Paris Adieu

by Rozsa Gaston

  The next day, Pierre picked me up on time, French-style. That is to say, ten minutes late. We set off for the military canteen. I’d opted for simple elegance in the form of a navy blue dress with scooped neckline. I’d added a red and white scarf, to match the colors of the French flag, along with the American one. Women in Paris dressed up to go to the market or take their small dogs out on the sidewalk for morning ablutions, so I wasn’t taking any chances just because we were going to a military canteen. No Parisian woman would be caught dead in combat wear, unless it was the height of fashion chic that season.

  We took the metro to Gare St. Lazare, a large train station centrally located on Paris’s right bank, then walked three blocks, until we arrived at a large, distinguished looking building on boulevard Haussmann. Over the entrance Le Cercle National des Armées was etched in marble.

  As we walked up the broad front steps, I felt my grandmother’s cane prod the small of my back, as she’d done so many times on our walks around West Hill Drive. Stand up straight, Ava. Posture tells the world who you are.

  Inside, paintings and photographs of famous French military figures lined the walls of the large foyer. I wanted to linger, but quickly we were ushered into a large and ornate dining room with twelve foot ceilings. The maitre d’ handed us each leather-bound lunch menus announcing the set menu of the day. No ordering was required other than drinks. In a minute, sparkling water arrived, followed by soup, a main course of cuisses de canard, duck thighs, in orange sauce accompanied by haricots verts or tiny string beans, then salad, cheese, and dessert. It was a meal fit for royalty. We talked nonstop about music, math, Paris, and New York, where Pierre had once delivered a presentation at the City University of New York’s graduate studies math department. Over the next hour and a half, Arnaud’s name never once came up.

  When it was time to go, Pierre signed the check, while I looked around the dining room. The couple next to us had recently sat down. They held hands across the table. The man leaned forward, his eyes gazing adoringly into the woman’s. She was petite, dark, with short, straight precision-cut dark brown hair and expertly penciled-in eyebrows. My senses sharpened to their obvious regard for each other, my ears picking up their conversation.

  “Je t’adore, cherie,” I overheard, warmed to hear the same words Arnaud had spoken to me the other day on the phone. The man played with the bangle bracelet on the woman’s wrist – a charming scene.

  I looked at Pierre. His mouth had formed into a disapproving sort of moue or pout.

  “What’s wrong?” I whispered. “Don’t you think they’re cute?” I motioned ever so slightly to the couple next to us, oblivious to everything around them.

  “Cute? If that’s what you want to call it, yes, I suppose.” He shrugged then rose from the table, motioning me toward the garden. In a minute, we were outside, strolling down an allée of plane trees flanking us on both sides like a military wedding guard.

  “What was wrong with you back there?” I continued. “It looked like he was about to propose marriage. Wasn’t it sweet?”

  “He wasn’t about to propose marriage, I can tell you that.”

  “How do you know?” I asked indignantly. What a killjoy. Was Pierre Castel was too much of a geek mathematician to understand romance?

  “He wasn’t serious about her.”

  “How do you know that?” I repeated. What was he, a body-language expert or something?

  “Because of the way he spoke to her.”

  “What do you mean? He told her he adored her. Didn’t you see the way he was smiling at her?”

  “Précisement. That means he’s not serious.”

  I stared at Pierre.

  “How so?”

  “If he was serious, he would have said je t’aime, I love you. And he wouldn’t have smiled. But he said je t’adore. There’s a difference.”

  “What’s the difference?” I kept my eyes on the path, unable to meet Pierre’s gaze.

  “One means ‘I love you’. The other means ‘I think you’re adorable.’”

  “Doesn’t it also mean something like ‘I love you’?”

  “Not really. It’s what a man says when he’s not serious about a woman.”

  My blood froze. Je t’adore sounded so serious. So adoring. How could it mean something less than the way it sounded?

  “It is? But what about the way he was looking at her? He was practically beaming.”

