Sellevision - Augusten Burroughs [45]
ten
The flight attendant aboard the Concorde approached Bebe and Eliot with two tall crystal flutes of champagne balanced on a silver serving stray. “Veuve Cliquot?” she asked.
“Yes, thank you very much.” Bebe took one glass for herself and handed the other to Eliot. This marked the first time since the sonic boom a few moments ago that the two had acted like adults.
Not wanting to establish a precedent for such behavior, Eliot sipped his champagne with a loud, childish slurp.
Laughing, Bebe challenged him. “I dare you to be normal for five minutes.” Then looking at her watch, “I’m going to time you.”
“Okay, time me,” Eliot grinned. After a pause of about three seconds, he turned and asked, “What do normal people talk about?”
“God, how would I know?”
“Okay, let’s talk about our jobs, normal people talk about their jobs, I think.”
“Terrific, you’re doing good so far. You go first.”
Eliot raised his eyebrows and said seductively, “There’s no stain on earth I wouldn’t eliminate for you, my dear.”
Bebe smiled at him.
Then remembering, he said, “Oh, I almost forgot, I brought you a surprise.”
“You mean like a trip on the Concord to Paris for dinner isn’t enough?”
He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket. “Voilà,” he said, presenting her a long, black velvet jewelry box.
Startled, Bebe said, “Oh no, Eliot, no, whatever that is, it’s way too much, I can’t.”
“Please, I wanted to—please, Bebe.”
Feeling that she had already been rushing things by agreeing to this crazy Concorde trip in the first place, Bebe was now feeling like this might have been a mistake, that Eliot was moving a little too fast.
“Eliot, that’s so—I don’t even know what—sweet, generous, but I just don’t feel comfortable.”
Eliot shrugged nonchalantly. “Okay then, if that’s how you feel, I’ll eat it myself.” And he popped the jewelry box open, revealing a colorful candy necklace.
Bebe burst into a fit of laughter, snatched the necklace from the box, and gave the elastic a little stretch. “Oh my God, I haven’t seen one of these in years,” she cried. She doubled it and slid it onto her wrist.
“It’s lovely,” he admired.
She extended her arm in front of her, as though wearing something by Harry Winston. “You failed your normal test,” she told him.
“I had you really worried for a minute there, didn’t I?”
“Maybe a tad,” she admitted. “But thank you. I mean it, this is like the sweetest—no pun intended—thing.”
She leaned over slowly and kissed him on the cheek, then pulled away slightly and paused, lips parted.
Gently, tentatively, he moved his lips to hers, closing his eyes.
And they kissed.
He brought his hand around to the back of her neck and she placed her hand along the side of his face.
For an instant, her eyes opened, and then suddenly she pulled away from him. “Oh my God, Eliot, look!” she cried, pointing out the window beside him.
Eliot turned quickly.
Almost breathless, Bebe whispered, “Oh Eliot, have you ever? It’s so beautiful. I feel just like Jodie Foster in Contact.”
Out the window of the Concorde, from an altitude of over eighty-five-thousand feet, the curvature of the earth filled the lower portion of the window. Blackness and stars filled the rest.
“I
thought you said you spoke French,” Bebe said, punching Eliot playfully in the shoulder.
They were sitting in the back of a taxi, en route to an address that Eliot gave to the driver by pointing to it in a travel guide. “If I told you I didn’t speak French, you wouldn’t have come.”
“The ugly Americans go to dinner,” she joked.
“Ugly?” he said, looking at her and smiling.
She came fairly close to blushing, turned away, and looked out the window.
Although the early-evening sky was overcast, there was still a pinkish hue around the edges. Two bicyclists sped past the taxi. On the river, a group of swans bent their graceful necks to take pieces of bread an old woman on the bank was tossing them. Bebe had been to Paris before,