Madame Mirabou's School of Love

by Barbara Samuel

  I nodded, not sure whether these were the judgments of a young, protected woman who was shocked by multiple lovers or the concerns of a woman who was nearly thirty and had lived all over the world. “Why do you think she’s doing it?”

  “Because she’s not over her ex.” Wanda narrowed her eyes. “You know what I think is weird? She really likes to sleep with married guys. It’s almost like she’s getting back at her ex.”

  I nodded. “It’s hard stuff, you know. My ex is remarried, too. It makes me feel kind of sick to my stomach sometimes, and it’s been awhile.”

  She pursed her lips. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.” I sipped my wine. “He was an all-right guy, just kind of lost at the end there. He thought he needed something else, I guess.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Almost eighteen years.”

  “That is long! How did you meet him?”

  I took a breath, smiled. “He came to do repairs at the apartments I was living in with a roommate. Back then, he had his first renovation business, him and one other guy, and he was only twenty-three, which I thought was amazing.” I grinned, moved my arms. “He had the best arms you ever saw, just sleek and muscled and very nice.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “But the reason I ended up going out with him was because he was smart. He talked about politics. He read the paper every morning. He knew geography and culture and all kinds of things like that that I didn’t know. I thought he was amazing.” I paused. “He is amazing, I guess. Not was. If he’s not a millionaire, he’s pretty close now—he’s worked really hard.”

  “Wow.” She rubbed her forehead, and I saw in the gesture her absolute exhaustion. With an embarrassed little shock, I realized she was being patient with me, letting me stay because she probably sensed my loneliness. Heat burned around the edges of my ears.

  “You are so tired,” I said, standing. “I’m going to take off and let you get some sleep.”

  “Drink your wine! I’m not that tired.”

  “I appreciate it, but I’m going to get home. If you need anything, please call me, all right? It’s hard work to be a single parent, even if it’s only technically single-parenting.”

  She gave me a very sweet smile. “You must have sisters.”

  I laughed. “Yes. Two. And I’m the oldest.”

  “I can tell.”

  On my way out, I touched her shoulder. “Be good to yourself, kiddo.”

  “I will.”

  Back in the silence of my apartment, I made a cup of tea and settled in front of the little gas fireplace, an ache in my chest. It didn’t seem that long ago when Giselle had been a little thing, her hair wild, her laughter the best thing in our world. We’d been in love then, too, me and Daniel. In love with each other and our baby daughter.

  When had it changed? I thought of grade-school plays and recitals, parent-teacher conferences. Still solid, still solid, still in love. We worked together. We went to business functions to hustle up more contacts and clients. We rented movies on Saturday nights and ordered pizza and drank wine in bed. We did it in the old house, and even when we moved to the house on Wood Avenue.

  My tea was deep red, tasting of hibiscus, and I sipped it slowly, admiring the flames on the grate.

  When did it change?

  It wasn’t one moment, but if I was honest, I could think of little things that had started to bother me. One night, as we got ready for a fund-raiser for the Urban League, Daniel frowned at my hair, lying loose on my shoulders as always. “Have you ever considered dyeing your hair dark?”

  I snorted. “I thought all men wanted blondes?”

  “I like it,” he said, straightening his tie. “All that yellow sure does stand out, though, doesn’t it?”

  The wind of change chilled me for a moment, washing over my white collarbones, my blue eyes, my very, very white arms. “Are you embarrassed to have a white wife, Daniel?” I said incredulously.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  But he was. He was the president of the African American Businessman’s Association, and more and more often he did not take me with him to anything connected to it. It was still fine for us to be a couple at white dinner parties and at fund-raisers arranged by white folks, but in the African American world, not so.

  But even now, after he’d married a perfect little African American princess, if I would have accused him of dumping me for the sake of his public perception, he would have denied it.

  At least, I thought now, taking my cup to the sink, I’d never caved into pressure and cut or colored my hair. Blond it was, and curly and bright.

  Hooray for me.

