Queen of Babble (13 page)

“Oh,” the guy says with another flash of those perfect white teeth, “they aren’t so bad. If you saw how the typical American tourist acted, you’d probably feel the same way about us that the French do.”

I’ve chugged most of my water. I’m starting to feel a little better—not so much like death warmed over.

Although I’m sure I probably look it. Which is great since now that I have an even closer view of him, I can see that my seatmate isn’t just handsome. His face is filled with kindness, intelligence, and good humor as well.

Unless that’s just the starvation talking.

“Well.” I reach up to dab at my eyes with my wrist. I wonder if my mascara is running down my cheeks in streaks. Did I wear the waterproof kind? I can’t even remember. “I’ll just have to take your word for it.”

“Your first time in France?” he asks sympathetically. Even hisvoice is nice. Sort of deep, and very understanding.

“My first time anywhere in Europe,” I say. “Well, except for London, where I was this morning.”

And then, like a dam bursting, I’m crying again.

I try not to do it loudly. You know, without sobbing or anything. I just can’t think about London—I never even got to go to Topshop!—without tearing up.

My seatmate nudges my elbow with his. When I open my streaming eyes, I see that he is holding a plastic bag in front of me.

“Honey-roasted peanuts?” he asks.

I am overwhelmed by hunger. Without a word, I dive my hand into the bag, grab a handful of nuts, and stuff them into my mouth. I don’t care if they’re honey-roasted and jam-packed with carbs. I’m starved.

“Do…do they come with the seats, too?” I ask between sniffles.

“No,” he says, “they’re mine. Help yourself to more, if you want some.”

I do. They are the best thing I have ever tasted. And not just because I haven’t had sugar in so long.

“Thanks,” I say. “I…I’m s-sorry.”

“For what?” my seatmate asks.

“For s-sitting here crying like this. I’m not usually like this. I swear.”

“Travel can be very stressful,” he says. “Especially in this day and age.”

“It’s true,” I say, taking some more nuts. “You can just never tell. I mean, you meet people and they seem perfectly nice. And then it turns out that all along they were just lying to you to get you to pay their matriculation fees because they lost all their money in a game of Texas Hold’em.”

“I was actually referring to terrorist alerts,” my seatmate says somewhat dryly. “But I guess what, er, you mentioned could be troubling as well.”

“Oh, it is,” I assure him through my tears. “You have no idea. I mean, he just outright lied to me—telling
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me that he loved me and all of that—when all along I think he was just using me. I mean, Andy—that’s the guy I left, back in London—he seemed so nice, you know? He was going to be a teacher. He said he was going to devote his life to teaching little children to read. Have you ever heard of anything that noble?”

“Um,” my seatmate says, “no?”

“No. Because who even does that in today’s day and age? People our age—how old are you?”

“I’m twenty-five,” my seatmate says, a little smile on his lips.

“Right,” I say. I open my purse, fishing inside it for some tissue. “Well, haven’t you noticed that people our age…all they seem to think about is making money? Okay, not everyone. But a lot of them. No one wants to be a teacher anymore, or even a doctor…not with HMOs and all of that. There’s not enough money in it. Everyone wants to be an investment banker, or a corporate headhunter, or a lawyer…because that’s where the money is. They don’t care if they’re doing anything good for mankind.

They just want to own a McMansion and a BMW. Seriously.”

“Or pay back their student loans,” says my seatmate.

“Right. But it’s like, you don’thave to go to the world’s most expensive college in order to get a good education.” I’ve managed to locate a wadded-up piece of tissue at the bottom of my purse. I use it to mop up some of my tears. “Education is what youmake out of it.”

“I never actually thought of it that way,” says my seatmate. “But you could have a point.”

“I think I do,” I say. The buildings that had been whizzing past my window have turned to open fields.

The sky is a golden red as the sun begins to slide down toward the western horizon. “I mean, I’ve been out there. I’ve seen it for myself. If you’re studying something like—I don’t know. History of fashion or something—people think you’re a freak. No one wants to pursue anything creative anymore, because that’s too risky. They may not get the kind of return on the financial investment they’ve made in their education that they think they should. So they all go into business or accounting or law or…or they look for stupid American girls to marry so they can live off them.”

“You sound as if you’re speaking from personal experience,” my seatmate observes.