  “A man doesn’t smile like a hyena when he’s telling a woman he loves her. It’s a serious statement. You don’t smile when you are trying to show someone you are serious, responsible, do you?”

  I remembered Arnaud saying je t’adore to me. Had he smiled? Yes. Not unlike the way the man at the table next to us had smiled at his girlfriend.

  “But the way he was smiling at her looked like he was crazy about her,” I protested.

  “Exactly. Je t’adore means he’s crazy about her. Don’t misunderstand. It means he likes her a lot. It just doesn’t mean he loves her. In fact, he definitely doesn’t, because he wouldn’t say je t’adore if he really meant je t’aime.”

  “Well thanks for clearing that up.” Something pinged inside my chest. Another balloon popping.

  “You’re welcome. I’m happy to explain to you the difference. It’s an important one for a woman to know.”

  So he did care about romance, and about a woman not getting her heart broken. Did he have any idea what state my own heart was in at that moment?

  “So, just to clarify, do you think a je t’adore sort of relationship ever turns into a je t’aime kind of one?” I hoped I didn’t sound too interested to hear his response. It’s just that I needed to know. Immediately.

  He shook his head. “Not likely.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because a man who says je t’adore to a woman without ever saying je t’aime is letting her know the relationship isn’t on the serious track.”

  “Huh.” There was so much to absorb, I couldn’t do more than walk in silence for the next few minutes. “So then, how does the woman let the man know she is on the serious track? I mean if he’s already said je t’adore to her. Like a number of times, say.”

  “Then she should dump him, I think you Americans say.”

  “Just like that?”

  “After he’s said it to her a few times, she needs to either confront him or just drop him.”

  “Oh.” I had a lot to think about.

  “Why do you ask?” he probed. Pierre Castel appeared to know something about romance after all. Talking to him was as easy as having a gabfest with my singer/actress girlfriend, Jessica, back in New York.

  “Oh well – I just know someone who –”

  “Who said je t’adore to you?”

  “No! I mean I know a girl – I have a girlfriend, I mean – who told me her boyfriend always says je t’adore to her whenever they say goodbye.”

  “So, she knows where she stands.”

  “Uh, I’m not so sure about that.”

  “I’m sure she does. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t keep seeing him.”

  “Well maybe she’s still seeing him because there’s no je t’aime kind of guy in her life at the moment.”

  “When he comes along, she’ll dump the first one.”

  “I like your certainty.”

  “I like your smart questions.”

  “I like your answers.”

  “I like your songs.”

  “I like you,” What had I said? “ – in your jacket,” I quickly added. Pierre wore an officer’s jacket, dark blue with red trim. He looked dashing, as well as geeky and earnest. It was an adorable combination, except now I was suspicious of using the term ‘adorable’ in French in any context. I would ban it from my vocabulary until I figured out what it really meant.

  “I like you,” he responded, no qualifiers attached.

  I was glad.

  “But you don’t adore me, right?” It felt good to get such a point straight fro
m the start. Although this wasn’t a start really, it was just the start of a friendship. Or something. Whatever it was, it felt genuine.

  “Right.” He smiled.

  We continued on our walk – I, more grown up than I had been minutes earlier, and he, lost in whatever private thoughts he was having. Perhaps about mathematics. Probably about me.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  La Décision

  For the next two weeks, I performed at Teddy’s on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights and for all six of those nights Pierre Castel showed up for part of the evening to listen, converse with me during my breaks and then leave. His elusiveness drove me crazy. The fact that I was Arnaud’s girlfriend and I was supposed to be desperately longing for his return, but somehow wasn’t, was also driving me crazy. Who was I? A lightweight? A will o’ the wisp musician drifting along in the willow world of nightclub entertainment and nightclub mores?

