The Quirk (3 page)

Rod took the old woman’s glass and turned with polite interrogation to Germaine. She returned his look without any change in her expression and seated herself with studied nonchalance on the arm of a chair and made a display of her good points: sleek legs crossed, flat stomach, small firm breasts. All right, he thought. I’ve got the message. I’ll keep it in mind if things get really tough. He knew of rich ladies who were very generous to their boys.

He congratulated himself for having such a cool, realistic thought as he carried the glasses, his and Lola’s, to the table against the wall where decanters were set out.

“Scotch?” he said over his shoulder, and Lola croaked an assent. He began to pour the drinks, his back to the room, and heard movement behind him, a flurry of greetings, a new voice. He turned, holding decanter and glass, in time to see the girl he was supposed to have fallen for embracing Germaine woman-fashion, kissing the air first in the general vicinity of one cheek and then the other. They parted, and Nicole caught sight of Rod. For a second their eyes met with mutual pleasure and recognition. Then a curtain dropped in hers, and she moved on to Lola.

“How nice of you to ask me, darling.” Her voice was as he remembered it, light and detached, with a ring of no-nonsense honesty.

Lola pawed at her vaguely as they embraced and then hitched herself around toward Rod. “You two know each other. Where’s my drink, young man? Nicole will have Dubonnet.”

Rod bowed briefly, trying to make eye contact again, but Nicole gave him only a friendly but impersonal smile before turning her back on him and seating herself. Rod resumed his bartending. Every detail of her was marked in his mind. She was dressed simply, as she had been the other night, not poorly but without the rich adornment of Germaine or old Lola. She wore her pale hair in an elaborate, rather old-fashioned way, drawn up behind and woven into an intricate knot She wore lipstick on her delicate French mouth, but she needed no makeup on her large wide-set eyes or the well-shaped brows. She was built lightly, delicately, but suggested strength. He was more aware than he had been at the crowded party of how easy it would be to fall for her. An idea Lola had planted in his mind that he wouldn’t allow to take root. He had neither the time nor the money to fall for anybody.

He handed around drinks and took a fresh one for himself and resumed his seat. He waited for them to get through their first rush of gossip while be observed Nicole covertly, absorbing brief sharp pictures of the tilt of her head, the long graceful line of her neck, the flutter of an exquisite hand as she made a point. He wondered if he would be the only man and suspected that he was. He was beginning to grasp the point of this slightly odd gathering of three generations of females. Lola, the old madam, was displaying her wares–Germaine for an uninhibited but casual roll in the hay, Nicole for more serious stuff. She was the sort a man would want to marry. He knew vaguely that the three were related, but he had the feeling that Nicole had opted out of their world. She didn’t join in the gossip with their zest and flippancy, and at times her smile became withdrawn and faintly disapproving. It put her on his side.

As he listened to the lightning flow of their French, he was content to be left out of the conversation. His own French was serviceable enough, but he was sure it would sound barbaric here. Lola suddenly switched to English.

“Enough of this female gabble,” she said readily. She addressed Nicole: “Are you aware that this superbly handsome young man is also a very important painter?”

“We’re cousins too,” Germaine contributed briskly. “His Aunt Irene–is that right?–yes, your Aunt Irene married the brother of one of my husbands.”

“An American painter? Are there any? Nicole asked innocently.

He recoiled from it as if an ally had suddenly gone over to the enemy. Maybe her English wasn’t very good; she had a pronounced and charming accent.

“Don’t you know American painting?” he asked, giving her the benefit of the doubt.

“I don’t suppose I do. Where would I see any?”

“God, you people are provincial about painting,” he retorted with a bluntness he would never have dreamed possible a year ago. He had sworn never to be mealymouthed or apologetic about his vocation. He was glad he had settled on a tie and an expensive dark suit. It made his tone more socially acceptable. “Nothing good is being done here anymore, but you refuse to look anywhere else,” he added impatiently.

“That’s telling ’em,” Lola crowed like a spectator at a sports event.

