Griffin to start the conversation, if it could be called that. First, he asked her bluntly, “Have you been to this place?” nodding in something like smug approval when she answered, truthfully, that she had not.
Then, he had simply turned his phone into a bizarrely effective intermediary—his head tipped down for a few minutes at a time before passing it to her, the screen lit and stopped on some weird, detail-oriented fact about the very place they were about to visit. Twenty miles of pipes for the largest fountain. Twelve hundred fireplaces. Too many flowers and trees for many of its original guests to handle, overwhelmed and sickened by pollen allergies brought on by the sheer excess.
“You know,” she’d said at one point, after maybe two back-and-forth passes, the warmth from his phone an oddly intimate transfer from his skin onto hers, “they probably have one of those headset tours. For all these facts.”
“Can’t wear a headset,” he’d said, gesturing vaguely toward one side of his face—the scarred side—and taking his phone again, going right back to scrolling through results. No further explanation on offer.
It had very effectively kept her from asking any more questions about this weird ritual they were doing together, and also, oddly enough—in spite of his refusal to explain—made her feel less like he was faking it as her friend. And while she waited for whatever he’d show her next, she would catch snippets of the pleasant, unstilted conversation from the rest of their party—Rosie chatting with Robert and Manon about wanting to adopt a cat this year, Jamie telling Abram about work, Céline explaining to Samantha why it was a crime not to have seen the Sofia CoppolaMarie Antoinette.
Michael and Emily, leaning into each other, looking decidedly less stricken.
Just like they did now.
“They’re good,” Layla said, keeping her eyes on the pair, even as she spoke to the man beside her, the one she wassupposedto be looking at. Michael was, of course, not looking at the door through which Marie Antoinette escaped. He was looking at Emily, a soft, adoring smile on his face.
“This is good for them,” she added.
Griffin made a noise, something likeHm.
Nota note of agreement.
She couldn’t help but turn her head to look at him. She’d noticed, over the course of the day so far, that he always stayed next to her on the same side, the unscarred plane of him always facing her, even if it required him to sidestep, to reposition himself. She wanted to say, “It doesn’t bother me, you know,” which would be a very mild expression of what she actually thought about his face, but also, she figured that the problem was that it bothered him.
That he probably wouldn’t believe her, even if she told him what shedidactually think. That she could probably be doing one of those awestruck faces that Michael was pulling right now, just at the sight of his stern, set brow line.
“You don’t think so?” she said.
He shrugged, and she suspected, like on the train again, he wouldn’t clarify. But eventually, he spoke, quietly, keeping it a secret between them. “Not the sort of place for honest feeling, is it?”
She blinked at him, instinctively knowing what he meant.
But also not knowing what to say.
“Distracting place,” he added. “Mirrors everywhere. Littlemysteries, like that door in the wall.” He flicked a hand dismissively at the scene in front of them. “All this gold-covered shit.”
Yes!she wanted to say.It’s toomuch, right? It’s not even pretty to look at!Part of her felt desperate to recap the range of feelings she’d had over the last hour and a half, since they’d passed through the entry gates: over-warm in the particularly crowded spaces, overwhelmed by the relentless excess, frustrated by the endlessspace, the endlessstuff. Another painting, another candelabra, another sculpture: everything, eventually, becoming oddly indistinguishable.
