“A ‘thing’?”
Vincent’s English was so good that it was easy to forget it wasn’t his first language. “It means I like museums. A lot,” I explained.
“Okay. Got it. You like museums but not Picasso in particular. So . . . you just come here when you want to meditate?”
I smiled at him, mentally giving him points for trying so hard. “Where’d your friend go?” I asked.
“He took off. Jules doesn’t really like to meet new people.”
“Charming.”
“So, are you British? American?” he said, changing the subject.
“American,” I responded.
“And the girl I’ve seen you around the neighborhood with would be your . . .”
“Sister,” I said slowly. “Have you been spying on me?”
“Two cute girls move to the area—what am I supposed to do?”
A wave of delight rippled through my body at his words. So he thought I was cute. But he also thought Georgia was cute, I reminded myself. The wave disappeared.
“Hey, the museum café has an espresso machine. Want to get some coffee while you tell me what other things you’ve got a ‘thing’ for?” He touched me on the arm. The wave was officially back.
We sat at a tiny table in front of steaming cappuccinos. “So, now that I’ve revealed my name and nationality to a complete stranger, what else do you want to know?” I asked, stirring the foam into my coffee.
“Oh, I don’t know . . . shoe size, favorite film, athletic prowess, most embarrassing moment, hit me.”
I laughed. “Um, shoe size ten, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, absolutely no athletic ability whatsoever, and way too many embarrassing moments to list before the museum closes.”
“That’s it? That’s all I get?” he teased.
I felt my defensiveness melting away at this surprisingly charming and decidedly not-dangerous side of him. With Vincent’s encouragement I told him about my old life in Brooklyn, with Georgia and my parents. Of our summers in Paris, of my friends back home, with whom I had, by now, lost all contact. Of my boundless love for art, and my despair at discovering I possessed absolutely no talent for creating it.
He prodded me for more information, and I filled in the blanks for him on bands, food, film, books, and everything else under the sun. And unlike most boys my age I had known back home, he seemed genuinely interested in every detail.
What I didn’t tell him was that my parents were dead. I referred to them in the present tense and said that my sister and I had moved in with our grandparents to study in France. It wasn’t a total lie. But I didn’t feel like telling him the whole truth. I didn’t want his pity. I wanted to seem like just any other normal girl who hadn’t spent the last seven months isolating herself in an inner world of grief.
His rapid-fire questions made it impossible for me to ask him anything in return. So when we finally left I reproached him for it. “Okay, now I feel completely exposed—you know pretty much everything about me and I know nothing about you.”
“Aha, that is part of my nefarious plan.” He smiled, as the museum guard locked the doors behind us. “How else could I expect you to say yes to meeting up again if I laid everything out on the table the first time we talked?”
“This isn’t the first time we talked,” I corrected him, trying to coolly ignore the fact that he seemed to be asking me out.
“Okay, the first time we talked without my unintentionally insulting you,” he revised.
We walked across the museum’s garden toward the reflecting pools, where screaming children were celebrating the fact that it was still hot and sunny at six p.m. by splashing around ecstatically in the water.
Vincent walked slightly hunched over with his hands in his pockets. For the first time I sensed in him a tiny hint of vulnerability. I took advantage of it. “I don’t even know how old you are.”
“Nineteen,” he said.
“What do you do?”
“Student.”
“Really? Because your friend said something about your being in the police force.” I couldn’t help the trace of sarcasm in my voice.