Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word (18 page)

“Food’s too good to miss,” he says amiably, sitting sideways on as I had to do, so we’re now directly facing each other. As
he maneuvers himself to avoid an avalanche of coats, I realize that every time I look up from now on, I will be looking straight
into those ink-stained eyes.

“Oh, boy, this is so great. Only Paris has the power to send me as high as a flag on the Fourth of July.”

“Nellie.
South Pacific
. ‘A Wonderful Guy.’ ” I smile back tentatively.

“Hey there, you’re a fan of the Great American Musical. Just so happens I teach a class at my college on the history of American
musical theater. It’s kind of a hobby of mine. So what’s your all-time favorite?”

“
West Side Story
.”

“And then?”

“
Singing in the Rain
.”

“After that?”

“
Grease
.”

“Not bad choices. How about
An American in Paris
?”

“The jury’s still out. You’re the first American I’ve met in Paris.”

Jesus. Was that me just answering a question? Or was it flirting? I didn’t think I knew how anymore.

“Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire?” he asks. He has great teeth.

“Gene Kelly.”

I’m pretty good at this sort of game, though I’m rather surprised to be doing it with a guy I met five seconds ago.

I try one of my own. “Jets or Sharks?”

“Sharks, of course.”

Yes, he’s definitely a Shark. Too dark and intense to be a Jet. “Right answer.” Now I’m taking charge. As usual. “Was
Gigi
American or French?”

“It was Lerner/Loewe. Their first musical after
My Fair Lady
.”

“I
so
loved Leslie Caron, wasn’t she gorgeous?”

“Yes, though I don’t care much for blondes.”

My hand goes instinctively to my dark hair. Idiot! It’s not a compliment. “Something’s just occurred to me. We’re sitting
in Colette’s Brasserie. Didn’t Colette write
Gigi
? The original story, I mean?”

“Hey, English lady, you’re quite the expert.”

The waiter has come to take our orders. He looks first at me.

“I think I need some help,” I say, looking at the American, as there really isn’t any other place to look.

“If I’m going to be your culinary adviser, I think we should introduce ourselves. I’m Dan.”

“And I’m Hope.”

“I like your name.”

“My mother liked it, too. Although she was none too keen on me.”

As the waiter looks on, Dan patiently takes me through the menu dish by dish.

“I want everything.” I sigh. “It all sounds delicious. But as I have to choose, I think I’ll go for the calamari with red
peppers and shrimp sauce followed by sea bass with spinach and
saucisse de morteau
.”

“Good choices. I guess you’ll be wanting white. How about sharing a bottle and seeing how it goes?”

For some reason, this suggestion puts me on edge.

“Look, I’m sorry, Dan, I know this must be awkward for you. You really don’t have to talk to me. I’m quite happy to just enjoy
my food and read my guidebook. You’ve been really kind, but I can manage perfectly well from now on.”

“Do I take that as a brush-off? Or are you being charmingly English, apologizing for something that you haven’t done and certainly
isn’t your fault? Tell me honestly, have you ever come across an American who doesn’t like to talk?”

I feel myself blushing.

“Hey, English lady, if you’d rather commune silently with your sea bass, that’s fine with me. But if I can seduce you with
a discussion on the semiotics of
The Wizard of Oz
, or the rise of tap-dancing in the McCarthy era . . .”

I’m blushing deeper.
Be reasonable, Hope. He’s not really on a mission to seduce you, it’s a figure of speech
.

• • •

When I finally look over into the restaurant, I become aware that all the other customers have gone. It must be because we’re
seated in the leper colony that Monsieur Arnaud didn’t need to turn us out for the restaurant’s second sitting. My watch says
eleven-thirty.

“My God, the time. We’ve emptied the place out. So much for my early night,” I say.

“Yes, we do seem to have driven everyone away. Though I can’t imagine why anyone would want to sleep when they’re in this
enchanted city.”

“You have a point. Still, I need to find myself a taxi. I’m staying on the opposite side of the river. It’s been a lovely
evening.”

“A cab may not be so easy to find in this part of town,” says Dan, glancing out of the window over the deserted side street,
“and you probably shouldn’t wander too far on your own at this time of night. Let’s look for one together.”

