“Maybe you like the shopping?” Khadija says. “Go to Bon Marché. They have many jewelries there.”
I laugh. It comes out sounding sad and insane. “Thanks,” I say. “I’ll try those. Nice to meet you all. Sorry about the big fat scene.”
I start to walk off but Virgil grabs my arm. “No way. You’re coming with us. Let’s go,” he says. I can see the worry in his eyes.
I give him a lame smile. “It’s okay. Really. I’m better now. I just … I just had too much coffee.”
I try to walk off again but he won’t let go of my arm. “I can’t go with you because I’ve got a gig and I can’t cancel it. I need the money. They need the money,” he says, hooking his thumb at his friends. “So you’re coming with me.”
“No.”
He shakes his head. Swears at me. His beautiful eyes are filled with anger now. He leans in close and says, “Do you want me to pick you up and carry you? Because I will.”
I don’t say anything but I stop pulling away from him.
Constantine looks at me, then at Virgil. “We go now?” he asks uncertainly.
Virgil wipes my face with the sleeve of his hoodie. “Yeah, Tino,” he says. “We go.”
PURGATORY
More than a thousand at the gates I saw
Out of the Heavens rained down, who angrily
Were saying, “Who is this that without death
Goes through the kingdom of the people dead?”
—DANTE
62
“So, where is this party, anyway?” Jules says as we head to the Métro.
“At the beach,” Virgil says.
Charon groans. Constantine swears.
“Yuck. Not that place,” Khadija says. “I hate it there.”
I don’t say anything at first. I can’t. I’m just stumbling along, wrung out. But then I remember Virgil telling me about the beach. He said it was some kind of party hangout. In the catacombs.
“But it closes at four in the afternoon. The sign said so,” I say. Tiredly. Stupidly.
“What closes at four?” Virgil says.
“The catacombs. I took a tour.”
“Yeah, I remember that,” he says. “That was the official tour. Tonight, you’re taking the unofficial one.”
“I don’t want to go in the sewer,” I say.
“Why? Worried you might catch something fatal?” he says, in an acid tone. “Don’t worry. We’re not going in that way.”
We come to a Métro station and take a train to the Denfert-Rochereau stop. Everyone gets off, crosses the platform, and walks down to the far end. I’m plodding behind them, still out of it, clutching my guitar case. We wait. Only for a few seconds. A train pulls in. I go to get on it but Virgil holds me back. The train pulls out again.
“You ready?” he asks me.
“Um, yeah, but the train just pulled out.”
The next thing I know, he and Tino and all the rest of them are jumping down on the tracks.
“Come on,” he says, reaching for me. “We’ve got four minutes.”
“Before what?”
“Before we’re track sauce.”
I hand him my guitar and jump down. I should be scared. This is dangerous. If I cared, I would be.
“I’ll carry the guitars. Stay close to me and stay away from that,” he says pointing at the electric rail. He starts running, slow and easy. He’s carrying both guitars, his and mine.
I follow him. I can hear the others ahead of us. I hear their feet slapping against the ground between the rails, splashing through the murky puddles.
“Virgil! There’s track work. They’ve got slabs down between the rails,” Jules shouts back.
“Keep going!” Virgil yells back.
“Where are we going?” I shout.
“There’s an archway up ahead. In the side of the tunnel. It’s the way in.”
I feel something then—a soft rush of warm, stale air against my face.
“Virgil!” Jules shouts.
“What?”
“Something’s coming.”
“Don’t be a girl, Jules.”
“He’s not—” Khadija says.
Jules cuts her off. “There’s a train! It’s a work train! I can see it!”
“Shut up, Jules!” Virgil yells. “Everyone! Shut up and run!”
He puts on a burst of speed. They all do. They’re streaking way ahead of me. Virgil yells at me to hurry. I run faster, trying to keep up. And then I see it. A glow. And it’s becoming stronger by the second. The ground is rumbling. The air is whirling.
And I’m scared.
