“What big world of discovery?” Karen asked. “Good heavens, Dee. I’m not some wide-eyed kid from Walla-Walla. I know all about the birds and the bees and have had some experience. . . .”
“Karen!” Dee was amazed to realize she was genuinely shocked.
She had just never thought of Karen as having been to bed with a man. Or maybe she just didn’t want to.
“Let’s have another drink,” Karen suggested mischievously.
“I think you’re drunk already,” Dee said, almost laughing with embarrassment, or discomfort, or for no reason at all. She was certain that if she were not leaving, Karen would never be talking this way.
“Really, Dee. Why do you insist on treating me like a crinoline-crocked—I mean frocked—little girl? Like why, man?” Karen giggled with obvious enjoyment of being able to shock the implacable Dee Sanders.
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“Still waters,” Dee mumbled, ordering their drinks “All right, Vampira, what other sordid details of your past are you going to reveal? Not that I believe you.”
“None, really. But you want to know something?” She stared at Dee for a long moment. “I don’t really want to get married, and least of all to Phil!”
“All right, all right,” Dee said carefully, still reacting to Karen’s confession of her love affairs. “Don’t get married. What do you want to do?”
“Have a career . . . be wanton and wild . . . like the song ‘I Want To Be Evil.’ Then, when I’ve got it out of my system, I’ll think about diapers and drudgery.”
Dee shook her head disparagingly. “Karen. You crazy nut. Don’t you see how foolish that would be? Wanton and wild,” Dee mimicked. “It’s like overeating. You’ll stretch your stomach to the point that going on a diet is near to impossible. Once you’ve given marriage a chance, then you can always do what you want later if you must—but the reverse is rarely true.”
“Well? What do women do who don’t want to get married?”
Turn queer, Dee thought despite herself, and immediately hated herself for the notion. Oh, yes, Dee said silently. Turn queer and spend the rest of your life atoning for it, worrying about it, wondering what you would have been if you hadn’t fallen into the convenience of a gay affair. Spend hours trying to rationalize your life after you’ve seen a mother in some simple little act like lifting a son to the water fountain with that special look of “This is mine; I made it; he came out of me.” Just the expression that comes into a mother’s eyes when she gazes at the back of her child’s neck, or the surprised smile that comes to a mother’s face when her child has said something genuinely amusing—even the moments of impatience and anger were to be envied.
“Make me a promise” Dee said suddenly.
“I’ll try.”
“Don’t cut Phil off until I get back—please.”
“But why?” Karen’s frown was swiftly replaced with a smile. “You going to find me someone better?”
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Dee ignored her comment with a sudden rush of thoughts whirlwinding scraps of conversation and ideas. “You once said you were afraid to take a place of your own because of what you thought you might do. Right?”
Karen nodded with an inquisitive, catlike tilt to her head.
“I’m going to be gone about a month. I have a pet and a paid-for apartment. . . .”
“You’re not going to suggest . . .” Karen interrupted.
“You move in and stay until I get back. You feed the cat and keep out intruders. I think half of your problems are that you live in that woman’s-prison residence and that you’ve not really given Phil a chance to be a man.”
“Oh, we’ve made love before. . . .”
She felt herself tense at Karen’s admission but managed to ask,
“Where? In the backseat of his car? Oh, no, Karen. Give him a chance. Let him come up to the apartment; make dinner for him; do anything you want. But try. That’s all I ask. Just try.”
“Why is this so important to you?” Karen asked sincerely.
Dee didn’t answer for a moment; she wasn’t too certain herself.
“Because . . .” she began, “because I’m very fond of you. And because I don’t want to see you make a tragic mistake.”
“What’s tragic? That I don’t marry my high school sweetheart?
There are other men.”
Funny, Dee thought, taken aback. Of course there are other men. She had been projecting her own feelings—assuming that if she didn’t marry Phil she wouldn’t marry anyone. Dee felt foolish and presumptuous. She bit her lower lip lightly, then smiled.
“Of course there are. But”—she paused—“I still would appreciate it if you would move into my place while I’m gone. A change of scenery certainly wouldn’t hurt you, and it won’t hurt to give Phil one big chance.”
Karen laughed suddenly. “As a matter of fact, I think I rather like the idea.”
They ordered dinner and discussed the new arrangements with enthusiasm. Dee found herself vaguely considering asking Karen to stay on even after her return . . . but something stopped her.
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Perhaps it was because each time she thought of it, the image of Phil and Karen making love followed immediately. She didn’t understand the association, but she instinctively mistrusted it.
She was trying very hard to believe she was doing the right thing by asking Karen to stay at all.
Time would tell.
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Her landing at Orly Field a day and a half later was uneventful, and even the terminal was a bit of a disappointment. Dee didn’t know what she had expected, but the lack of “foreign atmosphere”
was surprising. It could have been any terminal in the States. She’d gone through customs with her fingers crossed and smilingly lied about the amount of film she had with her. Her Rollei and her Leica were properly inspected and registered with the usual warning about the dangers of trying to exchange them for new ones and smuggling out the replacements.
