About Steven Verrier

About Plan B

Read an Excerpt

Though his parents had pushed him hard to make a hotel reservation in Paris before leaving the States, Danny, hardly strapped for cash but mindful of nearly every penny in his pocket and bank account, had ruled otherwise. He’d read a stack of books about traveling in Europe, and one, Europe on the Cheap, had warned him in no uncertain terms not to make any hotel reservations before starting his trip. It would be a lot easier, the book said, to find reasonable accommodations upon arrival at Charles de Gaulle International Airport, where desperate hoteliers would be dispatching workers to round up travelers to fill up unoccupied rooms. Travelers arriving at night would be able to play hardball and score rooms of any class for pennies on the dollar. But the reality awaiting Danny was that Paris was packed to the rafters, hostels were filled beyond capacity, and any hotel rooms that were still vacant were going for exorbitant prices.
Identifying himself as an American college student on summer vacation, Danny breezed straight through immigration, exchanged a hundred dollars for Euros, and then spent half an hour looking through brochures at a travelers’ aid bureau at de Gaulle and bartering in basic French with a few hotel agents who seemed intent on taking him for every Euro he had and then some. Though Danny wanted to see Paris, he decided to postpone that indulgence until later in his journey. Now, with no place to stay, and with night about to sneak up on him seven hours earlier than usual, he decided this would be as good a time as any to try out his Eurail Pass, which offered him fifteen days of unlimited travel on its intercity rail network covering much of the continent.
It took Danny, a novice at riding trains, a few hours to arrive at the Gare de Lyon, a station recommended in some of his guidebooks. As soon as he arrived there he learned he could have taken a bus from de Gaulle directly to the station and made the trip in under an hour. Determined not to rush into any other bad decisions, he decided to relax at a café he’d noticed near the station.
Not having his French footing yet, Danny looked about as disoriented as a hayseed dropped out of a plane into the middle of Manhattan. Such was all too apparent to a young blonde who sidled up to him as he headed for the café.
“Puis-je vous aider?”
“Uh, no, merci,” said Danny once his tongue was untied.
“Oh, you’re American.” Danny stopped and looked at the attractive young woman, who was about eighteen or nineteen. His disappointment that his accent had given him away as an American was mitigated greatly by the fact that a very pretty young female, dressed in tight shorts and smiling broadly, was standing barely a foot away from him.
“That’s right,” he said.
“What is your name?”
“Daniel.” He said it with a French accent, with heavy stress on the last part.
“Where are you going, Daniel?”
“I was just going to have a snack before catching a train tonight.”
“You’re leaving Paris?”
“I didn’t plan to. I’ve just arrived but couldn’t find a cheap place to stay.”
“Perfect,” she said. “My name is Julienne. You stay in my house.”
Danny, not yet wise to the world, stood there flatfooted, not sure which foot to pick up next.
“You don’t like?” said Julienne, smiling with the confidence of one who’d seen it all. “Daniel stays at Julienne’s house. Doesn’t that sound good?”
Unsure whether he was talking to a prostitute or a good Samaritan, Danny didn’t want to snuff out his prospects just yet. He’d hinted, after all, that he wasn’t a rich man – not that his worn clothes and tattered bag would have left much doubt anyway – and she still seemed interested … but in what?

***

Steven Verrier’s Plan B Virtual Book Tour 2010 will start July 6th and end on July 30th. You can visit Steven’s blog stops at www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com during the month of July to find out more about this great book and its talented author.

• Tweet This
• Digg This
• Save to delicious
• Stumble it
• RSS Feed