Virgil is a silhouette in the glare of the headlights. He gets smaller and smaller and then he’s not there at all. And then he is again. His head pops out of the wall he just disappeared into. He doesn’t have the guitars anymore. He’s yelling at me. Reaching for me. I’m about twenty yards away from him now. The train’s about a hundred. But it’s going a lot faster. I can see it now. Perfectly clearly. I can see its headlights, its ugly metal face.
“Run, Andi, run!” Virgil yells. “Don’t look at the train. Look at me! Run! Run!”
I am running. Like I’ve never run in my life—arms pumping, legs pistoning into the ground. Garbage from the track is swirling all around me. Virgil is screaming. Jules and Charon are screaming. I’m screaming. The light is getting brighter. The train’s horn is blaring. Its brakes are screeching against the tracks.
“Don’t look at the train. Look at me! Run, goddamn you! Run!” Virgil shouts.
The train’s only a few yards away from me now. Fifty. Twenty. Ten. I’m almost there. Almost at the archway. But almost isn’t enough. I’m not going to make it. I’m going to die. Under the wheels of a Métro train.
And, suddenly, I don’t want to.
I put on a last desperate burst of speed. As I reach the archway, only a split second ahead of the train, Virgil lunges for me. His hands close on my jacket. He yanks me toward him, and my feet come off the ground and I’m airborne and screaming and hurtling through the archway. The train rushes by. I feel the displaced air slam into us and then I’m on the ground, lying on top of Virgil. He’s holding me tightly. He’s shouting at me. In French and English and Arabic. And then he grabs my face with both his hands and kisses me hard on the mouth.
And all I want to do for the rest of my life is kiss him back, right here, on the filthy ground, but I don’t. Because Khadija’s standing two feet away from us. Jules pulls me to my feet. Constantine pounds me on the back. Khadija puts her arms around me, which is really weird. I mean, her boyfriend just laid one on me. Everyone’s jumping up and down, screaming and laughing.
Except me. I’m too dazed to jump up and down. Not because I almost got flattened by a Métro train. Because Virgil kissed me.
63
Jules takes a bottle of wine from his backpack and opens it with shaky hands. We all slug from it.
“I think I pissed my pants,” Virgil says, feeling the back of his jeans.
“It’s tunnel water,” Jules says. “You were lying in it.”
“That’s even worse.”
The wine bottle makes its way around again. Virgil slugs from it and passes it to me. “Hey, you owe me,” he says. “I saved your life.”
“That’s twice,” I say. Without thinking.
“What?”
“Hmm?” I say back.
“You said, ‘That’s twice.’ ”
I force out a laugh. “I said, ‘That’s nice.’ ”
He doesn’t laugh. He gives me a look, picks up his guitar, and starts walking. I pick up mine and start walking, too. As we get farther away from the train tunnel, the light fades. He pulls out two flashlights from his backpack. He leads the way with one. Jules brings up the rear with the other. I have one, too. A mini one with a really strong beam. Vijay gave it to me last Christmas. I get it out and shine it ahead of me on the ground. After about ten minutes of walking through a narrow tunnel, we arrive at a rusty, dusty iron grill
e. A padlock is lying on the ground in front of it; its shackle’s been cut.
“The cataflics—the tunnel police—are always trying to keep us out,” Virgil says, kicking the padlock aside and yanking the door open. “And we’re always trying to get in.”
Jules makes ghost noises and walks through the door. We follow him. Virgil’s bringing up the rear now. A few yards in, something shatters under my foot. I yelp. The others laugh. Virgil shines his light on the ground. It’s a bone.
“Don’t touch it,” he warns.
“Oh, thanks. I was so going to,” I say.
“Some of the bones have quicklime on them. It burns.”
He shines his light on the wall of the tunnel. Except it’s not a wall. It’s a mass of skulls and bones. And these aren’t as lovingly tended as the ones on the tour. These are green and slimy. Some are stuck together with a wet, mineralish-looking cement that’s dripped down them and hardened.
“Stalagtites,” Constantine says.
