The Last Time I Saw Paris (13 page)

Lara's jet-lagged spirits suddenly soared and her grin was almost carefree as she linked her arm in his again and they strolled around the corner to the rue Cambon and the famous Ritz bar.

The cozy paneled bar was full of sober-suited businessmen with a sprinkling of elegantly dressed women. Aware of how disheveled they looked, Lara thought how embarrassed “Bill's wife” would have been. But somehow this new Lara was past caring. They were in Paris. And they were at the Ritz.

“Hemingway sat here,” she told Dan, elated, as they nibbled on homemade chips. “Probably in the very seat on which you are now sitting.”

“I'm honored.” Dan lifted an inquiring eyebrow. “Who sat on your chair?”

“Oh, probably Chanel. Maybe Eisenhower or Jack Kennedy, or poor Princess Diana.”

“So we're in good company.”

Lara laughed; she felt ridiculously happy even though there was no room at the inn, and possibly none in all of Paris. She sipped her champagne lazily, as if they had all the time in the world to decide. “What shall we do?”

“There's always hotels near the railroad stations,” he said. “I'll bet the fashion crowd won't be staying there.”

They finished their drinks in a leisurely manner, then Dan paid the astronomical bill of fifty dollars, and they took another cab ride to the area of the Gare du Nord.

“Arrêtiez ici, m'sieur, s'il vous plaît.”
Lara stumbled through the few words of French and the cabdriver
stopped obediently outside a tall, shabby gray building with a green neon sign that said
Hotel Zorro, Chambres à Louer.

It was a cheap commercial hotel of the type found near railway stations anywhere in the world. A small thin man with slicked-back greasy hair glanced up from his copy of
France Soir
as they entered. His black sweater had a hole in it and ashes spilled from the stub of cigarette glued to his bottom lip.

He answered Lara's
“Avez-vous une chambre pour ce soir, m'sieur”
with a grudging nod and shoved a key attached to an enormous metal tag across the gray plastic counter. He muttered a price, then seeing her look of confusion wrote it on a scrap of paper.

“Oh, okay.” She took the key and started toward the tiny cage of an elevator.

“Madame!”
Finally, he spoke. He held out his hand, rubbing his fingers together impatiently.
“En avance, madame.”

Dan got the international message of the rubbed-together fingers and handed over the necessary francs.

Crushed together in the tiny metal-cage elevator, they creaked slowly upward. Lara's eyes met Dan's apprehensively as the gates opened onto a windowless corridor with a worn red-patterned carpet and twin rows of dingy brown-painted doors. The light was on an all-too-quick timer; it clicked off once, and they had to go back, click it again, and then make a run for it in order to find their room before it switched off.

Room 37 was not a thing of beauty. It was maybe eight-by-ten, with grayish lace curtains at the grimy window, a narrow sagging bed, and a too-bright overhead light. A plastic shower cubicle jutted so close you could have jumped straight from the bed into the
shower. Another flimsy cubicle contained the toilet and washbasin. This was definitely not Eden.

Horrified, Lara looked around, debating whether to hurl herself onto the bed in floods of tears or simply get the next flight home. Watching her, Dan wished he could think of something to say that would help.

Lara checked her watch. It was 8:30
P.M.
Paris time. She had already forgotten what time it was in California except it was probably yesterday, though, wait a minute, wasn't there a nine-hour difference? She gave up the calculation. All she knew was it was either time to sleep, the endless dropping-off-the-edge-of-the-world sleep of the truly exhausted, or it was time for action. She looked at Dan. He held out his arms and she walked into them.

“We happen to have reservations at this sweet little place I've heard of,” she said between kisses, “where the wine is superb and, even more wonderful, there is no markup. And the food is delicious.”

“But we have no clean underwear,” Dan said, grinning. “And you know what your mom always told you.”

Lara licked his mouth hungrily. “There's only one answer to that, Dan Holland,” she said, hearing him laugh as she pulled herself from his arms and threw off the clothes she had been wearing for what seemed like forever, then headed into the miniscule plastic shower.

Dan suddenly remembered the little blue-zippered Air France bag. “Wait a minute. That woman told me there was everything I would need in here.”

