I take a few more strides around the room, inspecting the place for any signs of what might have happened. It’s clear that they’ve at least entered the apartment, but for such tidy people to have abandoned the first day of class makes me even more suspicious as to what might have happened. With no further hesitation, I take a few steps into the girls’ shared room.
Here, it’s almost as bare as the living room, but there are more signs of life. The beds are newly made, and the suitcases are hardly unpacked. I glance between the two beds and raise an eyebrow with a soft smile. One of the beds surrounded with suitcases, each one laden with clothes to the point of bursting, and I can spot designer outfits in the open suitcase, along with a number of other personal affects that betray wealth. The other bed bears a lone suitcase with a few store-brand outfits stuffed neatly inside. Having recruited the girls personally, it’s plain as day as to which belonged to whom.
I can’t help but feel a little sympathy for Liv. Her frugal belongings remind me of my own upbringing back in Russia. It was harsh, harsher than anything I’d ever wish on the likes of any of the girls here, and far more frugal. I was never given the kind of opportunity I’m able to give the girls now. But for people like Liv, I can only imagine how overwhelming and inspiring this kind of chance must be. I almost chuckle to think back on the harsh winters of my homeland, my one good friend and I getting an offer to be whisked away from the frigid and desolate Siberian tundras to the city of lights and magic that is Paris — to get a university education, of all things. We probably would have turned it down, knowing us. We were too concerned with scrounging for food and not freezing to death each week to bother thinking about the kinds of luxuries France enjoys.
I can’t help but see something of myself in Liv. Her little American hometown with probably fewer citizens than this university has gymnastics students didn’t know wealth of any sort. It might not have been the crushing poverty I knew, but it was not a life of ease by any measure. I want to see her succeed. And I know talent when I see it.
And that makes me all the more sure something is amiss here.
I spot a laptop open on Liv’s bed, and I turn it towards me, brushing my fingers over the touchpad to wake it up. The screen lights up, and I narrow my eyes to look at the email notification in the corner, pulling up the newest one that’s already been read.
It takes me a moment to realize what I’m looking at, but realization dawns shortly, and my eyes widen.
“A party,” I mutter out loud, my brow furrowing. The email I read doesn’t sit well with me in the least. So the girls did indeed go out for a night on the town last night. Ordinarily, that would simply mean that they might be sleeping off a hangover this morning, and that they’d stumble into the gym later on, but as I straighten up and look around the apartment once more, the events piece together.
The girls get to the apartment, they set their things down, start to unpack, and then this email comes in around the time they’d be getting settled. A couple of young foreigners might be easily enticed by the idea of a party with some Parisians...but who’s this inviting her? What kind of man digs up a young woman’s email address from a roster like that?
Then again, I think to myself, what kind of man breaks into his students’ apartment on a hunch? But my motives have some purpose behind them. She doesn’t seem to know the sender of the email well, though.
I start to run a hand through my hair, thinking twice about my actions. Perhaps I truly am overreacting. It’s perfectly natural and fairly frequent for young people, particularly these college types, to flirt and hook up with one another right off the plane, as it were. Liv probably met this man and decided to really start enjoying herself for her first night in Paris. Can I really blame her for that?
Of course not, but some things simply don’t fit here. Suppose Liv really is waking up beside her new French lover in his cramped apartment — why is her roommate not around either? They must have been watching each other, so why would they have not helped each other home? And the email I see before me suggests that Will was the one making the advances when they met, and he was apologizing. He stepped over the boundaries and Olivia seemed to have rejected his advances. So unless something changed at the bar, what are the odds that she’d have gone home with him after turning down his kiss?
But all I have to go by is this email address and the name of the bar, I realize as I curse under my breath. There’s nothing definitive here. But the evidence is deeply concerning: however I rationalize it, two young American girls went to a party their first night in Paris and did not come back home. I think back to my past, to everything I saw back in Russia. Even what I saw when I headed west. I grimace. Even in the best cases, that doesn’t look good.