A French Girl In New York Read online

  “And cats cry,” chirped Benjamin.

  The family laughed.

  “Oh forget it you two,” Cynthia said annoyingly. “Thank God we’re almost home.”

  As the city whizzed before her eyes, its beauty amazed Maude.

  The tall skyscrapers looked like big trees and towered over her like a crazy jungle. The city was filled with an excited, electric buzz, people walking everywhere in every direction like a gigantic ant farm. Maude, looking through the window, felt deliciously small, wrapped in an emotion of awed silence as one would feel in a temple.

  However, New York City wasn’t a silent Grecian temple. It was full of life, blinding lights, colors, shades, and Maude could feel the energy flowing through her veins. Her life mingled with the city’s vibrancy and her heart beat as one with the city’s deep rumble. She wanted to be a part what she saw, not just watch it like an observer, but step into the scenery and play a role in the adventurous city so many singers had sung about.

  This was the second time in two months that she’d been in a city, and she couldn’t help but sigh at all that she had missed locked up in a basement in Carvin.

  Jazmine heard her sigh and asked her if something was wrong.

  “Nothing is wrong. This city is amazing. I wonder if I’ll ever get used to it.”

  “Of course you will,” she reassured. “You’ll probably get lost a couple of times in the subway, but you’ll get the hang of it. Besides, we’ll be together in class, and I’ll present you as the little sister I always asked my parents for Christmas every year since I was three. Instead I got a brother, but hey, when he’s dressed up, you wouldn’t tell the difference.”

  “Little sister? She’s sixteen, just like you, Jaz,” Ben pointed out, shaking his head.

  “Yes, but she was born September 7th, while I was born in August. So that makes her de facto my little sister,” replied Jazmine.

  Maude smiled, amused at the idea of being a complete stranger’s sister.

  “Don’t smile, Maude,” warned Ben “You have no idea what you’re getting into. Seniority is very important in this family. I know something about it. I never get a word in edgewise with these two.”

  “Yeah, and you’ll get to unload your new big sister’s luggage, too. It’s a good thing it isn’t heavy,” Cynthia added.

  Before Maude could protest, Ben retorted “I don’t mind doing it for my third new sister since I’m sure she’ll be the nicest of the three.”

  And with this cheerful chatter on seniority and little brother civil rights, the taxi arrived in Tribeca, where the Baldwin family lived.

  The brownstone was full of light. The spacious living room designed in a quiet and unobtrusive Japanese style was sophisticated as well as cozy. The beige tones enhanced a peaceful, homey atmosphere.

  “Welcome home.” Victoria said warmly. “First, we have to get you settled. Remember you start school in two days.”

  Maude simply nodded.

  “About room arrangements, we have two proposals. You can either share Cynthia and Jazmine’s room which is big enough for you three—”

  “Yes, isn’t it pathetic that these two grown girls were unable to live in separate rooms?” asked Ben mockingly.

  “I tried,” sighed Cynthia. “Jazmine just couldn’t handle it. So we stayed together, although I put my foot down about bunk beds.”

  “I was nine, Cynth. I’ve totally outgrown the bunk beds by now, thank you very much.”

  “—Or, you could have your own room,” Victoria completed.

  Maude who wasn’t used to sharing her room with anyone and felt uncomfortable intruding on the two sisters’ comradeship said she preferred being on her own. Jazmine hid her disappointment.

  “You see, Jaz,” her brother said. “You’ve already scared Maude to death with your nonstop chit-chat.”

  Maude followed Victoria upstairs to her new room. When she entered the room, Maude’s eyes widened.

  The room was huge. And it wasn’t cluttered with broken-down TVs, Maude thought happily. She couldn’t believe she was to have an entire room and a gigantic bed to herself. She waited for Victoria to leave before jumping on the bed. It was bouncy! A real mattress and covers and cloth! White carpet covered the ground, and Maude danced on it barefoot enjoying its warmth. It was nothing like the cold floor in the basement. And although Maude wasn’t going to check, she was sure there would be no rats visiting her at night.

