Five Minutes in Heaven

by Lisa Alther

  Her eyes kept returning to the photo on Jasmine’s desk. The young man looked a lot like Jasmine.

  “My brother,” she said, noticing that Jude wasn’t paying attention to her discourse on the limitations of realism in fiction.

  “You look very much alike.”

  “So I’m told. But he is dead now. Tortured and shot by the Germans. He was a messenger for the Resistance. Fifteen years old. I was ten. I thought I would die, too, because I adored him so much. But I didn’t.”

  Jude looked at her with new interest. This might be the first real thing Jasmine had ever said to her. She seemed embarrassed, exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke like an octopus spewing ink in a predator’s face.

  Quickly, Jasmine asked about Anna’s poetry anthologies. She had decided to try one for French schoolgirls, feeling they might take themselves more seriously as writers if they received that kind of confirmation at an age before hormones fogged their brains. Jude agreed to organize one but expressed doubt about whether her French was up to the job of dealing with the schools.

  “Martine can help you.”

  Jude nodded cautiously.

  “It will give you a chance to get to know her,” she said, looking at Jude from beneath her hooded eyelids. “She is a marvelous lover.”

  “I’m sure she is,” muttered Jude, wondering how Jasmine knew this. “But I’m not really interested in a new lover right now.”

  “What are you interested in?” asked Jasmine irritably, a repeatedly thwarted Aphrodite.

  “My job. Paris. The French.”

  “If you wish to understand the French, you must take a French lover. It would expand your vocabulary as well.”

  Jude laughed. “You make it sound like a self-improvement course.”

  “It would be, I assure you.”

  The door opened again, and Martine walked in carrying a shopping bag that was almost dragging the floor. Her shiny, chin-length auburn hair was parted in the middle and layered at the nape of her neck. Her huge dark eyes, like licorice throat lozenges, were ringed with kohl, giving her a bruised urchin look. Beneath her navy-blue silk suit, she wore an ivory silk blouse, which was unbuttoned to reveal a lacy camisole.

  It was a Saturday, so Jude was wearing blue jeans, a Big Apple T-shirt, and cowboy boots with silver toe guards. She hadn’t expected anyone to be at the office when she stopped by to leave off some memos en route to a hike across Paris. Already weary of the daily fashion parade at the office, whose corridors functioned like a couturier’s runway, she cherished her collapse into dishabille on weekends.

  “Ah, Martine,” said Jasmine. “We were just speaking of you.”

  Martine nodded to Jude, but her eyes never left Jasmine’s.

  “Did you know that Martine also writes poetry?” Jasmine asked Jude.

  Jude shook her head no.

  “Martine, get your last book off my shelf and sign it for Jude.”

  Martine did so. Then she handed Jude the book, still not looking at her. Flipping it open, Jude read an obscure inscription about secrets between them that awaited revelation.

  “Merci beaucoup,” she said to Martine, who nodded, still looking at Jasmine.

  “So what have you bought?” Jasmine asked her.

  “A skirt,” she replied in a small voice. “And a blazer. A dress and some boots.”

  “Very good. But you must try them on for us.”

  Martine disappeared into the next room.

  “She is a very gifted poet,” said Jasmine.

  “I look forward to reading her book,” said Jude, in fact dreading it because all poetry reminded her of Anna.

  “They are love poems. To her last lover, who has now left her.”

  Jasmine gave Jude a look loaded with meaning. But what meaning? She wished Jasmine would just back off and let her pick her own poison. She couldn’t love on command.

  Martine reappeared in a mauve chiffon skirt, the silk blouse, and the camisole. Watching her, Jude wondered how she’d tried to kill herself. There were no scars on her wrists or rope burns at her throat. Pills probably. Someone as fastidious as Martine wouldn’t use anything so messy as a gun or a knife. Jude was impressed by the purity of her response to lost love.

  Jasmine was studying Martine’s flawless physique. “Yes, lovely. But the blouse—no. Take it off.”

  Martine unbuttoned the silk shirt and let it waft to the floor like an apple blossom on a spring zephyr. She stood there in the camisole, her shoulders and upper chest goose-bumped, whether from cold or excitement Jude couldn’t have said.