  On Thursday morning, there was an e-mail from Niraj.

  TO: nikki@scentofhours.com

  FROM: niraj.bhuskar@blipdata.com

  SUBJECT: walking

  Dear Goldfingers,

  Would you like to go for a walk this afternoon? I was thinking about the Garden of the Gods—it might be very muddy, but beautiful anyway. It will soon be too busy with tourists to enjoy. What do you say?

  Niraj

  I wrote back:

  Yes. Call me at work around one p.m.

  So, I was expecting his call when Zara, the beautiful blond bartender, came to the kitchen to find me. “Niraj is on the phone,” she said with a little smile. It seemed secretive. Maybe mocking. “Do you want to take it?”

  “Yes.” I pushed the box of lettuce back into the fridge and hurried behind her. She gestured to the phone and again I caught a little edge of something in her attitude. I picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Nikki,” he said. He really did have the most extraordinary voice, dulcet and smooth. “Will you have time to walk this afternoon?”

  “Yes. I should be finished in about half an hour. I could meet you around two-thirty?”

  “That will be fine. Shall we meet at the main parking lot, then?”

  “Great. I brought old shoes in case it’s muddy.”

  “Good for you. I’ll see you then.”

  “Fine. Bye.”

  I hung up, feeling suddenly fluttery and nervous. Was this a date? Or were we just friends? Even the fact that I asked the question was embarrassing—what in the world would a man like that see in someone like me?

  “Niraj, huh?” Zara said with a smile, wiping down the bar.

  “We’re just going for a walk.”

  She smiled. “New to dating, are you?”

  I felt color in my cheeks. “No, it’s not that. I mean, we just got to talking and he likes to walk and so do I, and well—”

  “Interesting,” she said, inclining her head. “You’re not his usual type.”

  “His type?” I suddenly imagined him cruising the local bars and hot spots for easy marks.

  “He tends to go for a country club brunette. A tennis babe.”

  “You’re right. That’s not me.” Realistically, did anyone’s taste run to pudgy, middle-aged blondes? I added some figures on the computer, and tried to seem casual when I asked, “Does he have a reputation or something?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “Maybe a little. He’s dated a few women around here. I don’t think he’s a player, though, I think he just likes women and they like him back.”

  “Well,” I said dismissively, “we’re friends, that’s all.”

  “You don’t have to justify it to me, sister. I’m all for dates, friends, lovers, whatever.” She grinned. “Have a good time.”

  I’d brought a change of clothes with me, and after my shift, I washed my face and hands, reapplied some blush and mascara, and combed my hair. The blouse was one of the first new things I’d purchased after the official divorce, a floaty blouse in greens and blues in a pattern that reminded me of things I’d loved when I was twelve. It was a good color for me. I was feeling fairly cheerful as I headed for my car, my restaurant clothes in a bag.

  It was a beautiful day, with a light, fresh wind whispering through the narrow street. I swung the ba
g at my side as I walked, my spirits light. Maybe Niraj was a player. It had been so long, maybe I needed the reminder that men were not uniformly nice. But it didn’t matter. Maybe nothing would come of it. Maybe we were only friends, even though I was more than a little attracted to him.

  Whatever. A little tangle of annoyance rose in me. Stop it! Not everything was life and death. In the period when I’d been trying to save my marriage, when I’d been trying every possible variation on magical thinking, it had often seemed that if I just did the one right thing, or figured out where the one bad thing was that I could undo, everything would be all right.

  But even then, it hadn’t been life and death, had it? It only felt like it was.

  Coming up on my right was the narrow, neglected little shop for rent. I slowed. In the window, sunning himself in perfect contentment, was the black kitten. He’d startled so badly the first time I saw him that this time I paused and looked at him from a few feet away. Not more than three or four months old, with glossy black fur and a white chest. His back was dusty, as if he’d been rolling in the dirt.

  As a girl, I’d always had cats, but Dan was allergic, and to have the man, I gave them up. For the first time, I realized I could have one if I wished. I could have three! Ten! Who would stop me?

