Secrets of Paris, page 10
Yet here he was, back at the pool. And there was Anne, real, in the corner of his eye. His heart raced. He squinted, concentrating on an article about the political right in Lyon.
“Hey, there,” she said. “You came.”
“Hi,” Michael said, trying to sound surprised. He shaded his eyes. She wore a yellow caftan over her bathing suit, green espadrilles on her feet. She grinned; she looked so happy to see him that he rose and kissed her cheek.
“Come on, let’s swim,” she said. The caftan dropped to the floor, revealing a turquoise maillot. Michael thought of his fantasies about bikinis and skintight swim trunks, and he laughed. Anne tilted her head, inquisitive, but Michael just smiled. She dove into the pool.
What had seemed so sexual, so unbearably erotic in his fantasy, turned into merely a vigorous workout. Michael swam in the lane beside Anne. Turning his head to take a breath, he glimpsed her legs kicking. A flash of pale thigh, muscular calf; he pulled ahead. He heard his heartbeat echo in his head, unbelievably, slower than it had been when she had first approached on dry land. He was out of shape. He hadn’t the energy or strength to think about what could happen, or to make it happen. Instead, he swam as if his life depended on it. As if his ship had sunk a mile out of the harbor and he was fighting against an ebb tide and an undertow to reach the shore.
He couldn’t swim anymore. He stopped, treading water, gasping for air. His eyes stung from chlorine, but he scanned the pool, looking for her. There she was, halfway to the other end, stroking steadily. She touched the pool’s rim, then kicked off, coming toward him. Easy. Without looking up, she knew exactly where to stop.
“Had enough?” she asked.
He spoke with deliberate smoothness, to give her the idea he had his breath back. “For now.”
“It is good for you to start off slowly,” she said. “Swimming is the best exercise there is.”
“You were right,” Michael said. “This place is practically empty.”
“Isn’t it nice?” Anne said. “Now, let’s get out of the water before you die.”
They dried their faces on towels, then lay side by side on chaise longues. Michael was silent, his eyes closed, enjoying her closeness. She was right there, the woman he had fallen in love with. He wished the day stretched ahead without appointments. What time was it? Eight-thirty? Nine? He wished that his Louvre project would lead to another, so that he could stay in Paris forever. He felt her take his hand.
He opened his eyes, turned his head to look at her.
“Hi,” she said, watching him. She held his hand lightly, as though she wasn’t quite sure she wanted him to notice.
He said nothing, only looked.
“We could go somewhere,” she said. She smiled, ducked her head. “Oh, it’s embarrassing to ask …”
“No,” Michael said. “It’s not. I want to.”
“Will you come to my house? It is not far …”
Michael wondered whether this was how it felt to be hypnotized. He stood, gathered his towel and newspaper, followed Anne to the bathhouses. If she had told him to bark like a dog, he might have dropped to his knees and howled. She disappeared into one bathhouse, his signal to find his own and get dressed. He moved in slow motion, as though injected with a muscle relaxant. He noticed, with great clarity, the details of his clothes. The waistband of his boxer shorts, his blue boxer shorts, coming apart now, trailing filaments of elastic. His white broadcloth shirt bearing laundry marks from Wong’s in New York and the Blanchisserie Clement Marot here in Paris. The madras tie, a gift from Julia.
His trance evaporated the instant he stepped from the dark bathhouse into the bright sunlight. Anne stood there, glowing, the sun on her hair. He went to her, held her face between his hands, kissed her. The kiss was white-hot, fire. Then she touched a cool hand to the back of his neck, making him shiver.
She pulled away. Her smile was gentle, forgiving: it gave him one last chance to get away. He thought of Lydie. He thought her name, “Lydie,” and an image of her collarbone, elegant and delicate, came to him. Then Michael, whose romance with Anne had so far taken place in his dreams and imagination, willed his mind to be empty.
“Is it too far to walk?” he asked.
She lived in an apartment on the second floor of an old, impeccably restored building in the Sixth Arrondissement. It overlooked the rue Jacob, a street so narrow it afforded exquisite intimacy with the building just opposite. Anne walked to the window, to draw the curtain, but Michael stopped her. He stepped onto the balcony, looked up and down the street.
