The Last Nude (8 page)

I remembered it now, my first sight of Paris: then as now, the city buffeted me with beauty from all sides. Then as now, the warm light beguiled. Then as now, I had just gone to bed with a near-stranger, but this time it hadn’t sickened me. I hadn’t done it to work off a debt; I’d done it for pleasure. I felt as if I were seeing Paris for the first time, a city of bridges and shining water—I detoured south, along the Seine—a city of lindens and sycamores, of cobbled islands, of bird markets and flower markets, of buttresses and gargoyles, a rose-windowed river city wheeling with pigeons. I kept walking. The cathedral bells tumbled and sang.

I crossed another bridge and bought a purple
glace aux myrtilles
at an ice cream shop with a magnificent view of the back of Notre-Dame. I ate it slowly on the Pont Saint-Louis.
This,
I thought to myself, watching the moving water, remembering the sound of Tamara setting her rings on the table.
This always. Just this.
What would I do with myself until I saw her again?

 

 

 

I felt like a gardenia blossom as I drifted home, fragrant and bruisable. All the familiar things in my neighborhood seemed new again: the glass-domed arcades. The odor of honey cakes stealing toward me from Pâtisserie Fouquet. The sharp chemical scent prickling out of Galerie Vollard:
huile de lin,
Tamara had said.
Térébenthine.
I noticed as if for the first time the way the white dome of Sacré-Coeur rose behind the heavy columns of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette at the end of my street, as if they were a single mismatched edifice. When I reached the fifth floor, I found another note on the door.

I paused, angry. Then I took out my key and let myself in. The chain lock wasn’t on the door. Gin wasn’t even there. While I ran a deep bath, I tacked up a note of my own:

I lay on my back in the tub, arms and legs in the air, until the water level reached my ears. I looked up at Gin’s and my cosmetics lining the walls of the small bathroom. I savored the tranquil sight, and I dreaded my flatmate’s return.

Virginia Wilbur was two years older than I, and had arrived in Paris only a little after I had. When a small inheritance from an uncle coincided with the arrival of Josephine Baker’s first records in the States, it was no surprise that the kind of Episcopal minister’s daughter who drank bootleg liquor and owned every record ever made by Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds would take a steamer to Paris faster than you could say Bam Bam Bama. The first of Gin’s many boyfriends was one of the owners of Belle Jardinière, so she came by the glove counter job with no effort. She kept it, however, by dint of charm, polish, and four years of private-school French, even after she exchanged her department-store boyfriend for a banker who could get her a spot in the chorus of Le Casino Revue. From there, she prevailed on the director to let her sing a solo now and then. And she was
good.
Like, in fact, Josephine Baker, she could switch, within the same line, from a staccato purr to a clear high note like a wet finger circling a wineglass. She could dance, too, like an electric eel, but I never saw her happier than when she sang.

Gin was living in the dressing room of Le Casino the night she and I first met at the Vaudeville, when our boyfriends made us sing “La Marseillaise” up on those chairs
.
I was living with Hervé while his wife and small children wintered on the Côte d ’Azur with his in-laws. Hervé’s family was due back in Paris any time, and Gin and Jacques’s affair was just heating up. So Hervé and Jacques, in thrifty imitation of their superiors, decided to go in together on a room for their mistresses not far from the bank where they worked, an overwrought Delphic temple of money on rue Bergère. They installed us in a newly constructed apartment building on the site of a medieval pile that had collapsed from the constant vibration of traffic going down nearby Boulevard Haussmann. No good draught-fearing French family would live in a brand-new building while the plaster dried, so our boyfriends got the first year’s lease for half-price. That’s how Gin and I—strangers, but closer than most for having sung together on those chairs—became flatmates on rue Laffitte, camping with her gramophone and the steamer trunks we used as armoires, in a much nicer apartment than we could ever have found on our own. Though damp, it was cheap enough that we were even able to stay after Hervé and Jacques found other playmates, and when Gin found Daniel, he coaxed the landlord into switching the lease to Gin’s and my names at the same
sèche-plâtre
rent. The postwar economy affected even landlords, especially ours, who had lost both his sons in Flanders trenches. When Daniel dangled the promise of an easy bank loan before his eyes, the landlord gave in.