Nicole was really looking at him now, her eyes widening into his with a depth almost as palpable as tears. For a giddy instant she seemed to be completely open to him. Then she shrugged and resumed her studiedly distant manner.

“You’re probably right,” she said. “We have created so much and for so long that we no longer believe that is will save us. The Americans perhaps take it more seriously.”

“If art is serious, I don’t see how you can help taking it seriously,” Rod said, defending everything he’d become since he had made his big decision. Whose side
was
she on? She was quicksilver. A mystery. “I’d gladly show you some of my things if you’re interested,” he said, exploring further.

“I’d like it very much,” she said, sounding impersonal but genuinely interested.

“You must tell me how to reach you. I’ll call and arrange something.”

“I’ll give you my card.” She turned from him, apparently having gone as far in committing herself as she would in front of the others.

Talk became gossipy again. Rod followed it with more attention, anxious to learn all he could about the girl he was determined not to fall for. He picked up clues that indicated that she lived on her own, didn’t work, was relatively poor. There were other clues that suggested there might be a man. So much the better. It would curb his impulse to pursue her, but it was at odds with Lola’s roguishness and the brief candid welcome of Nicole’s eyes. When the talk turned to general topics–the theater, a recently published novel–Rod joined in in careful French. He saw Nicole give him an approving if slightly astonished glance. The French never believed a foreigner was capable of putting together coherently three words of their language.

Eventually, there was a lull in the conversation, and Nicole stirred and looked at her watch. “I must go,” she said. “I have to go home and change.”

Rod took a final sip of his drink and stood up. “Me too,” he said.

“I suppose I really ought to be going along,” Germaine said.

“Not a bit of it,” the old countess snapped. “I know what you’re doing tonight. You don’t have to go for an hour. I want to talk to you.”

Rod guessed that this was part of her game as a matchmaker and smiled to himself as he went to her and managed to brush his lips over her hand more expertly than before.

“I can’t thank you enough,” he said.

“I told you, I have a weakness for handsome young men.” She brayed happily. “Come see me.”

While Nicole was making her farewells, he turned to Germaine. “It’s been very pleasant seeing you again,” he said.

She gave him a final appraising look. “I imagine we’ll be seeing each other,” she said in a way that managed to be both insinuating and insulting. He hovered near the door while Nicole exchanged a few last words with the other two and then followed her out. The butler appeared from somewhere and escorted them down the hall and helped them into their coats. Hers was cloth, he noted.

“Are they great friends of yours?” he asked as they started down the stairs. They could really meet now, liberated from Lola’s cage.

“More like family really. Cousins. Like you. My parents are dead, you see. Without parents, cousins become more important.” She spoke more directly and sweetly than she had before.

He looked down at her and considered offering to see her home. “What about that card?” he asked.

She stopped and leaned against the banister and lifted her bag to her breast and slipped a hand into it. He noticed that she wore pale polish on her nails. She didn’t make a fuss rummaging through the bag but simply withdrew a card and offered it to him. He automatically passed a finger over it to find that it was engraved; he saw that she lived in a stylish neighborhood nearby. Warnings flashed in his mind. He was used to having girls and used to paying for the pleasure with dinners and shows and nightclubs. In Paris he hadn’t yet discovered where you could take a girl like this without spending a fortune. Let her go. Dammit, I don’t want to let her go, his old self balked.

“Would you really like to see my work?” he asked tentatively. He thought of the messy little attic room. She would probable expect a real studio.

“Very much.” She leaned lightly against the banister and looked up at him with charming expectancy.

“It would have to be when the light’s good. Could you have lunch with me tomorrow?”

“I’m afraid tomorrow is not possible,” she said with a little laugh.

It grated on him. Polite society. Everything turned into such a bore. All he wanted was to tell her that she was a very intriguing girl and that he wanted to spend some time with her and maybe to go bed with her, but there always had to be complications. “Well, maybe I’d better call you,” he said.