He pulled out a large white T-shirt with
Air France
inscribed across the left breast; then toothpaste and a toothbrush that Lara fell upon with glad cries; a packet of tissues, cotton swabs, soap. He looked at
the last item in the bag, then up at her. He grinned. “She was absolutely right!” He held up a condom. “Only the French would think of it.”

Lara burst into peals of laughter. “Magnum—
Le plus grand. EXTRA. How
did she know what size? Did they measure your shoulders or something?” He snatched her to him again and they fell onto the bed, laughing so hard they were shaking. Life was sweet in Paris, after all.

Forty minutes and thirty sleepless hours after they had left California, they were sitting opposite each other in the tiny stone-walled Les Bouchons de François Clerk, on the rue Hotel Colbert, a narrow cobblestoned street on the opposite side of the river from Notre Dame.

Looking around, Lara thought Les Bouchons was everything a Paris restaurant should be—small and intimate and cozy—and the other diners seemed not even to notice their scruffy appearance, let alone care. It was because they were all so into their own worlds, she thought: savoring the food, tasting the wine, intent upon their conversations, or else it was just French politeness.

Soon the waiter, in a big white apron, was pouring Roederer Cristal into tall flutes. He brought a basket of breads straight from the oven that to two veterans of airline food smelled like heaven.

Remembering she had no underwear, Lara wriggled, not sure whether she was comfortable or uncomfortable. She wondered whether no bra and panties could become a way of life.

“I would never have dared go out without underwear at home,” she confided. “In fact, I've
never
done this before, at least, not since I was three years old and fell into the lake at the Sleeping Beauty ride at
Disneyland, and then it didn't seem to matter. And you know what, now I'm all grown up and should know better, it still doesn't matter.”

Dan stroked her tired, pretty face, their eyes linked in that deep, intimate contact that only lovers have, and raised his glass to her. “Am I really here, with you?” he murmured. “Am I dreaming? Or is this Paris?”

“It's Paris,” she said, still locked into his gaze. “Paris is everyone's dream.”

As they sipped their champagne, still holding hands, Lara thought she felt like a different woman.

 

Dan said it was kind of a letdown, when they returned to their soulless room near the station, and Lara said it felt like a place where you paid by the hour and that she felt like a hooker, and Dan said good and kissed her in the hideous little elevator, just to make sure she was still awake, and besides, he said, he lusted after her. Then he pushed the timer on the light switch and they ran, giggling, down the shabby corridor to their room, just making it before the light clicked off again.

She leaned back against the closed door, watching him, half smiling. He looked so good to her, she could have eaten him for dessert.

They heard a trickling noise from above. They looked at the ceiling, then, questioningly, back at each other. It dawned on them that someone was using the bathroom upstairs.

“Must be the famous fountains of Paris,” Dan whispered, and they collapsed onto the bed, yelling with laughter until the man upstairs thumped on the floor for them to shut up.

They were still laughing as he began to make love to her. There was no way to stifle the noise of their passion but it seemed the French did not mind that.

They did not move out of that narrow sagging bed until the next afternoon, sleeping the sleep of the exhausted, making love like there was no tomorrow. And who knew, Lara thought sleepily, maybe in Paris there wasn't.

T
he next afternoon there was still no word on their luggage, though Delta thought maybe it was still in Cincinnati, so they made their way to the Boulevard St. Germain, heading for Monoprix, an inexpensive all-purpose store on the rue de Rennes, where they purchased underwear alongside women buying cheeses and detergent, bathing suits and bin liners.

At least I've got underpants, Lara thought, relieved, though she had in fact quite gotten used to doing without. And then they came across a wonderful little lingerie boutique. She smiled, thinking of Delia as she went in. She would buy something really gorgeous.

The shop was tiny and elegant, draped with the lacy teddies of which the French seemed particularly fond. Thongs and demibras were shown in illustrations on childlike waifs who, Lara thought doubtfully, bore no resemblance to her rounded self.

The gauntly elegant sales assistant swept her with a cold glance, taking in her decidedly down-market appearance.
“Bonjour, madame,”
she said distantly.

