“Good,” said Laurent. “Because they are extraordinary.”
“I agree,” said Jayne. Bernard’s work was very good, but it annoyed her that he kept looking around while she and Liesel tried to talk to him, searching for someone more important to ingratiate himself with. She also sensed that he had no real interest in Liesel. He would sleep with her and let her buy him dinner from time to time, but Jayne doubted that he would offer Liesel the commitment her friend was hoping for. She was being grouchy, Jayne supposed, and Liesel would have said that Jayne was jealous because Bernard was in the show, and she was not. Probably she was jealous, but this didn’t negate the fact that he was about as charming as a stubbed toe.
They were interrupted by a hovering couple that Jayne thought she recognized from another opening a year or so earlier. They were art collectors, not penniless gallery rats there for the free wine and artisan cheese; the woman was a highlighted blonde in a short orange dress; the man, his baldness partially hidden under a golf cap, wore a gray cashmere sweater and black wool pants. Each kissed Laurent on both cheeks before leading him to another corner of the gallery, the whole space now crowded, the air having grown warmer and heavier with laughter and heightened conversation in the last quarter hour.
Laurent circled back to Jayne an hour later when she was on the verge of slinking home to eat cereal alone in the kitchen, her roommate already out for the night with her classmates, as Kelsey often was on Fridays. In their apartment with its mice in the walls and the noisy upstairs neighbors, Jayne would stand with her cereal bowl and stare out the window at the faded brick building across the street, replaying in her head the brief exchange with Laurent.
While Liesel flirted and leaned as close to Bernard as he allowed, Jayne was wondering if she had the courage to return to Vie Bohème to catch another glimpse of its owner, even if he would know what she was up to, and think her foolish or else easy prey. But I suppose I am, she thought.
Now he was at her side, steering her away from the door. “If you’re free,” he said, “I’d like to take you to dinner. This Tuesday? Because I read the other day that this is the night when many restaurants serve the freshest fish. You like fish, I hope.”
It was Friday now. She worked Tuesday evenings until nine, but already she knew that she would call in sick if neither of the other two part-timers could be convinced to take her shift. She might be fired over this man, but the thought was not so terrible. She’d been thinking of looking for a part-time job that did not require her to stand for hours, even when no one was in the store.
“I do like fish,” she said. “I think Tuesday should be okay.”
“Is Monday better?” he asked, smiling, she thought, at her hesitation.
Monday would be better. It was one of her nights off. But if she said yes, she might seem too eager.
Still, did it matter? They were adults, even if she didn’t often feel like one.
“Monday is probably okay too,” she said.
“The fish won’t be as fresh,” he said. “But we will have steak instead. If you like it.”
“I do, but I don’t eat it very often.”
“Good for you. I don’t either. Only four or five times a week.”
She blinked. “Four or five times? I’m not sure that’s a good—”
“I am, how do you say it? I am kidding you,” he said, his eyes crinkling. He had a lot of wrinkles. She had some too, especially when she smiled, which she had been told since childhood by her mother and grandmother to do often because it made every girl a little prettier. Jayne had never heard anyone apply this rule to the boys she knew, and sometimes she had frowned fiercely when ordered to smile.
“Do you remember my name?” she asked. The question exhilarated her. Maybe she was trying to punish him. Why did he think he could tease her?
“Of course I do,” he said. “Julie.”
This was probably another attempt to tease her, but his face gave nothing away. “No, it’s Jayne.”
“Ah, even better.”
• • •
A few days after she learned that the job at her alma mater had gone to someone else—the news coming in a cowardly letter, the director’s name probably signed by her secretary—Laurent suggested that Jayne leave New York with him. It was an easy decision, once she understood that his offer was sincere. He had been encouraging her for several months, within days of their first date, to spend more time making art, and even though she hadn’t admitted it to Liesel or Melissa, she had begun to wonder if he was considering putting her in one of Vie Bohème’s shows—and if it were in Paris?—she could hardly stand to complete the thought.
There was also her suspicion that she had fallen in love with him. She didn’t want to be with anyone else, this much she was sure of. She still cared for Colin and regretted that she had hurt him, but her feelings for the assured, worldly Laurent were stronger. And the job rejection had stung: they had hired a recent graduate, purportedly one with more experience in international programs. She had a hunch that her rival was also a man, which she later discovered was true, the smiling face of the turncoat director flashing through her mind. She wondered what she had done wrong in the series of campus interviews—maybe it was the spilled coffee?—but in calmer moments knew this to be ridiculous. “If it is not for the reasons they stated in the letter,” said Laurent, “you will never find out why. Do not waste more time thinking about it.”
“I know you’re right, but it still bugs me,” she said.
“You must learn to live with uncertainty.”
“Or else I will be miserable.” She paused. “Yes, I know.” He sounded like her father, but she didn’t tell him this.
“Six weeks will give you enough time to prepare, I hope,” he said.
A moment later he added, “Please understand that I am not proposing marriage. But I do not want you to bring home other men. You are with me, yes?”
“I am,” she said, surprised. “I wouldn’t think of bringing home another man. I’m not like that.”
