The Last Time I Saw Paris (24 page)

“Delia, I'm in Carcassonne.”

“Sounds like some kind of rich French casserole.”

“Oh, Delia.” Lara's voice shook. “I just saw Bill's picture in the
Herald Tribune.
He was with the pediatrician and he looks as though he's just about to kiss her.”

Delia's sigh sounded wobbly as it struggled over the cable. “So what do you care, Lar? I gather you're getting plenty of kissing yourself.”

“That's not the point. . . .”

Lara's voice trailed off and Delia said quickly, “Okay, so what
is
the point? I'm assuming you must have one since you're calling specifically to tell me about it.”

“I mean … well, it just proves it's true, doesn't it?”

“But, honey, you already knew it was true. You can't let seeing a picture of them together put you back to square one. Remember, you're on a voyage of self-discovery—not spying on Bill and his bimbo.”

“But, Delia, I
am
back to square one. I mean, I knew Bill was with her, but seeing her in that picture, standing next to him as though she belonged, it just
suddenly made it all so real. Delia, I
earned
that role.
I
was the good wife.
I
should be the one there at Bill's side sharing his achievements when the world acknowledges him as a sort of patron saint to children. Oh, I'm not knocking him on that score; he really is almost that. Dammit, Delia, I guess what I'm saying is that
I
should be the one Bill loves. Now all I can think about is him with her. And about my children and what they are going to think when their father tells them he's leaving us for another woman. What will become of me when I get back and I'm just plain old Lara Lewis again?”

“Don't you understand?” Delia wondered impatiently why she had to bludgeon Lara into seeing reason. “You were wronged, sure. But so have millions of other women been wronged. But you and Bill have not been in love for years, Lara, admit it.”

Lara was silent and Delia said sternly, “I hope you're not crying, Lar, because it's time you started counting your blessings instead. You have two great kids who are grown up enough and independent enough to cope with the situation. You are only forty-five and in good shape, though I admit you could lose a few pounds. And you have a guy who's crazy about you. So come on, Lar, for God's sakes, give yourself a break. Get a life before I lose patience with you.”

Lara smiled sadly. “Sounds like you already did that.”

But Delia had an answer for everything that ailed her, even a broken heart. She said, “I get the feeling that you need new shoes. Sexy stilettos with peep toes, as expensive as you can find. Go for it, girlfriend.”

Lara promised to buy the stilettos and heard Delia's gusty sigh of relief echoing down the transatlantic line
with the sound of ocean waves whooshing over it as they said good-bye.

 

She was freezing by the time she slid back into bed. Keeping as still as she could so as not to disturb Dan, she lay with her eyes open, staring at the flowered wallpaper until dawn came. But she wasn't thinking about the shoes, or Delia, or Dan. She was thinking about Bill.

W
hen Dan awoke the next morning, Lara was gone. No note, no cheerful morning-naked face peeking around the bathroom door. She simply was not there. He dressed hurriedly and ran downstairs to look for her. Then, in the small square outside the hotel, he spotted her outside at a cafe.

It was only eight-thirty but already the sun blazed down. Still, Lara looked cool in white linen shorts and a black-and-white-striped camisole with black espadrilles laced around her ankles and tied in a little bow. Dan guessed she had bought them at the store down the street. She also wore huge dark sunglasses that he hadn't seen before—she usually wore little rose-tinted wire ones. And she was staring into space, an empty coffee cup on the table in front of her.

The metal chair scraped noisily on the flagstones as he took a seat next to her, and she frowned, as though the noise hurt her head. “Sorry,” he said. “And
bonjour,
Lara.” She glanced at him but he couldn't see her eyes because of the huge sunglasses.

“Oh, hi, Dan.” She sounded as though he were the last person she expected to see instead of the guy she came in with.

He waved to the waiter, ordered croissants and coffee, and the usual grand créme for her.

“No.” She stopped him. “I'll have another espresso. Double, please.”

