Parisian Promises (6 page)

Annie and Karen stood up, taking this as their cue to leave the salon, but Madame was having none of it.

“You must stay and chat with your hostess,
n'est-ce pas
?” she demanded. “Even in your wild west California, people don't just up and leave their host, do they?”

“We didn't mean to upset you, Madame,” Annie apologized. “We were concerned about the proximity of the bomb to your house, that's all.”

“That's very sweet of you, but only
ma belle rousse
asked me how I feel. The two of you just want to get back to your rooms and ignore me, isn't that so?”

“Actually, it might have seemed that way to you, Madame,” said Karen earnestly, “but we have lots of homework to finish before we go dancing tonight.”

“You
should
go dancing, my dear. Be young and trite–– I mean to say, be young and sprightly.” She gulped her drink. “You two would have never succeeded in the underground
Résistance
during the war. We had to be as tough as tanks inside, and yet outwardly we had to seduce our targets to get information out of them, or to kill them. Yes, you heard me right, I said to kill them! To kill them at the moment they climax––now, that takes courage. You two are an open blank book. Pfft!” She swatted at them as if they were buzzing houseflies.

Madame stared nostalgically at her empty glass as though it were a long-lost friend. Her words annoyed Annie, though deep down she knew that the old woman was right. Annie was no
Résistance
agent or killer: she was a scholar specializing in the nineteenth-century feminist writer George Sand. The only thing she really wanted to know right now was if more bombings could be expected.

“Do the police say who's claiming this bombing?” she asked, deciding to ignore Madame's criticism.

“No, no one has claimed their hatred for the exquisite Bordeaux now splattered all over the cellar. This stupid tall man had probably hidden the bomb in the cellar, and when he went to retrieve it, everything blew up. Pfft! Thankfully, he killed only himself. No group will claim such a moron.” Madame stared accusatorially at Annie, as though she were a moron as well.

“But that means there may be more bombings by this group, right?” Karen asked. “And they can't
all
be morons.”

“Yes, there will be more bombings, because every tribe hates the other tribes.” Madame teetered over to pour another glass of pretend-Armagnac. “We are savages, after all. Haven't you kept up with the news of late? Surely you've heard of the Primavalle firebomb in Rome this past April? It killed two innocent youngsters. And then there were the kidnappings of Basque industrialists. Surely you heard about those?”

Both women stared down on the worn parquet floors. How could they tell their housemother that she was ruining their rose-colored vision of Paris and Europe? Surely they had a right to live out their own
La Vie en Rose
? All they wanted was to retain their innocence a bit longer, even if the rest of world wanted to shred their dreams.

Madame made her way back to her Recamier, grabbing chairs en route to steady herself.

“By the way,” she asked, plopping down and almost spilling her drink, “where is our inquisitive Monica?”

Annie was glad to change the subject. “She met a handsome French man at a café on the Champs-Êlysées, and she joined him for a drink.”

Madame smiled, drooling Armagnac. “How bewitching and innocent our Monica is, don't you think?”

“Yes, I guess so,” said Karen, wishing she could escape.

“She cannot sleep, though. I often sit and chat with her after midnight, right here.” Madame patted the mohair sofa and let out a deep sigh, which threatened to become a hiccup. “She is a heartbroken girl. I recognize a forlorn woman––it's like looking in my own hand-mirror of time. I hope this young man doesn't play with her feelings. What did he look like?”

“Handsome and courteous,” Annie said, and Karen nodded.

“Hmm, and how old was he?”

“Under thirty.”

“Describe his looks and what he was wearing.” She burped, patting her chest. “It may seem shallow to you Americans, but we French can tell so much from a person's appearance.”

“Well, we didn't stare at him,” admitted Annie, frustrated at this downer of a conversation. “He had a tan like a Californian and a bit of a Che Guevara beard and––”

“Ha! I don't like it––not one bit.” Madame looked horrified. “You left her there with a man who does not appear to be French at all, certainly not a Parisian. Our tans fade by September, and we are not farmers out in the sun all day. Our Parisian sun is very weak this time of year.”

“But he spoke French like a local…,” Karen argued, not sure how else to describe it. She hadn't considered for a second that the handsome young man might not be French.

“When did you leave her at the café?”