  Best of all, in the left corner was an upright white Yamaha piano with a lovely dark stool. “For you to practice on,” Victoria had said before leaving.

  Her very own piano!

  Maude touched its keys softly, hardly daring to touch it, afraid it might vanish in front of her eyes. She caressed the white, polished instrument while humming softly the tune to ‘La Vie en Rose.’

  Her thoughts drifted to the next few days. In two days, she would be attending a meeting at Soulville Records to meet Mr. Baldwin’s associates, Mr. Brighton, Mr. Lewis, and the main crew she was going to work with. Then, she would be heading for a first day of school. And after school was to be her first singing class with Ms. Tragent, the renowned opera singer Maude admired with all her heart.

  She lay on the bed and heaved a deep, delighted sigh.

  Life was beautiful.

  On Monday morning, Maude discovered the joys of taking the subway at rush hour in New York City.

  Squeezed between two angry-looking passengers in a packed train with flickering lights, Maude thought that she really shouldn’t have bought coffee that morning and held it tight, not wanting to spill it on her brand-new clothes.

  Maude and the Baldwin girls had gone shopping on Saturday, and the young girl couldn’t help but feel elated, feeling like a whole different person in the new clothes Victoria has insisted on buying for her. With the Ruchets, she had never had clothes of her own, only wearing what Mrs. Ruchet would care to give her from the thrift store. She now had a new lovely winter-white, cropped-sleeved coat, black gloves and scarf, and amazing leather boots that Jazmine and Cynthia had insisted she have.

  While she was fondly remembering her first weekend in New York, the train came to an abrupt stop, the flickering lights definitely turning off with a loud buzz.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to announce that, due to a technical glitch, the train will have to halt for at least ten minutes,” the train conductor said in the microphone.

  All of the people in the car groaned.

  Maude remained calm. Ten minutes was nothing, she thought. She had left especially early to be sure to arrive in advance, and she had plenty of time. Ten minutes was nothing.

  What Maude didn’t know but found out soon enough, was that ten minutes were never just ten minutes in a subway breakdown in New York City. Fifteen minutes later, the man against whom she had been squeezed during the ride, sighed for what seemed to be the hundredth time.

  “Look, lady,” he said to an old woman behind him in a large fur coat holding a small poodle. “You’ve been pushing me for the last half hour, don’t you think you could move a little? Stop hogging all the space!”

  “Young man,” the lady answered haughtily, holding her poodle closer to her. “I can hardly move. We are all squeezed together. And as for hogging the space, you’re the one who is clearly overweight. Ever thought of shedding a few pounds? I’m sure that would do you and Lady Di here the utmost good.”

  “Yeah!” yelled a teenage girl while chewing pink gum, who, although listening to music loudly in her headphones could also hear everything that was being said around her. “But it wasn’t very smart to bring your poodle in the subway, either. He’s taking up the little oxygen we have in this tiny car. And who the hell calls their poodle, Lady Di?”

  “Perhaps you could take off your headphones before speaking, young lady. Don’t you hear yourself yelling? Young people these days are so uncivil,” said the poodle-lady visibly annoyed.

  “I’ll get rid of my iPod once you get rid of th
at ugly, old shriveled thing. And I’m not just talking about the poodle!” yelled the girl even louder, her gum almost falling out of her mouth.

  Maude was growing increasingly annoyed at the situation. How could a ten-minute breakdown turn into a thirty-minute uproar? If only she had more breathing room. She tried to look up, but her gaze met her neighbor’s wet, odorant armpits, his abundant perspiration soaking through his coat.

  This is what hell looks like, she thought.

  “Just stop yelling already! Do you people think you’re alone or what?” yelled someone at the other end of the car.

  “Ha! Being alone. That’s a feeling I’d like to remember. Ugh, I should never have taken this dreadful subway. And to think I just wanted to get to know the subway, what it felt like to be among the little people,” said the lady stroking Lady Di.

  “Little people?!” shrieked the man squeezed to Maude.

  “For sure, I was mistaken. Some aren’t so little,” retorted the lady dryly, looking at the man up and down.

