“Is this it?” asked Tom, squinting through the glass.
“There’s the Bard,” she said, pointing to a portrait of Shakespeare hanging above their heads from an iron rod. “Yes, this is it.”
“What did Paul tell you about this place?”
“If you are an American artist, you must visit.”
“But we’re not artists.”
“Oh bother. You read, don’t you? This is a bookstore, isn’t it?” and she stepped up into the shop. Tom doffed his hat and followed. Once inside, he relaxed. He was, after all, a reader, and the shop was crammed floor to ceiling with books. Several walls hosted black and white framed portraits of men and women, only two of whom Tom knew, but if you were living in or near New York, as Tom and Nancy were, it would have been hard not to know the Fitzgeralds. The papers followed the couple as they tore around town.
Two women were standing beside the marble fireplace, underneath about a dozen or so of the framed portraits. One wore a neat tweed jacket and skirt set, with a round white collar and a soft, striped silk bowtie, her thickly curled brownish hair bobbed to the earlobe. The other, younger woman, also in a short, dark bob, wore a green drop-waist dress and leaned against the top of the hearth, writing something on a small white card. Both women had strong features, the kind dubbed handsome rather than pretty.
“There –” said the younger woman. “Now I’m one of the Company, too.”
“I’m glad,” her companion said, taking the card. “Is there anything you’d like to take today?”
The woman shook her head, just as a man stepped in from the street, or rather blew in at a clip that was almost a dash. Nancy worried about the possibility of books flying off shelves as he whisked by the laden tables to claim the younger woman by slipping an arm around her green drop-waist. The older woman said something low, which made the big man laugh and in another moment, the couple left.
A rough, Nancy decided, and went back to her browsing. When she heard the woman in the bowtie sigh, and say, “Poor Bumby,” she felt confirmed in her opinion of the one-man windstorm.
“Who was that?” asked Tom, suddenly at Nancy’s side.
“How should I know?”
“He looked familiar.”
“All Americans look familiar.”
“Oh? And how do you know the man was an American?”
“He looked American.”
Tom laughed and Nancy smiled. “Well, he did,” she said, putting the book she’d been looking over back on the shelf. “Big galoot like that.”
“Want to bet on it?”
“Why? We both thought he was an American.”
“Hmm,” said Tom, rubbing his earlobe. “True. I’m going to ask, though. I want to know.” And he stepped over to the woman in the bowtie, who was filing library cards. “Excuse me, Ma’am?”
The woman looked up. “Yes, may I help you find something?”
“No, thank you. I do have a question, though – if I may ask, was that man who just left an American?”
Which made Sylvia Beach laugh outright. “Why yes,” she said. “Oh, yes. I don’t think there’s anyone so American as Hem. Would you like to see some of his work? These short stories are his –” and she reached for a small pile of books on a table, a small pile of In Our Time, by Ernest Hemingway.
“Never heard of him,” said Tom, looking over the slim volume.
“You will,” said Sylvia Beach. “Trust me, you will.”
♦
“I read somewhere,” said Quiola, sitting on the blue and gold floral brocade spread of the king-sized Ritz bed, “that after WWII, Ernest Hemingway was greeted by the doorman at this hotel and asked if he’d come to pick up his trunk. They’d kept it safe for him, during the War. That’s why he wrote A Moveable Feast, finding all his old stuff in that trunk.”
“Yeah? Have you read it?” One by one, C.C. hung their few shirts, two pairs of blue jeans and a light zippered jacket in the closet, unpacking their shared suitcase. The Ritz had given them a two-room suite, with a sitting area, a desk and a bathroom.
“No. Should I?”
“It’s mean. He savages the ex-pats, especially Fitzgerald. Who, by the way, drank himself silly downstairs at the bar. With Hemingway.”
“The place is too much,” said Quiola glancing over to the gilded hearth. “It’s all so, I don’t know, gold.” She shivered at the stately, ornate, impersonal pomp of the room.
“Ritzy?” C.C. put the empty Samsonite on the floor of the closet, next to two pairs of loafers and a pair of once-white tennis shoes.