“Well, what else am I supposed to think?” I’m babbling. I know I’m babbling. But I can’t seem to stop myself. Any more than I can stop the tears that continue to flow down my cheeks. “I mean, what kind of person—you know, who wants to be a teacher—works as a waiter, and ALSO collects the dole?”

My seatmate seems to consider this. “A financially needy one?”

“You would think that,” I say, sniffling into the tissue. “But what if I told you that this was also a person who lost all his money playing Texas Hold’em, then asked his girlfriend to pay his matriculation fees, and then, as if that were not enough, also told his entire family that…she’s…I mean, I’m…a fatty?”

“You?” My seatmate sounds suitably stunned. “But you’re not. Fat, I mean.”

“Not now,” I say with a little sob. “But I was. When we met. But I lost thirty pounds since the last time I saw him. But even if Iwas fat—he shouldn’t go around telling people that! Not if he really loved me.

Right? If he really loved me, he wouldn’t havenoticed I was fat. Or he would have, but it wouldn’t have
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mattered. Not enough to tell his family.”

“That’s true,” my seatmate says.

“But he did. He told them I was fat!” New tears erupt. “And when I got there, they were all, ‘You’re not fat!’ Which is how I knew he’d said something about it. And then he goes and gambles away the money his parents—his hardworking parents—gave him for school! I mean, his mother—his poor mother! You should have seen her. She’s a social worker, and she made me a giant breakfast and everything. Even though I don’t like tomatoes, and every single thing she made had tomatoes in it. Which is another sign Andy never loved me at all—I specifically told him I don’t like tomatoes, and yet he didn’t pay any attention. It was like he didn’t even know me at all. I mean, he e-mailed me a picture of his naked butt. What would make a guy think a girl would WANT to see a picture of his naked butt? I mean, seriously? Why would he think that was an okay thing to do?”

“I really couldn’t say,” my seatmate says.

I blow my nose. “But see, that’s just typical cluelessness on Andy’s part. The scariest part is, I feltsorry for him. Seriously. I didn’t know about the welfare fraud or that he was going around calling me fat, or that he was using me just to pay his gambling debts. And the worst part is…Oh God, I can’t be the only one this has ever happened to, can I? I mean, haven’t you ever thought you loved someone and done things you regretted with that person? And then wished you could get them back, only you can’t? I mean, haven’t you?”

“What kind of things are we talking about?” my seatmate wants to know.

“Oh,” I say. It’s amazing, but I’m starting to feel a little bit better. Maybe it’s the comfortable seat, or the golden glow flooding the train car as well as the tranquil countryside we’re passing. Maybe it’s the fact that I finally got some liquids into me. Maybe it’s the sugar from the peanuts.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s that saying all of this out loud is restoring my faith in myself. I mean, anyone might have been tricked by as smooth an operator as Andrew—I mean, Andy. ANYONE. Maybe not my seatmate, since he’s a guy. But any girl. ANY girl.

“You know the kinds of things I’m talking about,” I say. I look around to make sure no one is listening.

All the other passengers appear to be dozing, listening to things through headphones, or too French to understand me anyway. Still, I lower my voice.Blow job, I mouth meaningfully.

“Oh,” my seatmate says, both of his dark eyebrows going up. “Thatkind of thing.”

The thing is, he’s American. And he’s my age. And he’sso nice. I feel totally comfortable talking about this with him, because I know he’s not going to make any judgments about me.

Besides, I’m never going to see him again.

“Seriously,” I say, “guys have no idea. Oh, wait, maybe you do. Are you gay?”

He nearly chokes on the water he is sipping. “No! Do I seem gay?”

“No,” I say. “But then my gaydar isn’t the best. My last relationship before Andy was with a guy who dumped me for his roommate. His MALE roommate.”

“Well, I’m not gay.”

“Oh. Well, the thing is, unless you’ve given one, you can’t know. It’s a major deal.”

“What is?”

“Blow job,”I whisper again.

“Oh,” he says. “Right.”

“I mean, I know you guys all want them, but they’re not easy. And the thing is, did he so much as attempt to give me anything in return? No! Of course not! Not that I didn’t take care of, you know.

Myself. But still. That’s just impolite. Especially since I only did it out of pity for him.”

