“Ha-ha,” she said. He knew that she did not eat beef anymore, something she had decided to stop doing over the winter when she finally read Fast Food Nation, a book her sister had recommended.
His client was probably a woman, a new buyer, or maybe an artist, but Jayne didn’t ask. She had realized in New York that if Laurent was meeting a man, he would say so: “I will see Yves-Alain Nagy, the landscape painter, tonight” or “Olivier Denis, the sculptor of our marble dancers, the artist you think has borrowed too much from Degas.” A woman’s name was rarely offered. Was he, as his daughter alleged, a truly secretive man? But it seemed to her a gesture more circumspect than secretive.
“I’ll need to put clothes on if I take myself out to dinner,” she said.
He smiled. “Go out in your dress. No, your robe, I mean. But don’t forget to put on your shoes first.”
She laughed. “No, that’s okay. Maybe you could invite me out with your clients sometime.”
“We will see,” he said. “It is a possibility, Jayne.”
“I’d like it.”
“You want to be included,” he said. “I understand. That is only natural. You’re not bored, I hope.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m not.”
“You will hear from Jeanne-Lucie soon, I think. But I do not want you to ask her to tell you all my secrets if you do become friends.”
She turned to look up at him. “I’m sure your conscience is clear,” she said, nonchalant.
His laughter sounded forced to her ears. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t say that.”
CHAPTER 11
Work and Leisure
Are you taking care of yourself? Melissa wanted to know, her newly maternal tendencies as clear across thirty-five hundred miles of fiber optics as if she were voicing her concerns directly into Jayne’s ears.
Jayne’s sister Stephanie also had questions, less tactful than Melissa’s. What if Jayne got pregnant? And what if Laurent cast her out, forcing her to return to New York, a baby on the way or else an appointment scheduled at Planned Parenthood? Who knew how she’d be able to handle all that.
Pregnancy was unlikely, unless it was some other man’s child, because Laurent had had a vasectomy a few years after Jeanne-Lucie’s birth. “I saw no reason to risk having another child when the world is already very crowded,” he said. “My wife was not happy with this choice, but she understood why I made it.”
“You didn’t ask her before you did it?” asked Jayne.
“Yes, of course I did. She went with me to the hospital, and afterward she drove me home. She also made sure that I didn’t go in to work for a few days, as the doctor had recommended.”
“From what I’ve heard, most men don’t want to have it done.”
“No, they do not, but this surgery made sense. It should not cause as much controversy as it does, especially with so many people on the planet, twice as many now as when I was a child.”
“He could still give you an STD,” Liesel and Stephanie both had said later.
“You should use condoms anyway, Jayne,” Liesel added. “You never know if some of his soldiers will leap into the breach and make it across. I’ve heard about that happening.”
Jayne pretended to agree. Liesel was hardly a model of scrupulous birth control use anyway; she had taken plenty of risks during their long friendship, the most recent, from what Jayne gathered, with Bernard, but Jayne did not point this out.
Almost everyone Jayne knew from home had ideas about how she should spend her time in Paris. Write a blog about the city’s best pâtisseries! The best swimming pools and health clubs (“As if I even swim,” she’d told her friend Daphne, who drove her two border collies from Williamsburg to a beach on Long Island as often as she could, but Daphne insisted, “It’s probably one of the few things there aren’t already five dozen guides for.”). The best dog parks, knitting circles, emo clubs (“What are those?” Jayne asked her sister, who then mocked her ignorance over Skype), organic bakeries, gluten-free bakeries (“In France?” asked Jayne. “Yes, of course in France,” said Melissa. “Just do a Google search, and you’ll see.” “No offense, but I didn’t come to France to go gluten-free,” said Jayne. “Or to write a guide about how to do it here either.”), Japanese noodle shops, Vietnamese noodle shops, pizza parlors, yarn shops, bicycle shops, bicycle tours, helmet shops, soccer gear shops, soccer pubs, lamp boutiques, bead boutiques, flower shops, soap stores, all-night pharmacies, all-night wine shops. She could illustrate the blog too and land a huge book deal, like the one the cartoonist who blogged about her suicidal thoughts had gotten.
