She had spent the first few hours after he left smoldering in the hotel suite. Then she wandered up to place Vendôme and on to Madeleine, purchasing little beribboned gift boxes of chocolate and macarons and perfumes in an effort to convince herself that she’d been right to stay and was going to have a fabulous time on her own. She returned to the hotel, dozed miserably for a couple of hours, then decided what the hell, why not get out, cross the river, see what the famous Latin Quarter had to offer. She foresaw youthful street buzz, atmospheric bistros with rude waiters, cool independent movie houses showing old classics.
But she never got to the Left Bank that night. Smiling at the puffing patrons of Le Fumoir Lana decided to do something she had often thought of, but never acted on before. The bizarre French habit of panhandling cigarettes from complete strangers had always amazed her. Perfectly respectable-looking, college-educated types would just walk up and ask for—practically demand—a cigarette. She had never been able to refuse and had, ever since her first youthful visit to Paris, always wanted to do it in turn, but had never, ever had the nerve. Well, she was in just the kind of mood to do it now, and heaven help anyone who turned her down.
So she sauntered into Le Fumoir and looked around. After a couple of minutes of considering then rejecting a selection of potential victims, she recognized that she was just stalling, probably constructing an excuse to abandon the plan. Okay, she told herself, this is simple, just pick the best-looking guy in the bar and go for it. Almost immediately, she spotted him. Only his face was visible in the crush, but it was arresting enough. Either he had forgotten to shave this morning or he liked to look that way. The overhead light bounced off his luxuriant hair and the copper glow reminded her of a Lake Union sunset. Thick eyebrows hung over green eyes. The pale gold skin and mouth, wide and full, made the perfect French face.
Lana remembers staring a little too long, but more from surprise than procrastination. Then she wriggled through the bodies, tapped his shoulder, and made the smoking gesture.
“Une cigarette, s’il vous plait.”
“I thought it was only Parisians who were allowed to do that. If Americans start begging ciggies there won’t be enough givers for the takers.”
His voice was such a shock. And a kind of letdown: a purring English accent, terribly classy.
“Oh, you’re not French?”
“Are you disappointed? Of all the gin joints in all the towns? Actually, I am French. Well, a French citizen, with French parents, and although I was—but sorry, you don’t want my life story, you want a cigarette.”
He didn’t stop talking as he offered one.
“Here’s the thing. If you shamble off now with my cigarette, that’s perfectly fine, but if you do want to hear my life story while you smoke, I’d be perfectly happy to entertain you.”
What could she do? Walking away was awkward anyway in such a crush. Up close her flame-haired French fantasy was even more attractive and the English accent had its own charm. He might be Lana’s age, but no more; possibly a little younger. As she raised her left hand to accept the cigarette, she switched instinctively and took it in the right hand instead and so kept her wedding band out of sight as she lit up, sucked, and, holding her cigarette hand high, blew a very cool thin line of smoke. They introduced themselves and she reasserted some degree of dignified independence by insisting on paying for the drinks he ordered, while Nathan Maunier entertained her with his backstory. It took some time because of many asides, many good jokes. He’d been born in England because his French parents had moved there to work, and had been educated there all the way to university in East Anglia, but had spent every summer and Christmas in France. When his parents had retired back home he’d followed a couple of years later to do a PhD in economics and was now teaching at Sciences Po, specializing in French and British colonial history, about which he was very passionate. So much so he warned Lana to shout “boring” if he strayed anywhere near this subject tonight. Boring was the very last thing Nathan Maunier was and it occurred to Lana what an alluring combination she had found: easy conversation with a witty, louche Englishman, while feasting her eyes on a ravishing Frenchman. When he walked her back to the Hotel Regina she was drunk enough and buzzed enough to be so, so, so, so very close to inviting him to her suite.
Lana can’t remember now exactly why she hadn’t, but had felt no guilt in agreeing to meet him again. Why not? She was alone in Paris, free, and, as far as he was concerned, single. Somehow, while not lying, she’d managed to omit marriage from her own résumé and keep the evidence out of sight. Why spoil a harmless, pleasantly flirtatious encounter?
