Paris, He Said (3 page)

After they’d been together for three months, Colin gave her two books that she’d had on her to-read list for years,
Anna Karenina
and
Endless Love
. (“
Endless Love
!” cried Melissa when Jayne told her about the gift. “That book broke my heart. Colin must be in love with you. But what’s he trying to say? It didn’t end so well for David and Jade. Or for Anna.”) One thing he hadn’t said was that he loved her. She hadn’t said it yet either, but the week before she met Laurent, Colin had talked about introducing her to his parents when they would be in town over New Year’s.

Melissa and Liesel thought Colin was good-looking and sweet, and if he made her happy, this was what mattered most, but didn’t it bother her that he wasn’t interested in going to art galleries with her? He might tolerate museums, but wasn’t this true of most of the people she knew?

She didn’t mind very much because she didn’t go to galleries as often as she used to. If she hadn’t met Laurent, she would have continued dating Colin, even if she wasn’t sure he was the man she’d been waiting for. That man seemed to be Laurent.

The sky outside Laurent’s bedroom was cloudless, the west-facing window open a few inches, its dark blue curtains parted to let in a breeze tinged with cold humidity from the nearby river. She would be late for work but didn’t care, her heart buoyed by this defiance of a rule she had always observed without question. They were still in bed, the mattress smaller than she’d expected, but Laurent was subletting an acquaintance’s apartment and had explained unprompted that he hadn’t bought a bigger bed for his brief stay in New York because there was no space to store the owner’s. A queen would also have crowded the room more than it already was. That he worried about this at all touched her.

“I’m not being silly,” he said, kissing her bare shoulder. “Only honest. I must be one of many men who have told you they are crazy about you,
un vrai coup de foudre
, Jayne.”

She shook her head, lacing her fingers with his. “No, no one I’ve gone out with before you spoke French, at least not very well.”

His laughter was subdued. “Whatever language they spoke, some of them must have said the same thing.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she said, smiling. His unshaven cheek scratched her as he kissed her shoulder again. In his hair were the commingled scents of a grassy cologne and smoke from the Gitanes he bought expensively at a tobacconist near Grand Central (“They must be fresh, or I cannot smoke them,” he’d told her. “They are not always so good where I buy them in New York. In Paris, they are never stale.”), an addicting masculine perfume. He already occupied a larger place in her life than she wanted him to, but she wouldn’t tell him this, not even in the languorous tones of postcoital flirtation.

“I haven’t had that many boyfriends,” she said. “Not serious ones, anyway.” Maybe it would be smarter to lie, but Laurent would likely sense it if she did.

Men of his pedigree—wealthy, European, sophisticated, quite a bit older but not perversely so, she didn’t think—their paths did not often cross her own, except when they came into the boutique where she and her Florentine boss, a woman close to Laurent’s age, sold Italian shoes marked up by three times their wholesale price. Men like Laurent invariably were accompanied by girlfriends or wives. They might smile and look her over when their wives’ backs were turned, but they did not do more than this. If they had come back later to ask for her number, she would have been suspicious. She did not need a married man in her life with his guilty conscience, or worse, his rich man’s sense of entitlement. She hoped Laurent wasn’t married. He had told her over their first dinner together at a restaurant in Midtown—no prices on the menu and a wine list nearly an inch thick—that he was divorced and had been for years. She’d believed him, but later, riding in a taxi back to her apartment after declining his invitation to go home with him (on their second date a few nights later, she did not refuse), she realized that it would not be difficult for him to lie about his marital status, his wife conveniently in Paris, leaving him free to seduce girls their children’s age in New York.

The night of Vie Bohème’s opening, however, Laurent was not with any woman—wife, mistress, or worshipful, pretty assistant—that she could see, and he eventually made his way over to where she and Liesel stood talking to Bernard, Laurent touching Jayne’s shoulder lightly from behind. She nearly upended her champagne glass when she turned and saw that it was he, the beautiful man from the other side of the gallery, her first flustered thought that he wanted her to make room for him to pass.

“No,” he said, taking her elbow. “Don’t move. I wondered if you would like more champagne.” He nodded toward the half-empty flute in her hand. “Are you enjoying it?”