He held her gaze, trying to suppress a smile. “You say that now, but it isn’t impossible that you will change your mind. Beautiful women often change their minds. I have seen it happen more than once.”
Did it happen to you with someone else? she wondered, but didn’t ask. Did he really think that her desires and allegiances could mutate so quickly? Maybe he thought this of all women. “What about you?” she asked. “Are you going to bring home other women if we’re living together?”
Or men? But she didn’t think he slept with men.
“No,” he said. “No question. But what you do and what I do outside of the apartment, that is not for the other person to worry over. All right?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, staring at him. She felt the first steely hint of a bad headache. “Are you saying that you plan to go out with other women even if you’re not bringing them home?”
He shook his head. “No, that is not what I am saying. Maybe it is my English, the way I am trying to express this.”
“You speak English just fine,” she said. It was dizziness that threatened her, not a headache. She could feel the months they had spent together, she with the warmly embraced belief in their exclusivity, crumbling away. “Tell me what you mean,” she said. She wondered who was waiting for him back in Paris. Because now it seemed as if someone was.
He took his time replying, as though he really did need to find the right words. “You are getting upset over nothing,” he said gently. “I know I did not say this properly. What I mean is that I do not want you to worry when we are not together. I was once close to a woman who always assumed I was seeing someone else if she could not reach me on the phone or if I had an appointment in the evening for the gallery that went longer than I expected. She was very jealous, and it was a shame, because she had no reason to doubt my feelings for her.”
She didn’t reply. If he was telling the truth, and he seemed to be, she felt embarrassed
for jumping so quickly to the worst conclusion.
“But I will not be a prison master either, Jayne. You are free to come and go as you like. You do not need always to tell me where you are going or who you are seeing.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to?” she said. “What would I have to hide?
“Nothing, I am assuming, but I am not going to ask for a detailed list of your every move.”
“And you’ll expect the same from me where you’re concerned.”
“Yes, and I do not think that is unreasonable. You must not worry about me, Jayne.”
How confident was she supposed to feel about this arrangement? How badly, she could hear Liesel asking, a cynical but concerned edge in her voice, did she want a show at Vie Bohème? Then she heard herself say okay and saw him nodding in approval.
“This will be something nice for both of us,” he said. “We don’t need more reason than this.”
“But you do understand that it is a big deal for me to move overseas.”
He touched the top of her hand. “Yes, of course.”
“You might want me to leave after a week.”
“I won’t. What you are wondering is, what if you want to leave after a week? You are free to stay for six days or six thousand. As long as you would like to.” He paused. “Barring the unexpected. Chaos, I am speaking of. Other than that, it is up to you.”
Or Eros, she thought. The two forces did not seem so different to her.
“All right,” she said, letting him take her hand and press it to his lips.
“Do not worry that there are other women,” he said. “I have never brought up Colin, have I, even though you have told me that he has called you and sent you e-mails?”
“That’s true,” she said. “But he’s not a threat.”
His gaze did not waver. She wondered for a second if she was telling the truth and didn’t allow herself to blink.
“I know he isn’t,” Laurent finally said. “That is why I do not ask about him.”
She had not intended to for it to happen, but she’d ended up in bed with Colin on the night she broke up with him. She did not tell Laurent, nor did she think he needed to know; it had happened only a few days after their first night together, and they hadn’t made any commitments to each other yet. On the valedictory night with Colin, she was morose and moody; he kept asking what was wrong until she confessed that she wanted to see other people. Hearing this, he sat up suddenly in bed, a stricken look on his face with its dark smear of whiskers. His pale chest rose and fell erratically as he stared at her, and she had the urge to hide her face against his shoulder but knew it was selfish to try to draw comfort from the person she was hurting. She could not meet his eyes and rose from his bed, groping for her clothes, saying lamely that she was sorry and she understood if he would not want to talk to her again, but he shook his head.
“Maybe we should just take a little time off?” he asked. “What if we talk again in a few days?”
“Colin,” she said quietly. “I think I need more than a few days.”
“I know that my work cuts into our time together. And that I probably like sports too much. I used to get in fights with a girl I dated in college about it.” He let out a laugh that sounded like a knife scraping a table. “I could play a little less basketball,” he said hopefully. “Instead of two nights a week, I could just do one if you wanted me to.”
She felt guilt roiling in her chest. Why wouldn’t he simply let her go, or else force her out the door, half clothed and contrite? She would have preferred this to his sweet, futile efforts to make her stay. “I don’t think you need to—I don’t—”
“Let’s not decide anything now. Let’s talk in a week,” he said, his face gray in the dim room; he was trying to smile, but his lips were trembling. She couldn’t look at him.
“All right,” she said softly. “In a week or so.”
What she did not say as she finished dressing in the darkened bedroom with its miniature basketball hoop on the back of the door, her eyes on his moon-white, mournful feet, was that she had already met someone else, and this man was so at ease with himself, so thoroughly charming and in command each time she’d been out with him. Colin often told her to decide what they should do when they went out, and if she insisted that he choose a restaurant, they sometimes spent an hour texting back and forth before they ended up in one of the same three places they always went to because they were both half starved by the time they finally made up their minds. Laurent also knew how to make money and spend it luxuriously; he knew to put his arm around her and pull her close, as if sheltering her from splashing cars or strong winds, as they walked from the cab into the restaurant and later when he summoned another cab after dinner. He reached for her hand across the table while they waited for their server to appear, and again as they waited for dessert, something Colin had never thought to do, or had been too shy to do.