“Stalagmites,” Jules says.
“Stalagfrights,” I mutter.
A few yards down, the walls change to limestone again. Only they’re not gray like the ones I saw in the catacombs; they’re full of color. There’s graffiti everywhere. Cartoons. Copies of the old masters. Original paintings. There’s one really intricate painting of a man dancing with a skeleton in a bridal gown.
“Wow, that’s good,” I say, moving closer to it.
The others continue on. Virgil passes me, glances at the painting. “It was done by a necrophile,” he says. “Watch out for those guys. They’re always skulking around down here. Watch out for the drug couriers, too—usually a pair of men, moving fast. They like their privacy.”
I hurry to catch up, trip over something—somebody, probably—and stumble into Virgil. He feels for my hand and steadies me. I can’t see his face. Can’t tell what he’s thinking. I want him to kiss me again. I want the feeling of his arms around me so badly. I’m glad it’s dark. Glad he can’t see it written all over me. Glad Khadija can’t, either.
“You okay?” he says tersely.
“Yes.”
“Good,” he says, and lets go.
The tunnel veers left, then right, then it narrows. I can hear water trickling. The ground gets muddy, then soupy. We’ve come to a stream.
Virgil stops, shines his light on the wall. Rue d’Acheron, someone’s written on it. “Almost there,” he says.
Charon jumps across the stream. He reaches back to help me over. We walk on. The tunnel’s ceiling gets lower, the walls closer. It’s creepy and claustrophobic and kind of cool. I move the beam of my flashlight over the walls as I walk. There are more pictures. One of a lion. A wolf. A leopard. There’s a chalk drawing of a tall, eerie white man, too. His left arm is outstretched. He’s pointing.
“I saw that one before,” I say. “Back by the dancing skeleton.”
“Yeah, he’s been there the whole way. He’s chalked on,” Virgil tells me. “He’s pointing the way to the party.”
“How do you know that? How do you know your way around down here?” I ask him.
“I learned it by studying the maps. The Giraud map, which was made in the forties. And Titan’s map. But I know my way by heart now. I’ve been coming down here for years.”
A few minutes later, we come to a T. Somebody’s scrawled something on the limestone.
“The writing on the wall!” Jules crows. He stops to read it. Virgil walks on, reciting the lines from heart.
“… at times I almost dream
I too have spent a life the sages’ way,
And tread once more familiar paths. Perchance
I perished in an arrogant self-reliance
Ages ago; and in that act, a prayer
For one more chance went up so earnest, so
Instinct with better light let in by death,
That life was blotted out—not so completely
But scattered wrecks enough of it remain,
Dim memories, as now, when once more seems
The goal in sight again.”
“Wow. That’s deep,” Jules says.
“You know who sayed that?” Constantine asks excitedly. “Agent Mulder. X-Files, bruh! Season Four. Episode Five. ‘The Field Where I Died.’ My cousin has DVD.”
Virgil snorts.
“What, smart man? Who sayed it, then?”
“Robert Browning sayed it. He wrote it. It’s from a poem. ‘Paracelsus.’ ”
“You make me so hot when you recite poetry,” Jules says, planting a noisy kiss on Virgil’s cheek. Virgil swats him away.
“Yeah. Me too,” I say. To myself.
I read the poem again and a chill goes through me as I realize that I know some of the lines. The junkie at Clignancourt said them to me. He probably saw them on one of his trips down here to snatch bones and for some reason they were rattling around in his head yesterday when I bought the painting from him. But still, I get a creepy feeling reading them now. I feel like he somehow knew I’d be here, that I’d see them. What does it mean, anyway—’That life was blotted out—not so completely / But scattered wrecks enough of it remain’? I turn to ask Virgil if he knows, and see that I’m standing by myself. They’ve all moved on. I hurry to catch up.
