“That was…” April started, unable to find words to do the night justice. They walked a few paces before she continued. “Amazing. The best birthday I’ve ever had. Thank you for forcing me to go.”
“I’m glad, in the end, you decided it was fun,” Luc said, his pace matching hers. After a full night of dancing it was as though they were now physically in sync. “And as far as Bastille Days have gone, this was my favorite too.”
April nodded, heart fluttering in a way she did not appreciate, her entire body weak with equal parts exhilaration and exhaustion. She was shaky, her forehead still damp with sweat. As the cool Parisian air whisked past them, April shivered. They walked a few blocks in companionable silence until the point they had to decide. Luc lived in one direction, April belonged in another.
She cleared her throat.
“All right,” she said. “I turn here. Good night. And thanks again. It really was a special night.”
“Non. I am going with you.”
“Oh, that’s silly. Your flat is in the exact opposite direction.”
“Non,” he said again, this time leaving no room for discussion. “No gentleman lets his date walk home in the dark alone.”
“It’s almost dawn,” April pointed out. “Date.” He called her a date. “So it won’t be dark much longer. Really, Luc, I don’t want to put you out. I am fine on my own. Paris is a big city, but I know it well. It’s probably safer than if I were walking home in New York.” As she spoke, April volleyed her weight from one foot to the other. Go. Stay. She wasn’t sure what she wanted him to do. “Funny, isn’t it? New York is home, but Paris is where I feel safe.”
“I understand completely.” Luc took her hand. “Nonetheless, I will accompany you.”
April smiled again. “Thanks.”
She decided not to fight it.
The stroll back to the flat was both too fast and yet interminable at the same time. April felt every bone of Luc’s hand wrapped around hers. His pulse pounded in her skin. She alternated between enjoying the foreign sensation, that of someone holding her hand, and worrying what it all meant, or if it meant nothing, which was maybe the worst option of all.
April was so disoriented by the conundrum of a stranger’s fingers that when Luc jumped onto the curb and announced, “Here we are!” she had to peer at the building behind him to be sure.
“Yes,” April said, surprised, then added quietly, “I guess we are.”
Luc dropped her arm and put both hands on his hips. With one of his wry smiles he winked and hooked a thumb into the smartly frayed waistband of his fitted denim jeans.
“Well, Madame Vogt, tonight was a pleasure indeed.”
“It was,” April said, her eyes growing hot. “Thank you, Luc. I am not typically a fan of birthdays, but this one did not totally suck.”
He grinned. “That is a ringing endorsement. I preferred your previous ‘best birthday ever,’ though I suppose not totally sucking works too. May I add it to my résumé?”
April paused for thirty seconds, a minute.
“That’s it?” she said.
“What’s ‘it’?” Luc appeared legitimately confused.
“Come on, Thébault! You can do better than that. We both used a variation of the word ‘suck.’ Where’s your off-color comment?”
“I was under the impression you found my off-color comments tiresome.”
She could not tell if he was joking. And the truth was she didn’t. April didn’t find his comments tiresome at all.
“Maybe sometimes,” April lied. “But they are so very you, and now the conversation seems naked without them.”
“Naked?” He grinned.
“Yes,” April said. “Completely bare. Nude. À poil.”
She stepped up onto the curb and met him face-to-face, nose-to-nose. Without thinking, April leaned in and pressed her lips so softly against his they barely touched. She held for only half a second and was the first to pull away.
And in that instant, April understood. She saw how it was so easy for Marthe to flit from patron to patron, to fall easily into long-term flirtations or beds or financial arrangements, while still being able to recognize the real thing when it happened. Boldini was no lark, no dalliance.
It took only that half second for April to feel the sense of love and protection she’d been lacking for so long; and to know how genuine it was. It’s what Marthe spent her whole life trying to find, and to reclaim once she found Boldini. And here, in Paris, April had found it, too.
So April kissed him again. This time it was Luc who pulled back.
“You’ve had too much champagne, non?” Luc said, trying a smile but looking moderately pained and confused. He wobbled as he backed away from her.
