Anio Szado (6 page)

So much for hope. Tonio had sent a friend to fetch her from the gangplank. True, they had both long since given up on faithfulness, but that didn’t excuse a man from the requirement to serve his wife. He had claimed his absence was to avoid the ever-ravenous photographers. And there had indeed been photographers waiting. Before disembarking, she had run back to her cabin twice to check her makeup and hair. Imagine wanting to avoid photographers; it was absurd. It was an outrage that he hadn’t wanted to be seen with her at the port—and worse that in the months since her arrival, he had not yet changed his ways.

Did he think she would just roll over and slink back to her cave? She squeezed Binty’s knee.

He asked, “You’re sure your husband is at his club tonight?”

“He’s there.” Probably with some fawning Fifth Avenue socialite.

“It would have been a lot easier to invite him to join us at your place. That could be good for some raving and pummeling. I might even pick up a dashing scar or two.”

“That’s not the point, darling. Why should I stay out of
his way if he’s taking his friends out on the town?” The other evening, Consuelo had seen Tonio leaving Le Pavillon with an attractive girl. Even as he scorched his wife’s heart, she had felt the tug of desire. “Let him see how it feels to face his spouse’s darling in public.”

“As opposed to seeing me in the lobby of the apartment, as usual?”

“It isn’t the same, and you know it.” She kissed Binty’s cheek as the taxi stopped. “How do I look?”

“Gorgeous,” he said, without glancing at her. He returned his wallet to his inside jacket pocket and stepped out onto the street.

“Driver,” said Consuelo as Binty walked around to open her door. “Here’s something special for your wife.”

She dropped the irritating compact onto the front seat. It never hurt to give to one’s fellow man. One day you might need someone to give generously to you.

Consuelo entered the Alliance Française ahead of Binty and walked through the foyer to the members’ desk. Behind it, ancient Philippe bent his brittle frame to speak in an undertone to a uniformed teenage boy. His voice rumbled like distant thunder across the foyer. “That’s her. She tries every few days. Remember, Monsieur doesn’t allow—”

Consuelo interrupted with a clap of her hands.

“Good evening, madame. You kindly grace our lobby again.” In this place where the default language was French, Philippe always spoke English to Consuelo. It was a comment on the quality of her accent, she was sure, and proof of his disdain for her Central American roots. More than that: it was just another way these
émigrés
tried to deny that she was the wife of the world’s greatest living Frenchman. She wasn’t fooled by the stock deference in the old lizard’s bow.

Philippe continued. “And good evening, sir. Welcome to the
Alliance Française. Your first visit? You have come for tonight’s show?”

“What’s on?”

The boy answered. “The Fabulous Felson Singers. They’re fabulous just like they say. But if you don’t have tickets, we’re sold out.”

“We will make an exception,” said Philippe. “Complimentary box seats. All I require is that you follow me directly to the theater. Only the theater is open to nonmembers—as Madame well knows.”

“The Felsons?” said Binty. “You couldn’t pay me.”

And at any rate, thought Consuelo, we’re not here to see a show, but to make one. “We’ve come for drinks and dinner,” she said. “We’re here to join my husband.”

“And his guest,” the boy said, but Philippe pressed a hand on his shoulder, shutting him down.

The old man made a show of studying something on the desk. “Dinner? Then Mr. Binty is perhaps a new member?”

“I am a member,” said Consuelo. “Binty is with me.”

Philippe looked apologetic. “That is to say, as I have said before, your husband is a member. You are always more than welcome, provided he chooses to sign you in.” He put his fingertips together and assumed a sympathetic expression. “I was just telling our new desk boy that our policy is very strict. Members may bring up to three guests at a time for dinner; however, guests may not bring guests. As always, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to return with a cardholding member.”

A sculpture of a nasty Gallic rooster was within reach on the countertop. Its tail feathers would look good imbedded in Philippe’s skinny, speckled scalp.

Consuelo spoke to the boy. “What’s your name?”

“Carl.”

“Stand up, Carl. Look at me.”

Philippe raised an unruly ashen eyebrow as the boy scrambled to his feet.

“You know what my husband looks like, Carl? Tall, wide-shouldered? The famous writer.”

“Yes, madame.”

“Go into the dining room and tell him his wife is here—with her boyfriend—to join him and his lovely friend.”

“They’re expecting you?”

“My husband should always expect me.”

When the boy had gone, Consuelo turned to Binty. “Tit for tat,” she said.

“Who’s the tit?”

Consuelo began to sweat a little as she waited for Carl to reappear. Before their marriage, she and Tonio had exchanged a promise: if one of them proved to be unfaithful, no longer would they be beholden to each other. In body and soul, if not on paper, they would be free. They had left each other and returned to each other a dozen times or more—but until now, no promise had proven stronger than their vow of unending love. Freedom had always failed to break the bond that was Consuelo’s destiny.

When Tonio had almost lost himself—besieged by admirers and flatterers, caught in the quicksand of Paris parties and cafés—Consuelo had been his lifeline, his handhold for his art. When he would emerge for a nap or a clean shirt or a fresh start, she would coddle him, assail him, commission him: demanding five pages of writing for each visit to her boudoir.

Of course other men had loved Consuelo, too. How could they not? She’d been a young beauty, a patient angel, a girl who tried so hard to be good. And always the threat of losing her had brought her husband home. He had turned planes around to stop her; showered her with presents; followed her across seas. He trained her over the years on how to reel him back. A crisis was always more effective than complacency.

She had never made an impenetrable secret of her dalliances. But never before had she resorted to such boldness as this. When entertaining a lover almost under the nose of one’s husband no
longer amounted to a crisis, there was no choice but to put all at risk.

