What If It's Love?: A Contemporary Romance Set in Paris (Bistro La Bohème Book 1) (17 page)

So he went to his place, unpacked, showered,
and did some thinking. When he felt he was ready, he grabbed the neatly wrapped
piece of
Comté
his mom had sent with him for Lena and walked out the
door. On the
métro
, he recapped his arguments and rehearsed his speech.
His spirits higher, he keyed in her intercom code and ran up the stairs. He
knocked on her door. Then he knocked again, and again, and again, until his
knuckles hurt.

* * *

The cabbie was a frail little woman who looked to be in her seventies.
She was elegant, in an inimitable French way, and eccentric. She jumped out of
the car and rushed to Lena as if she meant to pick up her huge suitcase. But
halfway through, she slowed down giving Lena ample time to realize what was going
on—and refuse to let an old lady carry her stuff.

Throughout the trip, she talked and gesticulated with both hands, leaving
the steering wheel unattended in a cheerfully cavalier fashion. Her driving was
jerky and way too fast. When she finally ran out of conversation (it was a long
trip to the Charles de Gaulle Airport), she rummaged through her bottomless
tote bag and retrieved a newspaper. She held it in front of her and began to
read, first to herself then out loud for Lena’s benefit. When the cab finally
pulled up at Terminal 2E, Lena experienced the biggest moment of deliverance in
her whole life.

After she boarded the plane and buckled her seatbelt, she felt grateful
for that mad ride. Besides giving her the fright of her life, it shot her with
enough adrenalin to take her mind off the subject of Rob and stall her budding
depression.

She would get over him, she told herself for the hundredth time, just as
she got over Gerhard. And Paris . . . well, Paris was the price
to pay. Her favorite city was now tainted, its beauty no longer serene. It
triggered memories that had become painful. She couldn’t stay there anymore.

Lena closed her eyes and told herself again she was going to be fine.
Leaving Geneva had worked remarkably well only a few months before. It had
wiped out her feelings for Gerhard so utterly and completely that she concluded
she must have finally found her cure for a broken heart. It was an age-old
prescription worth more than all the modern antidepressants. Just six short
words:
out of sight, out of mind
.

She arrived in Moscow with just one suitcase; the rest of her stuff would
follow by freight. A connecting flight took her to Rostov, a town in the south
of Russia where her mother had returned to after the divorce. Lena was going to
see her, for the first time in twelve years, and she no longer cared that her
dad would disapprove. She was twenty-three now, and he could no longer prevent
her from visiting her mom.

Anastasia Malakhova was to meet her at the airport. Lena was a little
nervous as she walked through the sliding doors to the arrivals area. She hoped
they would recognize each other easily thanks to the photos they had exchanged
every now and then.

“Lenochka, I’m here!” she heard a vaguely familiar voice.

Lena scanned the crowd until she spotted a tall, youthful woman calling
to her. Her mother wore high heels, impeccably cut jeans and a stylish leather
jacket, and looked exactly like she did in the photos.

“Come here, darling, and give me a hug.” The older woman cooed and kissed
Lena’s cheek. “My God, how you’ve grown! Let me take a good look at you.”

She circled around Lena, looking her up and down, making her feel
increasingly uncomfortable.

“It’s striking how much you resemble him,” she finally said with a heavy
sigh.

After an awkward pause, she shrugged, and flipped her golden mane. “Well,
at least you are thin.”

“Can we go to your place now, please?” Lena pleaded.

Her mother stopped the inspection and led the way.

Located in the center of town, Anastasia’s apartment was spacious, light
and professionally decorated. Given her mother’s permanent lack of employment,
Lena had no difficulty in deducing that the apartment and the expensive clothes
were paid for by her dad. It was considerably harder to accept that the said
apartment and clothes were the price of her motherless adolescence.

“My dear, I’ve missed you so much! I am so glad you decided to come visit
me.”

“I’m glad, too,” Lena said.

Anastasia fidgeted with her ring. “Just make sure . . .
that your father knows it was your idea, and I had nothing to do with it, OK?”

