Paris, He Said (15 page)

Her phone chimed after she had been walking for several minutes. She disregarded it until it chimed a second time. There were two messages, the first from Laurent:
Just missed you, A said. Everything OK?

The second was from André:
You did not have to run away. I will not bite you
.

She only responded to Laurent’s message:
A show! You weren’t kidding that night at the restaurant. How can I thank you?

A few seconds later he wrote:
I will think of some way, chérie. Do not worry.

Her reply:
Thank you. Thank you!!

She wanted to ask what he’d been doing with Sofia, but her guilty conscience, and for the moment, her pride, would not permit it. She’d also forgotten to ask him about Pauline’s check.

Something that had happened since Jayne’s arrival at rue du Général Foy was that she had never previously felt such uncomplicated joy while working on a painting. At present she was occupied with Joanie in Salinas, the woman’s tentatively smiling face enlarged many times to fill two-thirds of a two-by-three-foot canvas. She had started to paint the photo faithfully, Joanie with her husband Jim’s protective arm around her shoulders, the light blue Cadillac behind them, but before the end of the first afternoon Jayne decided to focus only on Joanie. Standing a few feet away, her eyes on the woman’s sad eyes softly taking shape by her hand, Jayne felt an unexpected but growing certainty that before long she would have what for years she’d believed that she wanted, and from then on her life would become something else, something bigger and louder, its boundaries overlapping with countless other lives.

She would be envied and admired, and at times feel conflicted about these inevitable companions to success. She would have a name recognized by other artists and the people who knew about contemporary art. Pepper, with his Yale M.F.A. and tenure-track teaching position in San Francisco and his painting in the Venice Biennale of a derelict footbridge across an angry river, and with his gallery in Chelsea with exclusive representation rights, would hear her name, and at first he wouldn’t be sure if he remembered her, but eventually he would. On one warm Saturday afternoon he would drift in from the street, step into Vie Bohème–New York, where her new paintings, all realist narratives, were on display. She could hear him saying to his girlfriend (not his wife—he wouldn’t be close to marrying anyone yet, she didn’t think), “Well, I definitely didn’t expect this.”

It seemed to be looming there before her, a signboard in the distance that became clearer as she drew closer, the letters taller and more vivid with each fraught or tranquil minute:

Joanie
, oil on canvas

Vicky and Sheldon at the Brown County Fair
, oil and charcoal on paper

Last Night He Said
, oil on wood panel

Sarah with Cat-Eye Glasses,
india ink and oil on canvas

Owls and Starlings
, oil on canvas

Karen and Frank on the Canyon Road
, oil on canvas

Jayne Marks
(b. 1983, American)

The apartment was warm and a little stuffy, the rooms permeated with the lemon and bleach scents that lingered for a full day following a visit from Pauline. Jayne regretted not remembering to ask Laurent about the cleaning woman’s check, but she did not want to call or send him another text. Her hands shook slightly as she turned the bolt on the inside of the apartment’s main door and locked herself in. She was having trouble forming a lucid thought after the turmoil of the day’s events; she wanted to disappear into a nap but doubted she would be able to calm down enough to fall asleep.

She took a shower to cool off after her hot, zombie-like walk home from Vie Bohème, and remembered as she rinsed her hair that Colin’s unanswered e-mail was still in her in-box. In their last e-mail exchange, two weeks before she left Manhattan, he had again brought up his faithless older brother but ended his e-mail with a joke:
What do bagpipers and javelin throwers have in common? They don’t have to be very good to get people’s attention
. He’d also written,
Text me if you want to have breakfast again sometime?

Sure,
she’d replied.
I’ll let you know
. She intended to see him before she left, but in the end, she hadn’t. For weeks she’d dreaded the thought of meeting him for another morose breakfast and telling him about her imminent move to Paris, but during her last few days in New York she felt nostalgic and wished she had made plans to see him one more time.

By then, however, she had too many last-minute tasks to take care of, and ultimately it seemed best to leave those embers undisturbed. She hoped now that Colin was seeing someone else. If he wasn’t, it had to have been his choice because from what she had observed in their four and a half months together, he had no trouble attracting women.

