“Then stop complaining.” Marla shakes her phone again. “I can’t help it if my phone keeps freezing up. I don’t know if it’s the phone or my service plan.”
“Why don’t you reboot it? Sometimes that helps. Did you talk to your service provider about an international plan before you made the trip?”
Three men pass us on the sidewalk, do a double take, and slow their pace. I have no idea what they’re saying in French, but the way they’re elbowing each other, leering and laughing, makes me uncomfortable.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say to Marla. “I don’t like this.”
“Oh! Here it goes. We’re good. This way.”
I figure as long as we walk briskly and don’t engage with anyone, we’ll be fine. The best way to calm my nerves is to pick up our earlier conversation.
“So Callie was splitting expenses with you, right?”
“Yeah, money was pretty tight. I mean, we were teenagers. We just wanted somewhere cheap to sleep after the concerts. Then the next day we were off on the train to the next show.”
She stares straight ahead into the distance, seeing something in her mind’s eye that I can only imagine.
“What did you do after Callie went home? Did you room with someone else?”
Marla laughs. “Oh, Hannah, by that time I was ‘with the band,’ as they used to say.”
Oh… Oh!
“So, like what? You had a thing with one of the band members?”
Was my father one of The Squelching Wellies?
Marla has stopped again. This time we’re in front of the iconic red windmill of the Moulin Rouge. She’s looking at her phone and frowning. “Oh, for God’s sake. I guess I’ll try rebooting it like you suggested. How do I do that? No… Wait—no need. Service is back. Let’s go… this way.”
I follow her.
“You didn’t answer my question. Did you have an affair with one of the band members?”
She waves me off with the hand that’s holding her phone. “It’s not that simple, Hannah. It was a long time ago. Let’s talk about something else. We’re in Paris. Let’s live in the present, not the past.”
I’m not sure if she’s irritated by my questions or the spotty cell service. On the train, we exhausted all discussion of the apartment, so I’m out of ideas for small talk.
We walk in silence for the next several blocks.
Finally, we reach a large traffic circle with a statue in the middle and people loitering at its base.
Marla takes an abrupt left and forges ahead. I have to quicken my pace to catch up with her.
Soon, the traffic thins out. The area transitions into a tranquil, tree-lined street with a mix of residences and businesses occupying street-level storefronts. We pass a photocopy shop, a bank, several internet cafés, a grocery, and a couple of pharmacies.
A few minutes later, we round the corner and we’re on a pedestrian market street. Cafés and shops spill out onto the curb. Everywhere I look I see artisanal food boutiques, flower vendors, and fruit and vegetable stands. There’s a fish market displaying poisson on beds of ice. There are souvenir shops offering racks of postcards, Eiffel Tower memorabilia, Notre-Dame gargoyles, and I HEART PARIS hats and scarves that tourists will spend thirty euros on today and toss in the backs of their closets tomorrow. But that’s how Paris enchants. I can’t blame anyone for wanting to take a piece of the magic home.
Suddenly, I realize we’ve been walking a long time, so I stop to check my watch. “Marla, we’ve been at this for almost an hour. I thought you said eleven minutes.”
“And we’re not going to get there any faster if we complain about it.”
“I think we need to stop here and regroup,” I say. “Let me see your phone.”
She hands it to me. “Fine. If you think you can do better, go for it.”
Her phone appears to be frozen again, but from what I can see of the map, we’re way north of our hotel in the city center.
“Are you kidding me? We’ve been walking in the opposite direction of our hotel.”
“What?” she says. “No we’re not.”
She grabs the phone back.
“No. This isn’t right,” she says. “It’s frozen up again. The hotel should be right around the corner.”
It better be close since we’ve gotten our ten thousand steps in via the Seedy Paris walking tour.
I start to say that, but I don’t, lest I be labeled judgmental.
“Don’t get your panties in a wad,” she says. “I’m going to reboot my phone. Maybe that will stop it from freezing on me. Maybe the eleven-minute time was via car?”
Suddenly, as if the universe is willing me to hold my tongue, I smell chocolate. I inhale deeply to make sure my senses aren’t playing a trick on me.
There it is—that deep, rich, mouthwatering fragrance. Like manna from heaven.
It’s exactly how I remember Paris smelling, like chocolate and bread. Just when I thought that fantasy had been shattered, compliments of the red-light district, I spy the chocolate shop two doors down.
“I’m going in there.” I point to the pretty storefront and leave Marla holding her phone at arm’s length, waving it around as if that’s going to get her better reception.
As I wheel my suitcase inside the shop, I inhale the delectable scent of cocoa and marvel at the masterpieces in the glass cases. Instant mood booster. There are rows and rows of Lucite trays brimming with gorgeous confections in various shapes and colors. Some are wrapped in colorful foil; others are displayed in their full chocolate glory, as if they’re waiting to be plucked from the case and savored.
Did I mention that it smells heavenly? Like I’ve fallen into a chocolate dream.
A woman in a white apron smiles at me from behind the counter.
“Bonjour, madame,” I say, trying to sound Parisian. As if I’d fool anyone. All she’d have to do is answer me in French and my deer-in-the-headlights look would give me away.
