Read Online Parisian Promises by Cecilia Velástegui - Free Book Online Page A

tried to imitate her moves. Instead of ignoring her, Lola showed Bodysuit Girl the sequence of steps known as the Latin Hustle; both women laughed at their reflections in the surrounding wall-to-wall mirrors. When Bodysuit Girl offered Lola some pills, Lola swallowed a couple, despite Charles’ scowl of disapproval.
    â€œWhen in Rome,” Lola said to him, but he walked off and headed back upstairs to his table.
    Lola stayed dancing with the high-energy Bodysuit Girl and her friends. They turned out to be mostly American and German models, hanging out with some Puerto Rican artists from New York. All were intimates of the club’s owner and the DJ. The dancers embraced Lola’s energy and her looks. One of the men said, “You gotta come to our apartment tomorrow and let me draw you and your moves. I’m Antonio, and everyone in the world knows the girls in my drawings.”
    He pointed to his crew of gorgeous models, and Lola nodded, buzzing with excitement.
    â€œSure, just tell me when and where,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. Lola had no idea where her friends were, and she didn’t care. She was shimmying and bumping with Bodysuit Girl and the dark-haired Antonio. Perhaps Madame Caron de Pichet was right about the vast number of foreigners in Paris. The more Lola moved around the floor, the more languages she heard––and the more expensive the champagne, which was being splashed about without a care, became.
    â€œ J’aime Paris ,” shouted Lola, and the club goers laughed along with her.
    She danced towards a beehive of activity on one section of the dance floor. Everyone was huddled around a diminutive Japanese guy, whom Antonio had told her was a famous couturier. He wasn’t dancing, exactly: he was posing in a quasi- imperial manner, as though he were the reborn Louis XIV, now dressed in very tight geisha-style garb. He held a delicate fan, which he used alternately to hit people on the head and to hide his crooked teeth.
    Quickly bored by the Japanese couturier’s antics, everyone began making out with everyone else, but Lola wasn’t wasting her lip gloss until she assessed the pecking order of the club. If this Paris club was like the private clubs in L.A., then the super-wealthy men were sitting in some dark corner assessing the available women––that is, those women who were not professional hookers. Just as it began to dawn on Lola that the table where Charles sat at the club fit that precise description, and that he was her potential sugar-daddy, and that he was young and handsome, Charles surprised her by reappearing on the dance floor.
    He wasn’t dancing: he just stood next to her like a dead tree.
    â€œLet’s go sit down for a bit, okay?” Lola shouted in his ear, deciding that was the smartest move she could make right now, and followed him back to his table upstairs. Nobody else was there.
    â€œWhere are the others?” she asked, a little out of breath, though secretly she was glad that Annie and Karen had marched their boring butts and clunky clogs away from Le Sept.
    Charles answered in the softest voice. “Your friends left right away, and Xavier had to drive Bertrand to the airport so he could fly back to Colombia for his grandfather’s funeral.”
    â€œI’m sorry to hear that.” Lola frowned. “It’s so sudden, isn’t it? We just saw you all, like, eight hours ago, and now your buddy has had to fly back home.”
    Charles swallowed his drink and seemed to be fighting back tears. “I, I knew his grandfather, too. I’m sure that Bertrand will have to stay there to help the family.”
    â€œWhat about his doctoral program?”
    â€œIt was all just a dream. He, he won’t be coming back.”
    â€œNot even after the funeral?” asked Lola, perplexed. “So, are you all from Colombia, then?”
    Charles didn’t answer Lola. He was at a loss as