“A…pity blow job?” My seatmate has the strangest expression on his face. Sort of like he’s trying not to laugh. Or that he can’t believe he’s having this conversation. Or maybe a combination of both.

Oh well. Now he’ll have a funny story to tell his family when he gets back home. If he is from the kind of family where it’s okay to talk about blow jobs. Which I am definitely not. Except with Grandma, maybe.

“Right,” I say. “I did it out of pity for him because he couldn’t come. But now I realize that the whole couldn’t-come thing was just a ruse. He was faking it! So I’d blow him! I feel so used. I’m telling you…I want it back.”

“The…blow job?” he asks.

“Exactly. If only there was a way I could take it back.”

“Well,” my seatmate says, “it sounds like you did. You left. If that’s not taking a blow job back, I don’t know what is.”

“It’s not the same thing,” I say dejectedly.

“Billets.”I see someone in a uniform standing in the aisle.“Billets, s’il vous plaît.”

“Do you have your ticket?” my seatmate asks me.

I nod, and open my purse. I manage to locate my ticket, and the guy next to me takes it. A second later the conductor moves on, and my seatmate says, “You’re going to Souillac, I see. Any particular reason?

Do you know someone there?”

“My best friend, Shari,” I say. “She’s supposed to meet me there. At the station. If she gets my message. Which I don’t even know if she did, since she doesn’t seem to be picking up her phone. Which she’s probably dropped in the toilet again. Because she’s always doing things like that.”

“So…Shari doesn’t even know you’re coming?”

“No. I mean, she invited me. But I said no. Because back then I thought I could work things out with Andy. Only it turned out I couldn’t.”

“Well, not through any fault of your own.”

I look at him then. The sun, sliding into the car, has outlined his profile in gold. I notice that he has really long eyelashes. Sort of like a girl. Also that his lips are very full and squishy-looking. In a good way.

“You’re really nice,” I say to him. My tears have totally dried up now. It’s amazing how therapeutic telling all your problems to a total stranger can be. No wonder so many of my peers are in therapy.

“Thanks for listening to me. Although I must sound completely psychotic to you. I bet you’re wondering what you did to deserve having such a total wack job sit down next to you.”

“I think you’ve just been through a rotten time,” my seatmate says with a smile. “And so you have every right to sound psychotic. But I don’t consider you a wack job. At least, not a total one.”

“Really?” He also has, in addition to the lovely eyelashes and lips, really nice-looking hands. Strong and clean—tanned, too—with just a light spatter of dark hair on the back of them. “I just don’t want you to think I go around giving blow jobs to all the guys I feel sorry for. I really don’t. That was my first one.

Ever.”

“You don’t? That’s too bad. I was going to tell you about how I was raised in a Romanian orphanage.”

I stare at him. “You’re Romanian?”

“That was a joke,” he says. “To make you feel sorry for me. So you’ll—”

“I get it,” I say. “Funny.”

“Not really,” he says with a sigh. “I suck at jokes. I always have. Hey, listen. Are you hungry? Want to go to the dining car? It’s a long way to Souillac, and you’ve eaten all my nuts.”

I look down at the empty plastic bag in my lap.

“Oh my God,” I say. “I’m so sorry! I was starving—yes, let’s go to the dining car. I’ll buy you dinner.

To make up for the nuts. And the crying. And the thing about the blow job. I’m really sorry about that.”

“I’ll takeyou to dinner,” he says gallantly. “To make up for your recent mistreatment at the hands of one of my gender. How’s that?”

“Um,” I say, “okay. But…I don’t even know your name. I’m Lizzie Nichols.”

“I’m Jean-Luc de Villiers,” he says, holding out his right hand. “And I think you should know, I’m an investment banker. But I don’t own a McMansion or a BMW. I swear.”

I automatically take his hand, but instead of shaking it, I just stare at him, momentarily flustered.

“Oh,” I say, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…I’m sure notall investment bankers are bad—”

“It’s okay,” Jean-Luc says, giving my hand a squeeze. “Most of us are. Just not me. Now come on.

Let’s go eat.”

His fingers are warm and just slightly rough. I gaze up at him, wondering if the rosy glow all around him is really just caused by the setting sun, or if he is, by some chance, an angel sent down from heaven to rescue me.