Away Running (3 page)

I put the magazine down and turned on the flat-screen
TV
on the wall across from my bed. Along with the giant bed, my mom had bought me the
T
V and a new iMac. Like
that
would make this place home. I zapped from channel to channel while the snow fell steadily outside my window. Nasty weather, all slush and cold.

I booted up the iMac and checked my emails. I had two new ones. The first was a mass-mail about women’s rights in Afghanistan from my cousin Juliette, who was doing her doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris. The other was from my dad. Going ice fishing for a few days, he’d written in French
.
No cell reception. Call the village store if something comes up. They’ll know where to find me
.

Since my parents split up, every chance he got he headed up to the cottage he inherited from my grandfather, to bow-hunt or fly-fish or chop wood or whatever. He just needed the time alone in the wilderness. And I understood why: I needed my own wilderness too—what with the Orford/Laval thing, with my mom and all her expectations.

I’d forgotten about the second envelope, from Northern Bank of Canada. It looked real official. At the top of the letter, it said
RE: Mathieu Dumas RÉGIMES D’ÉPARGNE-ÉTUDES.
My
“
Education Savings Plan”? I skimmed all the banky kind of stuff but stopped when I got to the last line:
Fonds disponibles
(funds available):
$
84
,
900
.

Eighty-four thousand dollars!

I went back over the letter more slowly, looking for the catch. I knew my mom had a notecard in her desk drawer with our bank information on it. I got it, googled the bank’s website and entered the client-card number, user name and password. It took a few seconds to get to my personal page, but there it was: Education Savings Plan
.

I didn’t even know I had one.

I clicked and a new window opened, identical to the letter I was holding in my hand. Yep, $84,900.

I looked at the magazine beside me on the bed, at the Diables Rouges
QB
in his flashy red uni, the trident on the helmet and the roaring crowd. I didn’t usually talk to myself—I mean, who does?—but I heard myself saying aloud, “Seriously, Matt? Are you going to do this?”

I clicked on the link to transfer or withdraw funds.

It asked me to enter the amount. I typed my two favorite jersey numbers, 88 and 15.

A window popped up that said the maximum daily withdrawal amount was $2,000.

I typed 2
,
000 instead.

The pop-up showed a tiny clock, the second hand ticking. Then,
Confirmer la transaction?

I swiveled my desk chair left and right, left and right.

“Matt, seriously?”

Left and right, left and right.

I clicked on the link to confirm the withdrawal.

Fifteen minutes later, Jean-Michel held the door open for me as I headed outside. “You look like a man on a mission,” he said.

I didn’t answer. I was carrying my backpack, and I crossed the boulevard, heading for the Air France building. Northern Bank had a branch there, beside the airline office. The snow kept falling, and my footsteps erased themselves behind me.

MATT

And that’s how I ended up in Paris seventeen hours later. The woman at the information desk at Charles de Gaulle airport gave me a map, and I found my cousin Juliette’s street. I rode the
RER
train to her stop, Cité Universitaire. My first impressions, rising up into the city on the escalator: the air was brisk, but the sun was out and bright; there was a bustling boulevard, and Renaults and Peugeots and Mercedes sped by, honking; a green-and-white accordion bus stopped to pick up passengers. Just to my right was a park, the Parc Montsouris.

Paris was hillier than I remembered from the time my family had come here when Marc and Manon still lived at home and I was just a little kid. On the other side of the park were gray stone six-floor walk-ups, and three blocks
past that, in a narrow alleyway, was Juliette’s building. It was probably as old as Canada, and its entrance was a massive porte cochere. I pushed open the huge oak doors and stumbled into a little old lady hunched over a green plastic broom.

“
Bonjour, Madame
,” I greeted her.

“
Jeune homme
”—Young man—she replied, all but ignoring me.

An interior cobblestone courtyard led to a stairway in the back. All the apartments had tall windows, leafy plants dangling in nearly every one, even at this time of year. The wooden stairs creaked as I climbed. The second floor is called the first here, the second is the third and so on. When I got seven floors up, I stopped, kind of winded, before knocking at 6G.

