“All right, George. In that case I would very much like a digestif.”
“Lovely. Now, may I inquire whether you are fond of Armagnac?”
She nods. Behind the bar he wields the tools of his craft. His hands deftly lifting, chopping, swirling, pouring. Finally, a flower petal as a garnish.
“Voilà.”
She takes a sip. “Delicious,” she says.
Pleased, George permits himself a smile. “I thought you would like that.”
“What is it?” asks Harry.
“It’s called a Hôtel de France. Two parts Armagnac. One part crème de cassis. Seven parts chilled champagne. A shot of pear liqueur. I make the liqueur myself. And for you, Mister Winslow?”
“Surprise me.”
Once again the hands fly over the bar. It is like trying to watch a man cheat at cards.
“And voilà again.”
“Excellent,” says Harry. “What is it?”
“It’s a variation on the classic French 75. Before dinner I use London gin. After dinner, cognac is best. Then, of course, sugar, lemon, and champagne.”
“Superb.”
“It was my pleasure. Excuse me.”
Another customer is beckoning. George begins speaking in Spanish to him. Others come up, he responds in French. He is like a brilliant financier or someone who has the hot tips at the racetrack; everyone wants him.
“What a fascinating man,” Claire says. “I have never met a bartender who revered his work so much.”
“You’re right. To him, this is the sacred mountain. There has to be a best in everything. The best lawyer, the best shoemaker, the best baker. He is the best bartender. He has devoted his life to it. Do you know that he wakes up every morning and reads newspapers in five languages just so he will be able to converse with his clients on any topic that might interest them?”
“Does he know Chinese?”
“Not yet.”
“He should.”
“Maybe, but the Chinese don’t come here yet. At least not many.”
She sips her drink. “Just wait.”
As happens most nights, George facilitates introductions. They meet a Spanish couple from Madrid. Then some Germans. Finally, two American girls traveling on their parents’ money. Claire chats with them. Harry is smoking a cigar. A fat corona from Cuba.
“Are you having fun?” he asks when she turns back to him.
She squeezes his hand. “I am,” she answers. “Are you? Are you glad you’re here? With me?”
“There is nowhere else in the world I would rather be. And with no one else. Have I told you how beautiful you look?”
“Not nearly enough.”
“You look beautiful.”
“Thank you. For this, for all this.”
Later, in the room, he stands behind her, watching her brush her teeth. The water pouring from a faucet resembling a golden swan. She is very thorough. As he brushes his teeth, she uses the toilet, leaving the door open. He can see the white of her knees. Hears the roll of the paper as she unwinds it off the spool. He is overcome by intimacy, intruding upon her, her underwear around her ankles, knees together, her breasts bare. He stands in the doorway watching her. Her hand between her legs. Surprised, she looks up at him.
“Sorry,” he says. “I wanted to watch you.”
“It’s all right.”
“I’ve never done that before.”
She flushes and stands up, leaving her underwear on the floor. “I understand,” she says, kissing him. “This is all about new things.”
She is in bed waiting when he comes in. He can see that the message light is flashing red on the phone. He ignores it as he lowers himself into her arms.
8
They spend the day as lovers do. In the morning breakfast is wheeled into their room. Claire hides, giggling under the covers, while Harry, wearing only a terry-cloth robe, signs the bill. The waiter maintains an attitude of Gallic indifference. He has seen it all before.
There is hot coffee, croissants, buttery eggs, crisp bacon. The linen is starched and white as paper.
“Try this coffee,” he says, handing her a cup and saucer. “It’s the best in the world.”
“You say that about everything at this hotel. Oh my god, you’re right. That’s really good.”
“It ought to be. At the prices they charge.”
“And these eggs. They’re incredible. I can’t imagine I’d be hungry again after last night’s dinner, but I’m starving.”
After breakfast they go out. The sky mirrors the gray of the stones on the place. Drivers in sunglasses and dark suits stand in front of Mercedes parked beside the entrance talking on cell phones and waiting for passengers.
They turn up the Rue de la Paix, heading toward the Opéra.
“Where shall we go?” she asks, her arm tucked under his. She is wearing woolen mittens and a scarf. I never wear hats, she has told him.
“Wherever you like.”
“I don’t feel like going to a museum. I know I should. But it’s like waking up on Sunday and going to church. It feels like duty, not fun.”
“So that rules out churches too, I take it?” he asks with a smile.
“Oh. Well, yes, I suppose it does. I mean, I’ve been to Notre Dame. It’s beautiful and awe-inspiring but we only have a short time. I’d rather not spend it in a musty church.”
“Where would you like to go?”
“Besides back to bed at the hotel, you mean?” she says, grinning at him. “I’m happy just to walk until we’re both hungry and then stop at some random place for lunch. How does that sound?”
“It sounds perfect.”
They head north. In his mind they are heading vaguely toward Montmartre, but he is willing to choose another direction if one suggests itself.
They walk in contented silence, occasionally pointing out something amusing or odd. It feels so natural, her hand in his.
“The cars are all so small,” she comments. “It’s like a race of midgets drives them.”
