“Are you happy?” she asks him that evening.
“The happiest man in the world.”
“And do you love me?”
“More than ever.”
“Have you ever cheated on me?”
“Never.”
“Have you ever wanted to cheat on me?”
“Never.”
She looks at him steadily. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t appear guilty. But she puts her plan in action, all the same, just to be sure. She borrows her sister’s car for two days. She leaves her daughter with a friend for the night. She goes out to the movies and a restaurant with her husband. The babysitter looks after their son. They get home around midnight. She pays the girl. Her husband has stayed in the car, to take her home. She hears the car door bang and the engine roar. She races to her son’s bedroom, picks him up, as gently as possible, and places him in a bassinet. Then she leaves the apartment, puts the baby in the backseat of her sister’s car, and gets behind the wheel. She can no longer see her husband’s car, but she knows which way he is going because she knows where the babysitter lives. After a few minutes, she catches up with his car, and follows it from a distance. Checking her watch, she notes that the trip took no more than ten minutes. The metallic blue car stops; the girl gets out, waves good-bye, types in her entry code, and disappears through a gateway. So it’s not her; the babysitter is not the mistress. “What now?” she hisses.
To go home, he has to take the first left. But instead he drives straight on, and he drives fast. She follows him through dark, deserted streets. The baby is asleep. She is frightened, uneasy; her heart is pounding. But she wants—needs—to know the truth. The woods stretch toward them, black and tentacular. Still she tails her husband. There are lots of cars here; she is afraid of losing him. Where is he going? She doesn’t understand. Does he have a mistress on the other side of the woods?
Then she sees the prostitutes. Fluttering eyelids, blowing kisses, no more than a few yards between each of them, they flash their breasts, butts, and thighs to the passing cars. She feels her throat tighten. In the back of the car, the baby moans in his sleep. Her husband’s car comes to a halt. She brakes, and hears the honk of a horn from the car behind. Quickly she overtakes him, watching her rearview mirror, then stops a little farther on, eyes riveted to the little reflective rectangle. She sees a prostitute get in her husband’s car. The baby grumbles. He’s lost his pacifier. She doesn’t hear. The blue car makes a U-turn, and hurriedly she does the same thing, tires squealing. It turns in to an empty path. She extinguishes her headlights and drives slowly behind it. Silence descends upon the woods. She can no longer hear the raucous laughter, the traffic noise. He has switched off his engine, so she does the same. She can’t see much. The baby has fallen asleep again. She gets out of her car and quietly closes the door. There is a thick carpet of moss and twigs beneath her sandals. The night air is pleasantly cool. It feels like the countryside. She walks toward the blue car.
And then the moon, as if taunting her, emerges from behind a cloud, and she sees her husband’s face, contorted by pleasure. She moves closer still, her heart rent in two. Between her husband’s thighs she sees a head of brown hair, busily moving up and down.
Suddenly the baby screams, loud in the night. The man jumps, opens his eyes, and sees his wife standing in front of the car. He freezes, paralyzed with horror. The prostitute lifts her head and she, too, stares speechlessly at this sad, beautiful young woman bathed in moonlight.
His wife looks at him with sorrow, with pain, with disgust. Before leaving, she removes her wedding ring and places it delicately on the hood of the car, without a word.
THE PASSWORD
If we are to make reality endurable,
we must all nourish a fantasy or two.
—MARCEL PROUST (1871–1922), Within a Budding Grove
Hunter Logan is rather beautiful. She has turquoise eyes—a particular color found only across the Atlantic, in certain areas of Massachussetts; an intense blue, verging on green, with flecks of gold. She also has long, fair hair that turns platinum blond in the summer. She is a slender, square-jawed American girl with a predatory smile and athletic thighs. Sometimes people tell her she looks like the actress Cameron Diaz.