There was also the fact that being in bed with Laurent was like riding a boat through a storm—she wanted alternately to hold on and be tossed into the waves. Afterward, it felt as if she’d been washed ashore, naked and dazed, mutely euphoric.
CHAPTER 3
No One is an Island
In the year before Jayne met Laurent and moved to Paris, she experienced a number of more or less commonplace events that, like new neighbors who incrementally grew more intrusive and obnoxious, began to encroach on her peace of mind in a way that she realized might before long become unendurable.
Her anxiety flooded out in a feverish verbal stream one evening in an e-mail to her sister. Jayne had just returned home from seeing a movie with Colin, one with a profane talking bear, a movie so brainless and obvious that she had left after the first hour and walked home alone while Colin stayed in the Union Square cinema to watch the remaining hour. Her sister saw a lot of movies too and worked as the assistant to the owner and CEO of a small record company that seemed always to be wobbling on the edge of bankruptcy, which was due in part to the owner’s habit of signing musicians who made little money but ran up large bills for producers, engineers, and studio time.
What if I died tomorrow? Jayne wrote to her sister. What if you died tomorrow? What do you think people would say about you? What would you want them to say about you? Why am I living in a city I can’t afford and spending large portions of my never-to-be-repeated life on dumb jobs I can barely get out of bed for in the morning? I came to New York to be an artist, and all I’ve done so far is watch other people do it instead.
Instead of answering the e-mail, her sister called and left a long-winded message, which Jayne didn’t listen to until the next morning because she was up late arguing with Colin about why he hadn’t left the stupid bear movie too and had let her go home alone to write furious e-mails to Stephanie. “Existential crisis” was the term her younger sister repeated three times in her rambling voice mail. “Cliché” was another, though Stephanie laughed a little as she said it, apologizing for making light of Jayne’s bad mood.
Some of the events that Jayne connected to her increasing sense of disquiet:
– One Saturday afternoon in late September, she’d gone with Kelsey to a free lecture at the New School titled “The Ideal and the Idealized: Sex and Love in the Age of Instant Celebrity,” which was held in an austere, overwarm auditorium. Dozens of people huddled in chairs with poor lower-back support and peered warily at the speaker, a media critic known for her brilliant, pitiless screeds on contemporary sexuality and societal selfishness, and who spoke with frightening fluency about Facebook, pornography, and personal ads. More people than ever before are spending their lives alone, whether they want to or not. Despite our supposed connectivity, we have never been more miserable and closed off … The obscene number of choices, of immediately available pleasures, have made us, paradoxically, restless and dissatisfied! Jayne left feeling as if she’d sustained repeated blows to the back of her head. Though much of what the speaker said was old news, and spoken in a tone of
practiced gravity, her words nonetheless burrowed into Jayne’s consciousness like a poisonous tick that could not be dislodged. She went home and sulked in her light-deprived bedroom, her neighbors upstairs pounding around as if practicing for a Stomp audition. At frequent intervals, she heard them shouting with laughter. Feeling murderous, she made herself leave the apartment again for a yoga class. She would be late, but if she didn’t go, she knew that she would march upstairs and scream at her neighbors; both Drew and José were twenty-six, but they resided within what seemed an interminable adolescence. They were probably already drunk and would laugh in her scowling face before suggesting she join them in their sock- and trash-strewn apartment for a threesome. They had done this before, to both her and her roommate, and to the overly talkative, middle-aged widow who lived next door to them.
– A nuclear power plant had melted down, disastrously contaminating the nearby ocean and the land on which it sat. More proof that the world could not possibly be an endlessly renewing and self-mending resource.
– Close friends from high school and college had gotten married or announced their plans to marry suitors who, in a few cases, they had known less than a year. Jayne had other friends who were already married, one of them within eight months going through a rancorous divorce, but the more recent weddings and engagements seemed more serious, more adult and deliberate. Some of these friends had also earned enough money as lawyers, software engineers, or café owners to buy not one but two homes in desirable cities and oceanside resorts. She didn’t think it was envy she felt so much as self-lacerating regret at having neither the kinds of interests nor the ambition to earn for herself what these friends already had.
– Jayne’s father tripped on a rolled-up newspaper in the driveway, fell on his face, and broke one of his front teeth. The newspaper was there every morning, but on this day, Mr. Marks was carrying a big watermelon that he’d grown in his garden, one he planned to share with his coworkers, and did not see the paper because the watermelon was blocking his view of his feet. Up until then, her father had seemed to Jayne all but invincible, even after her mother admitted to deep-rooted feelings of restlessness, which she finally confessed to over the winter, when Jayne was newly in the thrall of her romance with Laurent and more insulated from unhappiness than usual.
Paris, He Said Page 3