On the Quai du Louvre Lana crosses to the riverside and peeks between the locked-up bookstalls along the quay wall. Halfway across, jutting out from Pont Neuf, a triangular park narrows to a point: the western tip of Île de la Cité, where Nathan had brought her the following evening. Despite the cold, all wrapped up, they’d picnicked on bread and saucisson and brie and grapes and wine and watched a winter sun, the color of his hair, tumble slowly into the Seine. Though she’d given it serious consideration, Lana, despite her anger at Brian, could not bring herself to remove her ring, so she had already decided to reveal the truth to Nathan and was shocked when he smiled and nodded.
“I knew there was a gap in your story. Some missing detail. It’s a bit of a relief that it’s relatively straightforward, I have to say. Also I rather like that you felt the urge to tell me. He’s not lurking anywhere nearby, is he?”
She assured him he was not and nothing more was said about that. They’d shared a joint, the first she’d smoked in years, and he talked about the Chinese opium wars, which he said most people assumed had been all about the nefarious Chinese turning the West into junkies, when the real cause had been the British desire to flood China with opium from India. He told the story so passionately, elaborating on tiny details, gesticulating with precision and intensity, that it was quite a while before the polite Englishman in him remembered to inquire if he was being boring—even though the charming Frenchman in him knew quite well that he was not. He explained that early in his career he’d tried hard to be an objective historian but, for better or worse, could never really manage it. However, being anti-imperialist was inevitable now and to be a socialist in French academic circles was commonplace. By that stage of the evening he could have been the shoe bomber for all Lana cared. She fancied a little imperialist venture of her own and planted her lips on that wide warm mouth, laying claim to the territory and all its treasures. Later they wandered up to Odéon and after a few more drinks in Le Danton, it became inevitable that they would stroll together around the corner to his apartment overlooking place St.-André-des-Arts.
If he talked like an Englishman, Nathan made love as a Frenchman is supposed to, which, it occurred to her at one delirious moment, was definitely the right way around.
The memory is embarrassingly vivid in Lana’s mind now, her straddling his thighs as he arches back, his hands on the bed taking the weight, his stomach and chest stretched, his head falling back and hair hanging almost to the pillow. Whatever light trailed from the window made the golden line of hair weaving from his navel to his chest glisten and spark. And she had screamed and finally laughed.
That was the first of the most reckless four nights and days of pleasure. It had so nearly been much longer than that. Halfway across Pont Neuf she remembers to stop at the narrow gap between the twin brick and sandstone buildings, to look beyond at the secret delight that was Place Dauphine and see if Ma Salle à Manger is still in business. Yes, there it is, just where the little passage fans out to an entrancing triangle. The chestnut trees are golden, unlike when she and Nathan had made the friendly little Basque restaurant their neighborhood hangout for three nights, including that languorous New Year’s Eve.
Now Lana peeks inside. The staff are lounging, enjoying a little drink before going home. They haven’t brought in the outdoor tables and chairs yet.
Desp
ite the late December cold, she and Nathan had preferred eating outside because they enjoyed the serenity of the solid old seventeenth-century buildings that enclosed the triangle and protected it from the noise of the city quite effortlessly, and the storybook magic created by the lamps dotted about the park area that made curious skeletal silhouettes of the bare trees. After eating they always lingered, wrapped in shawls provided by the restaurant, sipping and smoking, savoring the manufactured delay before returning to his apartment, the anticipation more addictive in many ways than the sex that followed. Better even than what she had thought was the unstoppable, unsurpassable buzz of the Pumpkins live at the Oz back in October 1993, when the crush of the crowd had allowed her skinny teenage frame to float for most of the night and she’d wished her lousy virginity back just so she could offer it up to Billy Corgan. It was even better than those first weeks and months with Brian, discovering for the first time what it was to be properly, generously in love.