As I sat up, suds coating me like meringue, I saw something had fallen under the sink: a doll’s plate? An oversize white coin? With a dripping arm, I reached for it: flat on top, with a threaded edge underneath, it was the ivory cap of a man’s shaving-brush tube. Daniel’s. Just as I set it on the window ledge with a sigh, I heard the door bang open. “Rafaela?”

“You can come in, I’m wearing bubble bath.”

Gin clicked straight into the bathroom without even taking off her hat.
“Cara mia,”
she began. She had learned the show business trick of presuming intimacy, which I often found cozy, but the Italian tidbits—especially because she only used them around me—were a bit much.

Particularly when I was already annoyed at her. “I just got in this tub. I’m not coming out until I’ve had a good soak.”

“Soon enough you’ll have the whole place to yourself, so I don’t see why you can’t just help me out for one more evening.”

“So he asked? He really asked?”

“I’m leaving the first of August.”

“Just like that?”

“I keep telling you and you don’t listen. Daniel’s gone to a lot of trouble to find a little place in Meaux for the two of us until we’re married.”

“Meaux!” Daniel regularly commuted into Paris for bank meetings, but he lived and worked an hour outside the city, in a town known largely for its mustard and Brie.

“So he really was getting that divorce all along?”

Gin gave me an opaque, pitying smile. “Yes, dear.”

“And it came through?”

“In all but name.”

“Ginny!” My chest flooded with giddy heat, delighted that one good story could wash away the past night’s grimy cynicism. I reached for her arm and shook it with glee.

“Stop it, soapy!”

“Did he get down on one knee?”

Gin’s smile tightened. She nodded.

“Ohhh! Congratulations! Can I see your ring?”

“It was his grandmother’s. She was tiny. He’s having it stretched.”

“One big diamond? Or lots of little ones?”

“Rafaela!” she said impatiently.

“What?” I demanded. I pointed at her earrings, a gift from Daniel. “We talked about
those
for a whole hour when you two came back from Capri.”

“You’re being a pain.”

“You’re being
something
. Did you
see
this ring, or did he only tell you about it?”

“You just don’t like Daniel. You don’t see how he’s actually being awfully fair. It’d be easier if you left, after all. Then Daniel could just come over whenever he’s in Paris.”

“It sounds like it would be easiest for
him
if you lived in Meaux.”

“Come on. He
lives
in Meaux. His children are in Meaux. You can’t expect him to never see them again.”

“Gin, you’re a Parisian. People who live in Meaux are called
meldois
.” I made a face. “The men, I mean. It’s even worse for the ladies. The
meldoises
.”

“Rafaela.”

“I’m just saying, are you sure you want to leave the city?”

“When two people are in love, they make sacrifices for each other.”

“Yes, Miss Wilbur.”

“Oh, I do sound awfully schoolmarmish, don’t I?” Gin said, a little too brightly.

“Madame Daniel Gordin,” I said, testing the name aloud the way young girls do. I saw her flinch. “So what I want to know is why you need the place to yourself, now that he’s asked.”

“He said he’d come again tonight, Rafaela. I just want to make things comfortable for him. I don’t understand. Why can’t you do this one little thing for me?”

“I did one little thing for you last night, and I probably have syphilis now.”

“You
didn’t
.”

“I didn’t have money for dinner. I spent every
sou
I had on the uniform for
your
stupid job, and you know what the pervert did?” Then I told her.

“Oh,
bella
. No!”

“Thank you.”

“So, wait. What did you wear to work?”

“I didn’t go.”

Gin lowered her eyelids in long-suffering anger. “I was counting on you. Madame Florin was counting on you. You know, there’s only one way to win at this game, and you don’t even try. If you had to get an old man to pay for your dinner, couldn’t you at least get him to buy you a new uniform?”

“Gin, I’ll eat out. I’ll piss in a pot in my room. I’ll stay in there all night until I hear Daniel leave. But I’m not spending another night out like that.”

