Bijou wasn't the only one to tremble that night.
It didn't take long for the crowd to really get riled up. I had no idea where they all came from, but the bodies continued to file into the door; more and more of them, young and old, rich and poor, men and women. I'd never seen such an assortment of types all pressed together, rubbing elbows on the dancefloor, united in the single-minded drive to be unruly.
As more dancers stepped onto the floor, Cosima and I were pushed further and further to the edges. And not that we minded. No one paid much attention to us as we spun in slow circles. No one paid attention as we stole kisses.
I thought the kisses would satiate me but instead they aroused an ever growing desire.
"Let's go somewhere else," I said, surprising us both. "It's too crowded here."
"Where?" she said. "I'm in a suit and Felix is in a dress."
"No, I mean somewhere quiet. Let's go back to the hotel."
She squeezed me and considered the thought.
"I'd love to, but I don't think the rest of our party will want to leave. It's still early. The last bus isn't for another hour."
"No! No buses!" I said. "I think I'm too drunk."
And it was true. My vision had narrowed. I was only able to focus on her face. The other dancers were foggy, as if they didn't really exist at all, as if they were figments in our shared dreamings.
Because this was our dream, wasn't it? Mine and Cosima's? Not Laurent's. Not Felix's. Heck, not even Bijou's.
Or so I thought with the selfish determination of an inebriated heart.
I laid my clumsy drunk hands on her cheeks.
"I want to go home," I said. "No, I mean to your home. To your hotel. I want to go home with you to your hotel. To the hotel you sleep in, you and me, together."
She laughed. If the content of my plea wasn't persuasive enough, the confused repetition must have been, because she left then, leaning me against a wall and whispering promises to return.
I watched her walk away. I watched her with a vulnerable, needy attention, a stare that only a lovesick and intoxicated fool could muster. I watched and I waited, feeling very much like le petite chiot, myself.
I leaned my head back until it rested against the wall.
"J'taime," I whispered.
But of course she didn't hear me. Only the wall heard me, and I wondered how many other earnest love confessions it had overheard through the years. I turned my head, looking at the old wood moulding. It was etched with the names of lovers past. I touched the spot.
"Don't tell," I said to the wall. "Don't tell anyone that I love her."
It was stupid for many reasons, but drunks don't know that the secrets they share are the same ones they wear on their sleeves. Drunks cherish these secrets anyway, thinking that if they whisper, their words are somehow more sincere.
I was such a drunk on that night.
Cosima returned with Laurent and Felix tagging behind her. They took one look at me and laughed.
"God! What a mess you are!" Laurent said. "We can't take you home like that!"
"I don't want to go home with you anyway!" I said. "I want to go home with Cosima!"
"Well, I don't think we have any other option," he said. "Mother would never forgive me if she saw you like this."
"I don't care about her!" I said. "I don't care what she thinks! I'm an adult! I make my own decisions!"
"Alright, alright," Laurent said as he helped me to the door. "We'll see how you feel about that tomorrow."
At least, I think he helped me to the door. I don't truly remember leaving the building, nor walking down the street, nor standing on l'Avenue de la Forêt Noire. I have faint recollections of coldness, of trembling legs and lips, of walking and walking. I remember street lights. I remember shouts. I remember the sound of slammed car doors.
And then suddenly, I was standing in front a cinema ticket box, staring at a brightly lit poster kiosk. The Rules of the Game was written across the bottom of the poster. Illustrated above that was an airplane, one that looked uncannily like the plane Cosima had flown in on.
"The Rules of the Game," I read out loud.
I stood still, though it was probably more like a sway. Laurent and Cosima were trying to flag down a cab.
"That's it!" I said, pointing to the poster. "That's the movie!"
And though I repeated myself at louder and louder intervals, no one paid much attention to me. Laurent shouted at another cab, and Felix grabbed at his arm, saying things like, "It's alright. Let's just walk. We're nearly half way there anyway."
"Laurent! Look! The Rules of the Game!" I shouted.