“Around four. You shouldn't worry about us so much, Madame.” Annie sounded snippy, she knew, but she was annoyed at the waste of valuable study time. “We are independent, mature, college women from California. We're not babes in the Bois de Boulogne!”

“Of course I worry about you! You are my guests. Yes, you pay me a pittance for your rooms, but you are my guests nonetheless. How many other foreign students do you suppose live in this type of house in Paris? None, I assure you.” Madame had finished her third drink––and gotten her second wind. “Our snoopy concierge downstairs, she has just been telling me that all sorts of dangerous foreigners lurk in our streets! It's just like the days when the Germans strolled our city as if they owned it.”

Madame rearranged herself on the Recamier and for a moment appeared to doze off. But when Annie and Karen exchanged glances and began to tip-toe out of the salon, Madame roused herself.

“In those days, I was already twice-widowed, but I had to do what I had to do to survive. Yes, I even had to bed a Nazi or two. We did everything for
la France
.” Madame grimaced at the memory. “You know, you four American girls are plump bunnies for the famished wolves in our midst.”

Annie couldn't tolerate any more. “Sorry, Madame, but I must go to my room to––”

“I assure you that the
loup garou
is not just a legend––he exists. And he is cunning and terrifying. He can change from a wolf into a handsome Nazi officer.” She sighed again. “Or into a bomber, or anyone who…who…”

Madame's eyes closed, and she snored loudly and gracelessly. The girls took this as their cue to flee the salon.

“We certainly have a bat in the belfry, don't we?” Annie whispered to Karen, who poured the remaining liquor from her glass into Madame's now empty glass. Karen said, “The old bat needs this poison more than I!”

W
e should have accepted their offer to send a car for us,” complained Lola, teetering on her high-heeled pumps across the wooden planks of the Pont des Arts Bridge. Despite her complaints, she leapfrogged over uneven planks and dodged slimy ground residue with confidence. A patch of fog hid some of the common Parisian pitfalls (dog poop, mounds of cigarette butts), but Lola cut through the city with the rhythm of a veteran disco diva who would soon be dancing with the elite crowd at Le Sept––and that was all that mattered to her.

“You should have worn sensible shoes, like us.” Annie pointed to Karen's masculine leather clogs. “We hardly know those guys, and we should be able to manage on our own, so we can leave whenever we want.”

“I'm tolerating the pain of these heels as a tribute to the memory of Louis XIV and his own five-inch-heeled slip-ons. We're in Paris, not Berkeley, in case you haven't noticed.”

Annie's argumentative tendencies rose to the surface. “I didn't know that you were a specialist on the Sun King's footwear. What's next? Are you planning to decree that only
you
can wear
les talons rouges
, his signature shoes with red heels?”

“Honestly, Lola, you're the total antithesis of feminism,” scolded Karen. “You show way too much cleavage. And I know you probably think that your finely arched foot is erotic to men, but you're forgetting that high-heeled shoes are oppressive and sexist.”

“You're both boring me to pieces!” Lola groaned. “The only one of us having a great time in Paris––and by that I mean having great sex––is probably Monica.”

Karen looked aghast. “What are you talking about? Monica is totally naïve and sweet!”

“Maybe she
is
naïve, and that's what's so attractive to men.” Lola tossed her curls and almost lost her balance on the uneven cobbles of the street. “She told me she's determined to find the love of her life here in Paris. Can you believe that? That's her only goal: to fall madly in love in Paris.”

“Oh! I thought we were talking about sex, not love.” Annie looked perturbed. “If Monica is mixing the two up, she's in for a big disappointment.”

“Well, we'll be seeing her in a few minutes at the club, and we'll be able to tell by her satisfied face,” said Lola, leading the way across the courtyard of the Louvre and onto Rue de Sainte Anne. She pointed at a lively group of club goers walking ahead of them. “You know, you can tell Le Sept is the hottest club by that group in front of us. People at this club really dress to impress.”

The three slowed down to stare at the attire of the people ahead of them.

“It looks like it may be some kind of gay club––those guys are wearing full make-up and lashes,” Karen whispered to Annie. “And that woman is in a stretchy bodysuit. Are those her
buttocks
showing through?”

