Because She Is Beautiful

by Cameron Dougan

  She found the card at last: a small envelope and a typewritten note.

  I miss you already. Robert.

  She closed the curtains and slipped off her shoes. She turned on the television, calculating the time in the States: 3:20 a.m. in New York, 12:20 A.M. in San Francisco, almost eight hours to her father's prep. She sat at the edge of the bed, her hands crossed in her lap as she waited.

  A man arrived with the champagne.

  "You are alone?" he said, looking around.

  He popped the cork and filled one of the two flutes, tucking the other under an arm. He put the bottle in a silver bucket of ice, rolled a napkin and draped it across the rim of the bucket.

  "It is early for you, non?"

  "Do I sign?"

  "Compliments of the house," he said. "For a little confusion."

  She gave him several francs and he left. She drank to the lilting sound of the television, words strung together seemlessly. Occasionally she'd catch a word. In the beat it took her to interpret, so many more had flown by. She drank quickly and ordered another bottle before she'd finished the first. It was a different man this time, older, with a thin mustache.

  She checked her watch again and reset it. She dragged a suitcase from the closet to the middle of the room and sat on the floor, sifting through it, pulling out pieces of tissue paper that she'd packed between layers of clothes to keep them from wrinkling, folding them for reuse. Robert had taught her the trick. Kim leaned against the foot of the bed and sipped her champagne. Piles of clothes were scattered now about the floor.

  The phone woke her. It was the concierge calling to say that her other room was ready. He'd rung earlier but she hadn't answered. She couldn't think of moving now. She remembered how much she had wanted to bathe. Somehow she'd forgotten. She wanted only to rest her head, to clear her mind. The champagne glass lay on its side.

  She looked at her watch and picked up the phone again. She asked the hotel operator to dial the number of the hospital in San Francisco and waited to be connected to patient information.

  "Reilly. Charles Reilly," she said. "He's just had surgery. I'm his daughter."

  "One moment."

  There was a long pause.

  "He's in recovery."

  "Is he conscious?"

  "Let me connect you to someone there."

  The line went silent. It hummed and clicked. Kim had spent so much of her life on the telephone, it seemed. She stared at the glass on the floor, so fragile, waiting to be stepped on, tripped over, shattered.

  The operator put her through to a nurse. They paged the doctor who had performed the surgery, and she continued to hold.

  "Mrs. Reilly? I'm Dr. Sturgess. You should know that the operation went smoothly."

  "He's okay?"

  "We're optimistic."

  "What does that mean?"

  "We expect no surprises. Medication should take care of the rest. It's just a question of monitoring him."

  "So he's going to be fine?"

  "Stronger than before, I think."

  "Can he talk?"

  "He's still heavily sedated. Say hello, but then let him rest. Do you have my number?"

  She copied it down on a piece of hotel stationery.

  "Thank you, Doctor."

  There was another silence, then a muffled grunt.

  "Daddy?"

  "Is that my girl?"

  He sounded drunk.

  "The doctor says you did great, Dad. I knew you would. I'm in Paris."

  "That's my princess. You're a good girl."

  "You need to rest, Dad."

  "What do you think I'm doing?"

  "Okay. You get better now."

  "Already am."

  She set the receiver down on its base, went around the room turning off all the lights, and climbed onto the bed.

  She draped an arm over her eyes and fell asleep thinking of the candles she'd lit as a girl, the dancing lights and smell of wax and incense, her mother's voice in prayer, and childhood wishes.

  She woke to the smell of roses. Her clothes were wet with sweat. She rubbed her eyes and sat up. It was nine in the morning.

  She called for coffee, shed her clothes, and started a bath. She was getting out when room service arrived. She slipped into a white hotel robe that hung from the door.

  A short gray-haired woman brought coffee on a tray.

  "On the bed is fine," Kim said.

  The woman went to the window.

  "Oh, non," said Kim.

  The woman opened the curtains anyway. Light flooded the room.

  "Ahhh," said the woman, smiling. "Il fait beau."

