Superior Women (17 page)

The toilet is down the hall, but this is Megan’s first room of her own; she finds it wonderful. Among other things, she wonders with whom she will first make love, in that bed—in Paris, France.

Somewhat surprisingly, Adam and Janet are not living in one of the cheap hotels, as everyone else is. They have a small, quite comfortably arranged apartment, on the Rue de Tournon, near
the Luxembourg Gardens. “Okay, no cracks about our bourgeois mode of existence,” is almost the first thing that Adam says to Megan, although she had not been about to make such a crack.

What has struck her most, and what she could never say, on first seeing Adam and Janet is the intensity of their affection for each other. What can be recognized only as love is present in the very air between them, surrounding them; it is visible on both their faces. Their affection is like a steady fire that warms a room, and for that reason, that year in Paris, that winter, people gather around Adam and Janet, everyone wants to be with them. (There is also Adam’s wonderfully energetic intelligence, and Janet’s slyer, wittier perceptions.)

Megan especially wants to be with them. She wants to see them almost every day. And Adam and Janet make it clear, in one way or another, that they want to see her too, every day. Closest friends.

A party at the Marrs’. “Come any time after dinner, and bring a bottle of something,” is how Adam’s invitations ran, which led to considerable divergence as to hours of arrival, and also among choices of drink. People began to arrive at Rue de Tournon about eight o’clock, and continued to do so until after midnight. And everything was being drunk, from the most sensible
vin ordinaire,
to Pernod, to the Scotch that some misguided person brought along.

Adam would seem to have walked through the central courtyard of the Sorbonne and to have invited everyone he saw. Surely, Megan thinks, he can’t really know all these people, or not by name? She tries to work out a guiding principle.

To begin with, they all look fairly poor. The men are in old army clothes, in various stages of shabbiness, and the girls wear old sweaters and skirts, last year’s college clothes. The exception is a dazzling young blonde, a Smith girl on her Junior Year Abroad, who looks uncomfortable in her smart blue velvet and pearls. She arrived, it turns out, with Price Christopher (who must not yet have found just the right French girl). Price introduces his blonde to Megan: Lucy Wharton. Even now, Megan jumps at the name—Lucy
Wharton
?

There are five, then six young Negro men there, Megan observes, which is all the American Negroes at the Sorbonne. Does Adam have some special feeling for Negroes?

And, that night, Megan notices an odd fact about Adam, which is that his accent changes, perhaps unconsciously, according to the person with whom he is speaking. Megan has usually seen him alone, with Janet, and at those times Adam, like Janet, and probably like Megan, speaks a somewhat Harvard-modified version of Brooklynese. With the Negro men, though, his voice becomes markedly Southern, or, actually, Negro. Later still Megan is amazed to hear his accent in French; someone has brought along a very pretty dark French girl.

“I used to know someone named George Wharton,” Megan says to Lucy Wharton, when she can.

“Oh, you know George? My absolutely favorite cousin. And Connie, isn’t she divine? Not exactly pretty, is she, but such a dear.”

“Uh, actually I met him a long time ago. When he was out at Stanford, actually. One summer.”

“Oh, George’s California experience. I’d forgotten all about that. In fact he was very cozy about the whole thing, we heard practically nothing.” Lucy looks over toward Price, who is headed for the pretty French girl. Not turning back to Megan, Lucy goes on talking nevertheless. “I asked Price if by any chance he knew George, but he didn’t. They must have been in different houses, or clubs, or something.”

Price would not have been in a club at all, Megan thinks, but does not say. She further thinks it is more likely that Price would have known Phil-Flash, also from the unclubbable Midwest. “Harvard’s awfully big,” she weakly lets drop.

Beautiful Lucy, whose eyes are a true dark azure, gives Megan a consummately scornful look. “Oh, I know. Actually everyone in my family’s gone to Harvard for
generations.
Of course I thought of Radcliffe, but Mummy’s an old Smith girl.”

“You probably wouldn’t have liked it there anyway,” says Megan, intending unkindness.

But Lucy might not have heard her; she is still looking worriedly over at Price, who is being very gallant to Odile, the pretty French girl. He is bent over her in a classically romantic pose; even his French has improved for the occasion.

Megan thinks, but does not say to Lucy: You don’t have to worry, really. She’s not rich enough for Price. She’s pretty, but her dress is much too shabby for Price’s ambitions.

