ne day left on her rail pass. Forty-two francs—about ten bucks. A quarter of a Camembert, mostly rind. Julia zipped the backpack closed again. She knew the rest of its contents without looking. Bathing suit, face towel, extra underpants, pad, pen.

And don’t forget the toothbrush, she muttered grimly. Toothpaste, that was a luxury. She had long since split open the last tube to scrape the leavings from the inside. How she hated waking with that sawdust feeling in her mouth, generations of bacteria breeding in her mouth all night long. Nasty.

The rail pass expiring—that was the biggest worry. It provided not only transport but also lodging. She hadn’t paid for a single night in a hotel or even a hostel. Instead she had taken night trains wherever she wanted to go, her sleep uncomfortable, broken, but pre-paid. Last week, wanting to stay longer in Nice, she’d taken the night train to Strasbourg and then back again. Now, with only one day left on the pass, lodging would be a problem.

From atop the ramparts of the old fort in Calvi, Julia could see the sea before her, the mountains behind. Corsica was "a mountain with its feet in the sea," the locals said. The sun was powerless against the April mistral that whipped her hair, made her eyes tear, pushed its way up her sleeves and down her neck.

There were other people at the fort, in ones and twos and a group of schoolboys scuffling with each other aimlessly. But the ramparts were broad and long, and she had come up there for the solitude. She had only a few hours to wait before the night train to Paris.

The return to Paris on the last day of her railcard—then what? She could take that job at the bookstore on the river. The pay was probably nothing more than a place to stay—an old bed on the third floor. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. She could sleep on top of it, put her towel over the pillow. And the owner, an old man with a white beard and strange eyes—he hadn’t minded the hours she’d spent browsing books without ever buying. "That’s what we need," he had said approvingly to no one in particular. "Someone like her working here."

But the smell of that third floor room—sour wine, body odor, the dead smoke from a million cigarettes. Queasiness shuddered through her stomach. Don’t be silly, she told herself stoutly. You’re probably just hungry.

Seeing Europe on almost no money had seemed romantic back when she’d planned the trip. The reality was ludicrous. From the beginning there had been nothing but pangs of deprivation. The menus were posted outside restaurant doors; even the simplest places promised grilled mushrooms, lamb stew, caramelized apple tart, taunting her by day, haunting at night. One baguette per day, a round of factory-made Camembert every two days—that left enough for coffee in the morning and a glass or two of wine at night.

Julia didn’t drink much herself, but never being able to buy someone else a drink was frustrating. She hated stinginess; even the appearance of it was despicable. If she ever wrote a travel book, that would be top of the list: "Bring enough money to stand a round of drinks every night for the fascinating strangers you will meet in the bistros."

Fantasy, pure and simple. Most of the strangers hadn’t been fascinating. Almost all of them were nice, and a few were mildly interesting; one had even become a friend. Annick, a young woman her age but not a student—a farm girl who was returning home after a winter working at a ski resort in the Alps. They’d met one night in a brasserie in Tours, and Annick had invited her to spend the weekend at her family’s dairy farm. That had been fun in a weird sort of way. The farm women—Annick, her mother and sister—spent their whole day feeding things. Animals, people, the fire. Breakfast at sunrise was coffee in big bowls with lots of milk. Then everyone went out to work—the men in the fields, the women in the dairy barns, milking and mucking out. They met back at the house around nine for a real breakfast—more coffee, bread, jam, sausage. The women cleared breakfast and started preparing lunch; in between, they looked after the poultry. Lunch was long, from noon until two; a stew of wild hare one day, four roasted chickens (for eight people!) the next. Clear up the lunch, work a little in the kitchen garden, the men back at four for a snack; clear up the snack and start dinner; clear up the dinner, collapse into bed and start the whole thing over again.

That was the routine for the three days of Julia’s visit; she couldn’t figure out when they did things like shopping or laundry. There was one aberration—on the last morning, the youngest son Jean-Claude was allowed to sleep in. It was his sixteenth birthday, and that was his present.

Julia sighed. She had left the farm feeling that to stay longer would be an imposition, feeling too that she couldn’t stand the routine much longer. Now she realized that the farm work had a comforting rhythm, purposeful, connected. . . .Romanticizing again, she chided herself.

"Bonjour, ma’mselle."

Startled, she turned to see a man standing nearby. He had sandy blond hair and wore a blue windbreaker. "Comment ca va?" he asked, showing crooked teeth. Then, without waiting for an answer, "It’s cold up here, very windy. The mistral, you know."

She shrugged, hoping her lack of response would discourage him. Another time she might have been friendlier, but now she needed to think.

"Where are you from?"

Julia sighed. Whatever she answered would begin an unwanted conversation, but nor did she want to be rude.

"I’m American," she replied. "My parents are from Korea."

"Ah, Korea!" he said. "I guessed wrong—I guessed Chinese."

She nodded. The mistral blew harder. Julia pushed her hands into her pockets, hunched her shoulders and lowered her chin into her jacket collar.

"You look cold. Can I buy you a coffee?"

Coffee would be good, she thought. Hot, bitter, sweet, one of those big cups like on the farm to warm her hands as well, maybe a little bite of something to go with it.

"I love Asian women," he said. "I so rarely have a chance to talk to one. Let me buy you a coffee and we can talk."

Julia was suddenly exhausted. It had happened so often on this trip—men who wanted to make her acquaintance because she was Asian. At first she had thought that the questions about her ethnicity were a harmless ice-breaker. It had taken several depressing encounters and, on one occasion, the intervention of a burly waiter, for her to realize that it wasn’t simply a conversational topic. They had some idea, those men, about passivity, submission, a willingness to please that simply wasn’t part of her being, but she could never make them believe it.

The man mistook her silence. "More than coffee, eh?" he smiled. "A drink, that would be fine with me too."

"No, monsieur, thank you but I do not want a drink. My boat leaves soon, you see."

He glanced at his watch. "The boat-train to Paris? Pah, you have plenty of time. Two hours yet. Come, I know a place."

She shook her head and turned away from him slightly to look out at the sea. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him take a step closer. He spoke again, his voice lower.

"I’ve never been with an Asian woman. It’s my dream. Please."

Julia closed her eyes against the mistral and translated his words again in her head; perhaps she hadn’t heard him correctly. When she opened her eyes he wasn’t looking at her anymore; he was gazing beyond the rampart wall toward the beach below.

"I’ll give you four hundred francs. I know a place."

Four hundred francs. Almost a hundred dollars.

That much money could last me another two weeks at least, she thought. I could do it, it would be easy.

She remembered something from a Christmas at home a few years ago, her younger sister tying up a parcel with twine. "Julia," she had said. "I need your finger." And Julia had put her finger on the cross of twine and held it down taut while her sister finished the knot.

Somebody borrowing part of my body for a little while, Julia thought. The same thing, only for four hundred francs.

The parcel held cookies in a tin; she and her sister had baked them to send to their favorite aunt.

"Eight hundred," he said then, his voice edged with pleading.

Pecan cookies dredged in powdered sugar, small rich crumbly mouthfuls.

I must be really hungry, Julia thought, and started to laugh.

© Linda Sue Park