Blue Sisters

Chapter One

Lucky

Lucky was late. Irresponsibly, irreversibly, in-danger-of-losing-this-job late. She had a fitting with a couture maison in the Marais at noon, but that was ten minutes ago, and she was still miles away on the metro. She had spent the night before at a fashion week party enjoying the open bar (the only kind Lucky cared for), where she’d met a pair of corporate-employed graffiti artists who were anxious to restore their reputations as creatives on the fringe of society. They’d offered to take her on the back of one of their motorcycles to an abandoned mansion, a former diplomat’s home in the 16th Arrondissement, that they’d set their sights on tagging. Lucky wasn’t particularly into the concept of defacing a historical building with spray paint, but she was always happy to delay the night ending.

The building had been more tightly secured than expected, dotted with security cameras and encircled by an intimidating pronged fence, so they’d settled for spraying the metal shutters of a nearby tabac instead, the graffiti artists opting for libertarian slogans popularized by the Paris protests of 1968—It is forbidden to forbid!—while Lucky went for a classic rendering of a penis and balls. They’d watched the sun come up from the steps of Palais de Tokyo while drinking bottles of pink Veuve Clicquot they’d swiped from the party, then returned to Lucky’s place to smoke a joint. After a predictable attempt by the two men to initiate a threesome, Lucky suggested they skip the middle woman and just do each other before passing out fully dressed on top of her bed, awakening several hours later in her empty and, thankfully, unransacked apartment to a perky reminder from her booker to wash her hair before the fitting today.

It was also the one-year anniversary of Nicky’s death.

As the metro surged on, Lucky checked her phone to find a missed call and voicemail from Avery, who was no doubt on a mission to get her to “process” her feelings about this day, plus a formal-looking email from their mother she promptly ignored. She missed the New York subway with its filth, reliable unreliability, and lack of cell service; the Paris metro was almost aggressively efficient and fully accessible by cell phone, even underground. Here, there was nowhere to hide. Without listening to Avery’s message, Lucky slid the phone back into her pocket. She had not seen any member of her family since Nicky’s funeral a year ago. That night, a strong, hot wind blew through the city; it upturned restaurant tables and sent garbage cans tumbling down avenues, it broke power lines and snapped tree branches in Central Park. And it scattered Lucky and her sisters to their corners of the world, without any intention of returning home.

She was now fifteen minutes late. In her hurry to leave, she’d forgotten her headphones, an oversight guaranteed to throw off her entire day. Lucky usually couldn’t walk more than one block without digging them into her ears, building a musical buffer between herself and the world. But she’d gotten out of the door in record time, helped by the fact she’d forgone her usual breakfast of a Marlboro Red and an ibuprofen and left the house in the clothes she’d woken up in. Surreptitiously, she gave her T-shirt a sniff. A bit smoky, a bit sweaty, but, overall, not too bad.

“Je voudrais te sentir.”

Lucky’s eyes jumped to the man sat across from her, who had just spoken. He had the tense, rodentlike face of prey, but his eyes were all predator. In his hands, he clutched a large Volvic water bottle over his crotch, pointing it toward her. He was smiling.

“What?” she asked, though she had no desire to know what this man had said, to speak to him at all.

“Ah! You are American!”

He pronounced it the typical French way—emphasis on the can.

“Yup.”

Lucky nodded and reached for her phone again, trying to radiate uninterest.

“You are beautiful,” he said, leaning toward her.

“Mm, thanks.”

She kept her eyes glued to her phone. She considered shooting off a text to her booker to say she was running behind, then decided against it. That would only make the lateness real. Better to enjoy the comfort of this limbo period while she could, before anyone knew she was messing up yet again.

“And so tall,” the man continued.

In dark vintage Levi’s and a black cropped tee, Lucky was, indeed, as straight and long as an exclamation point. She hunched her shoulders forward, so he could see less of her, and she became a question mark.

“Mon dieu!” he exclaimed softly to himself. “T’es trop sexy.”

She should get up and leave. She should tell him to go f*** himself. She should take his water bottle—his big, stupid, blue imaginary phallus—and crush it between her hands. Instead, she pointed to her phone.

“Look, I’m just—”

She frowned and pointed at her screen to indicate that she was making a call. She scrolled quickly through her contacts. But who could she call? She didn’t actually want to talk to anyone. Out of habit, she searched Nicky’s name and hit the dial button. They were all part of a family phone plan that Avery paid for; she guessed Avery had decided to spare herself the anguish of canceling Nicky’s number by simply continuing to pay her share. Lucky didn’t know where Nicky’s phone was now, dead in a drawer somewhere she imagined, but she was grateful to still have this. Her sister’s voice filled her ear.

You’ve reached Nicky’s phone, leave a message after the tone. Have fun!

She was giggling, self-conscious about being recorded. Just faintly in the background, Lucky could hear herself, several years younger and oblivious to the loss her future held, laughing.

“I would love to know you,” the man persisted.

“I’m on the phone,” said Lucky.

“Ah, d’accord.” The man leaned back, palms open in a ridiculous gesture of gallantry. “We speak after.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d phoned Nicky since she died; the urge to speak to her sister and tell her what life was like without her was constant. Calling her felt like being an amputee who, believing she still has legs, keeps trying to stand.

“Hi, it’s me,” began Lucky as the tone sounded. “I . . . Well, I’m just calling to say hi.”

She glanced at the man, who made no attempt to pretend he wasn’t listening to her.

“It’s fashion week here so things are kind of hectic, as always, but I wanted to call because . . . Um, it’s a big day for you, I guess. One year! I can’t believe it. So yeah, I just wanted to call and say . . . Not congratulations, obviously. It’s not, like, a goddamn celebration. But I wanted you to know I’m thinking about you. I’m always thinking about you. And I miss you. Obviously.” Lucky cleared her throat. “So that’s it. I love you.” Lucky waited to see if she would feel anything, some energetic shift in the cosmos to let her know her sister was listening. Nothing. “Also, Avery’s being annoying. Bye.”

She hung up and glanced out the window. They were almost at Saint Paul, her stop. As she unfurled herself to stand, the man reached to touch her arm. She jumped as though he had held a lit match to her skin.

“Can I take your number?”

The train slowed into the station and Lucky stumbled. He grinned up at her as she faltered. His teeth were stained brown from tobacco.

“You are so sexy,” he said.

Lucky looked at the man eyeing her with possessive joy, as though picking out his pastry from a glass display case. The water bottle still protruded toward her from his crotch.

“Can I?” she asked, pointing to it. The train came to a halt.

“This?” he asked, baffled. He handed her the plastic tube. “Mais bien sûr.”

She took the bottle from his hands, unscrewed the cap, and tipped the remaining water into his lap. The man shot up with a yelp as a dark patch spread across his jeans. Lucky darted toward the exit and pulled the silver lever, that curious object of agency unique to Paris’s metro, and the train doors sprang apart. From the platform, she could hear him calling her a bitch as passengers streamed onto the train between them. She took the stairs two at a time and emerged into the sunlight.

On Place des Vosges, stone archways swooped overhead as Lucky raced toward the address her booker sent her. Two old men smoking in matching olive trench coats turned to watch her as she passed. She rang the bell and passed through the chipped blue wooden doorway that led to the courtyard. At the other end was a tall, spiral stairway; her heavy boots reverberated off the stone walls as she climbed each floor, stopping on each landing to catch her breath. A pack-a-day smoking habit, started when she was a teenager, had left her ill-suited to this sort of activity. Finally, she dragged herself by the banister to the very top. A woman with her hair scraped into a tight dark bun and a tape measure snaked around her neck was standing in the doorway waiting for her.