Daring Chloe

by Walker, Laura Jensen

  The Picture of Dorian Gray

  For dinner that night, Tess and I suggested another neighborhood creperie as a lighter option instead of a heavy three- or four-course meal. The palpable relief in Becca’s eyes at this less costly alternative confirmed our suspicions. Then, as we were tucking into our crepes, she up and said: “I think I’ll quit my job and move to Paris.”

  We all looked up at once and said, “What?”

  “I could live in this city in a heartbeat,” she continued. “I’d quit Dunkeld’s tomorrow and come live in Paris. It’s such a cool city, and there’s so much to do here.”

  “But what would you do for a living?” Annette asked.

  “Work in a bookstore. Starve in a garret.” She shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “Starving would be more likely,” Tess said. “Paris is a pretty expensive place to live. Rents aren’t cheap and getting work as a foreigner is next to impossible — especially for Americans.”

  “I thought you wanted to live in China,” I reminded my roommate.

  “I’m over China. Paris is more my style.”

  “What about the whole language thing?” Paige asked. “Your French is pretty nonexistent. And to work here you kind of need to know the language.”

  “Not necessarily.” She flashed us a triumphant look. “Kai-lyn and I met this American girl in the catacombs today who lives and works here, and she said when she first came nearly a year ago, she could only speak a few phrases.”

  “That’s a little different,” Kailyn said. “Her husband works at the U.S. Embassy, and he got her a job there.”

  “Way to rain on my parade.”

  “Just trying to give you a reality check.”

  Annette sent a look of surprise to her daughter.

  “What? That’s what you always say to me.”

  “I know. But I didn’t think you listened.”

  “Sometimes.” Kailyn smiled sweetly at Annette.

  Once again, my roommate was off on one of her spontaneous flights of fancy. It was getting to be par for the course. As was my practical intervention.

  “Living in Paris is a nice fantasy, Bec, but apart from the obvious” — I ticked off on my fingers — “lack of a job, lack of a place to stay, lack of knowledge of the language, you couldn’t move here at least for another month or so anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “Hmm. Let’s see. There’s all your stuff you’d have to pack up and put in storage — or get rid of, then you’d have to save up for another plane ticket, find a new home for your angel fish, give Dunkeld’s a heads-up, oh, and then there’s that little thirty-day notice thing you have to give your roommate so she’s not stuck holding the full rent bag.”

  I smiled to show I wasn’t being a nag. Sort of.

  Becca smiled back.

  “But most important of all,” Tess interjected, “you’re the fearless leader of the Paperback Girls. You can’t abandon us. What would we do without your intrepid leadership? If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t even be in Paris right now!”

  “That’s right,” Annette said. “And I wouldn’t have gotten to see my gargoyles, or tasted those yummy Ladurée macarons or Berthillon ice cream.”

  I nodded. “And I wouldn’t have been able to see SainteChapelle, the Eiffel Tower, or my woman with the green umbrella.”

  “Yeah, and I wouldn’t have gotten my Hermès scarf.”

  “And I wouldn’t be fulfilling the dream of learning French cooking from a Parisian chef.”

  “That’s right!” Annette said. “What’d you learn to make in Jacqueline’s class today, and did you bring us the recipe?”

  “Tarte au fromage de chèvre, boeuf bourguignon, and mousse au chocolat.”

  “Translation, please,” Kailyn ordered. “All I got was the chocolate mousse.”

  “Goat cheese tart and beef burgundy, beef with red wine. And yes, I have the recipe. Jacqueline was kind enough to make each of you a copy.” Paige pulled the papers from her purse and handed a copy to each of us.

  Becca scanned hers and snorted. “Looks like a lot of time and work involved just to make lunch,” she said. “I think I’ll be sticking to my PB&J or grilled cheese and tomato soup.”

  “Julia Child said, ‘Noncooks think it’s silly to invest two hours’ work in two minutes’ enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet,’ ” Paige recited.

  “What’s evanescent?” Kailyn asked.

  “Brief, fleeting.”

