Parisian Promises

by Cecilia Velástegui

  Karen and Lola shook their heads.

  “You’d better stay for a sip of her Armagnac,” murmured Karen. “You know how she is about etiquette. Sometimes I wish I were staying in a ratty student dorm room, so I could at least do what I want. Madame is too demanding.”

  Annie ignored Karen’s wistful remark. She didn’t want to admit it, but she had been way too spoiled in her own commodious master bedroom back home in San Marino, as well as in her big, comfortable sorority house at USC. Madame’s hôtel particulier suited Annie perfectly––its location, size, and Old World furnishings. She was relieved when Lola spoke up.

  “Are you nuts, Karen? No way would I want to live anywhere but right here with our loony housemother. Look around at all these antiques and paintings! Geez, don’t tell me you of all people are used to this type of set-up?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Karen protested, bristling at Lola’s veiled reference to her working-class background. “I’m used to being independent, that’s all. I don’t like to ask Madame for permission.”

  “Cut the old crone some slack, would ya? She’s more risqué than she lets on. Let’s get her drunk and she’ll tell us some kinky tales. Maybe we’ll learn a thing or two. Look at all she’s accumulated in her life.” Lola pointed to the art on the walls. “Don’t you recognize that Degas? And, more importantly, do you see any man crowding her life? Hell, no.”

  Karen was about to leave the salon when Madame returned. She had changed into a black dinner suit, circa 1950, and was still adjusting her French twist.

  “My darling Americans,” she cried in a quivering voice, “let’s toast to our mutual friendship, shall we?”

  “Yeah, OK,” Karen said, sounding as reluctant as she felt.

  Madame sashayed up to her.

  “Karen,” she whispered sweetly, “you must always respond with equal charm to a toast. For example, you might say, ‘Chère Madame, to our beloved countries,’ and then raise your glass daintily.”

  As much as they liked Madame’s eccentricity, both Lola and Annie wanted this cocktail toast to speed by.

  “To France,” they said in unison, and downed their drinks. But Madame was in chatty mood.

  “Let’s agree to not talk about the bombings of late, shall we?”

  This comment piqued Annie’s curiosity. “Madame, why do you think these bombings are taking place? Who’s to blame?”

  “Pfft.” Madame shrugged her shoulders. “I had hoped not to talk about this topic.” She adjusted her pencil skirt and sank into a Louis XVI chair, the tapered wooden legs of which had been gnawed through the decades by Madame’s many past dogs. “People come to Paris so that their voices can be heard around the world. We get all sorts of international conferences and so forth. Why, this past January delegates from your country, South Vietnam, North Vietnam, and the Vietcong’s Provisional Revolutionaries met here for the Paris Peace Accords, and they signed an end to your country’s involvement in the Vietnam War.”

  Madame brushed phantom dust from her jacket and beamed at them, her head erect. “Enfin, you see, Paris is the center of the world.”

  “But why all the bombings in Paris now?” Annie wanted this wasted time to count for something, so she might as well get some useful information out of the old lady.

  “It’s not just Paris, my dear. There are insane revolutionaries all over the world now. They wish to change the world order. Oh, it’s just too convoluted. We’ve barely recovered from the Second World War, and now it’s one side cheering for anti-imperialism, an end to colonialism, left-wing politics.” Her shoulders slumped, and she dropped her high-heeled shoes onto the floor. “It’s the red faction of this, and pro-group of that! And on the other side is a cabal of conservative media, pro-business, police brutality, and who knows what other fascist evils. Look at what’s happening in Spain, Germany, Italy, all over, yes! Even in your own country!”

  The three young American women were speechless. They had thought their housemother out of touch––loony, even––but she’d just summarized the global state of affairs rather succinctly.

  “So, you say today’s bombing was near here, right?” Karen persisted.

  Madame was up, barefoot, walking up to her Art Deco mirror bar to pour herself another glass of Armagnac. She studied the old, stained bottle label––1908 B. Gelas et Fils, Vieil Armagnac––and she cackled at her sorry state of affairs. She’d been refilling the old bottle with cheap spirits for years. Finally, she replied, “Yes, the bombing was a little too close for comfort. Apparently some tall man blew himself up in the cellar of an ancient building near the Rue Censier.”