Juliette’s jaw dropped when she saw me. Literally. She stood there, her mouth hanging open. “Matt? What are you doing here?” she said finally.

“You invited me, remember?”

“Sure, but I imagined you’d call first.”

We hugged, and she waved me in. Her apartment was tiny. Two steps in, and I was in the middle of the living room.

“Did I catch you at a bad time?” I asked.

“Well, actually, I have to leave in a minute. I have a couple of seminars.”

“Want me to come back later?”

“Of course not, silly.”

She bounced around the room, from the desk in the corner through an adjoining door and then back to the couch, where there were stacks of books and papers. She put a few things in her satchel and then straightened up. Pointing to the couch, she indicated a space she’d just cleared for me.

“How long you in town for?”

“Depends,” I told her, but I figured it wasn’t the best time to try to explain. “But go on to your seminars. We can talk when you get back.”

She grabbed her keys and purse but came to a stop to ask, “How is Lucie? Charles?”

By her tone of voice when she said
Charles
, it was clear she was more interested in my dad, her mother’s brother. Everybody knew he was the one who was having the harder time with the divorce.

“They’re fine,” I told her. “Both of them.”

“Look, I really have to go. Make yourself at home. If you go out…” She pointed to a set of keys hanging from a nail on the wall.

I got up from the couch and gave her a huge hug.

“I’m really glad to see you, Matt.” There were actually tears in her eyes. “We’ll catch up properly when I get back at dinnertime—seven or eight.”

She left, and suddenly it hit me: I was in Paris! I was standing in an apartment the size of my bedroom back home. The sagging wooden beams that ran the length of the ceiling looked like something out of
Les Misérables
; there was a half-eaten baguette on the table and a bowl with drops of café au lait still in the bottom. I was in Paris!

The apartment had a kitchenette and a tiny bedroom with space for a futon and a dresser. The bathroom was just a commode and a sink, four feet by four feet, a handheld shower against one wall. The shower was great though—a strong stream, and hot! After the long, sleepless night on the plane, I stripped and enjoyed it—for, like, maybe three minutes, until the tiny water heater on the shelf above my head kicked on, and the spray went from scalding to lukewarm to cold.

Okay, I thought. I’ll get used to that.

The plan I’d devised on the flight over was to stay with Juliette until I got hold of Moose and looked into joining the Diables Rouges. I didn’t know how it worked or even if they had a spot for me on the roster. But this would be
my
cottage in the wilderness. I didn’t need the credits at school to graduate, and while I was here, I could figure out the rest.

All the tightness of the previous seventeen hours released as I lay down on Juliette’s futon. But even though I hadn’t slept one second of the flight over,
I wasn’t sleepy at all. Juliette had tacked pictures on her wall—her parents (my uncle Max and aunt Christie) and her sister, Jeanne. There was even one of her and me.

We went back a long way. She used to babysit me from when I was, like, seven until I was twelve. And I’d never forget the last time she did. It was a warm summer night, and my parents were out at the movies or something. I woke up, startled and sweaty, and headed to the kitchen for a glass of water. The lights were out, and there was a rustling kind of noise in the front room. I was about to ask what was going on when I
saw
what was going on: Juliette was naked and squatting like a frog on her boyfriend’s lap, her bum
clap-clap-clapping
against his hairy thighs.

I’ll carry a Polaroid of Juliette’s pasty derriere in my mind for the rest of my days. I mean, I’d seen stuff like that before on the Net—who hasn’t?—but it was way better in 3-D. I got down on all fours and hid behind the door to get a better view. And that’s when her boyfriend saw me.

Juliette chased me into my room and smacked me. “You say one thing about this to your mom, and I’ll tell her about the time I caught you whacking off while you spied on me in the shower.”

“But I never did that!”

“Says who?”

She’d slammed the door as she left.

So maybe Juliette and me being roommates wasn’t a gimme like I’d hoped. I figured I’d better start making a plan B for lodging just in case.

I switched on my phone. The second it found a network, it started to vibrate and ping. There were at least twenty voice mails and text messages, either Mom or Dad or Céline in the display screen. I didn’t open any of them. I punched out a message to Moose instead, in French:
Am in Paris.
I hit
Send
.

