Chapter 10: Ça Roule!
Paris revealed itself boulevard by boulevard: triumphant statues, graffiti-tagged tenements, and ancient homes glimpsed through rain-washed taxi windows. Weather pushed a gray veil across the sprawling city, softening its angles, muting its sounds. It was a tangle, an enigma, the modern mingled with the ancient; cafes and mosques, discotheques and cathedrals, mansions and tour buses—a bustling, burgeoning metropolis—life bursting from its seams.
“What’s the plan?” I’d asked, once we’d cleared customs on our ‘Mr. and Mrs. Coddin’ passports. I’d forgotten about that deception, experienced a moment of stark terror when I handed over my passport—we will be detained, arrested, exposed, executed on guillotines! —but my fears vanished as Customs waved us through.
“A bit of time in the hotel,” Colin said, “to get your feet on the ground. We’ll have dinner tonight with Desiree, maybe see some shows—then a few days exploring the neighborhoods, looking for apartments and office space.”
Desiree? I wanted to ask who that was—I could not stomach another Cherise—but my objection sounded petty. What did I have to be jealous about? I was here on the Braden expense account, for my own protection. For my own good. Of course Colin must know people here in Paris. Some of them might happen to be women. Half the population, even.
Colin startled me when we first slipped into our Taxi Parisien. The driver, a large, olive-complected man with the sort of walrus mustache one never sees anymore, except maybe on a Portland hipster barista, welcomed us with a hearty grin. “Où allez-vous?”
“À l'hôtel Agartha,” Colin said.
“You speak French?” I asked.
“Not well.”
The driver chuckled. The radio announcer jabbered away in incomprehensible French, as if that were the most natural thing in the world—which it was. Then she played songs I didn’t know, the words also in French. The signs meant nothing either. What is a kilomètre? Is it the same as a kilometer? How much is that in miles?
Streets went around in circles. Cars drove so close together with such aggression yet nobody went anywhere in an absolute snarl of traffic. And the names! They rolled by like so much haute cuisine: La Cournueve, Saint-Ouen, the 17th Arrondissement.
Then there were the people. I’d had this Woody Allen vision of ‘Paris’ in my head, something from the past, a city trapped in 1945. It isn’t that at all. Such diversity—Arabs, Africans, Eastern Europeans, and Vietnamese. We encountered people of dozens of nationalities and backgrounds the moment we stepped off the plane. Paris was far more diverse than Portland, let alone Selkie Bay.
Yet the deeper we pushed into the heart of the old city, toward the confluence of the Seine and Marne, the further we sunk into the past. I half-expected barricades across the streets, angry mobs, Napoleon’s legions, and the specter of the guillotines looming across the skyline as Les Misérables erupted into song among the cafés. And why not? What was real anymore? I’d never believed in vampires or black magic or tulpas and now I had my own personal timelord, or at least a man from the past.
My heart leaped as I looked at Colin. Such a handsome man and so good. He’d never gotten cross with me, not even once. He wasn’t anything like Burke and I felt bad for even thinking of him that way. If only the circumstances were different. If only his kind weren’t so ominous. If only I wasn’t broken. If only we’d met in another time, a better world.
“Colin?”
“Yes, lo—lass?”
“How long will you stay in Paris?”
“Oh, a week or two, until you get settled in.”
I nodded, twisting my fingers around the seatbelt. I knew he couldn’t stay here with me. We weren’t a couple. He couldn’t tear himself away from his life on my account.
Quit pretending like you’re boyfriend-girlfriend, I thought. You aren’t, you can’t, and you never will be. You’ll have to say goodbye. But it had started becoming more than an idle fantasy. Somewhere over the Atlantic, I started thinking of Colin as ‘my guy’ no matter how impossible or foolish it sounded.
“Something wrong?” he asked. Tires hissed on rain-slicked streets.
“Nothing, why do you ask?”
“You looked happy for a second, then sad.”
“Am I that transparent?”
He grinned. “In some ways, Butterfly Sparks, you’re an open book.”
I blushed at that, reached instead for my bag. We had a few guidebooks and I decided to orient myself to Paris. This would be my new home, after all, at least for a while. At least until this thing with Burke blew over and I could go back to my real home.