“Of course. Any time. Unless–”

He saw the expectant look fade and her eyes fix on his face assessingly. He knew very well what she saw, having spent hours studying himself in a mirror when he had no more interesting model to draw. He hadn’t been paying much attention to his hair lately. It fell around his head in thick dark shaggy locks. Framed as it was, his face was like a work that had been intended to be rough-hewn but had been worked over too much and refined beyond the artist’s intentions. It was his mouth that caused the trouble. It was delicately modeled, full but sensitive, so that the straight strong lines of nose and jaw were negated and the whole looked romantically rustic. He could start a drawing of himself looking like a hawk and end up with it looking like a pretty boy. Neither was the truth. People–girls–had told him that his eyes were fierce, but he suspected that that was because they found the idea of “fierce eyes” exciting. He knew that his eyes were simply penetrating and attentive.

“Unless what?” he asked before the silence between them became a problem.

“Oh, I thought that if you wouldn’t mind leaving out lunch, I could come in the afternoon.”

He smiled down at her, feeling that they were getting somewhere now. “No, that would be too much like business. Lunch is the part that interests me most. I’d like to talk to you. Can I walk you home now?”

“No, no,” she said hastily. She returned his smile playfully, shadowed with guilt. “To tell you the truth, I will meet somebody around the corner. I don’t tell those two everything. They are so wicked.”

“I know what you mean. Lola had us married before you arrived.”

“How dreadful of her. Were you terrified?”

“I could think of worse ideas.” They were smiling into each other’s eyes with open appreciation. Rod’s thoughts became explicitly erotic. Perhaps he was making the complications. Perhaps she was ready and willing for an uncomplicated affair.

“I must go.” She put a hand on his arm. “You
will
call? I look forward to it.”

The hand made him jealous of whomever she was meeting. It also reminded him that he didn’t want to make too much of it He shifted his feet and used the hand on his arm to set her in motion once more. “Don’t worry. I’ll call,” he said. Maybe he would. Maybe he wouldn’t. Keep all the options open.

She withdrew her hand, and they descended the stairs side by side. The moment of parting on the sidewalk in front of the building became inexplicably awkward. They shook hands, and he held hers a moment too long. They simultaneously opened their mouths to speak and uttered brief laughter. Their eyes met and flew from each other. He made an effort to recover his social ease. He was behaving like an inexperienced kid.

“I’m glad we’ve seen each other again,” he said. “I’d like us to get to know each other.”

“Perhaps we will. You don’t seem like an American in spite of your looks. Perhaps it’s because you’re a painter.”

“You don’t believe I’m a painter yet. You’ll see.”

They said good night and turned from each other and set off in opposite directions.

He turned his coat collar up against the night’s damp chill and resisted an impulse to look back. He would call her, but not for a couple of days, after he had had time to find an undisturbing place for her in his mind. He wasn’t going to fall for her. He didn’t need her. He had his Bohemian pals on the Left Bank with their willing, undemanding girls. (Jeannine was such a good sport that taking her to bed had already become rather perfunctory.) He should probably start rationing his sex in any case, along with cigarettes and everything else, as part of his new aestheticism. Maybe he could learn to do without it except for holidays and special feast days like his birthday.

And no more Lola. It was too great a wrench from his customary life. He could still taste the expensive whiskey in his mouth. He could feel it too as he forced his feet to carry him back to the Etoile. He was launched on a very nice drunk. They didn’t happen often, and this one was free. A bottle of wine with dinner would round it off beautifully. He plunged resolutely down into the noisome Métro.

Stale air rushed down a tunnel at him, and he found himself making his breathing shallow so as to inhale as little of it as possible. People pushed through a wicket, jostling each other, and he held back so that he wouldn’t come into contact with them, as if they were diseased. His too easily seduced senses recoiled, left vulnerable by the scene he had just withdrawn from. The exquisite room, warm and faintly perfumed. A manservant moving silently through it. Jewels. A shimmering spill of brocade.