“Fine,” Gin said, exasperated. “Now, will you get out of the tub?”

 

 

 

Just before I hunkered down in my room that evening, I caught a glimpse of Gin tripping past the kitchen in her underwear, setting out candles for Daniel’s visit. She was wearing the chemise I had made for her, a scanty thing we called a tunic in those days: rose colored, a heavy, drapey
peau de soie
—the kind of fabric you could just sink your hands into. Later, when I heard Gin and Daniel through the walls, I knew she was still wearing it. As I lay awake, listening to them, I wanted it back.

 

 

 

The sound of Daniel pulling the front door shut behind him woke me the next morning. I could feel it like a thumb pressing into the soft notch at my collarbone: the need to do something. Thanks to the wheezy grandfather, the need wasn’t about money; it was about Gin’s pained lying smile, the sound of Daniel’s leather shoes flap-flap-flapping down the stairs as he left. When Gin and I ate our morning
tartines
together, she thanked me for making myself scarce the night before. “It wasn’t too terribly cramped in there, darling?”

I shrugged. “It sure beats the pox. Or getting chopped into little pieces. Or arrested. Or pregnant.”

“All right! Shut up!” Gin said, laughing.

“So where exactly does Daniel work, anyway?”

 

 

 

The phone booth at Café Lorette was as snug as a confessional. “So you aren’t calling to elope with me, are you?” asked Anson.

“Your dance card’s a little full for that.”

“Your loss.”

“Listen, we were at the bar for a long time before you brought this up, but you mentioned that you had a friend who might be able to help me out.”

“You’re the soul of tact, Rafaela. But I wasn’t as drunk as all that. Your roommate has a rotten boyfriend. Shoot.”

I settled onto the shabby velvet bench in the phone booth and told him everything. “So now I have two weeks to save her from Meaux,” I concluded.

“Mustardville.”

“She doesn’t know a soul there. She can’t get work. I can’t imagine he’ll want her singing and dancing in his tiny town. What’s she supposed to do all day, just sit in their little flat? The town’s probably full of his wife’s friends, who will snub her.” I felt self-conscious for talking so long, but he listened quietly, letting me wear myself out. “Maybe he isn’t lying,” I concluded, “but an almost-divorce isn’t a divorce.”

“Very true,” he said.

“I
see
.”

“Leave me out of this. Let’s stick with your roommate.”

“I just think if she knew,” I insisted.

“Knew what?”

“I don’t
know.
Whatever this lie is, about his divorce. I even think she knows he’s lying to her, but she doesn’t want to admit it.”

“Sounds like. But you truly think if she knew, for example, that he hadn’t actually filed for divorce, it would change her mind?”

“Of course. She loves Paris more than anything.”

“More than she loves him?”

“Oh, come
on
.”

“I just wanted to make sure, before I bother my friend.”

“I’m certain.”

“All right. There’s not much time. I’ll see what I can do. Let’s make a plan to meet in a week and I’ll tell you what I find out.”

“
Meet
you? Is
this
how you get dates?”

“So you
are
going to elope with me! Actually,” he said primly, “I was going to propose we meet in a bookshop. You know Sylvia’s?” He gave me the address, not far from the Luxembourg Gardens, of an English-language lending library called Shakespeare and Company, owned by an American girl named Sylvia Beach. “She published
Ulysses
. She lives with Adrienne Monnier, who owns a French bookshop up the street.”

“
Lives with
lives with?”

“As in sin, my child.” I laughed, my body flickering with the memory of Tamara’s hands. “But you never met a more married couple, really,” he added.

My curiosity made me feel exposed, and I was aware of trying hard to sound blasé. “I guess there’s a lot of that sort of thing in Paris?”

“I used to run errands for a woman who called her friend her wife,” he said. “They kept house together on rue de Fleurus. Americans, both. I’ll bet you, ask any pair of American women in the Luxembourg Gardens, and fifty-fifty, they’ll say they’re married.” I didn’t want him to know how much I wanted him to go on. “They’re not a bad lot,” he concluded, “especially when you think about the messes most girls get into. Look at your friend Gin.”