At the bottom of Montmartre, they take the funicular to the top of the hill. Once there, they walk to see the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur, the highest point in Paris.
“I’ve never been here,” she says. They stand there looking out over the city, the Seine writhing like a lazy silver snake in the sunlight.
“Some people think the Eiffel Tower is the best place to see Paris, but I still think this is,” he says. “Did you know that the tower is older than the basilica?”
“Really?”
“It’s true. The basilica was only completed after World War One. The Eiffel Tower was dedicated in 1889. But people had been coming here for centuries. They say druids used to perform rituals on this site.”
“Stand there,” she says. From her purse she takes a camera. Behind him Paris falls away to the horizon. “Smile,” she says. He does. “Now you take a picture of me.”
They get a fellow tourist to take one of them together. I have seen it. They look like so many other tourists in Paris. I wonder if that’s how they felt.
They stop for lunch in a small restaurant full of Dutch tourists. After, they wander through Montmartre to Pigalle, past the Moulin Rouge, the Bateau-Lavoir, its great days, when Lautrec, Picasso, and Utrillo lived in the neighborhood, behind it. They turn down the Boulevard de Clichy and see a sign for the Musée de l’érotisme.
“This looks promising,” she says.
“I thought you didn’t want to go to a museum.”
“This is different. Come on.”
“Are you sure?”
“You never know. We might learn something new.”
Harry pays and they enter. The museum is clearly popular with tourists. On the walls are pornographic images from around the world. Carved images from India, contemporary photographs of naked women in leather, cartoons, phalluses of exaggerated length, an entire floor devoted to Parisian brothels, the maisons closes of the nineteenth century. They almost burst out laughing at several of the images
.
On the way out, there is a gift shop selling books, posters, and erotic postcards.
“Wait here,” she says.
A few minutes later, she returns carrying a brown paper bag. “I found it.”
“What?”
“Look.”
She hands him the bag. In it is a French copy of the Kama Sutra.
“They say there are sixty-four different positions,” she says. “I can’t wait to start.”
Back in the hotel they are sitting opposite each other on the bed. She translates, “ ‘the kinds of sexual union according to dimensions, force of desire or passion, time.’
“It says that man is divided into three classes, the hare man, the bull man, and the horse man.”
“How flattering.”
“Shhh, be quiet. It depends on the size of his lingam.”
“You mean the . . .”
“Exactly. And that women are divided into three classes based on the size of their yoni: a female deer, a mare, or a female elephant.”
“A female elephant? Good lord.”
“Stop it.”
“Why is there no male elephant? It hardly seems fair.”
“To whom?”
“To everybody. Poor female elephant, for one. No male elephant to satisfy her. And to me. I mean, who’s to say I’m not a male elephant? I’ve always thought of myself as being rather elephantine.”
“You are, darling. Now be quiet. It says here about three equal unions, based on corresponding dimensions. Look, there’s a diagram. It says that a male hare and a female elephant are an unequal union.”
“That makes perfect sense. It’s like the old joke about the elephant and the flea.”
“Do you want me to keep on reading or not?”
“Of course,” he says, stroking her white thigh. “Go on.”
“It says that when the man exceeds the woman in point of size, that is the highest union.”
“So what are we?”
“I am the deer, and you are the horse.”
“I would rather be the elephant.”
“Shut up.”
Her hair keeps falling in front of her face, and she keeps pushing it back with one hand. It is not quite long enough to stay behind her ear.
Suddenly, like an alarm bell, the phone on the night table rings, low and long, shattering the silence. “Shit,” says Harry, rolling over on his side with the speed of a guilty conscience.
“Darling,” he exclaims too loudly. “I’m so sorry I haven’t called. It’s been crazy.”
He sits on the edge of the bed, his naked back to Claire. A narrow expanse of white sheet separating them, an impassable boundary.
“No, no,” he says. “I was just taking a little nap. How are you? How’s Johnny? Tell me all the news.”
Claire sits there frozen, initially too terrified to move. She can barely breathe. It is almost as though Maddy is on the other side of the door. But he doesn’t even turn around once to put a finger to his lips or otherwise ask for silence. Or even to acknowledge her. It is as though she doesn’t exist. They are no longer in the same room, on the same bed, in the same world. No longer lovers on the verge of intercourse. Or maybe, like Lot’s wife, he doesn’t want to look back and be turned into a pillar of salt.
She keeps staring at his back, unsure of what to do. For a moment she considers making a noise to elicit a reaction from him, even if it is one of horror. It would be so easy. A word. A sound. A slammed door. It would all unravel. It would be that easy. But she does not.
Instead she lies there listening to his domestic intimacies, her back against the pillow, deciding whether she should pull the sheet up to cover herself or not. She stares at her toes, at the clock and the now-forgotten book that had promised so much just a short time before.
“I’ll be home on Friday,” he says. “Yes, yes. I love you too. And I miss you too. Give a big kiss from me to Johnny. Ciao bellissima.” His little joke.
He replaces the phone in the cradle but continues sitting there motionless, his face to the wall.