“If you’re not going to keep a blog, which wouldn’t even taken that much of your time,” said Stephanie, “why not invent something? Like sunglasses for dogs.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Jayne. “Sunglasses for dogs?”
“Aren’t people in Paris completely wacked over their dogs? I read that some of them spend two grand on fancy leashes at Chanel. You should invent little dog Ray-Bans and make a billion dollars. You just have to give me half because it was my idea.”
“You can invent them and keep the billions all for yourself.”
“Maybe I will. That way I can get away from my boss, who told me the other day that his wife used to make him use coconut oil as mouthwash and as a sex lubricant.”
“Is he on drugs? Why would he tell you that?”
Stephanie made a noise of contempt. “Of course he’s on drugs.”
“You can use coconut oil as mouthwash? That’s so strange.”
“Look it up. It’s true.”
“That’s all right. I believe you.”
Jayne did not need advice from friends or her sister on how to spend her time in Paris. She had her job at Vie Bohème. She spent hours every day painting, she read, she went for walks and ran a few days each week. She had the weekends and most evenings with Laurent.
A few days before Colin’s e-mail arrived, Liesel had announced that she wanted to visit in mid- to late August. By then Jayne planned to have at least two or three new paintings completed and another underway. She was working mostly with her collection of junk-shop and flea-market photographs, the ones in color, though she thought she might start a series of paintings in black, white, and gray in the next few months. Laurent was letting her use his study as a studio and had moved some of his files and his laptop into the salon, where he kept a small writing desk. She’d bought an easel at the art store off rue Bonaparte and set it up next to the bigger desk in Laurent’s study, where she did her sketches before moving to the canvas, her paints and brushes spread out across the desk’s newspaper-covered surface when she was painting. Her laptop she tucked into one of the desk drawers or else kept on the kitchen counter, where the Wi-Fi signal was the strongest.
Before she was able to set up her work area, Laurent had asked François from the gallery to come over to help him move a filing cabinet and a bookcase out of the study to make space for Jayne’s easel. François had not asked if Laurent was grooming her for a show; his work hadn’t yet been displayed, nor had Nathalie’s, but other art students who had worked at Vie Bohème as assistants, such as the mysterious Sofia B., had been given shows, though only after they were no longer working for Laurent and André. Laurent had told Jayne that one criterion for how he and André chose gallery assistants was whether they liked the assistants’ own artwork. “They must fit with our aesthetic interests,” he said. “That way they can better understand what we sell.”
When she told Melissa what Laurent had said on her second night in France, that he intended at some point to put her work in his gallery, her friend had screamed into the computer’s electronic eye, then clapped a hand over her mouth. “Shit,” she whispered, wincing. “I just put Josh down for a nap. But Jayne, oh my God, I’m so happy for you. I knew it!”
“I really didn’t know it,” Jayne whispered back. “Not at all.”
“No, of course you didn’t, which is probably one reason Laurent
is so willing to help you.”
• • •
About an hour after Laurent had left for Vie Bohème, Jayne was working on the drawing of Colin, his e-mail still unanswered, when the doorbell’s stately bong-bong interrupted her. She ignored it, but when it rang again, she got up from her desk, annoyed, and went into the hall. It was a little before noon, and Laurent was often home at midday, but Thursday was his early day at the gallery. He opened and manned it alone until Nathalie or François arrived an hour or two later. She wondered if he had lost his keys and was returning to pick up a spare set, but this seemed unlikely; he would probably have called and asked her to bring them down instead of coming all the way up to the apartment again.
She squinted through the peephole, the face of the man on the other side slowly assembling itself through the tiny distorting glass: Philippe, the music student from upstairs, the one who discarded the care packages his parents sent. She wasn’t sure if she should let him in, especially because she was still as naked beneath her robe as she’d been when Laurent had left for the day, but Philippe had probably heard her approaching footsteps. She tied the sash of her robe tighter and opened the door halfway.
