The Paris Affair

by Pip Drysdale

  Because, after the editorial meeting, Hyacinth handed me a black-and-white printout of my street art piece with a lot of red pen notes (Why is this here? What do you mean? Reference other artists! Give the reader something to learn! Did you do any research at all?). And so I didn’t get that head start on my Noah X article after all. Instead, I spent the rest of the day reworking the street art piece, trying to ignore my smug inner critic. But after I finally pressed send at 5 pm, I devoted a good solid hour to researching Noah X, looking more carefully through his Instagram page, dissecting his website, and reading reviews of his older work. But all that left me with were rudimentary details (‘born in Indiana’ and ‘attended Maryland Institute College of Art’) and useless tidbits (his sister’s name is Anna and she runs a gluten free bakery back in Indiana – this, I discovered by clicking on the handle beside an ‘I miss you’ on one of his Instagram posts). There are hardly any pictures of Noah X online and it seems he’s at that stage of his career where he’s ‘emerging’ enough to have a write-up in The Paris Observer but not quite famous enough to have a Wikipedia page or anything else that might make my job easier. He’s not quite Banksy-level invisible, but the ‘X’ in his name is indicative of a strong and unusual branding choice: mystery. Which is all fine and good and probably sells paintings, but it doesn’t help me.

  I look around the gallery, making sure nobody is watching me. But thankfully Noah’s model, the redhead, is here wandering around with her iPhone out, videoing people’s reactions to the work. Everyone’s attention is on her; lots of eyes darting to her nipples then back at the paintings.

  But wait, there’s a woman I recognise standing on the far side of the room.

  The woman from that magazine article on Instagram. The one with the short strawberry blonde bob and fine features who ‘discovered’ Noah. What was her name? It started with an ‘A’… She’s chatting to a man with thick salt-and-pepper hair and black, square-framed glasses, and her body language says she’s in charge. She must be Noah’s agent or the real gallerist here. I should ask her some questions. But the moment she looks up and catches my eye, I instinctively look away.

  Talking to her would be a bad idea.

  It’s just gone quarter past seven, Noah will arrive soon and I don’t want to be trapped in conversation with his agent when that happens. It’ll make it harder to slip out unnoticed.

  I glance down at the photograph I just took: good, no reflections. The artwork has the same Marvel comics and the same model, but this time she’s sitting up in bed, her legs barely covered by white sheets, her red hair brought forward over one shoulder. She’s smoking a cigarette as she stares down at her phone. It’s all in black and white except for her hair, the red string around her wrist, the red lighter beside her and the end of her cigarette.

  I stare at it and consider what I might write about it. It reminds me of something, another work, but I can’t quite figure out what.

  ‘It’s great, right?’ comes a French female voice from beside me. I turn my head to see who’s talking. Oh fuck. It’s the woman I was just looking at.

  Agnès, that was her name.

  I nod and say, ‘Yes,’ as I take her in.

  She’s somewhere between thirty-eight and forty-five and smells refined. Expensive. She has the kind of translucent skin that I recognise from the Fraxel leaflets that are handed to me every time I get a facial, and she’s wearing a navy and cream lace pants suit, the sort that you just know didn’t come from Zara. As for me, I’m wearing a black leather skirt (that did come from Zara), thick black stockings, black boots, a black V-neck, a gold necklace and a pair of dangly earrings I picked up from Topshop. I feel conspicuously inexpensive under her gaze.

  She’s watching me like she expects me to say something else. But I don’t want to say something else, I want to leave, so instead I glance over her shoulder; the last thing I need is for Noah to walk in right now.

  ‘Do you know much of his work?’ she continues. My gaze snaps back to hers and she smiles. God, she doesn’t think I’m a proper buyer does she?

  ‘Not really,’ I say, running polite reasons to excuse myself through my mind but the only compelling one I can come up with is: bathroom.

  And then something truly wonderful happens. My phone starts vibrating in my hand. I look down and see ‘Mum’ flashing up on the screen. Thank god.

  ‘Oh shit. Sorry, I have to take this,’ I say, holding up my phone.