  “I wish that ballet I saw back home had been brief and fleeting.”

  “You’re such a philistine, Becca,” Annette said fondly.

  “Yes, but she’s our philistine. And if it weren’t for our little philistine, we wouldn’t be here in Paris celebrating everything that is nonphilistine.” I raised my glass. “To Becca, our fearless leader.”

  The rest raised their glasses. “To Becca. Santès! ”

  That night we skipped the Nutella.

  Kailyn groaned as she pushed back from the table. “I bet I’ve gained ten pounds since we’ve been here.”

  “Me too,” Paige said. “And unlike you, I can’t afford another ten.”

  “I think you’ll be surprised,” Tess said. “I’ll bet when you get home you’ll find you’ve lost weight instead of gained it.”

  Kailyn brightened. “Really? But how?”

  “All the walking we’ve been doing.”

  “And all the climbing,” I said. “I think I’ve climbed more steps here than in my entire life.”

  “And there’s still more to come,” Tess said brightly. “Just wait until we go to Sacré Coeur and Montmartre.”

  “I can hardly wait.” Annette grimaced.

  “We’ll have to be sure and tell Jenna about the gym we found in Paris — the streets of the city,” Becca said.

  “Works for me. I could stand to lose my love handles,” Paige said.

  “You and me both,” Annette told her. “There was no way I was going to diet in Paris, so it’s a good thing we’re getting this city workout.”

  We paid the bill — a fraction of last night’s dinner — and walked out into the chilly night air. Kailyn, Annette, and Paige wanted to go up the Eiffel Tower since they’d missed out on that our first night, and although Tess had been several times before, she agreed to go along.

  “Becca and I will meet you there,” I said. “We need to do a roommate catch up.”

  “Do you know how to get there?” Kailyn asked.

  I pointed to the sparkling tower a few blocks away. “She’ll guide us.”

  As the others walked on ahead, Becca gave me a wary look. “Now what have I done?”

  “That’s actually what I’m wondering.” I paused and screwed up my courage. “Are you out of money?”

  Even in the night air I could see her face flush. “What makes you think that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Something about bailing out of the second cooking class, never buying any souvenirs, always ordering the cheapest item on the menu,” I said gently. “Want to tell me what happened?”

  Becca expelled a heavy sigh. “You know, the last thing I want to talk about in Paris is how bad I am with finances. Long story short, I found out just before we left that I’d maxed out my Visa, but I thought I had enough on my American Express to get me through the trip.” She surrendered a wry smile. “Only it turns out I figured wrong, and our first day here I maxed out that card too.”

  “But don’t you have any cash with you?”

  “Some. Not a lot.”

  “What about in your checking account?”

  “A whopping seven dollars and thirty-two cents until I get paid at the end of the month.”

  “Is this the same woman who just a couple hours ago announced that she wanted to move here?”

  “Shut up. A girl can dream, can’t she? What are we without our dreams?” she said. “When you cease to dream, you cease to live.”

  “Hemingway?”

  “Malcolm S.
Forbes.”

  “Who in the world is that?”

  “The head of Forbes magazine.”

  “You read Forbes?”

  “Nah. I found it in one of my quote books.”

  I made Becca an offer she couldn’t refuse. I told her I’d be happy to loan — even give — her money for the rest of the trip as long as she let me help her set up a budget when we returned home.

  She agreed, but only to a loan.

  The next day, after our final cooking lesson with Jacqueline, where she taught us to shop for and prepare blanquette de veau and crème caramel, we all trooped over to the Place de la Concorde area, where we took tons of pictures at “Kailyn’s fountain.”

  We’d named it that because Kailyn couldn’t stop gushing over it — like me and the Eiffel Tower.

  Afterward, we walked over to the Orangerie, or Musée de l’Orangerie.

  Tess told us a little of the history of the small museum on our walk. Initially built as a winter home to house fragile plants, Monet had rooms constructed at the Orangerie to house the immense lily paintings that were the culmination of his years of focus upon his water gardens at Giverny. He donated the final paintings of his life — painted as he was going blind — to France at the end of World War I.

