A Wife of Noble Character (26 page)

Clay pulled at Preston's knit vest. “You look good. Lookin' sophisticated.”

Preston shrugged. “It rubs off on you, this French stuff.”

A moment passed in which the men just looked at each other, the scenery so beyond the context of their normal range that neither seemed to know what to say next. Preston punctured it. “So—what are you doing here? You guys on vacation?”

Clay nodded vigorously. “Yeah, yeah. We're having a baby, and we figured we wouldn't be able to travel for a while after that—it's a girl.” He raised his eyebrows and pretended to brace himself.

“Congratulations.”

“Yeah, so the girls put this trip together. A last hurrah kinda thing. The Blanks are also here on business, so we figured we'd just make it a big trip.”

“Right,” Preston said. He shifted his weight. “So the whole group is here?” Through the window, at a far table, Preston saw a blond Karlie Nettle and a pregnant Waverly Blank—no Vivienne.

“Come say hi,” Clay said, clutching his shoulder.

Karlie spotted him first. “No way!” she cried.

He joined them at the wobbly table set over old bricks. Karlie wanted to finish her story about how she thought every Metro station was called
sortie
.

“We're trying to go shopping. We all get off the Metro and we're staring at the map. And I keep saying, this one is called
sor-tie
, that's where we are—”

“And I keep saying, it's not on the map, Kar!” Waverly said.

“Till finally this nice lady stops and she's, like, it means ‘exit.' How was I supposed to know? That's what the effing sign said!”

Just then, the bells of Saint-Germain-des-Prés rang out the four o'clock hour. Karlie put a hand to Waverly's bump and murmured, “Do you hear the bells, little lady?”

Preston caught Waverly giving him a sort of stink eye, though she wasn't the type of woman to make a face like that. He'd hardly said anything but hello and goodbye to Waverly Blank in all the years of their acquaintance.

“My back hurts,” she said. “I think I want to go to the room and take a bath.”

Karlie stood and came around to Preston, pinching his arm. “Come to dinner with us tomorrow night. We're staying at the Ritz. Meet us there and we'll all go together.”

Karlie had gained a few pounds, which suited her. She struck him as more brazen than he remembered and now she was blond. The effect was garish. He thought of Timmy and wondered if he was around; good, hapless Timmy—he hadn't thought about him in a long time. A heat gathered at the back of his neck. It was all very weird, too heavy with reminders. By shades each of them had changed, but broadly they were the same. That they seemed so delighted by this, or unaware of it, was strange to Preston. He exhausted so much life force pushing himself both literally and psychologically, all in an effort to create change. The fact that these people could exist without this exertion was unsettling—he lost respect for them, yet at the same time he envied them.

The sweat was making him cold. “I'm working tomorrow night,” he said.

“Come on,” Karlie chided.

“I'm working,” Preston repeated.

“No, you're not,” Karlie said. “You're coming to dinner.”

Clay hung back. “Want to grab a quick beer?” he said. His eyes went wide, as if to say, “
Please
grab a beer with me.”

*   *   *

B
OTH MEN WALKED
with their hands in their pockets, toward the river, Preston feeling unsure of his body language in Clay's company. He found it hard to believe it was really Clay, of Houston, of beer-drinking in fields, of rocks. They jogged down a flight of stone stairs, past hand-painted flood markers, to the quay. Clay went close to the water's edge and waved at a group of young people floating by on a long tour boat.

“How do you like Paris?” Preston asked.

“Incredible.” Clay raised his eyes, took a deep breath.

“How long are you guys staying?”

“A couple more days. Thanks for stepping away. I needed a break.” Just then his phone buzzed. “She keeps close tabs.”

Preston felt a rising anxiousness over what to say. He fought himself not to steer the conversation toward Vivienne. “So what business are the Blanks doing here?”

Clay picked up a rock and skipped it into the river. “Art stuff. You know Vivienne is working for Bracken? They've got a whole thing going on. Some big collector of Texas paintings is out here, so they're trying to buy up a bunch of this stuff, woo the collector.”

“French people love Texas,” Preston said.

Clay grinned. “'Cause it's the best.”