As Carl reappeared, Philippe said, his voice heavy with implication, “It seems that Monsieur is not in the dining room after all; isn’t that right?”

“He’s coming out,” said the boy.

Consuelo laughed. Philippe disappeared, defeated, probably telling himself he was only leaving to be discreet.

Tonio strode into the lobby, his footsteps firm. “What is the meaning of this, Consuelo?”

She straightened to her full height—five feet, two inches—and looked up at her husband towering a foot taller. There was no one and nothing more exciting than Tonio angry. Her heart might explode with the thrill of it. Her voice rose on the crest of it. “I am allowed to go out! I am not a dog to be kept in a cage!”

Just let him provoke her, and she would drop to her knees, barking and howling. Let him push her to it, and she would grind his last ounce of self-control into the ground. She would feel his large hands on her, yanking her to standing, his hot breath on her face as he shook sense into her and propelled her out the door. The stone steps would scrape her hands and bruise her knees—as Tonio and Binty, made mad by jealousy, exchanged blows over her prone and trembling body. Later, in the weak hours of the morning, Tonio would come to beg her forgiveness and she would collapse like Spanish lace, delicate and beautiful, unraveling in his arms.

But her husband’s voice grew low, steady, and cold. “I don’t care anymore what you do, Consuelo, or with whom. Only don’t interrupt me when I am in an important meeting.”

“A meeting! I am not so stupid! Show me who is so important that you can’t even give a minute to your wife.”

“I am conferring with a general who has come from Washington. He is an extremely busy man. I have only an hour of his time. Good night.”

“Tonio, wait!” Consuelo took Binty’s arm. “Aren’t you going to say hello to my boyfriend?”

“I could say hello, or I could continue to pretend that your friend is invisible, as I have these last few weeks: it is all the same to me.”

“How refreshing,” said Binty.

The men considered each other.

Then the taller of the two held out his hand. “I wish to you,” he said in awkward, heavily accented English, “a good evening, monsieur. But … 
pas ici
. Not ’ere.”

Consuelo said, “Don’t tell us where we can or can’t go! I’m not your pet lapdog!”

Her lover removed her arm from his. He grasped and shook her husband’s broad hand. “Jack Binty,” he said.

“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.”

I was craning my head to glimpse the Alliance Française as it came into view. It was a square marble building, just two stories high but with solidity and dignity in its design. Its second-floor balconies were bright with flowers. American and French flags hung above the sidewalk and the limestone steps. On the main floor, the soaring windows were positioned to let members look out and to stop passersby from peering in. My father had designed it to elevate its members above petty worries and weariness, into the realm of comfortable intellectual camaraderie and cultural pleasures. He had wanted it to be a place where one could enter and feel removed from the worries of the world.

When I came here as a child, several times a week, it had seemed to me in every way the refuge Papa had sought to shape. He used to hurry Leo and me from home to its lobby, then leave us to do as we pleased. A good part of my adolescence had been spent playing on this building’s grand staircase, under its desks, spinning on the stools of the bar, falling asleep in droning lectures, falling in love with sons of the members—and later, when as a high school and fashion school student I had tutored here part-time (English to the expats; French to their children), falling for certain members themselves.

I hadn’t been to the Alliance for a year. A long time, but not long enough to become inured to what waited beyond the oak doors. No loved one would be there to greet me; my father had been gone for almost two years. Uncle Yannick was still an adviser to the dining room, but God knew how he could manage
that now with his own busy restaurant to run. Leo still frequented the bar now and then, but as for tonight? Full of the whisky I had brought home, he had hopped out of the taxi a few blocks away and sent me forward on my own.

“Order for us both,” he had said, “and I’ll be right there. Just need to take care of some quick business.”

“Here?” The block comprised upscale shops and a small hotel.

“Opportunity is on every corner, if you know where to look.”

I exited the cab and climbed the stairs to the Alliance’s door. I had been nineteen when Papa’s memorial service was held, and twenty-one when I joined Mother in Montreal. Now, at twenty-two, I was living with my brother in a basement, eating his food, taking his only bed. My return to the Alliance was to celebrate a job that promised endless hard work for a boss I couldn’t trust—and only a remote chance at recognition. I wilted on my feet.

Buck up: people are looking.

A petite, buxom woman with a fine Latin complexion stood in the foyer. She studied me while her companion cleaned his glasses with a handkerchief. She was perhaps forty, and exotically pretty despite her frown and red-mouthed pout. Her eyes were large and attentive. Her curves, in a stylish, unadorned burgundy dress, had a voluptuousness that American women could never quite convey and that the Frenchwomen of the Alliance would likely spurn as earthy and unchecked. The dress seemed to float along the lines of her body in a fashion I had never before seen firsthand. Valentina, I thought; I had seen pictures of something like this. It was obviously well made. The very craft of it was reassuring.

I could design something like that. If I let myself. I could sew it, too. I could do anything: Madame Fiche probably had a mile of such fabric stashed away.

I approached the reception desk and smiled at the boy who sat there. He looked sweet, but what had happened to Philippe? All those years, it had always been Philippe.

“I’m Mignonne Lachapelle,” I announced. It was the first time in all my life that I had given my name at the desk.

“Good evening, miss. May I see your membership card?”

On the wall beside the desk hung a portrait of my father. Below it was a plaque.
Émile Lachapelle, 1882–1940. Visionnaire, fondateur, architecte
.

“I don’t have a card. I’ve never needed one.”

The boy shifted in discomfort. “Maybe some other desk boys were more loosey-goosey, miss. But now we’re very strict and all that. You need to show a card or come with a paid-up member.”

“I have a sort of honorary lifetime membership.”

The boy hesitated. “I’m not sure we have those.”