“Désolé de vous déranger, madame,” he said, blushing pink from the neck up. He wore jeans and a red polo shirt; he was lean and pale, probably at most twenty-three, with a bony, equine handsomeness. His face was unlined and clean-shaven, the hands at his side large and bony too, more fit for kneading bread or maybe for sawing wood than for playing the cello.
“Ça va. Tu ne me dérange pas,” she said, even though he was bothering her. “It’s okay.”
“Alors, il y a quelqu’un en haut … for a long time someone is in the bathroom upstairs,” he said haltingly. “I hit at the door, but no one will answer. Will you let me use yours and M. Moller’s? I am sorry. It would take so long to walk to the music school.”
She didn’t know if she should let him, but Laurent had never told her to be wary of Philippe. But would he have? “All right,” she finally said. “Entrez. It’s around the corner, first door on the right, première porte à la droite.”
“Merci,” he said, his face still red.
She could hear him even after he shut the bathroom door, peeing exuberantly, her own face turning warm now. She had long wondered, without ever being able to answer the question to her satisfaction, why people were so embarrassed by their bodies when their basic functions were all the same. She had known an artist who took on the topic in college, her paintings of urinals and of women and men peeing alongside each other in open stalls impressing Jayne as both funny and smart, but their instructor, a man with veins in his neck that bulged during his frequent aggrieved outbursts, had not been that impressed. Some of her classmates speculated later that he was jealous.
When Philippe reappeared a minute later, wiping his hands on his pants and thanking Jayne several times, she surprised them both by saying, “Why don’t you keep the packages your parents send you?”
He blinked, and for a second she wasn’t sure if he had understood her. He looked down at his hands and said, “They send too much. I used to be fat. That is the word for very big, yes?”
“Yes, it is,” she said, surprised. “But you’re so thin now. I can’t imagine you being fat.”
“I was,” he said. “It was very … c’était très difficile pour moi.”
“I’m sure it was difficult,” she said. “I’m sorry to hear that.” She paused, her eyes moving involuntarily to his stomach, which was as flat as the wall behind him. “But you give away the other gifts they send too, don’t you?” How nosy she was being! But she found it impossible to stop herself.
“Not always,” he said. His eyes were on his scuffed black oxfords, the toes worn down to grayness. “They send so much. I don’t like to have too many pieces—how do you say it?—in my room.”
“Too many possessions or things. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be such a busybody.”
He looked at her thoughtfully before turning toward the door. She was conscious again of her nakedness beneath the robe but no longer felt as shy about it. “Thank you,” he finally said. His hand was on the doorknob when he glanced back at her. “How do you know I give away the packets from my parents?”
“Laurent told me,” she said. “I guess he must have noticed, or else maybe one of your neighbors told him. I’m really not sure.”
“Are you his wife?”
She shook her head.
Philippe nodded. “He is not a bad person.”
She stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“I have had worse …” He paused. “The word for the person I pay each month?”
“Landlord?”
“Yes, landlord. In French it is propriétaire. Mais vous parlez francais, oui? Un peu?”
“Oui, mais pas très bien. I studied in Strasbourg for a semester in college, but I hung around with other Americans mostly. Not the best way to learn a new language, I know.”
“You will get better if you practice. Like me with the cello. I am better than I was two years ago, even two months ago.”
“I wish you practiced here in the building. I never hear you.”
He had put his hands into his pockets and was leaning backward on his heels. He shook his head. “My neighbors would not like it. They would complain. I must practice at the school. They have rooms for this. Je vous laisse maintenant. Merci beaucoup—thank you for letting me—”
“You’re welcome, Philippe,” she said. “No problem at all.”
She had almost shut the door when he turned again. “You can go back to sleep now,” he said, nodding at her robe.
“I wasn’t sleeping, though I’m sure it looks that way,” she said, pausing before she blurted, “Wait, Philippe. One more thing. Have other people lived here with Laurent before me?”