“Our clothes look sad and lonely in there.”
C.C. turned around and put her hands on her hips. “Would you just stop?”
“Sorry.”
“Aren’t you pleased we’re not melting anymore?”
“I guess.”
C.C. rolled her eyes, stomped one foot like an enraged elf, and marched off to the bathroom. “I’m taking a shower,” she called over her shoulder. “A cold shower.”
“Okay.” Quiola got up from the bed and went over to the unusable gilt hearth, upon whose marble mantle sat a fat gold clock and two twisted gold-plate candelabras. Behind the clock and candelabras was a long plate mirror, which reflected her and the room, the brocade bed with its assortment of tasseled throw pillows, and the heavy, matching brocade curtains. Quiola examined her face briefly, for blemishes. Finding none, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and wandered over to the window, which had a view of Place Vendôme, the vast square of grey cobblestone surrounded by a certain architectural uniformity, dotted with iron streetlamp trees, each one sprouting three lanterns, dead quiet in the daytime, all sight lines leading to a central spiraled monument, the Colonne de Vendôme, atop of which stood Napoleon. Quiola thought it probably the ugliest thing she’d seen in Paris, and when she read in her guidebook that the artist Gustave Corbet had helped tear it down during the Commune in 1871, her heart went out to him. Unfortunately for Quiola’s sense of beauty, the column had been restored by 1874.
“What are you moping about now?” C.C., finished with her shower, was mummified in white terrycloth, head to toe.
Quiola turned away from the window. “Grandeur.”
“Parisians are good at it.” She unwrapped her hair, shook it out and toweled the curls. “Hungry?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I am. Let’s go down for a drink, and see what’s on the menu.”
“You want to eat here?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I thought we’d go out.”
C.C. sat down in one of the brocade armchairs and crossed her ankles. “We can do that, if you like. Where?”
“Oh, come on C.C., I don’t know Paris the way you do. What about that café where we had the chicken and pepper thing? Or that Vietnamese place near the studio?”
“We’ve been to that place three nights out of five.”
“So? It’s good.”
“It’s also cheap. Don’t make me fight you every single step. Let’s just relax. Go downstairs. I’m sure there’s something tasty at the Club.”
Early the next morning, Quiola snuck out before C.C. woke, after collecting a map, her room-key, sunglasses and enough francs for brioche and coffee. The lobby was abandoned, the doorman invisibly visible. She left and practically dashed to the Rue de La Paix, only to find herself in front of a dark and empty Tiffany display window. Ducking her head, she marched forward. No one was about. All the expensive storefronts were locked tight, alarms at the ready and although the sun had only just risen, the heat was already wet and palpable.
As often happens to anyone who simply wanders Paris without a clear destination, Quiola ended up along the river. Book-sellers and such were just opening their wooden stalls; flowers and fruit, old movie posters, old, tattered Life and Look magazines and the like were being hauled out of their nightly storage, arranged and re-arranged. At one booth, for sale in small wooden cages, tiny birds, cinder gray
with heart’s blood wingtips and tails, hopped from post to swing and back. She watched the creatures for a few minutes, just for the sheer beauty of their feathers, until the vendor, chatting at her, began to extol them as highly decorative, undemanding pets.
♦
Pacing around her San Francisco apartment, her heart beating a two-step of pure fear, Quiola sank into the deep middle of a full-blown panic attack. Her hands shook. Sweat beaded her dark forehead, and the salt stung the cut below her bruised eye. She paced back and forth in the bedroom, back and forth, her gait unsteady.
“What am I going to do?” she murmured, glancing at the closed bedroom door. “What, what –?” She paced over to the window, but the fog that morning was dense and so the world seemed nothing but full of swirling gray, which almost made her stop breathing altogether. She turned away and threw herself on the bed, crying with the sorrowful intensity of an infant, shaking the bed.
Suddenly she sat up, listening. “Hello?”
Nothing.
“Evelyn? That you? Evelyn?”