Hunter came to live in Paris for a year in order to improve her French. She is taking classes at the university and staying with a cantankerous aristocratic woman on Avenue Marceau, at the corner of Rue de Bassano. It is a large, dilapidated apartment with damp bathrooms and dingy bedrooms, but as soon as she saw it Hunter fell in love with its moldings and its marble fireplace, so decorative and so very Parisian.
Madame de M. has to rent out her rooms to students in order to make ends meet. Since the death of her husband and the departure of her six children, she has not been able to bear the thought of selling this two-hundred-square-meter apartment and leaving Avenue Marceau, where she has lived for fifty years. In order to extract the maximum amount of money for the minimum amount of comfort, she rents the rooms to American students, preferably wealthy ones, who are all charmed—as Hunter was—by the view of the Arc de Triomphe, the proximity of the Champs-Élysées and the Eiffel Tower. And high-spirited eighteen-year-old Hunter is able to simply close her eyes to the tepid bathwater, the roaches, and the viscountess’s sour moods.
The ban on using the landline doesn’t bother her tenants either. The ingenious Savannah, from Colorado—a computer studies major who spends more time in nightclubs than in front of her laptop—managed to hack into the upstairs neighbors’ Wi-Fi connection, and Hunter is able to use this, too.
* * *
Hunter is a well-behaved young girl. Unlike Savannah, she rarely goes out. She has a boyfriend, Evan, who stayed in Boston to continue his degree in medicine, with whom she talks on Skype several times a week. The photograph of Evan is on her bedside table. He is a serious-looking blond boy with perfect teeth. Hunter thinks she will marry him. Hunter’s family is displayed above the fireplace: her parents, Jeff and Brooke; her younger sister, Holly; her brother, Thorn; and Inky the Labrador.
Sometimes, at night, staring up at the ceiling before falling asleep, she listens to the ceaseless rumble of traffic on Avenue Marceau, and the large family house on Carlton Street, which she had never left before, seems so far away that her heart aches. When she feels homesick like this, she sometimes walks down the endless hallway, the wooden floorboards creaking beneath her feet, to the huge, dusty salon with its furniture covered in white sheets. Hunter opens the rusty shutters on one of the five windows and walks out onto the balcony that runs around the entire building. Standing there and watching the city—the Place de l’Etoile, the coming and going of cars—makes her feel better.
One night, intoxicated by the indefinable odor of Paris, she felt a bony hand touch her shoulder, and gasped.
“What are you doing here?” wheezed Madame de M., dressed in an old bathrobe.
Hunter smiled. “Admiring your city,” she replied in her American-accented French.
The old lady observed her for a few moments. Then a smile softened her face. “Quite right,” she whispered. “You should make the most of it.” Hunter was surprised to notice that Madame de M. had suddenly started using the familiar tu form with her.
And Madame de M. went away, leaving the young woman alone with her thoughts.
* * *
Since moving to Paris, Hunter had still not gotten used to the interest she seemed to inspire in Parisian men. Even though Savannah had explained to her that all Frenchmen were obsessed by women—that this was a widely known fact she simply had to accept—she couldn’t help feeling ill at ease when confronted with those insistently staring eyes, those unambiguous whispers, and sometimes, walking in the Jardin du Luxembourg, she would break into a sprint in order to escape the attentions of a lone man. Even in winter, with her wrapped up in a padded anorak, men would still find some way to hit on her. To begin with, it had been flattering. Now it was simply annoying.
; As soon as the sun rose each morning, the males of Paris seemed to lose their minds. Sitting on café terraces, they spent their days watching women. Especially on the Left Bank, Hunter noticed. All it took was a bare knee on Boulevard Saint-Germain and they were thrown into a frenzy. On sunny days, Savannah and a gang of American girls more brazen than Hunter would sit outside Les Deux Magots like princesses. Older men, with suntanned faces and graying temples, would drive past in convertibles and offer them weekends in Deauville or Saint-Tropez, screen tests for a movie, the cover of a magazine. As for Hunter, she would walk back to Avenue Marceau reading Swann in Love for the French literature course given by her young professor, Jerome D., at the university.
