Janey
Night fell outside Adrien’s small window. We lay tangled in one another, me lying over his chest, his hand lazily sliding up and down my bare back.
“You’re so warm,” I murmured, nuzzling his neck. “I’m not going to leave here ever, if that’s okay with you.”
His chest rumbled beneath mine with his gravelly voice. “I wasn’t planning on letting you go, so that works out.”
I grinned and propped my chin on my hand to look at him. “You are nothing like what I expected,” I said. “Nothing.”
“In a good way, I hope.”
“The best way.”
He raised a brow at me. “Don’t blow my cover.”
He was teasing but I answered him seriously. “I won’t. I won’t write a word for the article. I don’t care if Antoine fires me.”
Adrien’s chest rose and fell beneath me in a sigh. “I don’t know, Janey. I don’t know what’s supposed to happen next.”
“You go to that symposium with the doctors Kouchner and Recamiér,” I said.
Adrien’s gaze turned to the darkness outside the window. “There will be scouts at the game. Even if I don’t play, I have to be there.” He laughed shortly. “The team will hate me. I don’t know if showing up will help them or hurt them, but I have to go.”
“If they can’t win without you, they don’t deserve to advance, right?” I said. “A team can’t survive on one player alone. That’s too much pressure on you.”
“It’s not true anyway,” Adrien said. “They have the skill to win without me but there’s a mental game, too. Their confidence is obviously shaken, and they played like shit.” He sighed again. “What a mess.”
“You need to live your life,” I said gently. “Become a doctor. Save the world. I know you can do it.” I lightly grazed circles on his chest with my fingernails. “But whatever you decide, I’ll support you.”
Adrien smiled faintly at me. “Thank you, Janey. I feel like I can breathe again, now that someone outside the family knows what’s happened. And you’re still here.”
“Of course I am. I’m not going anywhere. I’m pretty sure we already established that.”
He bent to kiss me, and when he pulled back he regarded me a moment in silence.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I want you to write the article.”
I blinked, lifted my head off my hand. “The whole story?”
He nodded. “All of it. About living here, med school, about what Vietnam did to my father…”
“But Adrien…”
“Leave out the particulars of my family’s finances,” he said. “For my mother’s sake. She couldn’t bear the humiliation. But everything else...”
My brows knit together. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure. It’s like confession that is long overdue.”
I nodded. “I’ll make sure I protect your mother, but I want to be honest about how you’re providing for them. More than anything, I want to write that.” I smiled. “It’s the angle.”
Adrien didn’t return my smile. “That’s not the angle. Vietnam is the angle. How war tears apart families and countries alike. It ended for France in ‘54, and yet we’re still feeling it.”
“It hasn’t ended for America. It feels like it never will.”
Adrien nodded. “I want to be a doctor, Janey. Helping is the only thing that makes sense to me in the chaos.”
I craned forward to kiss him softly. “Go to the symposium. Promise?”
“We’ll see.” He took hold of my shoulders and hauled me up so that my body lay flush atop his, eliciting a squeal from me. “But that’s a week away. We have a little bit of time, no?”
I kissed him long and deep. “We have all night.”
The following morning, Adrien and I woke at dawn and disentangled ourselves with effort. My body felt heavy and drowsy after a night spent bringing each other to one soaring high after another, and then sinking into each other to recover; to talk and kiss and sleep a little.
We dressed and went to an outdoor market so that Adrien could buy his father some groceries. We bought baguette, cheese, fruit, vegetables, eggs, and a hot croque monsieur ham-and-cheese sandwich for his breakfast. As we were leaving the market, I spied a stall that sold homemade jarred preserves.
“His favorite flavor?” I asked, perusing the pretty jars.
“Strawberry,” Adrien said absently. His gaze flickered to the price on the sign. “You don’t have to.”
“I want to,” I said. “And I’d like to meet him. For real, I mean.”
Adrien looked at me for a long moment, then nodded. “I’d like that very much.”
We went back to the pension where the Algerian man I’d met yesterday was smoking a cigarette and reading an Arabic newspaper.
“Bonjour, M. Hamidi,” Adrien said. “How are you and Imane this morning?”
“Eh? Bien, bien,” the man said. He peered at me through his pungent cigarette smoke. “You are the American? From New York?”
“California,” I said, with a polite smile. “Why does everyone assume I’m from New York?” I asked Adrien as we made our way down the narrow hall on the first floor.
“I don’t know,” he said, stopping in front of #5. “When I look at you, I imagine what California must be like. I think of a beach or a tropical island under a blazing sun.”
“We’ve turned mushy already, haven’t we?” I said, laughing.
“Yes, we have.” Adrien kissed me softly, then his smile faltered. “Are you ready?”
I nodded. “I am.”