“Nope,” April said. “I’m feeling quite sober, as a matter of fact. The most clear-headed I’ve been in months.”
He made a sound, like a hmph. Luc was trying to walk away but only because he felt he had to.
“You should probably escort me upstairs,” she said. “You never know what kind of vagrants and ne’er-do-wells loiter in my hallway.”
“April—” he said, voice raspy. “I don’t want to get you into any precarious situations.”
“Oh, believe me. I don’t like ‘precarious’ either. There isn’t a person alive more careful than April Vogt. I get it, now, though. I understand Marthe.”
“This is about Marthe?” Luc said, eyes narrowing.
“Yes. No. It is and it isn’t. It’s just—I finally appreciate that she could never love anyone she had to rely upon. In the years she had patronage from all those other men, she sought out love from Boldini; she didn’t need his money. She wanted only his affection. Luc, I—”
This was not like April. She’d never been so forward, so flagrant, so boob-print-on-linen-paper. But it felt good. Sometimes being someone else felt right.
“April,” Luc said, interrupting her again, using the American name that he so rarely uttered. He took several steps forward, so close April could literally smell him, and closed his hands around hers. April was surprised to find his skin clammy, a little jittery. “I think you’ve lost your head. Or have you sold the Americans on the four-to-five after all? Technically we are right now sometime after four but before five. Though it is morning, and I can’t imagine you’ve accomplished a feat of social upheaval in such a short period of time.”
The jokes that normally came so swiftly from Luc’s mouth now seemed to stutter and stop.
“We don’t need the four-to-five,” April said. “It’s for people who are being watched, not those free to do what they want.”
She slid her hands from Luc’s grasp and then wrapped both arms around his waist. They’d been close all night, but April could not believe she was this close now. She half expected him to jump back, in surprise if for no other reason. But he did not. Instead Luc pressed himself closer.
“I thought you were married,” he said. There was no smirking this time. “Le grand m’sieu and whatnot.”
“No,” she said. “There is no grand m’sieu. Not anymore.”
Chapitre L
Paris, 3 May 1896
I attended the Bazar de la Charité for the first time today.
It is the most fashionable event of the month, perhaps the entire spring! I can only hope I’ll get written up tomorrow. I worked hard enough on my dress and baubles … I worked hard enough loitering in the general vicinity of the Figaro gossips!
I’ve known of the Bazar de la Charité since my days in the convent. It is an annual charity event organized by the Parisian Catholic aristocracy, and given the convent girls and women were both Catholic and in need of charity, it stands to reason we would find it so appealing!
Sœur Marie used to bring me into the city to see the enormous wood-and-canvas structures erected on the Champs-Élyseés. Sometimes she was one of the nuns brought in to bless the proceedings. Either way, after the initial blessing, we stood together in awe of the grandness, the pomp
, the red and white banners fluttering in the wind. We used to spend hours on a bench outside watching people come and go, dreaming up stories for each one.
Back then I pledged to enter the tents one day, not as a member of the assisted poor, but as a gracious lady donating time and treasure to the indigent. Sœur Marie said not to set my sights too high. Be happy with your station. Be happy for a warm bed (cough, cough) and regular meals, and make no grand designs on someone else’s life. I always gathered Sœur Marie hoped I’d make grand designs on following her life, but joining the convent was never a consideration for me. I wanted the tents, I wanted the salons, I wanted Paris.
For most the Bazar de la Charité is an annual event, something that arrives on the calendar along with Christmas and New Year’s Day and all the things a person can set her clocks or social calendar by. And maybe one day I will see it the same way. But today. Today. Today after eleven years on the outside (and, really, twenty-two if you think about it), I pushed open the tent. I walked through the turnstiles. I gaped at the hundreds of visitors, the coterie of women standing behind tables hawking novelties, the proceeds of which would go to help little girls like I once was.
“Already I’m bored,” Montesquiou said the second we walked in, before I had a chance to catch my breath or assess my surroundings. “Let’s find the Hall of Mirrors. I need to practice my technique.”
