Queen of Babble

11

Iwake up to someone saying my name and gently shaking me.

“Lizzie. Lizzie, wake up. We’re at your station.”

I open my eyes with a start. I’d been dreaming about New York-of Shari and me moving there, and finding no better place to live than a cardboard refrigerator box on some kind of highway meridian, and my having to get a job folding T-shirts-miles and miles of capped-sleeved T-shirts-at the Gap.

I am startled to find I am not in New York but on a train. In France. That is stopped at my station. At least if the sign outside the window, silhouetted against the night sky (when did it get so dark out?), which says Souillac, is any indication.

“Oh no,” I cry, hurtling out of my seat. “Oh. No.”

“It’s all right,” Jean-Luc says soothingly. “I’ve got your bags here.”

He does. My wheelie bag is down from the overhead rack, and he passes me the handle, along with my carry-on bag and purse.

“You’re fine,” he says with a chuckle at my panic. “They won’t leave with you still on board.”

“Oh,” I say. My mouth tastes awful, from the wine. I can’t believe I fell asleep. Had I been breathing on him? Had he smelled my disgusting wine breath? “I’m so sorry. Oh. It was so nice to meet you. Thank you so much for everything. You’re so nice. I hope to see you again someday. Thanks again-”

Then I barrel from the train, saying, “Pardon, pardon,” the French way to everyone I bang into on my way out.

And then I’m standing on the platform. Which appears to be in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of the night.

All I can hear is crickets. There is a faint scent of woodsmoke in the air.

Around me, the other passengers who got out at the same time I did are being greeted by excited family members and escorted to waiting cars. There is a bus purring nearby that other passengers are climbing onto. The sign in the bus’s windshield says Sarlat.

I have no idea what Sarlat is. All I know is the town of Souillac isn’t much of a town. It appears, in fact, to be merely a train station.

Which is currently closed, if the locked door and dark windows are any indication.

This is not good. Because, despite the numerous messages I left informing her of my arrival time, Shari is not here to pick me up. I am stranded on a train platform in the middle of the French countryside.

All alone. All alone except for-

Someone beside me clears his throat. I spin around and smack-almost literally-into Jean-Luc. Who is standing behind me. With a big grin on his face.

“Hello again,” he says.

“What-” I stare at him. Is he a figment of my imagination? Can blood clots form in your legs on trains and then travel to your brain? I’m almost sure not. They are from the air pressure in planes, right?

So he really is here. Standing in front of me. With a long, extremely bulky gray garment bag in his hands. As the train pulls away.

“What are you doing here?” I shriek. “This isn’t your stop!”

“How do you know? You never even asked where I was going.”

This is totally true, I realize belatedly.

“But-but,” I stammer, “you saw my ticket. You knew I was getting off at Souillac. You didn’t say you were, too.”

“No,” Jean-Luc says, “I didn’t.”

“But…why?” I’m suddenly seized with a horrible thought. What if charming, handsome Jean-Luc is some kind of serial killer? Who woos vulnerable American girls on foreign trains, lulls them into a false sense of trust, then kills them when they get to their destinations? What if he’s got some kind of scythe or garrote in that garment bag? He totally could. It looks awfully bulky. Way too bulky to be a suit jacket or hemmed trousers.

I look around and see that the last car in the parking lot is pulling away-along with the Sarlat bus-leaving us alone on the platform. Totally alone.

“I wanted to tell you I was getting off at Souillac,” Jean-Luc is saying when I am able to focus on him, and not my complete and utter lack of recourse if he starts trying to kill me, “but I was afraid you’d feel embarrassed.”

“About what?” I ask.