He considered the question, his expression both serious and preoccupied. “I have not lived here very long. Only a year and a half,” he said. “There was maybe one woman before Monsieur Moller went to New York. But I am not sure. She might have been his daughter. I do not remember.”
He turned to face her more fully, his eyes moving to her chest. She looked down and saw that her robe had sagged open, her breasts half exposed. She almost scratched the thin skin over her clavicles in her haste to pull it closed. If she hadn’t listened to Laurent and sat around naked all morning like a dimwit, she wouldn’t be in this embarrassing situation!
“Thank you, Philippe,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “Bon après-midi.”
“Merci. Je vous en prie, madame.”
She shut the door, waiting until she heard his step on the stairs before she went into the bedroom to get dressed. She had spent enough time that day unclothed, and now she wanted to get out of the humid apartment for a while. Who was the woman Philippe had mentioned? Not Jeanne-Lucie, surely, but someone young, maybe Sofia? Laurent had never mentioned having a live-in lover before her, but this didn’t mean that he hadn’t had one; she had never pressed him for information, knowing that he would have told her not to worry about it—what, really, was the point? She reached for the skirt and blouse she had worn the previous day to the gallery, not caring that both pieces would have benefited from a washing. In France, she had seen people wear the same clothes several days in a row, and no one seemed to bat an eye.
It was after twelve now; she would go for a walk and find some lunch while she was out. On her way through the building’s crepuscular entryway, she encountered Laurent’s cleaning woman, Pauline, her hair in a topknot, a red bucket in one hand, pink latex gloves and a gallon of eau de Javel visible inside. She was going up to the apartment, she told Jayne by way of greeting. Jayne had forgotten that she was coming, and Laurent had not reminded her, something he usually did because Pauline, he was sure, preferred to clean the apartment when no one was occupying it.
Pauline was Czech, middle-aged, a graying blond with green eyes and prominent dark eyebrows. She had been friendly but not
overly talkative in the few exchanges Jayne had had with her. Laurent had told her that Pauline spoke five languages and had lived in several countries. Why she was cleaning houses for a living, Jayne wasn’t sure, but Laurent seemed to think it was because she liked the work—strenuous, maybe, but with tangible results. She could also be her own boss, more or less, and after she’d finished the work, her time was her own. Jayne suspected a deadbeat husband, but Laurent had scoffed at this.
“I don’t think it’s too messy up there,” said Jayne. “But it is a little warm.”
“I am used to that, Madame.”
“Please call me Jayne,” she said, something she had asked Pauline to do twice before now.
Pauline glanced toward the front door before meeting Jayne’s eyes again. “Did Monsieur Moller leave a check for me upstairs?”
“I didn’t see one,” said Jayne. “But it could be that I just didn’t notice it.”
Pauline sighed. “It should be on the dining room table.”
“I could call Laurent right now at the gallery and ask him. It wouldn’t be a problem.”
The older woman shook her head. “No, no, don’t bother him. I will call him if it is not there. He owes me for the last visit and for today’s.”
“I’ll make sure he gets a check to you tomorrow if you don’t find one,” said Jayne, surprised by Laurent’s forgetfulness. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford to pay Pauline. “Or I could go to the bank and get cash for you now.” She wondered again how Laurent could have forgotten. Something must have been on his mind.
Pauline faltered. “No, no, that’s okay. But if you would ask him to send the check to my house today or tomorrow, that would be good.”
“I will, Pauline. It’s no problem.” She couldn’t tell if the other woman was embarrassed about having to ask for her pay. Maybe forgetful employers were something she was used to, but what a drag to have to ask for money you were owed. Jayne had never been good at it. Even as a girl, she had not liked asking her parents for her allowance if they forgot to give it to her on Fridays after school, but her sister had not had any qualms, a trait Jayne had both admired and teased Stephanie about, to which her sister retorted, “I’m not being greedy by asking for something I’m owed!”
Paris, He Said Page 10