His “technique.” Mon dieu, his technique! The Bazar features not only goods for purchase but also performances such as those put on by ladies not quite ready for the Folies or even the exceedingly second-rate Moulin Rouge. It’s also a chance for members of the highest social stations to act out their theatrical aspirations without fear of disapprobation. It would never do for a baron or count or lady to step onstage and perform, but in the name of charity, c’est d’autre chose!
Robert didn’t plan to contort or bare a leg—though one couldn’t put it past him—but he did have it in his mind to treat visitors to one of his so-called famous mime sequences. The last time he did this the papers referred to him as “Le Comte, man of letters and sometimes miming” for months. It was fairly horrifying, but when it comes to Montesquiou there is a spectrum of horrification, and miming is at the very lesser end. His so-called orchestra of odors from two years past was worse. His flatulence is less charming than Pétomane’s.
Mime threats aside, Robert mostly behaved, but only because he was trying to impress Proust, his new protégé. Proust claims himself a writer but is little more than the city’s smallest rumor mill, and he follows Robert like whores used to follow Georges Hugo. He copies Le Comte’s every idiom, mannerism, and flourish, even the way Robert giggles like a girl after finishing a story. Then again, Proust acts like a female better than most girls around. He was created with the entirely wrong sexual organs!
I cannot write the term “sexual organs” without mentioning Boldini. The reference is in poor taste, admittedly, but if a woman can’t dabble in scandalous talk in her own diaries, where can she? In any case, as we promenaded through the Bazar I kept my eyes roaming for a glimpse of Boldini, though it was exactly the kind of place he’d never deign to enter. It’s not that I wanted to see him, though it could not hurt to have him see me look so exquisite. But more than that, I had a score to settle. After years of agonizing, after a hundred starts and stops, M. Boldini finally completed his rendition of Le Comte. How convenient! Now that I’ve taken up with the man, Boldini suddenly finds him easy to paint. I guess not all works were impaled on the Opéra spires.
The Affair of the Cane, the papers called this portrait (and still do). According to Montesquiou, Boldini positively insisted on the inclusion of Le Comte’s beloved turquoise-handled cane in the portrait. He ordered Robert to hold it up near his mouth and gaze at it fondly, as one might an old lover one was glad to see again. Or as the always-naughty Marguérite declared, in the manner Robert usually reserved for admiring his manhood!
“Admit it,” Marguérite snickered. “The way he’s grasping the neck of that cane in his white gloved hand is exactly as he does to his member in the boudoir!”
“I wouldn’t know,” I snapped back. “When I’m there he has no need of his hand!”
Marguérite was not the only one who made jokes. Not even close! That damn portrait produced such a slew of jibes I wondered if the hilarity would ever stop. Just where do you plan to put the cane, Monsieur de Montesquiou? Et cetera.
As incensed as I was over the whole thing, Robert merely laughed and said, “It is better to be hated than unknown.” I strongly disagree. One must maintain a semblance of respectability because if you don’t have a solid reputation, then what do you have?
Though Robert believes Boldini intended no ill will, I am certain the blasted man wanted to show Le Comte at his worst: the man’s dandy essence magnified tenfold. The situation was exacerbated by the recent eruption of Boldini’s popularity. Conventional wisdom now states that anything he creates is both genius and true to life. Ergo, if it appears that the subject longs to shove a cane up his derrière, then it must be the case!
As shameful as the whole experience was, with Robert there will be no hiding. He continues to drag me to Maxim’s and the Opéra and even my old place of employ. A chorus of tittering follows our every step! At least Le Comte understands that I require recompense for the mortification. Never has he plied me with so many beautiful things. My flat does not seem as large as it once was!
Gifts aside, after one hour in the tents, Montesquiou miming around with that damn cane, it seemed positively crucial to locate Boldini and put him on the receiving end of my wrath. I’ve tried to fault Robert for the debacle, so stupid was he to let Boldini dictate the props, but he doesn’t seem to care.