  On afternoons after my last English student left and evenings I wasn’t working, Pierre squired me around town. His enthusiasm for everything we visited matched my own, probably because he wasn’t a Parisian. We were both free to marvel at the wondrous beauty Paris offered, untrammeled by the mandatory blasé attitude of a native Parisian. “Je m’en fou. I could care less,” the expression I’d heard used so frequently there, never once crossed either of our lips. We were like two outer borough New Yorkers romping around the island of Manhattan.

  One mild early-December afternoon we decided to explore Montmartre, the hilly neighborhood where nineteenth and twentieth century artists such as Toulouse Lautrec and Modigliani had painted. It was a well-known tourist destination, which neither Pierre nor I minded, counting ourselves among them. We climbed the five hundred or so stairs to Montmartre’s most famous landmark, the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur. There, in the main square before the enormous white church, a street performance was in progress.

  Four acrobats, two men and two women, flashed back and forth across the square in dizzying gymnastic sequences. They wore black and white harlequin leotards with yellow-gold trim. Lithe and graceful, the entertainers teased the crowd, provoking, then retreating from the audience in a series of flips, cartwheels, and shoulder stands. Suddenly, the more attractive of the two female performers landed directly in front of us, breathless and flushed. Her animated eyes raked over Pierre, ignoring me altogether.

  Like a déjà vu, the castle courtyard in Sancerre flashed into my head, where I’d watched Arnaud exchange looks with the court lady with the green scarf. The scene still smarted, although I knew it had meant nothing.

  I glanced at Pierre, steeling myself to be strong. He was a French man after all.

  But he wasn’t gazing at the young, female acrobat only inches away, her not-unpleasant sweaty scent filling our nostrils. Instead, he stared bashfully down at the cobblestoned square like any homespun, right-hearted American man would do in the company of a female he was with and an attractive female stranger in front of him.

  “Ça va?” he asked, his eyes sweeping up to mine. No guilt or hint of wandering attention showed there.

  My heart warmed.

  “C’est merveilleux, non? It’s marvelous, isn’t it?” I asked, meaning how he hadn’t allowed his attention to be diverted to the lightly clad woman in front of us.

  He nodded, breaking into a smile. The performer gave Pierre a disdainful look, then she cartwheeled back to the center of the square.

  The rest of that afternoon, I had plenty to think about. One month earlier, I’d been madly in love with Arnaud. But the logistics of loving someone who wasn’t there and not in regular touch were having a not-so-surprising effect. In the absence of any sort of commitment between us, and buffeted by Pierre’s discourse on the je t’adore, je t’aime distinction, my heart was no longer certain of Arnaud or of my feelings for him.

  “So Pierre, what kind of woman do you date?” I asked, rather audaciously, a few days later, as we strolled out of Père Lachaise cemetery. We were planning to continue on to a nearby park that we hadn’t visited before, the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. Pierre had told me it featured Paris’s highest elevation point, with a waterfall cascading from a man-made cliff that offered spectacular views of the city.

  His smile was rueful, a tiny bit sad.

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “Because I want to know, that’s all,” I reasoned playfully, like an eight-year old having a talk with her big brother. It was delightful to spend time with him. We had no agenda. He was just visiting, and I was just waiting for Arnaud to return, so I could either have it out with him about the je t’adore track or suggest he take the fast track out of my life. It felt good to be beyond reach of Pierre – safe, protected and unafraid to say anything that might come into my head.

  “Bah, what is it you want to know exactly?” His eyes twinkled as he looked at me. They were a prosaic shade of medium brown, unspectacular but warm.

  “Well, have you been married?” With Pierre I was my curious, inquisitive, nosy New York self. I had nothing to lose, unlike with Arnaud, to whom I constantly tried to think of clever things to say in order to keep up with him.

  Pierre shook his head.

  “No. Never.”

  “Well, why not?” I prodded mischievously.

  “Sorry, Ava. If I’d known you were going to ask, I could have gotten married just so I’d have a story to tell you.”

