“I wanted to meet—”
“Yes, yes, you wanted to meet your family. Your father was a long-lost third cousin twice removed. But that’s not all of it. Really, you wanted a change.” He folded his hands behind his head. I opened my mouth to chastise him for interrupting again, but then what he’d said sank in.
“A change,” he continued with a slow smile when he saw my face. “A way away from ‘the ache that is your existence.’”
Zee ache. In Stellan’s light accent, it sounded especially weighty, like an ancient prophecy. I leaned forward without really meaning to.
“Toska.” He leaned forward, too. “It’s a Russian word. It has no translation into any other language, but the closest I’ve heard is the ache. A longing. The sense that something is missing, and even if you’re not sure what it is, you ache for it. Down to your bones.”
I sucked in a sharp breath.
Stellan rested his chin in his hand and watched me, like he understood things I wasn’t saying.
How did he know that? How did he know exactly the way to describe the gnawing hollow in my chest? I sat back and folded my arms like he could see straight inside me. “I’m not longing for anything,” I said defensively. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
I scooted as far away from him as I could and leaned against the window. We were stopped at a light, and outside, a group of laughing girls rode bicycles along the cobblestone walk bordering the Seine.
I could tell Stellan was still watching me. Toska. The Ache.
Past the walkway, through the flowering trees, I could see people taking photos from the deck of a white barge cruising lazily along the river. The sun warmed my face through the sterile cool of the car’s air-conditioning.
“It was Nabokov who coined that translation of toska,” Stellan said after a minute. I heard the shift as he leaned back into his seat. “Nabokov is—”
I let out a breath. “I know who Nabokov is,” I said without turning around. “I’ve read Lolita.”
Stellan kicked his feet up on my seat. “Have you?”
I moved even farther away. “Why not?”
“Lolita is not a children’s book.”
“How old do you think I am?”
“I know exactly how old you are. Sixteen, seventeen next month. June fourteenth.”
Now I did turn around. “How did you—”
“Five foot two inches tall.” He looked me up and down again, and I straightened automatically. “One hundred and three pounds.”
“How do you know—” I tucked my skirt under my legs. “That’s creepy. Why do you know that?”
“Could use a little more meat on those bones, if you ask me,” he said, leaning across the seat to wrap one slim hand entirely around my upper arm.
“Do not touch me.” I jerked away. “So part of your job is stalking? What, did you find my driver’s license records?” After everything else that had happened, I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“Why would an innocent thing like you read Lolita? Into older men?” He raised an eyebrow.
“What is wrong with you?” I pulled my feet up onto the seat, tucking them under my dress.
“Ah. Daddy issues, then,” he said with a sage nod. “Though I suppose that should have been obvious when you immediately agreed to run off with strange and somewhat threatening men you didn’t know.”
I felt myself flush. Okay, yes, obviously I did have daddy issues, but it had nothing to do with my literary preferences. I fished for a witty comeback, but I’d gotten too flustered. “You’re an ass,” I said instead. “I’d read through the whole kids’ section of the library by the time I was seven, so . . .”
Stellan rolled his window down a few inches and tested the breeze with his fingertips. Outside, a car smaller than a golf cart zipped past. “So then you read Lolita?”
“So then I read everything,” I huffed. It was none of his business that imaginary friends were my only friends for a lot of my childhood.
“Everything? Just fiction?”
“Everything.” I turned to the window again. How could I possibly make it more obvious that this conversation was over?
Stellan drummed his fingers on the seat. “You know Aristotle? ‘He who is to be a good ruler must first have been ruled.’”
I ignored him.
“So that’s a no? By ‘everything’ you really just mean twisted love stories.”
I gritted my teeth. “Yes, I’ve read some Aristotle. And I can see that you’ve read philosophy to give yourself an excuse for pretentious name-dropping.”
“Works better on girls than you might think,” he said with a wink.
“Ugh.” I rested my forehead on the window.
“And I don’t only read philosophy.” He nudged my hip with his boot. “I enjoyed Lolita for the lollipops.”
I finally turned and shoved his boots off the seat. We drove by what must have been a government building. High, arched windows were ringed by carved stone garlands, and a row of statues kept watch from the roof. But then again, nearly every place we’d driven by looked like that. It would make a good game. Buildings in Paris: significant national monument or apartment complex?
“What about history?” Stellan said. “How much do you know about Alexander the Great?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” He made me so combative. As hard as I’d tried to ignore him, and even though I knew he was doing it on purpose, he still annoyed me.
I gestured to the outline of the knife hilt on his side. “So, why the concealed weapons? What is there to be afraid of on a weekend of famous people going to balls and meetings?”
He tilted his head to the side. “Even a girl from small-town Minnesota should not be that naive.”
“What’s the Order?” I said. Two could play at this game. He’d deflect my questions, and I’d ignore his deflection.
The smile slid off Stellan’s face. “They’re nothing you need to worry about, kuklachka.” He cocked his head to one side. “Unless, of course, you know something I don’t.”
The car rolled to a stop, cutting off any more conversation. We were on a wide street, lined by trees in full bloom. Shops paraded down either side, and the Eiffel Tower loomed much closer than I’d realized. The annoyance dropped away and a thrill shivered through me.