As I rejoin them, we take a right off the main tunnel, walk for another five minutes or so, take a left, and then I see a glow at the end of the tunnel, soft and golden, and hear music. We make another right, and then we’re suddenly in a big room. It’s lit by dozens of candles and it’s full of people—all laughing, drinking, talking, and dancing. There are punks and geeks. Hippies in head scarves. Spelunkers with headlamps. Goths. A girl is juggling. Another’s walking around in a shroud. I hear French, English, German, Italian, Chinese. Tunes from an iPod. As I stand there, totally gobsmacked, a guy zips by in a Speedo.
“Welcome to the beach,” Virgil says.
He greets people he knows, slapping hands and fist bumping and kissing them. Then he leads us to a huge stone table in the middle of the room, where we put our stuff down.
“Why is this place called the beach?” I ask.
He points to a painting of a wave on a wall. And then to the ground, which is not limestone, but sand. “People brought it down here years ago. In buckets,” he says. “Don’t dig in it. It’s covering bones.”
I toe at the sand, wondering who’s underneath it and thinking that it’s weird the way things work out. I didn’t manage to kill myself tonight but somehow I still ended up in a grave.
64
Everyone takes their instruments out, so I take my guitar out, too, figuring I’m here so I might as well play. If nothing else, it’ll take my mind off what I almost did tonight. Somebody kills the iPod. We do Beatles covers. Stones. Stuff everyone knows. Khadija sings and she’s really good. We do “Alison,” “Hallelujah,” and “Better Than.” I have to sit out a tune here and there that I don’t know.
People are digging us. They’re dancing and singing, cheering and applauding. The goths are doing what looks like a minuet—bowing, touching hands, twirling. One of them, a shockingly hot dude, stands apart, just listening. He’s got the strangest expression on his face—like he’s never heard music before. Something about him looks really familiar to me, but I can’t imagine I could have seen him and forgotten him. Not with that face. Or those clothes.
We play for nearly an hour then take a break. Someone hands me a paper cup filled with wine. I try to find water instead but there isn’t any so I put it down. It’s not a good idea to mix any amount of Qwellify and alcohol, never mind mixing way too much Qwell and alcohol. Virgil and Constantine sit next to me. Constantine asks what’s beyond the beach. Virgil shows us on a map he made of the catacombs. It’s incredibly detailed, with markings for entries, blockages, rooms, and hazards.
“Why do you like it here?” I ask him.
“It’s quiet. No tourists. And it’s the only way someone like me can get a room in the good part of town,” he says,
smiling.
He’s not looking at me much. Even when he’s talking to me. He’s probably in big trouble with Khadija. What a horndog. I still can’t believe what happened at Sacré-Coeur. All the things he said. And did. I don’t know who’s the bigger jerk—him for perpetrating that nonsense or me for falling for it.
Another group of kids arrives and the call goes up for more music. We look around for the rest of our band. Constantine’s taken off. Charon’s nowhere to be seen. Khadija comes over, refills her cup from a bottle on the ground near Virgil, and turns to leave.
“Where you going?” Virgil asks her.
She winks at him.
“Does Mom know you’re still seeing Jules?” he asks her.
“Does Mom know you still come down here?” she asks him. And then she’s gone.
“Mom?” I say, confused. That can’t be right.
“Yeah,” Virgil says.
“Wait a minute … Khadija’s your sister?”
He nods.
“But I thought—”
“What?”
“That you were … that she was …”
“You thought she was my girlfriend?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that why you took off the other night? At Rémy’s?”
“You saw me?”
“Yeah, I saw you. You came in and then you left again. I had no idea why. I called you but you didn’t pick up.” He goes silent for a few seconds, then says, “Andi, what kind of person do you think I am?”
I never imagined there could be an explanation. I just assumed the worst. Because that’s what I do. About everything and everyone. Most of the time I’m right, but not this time. This time I was wrong. Really wrong.
“It’s not about what kind of person you are, Virgil. It’s about what kind of person I am,” I tell him.
Someone shouts at us to play. More people join in. A chant goes up. I can see from his expression that Virgil would rather not play right now, but as he said earlier, this is a paying gig.