Chapter Six
The time sped by and before I knew it, our departure date had arrived. I kissed Henry and Olivia goodbye and dropped them off at my parents’ house. Bradley swore he would not have Nikki over at our house while I was gone, but he also had not yet discovered the credit card charges, so I figured I should take precautions. First I hid all the extra toilet paper in Olivia’s closet and piled stuffed animals on top so when the current roll ran out, he’d go crazy looking for the stockpile. I stripped the sheets off my former marital bed too. Bradley was still on the couch, and he was too lazy to find clean sheets and make up the bed. I’d been doing it for the past eight years of our marriage anyway. I wasn’t even sure if he knew where the linen closet was in the new house. Then, while I was waiting for the taxi to come pick me up and take me to the airport, I changed the wifi password. I hesitated on that last one- was it too harsh? Bradley would die without wifi. And it might possibly drive him straight out of my house and in to Nikki’s.
I decided I didn’t care. He hadn’t shown any signs of second thoughts. I’d made it clear to him that if he wanted to try and save our marriage I would call a marriage counselor right away, but he wasn’t interested and I couldn’t make him. It would take two people to make this marriage salvageable, and in the meantime I sure as hell was not going to have another woman in my home. When my taxi arrived, I got in without any second thoughts.
The flights that I’d booked were first to New York, and then straight to Paris. I stood in line waiting to check in, looking around to see if I could spot any of the girls. I was there early, but wanted to get checked in right away. I had my purse and a small carry-on bag, and then my big suitcase that was half empty for all of the clothes I’d be buying on Bradley’s dime. Served him right.
Becca arrived a few minutes after me, followed by Megan, and they both joined me in line. We chattered excitedly while we waited for our turn.
“We should have done something like this ages ago,” said Megan. “I can’t believe it took a crisis like this to for us to decide to just go.”
“I changed the wifi password before I left,” I confessed. “And stripped the sheets off the bed and hid all the extra toilet paper. I think Bradley thinks that stuff just appears out of nowhere when we get low. I’m not even sure he knows where the linen closet is.”
Becca gasped, then giggled. “Oh my gosh,” she said. “That’s awful yet hilarious at the same time.”
“I know,” I said. “I thought it might be too mean, especially the wifi password. I mean...I’d die without it, and he’s worse than me. But then I thought about it, and...”
“...Telling your wife you’re not in love with her anymore is way worse,” Megan finished. “Dude can live without wifi for a couple weeks. It won’t kill him. Maybe he’ll spend his spare time doing a lot of meaningful self-reflection on what drove him to seek an emotional connection with someone other than his wife.”
“He’ll probably just go to Nikki’s house,” I sighed. “Whatever.”
Ashley showed up minutes before we were called up to the counter to check in, and we handed over our suitcases to be weighed, tagged, and sent off to the baggage handlers. We were given our boarding passes and sent on our way to security where once again we waited in line to take off our shoes and belts and produce our Ziploc baggies of tiny hand cream for inspection. Once we’d made it through security, we walked through a maze of hallways, escalators, and moving sidewalks to find the right gate and waiting area. I started to head towards the hard plastic seats, but Ashley grabbed my arm.
“Are you crazy? There’s a bar right over there! Let’s go grab a drink!”
“It’s not even nine in the morning,” Becca protested.
“So I’ll have a mimosa then. Come on! We’re going on a girls’ holiday! We should start it off with a drink. Oh come on, for me?”
So we all went over to the bar and let Ashley order for us while we plopped down in the bar stools. I checked my phone to see if there were any emergencies from my parents or if Bradley had discovered the wifi password changed, but I had no new messages.
Megan noticed my phone out. “Put that thing away, Jules,” she advised. “You’ll go crazy if you spend the whole time staring at it. Your mom and dad are great with Henry and Olivia. Your husband’s an asshole and deserves a couple weeks without toilet paper or wifi. If they need to get in touch, they will! Just relax. You don’t want to miss Paris because you’re busy staring at your phone, do you?”
“You’re right,” I admitted. I slid the phone back in my handbag. “I’ll do my best to stop checking.”
Ashley came back with four mimosas for us all and passed them around. “Cheers!” she cried. “Here’s to an amazing two weeks.” We all clinked glasses and drank.
“I can’t wait to go shopping,” said Megan.
“I can’t wait to check out the nightclubs and restaurants,” said Ashley.
“I want to visit some museums,” said Becca.
“Boooo-ring,” teased Ashley. “You’re such a teacher, Bec!”
“Well, you can’t visit Paris and skip the Louvre!” Becca protested. “What are you looking forward to, Jules?”
I thought for a minute. I wanted to do all the things my friends had mentioned- some shopping, checking out some of the restaurants and maybe going to a club or two if I could find something to wear while we were out shopping, and doing a bit of sightseeing during the day as well.
