A Paris Apartment (10 page)

“Right now, of course!” I whopped my purse onto the bar beside Émilie’s. “I’d like to request a small paycheck advance.”

“Paycheck advance? Mademoiselle, if you want to be a barmaid you need to wear the dress.” Gérard pointed at Émilie. “And if you want to wear the dress you’ll need to remit fifty francs.”

“Fifty francs?” I choked. I didn’t even have the five francs needed to pay off the craggy old landlady. “Is that negotiable?”

Émilie chuckled.

“Absolutely not,” Gérard growled.

“Well, that’s just not feasible,” I said. I was done with. It was to the brothels or the gypsum mines for me.

Suddenly a verbal sparring broke out several tables away. One man tried to clean while a patron batted him away with a cane. Instantly I knew the assailant. He was the same puffy, sweaty man known to the entire city.

“Is that—?” I started.

“Yes, Georges Hugo,” Émilie said. “We let him stay all day. He really has nowhere else to go. It’s safer for him here.”

“Safer for Paris, too,” Gérard grumbled. “His day is incomplete unless he’s challenged at least three different people to a duel.”

M. Hugo had several packages by his feet, seven or eight at least. I could not keep my eyes from them. I stared. I daresay I ogled.

Émilie did not miss it.

“Presents for his sister, no doubt. La princesse.” She rolled her eyes. “He can hardly walk a step without someone thrusting one in his direction.”

“Wedding gifts,” I gasped. “For Jeanne.”

My mind flashed back to Madame Daudet’s wedding procession, to standing on that street, the waif by my side and the crowd pushing at my back. I’d thought then if I could get my hands on a gift or two all my problems would be solved.

“Gérard, is it?” I said, turning back to the red-coated man. “I will pay your unseemly dress fee, but please let me work first. It is a long way to my apartment, and I want to get started right away.”

He showed reluctance, unsurprising given that I’d already shown my hand, namely that I had nothing in it.

“Oh, ease up, Gérard,” Émilie said. “I’ll show the new girl around. There’s a dress left over from the last woman. They’re about the same size. Marthe, come with me into the back. We can get things started. I’m so pleased you’re here.”

Émilie did not give her boss a chance to say no. I will remember this: Do not give them a chance to say no.

And that, dear journal, is how I started my first day of work at the Folies Bergère. Not as a cancan dancer but a barmaid. Alas, the day did not end when I left 32 rue Richer. In fact it continues on! Here I sit in my bed, in the
hôtel
I can now afford, with Jeanne Hugo’s brother snoring beside me.

It is not what you think!

He’s starting to rustle. It is, as they say, to be continued.

Chapitre XVI

If not for an early sunrise and lackluster window treatments, April might have missed the workday completely.

When the sun exploded across her face, she sprang to sitting. She was disoriented, her head full of cancan dancers and elephants. She half-expected to see a fleshy, sweaty man snoring beside her. It took April several minutes to remember her name and what country she was in. She’d blame the jet lag, but it was really more the fault of a good French burgundy, plus a healthy dose of Marthe.

Groaning, April swung her legs off the side of the bed, recoiling as her feet touched the brisk wood floors. Her stomach rumbled, or maybe it hadn’t stopped. A glance in the mirror revealed haggard-beast hair, purple-tinged teeth, and crumpled clothes she first put on two days ago on some other continent.

“Working on a few things from home,” April texted to Olivier as she wriggled out of her suit. “Home.” It was a curious word for a place she’d only entered a few hours ago. Still, it was more home to her than the apartment in Manhattan, the one with her name on the deed. “Will be at the flat later this morning, between nine and ten.”

April chucked her phone on the dresser and slid into the shower, if it could be called that. She’d had more satisfying personal space and water pressure in her junior-high locker room. The stall was narrow; the knobs required great force to turn. A metal spigot dangled overhead, barely spitting out drops of tepid water. April spun around, futilely trying to wet every inch of her body. Historical buildings could have dodgy bathroom situations, but this was ridiculous. Jeanne Hugo probably had better accommodations a hundred years ago. Of course she was Jeanne Hugo.
Jeanne au pain sec
could’ve asked for a shower given by elephants, and the city would’ve immediately marched twenty-five of them through her front door.