There was no denying that her professor was an attractive man. He was in his early thirties, with hazel eyes and dark brown hair. Very tall, he stood slightly stoop shouldered. He wore white shirts with the collars unbuttoned and round glasses that he would remove occasionally so he could rub the bridge of his nose. He also wore a wedding ring.
Often, Hunter noticed, there was a dark-haired young woman waiting for him in a car after his classes. Sometimes, Hunter would see two little girls in the backseat. The professor would fold up his six-foot three-inch frame, sit next to his wife and kiss her, then lean back to kiss his daughters. Hunter was always touched by this spectacle, as it reminded her of her own father and the affectionate kisses he would bestow on the whole family when he came home to Carlton Street in the evenings.
“Handsome guy,” murmured another female student, standing beside Hunter and watching his car move away into traffic.
Hunter’s best friend in Paris was taking the same classes as her. She was from Connecticut and her name was Taylor. She was a tall and slightly overweight brunette with surprising green eyes.
Taylor thought she was in love with the professor. Sometimes, sitting in the attic room she rented on Rue de l’Université, she would spend the whole night talking about Jerome D.’s hands, or his eyelashes, or the color of his irises.
“He’s married,” Hunter would repeatedly remind her.
“I know,” Taylor would reply. “And his wife is beautiful.”
“The brunette in the car.”
“Yeah, the brunette in the car with the two little girls. A perfect family.”
“You should leave families in peace.”
“God, Hunter—you’re so American, it makes me sad sometimes. We’re in Paris. Husbands have flings here. Back home, they’re all too scared. I wouldn’t mind being one of the professor’s flings, I can tell you that!”
“What about his wife? And his children?”
“I could care less about his wife and his children.”
“And afterward?”
“Afterward? Nothing. I go home and marry a nice, fat Yank who’ll give me four kids. But at least I’ll have the memory of my French lover.”
“I think that’s disgusting.”
“No man as handsome as he is can be hogged by one woman. Madame D. should have thought about that when she married him.”
* * *
From her hiding place, Hunter examines Madame D.’s face. Hair tied back in a bow, high forehead, harmonious features. Taylor was right: Madame D. is beautiful. Beautiful in the way only women in their early thirties can be, with that mixture of budding maturity and still tangible youthfulness. She is elegant, too, in her black suit and stiletto heels. A true Parisian lady.
Concealed behind a tree, Hunter is close enough to the professor’s wife to see that she appears worried, her forehead wrinkled by faint lines. She sighs. Leaning against her car, she chews on her key fob. The little girls aren’t with her today.
Students swarm from the building and divide into small groups on the sidewalk. The professor is a head taller than the crowd around him. His wife spots him, opens the door, and sits behind the steering wheel. He joins her. She doesn’t look at him. Hunter notices that they do not kiss. The car speeds away.
Hunter waits for Taylor.
“Did you skip class?” Taylor asks when she arrives.
“No, I got here too late. I was waiting for you.”
Taylor is exultant. “Hey, guess what? The professor’s a womanizer!”
“How do you know?”
“I met a girl who slept with him. Apparently he’s famous for it. All you have to do is go to his office, do a bit of flirting, and wham bam thank you ma’am!”
Hunter remains silent. She thinks about the little girls in the back of the car, and of Madame D.’s somber face. She doesn’t know why, but she wants to cry.
* * *
“Miss Logan?”
She turns around and she is caught in the full glare of the professor’s charming smile.
“Do you live near here?” he asks, gesturing to Place Saint-Sulpice.
She stands up. “No, I live on Avenue Marceau.”
He sits down, and she follows suit.
“So, you must be staying with the viscountess.”
“Yes,” Hunter admits, feeling intimidated.
The fountain beside them makes a pretty, musical sound.
“I often go for walks in the Luxembourg,” she says. “With Proust.”
“Good idea.”
She can feel his golden-brown gaze touching her cheeks, her forehead, her lips.