Lana had felt no guilt whatsoever during those few nights and the only uncertainty was about whether it should be left at that or become something more. She had seen little of her hotel room, returning only to shower and change and return Brian’s calls. She mostly texted him back, which was safer, but yet when they did talk she was able to mute her mood of ecstatic excitement and find instead a cooler tone, one more suited to their ongoing standoff. She felt so far away from him, much further than Seattle, way beyond the nine-hour time difference. On a different emotional planet.
For the first time since leaving Hotel Le Chevalier, Lana feels a jolt of fear. Who is that man walking toward her along place Dauphine’s cobbled road, his long moving shadow slinking up the wall of the buildings? She turns quickly toward the narrow Pont Neuf entrance and almost cries out when another man appears just as she emerges. But he pads by without a glance. When she looks back into place Dauphine the shadow man is no longer there, probably just a resident gone indoors. Still, she accelerates now to the far side of the bridge. Soon she’ll hit the corner of rue de Buci and rue St.-André-des-Arts with its busy late-night bars. On that New Year’s Eve three years ago, they had walked this same route and gone to see The Apartment somewhere along here, down a narrow street to the left. There it was. Halfway down rue Christine, she spots the battered old lit sign, made to look like a strip of film:
It had probably been there for fifty years, longer, since the golden age. She sees her ghost and Nathan’s skipping out, arm in arm, babbling about Wilder’s genius. The spectral couple come right at her and sweep by, rapt in their happy world. She pursues them to Buci and on to Odéon. She stares through the glass window of Le Danton at the exact banquette they had settled into, recalling, as though the thoughts are hers now at this moment, how much she’d hoped he’d ask her to stay on in Paris with him, knowing already that the answer would be yes. As it happened he hadn’t said anything then, but later, in the sleepy dark, wrapped together, she heard a whispered, “Don’t go.”
“What are you asking me?”
“I know, I’m sorry, it’s so bloody selfish, but I want you to stay, please.”
“You mean for a few more days . . . or longer.”
“I mean longer. Longest.”
“All right. I’ll stay.”
Just like that. And made a liar of herself.
The apartment where Nathan had lived back then is only two minutes’ walk away, but as Lana recalls how those few white-hot winter nights and days had ended, it’s becoming harder to complete the journey. She turns away from Le Danton, but then just stops and stands there. Odéon bustles all around, but she is seeing nothing. Wretchedness overwhelms her. This idea of finding Nathan is both crazy and sad.
A young girl stumbles and friends react with teenage shrieks. Until this moment Lana had not noticed them. Suddenly the young girl is vomiting, convulsed and groaning. Some of her friends try to be of practical help, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder or tugging hair back from a drooling mouth. What’s happening with Parisian girls? In Lana’s experience, they never used to stagger around the streets in this condition. She starts to move closer. The girl is still on her knees coughing and moaning and now Lana notices that the teenagers are not wailing in French. Just as she realizes that they are English, not Parisian, she spots a purse on the ground just beyond the vomit. It is scarlet and heart-shaped. Perhaps this style of purse is all the rage among English teenagers in Paris, but Lana prefers the less obvious conclusion that the girl on her knees really is the arrogant little bitch who had been so rude at the Hopper. She looks at her more closely, with more intense interest. Her clothes—what little she’s wearing—are different, but of course she would have changed for her night on the town. The hair seems about the same length and color, but still, as she stops spewing and lifts an anguished face, Lana still can’t be certain it is her. Then the girl speaks actual words. “It’s okay, I’m fine, stop! Let me be, yeah.” That petulant “yeah.” It’s her all right. Looking down at this shocking creature, her face green and gross, a thin line of drool stretching from her mouth, her skirt, already micromini, riding up so far her ass is exposed, Lana begins to believe that there might be a God and she is a kindly God who, to comfort Lana in her despair, sent her out onto the streets of Paris at this unlikely hour just so she can witness the humiliation and misery of this rancid little bitch. Lana taps one of the friends on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, can I help?”
“Actually we’re fine, thank you.”
“No, really, I’d like to help. You all have cell phones, I’m sure. If you let me use one I could get some great shots of you all. Wouldn’t that be funny?”