Jeanne Hugo, April thought. What was her real story? Or, rather, what was the deal with Jeanne and Marthe?

It was funny, this centuries-long obsession with celebrities and their offspring. Hugo, Kennedy, Windsor—not much had changed other than the form of media covering them. April’s father called it the “lucky sperm club,” and indeed it seemed that Jeanne accomplished little aside from being born into the right family. Despite Marthe’s grumblings, it wasn’t exactly newsworthy. Even Jesus Christ got street cred for the whole son-of-God business.

April was not exactly up on pop culture. Celebrity references went almost entirely over her head. But Victor Hugo? April would’ve stood next to Marthe and all manner of street urchins to catch a glimpse of the Hugo-Daudet marital procession. She was a theater dork, according to Troy anyway, but Victor Hugo meant something to April. Unbeknownst to Hugo or his family or anyone who ever knew him, the man was part of April’s own (admittedly inferior) provenance.

The musical adaptation of Hugo’s brilliant novel
Les Misérables
was the first Broadway show April ever saw, even though technically she saw it in Los Angeles. She went with her dad, on a Sunday, two weeks after she turned fifteen. A couple of women beside them clucked and grinned at the father-daughter outing: What a sweet dad! What a delightful young lady! In fact her dad
was
sweet. April was, if not delightful, at least not horrible, as far as teenage girls went.

But what “Frick and Frack” (Dad’s words) did not understand was that only four hours earlier, April’s father, the kind and paunchy dad smiling beside them, had given up. In a breath, or so it seemed to April, her mother’s illness had surpassed her father’s ability to take care of her. Sometime in the early-morning hours Sandra Potter was transferred from their home to a nearby nursing facility. April woke to find her mother gone, two theater tickets in her place.
Les Miz
was her mom’s favorite play.

“Your mom is very sick,” April’s dad told her.

It was the first and last reference he ever made to the illness. Later he used words like “comfortable” and “easier” and “for the best,” but he never again said the word “sick.” April had to get the real story from her brother. Her brother got his information from pestering the doctors.

That day, though, April asked no questions. She sought no information. Instead she shrugged, fished a pair of white, midheel pumps from the bottom of her mother’s closet, and concentrated on which
Les Mi
z T-shirt to buy. Baggy or fitted? Did Cosette’s flowing hair draw undue attention to April’s flat chest? Ultimately she chose the gray one, size extra-large despite her extra-small frame.

April ended up leaving the T-shirt, still in its bag, on the floor beneath her seat. She did not expect to like the performance and viewed the entire outing as a favor to her father instead of the other way around. But when the lights hit the stage, the revolutionaries fought, and Valjean and Fantine sang, April was entranced. She did not consider herself a sap, but during the performance her eyes were wet most of the time. Only as an adult did she realize the tears were probably less about the play and more about the morning’s events.

Her father returned to Los Angeles the next day to fetch the abandoned shirt. It was the last errand he ever ran for his kids, other than shuttling them to the hospital or to church. Once April’s mother was spirited out of the home, his attentions went along with her. He could focus only on his wife’s sad, slow decline.

In hindsight it was sweet. At the time, though, it seemed grossly unfair. So while her father was at the hospital, or at church, or doing whatever it was he did to pay the bills, April played her
Les Miz
soundtrack on repeat and at high volume most waking hours. Though it annoyed her brother, it transported April and, more important, drowned out the deep boom of silence their mother left behind. Within a week even the neighbor’s dog could’ve barked “Do You Hear the People Sing?”

As she finished trying to wring the shampoo out of her hair, April quietly sang a few verses of “Master of the House.” It wasn’t until she reached “kidney of a horse, liver of a cat (filling up the sausages with this and that)” that April realized she had tears in her eyes. How was it that she’d gone farther from home yet suddenly felt closer than ever? Like Marthe, April blamed Jeanne Hugo.

After cleansing herself of airplane and shuttered-apartment stink, April grabbed a washcloth-sized towel from the rack. She checked her phone and frowned. No messages. Not that Troy was required to call, but April wouldn’t have minded.