  “But that … that’s just a few blocks away!” Karen was wide-eyed.

  Madame guzzled her Armagnac and let out a belch. “Can you imagine all the Bordeaux wine bottles exploding in the cellar?” she sighed. “Their owners are in deep purple, mourning their loss, I assure you. Why, we French cherish our wines the way we cherish our dogs.”

  She plopped down on her Recamier-style lounge chair, and waved a hand at Lola.

  “Ma belle rousse, be a darling and go fetch my petite Fifi from that peasant of a concierge, please.”

  Annie and Karen stood up, taking this as their cue to leave the salon, but Madame was having none of it.

  “You must stay and chat with your hostess, n’est-ce pas?” she demanded. “Even in your wild west California, people don’t just up and leave their host, do they?”

  “We didn’t mean to upset you, Madame,” Annie apologized. “We were concerned about the proximity of the bomb to your house, that’s all.”

  “That’s very sweet of you, but only ma belle rousse asked me how I feel. The two of you just want to get back to your rooms and ignore me, isn’t that so?”

  “Actually, it might have seemed that way to you, Madame,” said Karen earnestly, “but we have lots of homework to finish before we go dancing tonight.”

  “You should go dancing, my dear. Be young and trite–– I mean to say, be young and sprightly.” She gulped her drink. “You two would have never succeeded in the underground Résistance during the war. We had to be as tough as tanks inside, and yet outwardly we had to seduce our targets to get information out of them, or to kill them. Yes, you heard me right, I said to kill them! To kill them at the moment they climax––now, that takes courage. You two are an open blank book. Pfft!” She swatted at them as if they were buzzing houseflies.

  Madame stared nostalgically at her empty glass as though it were a long-lost friend. Her words annoyed Annie, though deep down she knew that the old woman was right. Annie was no Résistance agent or killer: she was a scholar specializing in the nineteenth-century feminist writer George Sand. The only thing she really wanted to know right now was if more bombings could be expected.

  “Do the police say who’s claiming this bombing?” she asked, deciding to ignore Madame’s criticism.

  “No, no one has claimed their hatred for the exquisite Bordeaux now splattered all over the cellar. This stupid tall man had probably hidden the bomb in the cellar, and when he went to retrieve it, everything blew up. Pfft! Thankfully, he killed only himself. No group will claim such a moron.” Madame stared accusatorially at Annie, as though she were a moron as well.

  “But that means there may be more bombings by this group, right?” Karen asked. “And they can’t all be morons.”

  “Yes, there will be more bombings, because every tribe hates the other tribes.” Madame teetered over to pour another glass of pretend-Armagnac. “We are savages, after all. Haven’t you kept up with the news of late? Surely you’ve heard of the Primavalle firebomb in Rome this past April? It killed two innocent youngsters. And then there were the kidnappings of Basque industrialists. Surely you heard about those?”

  Both women stared down on the worn parquet floors. How could they tell their housemother that she was ruining their rose-colored vision of Paris and Europe? Surely they had a right to live out their own La Vie en Rose? All they wanted was
to retain their innocence a bit longer, even if the rest of world wanted to shred their dreams.

  Madame made her way back to her Recamier, grabbing chairs en route to steady herself.

  “By the way,” she asked, plopping down and almost spilling her drink, “where is our inquisitive Monica?”

  Annie was glad to change the subject. “She met a handsome French man at a café on the Champs-Êlysées, and she joined him for a drink.”

  Madame smiled, drooling Armagnac. “How bewitching and innocent our Monica is, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I guess so,” said Karen, wishing she could escape.

  “She cannot sleep, though. I often sit and chat with her after midnight, right here.” Madame patted the mohair sofa and let out a deep sigh, which threatened to become a hiccup. “She is a heartbroken girl. I recognize a forlorn woman––it’s like looking in my own hand-mirror of time. I hope this young man doesn’t play with her feelings. What did he look like?”

  “Handsome and courteous,” Annie said, and Karen nodded.

  “Hmm, and how old was he?”

