Little Known Facts A Novel - By Christine Sneed Page 0,89

of a famous man.

It startled him how easy it was too, once he set his plans in motion: he packed two suitcases, transferred money to an account he opened with the BNP, and gave away his houseplants to a neighbor. He had no pets and paid his monthly building assessments and utilities electronically. Luca was in L.A. when he left, but had put him in contact with his father, who had a friend willing to lease her apartment to him while she was away in Buenos Aires on diplomatic assignment. Will planned to return to L.A. in March for the marathon, but he would likely go right back to Paris afterward and run in the marathon there in April, running being the one activity that consistently filled him with a sense of elated contentment. During his runs, the near hopelessness of his feelings for Elise did not plague him. He didn’t know why he couldn’t simply force himself to stop wanting her, but his appointments with Dr. Shepherd had led him to the conclusion that he was a self-indulgent child. Also, that he was probably afraid of mature commitment, with the occasional sacrifices it required—it was safer to want someone you couldn’t have because you might fail to keep someone you could. Hence Danielle. Hence Sherrie and Luz and Melissa and Rian.

It was during his third week in Paris, at the end of January, that Elise acknowledged the two e-mails he had sent since arriving in France.

Dear Will,

I am happy for you. Paris is a beautiful city and I hope you’re doing well there. I’m sure you’ll be great in any of the marathons you run. I’m sorry you haven’t heard from me since we saw each other last May. I think you understand why it’s hard for me to be in touch with you. It would crush your father. Be well, Elise

P.S. If things were different, I would come to Paris and have dinner with you. I think I should tell you that your father proposed to me a couple of days ago. I haven’t said yes yet but I’m thinking about it.

P.P.S. Btw, thanks for your nice words about my Oscar nomination. I still can’t quite believe it. I know I’m not going to win, but I’m so excited to be nominated. One of us will win something though, I’m sure, with Bourbon getting eight (!) nominations. It feels like a dream sometimes. I wake up thinking about it in the middle of the night all the time now.

After reading her e-mail, which arrived just before midnight when he was about to go to bed, he put on his coat and went out into the quiet streets, where snow had started to fall, and walked across the city for three hours. It was a Tuesday night, and there were few people on the sidewalks and not many cars moving either. In his grief-stricken state, he still recognized that it might be dangerous to be out so late by himself in a city he didn’t know well, but he kept going and it made him feel better to be risking something, to be aware that his life might be taken from him if he didn’t care about it enough. He crossed the Seine and went southwest toward the locked gates of the Musée Rodin, then southeast to the tower in Montparnasse, before he turned north again and walked up through the crooked streets of the Latin Quarter, where more people were out than in the other neighborhoods he had passed through. He recrossed the Seine and walked to the Louvre, which at night looked especially like the impenetrable fortress-palace that it used to be, and then home again to rue Tiquetonne. He spoke to no one and felt his body’s strength and youthfulness and wondered why he could not stop wasting his life. He did not know why he couldn’t find anything that he wanted to do for a career, why his sister and mother both knew that they wanted to practice medicine or why his father had thought that he would be good and lucky enough to make a living as an actor. (And now he had those eight Oscar nominations. They weren’t a surprise, but Will had not felt very happy for his father when he found out about them, and his bitterness had bothered him more than the nominations themselves. How long would he and Renn be mired in this competitive struggle? It was horrible and