“Julia wants to find a hot rich French guy and have revenge sex with him all over Paris,” said Ashley.
“You totally should,” Megan agreed.
I blushed hotly. “No! That’s not it. I just want to get lost in the city, I think. I don’t know, find some narrow little streets and wander down there and find a cute cafe to sit in with a coffee or a glass of wine and forget about everything going on at home. Just- escape.”
Becca patted my knee sympathetically, but Ashley rolled her eyes. “We’re going to get you drunk and find you a hottie European to hook up with, mark my words. Another one please,” she hollered, waving her empty mimosa glass at the bartender.
By the time Becca, Megan, and I had finished our first drinks Ashley was polishing off her second. We left the bar and popped in to the departure lounge’s convenience store, buying gum, water bottles, and magazines for the plane ride. I almost pulled out my phone again, but Megan snatched it out of my hands and turned it off for me. “You’ll have to turn it off on the plane anyway,” she told me. “Might as well do it now, right?”
“You’re right,” I admitted. I opened a magazine instead and read all about the latest Kardashian drama until our flight was announced for boarding.
“Ooooh, Paris, here we come!” Ashley sang as we lined up to show our boarding passes.
“Well, New York, then Paris, but who’s counting really?” asked Becca.
The flight to New York was a shorter one, about an hour and a half. We were able to find our second departure gate without much trouble, and boarded not long after arriving. As we settled in to our seats I wished I’d sprung for first class tickets. Megan and I were sitting next to each other by a window, with Ashley and Becca across the aisle from us.
Megan settled back in to her seat. “I can’t believe we’re really doing this,” she said. She looked at me. “You okay? You look kinda sick.”
“I’m okay,” I said. “I feel a little queasy. Not motion sickness queasy,” I added quickly. “Just a general, wow, I’m about to leave my kids and fly over an ocean for the first time.”
“You’ll be fine,” she reassured me.
“I hope so,” I said. “Listen. Um, I feel like I should tell you something. I haven’t said anything to Becca and Ash, but...well...know how I booked our flights and said we’d be doing some serious shopping and I’d pay for it all?”
“Yes...”
“Well...that wasn’t entirely truthful.”
Megan looked confused. “What do you mean?” she
asked. “I mean, I can pay my own way of course, I don’t mind, I have savings for vacation and all-“
“No, that’s not what I meant,” I interrupted her. “I meant, I’m not paying for this. Bradley is.”
Her eyes widened. “Bradley is? How’d you convince him to do that?”
“I didn’t,” I said. “I- well, I guess I can’t show you because my phone is turned off, but I took a picture of his backup credit card. He said some really awful things to me and I got so mad, I just wanted him to feel the way I do. I wanted him to just get the rug pulled out from under him from nowhere, just a total shock he didn’t see coming- I want him to know how I felt.”
“Shut. Up.” Megan’s mouth gaped open. “I can’t believe you had the guts to do that! Wow. I mean good for you, girl, but wow.” She shook her head, then giggled. “Let’s book a massive hotel suite and order all the room service. Should we tell Ashley and Becca?”
“We’ll tell them later,” I said.
“On the way home Bradley should upgrade us to first class,” said Megan, looking down at the foot and a half of space between her seat and the seat in front.
“Bradley will definitely be doing that,” I agreed.
When we landed in Paris, it was just past ten PM local time, but it felt like suppertime to our American-adjusted bodies. We got our passports stamped by immigration, collected our suitcases from the luggage carousel, and then stood around in a tight cluster.
“Soooo,” said Becca hesitantly. “Where now? Do we have a hotel?”
“This is an adventure,” I told her. “It came to my attention that any time I travel, I have to spend hours researching reviews and comparing prices and features, so I decided that this time everything we do, we’re doing on a whim.”
“You take the lead, then,” said Ashley. “Which bridge shall we sleep under tonight?”
Immediately, I felt silly and a bit self-conscious. Maybe Ashley was right and Bradley had been wrong. Maybe planning everything in advance was the way to go. After all, here we were standing around in the Paris airport without a clue where to go. I didn’t have the slightest idea what to do. Catch one of the trains I saw signs for? Or a cab? But where would we go?
Megan rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, Ash. There has to be some kind of guest services guest that can help us find a hotel.”
Relieved, I smiled at my best friend. “Guest services,” I repeated. “Right, let’s find them.”
Between the four of us, we remembered enough vocabulary from high school French to figure out which direction we had to go. I was nervous that at this hour any desk would be closed for the night, but to my relief we found a guest services kiosk with a woman standing behind the counter.
“We’d like some help finding a hotel for the night,” I said, speaking slowly but clearly.
“For how many nights?” she asked, in perfect but heavily accented English.