  “That’s okay. Tell me your non-marriage story.” As we exited the gates of the cemetery, it struck me that walking there with Pierre made me feel completely different from being there with Arnaud. I wasn’t terrified of losing Pierre. I felt comfortable in his presence without the constant excitement coupled with anxiety I felt when I was with Arnaud. Spending time with Pierre was exciting too, but in a less flashy sort of way. Sort of like being in a Vermeer painting as opposed to a Toulouse-Lautrec one.

  “Umm, well I’ve had a few girlfriends here and there,” he replied hesitantly.

  “And who was the most important one?”

  How long would it take him to answer? If it was fast, he’d indeed had a serious relationship. If he took time to think about it, maybe not.

  “Ehh – crétin – comment vas-tu? Hey – stupid – how are you?” a voice sang out. We looked around to see a figure waving assuredly at us from across the street. Arnaud.

  In the strangest sort of way, I felt as if I’d been caught in the act. But what act? Arnaud had sent Pierre my way in his absence. Pierre had been a perfect gentleman, whose company I’d enjoyed. My heart sank at the thought our time together was about to end.

  Arnaud crossed the boulevard, his cocky, confident stride announcing to all he was in full command. The show he put on was for everyone – not just me. I was a show person, too, a performer, but inside, I’d become more interested in developing the private, songwriting side of myself.

  “Eh, salut, fils de pute. Hello, you son of a whore,” Arnaud greeted Pierre, wrestling him into a giant bear hug. His casual, comfortable tone confirmed they were old friends.

  Then he turned to me. Against his deep, golden tan, the blue-green of his eyes was even more vivid than usual. I thought of ice as I looked into them. He propelled me into his arms and against his chest. Petulantly, my muscles clenched, resistant to his embrace. He’d shown up at just the wrong moment – just when Pierre had been about to tell me something significant about himself.

  Releasing his grip, Arnaud kissed me four times, twice on each cheek, but not on the mouth.

  Strangely, I was pleased. I didn’t want my mouth touched by another man in Pierre’s presence. I stepped back, collecting myself. It wouldn’t do to show my hand at this particular moment. Especially, since I didn’t know what was in it myself.

  “Comment vas-tu, morceau de merde? How are you, you piece of shit?” Arnaud roared, smacking Pierre on the shoulder. Pierre looked pleased, but he wasn’t smacking Arnaud back. He said something jovial to Arnaud then looked at me. Suddenly, Pierre’s expression changed, b
ecoming more guarded.

  My heart contracted. Don’t look at me that way, look at me the way you did five minutes ago, the way we look at each other every day when we’re making silly conversation or taking a walk.

  “Let’s go get something to drink. Come on, I need to find out what filth you’ve been up to while I was away,” Arnaud said, draping one arm over Pierre’s shoulder and the other around my waist.

  Usually, I was starstruck in Arnaud’s presence, mesmerized by his charisma, his conversation, anticipating with bated breath the audacity of what he might do or say next. But this time, his outrageous, larger-than-life patter wasn’t working its magic on me.

  He and Pierre babbled on in French while I evaluated the shift in my feelings. As we stood at the crosswalk waiting for the light to change, I felt Arnaud’s left hand slip down my backside.

  I moved it back up to my waist. It didn’t seem to belong there anymore either. As the light changed, I realized so had I.

  We took a table on the terrace of the café at the corner of Rue des Alouettes and Rue Fessart, around the block from Teddy’s.

  “So how was it out there? Where were you – Vietnam?” Pierre asked.

  “Vietnam, Cambodia. Laos. Up in the Golden Triangle,” Arnaud listed, looking around for the waiter.

  He hadn’t said a thing about travelling to countries other than Vietnam. It occurred to me I knew next to nothing about what he did on assignments – where he went or with whom. Just as he had no idea who came in to Teddy’s on nights I performed, and what transpired between my audience and myself. How many admirers I had, which were there for my music, which were there waiting to find out what their chances were with the glittering girl from New York, bathed in spotlight at the piano. Our professional lives were mysteries to each other. As long as they didn’t bleed into our personal ones, who cared?