"Yeah, that's great, Delphine," he said, unimpressed. "Let's go."
He didn't seem to fully grasp the magnitude of the coincidence! The poster! The airplane!
"That's the movie we were supposed to see on Saturday!" I said.
Cosima grabbed my arm and pulled gently.
"Let's go, Delphine," she said. "We're going to walk to the hotel."
Just then the theatre doors opened and sleepy movie-goers stepped out into the night.
"No, no," I said. "You don't understand. This is the movie that I told my mother I was coming into town to see, but I didn't see it. I saw you instead. And look, it's an airplane! It's about an aviationist! Don't you see? Another statistical improbability!"
"That's really something, but maybe we should…"
Just then, something else caught my dumbly focused eye; a young couple that had just walked out of the theatre.
"Hey!" I shouted. "I know you!"
I pointed, surprising everyone, including the couple, including Cosima. And when Laurent turned around, he was surprised too, his eyes uncharacteristically cautious.
"Good evening, Ethan," he said.
Ethan jumped back, his eyes on me first, then Laurent, then Cosima in her suit, and finally lingering on Felix in his gown and heels.
"Good evening," he said slowly.
I didn't recognize the woman on his arm, but that didn't stop me from announcing how beautiful she was.
"Oh! I'm so happy for you!" I said. "I'm so happy you found someone else to take to the cinema! What's your name, darling? She's lovely! Isn't she lovely?"
Cosima tugged on my elbow, repeating my name in a hushed way.
"This is Ethan!" I said. "Remember when I told you about him? Remember he asked me to the cinema? Well, luckily, he found someone else to take! Isn't she lovely?"
Cosima didn't respond.
"And don't worry about me!" I said. "I've found someone else to take me to the cinema, too!"
I patted Cosima's hand, which was still in the crook of my elbow.
"She's talking nonsense," Laurent said. "She's had a lot to drink. Things got a little unruly tonight. You know how it goes."
"I see," Ethan said. "Things certainly do look... unruly."
He stared at Felix with an expression of unveiled disgust. Then he looked at Cosima, his disgust morphing into something even more sinister, a twinge of violence tainting his forced smile.
And me? When he glanced at me, his lip trembled.
"Now, if you don't mind, we'll be going," he said to Laurent.
"Of course," Laurent said.
"Good bye!" I shouted after them.
Cosima dragged me away.
"Now you've gone and done it," Laurent said.
He walked several meters ahead, walking incredibly fast, with his hands shoved in his pockets and his head down.
"Now you've really gone and done it!" he repeated.
"Done what? I was just being polite!" I laughed. "Did you see that woman? Poor girl… to think… sitting in the dark cinema next to Ethan for a whole hour and a half! How could she stand it?!"
"That's enough, Delphine," Cosima said.
"I think my skin would crawl right off if I was her," I continued, utterly sure of my own righteousness.
"Shut up!" Laurent shouted.
He spun around, raising his hands in the air and shouting. "Just stop talking!"
"What's wrong?" I said.
"Don't you know what you've done? It's bad enough he saw us in the first place, but then you had to go and insult him? You're just asking for it!"
"Asking for what?"
"People talk, Delphine!"
"So what?"
He raised his hands to his head, grabbing at his own hair. He roared.
"Christ! You are so naive sometimes! Why don't you open your eyes and pay attention for once? Ethan saw us — all of us! Do you think he's just going to keep his mouth shut?"
"Why wouldn't he?"
"Why? Why? Maybe he would have! Maybe... just maybe... he would have kept quiet — it's none of his business after all — but did you have to go and humiliate him in front of that girl?"
"I wasn't humiliating him! I was congratulating him!"
He cried out again and stormed off.
But even as the reality of his words creeped into the periphery of my awareness, while I was still drunk, I was still sure that I had done absolutely nothing wrong. In fact, I felt relieved. If Ethan had some other girl to court, then maybe he'd finally leave me alone.
It was only in the morning when I woke up, still in my gown and still mostly drunk; it was only then that I started to piece together the events of the night before. It was only then that I felt a creeping sense of doom.