I followed our progress on a map as we made our way through the torturous traffic. Colin pointed out sights as I crammed notes from the guidebook. Over there, the Arc de Triomphe. That way to the Louvre. When we entered the Trocadéro in the 16th Arrond., I knew he would spare no expense. The buildings lining the streets were not houses, not even mansions—these were baroque palaces, overlooking broad, sweeping boulevards and magnificent, tree-lined parks.
Then we rounded a corner, approaching the Seine and there it was—the enduring symbol of Paris, La tour Eiffel, crowning the city like a diadem. My heart soared into the cloud-lined sky.
We turned onto something called the Avenue du Président-Wilson before reaching our destination on Avenue d'Iéna. The cab let us out and Colin paid as I stood gaping at the behemoth before us.
“That’s a hotel?” I asked as he joined me on the curb.
“Aye.” Bellhops rushed up, taking our bags directly from the trunk.
“It looks like an embassy.”
“It used to be one of Napoleon’s residences.”
“Wow.”
“Wait til you see our suite,” he said with a wink.
I grinned. Then I laughed. I’d never been so happy. And it wasn’t until the elevator ride to our rooftop suite on the riverfront side that I realized that we would be sharing a hotel room here, just as if we were Guy and Anne Coddin, two married E.U. citizens. And I didn’t have a problem with that. The thought made me giddy.
The bellhops—five of them—swarmed around us, slim young men in crimson livery with effortless English. They ushered us into a set of rooms so luxurious it looked like a dream.
“La Suite Impériale!” said the bellhop with the most amount of gold braids and buttons. He showed me the amenities while Colin paid. It blurred together.
I ran from room to room, clapping with delight. Gold-plated faucets. Multiple bedrooms boasting canopy beds. An in-suite dining room with seating for eight. Eight! Curtains that hung from ceiling to floor, each one worth more than my bank account and Honda combined.
“It’s massive!”
“It is two hundred and seventy-five square meters, no?” said one of the bellhops.
“How much is that in feet?”
“I do not know, Madame Coddin.”
“About three thousand square feet!” Colin shouted from the other room. He had to shout—the place was as large as a suburban house. It was incomprehensible anybody on holiday could possibly need so much space unless they brought a massive entourage with them. Is this how Paris Hilton and Jay-Z and famous people lived? Extraordinary!
Or more to the point—is this how the Bradens lived? Is this how Burke would live? The thought turned my stomach. It seemed unfair: I, who could barely hold down a job and lived in a squalid studio apartment, would work long hours for low pay for the rest of my short, human life, while he would transform into a Braden, one who would enjoy apparently endless wealth and immortality, a comrade to Colin, one of the Blooded. My mom always warned me that life is not fair, but that was taking things to extremes.
The bellhops departed after getting their tips. Colin came toward me, eyes full of curiosity. “So, what do you think?”
“I should thank this Armando in person!”
“Don’t thank him until you see this,” he said, tugging open the curtains. Beyond stood a balcony overlooking the Seine. The iron structure of the Eiffel Tower rose into the sky less than a hundred yards away, a view so unobstructed I could almost reach out and touch it with my hand.
My voice went small and I held my hands close, under my chin. “Colin, this is too much. It’s too expensive.”
“It’s just for a short while,” he said. “I think even Armando might raise an eyebrow if I put you up here long-term. But it’ll give us time to find a neighborhood you like, an office for your blog. Did you think of a name?”
“Pookie Watches TV,” I said. It sounded small and ridiculous in the luxurious majesty of Napoleon’s Imperial Suite.
We showered—in separate showers, in different bathrooms, on opposite ends of the suite. This was possible because Napoleon apparently needed four separate lavatories throughout his sprawling labyrinth of an apartment. I changed out of my comfy travel clothes into the single, semi-elegant outfit I still owned: a peach chiffon blouse, mid-rise skinny jeans, and Chelsea rain booties. What I would wear tomorrow—I had no idea. I didn’t feel comfortable asking Colin to take me on a shopping spree and I couldn’t afford a single article of clothing on my own. Maybe I’d continue to accessorize the blouse and jeans until they fell off in poverty-stricken rags. For a raincoat, I had something gaudy and yellow and old.
I found Colin at the far end of the suite, dressed to the nines in dark slacks, a slim-fit t-shirt, Italian dress shoes and a London Fog trenchcoat belted around his waist.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
I shut my mouth, continued down the dais toward him. “You look stunning, Colin. A world-class business traveler. I feel like a truck-stop waitress bringing you your bill.”