Even though newer models of each of her cameras were out on the market—indeed had been for several years—she had a foolish superstition about her two “eyes.” They were a part of her. She might one day add to them but never replace them.
The porter was very attentive and personally selected a cab for her, haggling with the driver over the fare, then with a wonderfully candid smile informed her of the sum they had agreed upon and that she was not to pay him a cent more. Dee opened her purse to tip the porter, but he stepped back, dramatically shaking his finger at her.
“All France loves a beautiful woman,” he said in broken English.
“I welcome you for Frenchmen.”
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She was embarrassed yet terribly pleased. With a jolt the driver pulled away from the terminal and began the drive into Paris. As they passed the many vacant lots, run-down inns, remains of bombed buildings never rebuilt, and began to approach the city itself, Dee became more and more excited. She didn’t care if the cabbie was taking her the long way around or not.
She was absorbing the texture and feel of her first moments in Paris. It was too good to worry about the fare. She hated even to blink lest she miss something.
Obviously she was going to need a lot more film than she had brought. They passed Notre Dame, continuing along the Seine, passed a railroad station on the left, then turned right over a bridge to the famous Place de la Concorde. They darted in and out of traffic like insane polo players, but she didn’t care.
Dee was going to stay with Photo World’s French representative.
Monsieur Bizot had assured her office that he and his wife would be delighted to have her as their guest and that there was plenty of room for her, including a private entrance, since what had at one time been servants’ quarters had been converted to a guest apar
tment.
All this and a per diem, too, Dee thought excitedly.
The cabbie stopped in front of a rather plain-looking building and thumbed to her that she had arrived. She carefully inspected the fare the meter indicated and compromised between what it said, what her porter had said, and the unhappy expression on the driver’s face.
As she lifted her two valises, the high double doors opened and a short, round-faced man came rushing out to greet her and wrestled the bags from her hands. “How delightful,” he said in a surprisingly low voice. “You are here and you are welcome. Please. Come inside. My wife, Renée (I call her Pepe, though, because she looks like a Spanish orphan boy—you call her Pepe, too) is so looking forward to your stay.”
Dee liked him at once. He was sincere, frank, and had a wonderful enthusiasm.
“I want to thank you, M’sieur Bizot,” she began as they entered the building.
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“Mais non! Please. I am to call you Dee and you must call me Raoul. Please.” He smiled as she paused inside the foyer. “It is impressive, yes? It is said that before Napoleon met Josephine he maintained a mistress in these apartments. And since I am not tall, I always feel that my wife perhaps is really my mistress. . . . It adds such flavor.”
Dee laughed and followed him upstairs to the drawing room.
She felt at home immediately. Raoul left her neither time nor silence to feel otherwise. Placing her valises at the side of the upstairs landing with a gesture that such mundane matters could wait, he led her into the drawing room with obvious pride and pleasure.
“Pepe, my beloved, this is our Dee Sanders from New York.” He waved toward Dee, and from the tone in Raoul’s voice she knew this man adored his wife more than anything else in the world.
Dee felt a surge of genuine pleasure and gratitude toward this man for giving her a renewed delight with romance. She looked across the long, narrow room to the Renaissance chair across from the rich blue velvet settee.
A medium-sized woman rose and came toward her with feline precision. Her tightly fitted slacks and wraparound white blouse showed a boyishness to her body, but when she reached Dee, her face held the history of the world. Angular, deep-set dark eyes and a full, sensitive mouth made her look like a statue that had seen mankind pass by for hundreds of years and now had suddenly come to life. She was ageless. She could have been fifteen or fifty—it was impossible to tell.
Pepe extended her hand to Dee, hesitantly at first, looking intently into Dee’s eyes. There was a moment’s silence.
Suddenly, Pepe laughed heartily and threw her arms open and embraced Dee like an old friend she had not seen in years. “But this is Paris!” she exclaimed in soft-voiced chastisement. “We are an affectionate people who find it difficult not to show our feelings. . . .
You Americans are always so stiff.”
Dee was a bit uncertain what she should do or say, but they were both so open, so demonstrative, that it didn’t really worry her. “It is very kind of you. . . .”
“Feh!” Pepe said with another laugh. “I was dying of boredom.
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Your visit is a vacation for me—besides, I love to shop for clothes but am too thin to look well in them. I will enjoy going with you . . .
if you will allow.”
Raoul had, in the meantime, mixed them all martinis in honor of Dee’s visit. “Pepe, my darling,” he said, handing her the drink,
“Dee will think we have been imprisoned here the way we are both carrying on.” He laughed at his own little joke and glanced sheepishly at Pepe.
She extended her hand to him and held it, looking all the while at Dee. “I think not, mon cher. Dee knows of life. . . . It is there in her eyes.” She squeezed his hand briefly and let it go. “But now, Raoul, a toast. We must have a toast on this occasion.”
He smiled and scratched his head slowly, plainly seeking something really original to say.