  It was weirdly exhilarating.

  Cautiously, I approached the window and let my shadow fall on the cat. He seemed to realize now that the window was protection, and instead of bolting, he only lifted his head and opened bright yellow eyes. I put my fingers against the glass and he rubbed against it. I smiled. “You should come home with me, little one.”

  He bent down and stretched, then jumped out of the display window and disappeared into the dusty bowels of the shop. I wondered what he lived on. Mice? The creek was right behind the store—probably all sorts of little things lived down there.

  I thought of Niraj. Our walk. Butterflies swept through my belly.

  The Garden of the Gods was only a couple of miles from the restaurant. Although it was not yet tourist season, there were a fair number of cars in the parking lot, and I didn’t immediately see Niraj. I didn’t know what he drove, either, and imagined he might have a Toyota or Nissan, something reliable and clean. I didn’t know why. He didn’t strike me as an SUV sort, or someone who’d drive a sports car to impress, but then, what did I really know about him?

  I smeared Carmex on my lips and checked my reflection in the rearview mirror before I got out. The butterflies fluttered wings in my belly again. I touched the spot, surprised and a little embarrassed, but also pleased. How lovely, to anticipate the company of a man! How long had it been?

  As I closed my car door, I raised my face toward the sky, happily. It’s an impossible vista to feel jaded about, the hot cerulean sky, the stark white snow on the Peak, the vivid orangey-red rocks dotted with sage and yucca and juniper in various shades of grayish green. Ash green, I often think. It should be an official color.

  And against such a backdrop, Niraj was beautiful, too. He waited for me at the opening to the park, wearing a white T-shirt with three-quarter-length sleeves and a placket of three buttons at the neckline, which somehow gave him a Continental look. His feet were clad in boots with good socks, and he wore khaki shorts with plenty of pockets. He had spectacular legs, a cinnamony color with silky scatters of hair and splendid calves.

  I was so out of my league!

  My cheeks grew hot with it, the recognition of how much better-looking he was than me. Zara’s spiny comments poked me—You’re not exactly his type.

  As I approached, however, he straightened, gave me a smile. “Hello, Nikki,” he said. “How are you?”

  “Hello, Niraj,” I said, feeling that awkward sense of formality with him. “I am very well, and you?”

  He had a small CamelBak over his shoulders, and shifted so he could take a sip. “Do you have water?”

  I lifted a liter bottle in my hand to show him. Was he a little nervous, too? How could that be? “I’m good.”

  “This way, then,” he said, and led the way across the parking lot. A path ran between stands of trees, headed away from the main area. We walked in silence for a few moments, Niraj in the lead, which gave me a chance to admire the working of his strong calves. He wore gray-and-white wool socks. The day was warm, the sun high-altitude strong against the top of my head, even though it was only April.

  When the path widened to let us walk side by side, he paused to let me catch up. “You’re a very serious hiker, aren’t you?” I said.

  “I am not sure ‘serious’ is the correct word, but why do you say so?”

  I grinned. “The boots, socks, backpack—even the shorts. All the right things.”

  “Ah.” He grinned, too, and leaned a little closer. “That is only the habit of a bachelor with simple tastes and disposable income. I go to the store and say, ‘What is the best you have?’ And they show it to me.”

  I chuckled. “And you buy it.”

  “Mostly. And you, the native, you don’t have special things?”

  “Not because I wouldn’t want them.” I eyed the water-filled backpack. “That’s very cool. I’d like one of those.”

  “I do like it.”

  I kicked a rock and it skittered up the path, glittering with mica. “When did you start hiking seriously?”

  “In college. It was a girl.”

  “Of course.” I smiled.

  “She liked trekking, which is what we call it in the UK. We traveled many places, exploring. Always on foot.”

  “Really? Like where?”

  “Scotland, Greece, Turkey, the Verdon Gorge in France.”

  I imagined a sturdy English girl, all enormous eyes and breasts. “You must have been with her a long time to see so many places.”