I looked at my friends. “Are we going to stay here the whole time? Or visit somewhere else?”
“Seat of your pants,” said Ashley, swatting my on the butt.
“Five nights,” I said decisively. We had flights back two weeks from now, but now that we were in Europe, who said we had to stay in Paris the whole time?
“And do you have a preference for the area?” the woman asked.
“We’d like a suite,” Megan added. “The nicest one available. Actually, the most expensive hotel you can find.”
The woman tapped away on her computer. “I have two adjoining suites available,” she said. “The price will be one thousand four hundred euros per room per night. Will this be by credit card?”
I gulped. Holy shit. I couldn’t do that, especially since I wasn’t one hundred percent certain of the credit card’s limit. I thought it was fifty thousand, but with a few nights in a hotel like that we’d max it out in no time- especially if we planned to do any shopping.
“Actually,” I decided, “we don’t need the most expensive hotel available. We’d just like a big penthouse or two adjoining suites in a very convenient area for shopping and sightseeing. We’d like to be able to walk just about everywhere.”
The woman nodded briskly and tapped away at her computer again. “I have a nice hotel for you here. It is a smaller boutique hotel, but very luxurious. It is right here.” She turned the computer screen around and tapped a spot on the map she’d pulled up. “Just off the Champs-Elysees. A very short distance to the Seine and views of the Eiffel Tower. Five hundred euros per room per night.”
I could hear the appreciative sighs from my friends. I felt dazed myself. “We’ll take it,” I said authoritatively.
We all crammed together in a taxi to the hotel, giggling in the backseat. We arrived at the hotel and were greeted by a man who offered to take our bags upstairs to our room. The woman who checked us in offered us all a complimentary glass of champagne. “Is this your first time visiting Paris?” she asked. We nodded. “Bienvenue à Paris,” she smiled. “Here I have a map of the city for you. This is our hotel.” She circled a spot on the map. “You will find many things to do nearby. The Eiffel Tower is a very short walk away, and to arrive at the Champs-Elysees and many designer shops you will simply walk down the street in the opposite direction from the Tour Eiffel. If you have any questions or wish for directions we are happy to help you.”
“Merci,” we all said together, just like we were back in Madame Leblanc’s sophomore French class again. We walked upstairs to our rooms in a daze. I still couldn’t quite believe we were here.
“Is this real life?” asked Becca once we were alone in our suites. We stood in a small group by the door, gawking around us. There were two king size beds in each room, along with a small divan in one room and a table and chairs in the other. There was a balcony that joined the two rooms together, with a small table and chairs so we could sit outside and enjoy a drink.
“Ahhh,” said Ashley, stepping out on to the balcony. “I can sit out here in the morning with a coffee, croissant, and a cigarette!”
“You don’t smoke,” said Becca.
“So I’ll start,” said Ashley. “Paris just seems to call for a cigarette!”
“Did you guys see the bathrooms?” asked Megan, poking her head in. “Come here!” We all crowded in. The tile was so polished that we could see our reflections in it. Each bathroom had a large corner Jacuzzi tub, along with a soaker shower, and a huge sink and vanity. There were baskets filled with complementary products- shampoo, conditioner, soaps, lotions, perfume, moisturizers.
Ashley had wandered in to the other adjoining room. “Free wine in there,” she said. “Two bottles. So I’m not tired at all right now- are we going out or what?”
Megan looked at me. “Jules? What do you say?”
“Oh, let’s not,” interrupted Becca.
“Party pooper,” Ashley grumbled.
“Sorry,” said Becca. “But I’m kind of tired from travelling all day and I’d kind of like to just stay in. It’s eleven-thirty here- we can drink and watch a movie or something. Then wake up tomorrow all rested and do some shopping or sightseeing and go out tomorrow night. Isn’t that a better plan?”
“Yeah, sorry Ashley, but I’m beat too,” Megan admitted. “Let’s open those bottles of wine and find something good on TV.”
“Jules?” Ashley asked me hopefully.
“I’m all in for tomorrow night,” I told her. “We can go shopping tomorrow and find something to wear out. I’m pretty sure I have nothing nice enough to wear out in Paris, anyway. Tomorrow, Ash. We’ll get dressed up and go to dinner and then find a spot for dancing.
Ashley made a face. “Well, okay,” she said. “But I’m definitely drinking this wine!”
“Go for it. We can even order room service,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Girls- this trip is on me. Or rather...on Bradley.”
Ashley and Becca stared at me. “What?” they asked in unison.
“Um- well, it’s going to be a surprise to him,” I
said. “But yup, he’s going to pay for what he did to me, one way or another. I have his credit card.”
An evil smile spread across Ashley’s face. “Find the room service menu,” she ordered. “Bradley is going to live to regret the day he screwed Julia over!”