  And that’s true. My mother never calls me. And when she does it’s never good. It means the wheels are falling off again and she needs me.

  ‘Hey, Mum,’ I say, ‘just a sec.’ I weave my way through the crowd, past the mousy-haired girl by the door who’s greeting people and handing out champagne, and soon I’m outside in the crisp night air where it’s quieter.

  The sky is a rich starry-night blue and the yellow streetlights look gold against it.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Hi,’ she says. Her voice cracks.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I ask, moving away from the hum of the gallery.

  ‘We broke up,’ she says.

  By ‘we’ she means her and Neville. This is not a bad thing, Neville is a shit – but of course he is, that’s mum’s type. She’s been breaking up with men like Neville my whole life. And you’d think that would have taught me a thing or two about love but I guess there are some lessons that can’t be learned secondhand.

  ‘Okay, what actually happened?’ I ask.

  She starts sobbing. Then mumbling something – I’m pretty sure she just said ‘took my car’.

  ‘Take a deep breath,’ I say into the phone.

  She whimpers something back but I can’t quite make it out because there are people spilling out of the gallery now, and they’re talking loudly in French. I glance back at them: one is laughing; a man is lighting a woman’s cigarette. I look around me: a row of parked motorbikes sparkling under streetlights and the red and white neon of a tabac up ahead. But just beside the gallery there’s a narrow, cobbled side street. I duck into it. It’ll be quieter in here.

  ‘I just don’t know why this always happens to me,’ she says as I move into the alleyway. ‘I try so hard.’

  I lean against the cool bricks of the gallery. ‘I know you do,’ I say. She tries too hard. ‘When did it happen, Mum?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say. She’ll need a day or two. ‘Mum, take a couple of paracetamol and get an early night. We can talk properly tomorrow.’ Here’s a life hack for you: on a purely physiological level, paracetamol soothes a broken heart.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I love you, Harper.’

  ‘I love you too,’ I reply. ‘Sleep well.’

  And then we hang up.

  The air smells sweet. Spicy. Familiar. But I haven’t smelled that aroma in two years or so. Not since Harrison. I turn around, searching the cobbled street, up then down.

  Weed. It’s weed. And then I see him. He’s just a little further down the alley, beyond a light, obscured by the shadows. He’s sitting on the ground and leaning against the wall. He lifts something to his lips; the end glows amber in the dark.

  Noah.

  * * *

  I look back down at my phone, pretending not to care whether he’s there or not. In these sorts of situations, it’s best to be the one in control. He needs to come to me.

  And come to me he does.

  ‘Well, look who it is,’ he says, his teeth catching the light as he smiles and stands up. I take him in as he moves towards me: blue jeans and a white long-sleeved shirt with the top buttons undone. His expression is calm and his hair has fallen in front of one slightly pink eye. He’s baked.

  ‘Hey,’ I say, sweeping my hair from my face. Act cool.

  He’s right by me now, leaning against the wall. I can smell his cologne, mingling with the weed, and my eyes move from his face to the joint.

  ‘Want some?’ His expression is open, like that of a small child offering up a s
weet.

  I look around. Nobody is here – it’s just me and him. My insides are aching from that phone call with my mother, I’m stressed about seeing him, and yes, yes, I would like some.

  I reach for it and our fingers touch. Zap.

  ‘Might as well,’ I say. ‘We’re all doomed anyway. This might take the edge off.’ I take a deep inhale. The smoke singes my throat and moves into my lungs. My head grows light, my chest grows tight. I wait. Exhale. His eyes are still on me when I look back to him.

  ‘Doomed?’ he asks, with a small smile.

  I narrow my eyes. ‘Don’t you read the news?’

  ‘I didn’t peg you as such a negative Nancy,’ he says, reaching back for the joint.

  I shrug. ‘I’m full of surprises.’

  He smiles and takes a drag.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be inside?’ I ask, nodding to what I presume is the back door to the gallery.

  ‘I should. But I need this first.’ He nods to the joint. ‘Makes the bullshitting easier.’