“Hello.” Mercifully, she addresses me in English, and her voice has a delightful lilt that makes the ordinary greeting sound like a beautiful song. “How may I help you?”
“I’ll take one of each.” I’m joking, of course, but judging by her wide eyes, she thinks I’m serious.
“It all looks so delicious,” I add. “How does a person decide?”
“Oh!” She smiles and nods, catching on. “May I recommend the crème de noisette? It is… how do you say… hazelnut cream.”
“Yes, please. I’ll take a half dozen.”
As she selects six perfect pieces of chocolate, I make my way down the display case, wishing I really could taste one of each. I settle on an additional dozen traditional dark chocolate truffles covered in cocoa powder, and a bag of chocolate disks with cacao nibs mixed in.
I’m buying plenty to share with Marla as a show of goodwill.
The woman wraps up my treasures and tucks them into a bag with handles, which she stuffs full of gold tissue paper.
It looks like a gift when she hands the package to me.
I pick up a business card to slip into my purse, in case I want to come back again before I return to London. That’s when I notice that the zip code is 75017.
Wait a minute—the seventeen at the end of the zip means we’re in the seventeenth arrondissement.
It’s been ages since I visited Paris. I don’t know my way around the city without a map, but I do know that the hotel where we’re staying is not far from the Louvre, which is located in the first arrondissement.
I also remember that Paris has twenty arrondissements. The arrangement starts in the center of the city with the first arrondissement and spirals outward in a clockwise manner, arranged in a snail shell of sorts.
If we’re in the seventeenth, we definitely took a wrong turn or two somewhere along the way.
“Merci beaucoup,” I say. “Your shop is lovely. You’re in the seventeenth arrondissement, right?”
She beams with pride. “Oui. We are famil
y owned and have been in this location for nearly thirty years.”
“If I wanted to walk from here to the Louvre, how long would it take?”
Her eyes fly wide open and then she purses her lips as if she’s seriously considering the question.
“Oooh… Forty-five minutes? It would be a long walk.”
“Yes, it would.”
The moment I exit the shop, Marla says, “Okay, we’re lost. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened, but this damn thing sent us the wrong way.” She smiles meekly. “Don’t be mad. Please.”
“I’m not mad.” I’m irked at myself for not taking on the navigation responsibility from the start.
“You’re mad,” she says.
“I’m not mad,” I repeat. “But it’s after four o’clock. Let’s regroup. Call Monsieur Levesque and see if he can meet us at the apartment instead of his office. I’ll get us an Uber.”
June 1927
Paris, France
Dear Diary,
I’ve visited all the fashion houses. Each one has turned me down. Some of the ateliers acknowledged my superb sewing skills but claimed my aesthetic didn’t align with theirs. That’s confusing because my aesthetic rubbed too closely to Chanel’s. The others turned me away before I could even introduce myself, claiming they had no openings.
I am beginning to feel desperate. I’m constantly irritated with Helen.
She keeps begging me to come out with her and Luc, accusing me of moping about and being a regular spoilsport.
I try to reason with her: I don’t have a job, which means I have no money. I can barely pay for rent, much less drinks.
She insists something will come along. She did not win her Ballets Russes audition, because they only had one opening this time and they selected the niece of a principal dancer. Even so, Helen’s not worried. She says she will audition again the next time they need dancers.
I do wish I could be more like my friend—in some ways. She radiates a sunny disposition even when clouds loom overhead. But it’s easier to be sunny when you have an income, and she’s been dancing in cabarets and modeling for Luc.
Helen is much freer with her body than I am. She’s a good person, mind you, but she’s an exhibitionist. We have different views of modesty. I button up; she bares all. In the two weeks we’ve been living in Paris, she has shed any pretense of inhibition she might have presented in London.
As I write this, Helen is lounging about in her robe on the living room sofa, reading the Evening Standard and leaving very little to the imagination.
A few moments ago we had a disagreement when I mentioned returning to London if I can’t find work. I was trying to be practical and give her fair warning that she might need to find a new flatmate, but she called me defeatist.
She accused me of changing because in London I seemed much braver. She said what if success is right around the corner and I miss the opportunity because I return to Bristol with my tail between my legs?
I have to wonder if she will still sing that tune come the rent day when I can’t afford my share. It’s one thing to dream and it’s another to pay your own way.
I fear we have been living in an altered reality for too long: going to Dingo Bar almost daily and letting men buy us drinks for the pleasure of our company. How much longer will they be so generous? Soon, they will want something in return.
After our tiff, Helen calmed down and said she knows how I can earn money while I continue to look for a situation at a fashion house.
I knew I wasn’t going to like what she had to say.
And I didn’t.
Luc has a friend, another artist, who needs a model. It doesn’t pay much, but it wouldn’t require much time. I could still look for the work I wanted.
When I asked if I would have to take off my clothes, Helen laughed at me. Of course I would. He paints the human figure. He couldn’t do his job if I kept my coat on.
Embarrassed, I then said I had too much self-respect to flaunt my naked body.
Helen flinched and asked if I was calling her a whore.
Then Helen laughed as if nothing was wrong and started teasing me about being a modest little girl who was afraid for the boys to see my knickers.