He looked at her, astonished, as she continued to stare into space, lost, he assumed, in her own thoughts. She was not wearing makeup, not even lip gloss, which she always did because she said it kept her lips from chapping.

The waiter returned with the coffee and croissants. He glanced up at the sky with an ominous shrug, “Today,
m'sieur, ‘dame”
he told them, “we have the mistral. Soon, you will feel it.”

Dan had heard about the infamous mistral, the gale-force wind that blew from the Russian steppes, gaining strength as it funneled through the Rhône Valley all the way to southern France. “Is it that bad?”

Again the waiter shrugged, something it seemed the French could not talk without. “Is bad,
m'sieur.
Bad for business. Bad for families, bad for the”—he sought for the English word—“the harmony. You know?”

“The harmony?” Dan repeated.

“It drives people crazy.” The waiter snapped his fingers against his head. “You have to watch out in the mistral.”

“I'll watch out,” Dan promised as the first gust of wind swept across the square, sending their paper napkins flying and rattling the umbrellas in their heavy stands.

Lara seemed unaware of their conversation. She finished what must have been her fourth double espresso, got up abruptly, and said, “I'm going to pack. You stay here, enjoy the sunshine. No, don't worry,” she held up her hand, “I'll take care of it.”

Ten minutes later when Dan returned to the hotel, he found her downstairs with their luggage, and the hotel bill already paid.

“I thought you liked this place,” he said, surprised.
“Now you can't wait to get out of here.”

She shrugged, looking around the foyer as though seeing it for the first time. The porter wheeled their luggage out to the car and she climbed silently into the passenger seat.

Perhaps the mistral was getting her crazy, Dan thought, rolling up the window to shut out the gritty wind. Or it might be that time of the month. Or even the full moon.

“You sure you're feeling okay?” he asked after they had been driving in silence for half an hour.

“I'm fine.” She sat slumped in the hard little bucket seat, still in the dark glasses, inscrutable as Cleopatra.

They were on the A 61 heading for Avignon, City of the Popes. Dan had been reading up on Provence and liked what he'd read. It was a land of harsh rocks and strong light, beloved of artists, as dry and rugged as parts of his own California, filled with vineyards and sunflowers, truffles and olives, and blue, blue skies haunted by high-hovering hawks.

It was astonishing, he thought as he drove, how
much
of France there was—and with absolutely nothing on it. They had passed miles and miles, acre upon acre of nothing but green fields bordered by trees. He had not realized France was so immense, so free of overbuild, so absolutely gosh-darn beautiful. He glanced at Lara. She wasn't looking at the scenery. Her lips were closed in a tight line and she was staring straight ahead.

He fumbled in his pocket, took out a ten-franc piece, laid it on her knee. “I'm upping the ante,” he said with a sigh.
“Ten
francs for your thoughts.” Still she said nothing. “Silence could make you rich,” he promised.

“I have a headache. I couldn't sleep.…”

He inspected her face anxiously as he slowed down into the waiting line of cars approaching a tollbooth. “Maybe you shouldn't have drunk all that coffee.”

She lifted a weary shoulder, indifferent.

“How about Advil?”

“I already did that.”

The drive was taking longer than he'd thought. Lara seemed disinterested in navigating and he was forced to stop a couple of times to consult the map, and finally ended up lost in the urban sprawl around Montepellier. He parked outside a sidewalk cafe and they took a seat and ordered two Oranginas and two
croques monsieurs.
He downed the cold, fizzy drink thirstily and ordered another, watching Lara, a silent enigma behind the big sunglasses.

Lara wasn't aware of Dan's attention. Her thoughts were on Bill and Melissa in India together. And on the mess her life was in. She was back to square one and in a total funk.

Dan carefully cut the crusts off the bread and then cut it into four triangles. “Eat something,” he coaxed her with the childish sandwich. “You look as though you need it.”

Obediently, Lara ate. The food did make her feel better. Not inside, where it still hurt, but it made her feel stronger so at least she could walk back to the car without stumbling.

She took the wheel and drove the last part of the route into Avignon without getting lost once. The unair-conditioned car was hot as hell and the silence was tangible.