“I smell a big mistake in our coming here,” Annie muttered back, jostled by another gaggle of salaciously dressed women trying to get into the private club. “It doesn't even look like a club to me.”

Charles materialized next to the unsmiling doorman, who waved the three women in. Before Annie could voice any more fears, they found themselves in a tiny restaurant, crammed with people––many with vaguely familiar faces from the gossip magazines.

“Is that Andy Warhol?” Karen asked too loudly, gaping at the corner table like a small-town tourist.

Lola edged her way past Karen and Annie and grasped Charles' arm.

“Would you like to dine? We have our usual table.” He pointed toward another corner. “Over there, near Bianca.”

Lola glimpsed the famous Bianca––dressed all in white and sipping a glass of wine––but she refused to be awestruck like Karen. When it came to fame and fortune, Lola knew she couldn't compete with the women in here, but she
could
show off her dance moves.

“No, thank you,” she said, smiling at Charles. “But I'd love to dance.”

In her high heels, Lola stood a couple of inches taller than Charles. He didn't seem to mind, though he wasn't acting quite as cocky and lecherous as he'd seemed earlier that day. When Lola wended her way downstairs to the dance floor, following the pulsing beat of music, he trudged behind her as if heading to the gallows.

Minutes after they stepped onto the crowded dance floor, Lola's sexy moves drew admiring glances from the other dancers. Even the woman in the bodysuit sidled up to her on the floor and tried to imitate her moves. Instead of ignoring her, Lola showed Bodysuit Girl the sequence of steps known as the Latin Hustle; both women laughed at their reflections in the surrounding wall-to-wall mirrors. When Bodysuit Girl offered Lola some pills, Lola swallowed a couple, despite Charles' scowl of disapproval.

“When in Rome,” Lola said to him, but he walked off and headed back upstairs to his table.

Lola stayed dancing with the high-energy Bodysuit Girl and her friends. They turned out to be mostly American and German models, hanging out with some Puerto Rican artists from New York. All were intimates of the club's owner and the DJ. The dancers embraced Lola's energy and her looks. One of the men said, “You gotta come to our apartment tomorrow and let me draw you and your moves. I'm Antonio, and everyone in the world knows the girls in my drawings.”

He pointed to his crew of gorgeous models, and Lola nodded, buzzing with excitement.

“Sure, just tell me when and where,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. Lola had no idea where her friends were, and she didn't care. She was shimmying and bumping with Bodysuit Girl and the dark-haired Antonio. Perhaps Madame Caron de Pichet was right about the vast number of foreigners in Paris. The more Lola moved around the floor, the more languages she heard––and the more expensive the champagne, which was being splashed about without a care, became.

“
J'aime Paris
,” shouted Lola, and the club goers laughed along with her.

She danced towards a beehive of activity on one section of the dance floor. Everyone was huddled around a diminutive Japanese guy, whom Antonio had told her was a famous couturier. He wasn't dancing, exactly: he was posing in a quasi- imperial manner, as though he were the reborn Louis XIV, now dressed in very tight geisha-style garb. He held a delicate fan, which he used alternately to hit people on the head and to hide his crooked teeth.

Quickly bored by the Japanese couturier's antics, everyone began making out with everyone else, but Lola wasn't wasting her lip gloss until she assessed the pecking order of the club. If this Paris club was like the private clubs in L.A., then the super-wealthy men were sitting in some dark corner assessing the available women––that is, those women who were not professional hookers. Just as it began to dawn on Lola that the table where Charles sat at the club fit that precise description, and that
he
was her potential sugar-daddy, and that he was young and handsome, Charles surprised her by reappearing on the dance floor.

He wasn't dancing: he just stood next to her like a dead tree.

“Let's go sit down for a bit, okay?” Lola shouted in his ear, deciding that was the smartest move she could make right now, and followed him back to his table upstairs. Nobody else was there.

“Where are the others?” she asked, a little out of breath, though secretly she was glad that Annie and Karen had marched their boring butts and clunky clogs away from Le Sept.

Charles answered in the softest voice. “Your friends left right away, and Xavier had to drive Bertrand to the airport so he could fly back to Colombia for his grandfather's funeral.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.” Lola frowned. “It's so sudden, isn't it? We just saw you all, like, eight hours ago, and now your buddy has had to fly back home.”