“You must know your neighbors well,” he said, gazing across the street into the boudoir of one, the living room of another. He was stalling for time, and he knew it.
“I know everything about every one of them,” Anne said. “For example, the man who lives there.” She pointed at a window to the left. “Every night at eight o’clock he appears on his balcony in white pajamas. He unwraps a cigar, bites the end off it, and spits it into the street. Then he disappears. And the man who lives there …” She pointed at the window exactly opposite. “He is a doctor. On weekdays he lives with his wife, who is fat and blond, but on weekends, when she goes to visit her mother, his mistress, who is fat and blond, moves in.”
Michael stared at the doctor’s apartment. He kept a red plastic garbage can on the balcony. Also a collection of brooms and mops. Then he noticed the apartment above, which had laundry hanging on a line between two windows. “You’d think the doctor would put a tree or something there instead of cleaning supplies,” he said, thinking “mistress.”
“That building is a slum,” Anne said. “The inhabitants are all well-to-do, but look: laundry hanging out, mops and garbage cans on every balcony.” She frowned, perhaps assessing the impression the building made on Michael. He noticed the tension in her shoulders, her neck. She probably wondered what they were doing, standing in front of her window, talking about her neighbors. He hated to think of them living so close, looking in at her.
He put his arms around her, felt a thrill that reminded him of the first time he had touched a girl. Her smallness excited him, and why? Because it symbolized the difference between men and women? Because it reminded him of the year he shot up six inches, discovered sex, had to bend nearly double when dancing with girls in the gym? He lowered his head, kissed her deeply. Her lips felt soft; she tasted so delicious. Everything slid away except the kiss, their mouths, his and Anne’s. He wanted the kiss to go on, not stop; exactly the way that other times, during sex, just before coming, he would wish for the feeling to last, or at least recur on demand.
Anne stepped back. She held his forearms, smiled up at him. “I’m glad we are here,” she said.
“Yes,” Michael said. He glanced around, realized he was looking for the door to her bedroom.
“Would you like a tour of the house?” Anne said, teasing him.
“Okay.” He lifted her into his arms. Laughing, she pressed her cheek against his chest. He kissed her hair, which was damp from the pool and smelled of shampoo and chlorine. “Tell me where to go,” he said.
“Let’s start in that room,” she said, pointing to a closed door.
Michael actually held her with one arm as he turned the knob with his other hand; she weighed nothing at all. He felt dizzy, breathless. The room was dark as a cave; heavy curtains blocked the light, and Michael stumbled. Anne clutched his neck; he steadied himself.
“It’s an adventure,” she said. “We go in there.”
“In there?” They stood before what appeared, in the darkness, to be a tent. He brushed the fabric with the back of his hand, found an opening.
“It is my great folly,” Anne said, laughing. She tumbled out of his arms. “My bed, can you believe it?”
“Are we playing ‘Arabian Nights’?” Michael crawled in after her. It was snug, fantastic. He began to unbutton her blouse. She rolled away from him.
“Not ‘Arabian Nights,’ ” she said, “but there is a fantasy, certainly. This is a canopy bed from the seventeenth century.” Anne giggled. “Sometimes I think about it: how many people living at that time could have afforded such a thing? Not many, and one of them was Marie de Sévigné. What if this belonged to her? I don’t dare tell you what I paid for it; you would think I am crazy. The curtains are not old; I had them made.” She sat erect, handling a fold of the silk damask drapery. The stiff fabric rustled between her fingers. She seemed absent, her mind gone back to the court of Louis XIV.
“It’s beautiful,” Michael said, lying back.
He sensed, rather than saw or felt, Anne. And he felt sad, because he knew that, although he was about to make love with her, the great moment of romance had passed. He was wide awake. His own mood had slammed into Anne’s. There she was, upright, conjuring characters who had died centuries ago. He still wanted her, even though she was crazy. She unzipped his pants, lowered her mouth to his erection. Shivering, Michael closed his eyes. He reached for her shoulders; five minutes ago, this would have been exactly what he wanted.