Silence.
“Evelyn!” she shouted, hoarse. “Answer me!” She went to the bedroom door, closed her hand around the doorknob and then just stood there, as if frozen. She stood there, unable to open the door, for long enough for her neck to stiffen, long enough that the knob grew slick. Then she let go to pace again but after a few steps inside the cage of her head, words burst open like flares.
You cannot let them win. Even after they’ve stolen everything from you, you have to push on. Do you hear me, Quiola? Take it from a woman who knows. If you fall to the bottom, look up.
“Mom,” she whispered. “Mama? I’ve hit bottom.”
Okay, then, look up.
Quiola stood still. Stiffly she marched to the bedroom door, yanked it open. The living room was as she had left it last night, tidy. She said, “Evelyn?” into the silence, and when only silence answered, she saw her mother’s old steamer trunk, and knew what to do. She took all the things off the top of it, magazines, mail, an empty vase, then dragged it into the bedroom. Frantic and yet precise, she folded her clothes – all of them – into the steamer, and then went about the apartment, sorting, separating her self from Evelyn by the magic of things; she slipped these three necklaces, one of her mother’s, one a gift from C.C., one she’d bought herself into a velvet bag, took Collected Poems, her talismanic Ariel, Moby Dick, and The Awakening off the shelf; put all her work into a portfolio, then brushes, tubes of paint, into the trunk. Feeling like a surgeon, she severed the violent nerves and joints of fear and desire that knitted her to Evelyn, bleeding inside but determined that morning to push on, to get out of that place that she’d come to, and be free once again.
♦
An evening in the City of Lights, C.C. always said, was always supposed to end on a piercing bright aesthetic note, not simply fade like an old TV. But Quiola had never felt the spike, not back in 1982, not last year, not now. It was after eleven, and although the restaurant was full of diners, she also felt as if she was the only real being in a colony of merry, contented ghosts.
Or maybe it was the wine. She wasn’t sure.
“Un autre?” asked the barkeep, and it struck her that he was being irresponsible. She’d had enough.
“Non, merci. S’il vous plaît?” she asked, gesturing with money since she’d forgotten the word for bill.
Leaving, she stepped into the warm, lively night street and walked back up the Rue de Roquette to her flat, her hands in her pockets. It was raining lightly. It had been raining on and off. It would go on raining, after she left. She only had one day more, now, in Paris, and she was counting the minutes. Nothing, not even the pleasing solitude of her last week, could make her feel happy. Certain places had grace, yes, and beauty inhabited even the headstones at Père Lachaise, yes. But all she wanted was to go home. For good; she would never return to Paris – she would never live in a city again. All the years of her childhood, moving from apartment to apartment, each smaller than the last seemed to be crowding her. She wanted air.
A letter was waiting in the box at the flat, and since she was not expecting any correspondence, the sight of the slight blue note resting by itself sideways in the mail slot alarmed her. She hurried inside and switched on the light. The envelope had been typed, and there was no return address. She ripped it open with haste, worried, illogically, that something might have happened to Amelia – but C.C. would call, not write, she thought as she unfolded the single page.
Quiola:
Knowing you are half a world away, I am comforted. I am comforted by that distance & hope with all my heart that you decide to stay there, for good.
Quiola sat down.
Years ago, you broke me. You know it. When I came back to San Francisco and found that you’d gone, just left our place, gone, I collapsed. I dropped to the floor, and lay there, sobbing. Was that what you wanted? Did you care? I don’t, anymore. I’ve finally managed, after all these years, to burn anything you’d left, everything you’d ever given me, anything you’d even touched. I built a bonfire in the backyard last night just like you said Sylvia Plath did, burning Ted Hughes’s leavings. I chanted at your evil, and prayed you ill.
Never come near me again, you witch. Ever.
I will kill you.
She – Evelyn – hadn’t even signed the letter. Quiola felt a rush, then it passed and she was left holding a thin sheet of angry paper which she folded up and left on the kitchen table. She “shed” her damp clothes, got into sweats and a t-shirt, crawled into bed.