I was laying on my back, Cosima on one side of me and Felix on the other. Felix had managed to change into a white t-shirt and slacks. Cosima was still in her suit, minus the jacket and tie. And Laurent?
It was only when I saw Laurent sleeping at the foot of the bed, curled up on his side with one small blanket that barely covered his torso; it was only then that I remembered our argument and the way his fists trembled at his side when he shouted; it was only then that I remembered the indignance in his face, an expression he had never once thrown at me before.
It was only on the bus, the first bus to Rosheim, when we sat with our elbows touching, him staring out the window and me staring blankly ahead; it was only then that I remembered the way he had grabbed my arm; the way he had laughed awkwardly and spoken in my defense.
Defense against who? I thought.
I touched his leg, unable to bear the silence any longer.
"Don't worry," he said. "I'll tell mother it was my fault that we missed the bus."
I sighed because we both knew that she would believe it.
"She won't let you back into the city for a month," I said.
"Well, if she found out the truth, she wouldn't let either of us, maybe ever. Let's say it was just you and me. Let's not bring Felix and Cosima into this."
"Okay," I said.
Good thinking, I thought. Best not to have mother thinking they are a bad influence.
"And as for Ethan…" he said.
Ethan!
The memory of the night before leapt to the surface of my blank mind, shattering any illusion of calm I may have maintained until that moment.
"...let's just hope he keeps his mouth shut," he said.
Ethan! What have I done?
"I mean, what else can we do?" Laurent said.
We didn't talk much for the rest of the bus ride. There was nothing to say. Minute by minute, more and more fragments came back to me; the cold night, the poster kiosk, the illustrated plane, the sleepy movie-goers, the girl on Ethan's arm, the look in his eye, the disgust — at me, at Cosima — the way his voice trembled when he said goodbye.
And worst of all, I remembered that one glance, the moment our eyes had met and I had caught a glimpse of the depth of his injury, perhaps the deepest injury he'd ever felt, perhaps deeper than any injury I'd ever felt — yes, through the fog of my alcohol soaked mind, I remembered the exact moment when I had broken his heart.
"He'll never forgive me," I said.
"Maybe not," Laurent said. "But I do."
He put his arm around my shoulder, and soon I found myself leaning on him, too tired to keep my eyes open, but too nauseous to sleep.
Instead, I pieced together all the good memories from the night before, all the times Cosima had smiled at me, all the times her hands had roamed up and down my back, all the shivers, all the sighs. I grabbed up all of these moments as the floated to the surface of my mind. I grabbed them up and stitched them in, refusing to let them slip away. I stitched them together one by one; the fedora, the tie, the softness of her lip, the sleep in her eye in the morning, the kiss on the cheek in the hotel lobby, a whispered promise to see each other soon, a whispered promise followed by a whispered I love you.
I grabbed up these moments, my fists clenched in my lap as if I could actually hold on to them.
By the time we got home, it was already noon. My mother stood in the doorway, her hand on her hip. Laurent did all the talking, and thank god for that. My mother was surprisingly soft on him, excusing his behavior because, going to the theatre is an exciting event, after all. She let him off with a promise to not let it happen again, and thank goodness for Cosima for giving him a place to rest his irresponsible head.
I went upstairs and slept.
I slept for hours. I slept until the sun went down.
And when I finally came down for dinner, my father was in the middle of commenting on Ethan's absence.
"He's never missed a day before. I've got half a mind to walk right down there and check to make sure everything is okay."
"I'm sure everything is fine," Laurent said. "I'm sure he'll be here tomorrow and we'll get to hear the whole story."
"Maybe you're right," my father said. "Still… if something is wrong, what kind of neighbor would I be if I didn't at least inquire?"
"You don't have to do that," Laurent said, glancing at me.
"No, I think I will. Right after dinner," he said.
Laurent said nothing else because there was nothing else to say. Father had made up his mind. I sighed and slouched into my chair, suddenly very sober, suddenly very afraid.