I asked her if she ever felt vulnerable without a barrier of clothing between her and Luc.
She said boundaries were her barriers. He wouldn’t dare cross her barriers unless she invited him. She insisted that type of control was the ultimate form of self-empowerment.
Then she smiled in such a dreamy manner that I knew she had already given herself to him.
I’ve never thought about it until now, but the clothing I design is my armor, a barrier between me and the world. I can’t imagine laying myself bare for a man to gaze upon as if he were looking at fruit in a bowl.
However, if that fruit belongs to me, and I decide what’s forbidden, could I be so brazen if it meant getting what I wanted in the end?
Eight
January 2, 2019—4:20 p.m.
Square la Bruyère, 9th arrondissement
Paris, France
The building is surrounded by an iron fence with an ornate gate. Marla and I debate letting ourselves inside, but Monsieur Levesque, still en route through late-afternoon traffic, said we needed to sign some papers before the apartment would officially be ours. Even though we have the key (assuming it’s still functional), we agree to play by the rules and sit restlessly on our suitcases.
As I stare up at the beautiful five-story tan stone building, I take it all in: the Haussmann-style façade with elaborate stonework around large arched windows and iron rails that set off intermittent Juliet balconies.
There’s a fountain on the other side of the gate and a bit of garden space between it and the building. Several leafless, mature trees stand like sentries on the grounds. I imagine in summer, when they’re lush and green, they will filter the late-afternoon sun and create dappled shade on the walk that extends from where we’re standing to the building’s front door.
Even though the landscape is winter stark, the place is stately and elegant.
It looks expensive.
I reach into my purse and pull out the paper on which I’d written the apartment’s address and double-check that we’re in the right place. It appears we are.
With this, my heart thuds. I allow the floodgates I’d guarded to swing wide open. All the hope that I’d denied myself pours out.
The temperature has dropped several degrees, but my cheeks burn as I cast another glance at the apartment building.
I have no idea what shape the place is in, but at least it’s still standing.
A black Town Car stops along the curb.
A tall, thin, well-dressed man in his early sixties emerges and extends his hand. “Bonjour, ladies. I apologize for keeping you waiting. Emile Levesque, at your service.”
“Bonjour, Monsieur Levesque.” I shake his hand. “I am Hannah Bond. This is my mother, Marla Bond. Thank you for agreeing to meet us here on such short notice.”
“But of course. It is very nice to finally meet you both in person.” He smiles and regards me with warm eyes. I like him instantly.
He opens a leather folio and thumbs through some papers.
“The formalities won’t take long. First, allow me to extend my sympathies for your loved one’s passing. Monsieur Sterling in Florida communicated that Madame wasn’t simply a client to him; she was a friend, and she loved you both very much. That’s why her wishes are simple.”
She loved us both very much?
I wonder if she really said that or if he’s assuming. I hope it’s true. I was relieved when I learned that Gram hadn’t cut Marla out. Maybe she knew it had the potential to cause my already strained relationship with my mother to implode. I was even more relieved when she hadn’t attached stipulations to the inheritance—like us working together. Even though that’s what it’s come down to, it was our choice. I slant a quick glance at Marla, who seems uncharacteristically de
mure.
“I am in possession of a copy of Madame’s will. She has directed that the two of you shall split everything, which now includes the square la Bruyère apartment. I’m here to accommodate you should you require anything while you are in Paris.
“First, I need your signatures on the paperwork, and there will be the small matter of taxes, but you have ample time before you must pay.
“Now, I imagine you would like to see the property, no?”
We unlock the ornate gate with our key. Monsieur Levesque steps back and motions for us to enter first.
“You checked the place out?” says Marla, after we enter the building. She hesitates in the hallway. “No one is living here, I hope. I don’t want to walk in on a bunch of squatters.”
Levesque smiles. “I beg your pardon, madame. We are not in possession of a key. We were not able to enter the apartment, but I took the liberty of activating the utilities so you will have heat, light, and water.”
Marla laughs her flirty laugh. “That was very nice of you, monsieur.”
She arches a coquettish brow and smiles at him. Monsieur Levesque smiles back and takes her suitcase, rolling it to the elevator, which we ride to the second floor. We walk down a short hallway and Levesque stops in front of a door.
“Voilà.” He gestures for me to do the honors.
I insert the brass key. My heart thuds as it turns the lock. I try to open the heavy wooden door, but it sticks.
“Allow me.” Monsieur Levesque leans into it until it gives way with a creak and a groan.
Right away, I’m engulfed by the smell—musty, moldy, old. Exactly what you’d imagine a place that has been closed up for decades would smell like. Marla and I pull our scarves over our noses and mouths and forge ahead.
I flip the light switch on the wall in the foyer, but nothing happens.
“I will see to it that my secretary has someone install fresh light bulbs for you as soon as possible,” says Monsieur Levesque.
“Thank you,” I say as I peer into the murky grayness.
As my eyes adjust, I take in the spectacle before me and forget about the smell completely. Highlighted by the slant of afternoon sunlight filtering in through a slit in the drapes, the place appears frozen in time. My heart hammers in my chest.
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