Working intermittently now on the sketch of his photo from their friend’s Labor Day party had made her miss him more than she’d expected to—his texts and voice mails, his mischievous sense of humor; he had once sent an orange-and-green toy frog to her at the accounting office, a note included that instructed her to kiss the frog because it was a species that really did turn into Prince Charming. In return, she sent him a small box of Godiva chocolates at his own office, a photocopied picture of Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump taped to the lid. Her note read,
Life is like a box of … well, you know. May your life be much bigger and last much longer than these chocolates undoubtedly will. (Save a caramel for me?)
She hoped he would forgive her for the hasty departure from Manhattan, and that they really could stay friends, though she had never been able to pull this off with any other ex-boyfriend.

Colin!
she replied,

How nice to hear from you. Yes, you’re right—I did move to Paris. The opportunity came out of the blue and well, as you can see, I grabbed it (!) and now I’m here. It’s great, I have to say.

If you do come to Paris, yes, of course, let’s meet up. I’d like that a lot. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was moving. There were so many things to do before I left, and I felt so crazed trying to organize everything that I really wasn’t sure it would all come together and that I’d get on the plane on time.

It’s nice to be back in touch, btw. Be well and congratulations on the new job!

Jayne xoxo

She pressed send and went into the salon, where she drew the curtains, took off her skirt and blouse, and dropped them on the floor before she lay down on the green
canapé
for a nap. When Laurent’s landline rang a little while later, she was pulled out of what felt like the beginnings of a deep sleep. She didn’t move.

After several rings, the answering machine that Laurent still had not replaced with voice mail clicked on, and the woman who spoke into the electronic silence after the greeting was Jeanne-Lucie. Jayne sat up and looked at the small teakwood table that held the phone, the red eye of its companion answering machine blinking as Laurent’s daughter said, “Allô, Jayne? … tu es là?” She paused. “Jayne, are you there? Please answer if you are. It’s Jeanne-Lucie, Laurent’s daughter.”

“Oui, allô, c’est moi,” said Jayne, nearly fumbling the cordless to the floor when she pulled it off its cradle. “Sorry, I was in—”

“I’m glad I caught you,” said Jeanne-Lucie. “Are you busy on Saturday? I’m having a couple of friends over for lunch and thought you might like to join us.”

Jayne gazed at the flowery heap of her clothes on the floor. A block or two away, she could hear the scream of a siren. “I’m not sure if your father has anything planned for us that day.” She made a face. She hadn’t intended to say “your father.”

Jeanne-Lucie paused. “No, my father does not. I just spoke to him. He’ll be at the gallery.” As if you didn’t already know that, Jayne could almost hear Jeanne-Lucie thinking.

“Oh,” said Jayne. “Then yes, of course, that’d be nice.” She felt obliquely scolded, but Laurent had insisted that his daughter liked her. Maybe this was just the way Frenchwomen communicated with each other. “What time would you like me to be there?” she asked.

“Twelve thirty, and you don’t need to bring anything,” said Jeanne-Lucie, anticipating Jayne’s next question. “One other thing. My mother might be coming too. I thought you would like to know.”

Jayne looked down at her hands, noticing how uneven her nails were. She would have to file and buff them before the luncheon, or else go around the corner to the nail boutique on rue du Rocher where she’d seen a flashing neon pink sign announcing a manicure sale the last time she’d passed by.

“Hello?” said Jeanne-Lucie. “Are you still there, Jayne?”

“Yes,” she said.

“My mother is very nice. You will like her.”

Jayne held back a nervous laugh. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to bring anything?”

“No, I’ll have everything we need,” she said. “À samedi, Jayne, et bon après-midi.”

A Saturday lunch at Jeanne-Lucie’s home. Jayne wasn’t sure what to think: a friendly gesture, or some sort of hazing ritual for her father’s new girlfriend? Jeanne-Lucie and her husband Daniel’s apartment was near the Père-Lachaise Metro stop, a couple of blocks southwest on rue Merlin. When Jayne shook off her apprehension and looked at her foldout map of the city, she saw that rue Merlin ran parallel to rue de la Folie—a more aptly named street, if ever there was one, for the surreal state in which she had lately taken up residence. Did Laurent know that his ex-wife had been invited too? Was he also aware that André had just kissed her?