  And just like that, a miniature revolution erupted on the one line, the angry man raging against the “stuck-up queen of the Upper East Side,” of what he called “a rich, privileged cast of exploiters, that feeds off the misery of the working class,” while she called him “a lazy, sweaty, obese hillbilly, only good for breeding cows and eating hamburgers,” in what she called “low-class fast-food restaurants and cheap diners.”

  Forty-five minutes later, when the train finally got to Times Square, Maude hurried out. She hurried in the station’s long tunnels full of people, still holding the coffee cup that had, by now lost its lid. She still had ten minutes to get to Soulville Tower on time.

  Suddenly, a young man came out of nowhere and trying to run past Maude, bumped into her very roughly, and half her coffee spilled onto her brand-new white coat.

  “No, no, no,” she moaned.

  The young man stopped in his tracks and looked at Maude, irritated. He headed back in her direction reluctantly, hands in his beige trench coat, his face partially hidden by his upturned collar. He was tall, with dark blonde wavy hair sweeping his broad shoulders. His penetrating gray eyes were clouded by his obvious annoyance at the present disturbance as he walked towards her in a hurried but resolute step. He didn’t want to waste time with yet another chick drama. God knows, he’d had enough of those in his short life.

  Maude was furious and panicked at the same time. She couldn’t go to her meeting in this state! What first impression was she going to make? And the jerk who had just bumped into her didn’t seem to care in the least. He even looked annoyed which made her angrier.

  It is quite a common thing for foreigners to get angry in their mother tongue, and poor Maude was at a loss for words in English and went straight to the language in which she could easily express her anger.

  “Oh, mais qu’est-ce que tu peux être bête! Tu te rends compte de ce que tu viens de faire, espèce d’idiot! Comment est-ce que je vais aller à ma réunion maintenant? On venait de m’acheter ce manteau, bon sang! Quoi! En plus, tu te marres?!” she shrieked. (Transl. “How can you be so stupid? Do you realize what you’ve just done? How am I supposed to go my meeting now? I just bought this coat! And you’re laughing?! You have some nerve!”)

  Indeed, the young man couldn’t help but laugh his head off, his gray eyes brimming with plain amusement looking at the pretty, eccentric girl with her stained, white coat, berating him in a foreign language and getting angrier and angrier as he laughed harder and harder.

  Maude couldn’t believe it. These New Yorkers were something, she thought.

  She had just spent forty-five minutes in the midst of the craziest subway ride, and now she had to deal with this? She looked at him angrily, and before she knew it, threw the rest of her coffee at him.

  His face froze in mid-laughter.

  Maude smiled, pleased to see the astounded expression on his once-amused face, lifted her head haughtily, and stomped off before he could utter another word.

  She hurried out of the station, all the while thinking fast. She couldn’t possibly walk into that room with a coat that looked like she’d just rolled in mud. As she got closer to the building, she decided to take off her coat. The cold air bit her, and she shivered, hoping not to catch cold. Although some coffee had spilled on her beige blouse, she could still cover it up with her scarf.

  She breathed in deeply, entered the gigantic building, and got on the elevator, her heart pounding in her chest. She would be right on time if the elevator didn’t have a major breakdown. Luckily, no such thing happened to Maude, who would’ve probably lost it if it had, and she arrived on the fourteenth floor. She barely had time to take in the wide lobby, but noticed with a small start of surprise an ancient Steinway Concert Grand Piano reigning majestically in the center of the lobby.

  She reluctantly tore her eyes away from the enigmatic object and hurried into the conference room where several people were chatting lightly around a large oval table. At the far end of the table, James Baldwin was talking to a kind looking brown-haired man and another small, bald man in a costly gray suit who wore a dissatisfied smirk on his face while listening.

  When James saw Maude, he smiled broadly at her, cleared his voice and spoke.

  “All right everybody, gather around. Almost everyone is here, except Matt. He called to say he would be running a little late and to go ahead and start without him. For those of you who don’t know her, this is Maude Laurent, the talented French singer we will all be working with to produce her first album.”