“Well,” Jean-Luc says. He’s starting to look a little sheepish in the bright glare of the streetlamp, around which moths are throwing themselves about as noisily as the crickets are chirping. Why does he look sheepish? Because he realizes he has to kill me now and I’m probably not going to like it? “I haven’t exactly been honest with you…I mean, you thought I was just some random stranger on a train you could pour out all your problems to…”

“I’m really sorry about that,” I say. My God, what kind of person would kill another person just because she told her life story to him on a train? This is totally unreasonable. All he had to do was pull out a book and pretend to read or something, and I’d have shut up. Probably. “I was very upset-”

“But it was so entertaining,” Jean-Luc says with a shrug. “I have to tell you. I’ve never had a girl sit down next to me and start talking about-well, what you did. Ever.”

This can’t be happening. Why did I tell a total stranger so much about my personal life? Even a totally cute one in a Hugo shirt?

“I think you’ve got the wrong idea about me,” I say, backing slowly toward the train platform’s stairs. “I’m not that type of girl. I’m really not.”

“Lizzie,” Jean-Luc says. He takes a step toward me. He is not letting me back away toward the steps. “The reason I didn’t tell you I was getting off at Souillac-besides the fact that you didn’t ask-is because I’m not some random stranger you met on a train.”

Oh, great. This is the part where he starts telling me something psychotic about how we knew each other in a past life. It’s like T.J. from my freshman year all over again. Why am I such a weirdo magnet? WHY?

And he seemed so great back on the train! Really! He said I was fairly brave! He totally restored my faith in men! Why does he have to turn out to be a murdering psycho? WHY?

“Really,” I say. This is all Shari’s fault, of course. If she would just answer her freaking cell phone once in a while, none of this would be happening. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’m actually your host. Jean-Luc de Villiers? Your friend Shari’s staying at my father’s place, Mirac.”

I stop backing up. I stop staring at the garment bag. I stop thinking about my imminent death.

Mirac. He said Mirac.

“I never told you the place I was going was called Mirac,” I say. Because, while it’s true I’d babbled almost nonstop to him, I don’t remember ever saying the word Mirac. Which I’d actually forgotten until that very moment.

“No, you didn’t,” Jean-Luc says. “But that’s where your friend Shari is staying, isn’t it? With her boyfriend, Charles Pendergast?”

Charles Pendergast? He knows Chaz’s real name! I know I never told him that. No one ever uses Chaz’s real name, because he tells hardly anyone what it is.

Who would know Chaz’s real name? Only someone who knew him. Well.

“Wait,” I say, my mind lurching for some-any-reasonable explanation for what’s happening. “You’re…Luke? Chaz’s friend Luke? But…you said your name was Jean-Luc.”

“Well,” Luke-or Luc-or Jean-Luc-or whatever his name is-says, still looking sheepish, “that’s my full name. Jean-Luc de Villiers. But Chaz has always just called me Luke.”

“But…but aren’t you supposed to be at Mirac with Chaz and Shari?”

He swings the garment bag off his shoulder. “I had to go into Paris for the day to pick up my cousin’s wedding gown. She didn’t trust the shop’s courier to get it here in one piece. See?”

He unzips the bag a little and a froth of white lace-unmistakably bridal-spills out. He tucks it back in and rezips.

“I never thought in a million years, when you sat down next to me, that you were the Lizzie I’ve heard so much about from Shari and Chaz. But then when you said Shari’s name, I knew it. But by that time you’d already mentioned…you know.” Now he looks more embarrassed than sheepish. “And I knew you’d only done that because you thought you were never going to see me again…”

“Oh,” I say, feeling suddenly sick to my stomach. Since that’s exactly what I HAD thought to myself. “My. God.”

“Yeah,” Luke says with a very French shrug. For an American. Which makes sense. Since he’s half French. “Sorry about that. Although you have to admit…it’s kind of funny.”

“No,” I say, “it’s really not.”

“Yeah.” He sighs, not smiling anymore. “I sort of guessed you’d see it that way. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

“So you knew,” I say, feeling my cheeks heating up. “You knew all along we’d be seeing each other again. A lot. And you didn’t try to stop me. You just let me go on and on like that. Like a moron.”