But when they finally got to Avignon the hotel wasn't at all like the sweet little French hotel Lara remembered. It looked awful, inhospitable, commercial, and dingy. Its grimy, tattered shutters were
closed tight against the mistral and the stucco walls were flaking. Could she and Bill really have stayed there? Had she gotten it wrong again? Back home she had the receipt that told her they had; that's how she had tracked down all their hotels, and the restaurants. Bill had kept everything. If nothing else, he was an organized man.

Dan got out of the car. “I'd better check it out,” he said.

A tear bumped from Lara's eye. She was looking at the truth. Her honeymoon had never been the wonderful trip she remembered. All these years, she had lied to herself about it. And now
she
was the one who had brought them here, the one who had insisted on sticking with her schedule. She had become exactly like that bastard Bill. He
was
a bastard, wasn't he?

Yeah, but you know you still care.
The inner voice was goading her on again.
He's still the man you fell in love with at the age of seventeen, he's still the guy you married, the father of your children, keeper of your happiness and guardian of your heart.…

Dan got back into the car. He didn't notice her tears behind the dark glasses. “You wouldn't like it” was all he said. “Come on, honey, move over. I'll drive.”

While Dan negotiated his way through the maze of narrow streets, Lara gazed unseeing at the stern stone walls of the ancient palace where, in the fourteenth century, seven popes had opted to live instead of in Rome. They could have been in Pittsburgh for all she cared.

They ended up at the Hôtel du Mirande, an exquisite small hotel in a converted town house, luxuriously furnished with beautiful antiques and artwork. Their window looked out over the roofs of the old part of town, glowing like jewels in the setting sun, but Lara
wasn't interested. Her problems crowded in on her. Her life had been a sham; the past she had treasured did not exist; there
was
no present, no future.

When their bags had been stowed and the amenities explained by the bellhop, Dan perched next to her on the bed. “Okay, Lara, let's have it,” he said. She looked back at him, her eyes big and dark under the delicately winged brows.

“I think it's over between us, Dan!”

He stared at her. The lump in his throat was so big he couldn't speak. She was looking at him as if he were a stranger. He was looking at her as though she had just shot him. His shoulders slumped, his strong workman's hands lay limp in his lap. He bowed his head.

“Are you going to give me any reason for that?” he asked finally.

“It's Bill.”

“But Bill has always been there. He was there when we met. He was there when we fell in love. He was there when we left for this trip. Why Bill
now?
What happened, Lara?”

She shrugged again, avoiding his eyes, saying nothing.

“For God's sakes, Lara, don't I have a right to know?”

There was a steely edge to his voice that shocked her. She pressed her hand against her heart to stop it from thudding. All the lightness had gone out of her and she could not even recall what it had felt like that day at the Shoups' house when she had been so buoyant with happiness she had thought she was about to levitate.

She walked across to the table, took the page from
the
Herald Tribune
from her bag, and handed it to him.

Dan looked at the photograph of Bill and his mis-tress, scanning the text quickly. “So?” He didn't get it.

“Don't you see? That's
Bill
—he's with
her
in India. He looks as though he's about to kiss her.…”

He looked up at her, shocked. “Don't tell me you're going to play the jealous wife at this stage of the game.”

She heard the contempt in his voice, and she nodded, acknowledging her treachery. “I'm sorry, I can't help it. I'm jealous. I admit it.”

“Okay, so how do you think Bill would feel if he saw the photograph of the two of us in Paris? The one the waiter took of us where you look like the cat that's got the cream and I've got my arm around you? Would he be jealous?”

Lara slumped despairingly onto the bed. “You don't know what it's like. It's twenty-five years of my life,
his
life.… There are things between us, a whole lifetime of things.… It's hard not to be jealous, not to be hurt.”

“So now you propose to go on being hurt forever, is that it? You choose martyrdom while Bill has fun. Great. I didn't realize you were a masochist as well as jealous.
And
still in love with your husband.”