One night, after Chance had been staying with Gemma in London for a week, he bought the two of them tickets to see A Winter's Tale at the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was something to do. They needed to leave the flat.
They took the Jubilee line to the Central line to St. Paul's and walked toward the theater. It was raining. Since the show didn't start for an hour, they found a pub and ordered fish and chips. The room was dark and the walls were lined with mirrors. They ate at the bar.
Chance talked a great deal about books. Gemma asked him about the Camus he had been reading, L'Etranger. She made him explain the plot, which was about a guy with a dead mother who kills another guy and then goes to prison for it.
"It's a mystery?"
"Not at all," said Chance. "Mysteries perpetuate the status quo. Everything always wraps up at the end. Order is restored. But order doesn't really exist, right? It's an artificial construct. The whole genre of the mystery novel reinforces the hegemony of Western notions of causation. In L'Etranger, you know everything that happens from the beginning. There's nothing to find out, because human existence is ultimately meaningless."
"Oh, it's so hot when you say French words," Gemma told him, reaching over to his plate and taking a chip. "Not."
When the bill came, Chance took out his credit card. "My treat, thanks to Gabe Martin."
"Your dad?"
"Yeah. He pays the bills on this baby"—Chance tapped the card—"till I'm twenty-five. So I can work on my novel."
"Lucky." Gemma picked up the card. She memorized the number; she flipped it over and memorized the code on the back. "You don't even see the bill?"
Chance laughed and took it back. Pushed it across the bar. "Nah. It goes to Connecticut. But I try to stay conscious of my privilege and not take it for granted."
As they walked the rest of the way to the Barbican Centre in the drizzle, Chance held the umbrella over them both. He bought a program, the kind you can buy in London theaters that's full of photographs and gives a history of the production. They sat down in the dark.
During the intermission, Gemma leaned against one wall of the lobby and watched the crowd. Chance went to the men's room. Gemma listened to the accents of the theatergoers: London, Yorkshire, Liverpool. Boston, General American, California. South Africa. London again.
Damn.
Paolo Vallarta-Bellstone was here.
Right now. Across the lobby from Gemma.
He seemed very bright in the middle of the drab crowd. He had on a red T-shirt under a sport coat and wore blue-and-yellow track shoes. The bottom edges of his jeans were frayed. Paolo had a Filipina mom and a white hodgepodge American dad. That was how he described them. He had black hair—cut short since she'd seen him last—and gentle-looking eyebrows. Round cheeks, brown eyes, and soft red lips, almost puffy. Straight teeth. Paolo was the type of guy who travels around the world with nothing more than a backpack, who talks to strangers on carousels and in wax museums. He was a conversationalist without pretension. He liked people and always thought the best of them. Right now he was eating Swedish Fish from a small yellow bag.
Gemma turned away. She didn't like how happy she felt. She didn't like how beautiful he was.
No. She didn't want to see Paolo Vallarta-Bellstone.
She couldn't see him. Not now, not ever.