A thought came into Dee’s mind, but she knew it was not her place to say anything, so instead she waited.
“Yes, Dee,” Pepe smiled at her knowingly. “What were you to say. There are no formalities here—you are now family.”
It surprised Dee, this immediate perceptiveness of Pepe’s. Despite a lump that was rapidly forming in her throat, she asked, “May I suggest a toast?”
Raoul came over to her, clicked his heels without spilling a drop, and smiled patiently and approvingly at her.
Dee looked first from one to the other and took strength from their obvious zest for living. “To the birth of a lasting friendship . . .
first,” she hesitated.
“And second?” Pepe asked quietly.
“To the circumstances that allowed me to find a truly happily married couple who find that life is richer for the pleasure they find in each other.” Dee felt a little melodramatic and foolish, but she meant it nonetheless.
“Charmant!” Raoul said, and took a long swallow from his drink as if to wash down the thought.
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As if in a dream, Dee filled the first few days with impressions and sensations. Then she discovered the shops. She hadn’t ever been particularly enthused about clothes before, even though she always took great pains to dress simply and in taste. But Paris fash-ions! It had brought out a woman in her she did not know existed.
It seemed to her that every smile she saw was directed personally at her, full of merry approval.
She also grew to adore Pepe and Raoul completely. All strangeness and reserve with them was gone—they wouldn’t allow it.
In spite of all her tourist treks, she still found the necessary time to accomplish what she was there for. She arrived at Raoul’s office around ten-thirty in the morning, worked furiously, to everyone’s amazement, and left around three-thirty or four in the afternoon.
She knew no other city would ever hold her love as much as Paris did. Paris was her first European city. It had awakened her much as a lover might introduce a woman to sensations she never knew she could have. Dee wanted every moment to last as long as it could, to drink in her new sense of freedom.
She had never been so wide awake in the morning, never so grateful to breathe . . . French air had no distasteful associations for her. It was new, and it therefore had to be clean.
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On the fifth evening, after a particularly grueling day sorting out hundreds of enlargements, Pepe had met Raoul and Dee in front of the office, waving mischievously from the small Renault parked at the curb. “So slow, you two! It is no one’s funeral. Come, get in.”
Pepe’s dark eyes gleamed with secret knowledge, her short hair only slightly disarranged from the breeze as she slid into the driver’s seat.
“We’re coming, ma petite,” Raoul called. It always sent a small wave of pleasure through Dee to see how he immediately straightened up and took on an air of “Now I am truly alive” whenever he was near Pepe.
He opened the rear door for Dee while she climbed in as gracefully as she could under the circumstances—foreign cars seemed to require the wearing of slacks—then hopped into the front seat next to Pepe, content to let her drive.
“What diabolical plan have you?” Dee laughed as they lurched off down the Boulevard de Courcelles.
“You have found me a mistress at last,” Raoul teased.
Pepe’s eyes darted in his direction with amused tolerance.
Dee would never fully understand how they could joke so openly about these things. To be sure of each other’s love is fine . . . but joking sometimes too easily disguises the truth. “Don’t listen to him, Pepe,” Dee shouted over the traffic noise. “Even if he had a mistress he would spend all his time telling her she is not as marvelous as you.”
Raoul laughed uproariously. “She’s quite right, ma cherie.”
“C’mon, Pepe. Where are
you taking us?” Dee asked. She caught Pepe’s smiling glance in the rearview mirror.
“Tonight, my comrades . . .” She paused teasingly. “Tonight we let others amuse us. An intimate little dinner somewhere, perhaps the Folies-Bergère, or maybe the Lido later—perhaps even both.
Then . . . ah . . .”
Raoul smiled and surreptitiously took out his large wallet and began counting the stiff francs quickly. “How much more ‘then’ are you planning?”
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our vacation savings—a loan to ourselves until you can put the whole evening down on your expense account.”
Dee knew better than to offer to help pay for the evening, but she made a mental note to get them something specially nice before she left.
“I thought it would be fun,” Pepe continued, “to take in the Pigalle clubs, just to round out the evening.”
“Those . . . those cleep joints?” Raoul said in surprise.
Dee smiled at his pronunciation of the word but enjoyed it too much to correct him.
“Raoul, darling,” Pepe said with an amused sternness. “Where is your patriotism? It is all in the name of saving France’s national economy! So they charge too much money—but they in turn spend more money elsewhere, and the money goes to pay someone’s bills, taxes . . .”
“Halte! Your point is clear—my duty lies before me.”
They drove to a pleasant restaurant called Le Jour et Nuit, but it was hardly what Dee would have called intimate. Unless she wanted to consider the prostitutes sitting at the bar “atmosphere.”
Over their coffee, Pepe observed that one of the girls seemed to have left and come back every fifteen to twenty minutes.
“That is because she must live nearby and does not bother to undress,” Raoul explained.
Pepe shrugged her shoulders. “How unethical!”
Dee smiled. “It does seem that if the man is paying for the service he deserves more than a raised skirt. . . .”
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