She called his cell phone, but his voice mail picked up. She didn’t leave a message, and when she sent a text a moment later—
Pauline needs her ck & Jeanne-Lucie just invited me to lunch
—she did not receive a reply to it either. She tried the gallery line next, but it was André who answered. Laurent had gone out again, he informed her, offering nothing more. “Is he coming back soon?” Jayne asked. She felt almost feverish. Maybe Laurent did know about what had happened in the back room, but she could think of no logical reason why André would have told him.

André sounded amused when he told her he didn’t know. “We are meeting an artist for dinner tonight, and perhaps Laurent will go directly to the restaurant from wherever he is now.”

“Who are you meeting?” she asked. Was it Sofia again? Twice in the same day?

André paused, and in this moment she could imagine him smiling, his slightly stained teeth bared in the soft light of the rear office. “A painter,” he said mildly. “She’s very good. Her name is Chantal Schmidt. Do you know her?”

“No, I don’t know her,” she said without enthusiasm, but she would look Chantal Schmidt up online after she got off the phone. She knew almost no one in Paris. He knew this too.

“Ah, tant pis,” he purred. “Why don’t you come back to Vie Bohème right now? You can talk to me while you wait for Laurent.”

“No, I’m not going to do that, André,” she said. She was trembling again very slightly; she held out her left hand, willing her nerves to steady themselves. “Please ask Laurent to call me when you see him.”

“C’est important?” he asked.

“Oui, c’est important. Merci.”

He waited, but she said nothing more. Finally he murmured, “You don’t need to worry, Jayne. Not about me. Bonne soirée.” He hung up, leaving her more uncertain than before she called. She wondered if he was being sincere when he told her not to worry. It was difficult to believe that he had anything but his own interests at heart.

At seven o’clock and again at ten thirty, she tried Laurent’s cell phone, but each time was routed to voice mail. He did not call back; she suspected that André had not given him the message, but she had to think that he had checked his voice mail at some point in the evening and was knowingly ignoring her calls and the second text she’d sent between them. Intermittently she worked on the Joanie painting that was taking shape on her new easel, but it was hard to concentrate when she kept wondering why Laurent continued to be silent.

She wasn’t supposed to worry about what he was doing when they weren’t together, but it was ludicrous that he would think such a thing possible, as if he were telling her not to worry about what was in the closet, from which the strangest, most bloodcurdling sounds were emerging. She put her brush in the jar of solvent next to her easel every fifteen minutes or so and checked her quiet phone, which she had placed on a table in the hall, hoping it would distract her less if it wasn’t directly under her nose. She paced around the apartment, stopping before every framed picture, Sofia’s family of portraits difficult to look upon now without strong feelings of suspicion and jealousy and doubt assailing her.

There were dozens of books in the bookcases in the study to distract herself with, many of them American or English novels in French translation, a few in the original. But Jayne had only ever seen Laurent reading the newspaper, a few art magazines, and sometimes the sports daily
L’Equipe
, which he purchased for soccer scores and news about player trades, coach firings, and negotiations over their replacements. She looked at the book titles, repeating them to herself to keep her mind off her silent phone.

When he finally came through the door a little after eleven, she was fully dressed and trying not to feel angry and neglected. He was putting her in a show, after all. Wasn’t this enough to make her happy, no matter what he’d been doing that day, out of sight and out of reach? And she was hardly one to be casting stones right now either.

Laurent stopped in the doorway, surprised to find her in the hall when he opened the door, a rush of stale air from the stairwell following him inside. He held her unsmiling gaze, his face softening into what looked to Jayne in her grouchy mood a goofy, almost clownish smile. She could smell the cigarette smoke on him from several feet away, and her irritation increased. Juvenile as it was, she refused to be the first to say hello.

He continued to look at her, still smiling, and blinked several times. She wondered if he was drunk; before now she wasn’t sure if she’d ever seen him tipsy.