The look on the friend’s face certainly is, as far as Lana is concerned.
“No. Now just leave us alone, please?”
“But wouldn’t all your Facebook friends get off on seeing this hilarious scene? Lots of Likes and LOLs? I could make a Vine of you, sweetheart, spewing. So sophisticated, real classy.”
Horrified, the friends start to push Lana away. The princess tries to stand, staggers, and falls again. Lana is buzzing. All the crap she has had to put up with over the last few hours, the noxious mound of bile expanding inside her finally has an outlet and this spoiled, arrogant, mean girl is the useful target for all of it. Lana leans closer to her.
“You really are taking Paris by storm, aren’t you? We met earlier at the Hopper exhibition. Remember me? No? You were snapping everything then, yeah? Now you’re an exhibition all on your own. Yeah? Kind of living art.”
Shrieks of revulsion and rage shock the Paris night. The girlfriends lunge at her. It’s turning feral. Lana backs away.
“Oh come on, ladies, this should be recorded. Someone take some photos, please.”
Parisians of the 6th strolling by shudder at the raw, ear-piercing Anglo-Saxon vulgarity. In the moment, Lana, buoyed by the effect of her taunts, doesn’t care that she’s probably coming off as as crazed and cheap as the young brats. The success of her vengeance propels her along boulevard St.-Germain, around the corner and in no time she reaches the corner of rue Danton and place St.-André-des-Arts. She looks up at the fourth-floor window. It is unlit, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Nathan’s not there. He might be asleep already. She approaches the heavy brown double doors. Naturally she can’t remember the entry code, which surely has been changed in the last three years anyway. If she waits, will some resident leaving or returning let her in? Unlikely, especially at this hour, but she’s here now, so she might as well stay and find out. It occurs to her she might not have to ask permission to enter. Lana remembers that the heavy doors are self-closing and swing very slowly. If anyone goes in or out she would have a few seconds to get to it and prevent it from locking. A Vélib’ bike-share stand only yards away seems like the perfect place to hover without arousing attention. She can hang there looking at the map or reading the instructions as if trying to work out how to sign out a bike. No one passing would be remotely suspicious. She steps quickly
toward the bikes, counting silently. It takes no more than six seconds. Time enough, surely.
The deflation comes soon. No one arrives at the doors or emerges from inside. Surely they’re not all tucked up in their beds? Her hopes are raised and dashed, raised and dashed, raised and dashed . . . Each time someone approaches they just sail past the brown double doors. To lift her spirits she thinks about her encounter with the spewing princess, but this leads her to a very different memory: Lana Turner at the Regina Hotel packing her bags. The final moment before the shock.
She was all ready to check out and float back to Nathan’s apartment, refusing to think about the painful phone call to Brian she would have to make later.
The nausea came out of nowhere. It rose quickly in waves and she sank, plummeted. On her knees in the bathroom just in time, head hanging in the toilet, breathing in gulps, she told herself it had to be some French thing she’d eaten, escargots, something. But she also knew she was almost a week late.
She found a drugstore around the corner on rue St.-Honoré and back in the hotel, curled in an armchair by the window, she waited for the verdict of + or −. The most surprising thing was that despite willing, demanding a negative, when the red plus sign appeared Lana felt an instinctive surge of what she knew was delight. That weird reaction evaporated almost instantly, but she could not dismiss its significance and how it changed everything. How many weeks gone? Not that it mattered, because it was Brian’s, of course, there was no question of that. The hotel phone was a sudden, loud, alarming intrusion. A polite voice inquired if Madame Gibson was leaving today, as it was now after checkout time. She said sorry, yes, almost ready. Then she heard herself ask, would he mind booking her a cab to the airport? Her flight to Seattle would be taking off in less than three hours. Was she doing the right thing? Had the last few days been just a fantasy after all? Or worse, had she been playing a selfish trick on this poor guy, like one of those horrible women who enjoy stealing hearts? In the end she hadn’t even had enough courage or grace to call Nathan, afraid that the sound of his voice might induce her to stay. That was what she told herself.
What She Saw Page 11