He grinned and took my arm, a motion so natural and casual neither of us noticed. “Nonsense. But if you’re worried about your wardrobe, Dez can take you shopping tomorrow. Dress to your heart’s content.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t.”
“What? Why not? You’ll like Dez, I promise. She’s sweet, nothing like you-know-who. And I trust her. She’ll keep your location secret. There’s few I’d trust with that.”
“It’s not that—it’s just you’ve done so much already. I don’t want you to get in trouble, spending so much money on me.”
“Get in trouble?” He laughed. “Butterfly Sparks, I’d get in trouble with Dez if I let you walk around Paris in old clothes. You’re going shopping with her and that’s that.”
“Yes, sir!” I grinned, giving him an old-timey, Union Army salute.
We brunched at the hotel restaurant, sharing a meal so mouthwateringly exotic it would take an hour to describe, followed by a couple hours walking around the neighborhood, taking pictures, buying bread and pastries, and doing tourist-y things.
“Desiree is another Braden?” I asked. We’d stopped on the rail of Port Debilly, a small wharf and carport where the tour boats that plied the Seine tied up. Pigeons wheeled and turned in the sky. It had stopped raining earlier and the air felt crisp, clear, new.
“Aye.”
“And Armando, is he the one that blooded you? The weird old guy in the tomb?”
Another shake of the head. “No. Our sire—the one who blooded both Armando and me—was assassinated. Armando was blooded before me, so he’s like my elder brother. He’s not some old man—he’d strike you as a long-haired party boy if you met him, though looks can deceive. He’s strong, too—he blooded two spawn though he’s had more over the years and could handle more, if he chose.”
“Who are his ‘spawns’?” I asked, trying on the unfamiliar word.
“Cherise, you’ve met. The other is Desiree.”
“That’s your whole clan? Two guys, two gals?”
“There’s also Xerxes—young, Greek bodybuilder. Good bloke.”
A Greek Arnie? I laughed and said I couldn’t imagine such a thing. He grinned and showed me a picture on his phone. Big, bronzed, and scowling. I could see it.
“Only five Bradens?” I asked. “That’s a nuclear family, not some sprawling, Highland clan the way you made it sound. Somehow, I thought there would be more. You’re not even as big as the Addams Family.”
He shrugged, not quite getting my joke. “There are other houses that run a bit bigger but that’s rare. The Blooded are strong-willed, independent types who don’t do well in large groups. If it gets too big, people split off.”
“So where does Desiree fit in?”
“Armando blooded Dez and Cherise. Dez blooded Xerxes. Cherise was only turned a year or so ago, so she’s young, as vampires go. Too young to be taking a spawn of her own, but Dez has one, so she has to have one too. She thinks she can handle it and Armando, soft-hearted old romantic that he is, won’t stop her. That’s how your ex-husband entered the picture, because she chose him.”
“How’d they meet?”
“That I don’t know, but it’s what brought you into the frame.”
I shuddered, but this stuff mattered now. My survival instincts kicked in. I drew a rough, mental map in my mind. “So, you’re second eldest?”
“Aye. There was a third elder, George, but he left.”
I frowned. “And you don’t have a—what did you call it—a spawn?”
He shook his head. “Never have.”
“Why not?”
“Blooding another is not easy; most can’t handle more than one at a time. You give a piece of yourself and it binds the two of you together, forever. It can be the greatest bond in the world, or a never-ending well of misery. I’ve seen sire-and-spawn relationships turn so toxic they triggered vicious blood feuds spanning decades and killing dozens, mortal and immortal. I don’t want any part of that. I had trouble enough with my own sire, Ferdinand. That old nutter, may he rest in peace.”
I looked out across the gray, undulating Seine. The clouds had broken, showing a glimpse of white sun. A few rays tumbled across the wind-swept current. “It sounds like a weird version of parent and child. No matter what happens, you are always connected to that person. Like how I will always love my mom, no matter what. She will always be my mom. At the same time, this sire-spawn thing has that marriage vibe, a close relationship between two unrelated adults who are both drawn together yet have the potential for an explosive breakup.”
“That’s it exactly,” he said. “It’s the strangest, strongest bond in the world.”
“But your sire is dead.”
“Aye.”
“And you have no spawn of your own.”
“Not a one.”
I studied his strong, handsome features. A scowl marred his face, not disgust but of a man lost in thought, squinting against an unexpected sun. “Don’t you get lonely?” I asked. “All those years, all those decades, with no wife, no lover, no children—no family left?”