  I think about yesterday and how he didn’t tell me he was the artist, how he let me ramble on and just played me like some silly girl, some groupie. I glance over at him, there’s something in his eyes, he’s thinking, She still has no idea who I am. Should I tell her? And fuck that. Fuck letting him think he’s smarter than me. Fuck letting him have control.

  ‘Oh… yes,’ I say, reaching for the blunt. The end of it has been stained pink-mauve from my lipstick. ‘The bullshitting. You have quite a talent there.’ I take another inhale.

  ‘How do you mean?’ he asks, frowning.

  I hold my breath, my eyes on his. And then I breathe out a cloud of smoke.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me who you were yesterday?’ I ask. His features shift. He’s trying to figure out what to say next.

  Of course, I still haven’t told him who I am either, so yes, technically that makes me a hypocrite but whatever. Nobody is perfect.

  ‘How did you figure it out?’ he says.

  ‘Fun little tool called Google.’

  His eyes are all sparks and flames. He’s not used to being caught out. ‘Well, I mean, I am your favourite French artist.’ He takes the joint back from me.

  ‘Not anymore,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, is that right?’

  And then we stand there in silence for a moment.

  ‘You wouldn’t have told me the truth if you knew,’ he says, his voice low and crackly from the weed. ‘And I wanted to know what you really thought of it. The work. It’s scary putting something new out into the world.’

  The cool breeze blows my hair around as I look back to him. His face is fragile, childlike. But Harrison used to get that look, the tortured-artist-needing-validation look. It’s that look that drew me in to start with. So fuck that look. I focus my gaze on the ground instead.

  ‘So have you been inside tonight? Seen the rest?’

  ‘I have,’ I say.

  ‘And?’

  I look up at him. ‘The one in bed is my favourite.’

  ‘The one with the red.’ He grins, nodding in agreement.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. And then I know what it reminds me of. ‘It’s very Berthe Morisot.’

  He starts to laugh. ‘What? That I was not expecting.’

  ‘No, it is,’ I say. ‘It’s like that painting she did of a man in a hat looking out the window at women outside. I think it’s called Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight.’

  ‘Yes, I know the work. But Berthe was not really what I was going for.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand what I mean. I remember seeing that painting for the first time in the Musée d’Orsay and I had one of those little sound recording devices that tells you all about the painting. The guy on the recording kept talking about the light and the gauzy curtains and the greys and greens and all that. But I kept thinking, She’s having a dig at the status quo. Because, at the time, femininity was all about confinement. Women were either stuck in the house, looking out windows, washing the femininity off them in the bath or in the garden close to nature. But the women in that painting are free. They’re outside. It’s the man who is inside, behind the bars of a picket fence and the barrier of a window. The roles have been reversed. I fucking love that painting.’ I pause. ‘And that’s why I love yours. It’s the girl ignoring the guy, not vice versa. A role reversal.’

  I pause again for breath. But now my cheeks are getting hot in the dark. Insecurity is taking hold. Have I said something stupid?

  ‘But then you’re the artist.’ I backtrack. ‘Am I reading too much into it?’

  ‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘Not at all. I like the way you think.’ Then he takes another drag and as he holds his breath he asks: ‘How do you know so much about art?’

  I shrug, watching him exhale as I think of all those galleries I wandered through while Harrison was fucking ‘her’. All those long conversations with gallerists. But I don’t want to get into that right now. So instead I say, ‘I studied it a bit at uni,’ and shrug. ‘So who’s the girl in the pictures?’

  ‘Sabine? She’s an artist’s model.’

  ‘Is that an actual thing? Being a model for a painter as a proper job?’

  ‘Well, it is for her – now at least. She used to work here.’ He bangs gently on the wall of the gallery. ‘That’s where we met.’

  And that’s when the weed hits. There’s a blessed barrier between me and anything harsh in the world now. My lips feel big and tingly and my mouth is dry, and I’m very aware of the fact that Noah is standing close to me. That he’s pulsing warmth and I want to giggle and melt into him.

  ‘You must pay her well,’ I say. ‘Paris is expensive.’ I don’t really care what he pays her. I’m just filling the silence because it’s thick with tension and I can’t stand it.