  “Under thirty.”

  “Describe his looks and what he was wearing.” She burped, patting her chest. “It may seem shallow to you Americans, but we French can tell so much from a person’s appearance.”

  “Well, we didn’t stare at him,” admitted Annie, frustrated at this downer of a conversation. “He had a tan like a Californian and a bit of a Che Guevara beard and––”

  “Ha! I don’t like it––not one bit.” Madame looked horrified. “You left her there with a man who does not appear to be French at all, certainly not a Parisian. Our tans fade by September, and we are not farmers out in the sun all day. Our Parisian sun is very weak this time of year.”

  “But he spoke French like a local…,” Karen argued, not sure how else to describe it. She hadn’t considered for a second that the handsome young man might not be French.

  “When did you leave her at the café?”

  “Around four. You shouldn’t worry about us so much, Madame.” Annie sounded snippy, she knew, but she was annoyed at the waste of valuable study time. “We are independent, mature, college women from California. We’re not babes in the Bois de Boulogne!”

  “Of course I worry about you! You are my guests. Yes, you pay me a pittance for your rooms, but you are my guests nonetheless. How many other foreign students do you suppose live in this type of house in Paris? None, I assure you.” Madame had finished her third drink––and gotten her second wind. “Our snoopy concierge downstairs, she has just been telling me that all sorts of dangerous foreigners lurk in our streets! It’s just like the days when the Germans strolled our city as if they owned it.”

  Madame rearranged herself on the Recamier and for a moment appeared to doze off. But when Annie and Karen exchanged glances and began to tip-toe out of the salon, Madame roused herself.

  “In those days, I was already twice-widowed, but I had to do what I had to do to survive. Yes, I even had to bed a Nazi or two. We did everything for la France.” Madame grimaced at the memory. “You know, you four American girls are plump bunnies for the famished wolves in our midst.”

  Annie couldn’t tolerate any more. “Sorry, Madame, but I must go to my room to––”

  “I assure you that the loup garou is not just a legend––he exists. And he is cunning and terrifying. He can change from a wolf into a handsome Nazi officer.” She sighed again. “Or into a bomber, or anyone who…who…”

  Madame’s eyes closed, and she snored loudly and gracelessly. The girls took this as their cue to flee the salon.

  “We certainly have a bat in the belfry, don’t we?” Annie whispered to Karen, who poured the remaining liquor from her glass into Madame’s now empty glass. Karen said, “The old bat needs this poison more than I!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Le Sept

  We should have accepted their offer to send a car for us,” complained Lola, teetering on her high-heeled pumps across the wooden planks of the Pont des Arts Bridge. Despite her complaints, she leapfrogged over uneven planks and dodged slimy ground residue with confidence. A patch of fog hid some of the common Parisian pitfalls (dog poop, mounds of cigarette butts), but Lola cut through the city with the rhythm of a veteran disco diva who would soon be dancing with the elite crowd at Le Sept––and that was all that mattered to her.

  “You should have worn sensible shoes, like us.” Annie pointed to Karen’s masculine leather clogs. “We hardly know those guys, and we should be able to manage on our own, so we can leave whenever we want.”

  “I’m tolerating the pain of these heels as a tribute to the memory of Louis XIV and his own five-inch-heeled slip-ons. We’re in Paris, not Berkeley, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  Annie’s argumentative tendencies rose to the surface. “I didn’t know that you were a specialist on the Sun King’s footwear. What’s next? Are you planning to decree that only you can wear les talons rouges, his signature shoes with red heels?”

  “Honestly, Lola, you’re the total antithesis of feminism,” scolded Karen. “You show way too much cleavage. And I know you probably think that your finely arched foot is erotic to men, but you’re forgetting that high-heeled shoes are oppressive and sexist.”

  “You’re both boring me to pieces!” Lola groaned. “The only one of us having a great time in Paris––and by that I mean having great sex––is probably Monica.”

  Karen looked aghast. “What are you talking about? Monica is totally naïve and sweet!”