“I did meet one absolutely divine Cliffie,” says Lucy, with a somewhat tactless emphasis on
one.
“Lavinia Harcourt. In fact she’s married to someone I practically grew up with. They had the most divine wedding, down in Washington. But you probably wouldn’t have known her.”

“Actually I did. In fact we lived practically next door to each other.”

A quick look from Lucy brings Megan to an odd realization, which is that she herself has been doing exactly what she observed in Adam: she has been aping Lucy’s very Bostonian accent, so much so that even preoccupied Lucy notices. But in her own case the intent, although unconscious, was surely parodic, wasn’t it? Whereas Adam would never parody Negro voices, would he?

Because of the variety of things to drink, the guests at that party all tend to get drunk at uneven rates, and in divergent, incompatible ways. Poor Lucy Wharton, predictably enough, being unused to such rough social scenes as well as to the
ordinaire
Price brought—poor Lucy gets sick; she is led off to the bathroom by kindly Janet, and soon taken home by another of the Smith girls, as the whole scene is almost ignored by unchivalrous Price, who is still occupied with gallantry to Odile.

Adam, drinking Pernod, is a wild manic drunk; his loud energy gives the nonparty whatever life it has. All night his voice can be heard over everyone else’s, in those impossibly crowded, over-furnished, overheated, and now extremely smoky rooms. Adam is shouting Marxist theory or newly acquired French obscenities. He is in love with his new Marxist culture, and in love with words.

And he is deeply in love with Janet, Megan feels, observing the
two of them at the door, near midnight, as finally people begin to leave. Adam’s arm clutches Janet’s much smaller shoulders, drawing her close, as he shouts good nights: “
Ecoute, mon vieux, soyez sage, eh? Et bien, bon soir, mon gars, ma fille—
”

At last only a few people are left, of that original throng: there are Adam and Janet and Megan, and a fragile-looking French boy, a painter named Danny, who has somehow attached himself to Megan. And Price Christopher. And the French girl, Odile. And somehow it is then decided (Adam decides) that they must all go on to a place called Bal Nègre, on the Rue Blomet.

They all troop through the blackened streets, in a direction which Adam, mysteriously, is sure is correct, and he turns out to be right. Adam has a photographic memory for maps; he has already memorized Paris.

They arrive at last at a door, which is easily opened—opened to an absolutely jammed, brightly lit, enormous room, incredibly noisy; from a block away they were able to hear the wild West Indian music, the shouts, the pounding, dancing feet. Just inside, as they enter, there is a long crowded bar, at which they all stop for drinks. Adam insists on Pernod all around, his new addiction, before they climb some rickety steps to a balcony that overlooks the dance floor.

And somehow Adam commands a table. And, almost immediately, before sitting down, he asks Odile to dance.

Megan involuntarily looks at Janet, whose face is a blank; then Adam looks at her too, and he kisses her neck, and he says, “You don’t mind?”

She frowns, just a little. “No, of course not.”

But she does mind; Megan has seen it on her face.

Price has not liked this either, his new French girl off with Adam, now down there dancing with Adam to this crazy, manic music. Very carefully he does not watch them, but instead turns his attention to Megan.

Danny, Megan has begun to realize, is fairly drunk, slouched silently in his chair.

Price makes a curious speech to Megan, its curiousness including the circumstance of time and place. “I’ve been thinking a lot about
you, Megan Greene,” says Price, above the noisy music and the shouts.

“Oh?”

He makes her wait, smiling down at her—superior, withholding. “In some ways you’re much more like a man, despite that body,” he at last tells Megan, with a further smile.

“Oh, really?” Price has spoken as though he were giving her a compliment, but Megan has failed to understand.
How,
like a man?

“About sex,” he explains. “You aren’t silly about it, the way most girls are. You don’t take it too seriously.”

Is he referring to the fact that she was able to neck with him on the boat, coming over to Cherbourg, without falling in love with him? Of course, he must mean just that; and he is praising her good judgment, isn’t he? But Megan still feels somehow vaguely, quite subtly attacked. Why, she wonders, is it “like a man,” necessarily, to exhibit simple good sense? Or, can he possibly believe that only a woman who was “like a man” would not fall in love with him?

Wanting to change the subject, then, and certainly to shift it from herself, from Price’s idea of her, Megan remarks that it is too bad poor Lucy got sick. “She’ll feel awful tomorrow,” Megan says.