“By the way, your last essay was excellent, if I remember correctly.”
“Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me. It was very well written.”
She looks up at him, blushing slightly.
He says, “We could go for a drink if you like.”
She can no longer hear the fountain, only the sound of his voice.
“There’s a nice café just over there. What do you say?”
She notices he is carrying a large folder.
“You know what this is?” he asks.
“No.”
“Guess.”
“Your next class?”
“Wrong! It’s a book.”
“On Proust?”
He laughs. “No, I’ve already done that! This is a novel. My first novel.”
“Do you have a publisher?”
“Yes. These are the final proofs. I’m correcting them at the moment. I was on my way to see my publisher when I met you.”
“Will it be published soon?”
“In the fall.”
“What’s it about?”
“Love.”
Hunter feels herself blush again.
The professor smiles as he looks at her. Then he strokes her cheek. “How pretty you are, Miss Logan. And how afraid of me you seem!”
“No,” she says, standing up again. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“And yet you’re trembling.…”
He takes her hand in his. He’s right: she is trembling.
“I’m not going to eat you.”
“Please…”
The professor lets go of her hand. “Relax.”
She says nothing.
“Let’s go for a walk in the Luxembourg. Just the three of us: you, me, and Marcel.”
* * *
Hunter wished the huge yellowish clawfoot bathtub in which she lay would swallow her. The water was no longer even tepid; it was just plain cold.
Savannah hammered at the bathroom door. “Hey, Boston, have you drowned in there? Your pal Taylor has called three times tonight!”
“I’m coming,” Hunter muttered.
She emerged from the tub and wrapped herself in a towel. Then she lay on the floor, her feet raised up on the bidet. She dreaded talking to Taylor, who would undoubtedly guess that she was hiding something.
It all began yesterday, in the Luxembourg. The two of them walked under the chestnut trees. The weather was perfect. Around them, people were playing tennis, running, sunbathing. Jerome D. told her about his book. She listened dreamily. He held her hand, and she made no objection. She had the impression that people were looking at them kindly, as if they were happily in love, a
nd this thrilled her.
Then he kissed her. Intoxicated, she let him. For a brief instant the sad face of Madame D. and her little girls flashed through Hunter’s mind. Then Evan’s face, too. But she pushed them away. It was only a kiss, after all.…
But the kiss did not end. It became less innocent. In the shadow of a chestnut tree, Jerome D. became bolder. His hands brushed her breasts, her hips. He rubbed himself against her, drank in her kiss.
“I have an apartment, on Rue de Vaugirard,” he whispered into her hair. “You want to come? It’s nice there.”
Hunter stiffened.
“What’s the matter?” Jerome D. asked.
Hunter freed herself from his embrace. “You’re married.”
He laughed. “So?”
She looked at him, dumbfounded. “But … b-b-but…,” she stammered.
He drew her close to him again. “My wife doesn’t know anything.”
Hunter pushed him away. “How do you know?”
Surprised, he looked at her more attentively. “I’m sure she doesn’t.”
Hunter took a few steps back. “I think your wife looks sad. She knows you’re cheating on her.”
He laughed again. “So you think this is cheating, do you? A little kiss on a sunny afternoon? Seemed to me you were rather enjoying it—”
“Everyone in the university says you have affairs with your students.”
He smiled mockingly. “Oh, so you’re worried about my bad reputation?”
“I’m not afraid of you or your reputation. I despise you. If you were my husband, or my father, I would be ashamed.”
Jerome D. gave her a sardonic look. “Poor little American girl,” he hissed. “You really need to get laid more often!”
Then, with a shrug, and a quick adjustment of his shirt collar, he walked away.
* * *
Jerome D.’s book was published. It was displayed in bookstore windows and the author’s photograph appeared in the newspapers. The university organized a book-signing event, which was a great success. Hunter was the only student in the class who didn’t want to buy the professor’s novel.
A Paris Affair Page 6