Possessions

by Judith Michael

POSSESSIONS

  "I delight to hear it. I also am working on your other suggestion—that we put it at the front of the entrance hall. But you say I may not use the cloakroom. A perfect space! A perfect size!"

  "Well, we may have to use it. But it means moving a wall on the third floor."

  "Precisely the problem! Why all this effort and cost? It is cheaper to tear down and begin fresh!"

  "Not always."

  "I concede that. But consider: buildings are made for specific times and people, with specific customs and idiosyncrasies. No one builds for people who will not be bom for four hundred years."

  "Jacques, woridng on this hotel, you'd still erase it if you could?"

  "Whoosh it out. Begin fresh. An odd debate, is it not? The Americans are the best at tearing down, even buildings only thirty or forty years old. Occasionally they are wrong, but most often I agree. Begin fresh. No clutter of old ideas, no rubble from other generations, no messy traditions, no— "

  "Variety," Ross finished helpfully. "Or contrast or history or excitement."

  "Well—^" Jacques shrugged. "So you say. But what we lose we replace with what is truly ours. Lx)ok at us, you and me. Did we not start all fresh? Of course people are not the same as buildings, but what do you think? Was it not better that you and I left wives who were not congenial so we could begin again and unprove our situations? Should we not seek perfection? We change; we requu^ new marriages and new buildings. The old no longer satisfies. Who would pay ten million francs for a hotel of four floors with no elevator? Who will tolerate a marriage that is all uphill?" He grinned. ^That is not bad."

  "Not bad," Ross agreed, then said, "I have two children who are part of my old marriage. Would you have me throw them out . . . give them up?"

  "No, no; that is different. You would regret it; so would they. Allow me to speak from experience. My wife and I own an art gallery together. We are good partners, yes?—but ferociously bad at living together. So we kept what was good: we are together often, we dine, we laugh, we shake hands and go to someone else for love. One must leap to new adventures;

  POSSESSIONS

  one does not look back, even if occasionally one regrets losing something along the way. You comprehend? Here is the check; is it my turn to pay?"

  "No, mine." Ross pulled out his wallet and smiled. "You're the real consultant, Jacques. We disagree, but without you Td have no ancient building to study, and you also offer me the bonus of your curious philosophy. I don't give you half as much."

  "Not so. You bring me friendship and American technology. As for ancient buildings, it is not your fault America has nothing from the sixteenth century on which you can practice."

  "Only wigwams," Ross said and they were chuckling as they walked through the shadowed arcade into the sunlight. Shading his eyes, Ross turned toward the hotel and for the second time in two days found himself face to face with Kath-erine.

  He stopped short. His grandmother's idea—or hers? Then he saw her eyes, self-conscious, determined, a little wary, as if she had steeled herself to be here and feared he might turn his back on her. Ross took her hand. "Welcome back." He looked around. "Are you alone?"

  "Yes." She glanced inquiringly at Jacques, who hovered at Ross's shoulder.

  "Jacques Duvain," said Ross, piqued by the intense admiration that lit Jacques' face. "Katherine Eraser."

  Jacques lifted Katherine's hand and brushed it with his lips. "How pleased I am to greet you." He smiled broadly and, through him, Ross saw Katherine as if for the first time, separated from the familiar background of San Francisco, with no husband shadowing her, no grandmother as chaperone, no Derek. In a low-necked sleeveless blue dress with a white jacket over her shoulders, she stood alone, tentatively, as if on a threshold: a young woman of unusual beauty, hesitating before opening a door to the unknown. Ross understood why Jacques was intrigued. "I have heard you are visiting," Jacques went on innocently, with barely a sidelong glance at Ross. "I do not wish to intrude, but if at some time you desire a guide who has lived here always . . ."A movement from Ross caught his eye. "Of course my friend Ross knows Paris almost as well as I. So I leave you" —again, he touched Katherine's hand with his lips— "but I hope to see you again . . ."He looked

  305

  k

  POSSESSIONS

  at Ross and grinned. "I spoke of starting fresh. I did not realize my admirable friend was far ahead of me. Perhaps dinner one night, the three of us, if it becomes possible—?"