Preston lit a cigarette and offered one to Clay.

“No thanks,” Clay said. He was looking out at the river and the wooden boats grazing its concrete banks and the sky winding down to evening. Behind them, noisy cars passed in packs. During the periods of silence, Preston heard the lapping of the water.

“Almost makes me want to say a prayer,” Clay said.

Preston noticed his eyes were closed. Maybe he really was praying.

“Is Vivienne here?” Preston said.

Clay nodded. “She went to another museum today. She's been doing the museum rounds.” The breeze was picking up the loose strands of hair over his forehead, exposing his hairline in retreat. His nose was pink in the wind.

They stopped at a street vendor and bought dark German beers and sat in a pair of rickety metal chairs under some poplar trees. Clay drank his beer with heart, giving himself a foamy mustache with each sip. They talked about work for a while. Clay was in awe of the Roman ruins beneath Notre Dame, more for the visible layers of earth they revealed than for the ruins. Preston found he enjoyed the conversation. His French was lacking, and even in the best English-speakers the accents were thick. It was nice to just talk.

But Vivienne remained in the front of his mind. “So Vivienne is working with a collector here?”

“A lady from Texas who lives here,” Clay said.

“How's she doing?” For as often as he'd thought about her, he'd also told himself he was lucky. He'd escaped unscathed. But now that he knew she was somewhere in the city, the realization of a wound was growing on him.

“She's great. Do y'all stay in touch?” Clay let the question hang there.

Preston traced his thumb along his perspiring beer mug. “No.”

“Bracken didn't want to bring in a hoity-toity art-world chick,” Clay said. “Vivienne has a good eye and she's good on the eyes. I don't say that against her, it's just—it's just obvious.” Here he cleared his throat.

Preston swirled his beer around the bottom of the mug. “Is it obvious to her?”

Clay swallowed a full gulp. “I don't know. She doesn't really have anyone looking out for her. I look out for her, but I'm her best friend's husband and Bracken's son-in-law. I mean someone looking out for her who has something to lose, if that makes sense.”

Now Preston cleared his throat. “Is Timmy here?”

“He's been hanging out at the hotel bar and checking the markets. I'm too pumped with protective juices to let Waverly go anywhere on her own—” He paused. “Karlie's probably fooling around on him. Not that he'd do anything about it. He probably wouldn't. But sometimes I wish he'd just face it, you know.”

Preston didn't answer. He looked away from Clay toward a crowd of pigeons fighting over a baguette.

“She's an intense girl,” Clay said.

“Vivienne?” Preston said.

“No, Karlie.”

The sky was in full orange now; the sun had set, but its effulgence warmed the whole riverbank, even the faces of the vintage postcards in the street vendor's spinning stand. Preston was a little cold, increasingly troubled, and didn't want to put off the long Metro ride home after Clay jumped into a cab on Bracken's dime.

Clay sighed. “Sorry if I unloaded on you, man. Guess you kinda caught the brunt of me after hanging around my in-laws and three women all week.” He laughed. “Come to dinner tomorrow. I think the painting lady will be there too.” He said this as if Preston should be relieved.

They made their way back to the street and shook hands by the Metro station. Clay smacked Preston's shoulder with manly solidarity and said, “You better not bring that vest back to Texas.”

 

IV

Paris made Vivienne feel like a slow-budding flower. Each successive morning she woke imperceptibly blossomed, breathing more deeply, seeing more vividly, filled with energy. The effect was so granular that she hadn't perceived the change until today, when, through a part in the damask curtains, in the quiet of the vaulted room, she watched the morning sun cross over the empty arena of the Place Vendôme. Napoleon's old bronze column seemed to her a sort of sundial, or the gear at the center of a clock, a guide.

Karlie was asleep in the next room, without Timmy, a long lump beneath the duvet, crowned with a blond flame. The beauty of the morning swelled into a moment of tenderness. If a place like this existed in the world, then Vivienne could love Karlie despite her many, many flaws. There was no one else like her, after all. The traits that made her suspect were the very traits that made her endearing: the tartness, the cunning, the spontaneity.