  She unhooked the latch and swung the window open. She stood on tiptoe and leaned out and waved to someone. She turned and smiled, nodding to the window.

  "It is nice. Écoutez—the birds. They are pretty. Perhaps you leave the window open."

  She collected the champagne bottles and the glass. Kim wandered over to the window and rested her arms on the sill. Sunlight filtered through a yellow awning. A breeze blew cool against her still-wet ears. Tiled ivy-covered walls and columns enclosed the busy courtyard. A fountain gurgled. Geraniums and roses spilled from giant urns. White marble statues, their smiles unchanging and silent, gazed demurely at the white set tables and white iron chairs and the bustling waiters in tails.

  "It will be like this all morning," said the woman. "Later, it rains."

  "Yes, oui," said Kim. "I plan to be out."

  The woman nodded to the side of the bed Kim hadn't slept on, still undisturbed. She held up the single champagne glass.

  Kim finished her coffee. It grew thicker as she neared the bottom of the cup, a pattern of grounds clinging like tea leaves for a fortune-teller to divine. She checked herself in the mirror and switched earrings, then sorted through hatboxes, switched earrings again, and listened to the birds. She was overdressed, but there was always the possibility of running into someone from New York. Finally she went down to the lobby and stopped at the desk to say she was happy with the room.

  "Attendez," the man said. "There is a message."

  He searched. A man in a white coat was on his knees polishing a brass floor grate. Even in the dim light the fixtures shined. A series of vitrines lined the lobby, containing necklaces and bracelets from select jewelers. On previous visits she and Robert had always stayed at the Ritz. They would browse these vitrines after dinner, and she would point out what she liked.

  "There are better," Robert would say, as though she were worth more.

  "Ah, oui," said the man, having located the note. "I thought not to disturb," he said, passing it across the desk.

  M. Sanders, it read, and the time.

  She folded the note and dropped it in an ashtray on her way out the door.

  The day had started out fine, as the maid said it would, but already clouds were gathering. The breeze picked up. Kim stood at a corner of the Place de la Concorde, dizzied by the swirl of traffic. Fountains spilled in the wind, dousing the cobblestones. She had an umbrella but left it down, turning her face to the wet wind, the first raindrops pricking her cheeks, the gray obelisk in the center of the square and the tip of the Eiffel Tower rising like twin spires above the city line.

  It began to drizzle. She wandered east under the protection of an endless arcade. The street was sad, dark, and full of hurried people, tourist shops, and metal carts and freezers full of long dry sandwiches. T-shirts with emblazoned red, white, and blue fleurs-de-lis screened windows like curtains. Rows of shiny Eiffel Towers of assorted sizes were stacked as many as shelves would fit. Kim watched a family choose the biggest one. The store woman didn't go to the shelf. She produced a shrink-wrapped tower from behind the counter.

  Kim veered off the main street. The rain fell harder. Cracked terra-cotta pots sat in a blue rusted-metal window box, flowerless, clumps of oozing mud piling on the sidewalk beneath like sand castle beginnings. The outside tables of a café were deserted. Plastic ashtrays flooded. The windows
reflected the street except where a man sat just inside, his long burning cigarette hanging from his lips, ash ready to fall. A hand supported his tired head, pushing a tweed cap off center. A car rattled by and the man sat back, his figure shrouded by the stormy reflection.

  Up ahead another woman walked at the same pace as Kim. Together they left the avenue's sighs behind but grew no closer to each other. Two smoking men in overalls leaned against a miniature green garbage truck. Their heads followed the other woman, then swung back. They jeered at Kim: "A passing cloud." One man blew a kiss. She walked faster.

  A sharp gust of wind bucked a red store awning. It swelled and strained against weary metal arms. A loud crack drew a clerk out into the rain, cursing. He hurried to crank the awning shut with an old dark lever. The side flaps snapped wildly like a loose sail.