“That would be great. Thank you.”

We pay our separate bills and turn toward the coat stand. Our jackets have become entwined in an awkward embrace. Dan untangles
them and helps me on with mine. Monsieur Arnaud smiles beatifically as we leave the restaurant together.

“I have a great idea,” says Dan once we’re out on the street. “Just look at this glorious night. So warm I don’t even need
this.” He swings his jacket over his shoulder, hooking a finger through the loop on the inside of the collar. “How about an
exclusive Paris by Night tour? I lived here for three years as a student, and it would be my pleasure to be your guide.”

“Dan, seven hours! That’s how long I walked today.” I pause. “Oh, well, I guess a couple more won’t make much difference.”

This is not the answer I should have given. I must be crazy. What am I thinking of? I’m standing here with a complete stranger
in a foreign city in the middle of the night. His next move is probably to drag me down some stone steps beside the Seine,
steal my jewelry (well, my watch, which is the only jewelry I’m wearing), rape me at knifepoint, and dump me in the river,
as good as dead. Or dead.

“Shall we head for the Seine?”

There, I knew it.

“It’s so beautiful to walk along the embankment when all the traffic and the fumes have gone. There’ll be hardly anyone about.
Except for lovers, of course.”

We’re heading toward the scene of the intended crime. I’m a little drunk—not so far gone as to not know what I’m doing, just
far enough gone not to care—but for some reason I trust this man, this easygoing college professor who wears J. Crew sweaters
and teaches English literature at a prestigious university in Massachusetts; is crazy for corny musicals, and has a beautiful
lawyer wife and two small children back home.

We walk and we talk. I tell him about my midlife crisis, but only the bits that make me sound interesting. I don’t mention
my age or my dodgy relationships with my husband and my dying mother. I explain how I’m at a crossroads in my career, looking
for a new creative path to follow, taking my time to think and travel and reflect before I throw myself into something new.
None of it’s actually a lie, it’s just not nearly as true as it might be. We talk about books and movies and plays we’ve seen
and countries we’ve been to and why he loves Paris and why I love New York and why Bush should be hanged, drawn, and quartered.
He’s less enthusiastic about this last idea than I am. He tells me about his clever wife and how little time they seem to
have to talk these days. I look at my watch and it’s now two a.m., and I’m about to say, “I think we’d better find that cab,”
when he says, “Would you like a nightcap? The bar at my hotel will still be open, and it’s only a ten-minute walk from here
to the Rue de l’Université.”

I hesitate. “Let’s head in that direction, and if we don’t see a cab, I can call for one from your hotel.”

• • •

“I really must go,” I say after the second brandy, as I sink deeper into the burgundy velvet sofa.

“And I think you really must stay,” says Dan, moving deftly from the armchair, taking my hand, and pulling me to my feet.
He traces my cheek with his fingers. “You’re quite something, little English lady.”

He keeps hold of my hand as we walk across the bar, through the deserted lobby, and single file up the narrow staircase. A
zillion contradictory thoughts are racing through my mind. This can’t be happening. Jack. Jack!
Jack!
I’ve never been unfaithful to Jack. Never even seriously considered it. My God, this Yank is handsome. And so young. Ten
years younger than me, at least.
Don’t do it, you fool,
says the voice of reason in my head.
You’d be a fool not to
, says the voice of temptation. Twenty years of fidelity, about to be nuked in a single night.
But what about my marriage?
says the voice of reason.
Yeah, what about it? What has this got to do with marriage?
says temptation. It’s not too late to turn and run.
Oh, yes, it is. Much too late
. And now I want it to be too late. I need it to be too late. As long as the lights stay out. As long as he doesn’t see the
real me. The me that’s fifty. Oh, Jack, I really never intended . . .

I feel like a nuclear reactor about to pop. I blame the underwear. I’ve been carried away by my underwear. A key is turning
in a lock. As the door slams behind us and he presses me up against it, his lips on mine, his tongue investigating the inside
of my mouth, his hands roaming over my body, lifting my skirt, tearing at the buttons on my blouse, my hands pulling his shirt
from his trousers, grappling with the buckle on his belt, unzipping him, all thoughts are extinguished. The sexual famine
is officially over.