  “Maybe she is naïve, and that’s what’s so attractive to men.” Lola tossed her curls and almost lost her balance on the uneven cobbles of the street. “She told me she’s determined to find the love of her life here in Paris. Can you believe that? That’s her only goal: to fall madly in love in Paris.”

  “Oh! I thought we were talking about sex, not love.” Annie looked perturbed. “If Monica is mixing the two up, she’s in for a big disappointment.”

  “Well, we’ll be seeing her in a few minutes at the club, and we’ll be able to tell by her satisfied face,” said Lola, leading the way across the courtyard of the Louvre and onto Rue de Sainte Anne. She pointed at a lively group of club goers walking ahead of them. “You know, you can tell Le Sept is the hottest club by that group in front of us. People at this club really dress to impress.”

  The three slowed down to stare at the attire of the people ahead of them.

  “It looks like it may be some kind of gay club––those guys are wearing full make-up and lashes,” Karen whispered to Annie. “And that woman is in a stretchy bodysuit. Are those her buttocks showing through?”

  “I smell a big mistake in our coming here,” Annie muttered back, jostled by another gaggle of salaciously dressed women trying to get into the private club. “It doesn’t even look like a club to me.”

  Charles materialized next to the unsmiling doorman, who waved the three women in. Before Annie could voice any more fears, they found themselves in a tiny restaurant, crammed with people––many with vaguely familiar faces from the gossip magazines.

  “Is that Andy Warhol?” Karen asked too loudly, gaping at the corner table like a small-town tourist.

  Lola edged her way past Karen and Annie and grasped Charles’ arm.

  “Would you like to dine? We have our usual table.” He pointed toward another corner. “Over there, near Bianca.”

  Lola glimpsed the famous Bianca––dressed all in white and sipping a glass of wine––but she refused to be awestruck like Karen. When it came to fame and fortune, Lola knew she couldn’t compete with the women in here, but she could show off her dance moves.

  “No, thank you,” she said, smiling at Charles. “But I’d love to dance.”

  In her high heels, Lola stood a couple of inches taller than Charles. He didn’t seem to mind, though he wasn’t acting quite as cocky and lecherous as he’d seemed earlier that day. When Lola wended her way downstairs to the dance floor,
following the pulsing beat of music, he trudged behind her as if heading to the gallows.

  Minutes after they stepped onto the crowded dance floor, Lola’s sexy moves drew admiring glances from the other dancers. Even the woman in the bodysuit sidled up to her on the floor and tried to imitate her moves. Instead of ignoring her, Lola showed Bodysuit Girl the sequence of steps known as the Latin Hustle; both women laughed at their reflections in the surrounding wall-to-wall mirrors. When Bodysuit Girl offered Lola some pills, Lola swallowed a couple, despite Charles’ scowl of disapproval.

  “When in Rome,” Lola said to him, but he walked off and headed back upstairs to his table.

  Lola stayed dancing with the high-energy Bodysuit Girl and her friends. They turned out to be mostly American and German models, hanging out with some Puerto Rican artists from New York. All were intimates of the club’s owner and the DJ. The dancers embraced Lola’s energy and her looks. One of the men said, “You gotta come to our apartment tomorrow and let me draw you and your moves. I’m Antonio, and everyone in the world knows the girls in my drawings.”

  He pointed to his crew of gorgeous models, and Lola nodded, buzzing with excitement.

  “Sure, just tell me when and where,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. Lola had no idea where her friends were, and she didn’t care. She was shimmying and bumping with Bodysuit Girl and the dark-haired Antonio. Perhaps Madame Caron de Pichet was right about the vast number of foreigners in Paris. The more Lola moved around the floor, the more languages she heard––and the more expensive the champagne, which was being splashed about without a care, became.

  “J’aime Paris,” shouted Lola, and the club goers laughed along with her.

  She danced towards a beehive of activity on one section of the dance floor. Everyone was huddled around a diminutive Japanese guy, whom Antonio had told her was a famous couturier. He wasn’t dancing, exactly: he was posing in a quasi- imperial manner, as though he were the reborn Louis XIV, now dressed in very tight geisha-style garb. He held a delicate fan, which he used alternately to hit people on the head and to hide his crooked teeth.