  He drifted off. Silence filled the space left by his chatter. "Why don't we walk?" Ross suggested. "You didn't get to see the whole square yesterday." Katherine nodded. She was nervous and he wondered again about his grandmother as they strolled through sunlight and shadow. On one side was the green park with its fountains and benches, on the other the stately old hotels. They paused to look through a shop window at a craftsman restoring a clavichord. "What time are you meeting Victoria?" Ross asked.

  "I'm not." Katherine watched the man's quick fingers. "She went back to Menton this morning."

  He turned sharply. "Was she ill?"

  "No." Katherine met his eyes and smiled. "She thought she was being cool and crafty."

  Ross chuckled and then Katherine laughed with him. "Well," he said as they walked on. "Maybe she was. Here you are."

  Katherine stopped, her face deeply flushed. "I act on my own," she said. Her nervousness gave way to anger; her large eyes were clear and unwavering. "I'm not a puppet to be manipulated; I make my own decisions."

  Ross cursed himself. "I'm soiry; I didn't mean that. I thought you didn't want me to share your time in Paris, and it was so clear that Victoria wanted— "

  "Of course it was; she even admitted it. But she left without making any suggestions, without even a hint. She knows I wouldn't have come to you just because it was something she would have liked, especially after yesterday."

  Ross looked at her averted eyes. "Why did you come?" he asked quietly.

  "Because I wanted to." For the first time, her voice wavered. "Because I wanted to see you."

  The words struck him with their simplicity. Just as simply, he responded, "I'm glad to see you." In a moment they walked on. "How did Victoria explain her sudden departure?" he asked.

  They were passing a sculpture gallery and Katherine paused to look through the window. "She said she'd give me a chance to explore on my own." She smiled, almost to herself. "In a way, she was telling the truth, because yesterday she knew she

  POSSESSIONS

  was holding me back. But whatever her reasons, she gave me our hotel suite and two days in Paris, and that was wonderful. She's wonderiiil, and I'm grateful, and I love her."

  "Yes," Ross said. "That's something we share." His eyes had the same tenderness Katherine had seen in Vancouver, the first time she heard him speak of Victoria. "When did she leave?" he asked.

  "After breakfast."

  "And left you no instructions for touring Paris? That doesn't sound like my grandmother."

  Katherine laughed. "She left me names of her favorite restaurants and the finest buildings, the places to go for the finest views, small boutiques for the finest of—"

  "Everything," he finished and they laughed together. Ross put his hand on Katherine's arm and led her into a restaurant filled with flowers. "Have you followed all her instructions?"

  "I'm afraid I forgot most of them. I bought a map; I walked; I took the Metro ..." She hesitated. "And I took a bus tour."

  "A bus—!" He caught himself. "And what did you see?"

  "A great many buildings and statues that all looked alike after ten minutes."

  He smiled. "That happens on most bus tours. And then?"

  "I came to find you."

  How natural she made it sound. "Why?" he asked.

  "I was thinking about you. I never really knew whether you liked me or not, and it bothered me, and this seemed a good place to find out, but I knew you'd never call me; I knew I had to come to you."

&
nbsp; A strange lightness was spreading through Ross. "Why is this a good place?"

  "Because it isn't San Francisco. I couldn't have done it there." The waiter brought a carafe of wine and filled their glasses and Katherine raised hers, looking through it at the colorful flowers surrounding them. Seen through the pale gold wine, the petals were elongated and curved, oddly changed. "I feel as if I've broken away from everything I knew, everything I've ever done. Whatever I look at is new. Even ordinary things like groceries and street signs and price tags are exotic and mysterious. So it seems all right to behave differently. In fact, I feel that I ought to, since everything around me is different." She gave a small laugh. "It sounds so foohsh."

  POSSESSIONS

  "No.** Ross sat back, stretching his long legs. "When I work with Jacques on the building he's renovating—it's around the comer, I'll show it to you later—we stand in front of fireplaces niore than three and a half centuries old, large enough for three men to stand comfortably, and we walk on parquet floors that were laid long before the Pilgrims came to America. It's not easy for me to hold on to twentieth-century thoughts when I stand there; nothing seems quite real."