  “And now the blazer,” said Jasmine in a low voice.

  Martine picked up the cream-colored cashmere blazer and slipped it on over the camisole.

  “No,” announced Jasmine. “Absolument pas. Not with the camisole. Take it off.”

  Martine removed the jacket and folded it carefully across the back of a chair. Then she shrugged off the camisole, revealing high, firm breasts with small, stiffening nipples. Putting the jacket back on, she buttoned it, leaving a pale canyon of flesh down the middle of her torso, breasts rising up on either side like rounded mesas.

  “Magnificent,” murmured Jasmine, eyes locked with Martine’s. “But now try the dress.”

  Martine glided into the next room. While they watched, she let her skirt drop slowly to the floor. Then she bent over to remove the boots from their box, and Jude glimpsed in the grid of shadows cast by the blinds smooth black-silk bikini briefs, a garter belt, and black-stockinged legs in high-heeled pumps.

  Martine kicked off her shoes and drew on the boots, which had spike heels and rose up above her knees. After letting the black knit dress fall down over her admirable lingerie, she walked toward Jude and Jasmine, a slit up the front of the ankle-length skirt displaying and then concealing the high black boots and dark-stockinged thighs.

  Jude realized that Jasmine was now watching her. Evidently, the next move in this game was up to her, but she didn’t know what it was supposed to be. Martine still hadn’t looked her way. She continued to gaze at Jasmine. She seemed afraid. Jasmine had been exercising some sort of dressage on her, and on Jude—spurring their desire, then reining it in. Should she leave? Jude wondered. Were Martine and Jasmine lovers? If so, what did Jasmine want Jude’s role to be? What did Martine want? She recalled Jasmine’s attitude toward the apricot tarts in Frankfurt. Was Martine the dessert du jour that one savored without touching? Jude was a guest wandering in this foreign land. She wanted to do the appropriate thing, but what was it?

  “Where did you buy them?” Jude finally asked.

  There was a long silence.

  “It is not important,” murmured Martine, finally looking at Jude, irritated.

  Jasmine sighed like a teacher with a slow pupil.

  Jude recalled that she was an orphan raised by wolves. Her family coat-of-arms read: “When in doubt, get the hell out.” She struggled up from her chrome-and-leather reclining chair.

  “I’d better get going,” said Jude, pulling on her Levi’s jacket. “Miles to go before I sleep and all that.”

  Jasmine smiled, perhaps challenged by Jude’s seeming indifference. Maybe she imagined that Jude was finally learning to play. But all Jude really knew how to do when faced with a situation that smacked of sadism was to flee, as her forebears had. One day, maybe she’d stick around to explore her own capacity for the dark, but at the moment all she wanted was a cheeseburger.

  As the Métro clattered toward Porte des Lilas, Jude contemplated the concept of lovemaking as blood sport. Anna and she had approached it as a mystic rite. They had ascended from this vale of tears for hours at a time. The stimulation of the hunt, or spiritual transfiguration—which was its proper goal?

  At the far end of the car, Jude heard a man singing an interesting jazz version of “Desperado” in a Georgia accent, accompanied by a guitar and harmonica. Leaning forward, she saw that the ponytailed young man wore a Stetson and cowboy boots. His harmonica was fastened to a f
rame around his neck so that he could alternate between it and his voice. As he strolled up the aisle collecting change, she handed him some centimes. The car pulled into a station and the door hissed open.

  “Have un bon weekend, y’all,” he called to the passengers as he stepped onto the platform. Noticing Jude’s silver toe guards, he pointed to them, then gave her a thumbs-up signal. Two southern cowboys riding the Paris range. Jude smiled at him as the door slid shut and the car whisked her out of his life, presumably forever.

  Getting out at Porte des Lilas, Jude walked west until she came to a Burger King disguised as a bistro. Inside, she ordered a Whopper with cheese, fries, and a Coke, sop to her sudden homesickness. When the man behind the counter handed her the tray, he said, “Bon appetit, madame!”