As we wandered through the Bazar I stopped every one of Boldini’s associates to inquire after his whereabouts. I asked Gauguin and Bourget and even that midget. They all said he was there, perhaps but not for sure. So single-minded was I that when a harried, haggard woman careened into me I didn’t notice her face. At first.
“Please watch your step,” I said as she trampled over my shoes. “This place is crowded, and you can’t rush through like it’s a barn burning.”
I thought she was one of the poor, a penniless spinster there to help serve food and count change. But when my eyes finally took hold of the woman’s face, I saw it was Jeanne Hugo Daudet herself, standing before me with those ugly little children hanging off her skirt like trained monkeys.
“Watch yourself,” she snapped back.
“Oh, Madame Daudet. Bonjour.” A certain thrill crawled up my spine. “I did not notice you. It’s so very odd that wherever I am you turn up! Really quite peculiar, don’t you think, Madame Daudet?”
I used her former surname so as to emphasize Madame Daudet’s twice-married status. Marguérite reported that after Jeanne’s most recent wedding she showed up at the Folies and plunked down at her brother’s former table, now vacated since Georges ran off to Italy with his wife’s cousin. After downing two Pernods, Jeanne proceeded to sob into her handkerchief for the duration of the evening. She hated having a second marriage. She hated that she had to wear a suit of brown instead of a dress of white.
Alas, I will allow the woman this: Her new husband, Jean-Baptiste Charcot, seems a decent fellow. For better or worse, he is far more interested in adventures on mountaintops than in bedrooms or bordellos. I’d previously overheard him at the Folies, when I still worked there, and he spoke of little else than what peaks he’d scaled or wanted to scale and what gravity-defying objects he attempted to fly. Though he might fall off a cliff, at least he will not catch the clap.
“I’m not sure why you repeatedly use my former name,” Jeanne said, straightening her spine as visitors to the Bazar continued to bustle around us. “I’m not sure why you address me at all. I don’t believe we’ve met formally. If we had, you would certainly know my name. Unfortunately I cannot keep track of every impoverished person I’ve graciously helped along the way
.”
“You are so amusing,” I replied, trying to mask my internal rage. “You should be careful, you know. There are rumors you’ve remarried. I told people it is not possible, so barely out of wedlock are you from Léon. I am not sure who is spreading such vicious lies, but you should find the source and stop them immediately!”
Jeanne Hugo Daudet Charcot smirked and lifted her eyebrows.
“Actually, I have recently married the most dashing fellow in all of Paris … in all of Europe, even! Although you know this, do you not? Your boy dandy worked so very hard to secure himself an invitation to the party.” She clicked her tongue. “We were so sad we could only invite the important people of Paris.”
I hastened to point out that, despite calling me a stranger mere seconds ago, Jeanne admitted to knowing both Le Comte and me. Yet the victory did not seem mine to take.
At that moment Robert marched up. I took the opportunity to “startle” and “accidentally” spill my newly purchased perfume oil across Jeanne’s dress. She screamed in horror, shielding her eyes as she fell to the ground, even though the liquid was nowhere near her face. It wasn’t even hot.
“Oh, Le Comte! You startled me. I am so very clumsy when alarmed! Poor Madame Hugo-Daudet…”
“Madame Charcot!” she spat between her teeth. Montesquiou tried to help her to stand, but she pushed him away.
“I’m so sorry to have ruined your gown.”
“You are a nasty woman,” she sneered, brushing off her backside.
“Well, you would know the species.”
“I don’t have time to entertain the likes of you!” she cried. “I cannot believe Montesquiou is fooled! He is the stupidest man alive, but even for him this is absurd!”
With that Jeanne lifted her skirts and plodded off in the other direction, those hideous chicken-children clucking behind her. I turned to Robert, at the ready with an excuse. But Le Comte was so busy studying his freshly manicured nails he did not have time to contemplate my erratic behavior.
We spent the balance of the afternoon stomping across hay and visiting the ladies selling their geegaws. Sometime after dusk, Robert and I returned to my flat. As he poured a drink I slid out of my shoes and gown. I felt exhausted, tired, and overwrought all at once.
A Paris Apartment Page 25