She can wait no longer. A line has been breached, a moment shattered. She says nothing and instead quickly gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom, closing the door behind her. A few moments later she emerges, clothed, her hair hastily brushed. She stops, pauses as though about to say something but doesn’t. Her heart is racing.
Finally he turns. “What are you doing?” he asks.
“I need some air. I’ll be back later,” she says. She takes her coat and rushes out of the room. The big, heavy doors are too well-balanced to slam.
“Wait! Come back,” he cries, but it’s too late. She doesn’t hear the rest, if there is anything. Would he follow? She can picture him struggling with his pants, searching for his socks. She walks faster.
She passes through the hotel lobby and finds herself on the street, slipping into the culture. There is something familiar, comfortable even, about the signs in the store windows, the words on the newspapers, the overheard snatches of conversation of the pedestrians. It is not foreign to her. Like a mermaid, she is able to live in both sea and air.
A light rain falls. Already it is growing dark. The rain mingles with her tears. She is furious at Harry. Furious that he would answer the phone when they were about to make love, furious that he would ignore her so completely, furious that he could sound so easy and natural with Maddy, furious with herself for her betrayal of Maddy, and furious at the position in which she now finds herself.
She walks through traffic to the Tuileries. The benches are empty. The gravel crunches underfoot. The world is going home. In the twilit distance, the elegant ponderousness of the Louvre, lights burning from its myriad windows. I am a fool, she thinks. This is a car that is heading for the cliff. Do I jump out now or do I stay in?
After an hour she returns, her hair soaked. The doorman smiles in greeting.
“Mademoiselle,” says the front desk clerk.
“Oui?”
“Monsieur Winslow left you a message in case you came back before he did.”
He hands her an envelope of heavy paper with the hotel’s crest printed on the back, and she opens it. The note reads: Went to find you. If you get back before I do, wait in room. Sorry. X Harry.
She returns to their room. Like a murder scene, it is exactly as she left it, the sheets rumpled, the pillows dented. The Kama Sutra lying where it fell.
A quarter of an hour later, Harry returns. “Thank God,” he says, striding up to her and embracing her. His arms and face are still wet with rain. “I was worried. What the hell did you do that for?”
“I’m sorry. Maddy’s call freaked me out.”
“Well, it freaked me out too,” he replies with a laugh, taking off his coat.
She lets out a little half smile. “I hadn’t thought about that. Of course it would bother you. It was just that we were having this special moment, and all of a sudden, you switch off, and you were talking with Maddy, and it was like you had forgotten me completely. I’d never felt so alone in my life.”
“I understand. But Maddy’s my wife. I do love her.”
She looks down. “I know.”
“And it would be damn odd for me to go away on a trip and not speak to her. We don’t want her getting suspicious. That would ruin everything.”
She nods her head. “I know.”
He kisses her, and she lets him. Her anger has passed but not the fear. “Your hands are freezing,” he says. “Do you want me to order some tea from room service?”
She smiles up at him. She has never wanted, needed him more. “No, I have a better idea,” she says, pulling him toward the bed. “And this time don’t answer the phone.”
That night, around eight, they are in a taxi heading to the Marais, leaving the glittering lights and privileged streets of the Premier Arrondissement. It is an unfashionable neighborhood, the streets narrow. This is the Paris of cheap hotels and peeling posters. The taxi stops in front of a nondescript restau
rant. Its simple façade paneled in dark wood, the interior concealed by red-and-white-checked curtains. On the window the words RESTAURANT A LA CARTE FOIE GRAS A LA MODE DES LANDES.
“Don’t be put off by the way the place looks,” he says, as he holds the door for her.
They enter. The room is well-lit but dingy. There are only twenty or so tables, but every one is occupied. In the corner Claire thinks she recognizes a famous film star. She looks again and realizes she was right.
They sit. The waiter presents the menus. “It’s practically impossible to get a reservation here,” Harry says. He orders champagne.
“What is this place?” she whispers.
“The best restaurant in Paris. Maybe the world.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“Why is everything about the best with you?”
He takes a sip of champagne. “As Oscar Wilde said, I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best. Well, actually, I think it’s the best, and so do a lot of other people. It also horrifies just as many others. You won’t find it in the Michelin guide, that’s for sure. As you can tell, they don’t spend a lot on their decor. But the food is amazing.”
“So what makes it so good?”
“The secret is fat, if you want the truth. And ingredients.”
“What do you mean?”
“Most restaurants in Paris these days are mindful of the fact that their clientele cares about their weight. Not this place. This place is a heart attack waiting to happen.”
“That’s good?”
“It is when you taste the food. There are many different kinds of cuisines in France. Some are about oil, some are about butter, this place is about fat. They make the best roast chicken in the world here, which we are going to order by the way. The skin is covered in crackling hot fat. The chicken is a Coucou de Rennes, which are the best in the world. They also have the best foie gras I’ve ever tasted. It comes direct from Aquitaine. I don’t know if you noticed but on the window outside it says ‘foie gras des Landes.’ ”
“I guess.”
“Well, anyway, ‘des Landes’ means it comes from Landes in Aquitaine. Again, the best. You can’t find any other foie gras in Paris to compare. So, you see, ingredients.”
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