  As she munched her greasy fries under the awning along the pavement, Jude pictured Martine in her camisole, flesh riddled with goose bumps, eyes riveted on Jasmine’s. What had that been all about, anyway? Martine had been trying to please Jasmine, who was her boss and maybe her lover. Jude had been trying to keep her job and be a polite guest. But what had Jasmine been doing? She appeared to be teasing Jude—or testing her. Did she want to help Jude and Martine in their grief or merely manipulate them for her own inscrutable purposes? Or was it all a friendly romp, intended to welcome the new kid to the neighborhood? She realized she was bowling out of her league with these complicated women.

  Back in Montmartre, Jude went into her neighborhood patisserie to buy herself a reward for the completion of walk number four.

  “I would like a tart,” she told the man behind the counter in French, rhyming tarte with rat and clearing her throat in the middle to indicate the r. She’d been practicing this alone in her apartment and felt she’d finally mastered it.

  “Une quoi?” asked the man, looking at her as though she were a litter box that needed cleaning.

  “Une tarte,” she repeated, drawing back the corners of her mouth as though playing an oboe and exaggerating the gurgle.

  “Ah,” he said, “une tarte?”

  To Jude, this sounded identical to what she’d just said. “Oui, une tarte.”

  “Mais, bien sûr. Une tarte.” His r was the growl of a puppy at play. “What kind of tart?”

  “Poire,” she growled back.

  “Poire,” he corrected.

  She had wanted a tart, not a language lesson. “S’il vous plaît,” she said, accepting defeat.

  Exhausted, Jude dragged herself up the six spiral flights of steps to her apartment. Throwing open the glass doors, she gasped the fresh air, free of exhaust fumes that high up. It was starting to rain. A sullen black cloud was almost obscuring the Eiffel Tower.

  As she placed her pear tart on a plate and took a fork from the drawer, Jude decided to watch “La Classe” on television. Every evening, a schoolroom of famous French comics did send-ups of everything their fellow citizens held sacred. Jude plopped down on the couch and switched on the TV with the remote control. A comedian dressed as a matador was sitting on a stool, playing a guitar and singing a mournful ballad. The refrain was, “My bull is dead./I killed him this afternoon./Now I’m alone and, oh, so blue.”

  Another comedian appeared, dressed in the ruffled skirt and busty peasant top of a female flamenco dancer. He began to clack his heels and castinets with dignified restraint, giving the matador smoldering over-the-shoulder glances. Gradually, both sped up, trying to outdo each other, until they were in a frenzy over the dead bull, the matador strumming frantically and the dancer whirling around the stage like a clattering Valkyrie. The teacher and the class were in hysterics.

  Nuking the program with her remote control, Jude sat there holding her empty plate and realizing that that afternoon at the office, Jasmine and Martine had spread out an entire smorgasbord of sensual delights to lure her back from the graveside. But she had departed without even sampling the finger foods. She was like a starving dog who snapped at every hand that offered her food. She had been very rude, and she probably owed Jasmine an apology.

  Reaching over to the end table, she picked up Martine’s book. Its white paper cover bore the title Le Coeur Sauvage in dark red letters. Flipping it open, she reread Martine’s mystifying inscription: “With the hope of one day exploring the secret passages and chambers between us that remain to be revealed.”

  Jude decided to invite her to lunch. Martine was beautiful and intelligent. Jude admired her wardrobe and her physique. Although they’d gotten off to a bad start, it sounded as though the interest might still be mutual. They were both in mourning. If they could just get out from under Jasmine’s surveillance, maybe they could help each other rejoin the ranks of the living.

  As the phone purred, Jude remembered it was Saturday night. If Martine answered, it would mean that she was as alone and lonely as Jude.

  “Allo?” She sounded drunk or drugged or sleepy.

  “Hi. It’s Jude. From the office.”

  “Oui?” She sounded deeply uninterested.

  “Uh, I wondered if you’d like to have lunch with me tomorrow.”

  There was a long silence. Jude could hear some voices in the background. But if Martine was entertaining, would she have answered the phone?

  “Pourquoi pas.”

  “Great. When and where?”

  She suggested a brasserie called Le Vrai Paris near her apartment south of the Luxembourg Gardens at about one o’clock.

  “I’ll look forward to it,” said Jude.

  “Et moi, aussi. A très bientût.”