She didn’t turn the lights off.
From the kitchen table, the paper sat, not quite mute. She stared at it, and could not sleep. Sometime around dawn she got up again, lit a match and burned the letter in the bathroom sink. Her hands shook. Evelyn never did anything small, and now, what had started out on the rocket fuel of lust was still flaming, flaming hatred.
When Quiola woke again, she felt groggy. She flipped over onto her side, slipping her hands under her cheek. Gray light filtered in the studio front, half-shuttered window. Without moving, she let her gaze cross the familiar space, already half-stripped of the personal, prepared for new paint and new owners, young Parisians who’d never heard of Liz Moore, let alone Paul Gaines or C.C. Ryder –
“…or me,” she muttered. “Ha.”
She sat up, pulling the blankets with her, to clasp her hands around her knees. “No one will ever hear of me,” she said to herself, and got out of bed. She stepped into the bathroom. Ashes of Evelyn’s note still smudged the sink. She washed them away and ran the shower. Pulling on a thin cotton robe, she went to the kitchen-space and made coffee, taking her cup with her, weary already, back to the shower.
Later, as she walked home from the grocers with her dinner in her cotton mesh sack, Quiola made a slight detour to stroll beside the Seine and found that they were there, still, not of course the exact same birds, nor the same vendor certainly, but yet the same sort of gray and red-tailed tiny birds in wooden cages for sale as she’d seen in 1982, busy grooming powdery dove-gray feathers, tipped in a deep sparkling red, like snake’s blood.
6. Make-Up
LaGuardia was crowded. Quiola thought her baggage lost, but it made an entrance at last, flapping through the black plastic curtain of the conveyor belt. She shouldered her duffle, flipped the handle up on her roller, and, mowing back through the throng of travelers for the taxi line, nearly ran C.C. over.
“Good lord, what –” said Quiola. “What is that on your head?”
“A turban. Valerie helped me pick it out. What do you think?”
“Stylishly bright.” She eyed the flaming orange and white cotton thing hugging C.C.’s bald head. “Ugly as sin.”
“The other one is purple.”
“Grand. I’ll never lose you in a crowd again – and just what are you doing here?”
“Hug?”
Quiola put one arm around C.C.’s thin shoulder, brushed her lips against a pasty c
heek and stood back. “A turban?”
“I got tired of being the scary bald lady. Playing at being a one-breasted Amazon sounds romantic, but trust me, it gets old fast.”
“What about your tattoo?”
“I still love it. I just don’t like the sight of my naked skull. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“I could’ve caught the train home.”
“I know, but I bought a new car. You don’t mind a lift, do you?”
“New car? You bought a car new?”
“No, of course not. I’d never. I bought a new used car, a real humdinger.”
“I’ve heard that before – what sort of trash heap this time?”
“Not a heap my dear,” said C.C., as the two women headed for short-term parking. “I bought a Volvo. In other words, a tank, one of those boxy 1996 Volvo 960 station wagons, white, slightly dented about, but quite solid. I call him Moby. My own private white whale.”
“More like a white elephant.” Quiola left her suitcases beside a wheel and walked around the Volvo, checking it out. “Does he have airbags?”
“Yes.” C.C. opened the rear.
Quiola folded down the roller, stowing both duffle and suitcase in the wagon. “I’m driving,” she said. “Hand over the keys.”
“Why? I’ve been well, well enough to shop for a turban and to buy Moby. Besides, you’ll have jet-lag.”
“That’ll hit tomorrow. Hand over the keys. I want to put Moby through his paces, and I don’t fancy sailing off the highway ramp. Keys, please.”
“Yes Cap’n Ahab, sir.”
“Don’t try me,” she said as she slid behind a rather large steering wheel.
C.C. snapped her seatbelt on. “I can drive.”
“Of course you can. How’s Amelia been?”
“Lonely.”
Quiola started the car. “Poor thing. I missed her, too – those two weeks in Paris felt like a decade. I am so glad that’s over and done with.”
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