  We’d already seen one of the artist’s beautiful Water Lilies in San Francisco, and I’d been entranced by the vibrant colors, peaceful scene, and use of light, so I was looking forward to more.

  I followed Tess into the first gallery, reading the brochure about Les Nympheas. Then I looked up and gasped.

  Color and light exploded from the curved walls of the large white oval room. Daylight streamed through the ceiling, offering a natural spotlight to the massive panels of ever-changing blues, greens, and lavenders.

  I felt my jaw drop at the sheer size and magnificence.

  Slowly, I moved around the room, drinking in the tranquil murals of the serene lily pond with its changing light and swirling color that looked like it went on into infinity.

  “To think that he was able to create this even as he was going blind,” I murmured, gazing at the swirling, evocative brush strokes.

  Beside me, Tess said, “Someone once described this museum as ‘the Sistine Chapel of Impressionism.’ ”

  “I can see why.”

  After finishing our slow circle of the room, the others moved through the arched doorway into the next gallery, but I remained behind.

  An oval bench in the center of the room beckoned me.

  I sat staring for I don’t know how long, at the peaceful, panoramic view in front of me. Then I walked to the other side of the oval bench that replicated the shape of the room so I could see the large panels behind me. I kept scooting to different places on the bench so I could take it all in.

  There are moments in life when everything changes.

  Sitting there on that bench in the Orangerie, something inside me shifted.

  As I continued to gaze upon the soothing colors of the water scenes, I remembered the first of Monet’s Water Lilies I’d seen many months before.

  And I remembered, too, the painting of the peasant girl dressed in brown that I’d longed to pluck out of her drab surroundings and set in the middle of the lilies with her hair free from its dutiful bun and flowing down her back, her face turned to the sun, basking in the light.

  I reached up and released my hair from its ponytail.

  After our visit to the Orangerie — which included a second oval room of water lilies and the wonderful surprise of basement galleries of Renoirs, Cezannes, Picassos, and more, we went to the Opéra Garnier in search of the Phantom’s underground lair for Kailyn and my mom and were surprised and delighted to find Marc Chagall on the ceiling as well.

  I bought a small jar of opera house honey for my mom, courtesy of the bees that live on the roof — yes, at the Opéra Garnier. Go figure.

  During the rest of our Paris stay, we visited Montmar-tre and had our pictures painted by street artists, climbed up myriad stairs to the Sacré Coeur for another beautiful view of the city, had lunch at Café de Flore in Saint-Germain-des-Prés where Hemingway, Picasso, and Truman Capote used to hang out, and squeezed between the bookshelves in Shakespeare and Company, where we bought used paperbacks for our next book club selections.

  We walked and walked and walked.

  We discovered small cafés off the beaten path where we had croque-monsieurs and onion soup, got lost, revisited Becca’s bookstalls along the Seine, and shopped for souvenirs in the Rue de Rivoli, where Becca was delighted to find miniature Eiffel Towers for only one euro.

  She bought five for friends and colleagues, and I bought one for Ryan.

  In a nod to the absent Jenna, we visited the Concierge-rie, Paris’s oldest prison, where Marie Antoinette and others from the Revolution were incarcerated before being executed. We also acquiesced to Tess and Annette and checked out Napoleon’s tomb, a deep red sarcophagus inside Les Invalides with its grandiose frescoes and Corinthian columns. Then we paid our respects to Victor Hugo at the Panthéon, where he is entombed along with Voltaire and Rousseau.

  One day we took the train to Versailles, and as Becca had thought, it was a lot of ritz and glitz at the Sun King’s former palace, but we fell in love with the massive, well-manicured grounds.

  Stunning. And probably even more so in the spring when everything would be in bloom.

  Another time we went to le Grande Epicerie, the famous gourmet supermarket where we bought ham and pâté and three kinds of cheese, and baguettes, planning to picnic in the famed Bois de Boulogne. But it was way too cold, so we trundled back to the hotel and squeezed into our tiny room with a view and had a bedroom picnic instead, raising our glasses to La Tour Eiffel, which we could see out our window sparkling in all her nighttime finery.