He replied almost instantly.
Rite, n Im @ Hogwarts
.

Landed this a.m.

My phone rang less than a minute later. “
No way!
” Moose said. “You could have told me you were coming. How long you here for? When do I get to see you?”

“Right now if you want.”

“I’m in school,
mec
.”

There was a pause.

“Look, I made an excuse of needing to go to the bathroom. I’ve got to get back to class, but I can bail at lunch. Where’s your hotel?”

“Not a hotel. My cousin’s place.” I gave him the address.

“I’ll come get you. We’ll head up here and you can check out the team, meet my teammates.”

“You guys still looking for a
QB
?”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously.”

“
Putain, mec!
You’re just full of surprises.” There was another pause. “Listen, it’ll be like, two forty-five or three before I can get down there.”

“Great,” I said, and we hung up. And before I even felt it coming on, I was out cold.

» » » »

The sound of arguing in the courtyard filtered up to the window, waking me. The clock on the nightstand read four thirty.
Crap!
There were five new voice mails from home and a long list of texts; I’d managed to sleep through the pinging. One of the texts was from Juliette, saying my mom had called. It ended with
We need to talk
.

Double crap
flashed across my mind, even though it was inevitable that Mom would figure it out. My backpack was gone from the closet, my passport from the desk…

Another text was from Moose, just minutes before Juliette’s:
Am at your building
.
Concierge threateningcYOU!?!

Crap, crap, crap!

I hit him back:
Be right down
.

I threw on my clothes and rushed downstairs. The concierge stood beneath the porte cochere, broom in hand, blocking the entrance to the building. Moose and another guy were outside on the street. They wore baggy
jeans and red Diables Rouges hoodies, and I could tell that the commotion that had woken me up had come from Moose. Tall and lean, with olive skin and curly dark hair, he was in the little old lady’s face, talking excitedly; the other guy, who looked to be in his twenties, was holding Moose back, trying to calm him.

“They’re with me,” I explained to the concierge. “They’re friends.”

“No trespassers are allowed in the building,” she snapped.

The sharpness of her anger surprised me. “Then why did you let me in this morning?”

She glared at me, holding her broom the way a hockey player holds his stick in a face-off.

“What’s going on?” Juliette said, coming in from the street.

The concierge pointed to Moose and his friend with the end of her broom. “These two, they tried to force their way into the building.”

“We did no such thing!” said Moose. “We’re here to pick up Matt!”

“This is a secure building,” she shouted back. “Visitors must be announced!”

“All visitors,” Moose said, “or just the North African ones?”

“All right, enough!” Juliette said. She turned to the old lady. “These are guests of my cousin, Madame Lafarge.”

“You know full well that all visitors must be announced. This one”—she pointed her broom at me—“as well as those.”

“I know, and I will in the future.”

“Be sure you do.” The old lady stood there for a long moment before finally turning and heading back to her booth.

I ushered us all out into the street. Juliette ignored Moose and his friend and shot me a look—not a friendly one. “I talked to your mother,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t play dumb.”

“Look, Jules, I wanted to explain this morning, but there was no time—you had to run out. Now I have to go with Moose and meet my—”

“Your mother is furious with me. She’s accusing me of encouraging you to come here and a bunch of other things I did not do. I left my seminar early. You owe me an explanation.”

“And I’ll give you one.” Moose and his friend were at their car, a little white Peugeot hatchback, and I moved toward them. “Just not now. I have to go now.”

“Mathieu!”

“Trust me, Juliette,” I said, one foot in the car. “Please.”

Her face was flushed. I could see tears pooling in her eyes, different from the ones she’d greeted me with earlier. Then she turned and entered her building.

MATT

The entire car vibrated as Moose’s friend sped over the cobblestone streets of Juliette’s neighborhood. The tiny Peugeot only had front seats; I was on the passenger side, and Moose was in the cargo space behind, sitting yoga-style, hunched over and head hanging, his friend scolding him. “Your father taught you better than this. And toward a woman, no less!”