He turned toward me and winked. “Nah, I’ve got my little amusements. Come on, let’s meet Desiree. I’ll warn you she’s a touch … eccentric.”
I did not find Desiree eccentric, or even frightening, to my relief. She smiled as we entered then looked away, not meeting my eye. She was shy, a shy vampire! It must take all types.
To look at her, one would never think she was Blooded, just a slight pallor but nothing out of the ordinary. Short, curvy, almost mousy, wearing tacky Sailor Moon earrings, a hot pink sweater and a canary yellow skirt that looked a bit short and cool for autumn in Paris, but she pulled it together with sky-blue leggings. And despite those bright, solid colors, she gave off a literati vibe, the kind of woman who sat in Jakarta Joe’s, pecking away on a laptop with those other oddballs. Black-framed specs made her look like more of a blogger than me.
“Dez, this is Rowan, the one I told you about,” Colin said.
“Hi!” Desiree said, rising from her seat and giving me a shy, half-hug, half-pat on the back. Her American accent reassured me. “How do you like it here?”
“It’s crazy,” I said. “Beautiful, foreign, expensive! My head’s going to explode!”
She laughed and we took our seats, three of us around a corner table. It was a little indoor café with the improbable name of Une promenade dans le parc, which Colin translated to ‘A walk in the park.’ I took it as a good omen.
One of France’s ubiquitous gorgeous waiters took our order—coffee, wine, entrees, main courses: I settled on Pot au Feu, or French Beef Stew—and we settled down to chat. I was the only one who ordered a full course, the other two selecting only a few appetizers.
“Xerxes says hello,” Colin said.
Desiree glowed. “How’s my big guy?”
“Great,” said Colin. “He can handle Braden Services for a wee bit, while I’m away.”
“Xerk is my guy,” Desiree told me. “He’s a fireman from Portland. It’s a long, crazy story. I’ll have to tell it to you someday.”
“By the way,” said Colin. “You’re taking Rowan shopping tomorrow.”
Desiree’s eyes lit up. “Armando’s buying?”
“Of course!”
“Deal.”
Conversation flowed like that all through dinner: light and pleasant and non-threatening. We talked about neighborhoods I might like, places I could set up shop. In Desiree, I found another television fan and she said she’d do everything she could to get ‘Pookie Watches TV’ up and running. She knew plenty of young, fun, creative people in Paris, all of whom would love a job. Unemployment plagued the young here.
The sudden prospect of me managing a bunch of French intellectuals and videographers moved closer to reality. Me, who hadn’t managed anything more complicated than a few real estate showings. Maybe it wasn’t too late to change my job idea. A pet store on the Left Bank might be more my speed. But how could I talk to customers who spoke French?
The enormity of this life change started sinking in. It must’ve shown on my face, too, because Colin paused in nibbling his crème brûlée. “What’s wrong, Butterfly?”
“Nothing, just … maybe a little homesick, that’s all.”
“Don’t worry. I have hopes this will blow over soon and we can get you right back where you started.”
“Thanks,” I said. But that didn’t prospect didn’t appeal so much to me, either. Back home to my dingy apartment, my terrible career, a little town best known for its prison and its rain? I didn’t want that life, either.
I wanted Colin.
“Cheer up, doll,” Colin said, scooting his chair closer. “Dinner is done, but the evening’s entertainment has not yet begun.”
“Oh? What do you have planned—and what happened to Dez?”
“She’s gone on ahead to call friends, make arrangements. We’ve dined. Now we dance.”
“You dance?” I asked, stunned. “What kind?”
“I can swing a swing dance, if you like.”
“I do like! I told you I loved it. But swing dancing, you? I never expected that.”
“There’s plenty you don’t know about me, Rowan Butterfly.” He grabbed a napkin from the table, dabbed a bit of brûlée from my chin. “I’ve even acted with the Port Selkie Players. You don’t know drama until you’ve done a stage adaptation of Anne Rice in a local theater.”
“Acting? Anne Rice? Swing-dancing?”
“Oh, aye. Glenn Miller, Count Basie, I’ve been there and seen that.”
“Wow,” I said. “I guess you could have.”
“I don’t like to brag.” He stood, helped pull my chair back. “Shall we?”
“Sure, but there’s one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“I can’t swing-dance in jeans!”