• • •

I awake in a cold sweat, a shaft of light beamed across the bed into my sore eyes from the crack between the wooden shutters.
I’m lying in a pool of something. Is it blood? Have I been stabbed? Is that what happens after a fantastic fuck with a total
stranger? First he fucks you, then he fucks you again, then he stabs you. But there’s no pain, just me covered in sweat lying
on a soaking sheet. I feel along my body, too scared to look. I’m still wearing the slip, but the bra and panties seem to
have escaped. I gingerly place my hand beneath the arch of my back, praying that the six feet three inches of all-American
boy lying on his belly to my left won’t wake up, and that I’m not hemorrhaging eight pints of blood. I bring my hand back
round to my front. It’s even wetter than before, but there’s not a spot of blood.

Slowly, terrifyingly, it dawns on me. I am lying on a hotel sheet in a Sabbia Rosa slip, drenched in the watery excretions
of a menopausal sex siren. I have been awoken from postcoital slumber by the kind of night sweat that can only be induced
by plummeting levels of estrogen. The stabbing scenario seems almost attractive at this point. If he wakes and sees me lying
here like a beached jellyfish, I shall simply have to jump straight out of the window.

The bed creaks as I roll over and onto the floor on my hands and knees before carefully, quietly standing up and tiptoeing
my way to the bathroom, picking up bits of discarded clothing as I go. If only I can escape this hotel bedroom without waking
the American (I can’t even remember his name at this point, I’m in such a state of panic), all will be salvaged. I sloosh
myself with water from the sink, rub myself dry on
his
towel, and dress in last night’s much mussed clothing. The American stirs as I turn the doorknob. Safe. Thank God. Out in
the corridor, I take my notepad from my handbag and start scribbling.

Dear American,

Thank you for showing me Paris at night. Very, very much appreciated. Have a nice life.

Yours,

Hope

P.S. My e-mail, should you ever want to get in touch, is
[email protected]

I know I should feel guilty, but I don’t. I know I’m trying to repair my relationship with Jack, not destroy it, but I don’t
see why this should get in the way. I’m walking on air. Despite my age, despite the hot flashes—and now the night sweats too—I’m
still a fully functioning sexual being. I came not just once but three times! It was award-winning stuff. I didn’t think about
tomorrow’s to-do list once, I didn’t have to conjure up a fantasy about a dark and dangerous stranger to get my juices flowing,
I had my dark—and potentially dangerous—stranger right there on the bed with me, lapping expertly at my labia and making me
bite hard into my own hand to stop me from Oh-my-God-ing at the top of my voice and waking the occupants of the next room.

I don’t suppose sex with Jack will ever again be like this. It changed after Olly was born, in both frequency and intensity.
It stopped being a priority. We knew that was normal and natural. Our lovemaking still had the ability to surprise us sometimes,
to teach us something new about our bodies and what gave us pleasure. I’m not sure exactly when I lost the urge, when it became
a chore rather than a pleasant diversion, when I started going to bed after Jack was asleep. But that would all change now.
Armed with my Sabbia Rosa lingerie and the knowledge that my sexuality had been merely sleeping rather than killed off completely,
I could surely find a way back to Jack.

• • •

Over two more days and nights in Paris, I walked for hours at a time, learned to navigate the Metro like a local, ate and
drank in endless cafés and
salons du thé
, exclaimed at the beauty of my surroundings, and slept soundly. I did keep thinking about Dan, wondering whether I might
bump into him by chance and what might be the consequences if I did. He didn’t know the name of my hotel, so it would have
been up to me to get in touch. But I was too scared to, in case he had no interest in a repetition of our one-night stand,
in case it hadn’t been nearly as good an experience for him as it had been for me, in case I got in deeper than I dared.
Keep it in perspective,
I kept telling myself. Which didn’t keep me from looking and hoping that chance would bring us together again, that he’d
turn up at the same café or gallery, or that we’d find ourselves sharing a train car on the Metro.

By the time I checked back in to Gare du Nord, it all seemed something of a dream.
Cherish it for what it was,
I told myself, putting my bag into the X-ray machine and looking back over my shoulder one last time. Cherish it as a magnificent
one-off, an experience intensified by its very singularity, one that repetition would only dissipate and dilute.