I hear that there is a constant round of pleasure, but not a moment of genuine enjoyment.
—TO FRANÇOISE-MARGUERITE, JUNE 1680
THE BALL WOULD be magnificent, Lydie decided. She had located a château in the Loire Valley, whose owners, a titled though impoverished elderly couple, rented it to paying guests by the day, weekend, or week. The eighteenth-century château stood in a park, surrounded by a moat, at the edge of a forest. It overlooked a swanless lake.
“It’s up to you,” she said over the phone to Didier. “It’s rather expensive, but I think it’s the perfect backdrop for our ball.”
“You say they will rent it for the weekend?” Didier asked.
“Yes.”
“Then let’s take it from Friday night through Sunday and make a country-house weekend of it. Hold the ball on Saturday night and shoot the ads then. We justify the expense of the château by using friends as guests instead of paid actors.”
“That’s clever,” said Lydie, who had been thinking the same thing. “When do you think we should stage it? After August, when people are back from vacation?”
“Absolutely. After the rentrée, at the end of September. Give people something to look forward to.” Lydie heard him clucking at his end of the wire. “Especially Patrice,” he said. “I suppose she has told you about her mother? Last night I had to give a tranquilizer to the poor girl.”
“I know she seems to be under a strain,” Lydie said. She had not yet met Mrs. Spofford, and although she knew that some women did not like their mothers, she thought Patrice’s bad reaction to her mother’s arrival petulant and mean. Patrice had said her mother didn’t travel easily. Lydie wondered how Mrs. Spofford must feel, coming to Europe to visit her only daughter and finding her furious. Patrice had said to Lydie, “I’m in a killing rage anytime she’s in the room.”
“I am mad about your ideas,” Didier said. “In marketing meetings I tell my managers, ‘Take a look at this plan, you assholes.’ Listen, we will divide the guest list in two. You invite half, I invite half.”
“Michael and I don’t know that many people in Paris,” Lydie said. “We’ll ask ten guests, you can have the rest. Will Patrice’s mother still be here?”
“God willing, no,” Didier said.
When she hung up the phone, Lydie took notes on ideas for the ball. If the weather was fine, perhaps they could hold it outdoors. She would have to arrange for a sumptuous banquet. She envisioned oysters, spider crabs, a roast capon, something en croute, platters of tartes, Paris-Brest, and petits fours. Every guest would be required to come in costume, and she needed a theme. Eighteenth century? Subjects of famous paintings? The court of Louis XIV? She left a question mark after the word “theme.” She would have to visit the château again, to get a feel for the possibilities.
This project would take the place of Lydie’s August vacation, and it was just as well, considering that Michael’s work on the Louvre had shifted into high gear. Just as the rest of Paris was winding down, preparing for the great exit when every minister, cabdriver, waiter, executive, and concierge took off for Ile de Ré, Saint-Tropez, Arcachon, Biarritz, or Deauville, Lydie and Michael would be digging in. Paris would be a ghost town, like New York on a hot Sunday in July. The blare of horns on Avenue Montaigne would cease; the few restaurants that remained open would be quiet and relaxed. She could stroll through the garden at the Musée Rodin and find an empty bench. They could stand directly in front of Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe for as long as they pleased without being jostled. The idea of it made Lydie feel luxurious, and she put down her pen and stretched.
She knew that Patrice and Didier planned to spend all August at Saint-Tropez with Mrs. Spofford, and for the first time Lydie wondered about Kelly. Would she go with them? Or would Patrice give her August off? Lately the thought of Kelly had made Lydie frown, and she wasn’t sure why.
The telephone rang, and Lydie answered on the third ring. “Come out to lunch with us,” Patrice said, an edge of desperation in her voice. “I need you.”
They sat beneath a red umbrella in the courtyard of the Hôtel Diaz de la Peña. Ivy covered the four walls and cascaded from romantic, asymmetrically positioned iron balconies and stone balustrades. Lydie saw red everywhere: the umbrella, the pots of geraniums, the lipstick worn by Patrice and her mother.