“It’s so good,” Liesel interrupted. “What kind is it?”

Jayne thought that her friend was already a little drunk. The champagne bottle’s telltale orange label was clearly visible.

“It is Veuve Clicquot,” said Laurent. “I will tell the
maître de cave
at the vineyard that you like it. We are friends.”

“Really?” said Liesel. “You know him? I hope he gave you a good deal.”

Laurent chuckled. “Oh, no. He doesn’t need to. His champagne sells itself.”

Jayne glanced at Bernard, blond, tall, remote. He did not appear to be listening; he was staring beyond Liesel’s shoulder, a look of studied blankness on his handsome stubbled face.

“I’d better not have any more,” said Jayne to Laurent. “But thank you.” The thought that this man was too old for her arrived and was turned away. “I get a headache if I have more than one glass.”

“Ah, all right,” said Laurent. “We have Perrier if you would like it instead. No one will notice if you switch.”

(The next morning, when Jayne called to rehash the party with Liesel, her friend would say, a little jealous but also genuinely irritated by Laurent’s presumption, “Why should he or anyone else have cared if you didn’t want to drink? It’s not like we’re in high school.” And in the next breath, “Do you really want to go out with that guy instead of Colin? At least Colin was born in the same decade as you.”)

“No, that’s okay,” said Jayne. “I’ll just stick with this one glass.”

“Stick with this?” he said. “American expressions are so funny. Mind your own, what do you say, beehive? That’s the one I like best.”

“Beeswax,” she said, laughing. “I don’t think I’ve heard that one since third grade.”

“I read it somewhere,” he said. “I had to look it up. In France we say ‘Occupe-toi de tes oignons.’”

“Mind your own onions,” she said.

He nodded. “Alors, vous parlez français.”

“Un peu, c’est tout,” she said.

He smiled, his eyes still pinning her. “Only a little? Vous mentez, c’est mon soupçon.”

She didn’t think she was lying, not exactly, but before she could decide how to reply, he took her hand and at last introduced himself as one of the gallery owners, he and his partner both from Paris. He shook Liesel’s hand, bowing slightly over it, and complimented her on her good taste. Liesel looked uncertain. “These paintings,” said Laurent. He pointed at the college boys on the wall. “Aren’t they astonishing? Bernard is very talented, yes?”

“Oh my god, he’s amazing,” cried Liesel.

At her side, Bernard reddened but looked flattered. “Thanks,” he said. “I think I like them too.”

“Good,” said Laurent. “Because they are extraordinary.”

“I agree,” said Jayne. Bernard’s work was very good, but it annoyed her that he kept looking around while she and Liesel tried to talk to him, searching for someone more important to ingratiate himself with. She also sensed that he had no real interest in Liesel. He would sleep with her and let her buy him dinner from time to time, but Jayne doubted that he would offer Liesel the commitment her friend was hoping for. She was being grouchy, Jayne supposed, and Liesel would have said that Jayne was jealous because Bernard was in the show, and she was not. Probably she was jealous, but this didn’t negate the fact that he was about as charming as a stubbed toe.

They were interrupted by a hovering couple that Jayne thought she recognized from another opening a year or so earlier. They were art collectors, not penniless gallery rats there for the free wine and artisan cheese; the woman was a highlighted blonde in a short orange dress; the man, his baldness partially hidden under a golf cap, wore a gray cashmere sweater and black wool pants. Each kissed Laurent on both cheeks before leading him to another corner of the gallery, the whole space now crowded, the air having grown warmer and heavier with laughter and heightened conversation in the last quarter hour.

Laurent circled back to Jayne an hour later when she was on the verge of slinking home to eat cereal alone in the kitchen, her roommate already out for the night with her classmates, as Kelsey often was on Fridays. In their apartment with its mice in the walls and the noisy upstairs neighbors, Jayne would stand with her cereal bowl and stare out the window at the faded brick building across the street, replaying in her head the brief exchange with Laurent.