  Katherine's eyes were bright. "Yes. That's exactly it." "But you didn't think I'd understand. Since I might not like you."

  She flushed, then challenged him. "Do youT* "Yes," he said easily. The waiter reappeared, dividing the remaining wine evenly between their glasses. "We can talk about it, if you'd like. At dinner. Will you have dinner with me? And tomorrow, if you'll let me, I'd like to show you my Paris. It's quite different from Victoria's, but I think you'll enjoy it. If you have no other plans, of course. And if it would please you ..."

  For the first time, katherine's smile was relaxed. "It would please me very much," she said.

  Dinner was at Chez Philippe, small, casual, crowded, with vociferous conversations bouncing off the stone walls, beamed ceiling and red tile floor. Ross had reserved a table in a quiet comer. "It's not always so noisy," he said as they were brought a bottle of country wine. "But it's a neighborhood place and when it's crowded it's like one big family gathering. Are you disappointed?"

  "No," Katherine said, surprised. "Why would I be?"

  "It's a long way from Tour d'Argent or Taillevent or L'Ar-chestrate. I should have told you I'm not fond of spectacular restaurants. It doesn't matter how special the food, I can't enjoy it when it takes second place to mirrors and silks and black-tie waiters who whip silver covers off the plates like penguin magicians."

  Katherine was smiling, but, uncomfortably, she remembered how impressed she had been when Derek took her to San Francisco's most glittering restaurants. And it was true that she had expected one of the places Victoria or Derek would

  POSSESSIONS

  have chosen, and had dressed for it. And pale yellow silk seemed excessive in the simple room.

  "You look wonderful," Ross said, watching her look at the other women. "And not out of place. Chez Philippe prides itself on individualism. Is that a Parisian dress?"

  "Yes; is it really all right? I found a wonderful shop yesterday; one of the designers Victoria introduced me to told me about it, a place called Miss Griffes—" Ross nodded, and she said, "You've heard of it?"

  "Melanie heard of it. Designer clothes that had been used on mannequins in store displays—isn't that it?—sold for next to nothing. Melanie never went there; she said she didn't like used clothes."

  "Victoria told me you'd separated."

  "Yes," he said shortly. "So you liked Miss Griffes?"

  "Liked it? I went into a trance. I didn't even count dollars; I just spent francs. I haven't spent so much on myself since— for more than a year."

  "It's about time you did. You're very lovely, Katherine." Her color rose and she looked again around the room as Ross contemplated her. Her beauty was softer and less vivid than Melanie's, her gestures less sharp, her dress, though exquisitely cut, simpler than one Melanie would have chosen. But perhaps because of that she seemed steadier than Melanie, more steadfast, more—

  Damn it, he cursed silently. Why the hell am I comparing her to Melanie? They have nothing to do with each other.

  "I'll order, shall I?" he asked as the waiter approached. "The food is Basque and you might fmd it unfamiliar."

  "I might," she agreed. "Since I don't even know what it is."

  He laughed. "It's from the Pyrenees, a cross between Gascon France and northern Spain. Do you like roast quail?"

  "I have no idea."

  "We'll share, then." He ordered it, then added, "And cos-soulet. With a Pomerol or a Saint-Emilion. I leave the choice to you; the best year of the two." He sat back. "If you dislike any of it, we'll order something else. But I think you'll fmd it worth giving up the showplaces."

  "I wish you'd stop expecting me to be disappointed," Kath-

  POSSESSIONS

  erine said mildly. "I like it here. I don't need shdwplaces; that was exactly what I didn't like about the bus tour. Everything I saw was niagnificent, but it was the public face of the city. I kept wanting to see the hidden part, to make discoveries— ^ "—to turn a comer and find real people—" "—doing the laundry or making dinner—'* "—or eating together in a neighborhood restaurant." They were laughing. As the waiter brought glasses and the Pomerol, Ross put his hand on Katherine's. "You have my promise," he said, "that for the next two days, you will see only the hidden side of Paris."

  He kept his word, beginning at seven thirty the next morning. "Victoria would be appalled at the hour," he grinned when he met Katherine in the Meurice lobby. "But she would approve of my buying your breakfast."