“This was always my favorite hotel in Paris,” Mrs. Spofford said in a voice that was at once warm and regal. She appeared much too young to be Patrice’s mother. Her skin was unlined, powdered white, and her hair was honey-blond. Where Patrice was dark-haired and large, even robust, her mother was fair with a delicacy that bordered on frailty. Lydie could not take her eyes off the woman’s wrists, which were thin, elegant, graceful as a ballerina’s. The way Mrs. Spofford moved them made Lydie think she too was aware of them. And Patrice as well. How could they support the weight of those bracelets? All three women were captivated by Mrs. Spofford’s wrists. It hurt Lydie to look at Patrice, whose anger was a mask blazing with too much eye shadow and lipstick. Like her mother, Patrice wore an armful of gold bracelets. Mother and daughter wore Chanel suits. “Patsy’s father thought this hotel flashy, but I adored it.”
“She calls me ‘Patsy,’ ” Patrice said. “Didier just loves that.”
“Well, dear, your name is ‘Patricia.’ ” A subtle emphasis on the “is.”
“Mother, has it ever crossed your mind that ‘Patricia’ in French is ‘Patrice’? When a ‘Pierre’ moves to Boston he is called ‘Peter.’ Get it? You have to conform to the culture.”
“Whatever,” Mrs. Spofford said, turning to Lydie. “Where are you from, dear?”
“New York City, originally. Still, I guess. My husband and I are only here for a year.”
“A year in Paris! How marvelous! I spent a year in Paris my junior year abroad. But how much better to have the additional perspective of being an adult. You appreciate more, don’t you? I see it in Patsy: she has absolutely melted into France. Her accent is flawless.”
“How was your trip, Mrs. Spofford?” Lydie asked.
“Oh, call me Eliza. You make me feel so old. It was fine, thank you for asking. So much easier, now that Air France flies out of Logan. I only wish we had more time in Paris, instead of going straight to the Riviera.”
“Imagine,” Patrice said. “Having to spend a month at a house built into the cliff overlooking the sea. With a saltwater pool. Torture.”
“Darling,” Eliza said. “Saint-Tropez is lovely. But there is so much I want to do in Paris—I want to see that ghastly pyramid, I want to spend a day at least in the Musée d’Orsay, sitting right in front of those Degas horses. And I want to visit dear Sainte Chapelle, which has been closed the last two times I visited you. Is that unreasonable?”
“How do you know it’s ghastly if you haven’t even seen it?” Patrice asked, lighting a cigarette. At that moment the waiter brought their first course, salade de langoustines; Patrice gave him a dirty look, as if she thought his timing was deliberate, and put out the cigarette.
“Patrice loves the pyramid,” Lydie said.
“Didier tells me your husband was chosen out of an enormous field of architects to work on the Louvre,” Eliza said. “I think that is stunning. I don’t know anyone who’s worked on the Louvre.”
“Thank you. I’ll tell him you said so,” Lydie said.
“This is delicious, isn’t it, Patsy?” Eliza said.
Patrice said nothing. She prodded a langoustine with her fork. Lydie felt her stomach tighten as Patrice craned her neck, looking for a waiter. Don’t do it, Lydie thought, willing her friend to behave.
“This fish is not fresh,” Patrice said to the waiter. “Send over the maître d’.”
“Madame, I shall take care of it myself,” the waiter said, gathering the plates. Eliza Spofford wore an expression of pure astonishment.
“Put those plates down and send me the maître d’,” Patrice said, her voice rising.
“Right away, madame,” the waiter said. He hurried away.
“My dear, they are fine,” Eliza said. “Maybe a tinge of iodine, but that’s par for the course with crustaceans. Now, don’t spoil a nice lunch.”
Patrice no longer looked angry, but she looked bold, as if she had a mission. “How can we have a nice lunch if the fish is bad? You know what happens if one eats bad fish? One vomits, and one has to spend the day in bed.” To the maître d’, who had been standing by, she said in a cool tone, “We don’t come to a restaurant like this to eat rotten langoustines. Bring us something different.”
“What would madame desire?”
“Don’t give me that shit,” Patrice said. “Look in your larder and bring us whatever is fresh.”