“No, not like a moron,” he says, really not smiling anymore. In fact, he looks a little worried. “Nothing like that. I thought you were really charming. And funny. That’s why I didn’t try to stop you. I mean, in the first place, I didn’t know, until you were almost through with your-um, venting-who you were. I just knew you needed to vent, and so I let you, because I actually enjoyed it. I thought you were sweet.”

“Oh God!” I want to throw his garment bag over my head and hide in it. “Sweet? Talking about how I gave my boyfriend a blow job?”

“You talked about it in a very sweet manner,” Luke assures me.

“I’m going to kill myself,” I say from between my fingers, since I’ve buried my burning face in my hands.

“Hey.”

I hear footsteps, then feel hands go around my wrists. I look up, startled, and find that Luke has laid the garment bag across my suitcase and is standing very, very close to me, looking down into my face while gently pulling my hands from my eyes.

“Hey,” he says again, his voice as gentle as his touch. “Seriously. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t…I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to tell you, but then I thought…well, I thought it would be a funny joke. But. Like I said. Jokes aren’t really my thing.”

I am intensely aware of how dark his eyes are-as dark as the tree branches behind the train station, silhouetted against the navy-blue sky-and how kissable his lips look. Especially since they’re only just a few inches away from mine.

“If you tell anyone,” I hear myself say in a voice that has gone strangely throaty, “about what I told you on the train-especially Chaz-I will kill you. About my not finishing my thesis yet AND the other thing. The you-know-what. You can’t tell anyone. Do you understand? I will kill you if you do.”

“I totally understand,” Luke says, his grip on my wrists even firmer now that I’ve dropped my hands from my face. He’s essentially holding them in his big warm hands. And it feels nice. Really nice. “You have my complete and total word. I won’t say a thing. Your blow job is totally safe with me.”

“Ack!” I cry. “I mean it! Don’t mention those words again!”

“What words?” he asks. Now his dark eyes are as lit up as the smattering of stars I see winking down at us, like sequins on a blue cashmere sweater set. “Blow job?”

“Stop it,” I say, and let myself sway toward him.

Just in case, you know, he wants to kiss me.

Because I’m starting to realize that the fact that Luke is Jean-Luc is hardly what anyone can call bad news. Considering that now I don’t have to worry about getting hold of Shari. And about where I’m going to stay tonight.

Not to mention the fact that he’s the nicest, hottest guy I’ve met in a really long time. Who doesn’t have an addiction to Texas Hold’em…that I know of, anyway.

And that he seems to like me.

And that I’m going to be spending the rest of the summer with him.

And that he’s holding my hands.

Suddenly things are looking up. Way up.

“So,” Luke says, “am I forgiven?”

“You’re forgiven,” I say. I can’t help smiling up at him like the moron he claims I’m not. He’s just so…cute.

And not just cute, either. He’s nice, too. I mean, he bought me dinner.

And he was totally sympathetic when I was crying like a maniac.

Plus he’s an investment banker. He’s working hard to…protect rich people’s money. Or something.

And he made me laugh instead of cry after I got off the phone with Andy.

And I’m going to be with him. All summer. All-

“Good,” Luke says. “Because I’d hate for you to think you were wrong. You know, about my character assessment. The one you made based on my clothes.”

“I don’t think,” I say, lowering my gaze to the opening of his shirt, where I see a few promising-looking chest hairs poking out, “that I’m wrong.”

“Good,” he says again. “I think you’re really going to like Mirac.”

I know I’m going to like it, I think-but for once restrain myself from saying out loud-if you’re there, Luke.

“Thanks,” I say. And wonder if he’s going to kiss me now.

And then we both hear a car coming and Luke says, “Oh, great. Here’s our ride.” And abruptly drops my wrists.

And an ancient butter-yellow convertible Mercedes pulls into the parking lot, driven by a honey-colored blonde who calls out in a French accent, “Sorry I’m late, cheri!”

And I know, even before he hurries down to kiss her, who she is.

His girlfriend.

It so figures.