  "I don't think this is quite what she had in mind," Katherine commented as they stood at the bar of a small caf6 while having their croissants and coffee. But she laughed as she said it, because the morning was sunUt and cool, the croissants hot and buttery, and she was as eager as Ross to begin—not to sit in a restaurant at the mercy of a waiter's deliberate pace, but to hurry into the city that awaited them.

  There are so many cities called Paris that no one can count them, for no two people view it the same way and no one views it with indifference. Brilliantly beautiful, deafeningly noisy, januned with people and traffic, stunning in its vistas, grubby in its comers, infinitely varied and experimental in food, couture, culture, churches and erotica, it is a city that prides itself on being at once a vast museum and a vibrant, living part of the modem worid.

  Ross's Paris embraced it all, but especially the hidden ar-rondissements behind the city's grandeur narrow, twisting streets where generations of families have lived and loved, worshiped, worked, died, and been buried. Over the years, in trips with his parents and then alone or with Melanie, he had explored those labyrinthine neighborhoods, each centered on a church and a small square or park, listening to conversations in the bistros, making friends, reading French history and literature, and studying the architecture that religion and everyday life had inspired.

  POSSESSIONS

  These were the streets he and Katherine walked, while he told her theu" legends and histories. It was as if he were peeling off layers of the past, revealing the quirks and dreams of centuries. "The owners found eighteenth-century torture instruments in the lower cellar," he said as they stopped before the massive double doors of a renovated building. "If you can picture it—revolutionaries suspended over vats of boiling oil, while, three floors up, in the kitchen, the cook measures olive oil for the salad dressing. An eerie symmetry: death and life, killing and creating ..."

  Katherine gazed at the carving of the Greek goddess of justice above the door. "I wonder if every family has a cellar it would like to forget."

  A smile lit Ross's eyes. It was a thought he'd had often when restoring old buildings, but he had never talked about it with anyone. "People, too," he said. "We have our cellars inside us—things in our past we try to bury and ignore."

  The words hung in the air. Repeating them silently, Ross thought of the one person they best describ
ed. He scrutinized Katherine, trying to think of her as Craig's wife. But Craig was remote; absent. Nothing seemed real but Paris.

  Katherine looked past him. His words had tugged at her, but the pull of the present was stronger. Just as she had at Victoria's villa, she felt cut off from everything that had happened before. At least for a while, it had been left behind. She met Ross's eyes. "I'm sure we all do," she said easily.

  Slowly, he let out his breath and together they turned and walked on. In the Rue de la Bucherie they came to a wall that Ross said had been part of the Faculty of Medicine five hundred years earlier. "Only monks practiced medicine then," he mused. "They prescribed eating earthworms in white wine to cure jaundice, chx)ppings of mice for bladder stones and the blood of a hare for gallstones." He glanced at Katherine. "In a classic case of discrimination, women weren't permitted medical care."

  "Fortunate women," she murmured, and they laughed as they moved on. A few blocks farther, Ross touched Katherine's arm.

  "Here's the other side of the story of torture in the cellar." He ran his hand over a dark stone embedded in the comer of a new building. "Buried treasure. When the old building was condemned, and wreckers ripped open the wall, a torrent of

  POSSESSIONS

  lows dor gold pieces poured out—over three thousand twenty-two-carat gold coins—and the will of a man who'd disappeared in 1757, bequeathing it all to his daughter. Eventually eighty or so descendants of the daughter were found, and they divided up the fortune."

  "The other side of the story," Katherine repeated slowly. 'Torture and treasure, balancing each other. Symmetry. Is that what you look for in your work?"

  Ross felt the rush of joy that came with having someone to share his thoughts. "In my work and for myself. To be able to juggle things so that, even if I go off half-cocked over something, eventually I can come back to a balanced center. That's probably why I love Paris, because it exists by its own balancing act: some of the bloodiest history of all time alongside a reverence for life; memorials to hermits next to monuments to the family; the wildest post-modernism a few feet from the most lovingly preserved works of ancient times. All those wonderful contradictions that add up to synmietry."