She smiled sweetly and patted the sofa next to her. “Come here and tell
me about everything. What are you plans? Will you stay in Russia or go back to
Paris? You must have a boyfriend. I’m dying to hear about him!”

Lena sat down in the sleek armchair on the other side of a designer
coffee table. “I don’t have a boyfriend at the moment.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry more than necessary about that. I’m sure you’ll
find someone sooner or later. You’re still young and you’re an heiress.”

Lena shifted uncomfortably but didn’t say anything.

“Fortunately,” Anastasia continued, “there are enough men to go around
after the prettiest girls have had their pick.”

She winked at Lena, then fingered her phone and
held it out. “This is my boyfriend. Isn’t he gorgeous? And you know what? He’s
crazy about me. Says he’d die if I left him. Ha! I should test if he really
means it. Don’t you think?”

Lena changed her ticket and flew to Moscow the following day. In spite of
her complete failure to establish a connection or relate in the tiniest way to
her mom, she was content about this visit. It helped her see certain things
with more clarity. And it drove away the regret that had plagued her for so
many years, giving way to a much less taxing emotion—disappointment.

Saying your name—a breath
of my lungs,

Saying your name—a
peppermint on my tongue.

A tiny movement of burning lips,

A single beat of bird’s wings.

A glimpse of swallows headed
south,

A clink of
silver bells in my mouth.

A stone thrown into a pond

Will cry
out the name that you are called.

Marina Tsvetaeva

A Slavic
supremacist gang savagely beat up a Tajik immigrant and his four-year-old
daughter. The man died on the spot. The girl was hospitalized. Even though at
least eight people witnessed the incident, authorities do not appear to have
much to go on.

Lena read about this incident in the morning paper and couldn’t stop
thinking about it ever since. She wasn’t the only one, of course. Many of her
fellow doctoral students and faculty at the Language and Translation Institute
shared her incomprehension and outrage. People shuddered at the horror of the
attack, cringed at the brutality of the skinheads and worried about the little
girl. Strangely, no one condemned the witnesses who had been close enough to
see the crime but did nothing to intervene or help the police find the
attackers.

As she walked home from the institute, Lena thought this incident was an
extreme form of her home city’s ugliest side—its hostility toward the
outsiders. Not the rich tourists who bought overpriced souvenirs and ate in
expensive restaurants, but the scruffier migrant workers and refugees.

She glanced at the unusually blue September sky, then at her watch, and
made a detour to the park. As she treaded on the colorful carpet of fallen
leaves, her dark thoughts began to fade away. Soon enough, she lost herself in
the childish joy of ruffling the dry leaves with her feet and listening to
their soft rustle.

She filled her lungs with air and remembered she had a reason for
celebrating today. This morning, before she opened the newspaper, she had
realized she could no longer picture the exact shade of Rob’s eyes. At first,
she felt shocked and bereft, but then it hit her that this could be the first
sign of healing. Since her return to Moscow two months ago, she’d done
everything in her power to help the out-of-sight cure do its magic. She had
deleted all Rob’s photos, avoided social media, and asked Jeanne not to talk
about him in her e-mails. But until now, she’d been seeing no results.

Lena reached a five-story building off Tverskaya where she had a small
apartment. The location was perfect and within walking distance from both her
father’s place and her school. Plus it eliminated the need to drive—or be
driven around—in Moscow’s crazy traffic.

As soon as she walked in, she opened her e-mail to
see if she had a reply about the abstract she’d submitted to a conference
organizer. With a gasp, she stood up and walked over to the window. She
remained there for a few moments, staring at the traffic and counting to ten,
then to twenty, then to thirty. When she reached one hundred, she returned to
her desk and opened Rob’s e-mail.

Hi Lena,

It’s been a while since we last talked, and that conversation
didn’t end well. When I returned to Paris and didn’t find you at your place,
Jeanne told me you’d left earlier that day to return to Moscow. She also
conveyed your request not to contact you, to let you move on.