  By chance she found herself on the rue Saint-Honoré and set out for the couture houses she knew. She was relieved to strip off her wet coat and sip espresso as young women modeled gowns and suits for her. She bought freely and had everything delivered, but what used to be the thrill of returning home in the afternoon, to find garment bags spread out like gifts, now only emphasized the fact that they were not gifts. They were things she could purchase just as easily in New York. She blamed herself at dinner for not being courageous, for not venturing out into quarters she'd never seen before.

  The following morning, she ate in the spa by the pool. Bathers plodded down the marble steps in white terry robes and slippers—celebrities she recognized from television, Americans from the flight she'd come over on, skin glistening, all smelling of chlorine. A man with a long sloping nose stopped to talk. His eyebrows were thick and tangled, and he had a copy of the Herald Tribune rolled under his arm.

  "You are staying at the hotel?" he said, surveying the pool. He turned back. "Not everyone is."

  She asked if he knew any restaurants she should try, and he suggested they meet for drinks that evening.

  "What is your room number? I'll ring you."

  "I can't this evening," she said.

  He gave her his business card and she thanked him and tucked the card under her breakfast plate.

  The man at the table next to her had small round spectacles that made his eyes appear soft. A stack of newspapers lay at his feet. She asked if he knew a good café she might try.

  "I don't want to feel like I'm on holiday," she said.

  "But you are, non?"

  "Oui."

  He seemed happy to share a part of his city, perhaps a personal, secret part.

  "You are American?" he said. "You will like this place."

  "Why?"

  He wrote the address on a napkin and handed it to her.

  "Many beautiful people go there," he said.

  "So?"

  The man laughed. He asked if she was free for dinner and frowned when she declined.

  "You are here long?" he said.

  "Only a day."

  "Well," he said, gathering his papers, "I hope your stay has been nice," and he got up and left. She realized he was referring to the length of her visit. She hoped she wouldn't see him again.

  The driver didn't need her napkin with the address. He was eating lunch as he steered, a brown bag flattened in his lap. Something on the floor stirred and she saw two large brown eyes looking up at her.

  "Say bonjour, Titi," the man said. The dog put its face on the seat and sniffed the air and then stared at the man's hamburger.

  "He is quiet today," said the man. "Usually he is not this way. He is not so good. Are you, Titi?"

  Two gold statues of warriors on horseback ushered them across a bridge. The man turned down a tree-lined boulevard. Branches arched across its width, joining and twining to form a continuous shimmering canopy that stretched for blocks. It was like looking through a garden hose, the green translucence and circle of light ahead where the boulevard intersected a square. One summer, her mother had planted petunias by the stoop of their house. Every day Kim watered the cluster of flowers. She'd put her thumb over the nozzle and mist the water until she could see a rainbow; she remembered thinking how the colors were always there, all around her, even though she couldn't see them all the time. She had only to mist the water to prove it—even when they moved and there were no longer flowers by the stoop.

  The driver parked and motioned to a green-and-gold-trimmed awning.

  "C'est là," he said. Then suddenly, "Merde." A bit of hamburger had tumbled into his lap. "Merde."

  He needed her napkin after all.

  On the other side of the square was a church, its bells ringing the end of mass. Worshipers filed out, joining the roaming hoards. Roads converged from several angles. Scattered stoplights held cars in check as they funneled into the chaotic intersection, making surprisingly little noise; or, if there was much, Kim didn't notice, because the engines idled at a different pitch from those in the States, a distant siren sounding silky as a mother's hushed lullaby. There was a softness to the city's hum, the street chatter and clatter of silverware and tables being served—notes of a chord.

  She liked that the sidewalks were wide and one could sit outside without being in the street. There were no free tables that she could see, and she went to the entrance and asked a waiter. He swept his arm impatiently, a silver chain looped from his vest to his belt jangling as he gestured to the whole of the café. A woman in a sooty bowed hat got up, clucking to a dog on a leash to follow. Kim started for the table but was cut off by a man, who gave her a tight-lipped smile and sat.