  Her voice had warmed up as the conversation progressed, and by the end she had sounded downright pleased. Jude sat back in her chair, smiling thoughtfully. Lightning had begun to lash the monuments of Paris, and thunder was rumbling in the Bois de Vincennes. God moving furniture, Molly used to say. Jude felt happy for the first time in months. She would cook Martine nice meals and serve them on the table by the window, with the lights of Paris flickering below. She would cheer Martine up, help her feel alive and attractive again. And Martine could do the same for her.

  JUDE SAT IN LE VRAI PARIS watching people come and go. Martine was an hour and a half late. Jude had spilled kir on her white jeans, and her hair was kinking as last night’s rain evaporated in the hot afternoon sun. She went to the bathroom and struggled hopelessly with her unwanted curls. Then she phoned Martine for the third time. But there was still no answer.

  In an upstairs room, accordion renditions of French dance-hall tunes were pouring out the open windows into the street. After each number, people stamped and cheered, making Le Vrai Paris sound like a happening kind of place. But Jude had been there long enough to hear the songs recycle a couple of times and to realize that it was a tape.

  Returning to her table, Jude ordered another kir from the burly barman and watched the TV above his head. A matador in Nîmes was plunging his sword into a bull’s neck. The snorting bull sank slowly to his knees in the swirling Midi dust. An instant replay in slow motion showed the pass with the muleta that preceded the coup de grâce. Contorting his torso and gesturing with his arms, the commentator critiqued the angle of the matador’s shoulder in relation to the horns.

  The bull, soaked in blood and coated with flies, was dragged from the arena on a sledge pulled by horses. Then the next bull entered, outraged and defiant, immediately charging the waving red cape. Jude was rooting for the bull. But he was the only one in France not to realize that he didn’t have a prayer. The picador leaned over from his horse to plunge his spike between the bull’s shoulder blades. He worked the lance up and down like a lover.

  Jude realized that not only was her hair a disaster; she’d also been stood up. But why? Paying her bill, she wandered out onto the sidewalk in her stained jeans. An American in a DON’T FOLLOW ME. I‘M LOST T-shirt collared Jude to ask the way to Notre Dame, which he pronounced like the American university.

  Too distressed to deal with directions, she said, “Je ne sais pas. Je suis Cherokee.”

  He
looked at her and crossed the street.

  Jude went into a tabac on the next block and bought some Marlboro Lights. Leaning in a doorway in the sun, she lit a cigarette and wondered what to do next, taking the pulse of her emotions like a doctor by a deathbed. She didn’t want to go back to her empty apartment. She hadn’t felt its emptiness until last night, when she had allowed herself to imagine Martine there with her. Her overzealous imagination had deformed the reality of the situation. Martine was evidently like an overcooked meringue—luscious on the surface but hard as nails beneath.

  Eventually, Jude noticed half a dozen coral roses thrust through a metal ring that hung from the stone molding beside the door. Above it was a plaque that read: “Ici est tombé le 22 juillet 1943 Pierre Beaulieu, combattant pour la liberation de la France.” The stone all around the doorway was chipped and pocked. A Resistance fighter had been gunned down where Jude was now standing. She imagined him dropping to his knees, riddled like a Gruyère with bullet holes, pavement and doorway splattered with blood….

  Jude stamped out her cigarette. Since her calf muscles were aching badly from yesterday’s crosstown trek, she couldn’t undertake another. She decided to head home. Maybe stop off at a movie or phone Simon at his house on the Cape.

  Wandering across the Seine toward Montmartre, she passed the spot where the grand master of the Knights Templars had been burned at the stake after seven years of torture. She followed the route alongside the river taken by the rubbish carts that had carried Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI to the guillotine. Then she crossed the Place de la Concorde, where the vast crowds had assembled to witness the beheadings.

  Strolling along the boulevard past the Madeleine, she arrived at a café with a scarlet awning: L‘Elite. Pausing, she studied the customers sitting in bow-backed basket chairs at small, round tables along the pavement. They were surrounded by ancient killing fields. Yet there they sat, laughing and eating and drinking, smoking and flirting. Like Jasmine, they seemed to know how to enjoy life, despite its legacy of horror and its inevitable end.