  Maude thought she saw the bald man’s smirk deepen as James Baldwin introduced her and felt a little uneasy.

  “She has a classical background that I think will enrich her music greatly once she learns more about other, more modern, music styles. That’s why you will be working with Matt, Maude. He’s a young singer, composer, and songwriter and knows everything there is to know about music,” James continued, his eyes shining. “He is a younger, eighteen-year-old version of me, music-wise at least. He will help you compose, here, every Saturday morning, and I’m sure you two will get along great. We will start recording in a couple of months with these musicians, and sound engineers present, although we might add a few according to the style that will best fit you. We are all in this together, and I think this will be a great experience.”

  The crowd in the room started clapping, but the small, bald man held up his hand, commanding the clapping to a stop.

  “That was all very nice, James,” he snickered. “However, I think you forgot a few things in your presentation. First, you didn’t introduce me. I’m Alan Lewis, James’s associate, and an important shareholder in this company. I want you to understand that this is very serious business. We’d previously considered signing another young singer to this label before James met you. James then convinced us to sign you instead. You aren’t allowed to fail, Maude Laurent,” he said looking at her with narrowed eyes. James seemed annoyed at his intervention, but remained silent.

  Maude looked at Alan Lewis and said calmly “I understand what you mean. And I hope you realize that I am a hundred percent in.”

  “I wish you’d said you were a hundred and ten percent in,” he said dryly.

  And Maude wished she could wipe his smirk off his face as it strangely reminded her of Mrs. Ruchet’s face, but didn’t say anything.

  “Why don’t you give us a little taste of what you’ve got?” he said, crossing his arms.

  Frowning, Maude looked at the dark Yamaha piano in the room. She didn’t like his tone, or the way he ordered her to play, as if she was a jukebox playing on demand. She wasn’t one bit intimidated by him. She’d give him a “taste” as he had put it. He was just a smaller, thinner, male version of Mrs. Ruchet. She lifted her head proudly and walked towards the piano. She knew exactly what to play.

  In Carvin, when Mrs. Ruchet had been particularly cruel to her, Maude would play, Beethoven’s Tempest as it perfectly suited her stormy mood.
When playing this piece, she imagined herself in utter despair stranded alone on a ship, in the middle of a stormy, raging ocean, with no one to help her, waves crashing around her, the sky in complete darkness.

  Her fingers slid across the piano, the low-pitched notes sounded like thunder rumbling under her fingers. She saw the waves willfully smash the boat to pieces, wood, masts, ropes raining all around her as the boat started to disintegrate to nothingness in an apocalyptic atmosphere. The loud roar of the ocean covered her pleas, enjoying the debacle of the poor soul. She felt the salty water mix with her tears, the boat jerking from side to side. The wind howled a long, strident complaint that pierced her ears.

  Maude poured her whole anger in the Tempest. Her morning had been awful, her coat ruined by the laughing jerk who hadn’t even had the decency to apologize for his klutziness. She thought about it all, her heart beating loudly as she saw the boy’s laughing face which reminded her of Luc, a boy in her class in Carvin, who had always loudly made fun of her clothes, roaring with laughter at her worn-out shoes and torn-up jeans and faded shirts. In her mind, Luc’s face telescoped with the boy from the subway’s face and finally, with Mr. Lewis’s smirk. She no longer saw the room that was around her or the people that were in it. She barely felt the piano as her fingers flew on the keys that rang with terrifying beauty.

  However, slowly, in the middle of the allegretto, hope seemed to prevail, light seemed to shine through as she played the light, high-pitched notes of the sonata. The light seemed to break through the threatening, menacing clouds.

  But the peaceful moment in The Tempest was just a lure. It wasn’t real. The storm came back even more menacing, joyfully rejoicing over the lone mortal’s false hope and eating her alive, swallowing her in a giant gulf, her frail mortal form disappearing from the face of the earth.

  That was how at the end of The Tempest, the storm subsided, satisfied with the immensity of the destruction that had just taken place.