“Maybe just as well,” Price oddly answers, and then he laughs. “If she’d stayed sober I might have taken her home for an old-fashioned rape scene. And I must not do that to a nice girl like Lucy. In fact I really should stay away from that girl altogether.”

“Why on earth? She’s so pretty, and probably rich.”

“Exactly.” Price beams at Megan (again approving of her “male” intelligence?). “She’d be the perfect girl for me to marry, and I don’t need anything that serious. Not yet.”

Price has said this so earnestly, so pompously, really, that Megan is tempted to tease him. “First you have to find that nice rich French girl to move in with?”

“Oh Megan, you really know how to hit a guy below the belt.” But he laughs, appreciating her, or seeming to—for whatever reasons of his own.

Price has succeeded in making her uncomfortable, though,
Megan recognizes, despite the fact that on the face of it he has been talking to her as to a friend. As a male friend, in fact, which is perfectly all right with Megan; God knows she would not want to be courted, as a woman, by Price Christopher. But what is bothering her, she decides, is that she does not especially want to be his friend at all. On some important level she is deeply distrustful of Price.

Later Adam dances with Janet, and everything between them is immediately all right, Megan feels (or hopes). Price dances with Odile, and Megan with small, thin Danny, who is really too drunk to dance. “You aire so beautiful,” he keeps crooning into Megan’s ear, as they jump about, not at all in time to the music.

By the time they leave the Bal Nègre, the Métro has long since shut down, and so the six of them troupe home, through the shuttered, gray deserted streets; they say good night to Adam and Janet at the Luxembourg Gardens, to Price and to Odile a few blocks later on. Price lives on Rue Monsieur le Prince; it is not quite clear where Odile lives.

At the entrance to her hotel, the Welcome, seeing that Danny is in a state of near collapse, Megan simply propels him inside the door and then she half-pulls, half-pushes him up her stairs—a relatively easy task, since, even drunk, Danny is light, nimble-footed.

They fall into bed and both fall immediately asleep. They sleep until fairly late the following morning, when some harsh sunbeams bring them simultaneously awake. They regard each other, then, with a shared mixture of surprise and amusement. And then Danny begins to make love to her.

Although all his motions are practiced—he is highly educated in ways of pleasing—Megan feels—something is wrong. He does not really want to do this, she thinks, and, ludicrously, he is just being polite.

Which is not quite a sufficient reason for making love, or so she believes.

As she half-responds, politely, Megan longs for an instant improvement in her French. “This is not necessary” sounds crude in any language, as does, “You don’t have to make love to me.” And, under these circumstances, does one use the familiar form?

Sensitive Danny, though, has understood without any words. From her breast he reaches to stroke her face, as, smiling, he asks her, “Ah, you do not feel at this moment ‘in the mood?’ ”

“Well, no.”

Megan too is smiling, and next they both begin to laugh, having perfectly understood each other, with remarkable clarity. Having begun to be friends.

Danny seems to have no home. “I generally stay with some friend,” he says to Megan, early on. And, “I paint in the studio of a friend.” Also, he has no money. Or rather, he has just enough money, always, for the two Métro tickets, which he invariably, chivalrously pays for. He wears tattered pants that have the look of some army or other, and clean white shirts, never ironed. Blondish curly hair, light eyes, a delicately graceful body. A street child. Megan likes Danny very much, from the start, and she worries about him, although he does not seem to worry about himself, any more than a sparrow would.

That first day they go out to lunch, at Benoit, just down from the Flore. “I have no money,” he has already said to her. “You don’t mind to pay?”

“No, of course not. I have plenty.”

“If I had—” He smiles at her, charmingly, and shrugs.

It is not important to Megan which one of them pays; since she is the one who has money, it seems natural that she should pay.

They are friends. He is an amusing companion, a gentle friend.

In quite another way, Adam is also a good friend to Megan, that year. The friendship between the two of them has grown, somehow, whereas the connection binding Janet and Megan is just slightly diminished. The two young women never spend time alone; they do not go out for lunch, for example, and Megan finds it hard to imagine what they would talk about if they did: how much Janet
loves Adam, how happy she is with him? Because it is true that Adam takes up the whole of Janet’s life; he surrounds and encompasses her. While Adam and Megan are violently talking, arguing, or while Adam argues with some other friend (ferociously, often, with Price Christopher), Janet will simply watch and smile. In love and loved.