Chapter 2

The bus took us to the Triomphe, dropped us off and the driver informed us that we needed to be back to the parking lot by two a.m. in order to catch the bus back to the hotel room. We disembarked with every intention of making it back in plenty of time to catch our ride 'home'.

We didn't make it back in time, but the fun of the story is telling you why we didn't make it.

The area surrounding the Triomphe was even more packed than the strip near the Rouge had been. I cannot begin to fathom a guess at exactly how many people had gathered in celebration on that New Year's Eve night, but it was many thousands of people. It seemed like every person in the entire city had come for the party.

But we didn't stay there.

I don't even really remember why, but we just started walking. And walking ... and walking some more. We migrated further and further away from all of the hordes of people gathered and partying, and we hardly looked back. We walked away from the fun, walked away from the drinking and walked away from where all of the action was at.

The further we got from the Triomphe the thinner the crowds became. I'm not sure exactly where we were at, or what we were headed toward, but there were buildings, some of them looked like apartments, some of them businesses of different sorts. There were people around, pretty much doing what we were doing, walking to and from, some were tourists, some were prostitutes, and some were locals partying it up, but doing it farther away from the masses.

I think we walked for about an hour or so before we stopped. Essentially, we were just people watching and the surrounding was beginning to look a little less urban.

"How much farther you want to go?" I asked John.

"All the way," he answered, "why, you see any takers?" He must have thought about it, because he added, "but I'm not paying for it."

We kept going, walking up and down dark alleys, as if tempting fate, chins out, shoulders back, just asking for another punch to the chin. But we didn't care. We were there for adventure.

And it found us.

The adventure came in the form of four partiers. The partiers were about the same age as we were, and they weren't American tourists, but French locals and we met when I nearly stepped on one of the girl's hands.

I was talking to John and not paying attention to where I was stepping. I had seen the locals and had maneuvered around them, but one of the girls was keeled over and puking up her party favors. She had enough sense to pull her hand away as my foot began its descent, but she glared up at me from her crouched position.

"Are all American's so rude?" she asked me.

Her voice and accent were like doves cooing in the dark, soft, gentle and hypnotic. I bent down, put my hand on her shoulder and apologized obsessively. She looked at me and smiled as I helped her back to her feet.

"You should at least offer me a drink, no," she said playfully.

I looked down to the pile that she had just left, my eyebrows nearly touching, "You sure you can handle another?" I asked her.

She laughed, each edge of her tender lips spreading like an eagle's wings, across her face, pausing to speak French to her friends, before she returned her attention back to me.

"When we party we don't hold anything back. Bonne annee," she added, tipping slightly, "Bonne annee," repeating it again as she collapsed into my arms.

"Auh, you are so strong," she added grabbing my arm through my jacket. "You should carry me around for the rest of the night!"

It seemed that the French were so into curvatures, not only in their architecture, but also in the way that they speak, because even her words seemed ovular to me, round, dragging out in different places than my ears were used to hearing, sharper in some places than in others, but as beautiful to my ears as she was to my eyes.

She had gently soft blonde hair, pulled back from her face, braided into a ponytail that lay on her shoulder as if stuck there. Her face was the color of crème, but her cheeks were rosy like apple skin, giving her face character, and pointing out the blue in her eyes. But it was her smile that did me in, for her smile seemed to start from her eyes, and only went to her lips because that's what smiles do. She was utterly beautiful.

"I am Plaisance," she said extending her hand. "This is my friend, Cateline, this is Adelarde," she added pointing to one of the two male members of their group, "and this is Claude," she finished pronouncing his name like 'cloud'.

"Claude," I repeated as I shook his hand.

"Yeah, Claude. Because he is so lame," she added with a laugh, forcing John and I to give each other confused looks.

"That's what his name means in French!" Adelarde commented.

"I'm Chris and this is my friend, John," I offered.

Cateline drifted over to John and put her arm around him. I looked nervously to the two men that were with the girls. I just knew that we were treading on thin water, stepping on the toes of the two guys in the group like coyotes stealing a meal from a farmer, but the two guys had grins on their faces. It was as if they didn't mind our intrusion at all. I wasn't about to complain because Plaisance still had her arm around my waist and I liked it there.

Your name is really translated to 'lame'," I asked.

Claude nodded yeah sheepishly, but he still had a grin on his face.

"My name means, pure, because I am so wholesome," Cateline added.