Charles swallowed his drink and seemed to be fighting back tears. “I, I knew his grandfather, too. I'm sure that Bertrand will have to stay there to help the family.”

“What about his doctoral program?”

“It was all just a dream. He, he won't be coming back.”

“Not even after the funeral?” asked Lola, perplexed. “So, are you all from Colombia, then?”

Charles didn't answer Lola. He was at a loss as to what to do next. He had waited for instructions from Jean-Michel, but none came. His clandestine training told him to continue with the plan unless otherwise advised, and that is why he'd decided to meet the American women at Le Sept––despite the tragedy. Charles was used to being glib and dismissive when his lifelong buddy was with him. Bertrand might have been much taller than Charles, but they were like brothers: they knew how to finish each other's sentences and how to impress women as a dynamic duo. Together they also enjoyed unnerving Xavier, whose whereabouts were now a mystery. The anonymous man Charles had contacted after the accidental explosion that killed Bertrand told him that no one had heard from Xavier and that all communication among the squads would be curtailed indefinitely.

Charles was alone now––forever––and he didn't know how to get out of this predicament. He looked around the club, expecting Xavier or Jean-Michel to stroll in at any moment. But instead of seeing the men that he trusted, he thought he detected Jean-Michel's other secret friends stalking him. Watching him, just in case he got weepy and remorseful and went to the authorities to divulge how his best friend's only remaining body part could provide missing the puzzle piece to the homegrown European terrorism sprouting in cellars and dank apartments from Rome to Madrid. The student movement of 1968 had unearthed deeply buried sentiments of dissatisfaction with the status quo. This new generation demanded societal changes and wasn't afraid to use the proven tactics of guerilla warfare––explosively loud and randomly executed––to get everyone's attention. Since anyone could be a victim, everyone feared that these spores of malcontent would germinate into hardy vines that would strangle their cities.

“What about your friend at the café near the Arc de Triomphe? Shouldn't he be here too?” Lola asked, draining a flute of champagne. “We haven't seen Monica since she stayed behind with him.”

“I'm sure that she is in good hands and having a wonderful time with Jean-Michel.” Charles put on a show of false enthusiasm, not just for Lola's benefit. He needed to convince the stalkers who might be studying his behavior across the club to determine if he was no longer an asset; that, in fact, everything was back to normal, and that he was ready and able to execute the plan.

“I guess I thought they'd be here at the club,” said Lola.

“They may have already shown up and left. I really don't know.” Charles hoped that nobody could notice his hands shaking, or see the profuse perspiration soaking through his shirt.

“Well, I'd really like to call Monica and talk to her. May I have Jean-Michel's phone number?”

It was all Charles could do not to lose patience with this meddling American girl. Eight hours ago, all he could think about was taking this voluptuous redhead to bed, but now he was devastated by Bertrand's death, and the last thing he wanted now was to be intimate with this woman.

“Those pills you took are putting you on edge,” he said. “Why don't you go out on the dance floor again?”

“Sure, but first I want to talk to Monica. Why won't you give me his phone number?”

Lola
was
feeling the effects of the pills, but she wasn't so stoned that she couldn't detect the same gnaw in her gut, the same anxiety she'd felt when they left Monica behind at the café. She was determined to find out how Monica was doing, especially after Karen and Annie's observation that Monica's innocence could lead her astray. Besides, Lola truly believed in her motto––whatever Lola wants, Lola gets––so she tried again.

“It's just that Monica needs some medication and I have to get it to her. It's for her asthma.” Lola slung her arm around his neck and ran her fingers through his wavy hair. “I'm a good friend. I would take care of you, too, if you needed me.”

Lola purred, slipping her other hand under his shirt and gently massaging his chest. Charles responded with a guttural sigh. Her soft touch on his skin uprooted his deep need to release his pain––not just over losing Bertrand, but also because of the dangerous, violent path his life had taken. He had been his family's prize orchid, cultivated in their pampering hothouse; they'd indulged all of his whims. They thought that a European stint at an expensive boarding school and a prestigious university would turn him into a cultured, cosmopolitan man who would return to Colombia in impressive form. Little did they anticipate that his core beliefs would be altered by the stranglehold of radical politics prevalent at the Sorbonne, and that he would be risking imprisonment or even death here in Paris.