Today Vivienne was finally meeting Kitty Crawford—seventy-something expat collector of Raleigh Wester's original watercolors, great-great-niece of one of the original Spindletop guys. Vivienne had tracked her down after discovering a replica of Wester's
Band of Charging Comanches
in an antiques store in Fredericksburg. Finding the painting's owner had taken weeks and happened only by chance, when Vivienne came across a picture, in an old catalog, of Kitty in a silk robe, with the caption
Collector of Texas
beneath her name. She looked her up online and clicked through the history of a woman who moved to Paris and took Texas with her. The walls of her apartment in the Latin Quarter were supposedly hung with early paintings of the Big Bend, the antlers of a buck shot by Sam Houston himself, and two of the first Texas flags ever sewn, one by the mother of Texas, Jane Long. When Vivienne had reached Kitty by phone, Kitty told her to come on over and take a look, as if it were a matter of a walk around the block.

The Wester painting suited Bracken's tastes, but it had something extra that kept Vivienne looking into it: the Comanches charging over the barren Edwards Plateau, wrenching back atop their naked horses as the Texas Rangers neared, the sunset behind them all a deep summer red—and, among them, Cynthia Ann Parker, the Texan girl captured by Comanches as a child, tearing back her buffalo skins to reveal her pale breast. The watercolor blurred their faces, but their bodies were tense and alive. She kept the reproduction by her desk. It was the only picture she had up in her office. She glanced at it probably a dozen times a day, and it never lost force for her.

Bracken's associates—all of them men—teased her for it. They couldn't understand why a girl like Vivienne would hang an Indian war picture in her office. Vivienne tried explaining it was Cynthia Ann's last moment of freedom before the Texans captured her, the moment she revealed herself to save her children. After this, the white men took her to the piney woods of East Texas and made her live with her white relatives. They were strangers to her, and she ran away as often as she could. They found her praying and sobbing in the forest, singing Comanche songs.

The associates didn't like this story. It wasn't so much the story, Vivienne thought, as the fact that she was telling it. They looked at her as though she wasn't doing her job. Her official title was vague: “Junior Consultant.” She liked her office—just as Bracken promised, she had a view—and she liked dressing up and having somewhere to go every morning that felt legitimate and professional, but for a year, all she'd done was conduct light research and send suggestions to Bracken. When he actually made a purchase, he did it through a nonprofit he'd set up in his company's name and worked with an art brokerage or, depending on the scale of the piece, an auction house. This process could take several weeks or months and involved tax attorneys and financial managers.

Occasionally he sent Vivienne out to meet with a gallery owner, to collect information, and, as he put it, to “make an impression.” Indeed, “making an impression” was Vivienne's strength. She tried to think of herself as the face of Bracken's endeavor, and she did her best to look the part. The guys loved her, and, true to her fantasy, they all wore suits. Bracken requested that she “take care of them.” Vivienne took this to mean she should act as a sort of female confidante. She was expected to join them once or twice a week for drinks after work, to boost morale around projects, to unite the team. She had dinner with the guys she thought were cute, but most of them were married. There was one single attorney, but he was leaving the firm. After the goodbye party they went out to his truck and he kissed her. He was tall, from Fort Worth, and he'd recently bought a small ranch outside Dripping Springs. He was so good-natured and fun, she thought they'd connected, that he would open new doors. But it fizzled. Vivienne cried for a night and thought of Preston.

Bracken would saunter into her office on Friday afternoons, clutching his Scotch, and tell her how pretty she was and how much they all liked having her around. If any of the guys heard him, they'd come in and tell her too, until they blocked the doorway. A big chunk of twangy men telling her how pretty she was. To her surprise, she didn't like it at all; she hated them for it. Sometimes, when she had it in her, she'd laugh and shout, “Sexual harassment!” and push them all out. She worked up the nerve to ask Bracken about Paris on one of those Friday afternoons. He was just lubricated enough to think it was a wild idea. She sold him on the fact that Kitty Crawford was notoriously private and reluctant to sell, yet here she was—eager to meet. Bracken announced that they were on their way to Paris, that Vivienne had a done a superb job making an impression—and would she mind escorting a couple of the boys out tonight?