The Fugitivities, стр. 28

hash with a lighter and fritter its crumbs into a bed of rolling tobacco. Hashish was Arna’s oblique answer to poetry. She had accessed a different portal to knowledge, one she wanted to know of through her body, and that she had somehow, seemingly without his being able to detect when or how, confidently claimed as new territory for exploration. While he pretended to watch music videos on a television fitted into a Louis XV cabinet, she moved lithely from one body to another, laughing tipsily, then suddenly entwined in voluptuous and cryptic gestures. There were no rules, at least none he could detect; sometimes she was kissing boys, sometimes caressing girls.

Jonah worried that his wallflower inhibitions would mean losing Arna to the dizzying new world she had so swiftly, and apparently effortlessly, integrated. But, miraculously, even as he remained outside the inner circle, his skin color had come to take on new meanings, some of them positive, or at least it was made clear to him that his presence added something cool and desirable, like a prized and rare accessory. Most importantly, from his perspective, it ensured his continuing access to certain invitation-only parties at country houses in the “Island of France,” that green Merovingian radial marked by all points, no less than half and no more than one hour’s distance from the bell towers of Notre Dame.

To get there, Arna and Jonah had to prearrange rides. Things started in the back of seat of a Peugeot in whispers, a joint passed around furtively, burning at the lips. Circumflex accents in tight sweaters caught the eye and legs brushed together in the woozy sway and tip of the car, touching off tactile collisions. Sometimes there was “free” kissing, in that it didn’t count. In the gardened manor houses, all vaguely alike, someone always put on the same album by the Doors, and Jim Morrison’s oracular pronouncements licensed and promised a time in which anything could happen, and would happen, under the sign of eternal youth. The aroma of hash and spilled Malibu liqueur, of being seventeen, caused a permanent tilt, so that there was only the possibility of bodies moving toward each other or falling away into various degrees of paranoia. In the tense, hermetic daze of the country house and its many attic rooms, skin and color were complicating assets, and Arna took it upon herself to act as a kind of chaperone, keeping her eye on him, teaming up when necessary, so that he, too, could fleetingly let his guard down and succumb to the ambient goal of pursuing new sensations. She allowed him to kiss and to discover the surface of her body, only, or mostly, above the waist. She gave him hints of desire, but he understood that it was also an act of generosity, a tacit sign of the compact that she was engaging in to protect them both. In the morning, the stone houses were always incredibly cold. Three and four under extra blankets, they lay in bed virtually naked and feverishly hot. He listened to the birds sing in the blue darkness, unsure whether the spell had broken, how much longer they might touch that way before it was time to go.

With Arna things were never official. They weren’t “going out,” but they also agreed that theirs was a special kind of friendship. They haunted the record stores behind the Pantheon, watched Hitchcock flicks on the rue des Écoles, and posted up in cafés, bantering about movie stars and music and the hookup scene. Arna’s hair was short like a boy’s. She should have been a member of the group of girls from the good families, but those girls hated her. She was a transfer student and the shape of her eyes and her skin tone was held to be suspicious. Behind her back they called her “a Mongol” and the rumor was that Arna was a gitane. One afternoon as they waited in line for the bus, a group of girls got a chant going. Arna walked away, presumably to cry, but she reappeared moments later with a jar full of filthy water that she tossed in a girl’s face, causing an eruption of hysteria. On one of their first hangs, Arna showed Jonah an impressive knife from her father’s collection, a lissome folding blade. She liked to play with it over lunch after slicing vertices from her Camembert. It was Arna’s idea to carve their names into the green plank of a park bench where they met sometimes after school. Their special friendship, which was always something more, but also less, went on this way until the afternoon Arna came over to the rue de Tocqueville.

Jonah had invited her before. This time she accepted. It was midweek and his mother had left her usual note reminding him she would be working late. They sat on the living room floor watching MTV Europe. MC Solaar, Massive Attack, heart-stopping Lauryn Hill, watery flashes of Kurt Cobain. Arna half watched as she flipped through a National Geographic. She was wearing her evergreen track shorts with the Adidas flower, and a white tank top. A new show came on, and they decided to move to his room. Arna sat on his bed, poring over an article on whaling in Iceland. He followed along over her shoulder. Her hair smelled like wet wood in the sun, like the bark of a tree hit by a sprinkler in the summer. She flicked through the pages for a while, then, with a sigh of boredom, stretched out on the bed. He picked up the magazine, pretending to read in silence. Arna said something muffled into the pillow, and he heard her pull off her top and flounce back down. He waited a moment, then put the magazine aside and lay down next to her carefully, as if afraid of waking her. At first, when she touched him, he thought it must be an accident, but then he