While Liesel flirted and leaned as close to Bernard as he allowed, Jayne was wondering if she had the courage to return to Vie Bohème to catch another glimpse of its owner, even if he would know what she was up to, and think her foolish or else easy prey. But I suppose I am, she thought.

Now he was at her side, steering her away from the door. “If you’re free,” he said, “I’d like to take you to dinner. This Tuesday? Because I read the other day that this is the night when many restaurants serve the freshest fish. You like fish, I hope.”

It was Friday now. She worked Tuesday evenings until nine, but already she knew that she would call in sick if neither of the other two part-timers could be convinced to take her shift. She might be fired over this man, but the thought was not so terrible. She’d been thinking of looking for a part-time job that did not require her to stand for hours, even when no one was in the store.

“I do like fish,” she said. “I think Tuesday should be okay.”

“Is Monday better?” he asked, smiling, she thought, at her hesitation.

Monday
would
be better. It was one of her nights off. But if she said yes, she might seem too eager.

Still, did it matter? They were adults, even if she didn’t often feel like one.

“Monday is probably okay too,” she said.

“The fish won’t be as fresh,” he said. “But we will have steak instead. If you like it.”

“I do, but I don’t eat it very often.”

“Good for you. I don’t either. Only four or five times a week.”

She blinked. “Four or five times? I’m not sure that’s a good—”

“I am, how do you say it? I am kidding you,” he said, his eyes crinkling. He had a lot of wrinkles. She had some too, especially when she smiled, which she had been told since childhood by her mother and grandmother to do often because it made every girl a little prettier. Jayne had never heard anyone apply this rule to the boys she knew, and sometimes she had frowned fiercely when ordered to smile.

“Do you remember my name?” she asked. The question exhilarated her. Maybe she was trying to punish him. Why did he think he could tease her?

“Of course I do,” he said. “Julie.”

This was probably another attempt to tease her, but his face gave nothing away. “No, it’s Jayne.”

“Ah, even better.”

•    •    •

A few days after she learned that the job at her alma mater had gone to someone else—the news coming in a cowardly letter, the director’s name probably signed by her secretary—Laurent suggested that Jayne leave New York with him. It was an easy decision, once she understood that his offer was sincere. He had been encouraging her for several months, within days of their first date, to spend more time making art, and even though she hadn’t admitted it to Liesel or Melissa, she had begun to wonder if he was considering putting her in one of Vie Bohème’s shows—and if it were in Paris?—she could hardly stand to complete the thought.

There was also her suspicion that she had fallen in love with him. She didn’t want to be with anyone else, this much she was sure of. She still cared for Colin and regretted that she had hurt him, but her feelings for the assured, worldly Laurent were stronger. And the job rejection had stung: they had hired a recent graduate, purportedly one with more experience in international programs. She had a hunch that her rival was also a man, which she later discovered was true, the smiling face of the turncoat director flashing through her mind. She wondered what she had done wrong in the series of campus interviews—maybe it was the spilled coffee?—but in calmer moments knew this to be ridiculous. “If it is not for the reasons they stated in the letter,” said Laurent, “you will never find out why. Do not waste more time thinking about it.”

“I know you’re right, but it still bugs me,” she said.

“You must learn to live with uncertainty.”

“Or else I will be miserable.” She paused. “Yes, I know.” He sounded like her father, but she didn’t tell him this.

“Six weeks will give you enough time to prepare, I hope,” he said.

A moment later he added, “Please understand that I am not proposing marriage. But I do not want you to bring home other men. You are with me, yes?”

“I am,” she said, surprised. “I wouldn’t think of bringing home another man. I’m not like that.”

He held her gaze, trying to suppress a smile. “You say that now, but it isn’t impossible that you will change your mind. Beautiful women often change their minds. I have seen it happen more than once.”

Did it happen to you with someone else? she wondered, but didn’t ask. Did he really think that her desires and allegiances could mutate so quickly? Maybe he thought this of all women. “What about you?” she asked. “Are you going to bring home other women if we’re living together?”

Or men?
But she didn’t think he slept with men.

“No,” he said. “No question. But what you do and what I do outside of the apartment, that is not for the other person to worry over. All right?”