  ‘Not really, but she still lives with her mother. Cheap rent.’

  The joint has burned down to his fingertips now, and so he drops it to the ground and stomps it out. And we stand there, both leaning against the wall, looking at each other. I’m toying with my necklace the way I always do when I’m a bit nervous or flirting, and I’m not sure which one it is right now. It’s a gold coin pendant with my star sign on it: Virgo. Camilla got one for me before I left London. She has one just like it but hers is Pisces.

  ‘This is cool,’ he says, reaching for it. And we’re standing even closer now. My cheeks are warm. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘That I’m a Virgo,’ I say softly, with a small smile. My voice is scratchy from the weed and it comes out like a whisper.

  ‘And that means…’

  ‘That I’m bad news,’ I say.

  He laughs – a big, real laugh – and says, ‘What a coincidence, me too.’ Then he lets go of my necklace and it jangles as it drops back to my breastbone.

  And we’re just standing here now.

  ‘Shit. I really have to go inside,’ he says, not moving.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. And I don’t move either.

  One moment. Two moments. Three moments pass. Then he takes a deep breath and it comes out jagged; it breaks my train of thought. He takes a micro step back. And then he moves towards the door. I watch as he traces a cross on the keypad. The door buzzes. He pushes it open and a glittery white light spills out into the shadows.

  ‘Good luck,’ I say, before he goes inside.

  And he looks back at me, hesitates for just a moment, and then says: ‘Are you on Instagram?’

  I nod, mentally scanning my new account – but there’s nothing on there to identify me as ‘Harper Brown’. No name. No workplace. And only a picture of the Eiffel Tower as my profile picture.

  ‘@new.girlinparis,’ I say. ‘But there’s a dot between new and girl.’

  ‘Cute,’ he replies. ‘Well, I’ll see you around, new dot girl in Paris.’

  Then he closes the door and he’s gone and it’s just me and the treacle black sky and the yellow globe by the door. The air smells of fading weed and impending rain. But t
hen my phone lights up in the dark: @NoahXartist has started following you. So I do the only polite thing… I follow him back.

  Chapitre six

  The Paris I used to visit with Harrison is not the same city I’ve lived in for the last five weeks. The former was all cobbled streets, picture-perfect cafés, neon signage, the sound of rain on tin roofs, the glittering lights of the Eiffel Tower in the middle of the night on our way back to our hotel room from his shows. It was an untainted projection of the Paris of my mind, a montage of movie scenes from Amélie, the golden hues of impressionism, that kissing photograph by Robert Doisneau and quotes like ‘Paris is always a good idea’. It was pretty, poetic and romantic. But it was soulless, choreographed and two-dimensional compared to the Paris I live in now.

  Because there’s a grit to the real Paris I didn’t see back then, an electric sort of madness that only opens itself to you once you’ve been here long enough to see beyond the varnish.

  Yes, even in the 6th arrondissement.

  Like, there’s a homeless guy who poops on the corner by my flat every morning at the exact time I need to pass by to get to the metro. Nobody says anything. Nobody stares. Then there’s the woman I see at the grocery store almost every time I go in. She’s perfectly coiffed, her makeup immaculate, and she wears her tabby cat in a grey baby-holder strapped to her chest. She just wanders the aisles in silence.

  There’s the ongoing battle not to eat an entire wheel of brie for dinner every night when it’s only one euro at the supermarket and so clearly the most economical choice. And when I came across for my interview in August, there were thunderstorms, the hot pavement sizzling with summer rain. Sometimes I swear to god there were seagulls too, I could hear them from my open hotel window. It was eerie.

  Real Paris is magic and grime and the unexpected all tangled up together like glittery wool.

  But it’s also rude commuters huffing and puffing over my shoulder as I shove my white paper billet in the metal slot and hurry through the gate to wait on the crowded platform. And it’s stairs. So. Many. Fucking. Stairs. There are ninety-six of them leading up to my flat, meaning each trip to the supermarket or chemist requires a thorough cost–benefit analysis.