  Nearby, another man leaned against a thin tree trunk. He read from a folded copy of Le Figaro, looking up from time to time to scan the tables and re-adjusting a brown linen coat draped over his shoulder. Two women stood in casual, almost surprised conversation, as though they'd just bumped into each other. One held a plastic bottle of drinking water between pointed fingers like a cigarette. The other had short raspberry-colored hair and a black lace choker about her neck. They too were waiting to sit, keeping tabs on new arrivals, nodding politely to imply an order.

  At last Kim squeezed toward a table without competition and collapsed into the chair. It was ten degrees cooler under the shade of the awning. She took a handkerchief from her purse and dabbed at her forehead and neck.

  Her waiter was the same one she'd approached before. He seemed not to recognize her. She asked for white wine: "Peut-être un Montrachet—"

  "There is nothing like this," he said.

  "Un Corton?"

  He shook his head. "Shall I choose?"

  A tall, lanky young man sat at the table next to her with an open book, one eyebrow cocked like a crow's wing as he read. His hair was still wet, drying in long black streaks that threatened to fall in his face. Sloppy, she thought, but caught herself. Maybe he just wasn't trying to impress anyone. He had a scar running from his left eye to the sideburn, like a wrinkle from squinting or Egyptian makeup, paler than his already pale skin. He was clean-shaven, almost too pretty except for the scar, which made him look older than he probably was.

  The waiter brought her glass on a round silver tray. He slipped the receipt under the corner of her ashtray and stood waiting for her to sample his selection. It was fruity like an after-dinner wine. She thanked him.

  Condensation beaded on the side of the glass.

  The book the young man was reading had a long French title with a peacock on the cover, its fanned tail feathers superimposed over the outline of a woman's legs. Kim sipped her wine and wondered what kind of a story would have such a jacket. What would a man be reading on a weekday morning at a café in Paris? His cheek was laid across the knuckles of a supporting fist, his expression shifting from troubled to serene: a ripple of concern in tired dark eyes, then still-water smooth. What was he thinking?

  He glanced up, saw her staring, and looked away, then looked back, this time at her hand—her emerald ring, she realized. But he didn't say anything. He dove back into his book.

  Kim adjusted her hat.<
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  There was a girl at the street corner with bony knees, dressed in a sheer flowery dress. A sweater so small that it couldn't possibly fit was tied about her waist. She flirted with a boy in leather biker pants. His hand caressed the seat of a sleek crimson motorcycle. Every few seconds he wiped it as though dust had collected.

  A Chinese gentleman with a white silk ascot and cream linen jacket sat with his dog. He threaded the leg of his chair through the handle of his leash and took out a pipe. A Gypsy boy crept up to him. There was a girl not far behind. They peddled carnations. The boy's tray was full, stems held in a frame of wet cardboard. The girl had sold all of hers but one, and the Chinese man was her final taker. He clipped the stem near the bud and stuck the flower in the lapel of his jacket.

  The girl curtsied and skipped away in pink plastic shoes.

  The boy pressed on, calling out, tugging at people's legs.

  Across the street above a pharmacy, a large billboard promoted a film. It showed a woman with stricken eyes and a bleached white face, her front teeth pinching a fleshy lower lip.

  "Excuse me," she said, touching the young man's table as if it were his shoulder. "Do you know who that actress is?"

  She pointed to the billboard.

  He looked at it a moment. "Camille Claudel?"

  Kim shook her head. "Who is she?"

  "I'm sorry. Camille Claudel is not the actress."

  "Oh."

  "She was Rodin's lover."

  "The sculptor?"

  "She was an artist too."

  "You are an artist?"

  "I mean like Rodin. Some of her finest work he took credit for. She broke free finally."

  "She left him?"

  "It was always his greatness, being his lover and all. No one could judge her on her own."

  "And who's the actress?"

  He paused and smiled. "I forget now."

  "You're American?" Kim said.

  "From Los Angeles."

  "My father lives in San Francisco. Have you been here long?"