She frowned and pointed at her screen to indicate that she was making a call. She scrolled quickly through her contacts. But who could she call? She didn’t actually want to talk to anyone. Out of habit, she searched Nicky’s name and hit the Dial button. They were all part of a family phone plan that Avery paid for; she guessed Avery had decided to spare herself the anguish of canceling Nicky’s number by simply continuing to pay her share. Lucky didn’t know where Nicky’s phone was now, dead in a drawer somewhere she imagined, but she was grateful to still have this. Her sister’s voice filled her ear.
You’ve reached Nicky’s phone, leave a message after the tone. Have fun!
She was giggling, self-conscious about being recorded. Just faintly in the background, Lucky could hear herself, several years younger and oblivious to the loss her future held, laughing.
“I would love to know you,” the man persisted.
“I’m on the phone,” said Lucky.
“Ah, d’accord.” The man leaned back, palms open in a ridiculous gesture of gallantry. “We speak after.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d phoned Nicky since she died; the urge to speak to her sister and tell her what life was like without her was constant. Calling her felt like being an amputee who, believing she still has legs, keeps trying to stand.
“Hi, it’s me,” began Lucky as the tone sounded. “I…Well, I’m just calling to say hi.”
She glanced at the man, who made no attempt to pretend he wasn’t listening to her.
“It’s fashion week here so things are kind of hectic, as always, but I wanted to call because…Um, it’s a big day for you, I guess. One year! I can’t believe it. So yeah, I just wanted to call and say…Not congratulations, obviously. It’s not, like, a goddamn celebration. But I wanted you to know I’m thinking about you. I’m always thinking about you. And I miss you. Obviously.” Lucky cleared her throat. “So that’s it. I love you.” Lucky waited to see if she would feel anything, some energetic shift in the cosmos to let her know her sister was listening. Nothing. “Also, Avery’s being annoying. Bye.”
She hung up and glanced out the window. They were almost at Saint Paul, her stop. As she unfurled herself to stand, the man reached to touch her arm. She jumped as though he had held a lit match to her skin.
“Can I take your number?”
The train slowed into the station and Lucky stumbled. He grinned up at her as she faltered. His teeth were stained brown from tobacco.
“You are so sexy,” he said.
Lucky looked at the man eyeing her with possessive joy, as though picking out his pastry from a glass display case. The water bottle still protruded toward her from his crotch.
“Can I?” she asked, pointing to it. The train came to a halt.
“This?” he asked, baffled. He handed her the plastic tube. “Mais bien sûr.”
She took the bottle from his hands, unscrewed the cap, and tipped the remaining water into his lap. The man shot up with a yelp as a dark patch spread across his jeans. Lucky darted toward the exit and pulled the silver lever, that curious object of agency unique to Paris’s metro, and the train doors sprang apart. From the platform, she could hear him calling her a bitch as passengers streamed onto the train between them. She took the stairs two at a time and emerged into the sunlight.
On Place des Vosges, stone archways swooped overhead as Lucky raced toward the address her booker had sent her. Two old men smoking in matching olive trench coats turned to watch her as she passed. She rang the bell and passed through the chipped blue wooden doorway that led to the courtyard. At the other end was a tall, spiral stairway; her heavy boots reverberated off the stone walls as she climbed each floor, stopping on each landing to catch her breath. A pack-a-day smoking habit, started when she was a teenager, had left her ill-suited to this sort of activity. Finally, she dragged herself by the banister to the very top. A woman with her hair scraped into a tight dark bun and a tape measure snaked around her neck was standing in the doorway waiting for her.
“I’m late, I know,” Lucky panted. “Je suis désolée.”
“And you are?” asked the woman in a sharp voice.
“Lucky—” she heaved. “Blue.”
“Loo-key?” the woman repeated, looking down at her clipboard. Behind her, Lucky could hear the industrious hum of sewing machines. “You are not late. In fact, you are quite early. Your fitting is at two.”
Lucky placed her hands on her knees and exhaled.
“I thought it was twelve?”
“You are mistaken. Please return at two. Ciao!”
With an authoritative click, the door was shut in her face. Lucky resisted the urge to collapse right there and sleep in the doorway like a neighborhood cat until it was her turn to be seen. Slowly, she carried herself back down the stairs.
With nothing else to do, Lucky wandered through the sun-dappled streets of the Marais in search of a place to get a drink. The adrenaline from her Volvic vengeance and ensuing race to the fitting was wearing off, revealing the start of what promised to be a brutal hangover if she didn’t nip it in the bud. It was early July and despite the clement weather, an air of restlessness had pervaded Paris that summer. A general strike and the resulting congestion had filled the air with a hazy smog, and a flurry of stabbings in subways and residential neighborhoods had led to a heavy police presence on the streets. Yet the Marais, with its boutiques, packed bars, and bustling cafés, felt cheerfully removed from all that.
Lucky heard a woman’s voice calling her name from across the street and turned to see her friend Sabina, a French redhead and fellow model whose body Lucky had once heard a designer describe as like a hundred miles of good road, sitting outside a café with two male models. She beckoned Lucky over.
“If it isn’t punk Pollyanna,” said the taller of the men, Cliff, as she approached.
Cliff was an Australian former pro surfer enjoying some notoriety that season for walking a Milan runway in nothing but a gold thong. Despite this, it was impossible to objectify him; the sheer force of his ego would not allow it. That, and the knowledge that he could always quit fashion and go back to his life of chasing surf and living out of his van, meant that he appeared completely unconflicted about his current choice of career, unlike Lucky, whose beauty was a source of both income and shame for her. Lucky had never done anything but model, which made her feel like she had never done anything. She would not admit it aloud, but she envied Cliff his freedom.
“Ciao, Golden Balls,” she said, taking a cigarette from the pack in front of him and pinching it between her lips. “I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.”
The other model, a baby-faced American Lucky didn’t recognize, laughed and leaned over to light her. He had the coloring of a golden retriever and the same seemingly indiscriminate desire to please. The men each had a large beer in front of them, while Sabina twirled a small glass of white wine without sipping from it. Lucky beckoned for the server and ordered a beer before she took a seat.
“Hey, I’m Riley,” said the younger man.
“I need a drink,” said Lucky and leaned back to expose a pale slice of stomach.
“This is Lucky,” said Sabina. “Ma soeur.”
Lucky acknowledged this with a vague nod. Sabina had the only child’s tendency of recruiting friends as family members; in truth, the two didn’t know much about each other beyond their most recent campaigns and drink of choice.
“You’re American!” said Riley. He had a soft southern accent that made each vowel sound like it was wrapped in cotton wool. “I’ve been waiting to see an American today.” He raised his beer. “Happy Fourth of July.”
Lucky exhaled smoke in a narrow column toward the sky.
“I don’t celebrate that,” she said.