“Bonjour, madame,”
Lara replied. “I need some bras.” She spoke slowly in case the woman only understood French.

The saleswoman's eyes fastened disapprovingly on Lara's lavish breasts. “But what size, madame?”

Lara knew the French worked in centimeters but couldn't remember the correct size. She told her the
American size instead. “Thirty-eight.” The woman's eyes widened in astonishment. “And a C cup,” Lara admitted.

The saleswoman sucked in her breath, her disdainful brows rose, she
tskd-tskd,
and shook her head.
“Oh, mais non, madame.”
Her mouth pursed disapprovingly.
“Non! Pas ici.
No.
Not here.”

Lara laughed. This was just unreal, so silly, so absolutely Parisian.

“Imagine, being turned down by a bra shop,” she said to Dan out on the street again, still laughing.

Later she got luckier and discovered a sale at Max Studio on the rue des Saints Péres, where she thankfully grabbed up a linen-knit twinset in pale cream, a pair of linen pants, some plain T-shirts and camisoles. Now that she had discovered sales were on, she dragged Dan along Boulevard St. Germain, looking for
Soldes
signs. She stopped dead in her tracks outside Sonia Rykiel's elegant boutique, staring, smitten, at a soft silk-georgette dress, cream splashed with deep pink flowers. It was sleeveless, with small ruffles drifting over the shoulders, a low sweetheart neckline, and a skirt that floated like a cloud. It was, Lara thought with a longing sigh, the epitome of summer in Paris. She
had
to have it, and she knew exactly when she was going to wear it. Tonight, at the famous restaurant where she had made reservations many months ago, when she had still been coming to Paris with Bill. Surprised, she realized she was enjoying herself so much, she had temporarily forgotten about Bill.

Who cares about that treacherous bastard, she thought with that little Parisian shrug, he's certainly not thinking about me. And she strode into the store,
emerging, beaming, fifteen minutes later with that dress.

Then they went in search of clothes for Dan. Lara insisted on buying him a beautiful deep-blue shirt that she said matched his eyes, and a yellow and blue tie that she picked out herself, though Dan swore he never would wear one, and he chose a nice unconstructed black linen jacket, and also a pair of soft loafers in a smart shop called Westons, which Lara told him she had heard from Delia was the chicest thing in men's footwear in France.

Two hours later, they flung themselves down at a sidewalk table at the Café Les Deux Magots, their packages piled next to them, sipping café grand créme and nibbling on croissants. Saving themselves, Lara said, for the memorable feast to come that night.

T
hat evening, as they dressed for dinner in their ugly, cramped room, Lara inspected the new her in the tiny spotted mirror. The floaty dress clung alarmingly to her curves and she smoothed it doubtfully over her hips, thinking it hadn't looked quite so clingy in the shop and wondering if pink was really okay for a woman her age. The sweetheart neckline revealed the upper curves of her breasts and the fluid skirt showed quite a lot of her legs. Underneath she wore a little lace bra from Monoprix that did wonders for her, and a lace thong that left her feeling naked, which, she figured, she almost was. Plus the new four-inch heels that made her look taller and elegant, if a little wobbly.

She bent her knees, trying to catch the full effect in the murky mirror propped on the chipped brown dresser. Dan's face appeared over her shoulder. He was adjusting the tie she had bought for him, and she thought, guiltily, how Melissa had bought a tie for Bill. Was this a mistress pattern? she wondered.

“Only for you would I wear a tie,” Dan said, “and there's no need to look in the mirror,” he added, dropping a kiss on top of her head as she stabbed tiny pearl and diamond earrings through her lobes and patted her sleeked-back hair one more time. “You look wonderful.”

Lara twirled for him, still uncertain about this new
self, and he shook his head, bemused. “Is this really the woman I came in with?”

Laughing, Lara kissed him, straightening his new silk tie, admiring him. “See how handsome you are?” she said.

He grinned back at her. “We're so darn chic I'm not sure Paris is ready for us,” he said, and they ran hand in hand down the gloomy corridor before the light could click off. They were still laughing as they hailed a taxi and took off for what Lara knew would be a highlight of their stay in Paris.