I’m not a stalker, so when a girl says she’s through
with me, I respect her decision. Which is why I followed your instructions and
let you be. But here’s the thing. The more I think about how I behaved over the
summer, the more ashamed I am of myself. I can live with shame. What I can’t live
with is knowing that I hurt you and didn’t tell you how sorry I was, didn’t beg
you to forgive me. What prevents me from sleeping at night is knowing that
you’re thinking badly of me.

That’s why I’m writing to you now—to say what I
should’ve said during the firemen’s ball, what I’ve said in my head a hundred
times. Lena, I’m so very sorry. I wish I had words to convey how much I regret
the whole spying business, and, most of all, that I broke my promise and lied
to you.

I don’t know if you can find it in your heart to forgive
me, but I pray to God that you will. And I also pray you’ll accept to remain in
my life, at least as a friend.

All the best,

Rob

Lena reread Rob’s e-mail five more times. Could she forgive him?
Eventually, yes. Despite his betrayal, she knew he hadn’t meant to hurt her.
He’d behaved in a stupid and selfish way. He’d convinced himself that what he
was doing wasn’t so bad, and downplayed the damage his actions could cause.
He’d been irresponsible, but not mean.

So yes, she could find it in heart to forgive him. But she couldn’t trust
him. Everything she knew about him told her he could hurt her again. He
would
hurt her again. Without meaning to, of course. And when that happened, he might
shatter her heart into too many small pieces to reassemble.

And that was why she couldn’t let him back into her life. She had torn
herself from him in one clean cut, like a surgeon, so that her she’d have a
better chance to heal. But her wound was still raw. She needed a lot more time
before she could envisage even friendship with him.

And by then he’d probably have forgotten she existed.

* * *

Lena made some coffee and sank into the cushy couch. She looked around.
The apartment was now nicely furnished, trendy—and impersonal. Just as
impersonal as it had been four months ago when she moved in.
Oh well.

She opened her e-mail and read Jeanne’s typically short note.

Last night
I had an epiphany and discovered my true calling. I want to be a
bartender/proprietor. Preferably of La Bohème.

Lena immediately shot her a reply.

How
exciting! But what made you see the light? And is there any indication Pierre
would want to make you a bartender and then sell the place to you? Please tell
me more.

As soon as her note hit the cyberspace, Lena shut the laptop. She wasn’t
going to work on her paper or translations. She had established a rule for
herself—Saturdays were for relaxing, which was why she was still in her
pajamas. The rest of the week she worked almost around the clock, but she
didn’t want all work and no play to turn her into a bore.

The problem with her seemingly sage rule was that it created a space
unoccupied by purposeful activity. A space in which she was alone with her
moleskin notebook. A dangerous, murky space in which strange things
happened . . . Like now. Feeling as if she were a zombie, Lena
grabbed a pen and began sketching portraits of an ancient god—a painfully
familiar ancient god. After she filled several pages with drawings en face and
in profile, she traced her finger over each line and then tore them into tiny
pieces. Next, she began to decorate a blank page with the same tightly strung
three-letter word.

Rob, Rob, Rob, Rob, Rob, Rob,
Rob, Rob

She couldn’t help it and she couldn’t stop. She had the impression her
hand was possessed, its neural pathways diverted from her brain and plugged
into her silly defective heart. After she was done writing and tearing up, she
chastised herself and made another useless promise to never do it again.

To distract herself, she turned on the TV. The eleven o’clock news
segment was just beginning, which reminded her to stay close to the phone.
Dmitry said he’d call between eleven and eleven fifteen, and Lena expected him
to call in exactly that interval. The phone rang at eleven oh-three.

“Hello, my dear. I’ve got great news. I managed to get us front row
tickets to the
Swan Lake
at Bolshoi.”

“No kidding? The new
stellar
interpretation everyone is raving
about? How on earth did you accomplish that feat?”

“I’m not telling. But I’m happy you seem pleased.”

“I’m over the moon! Thank you so much, Dmitry, I really appreciate it.
When is the show?”