  “Five years,” he said. “We planned to marry.”

  “And?”

  He looked at me with a small smile. “We did not.”

  I grinned. “Is she the one you followed to Colorado?”

  He met my eyes. “You are a good listener.”

  “I try.”

  A slight hesitation. “The answer is no. It was another woman I followed here.”

  There was some small something that made me think it was unresolved, or at least his feelings were. His face showed nothing. I let it go.

  “And what about you, Nikki? How long were you married?”

  I told him, and wondered if he would realize that I hadn’t dated much. At all. How embarrassing would that be?

  We reached a tight place on the path and he gestured for me to precede him. I led the way around a turn and stepped over a hay-clogged pile of horse manure, then down the hill a little ways. I was conscious of the fact that he could now look at my behind; the back of my thighs, which might not be as smooth as they once had been; the slight roll of flesh beneath my bra. All the bad spots.

  “I like your hair,” he said. “It looks like cotton candy.”

  I looked over my shoulder. “I like yours, too.”

  “No! Mine is wild and mischievous.”

  “That’s why I like it.”

  He caught up with me on a wider space of the path. “Do you have a rebel heart, then?”

  “Not really. Never really have.” I looked at the mane of his curls, the loose ringlet fall. It made me think of a prince. “You have medieval hair,” I said, “from a painting.” I wanted to touch it and instead unscrewed the lid of my water bottle, took a sip. “So, what happened to the fiancée, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I don’t mind.” He gestured for me to go ahead around a rock in the path, then caught up with me when we’d passed it. “My fiancée dumped me for a man with a very posh accent and a pretty face.”

  “It’s so English, that you mentioned his accent.”

  “No, it’s English that she would choose it.” A shrug. “She was not a rich girl. I don’t blame her. And in those days, I was not a handsome lad.”

  “Impossible.”

 
He smiled. “Thank you. But I assure you, I was not. I was a computer boy, a little bit fat from my mother’s cooking.” He gestured with his fingers. “Very thick glasses. Black ones.”

  “I can’t tell if you’re pulling my leg or not.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Teasing me. Seeing if you can fool me.”

  He smiled. “I assure you, I was quite a homely child.”

  I tried to imagine him a doughy Indian computer geek in thick glasses. “Well, you grew out of it very nicely.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What happened to the glasses?”

  “Lasers.”

  “Ah. Good idea. My mom had it done, years ago.”

  “And you, Nikki-Nicole, what were you like as a young woman?”

  “You mean I’m not one anymore?”

  He looked slightly abashed, then realized I was only kidding. “You’re pulling my leg.”

  I danced around a spot where melted snow had made a pool the color of blood from all the clay. “Yes.”

  “So?”

  “I was ordinary,” I said. “My mother is beautiful, and I have a beautiful sister who became an actress, but my other sister and I were just the ordinary ones.” I realized that it would sound as if I were fishing for compliments, that he might feel obliged to comment on my not-ordinariness now, and I rushed to add, “Not that I think I’m ordinary, necessarily,” which was worse, “or beautiful, either, but my sister is really, really pretty and—well, that’s just sort of the cornerstone of deciding what everyone else looked like.”

  He listened to this long babble with patience. “I have a very, very beautiful aunt,” he said. “When she comes into a room, everyone feels a little bit less. They’re all looking at her.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Aside from having to endure a beautiful sister, what else were you like?”

  “Serious. Quiet. A little bit on the outside—an observer, I guess.”

  “You liked kittens and pretty things? Or were you a tomboy?”

  Surprised, maybe embarrassed, I glanced at him. “Both. I loved kittens, and ribbons in my hair, and flowers and perfume. But I was also a daredevil on my bike, and I liked climbing trees. I liked being outside. I had this friend, Mark—” I stumbled for a minute, surprised to hear his name on my lips. I didn’t speak of him, as a rule. Not because it was some hidden trauma or wound I wanted to keep secret—I just didn’t.