As she toweled off and planned her non-American outfit for the day, April checked her phone another thirty-seven or thirty-eight times. It remained so quiet it hurt her ears.

April threw on jeans, a light sweater, and an Hermès scarf she purchased in her barely surviving museum curating days. It was an investment, April figured back then. Sort of like Marthe’s barmaid dress. Of course April was never in danger of losing her home, at least not when she bought the scarf.

Outside the air was cool. The fog hung low, turning the sky navy blue. Because it was still relatively early, the streets were quiet save for a smattering of delivery people, cleaning crews, and a few revelers trudging home from a night out. This was not the neighborhood for ambitious office workers, which endeared it to April even more.

After greeting several garbagemen with what Luc Thébault would surely’ve described as typical American verve, April stepped into the
boulangerie
across the street. A bell tinkled overhead. Though the smell was intoxicating enough to make even the pickiest of Parisians fret with indecisiveness, April knew exactly what she wanted. She tiptoed to the glass case.

Bonjour, les chouquettes
, I’ve missed you.

Chouquettes
. The perfect pastry. Puffed up. Light. They came in two versions, dusted with sugar granules or chocolate chips. April elected the
sucre perlé
. If you were in Paris your food might as well glitter.

After purchasing exactly one dozen of them, several times making blithe reference to a large family back in the flat, April requested a to-go cup of coffee. Opening her purse to pay the vendor, she couldn’t resist peeking at her BlackBerry once again. No new messages.

With sugar and caffeine as consolation, April scurried back to her apartment, where she estimated there was enough time to gorge herself on at least six or seven
chouquettes
while engaging in a little “research.”

She told Olivier she planned to work from home, and Marthe’s diaries legitimately qualified as “work.” Plus April was in no hurry to trot them out beneath the curious eyes of her Parisian cohorts. The documents were a find, and April didn’t care to answer questions about how she got them, when she got them, or why she was suddenly the estate attorney’s primary contact. It all felt too precarious, delicate, as if one misstep might break the whole thing.

Chapitre XVII

Paris, 13 May 1891

I brought Georges Hugo and his packages back to my bed-sit, oh, yes I did! He only just left. Not to worry, the only
packages
I touched were the ones wrapped in paper.
Mon dieu!

Many times I’ve heard my sweet
hôtel
neighbor Aimée complain about the effects of drink on men. Though I cannot speak from experience, it is, according to her, quite the softening agent. Evidently some men become so inebriated the only way to consummate the act would be to tie his member to a shoehorn and slide it in like a foot into a shoe! Aimée likened it to a damp stocking. It all sounds positively dreadful. Dressing will never be the same.

What young Aimée did not tell me, but what I already know, is that drink also makes people forget. Though I’ve not had to tussle with any drunken, flaccid men, my convent was famous for its wine production, and Sœur Marie did not hesitate to partake. We had multihour conversations she later forgot in their entirety.

“What were you up to last night, Marthe?” she would ask. “I didn’t see you the whole evening!”

Never mind she’d spent three hours regaling me with stories of her younger days (she was not always a woman of the Lord!) and that I often helped her change and get into bed. Once or twice I even assisted her on the toilet!

So when Georges Hugo came back to my bed-sit expecting a host of pleasures, I understood I only needed to
tell
him what happened. It didn’t actually
have
to happen. By the time we returned to the
hôtel
he was stupid with drink and quite near passing out. To hasten his slumber, I paid Aimée my last three francs to hit him in the back of the skull with an iron. Not to worry, she took care not to permanently injure the man! She has done this before.

Georges woke in the morning groggy and with the start of a headache. Aimée sat in for me and explained, in great detail, the acts “we” performed. I figured it was best for her to impersonate me. The things she told him I’ve never heard of! Apparently men like accessing women at multiple points of entry. And Aimée can fit a penis all the way down her throat!

Aimée spun a good (and sufficiently raunchy) tale, Georges none the wiser. Even if he could not remember doing
those
things with
that
woman, a man of his stature would never admit it! Pleased with the reports of his sexual prowess, he nodded along and ultimately smacked Aimée on the backside before reaching for his billfold. He remitted a tidy sum and shuffled out of the
hôtel
, whistling as he went.