“My father is not violent, but he is quite unwell…”
I gave his hand not holding our groceries a squeeze. “It’s going to be okay.”
He smiled faintly and knocked on the door. “Papa? Are you up?”
The door flew open and I stepped back involuntarily. M. Rousseau stared at us with wild eyes, his hair askew from sleep and a loose coat hanging over his pajamas.
“You must go to Edouard,” he said. “Edouard has it. They have it!”
I saw Adrien try to smile reassuringly through a pained expression as he gently ushered his father inside. Victor’s place was the same as Adrien’s, only cluttered with papers and empty bottles. I knew without having to ask that Adrien probably took great pains to see that his father didn’t live in squalor.
“Who is Edouard, Papa? What does he have?” he asked calmly, as if he were accustomed to his father’s incoherent talk. He set down the bag of food on a table littered with papers, half-finished sketches, and the remains of last night’s dinner.
Victor rushed to his desk and began rifling frantically through the papers there.
“Vietnam. I brought it back with me and Edouard has it. I thought it was here…” He held up a wrinkled paper, inspected it, then tossed it away. “But then I remembered, they have it. Edouard. Edouard…” He smacked his own forehead. “The rest…it didn’t stay.”
Adrien brought his father a pill from a small bottle of medicine, and a glass of water.
“Where did you know Edouard from?” Adrien asked with practiced patience.
“The after.” Victor looked at me. “They booed. They didn’t want our wounded to land at Marseille. Can you imagine? We were trying to come home. That’s all we wanted. To come home…”
He took the pill from his son and sank down on the chair to drink the water. Adrien turned to me.
“He means there were protests when the soldiers came back,” he said.
I nodded. “It’s happening in the U.S. too.” I retrieved the hot sandwich for Victor, and handed it to him with a napkin. “Here you are, M. Rousseau.”
The older man peered up at me, then looked to Adrien. “Edouard has it,” he said, calmer now. I guessed the pill Adrien had given him was a mild sedative. “Edouard has Laos. Khmer. Vietnam. All of them. I tried to leave them behind but the shadows remained anyway.” The tapped his forehead. “In here.”
Victor went quiet then, and turned his attentions to his food.
“I should go,” I told Adrien. “I have a story to write.”
He sucked in a breath. “Yeah, I guess you do.”
“It was very nice to meet you, M. Rousseau,” I said, but the man was intent on his food.
Adrien walked me to the door, and glanced at his father by the window. “I know, he needs real care but he was dying at the veteran’s hospital. Another reason to sign with a Premier League if they’ll have me. So I can put him somewhere good.”
I took Adrien’s face in my hands and kissed him and hurried out before he could see my tears.
Back in my flat, I sat at my typewriter and Adrien’s story flew out of me. I wrote everything: about football and beyond. The only area where I held back was the specifics of the Rousseau’s finances, though I made it clear Adrien was doing everything in his power to provide for them, even if it meant giving up his studies. It took me all of that Sunday, but by Monday morning it was done.
I stared at what I wrote and called America. My best friend.
“Hello?” Helen said.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Janey!” she said. “I’ve missed you. How is Paris?”
I told her all that happened and about Adrien.
“He sounds wonderful,” Helen said wistfully.
“He is…” I bit my lip and looked at my article. “Helen, you were right.”
“About what?”
“I found a big story inside a little one. The biggest story of my life.”
After I hung up with Helen, I showered, dressed, and hurried down to Antoine’s office with the story and the best photos tucked under my arm.
I stood, biting my lip, as Antoine read the article. When he finished, he looked up at me, his eyes wide.
“This is true? Adrien’s father is alive?”
I nodded.
“I was at the match two days ago,” Antoine said. “I saw the red card…” He narrowed his eyes at me. “One could read this and feel as if Adrien doesn’t want to play football, but you never clarify that at all.”
“It’s not an opinion piece.”
“But didn’t you ask him?”
I wasn’t about to jeopardize Adrien’s chances of being signed. If that’s what was supposed to happen, I wouldn’t interfere. But I hoped putting Adrien’s story out into the universe was going to help make the right things happen for him.
It has to. He deserves to be happy too.
“He will do whatever is necessary to take care of his family,” I said.
Antoine regarded me a moment more, but I was unwavering. He blew air out his cheeks, shaking his head. “Very well. We’ll run it tomorrow.”
“Thank you.”
I eased a sigh where Antoine couldn’t hear it—and started to go.
“Mademoiselle Martin?” Antoine said.
“Oui?”
“It’s very good, this article.”
I waited for the pride to swell in me for the praise, but it was the story that needed to be told, and that’s all that mattered. And I decided, then and there, those were the only kinds of stories I would ever tell.
I want to stand on the big stage too, right next to Adrien Rousseau.