  Our final day, we enjoyed strolling through the city and picking up last-minute gifts and souvenirs. I bought silk scarves for my mom and Julia — not Hermès, but beautiful nonetheless — and a copy of Madeline for my niece; Paige went to Dehillerin, the famous kitchen supply store, and bought a madeleine pan and some cooking utensils; Kailyn haunted the “bowels boutique” in the Metro; and Annette returned to La-durée for more delicious macarons.

  While the rest of us were loading up with souvenirs, Becca asked Tess if she’d take her to Sainte-Chapelle.

  As the sun was setting, I returned alone to the Musée d’Orsay to gaze upon my woman with the green umbrella once more and to say good-bye. Again, as before, there were artists-in-training practicing their painting in front of the Van Goghs, Renoirs, and Monets.

  I stood and watched them awhile, aching for a brush of my own.

  Finally though, it was time to go. Instead of saying au revoir, however, I murmured à bientôt.

  See you later.

  That night, my Eiffel Tower seemed to sparkle more brightly than ever, as if she knew we were leaving and was giving us a special farewell show.

  27

  A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  This time when our plane took off, I didn’t clench the armrests, and I skipped the Valium my doctor had prescribed. My fears had evaporated in the Paris mist.

  Around me the Paperback Girls chattered happily.

  “I can’t wait to get home and see your daddy,” Annette said to Kailyn. “I’ve missed that good-lookin’ man! I’m going to plant a big wet kiss on him the minute I see him.”

  Kailyn adjusted her Hermès scarf. “I can’t wait to show all the girls my new scarf. And I sure hope Daddy likes the black beret I got him.”

  “I wonder if my boys have destroyed the house in my absence,” Tess said wryly.

  “Oh, I’m sure there will be something still left standing,” Becca said. “It’s that sturdy California stucco, right?”


  I turned my head to the window, hoping for one last glimpse of my iron lady silhouetted against the Paris sky. But the clouds hung too low.

  Instead, I put in my ear buds, shut my eyes, and relived the memories of the past week. When “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from Les Misérables came on, I was cruising down the Seine again in a Bateau Mouche, passing the flying buttresses of Notre Dame. And when the Little Sparrow sang “La Vie en Rose,” I was in every sidewalk café with my friends, eating délicieuse foods, laughing, and having a good time.

  Then the Josh Groban – Charlotte Church duet of “The Prayer” came on, and I was transported back again to SainteChapelle and its glorious stained glass.

  The tears flowed.

  “Chloe? Hello?”

  “Huh?” I blinked and looked at my boss.

  Bob grinned at me. “I think someone’s still in Paris. They say it gets in your blood.”

  “That it does,” I murmured. “There’s nothing like it.”

  “Well I know where someone’s going for vacation next year.” He smiled. “Meanwhile though, we need to analyze this latest regulation.”

  I called Tess on my break and asked if we could meet for dinner after work. As I drove to our favorite Mexican restaurant, I stuck in the Joni Mitchell CD Tess had given me and sang loudly along with Joni to “Free Man in Paris.”

  Tess arrived ten minutes late, after I’d already scarfed down half the chips and salsa. She was flushed and out of breath, her cheeks pink beneath her red glasses.

  “Sorry I’m late. James called from Chicago just as I was leaving work, and I lost track of time.”

  “No problem. I can see how you’d rather talk to the dashing widower instead of your favorite niece.”

  “That’s not true,” she protested, blushing. Then she saw my face. “Oh, you’re teasing.”

  “Duh.”

  When Tess returned home from our trip, she had found that her boys, far from leaving her house a disaster, had cleaned it from top to bottom at the urging of and with the help of Clemmie, Tommy’s now-girlfriend. Tess had been surprised and touched.

  And delighted with the beautiful bouquet of long-stemmed yellow roses on the dining room table. Only the roses hadn’t come from Timmy and Tommy.