I pulled one of the cards I’d received for this purpose from my purse, though until now I hadn’t managed to give away a single one.
“You’ll need one of these to get in.”
He held the card with his fingertips and looked it over, smiling.
“Thank you. But I don’t really like parties.”
“I understand.” I tried to appear unaffected by his refusal, as if he were just some fool from the neighborhood I’d invited out of friendly manners or pity. It was Saturday night. He obviously had other plans. He was probably at the drugstore to buy condoms like the guy before me. I looked around to see if there was a girl waiting for him nearby, but his hands were empty, and there was no one.
“Thank you for inviting me,” he said, tucking the card into his pocket.
“It’s nothing.”
My hurt turned to annoyance. He at least could have come up with a better excuse than not liking parties.
The pharmacist rang up the pills and I paid with the money Loic gave me. I mumbled a good-bye and started to leave, but Cato touched my arm again with his frosty fingers.
“Lita, wait … I’ll come to your party. I’ll see you there.”
Séraphine wouldn’t be leaving her room or receiving guests, yet she’d gone through the trouble of putting on fresh evening makeup, evening jewelry, an embroidered shawl across her shoulders, and a pair of jeweled barrettes in her white hair.
She looked lovely, and I told her so when I stopped in to deliver her medication. She locked her eyes on me for what felt like a full minute, and I wondered if I’d said something wrong.
“What’s happened to you, chérie?”
“What do you mean?”
“You look quite different from when I last saw you. How shall I say this? It’s as if your body is here, but you … you, my darling, are somewhere else.”
I admitted I’d run into a boy I liked at the drugstore and given him one of those dumb cards for the party.
She became dreamy eyed, falling into a two-minute tale about some Guillaume she herself met at a pharmacy on rue la Boétie a thousand years ago, but he left for Indochina and never came back.
“Alas, we now have a more serious matter on our hands,” she said shifting her attention back to me. “That dress you are wearing will no longer do now that the boy has seen you in it. It’s now a dress you wear to pick up prescriptions. An errand outfit, not a party dress. You must change into something else. A dress of another color at the very least.”
“This is my only dress.”
“Your only dress? How can that be?”
“It just is.”
“Very well then. We’ll make due with what we have. Do you mind if we tinker with it a bit?”
I thought she meant adding a sash or a pin, but she rang her handbell to summon Violeta, her favorite maid, and when she appeared, Séraphine pointed to me as if I were a plumbing problem.
“Violeta, take this dress and raise the hem by one half meter. No less. And remove the sleeves. Be quick about it, please.”
I ducked behind Séraphine’s dressing screen and slipped off the dress. I tossed it over to Violeta and saw my initials where my mother had stitched them in turquoise thread in place of a label. A gush of homesickness came over me, remembering how I’d stood on the block of wood in my mother’s sewing room while she measured me, humming one of her old Spanish songs.
Séraphine said to put on one of her silk robes hanging on the post behind the screen while I waited for my dress to be ready. I did and sat on the ottoman beside her bed. She handed me her silver cigarette case offering a Dunhill. She lit her own cigarette with a surprisingly quick and steady hand, squinting at me.
“Why do you wear those hideous boots, chérie?”
I hadn’t taken them off with the removal of the dress.
“I like them.”
“Aren’t you worried people will think you can’t afford better shoes?”
I shrugged. “Is that what they assume?”
“Just the other day one of the girls, don’t ask me who because I won’t tell you, said to me, ‘I admire Lita’s lack of vanity. She really doesn’t care what people think of her,’ and I said, ‘On the contrary. Our Lita simply isn’t aware. It’s the difference between bravery and oblivion.’”
“You’re saying I’m oblivious?”
“Of course not. You are a smart, smart girl. We all know this. But if anyone asks, you say your boots are Saint Laurent, yes?”
I nodded just to appease her, exhaling long across the room. I was getting good at smoking. Séraphine even commented that I looked like I’d been at it for years already.
“To think, all this time I thought you had something with the Corsican.”
“Romain?”
“I’m told he visits you every day.”
“We just read together. I’m helping him with his English.”
“And this new boy? Where did you meet him?”
“The night of Florian’s party.” I left out that we’d met on the street while his cousin graffitied the Pont de l’Alma.
“He’s French?”
“He seems to be. I don’t know much about him.”
“Just that you like him.”
I nodded.
“This is good, chérie. Autumn is when smart girls do like the squirrels gathering nuts and find a lover to carry them through the winter.”
I chuckled and she waited for me to regain my composure before continuing.
“You laugh, chérie, but you must trust this old woman. Without a winter lover, a girl risks falling into melancholy, and if a girl has too many melancholy winters, she falls out of practice for love and it’s nearly impossible to recover. Remember, you can’t make an omelet without cracking eggs.”
I’d just nod when she started philosophizing. Sometimes people only want to be heard, and it’s a beautiful thing to watch someone switch from casual conversation to revealing a particle of their interior. Séraphine was happiest when you let her dish out free advice or give her a reason to talk abut 1932, her pinnacle year of the whole century, when everything was still grand and glorious and every man wanted a chance to become her husband. At least that’s how she sold her past. She had loads of lovers in the first twenty years of her marriage before she and Théophile gave up and started being faithful to each other. A lineup of men and a few women—it was the fashion—but Philippe and Jean-Michel were the valedictorians of her memoirs. Jean-Michel, the groundskeeper of the Biarritz house, which the family had to sell off in the seventies, and Philippe, her all-time-favorite amant, a Canadian banker she met at Harry’s Bar while his wife was in the powder room. For twelve years Séraphine and Philippe would each tell their spouses they were going to Mont Blanc for three weeks of spa cure, which was true if you’re one of those people who thinks of sex as medicinal.
“Now that I’m old, I can be honest,” is how she began her special confessions. “Most of the time people do not manage to marry the one they truly love. My greatest regret is that I didn’t have the courage to hold on to my Philippe when everyone and everything in my life told me to let him go.”
She sighed as if the memory exhausted her.
“But in the end, chérie, there was nothing to be done. Women of my generation were raised to betray ourselves in ways your generation will never know.”
Violeta returned with my deconstructed dress. I put on what was left of it and stepped out from behind the screen to show Séraphine, self-conscious with Violeta there because she and the other maids referred to us girls as “the little sluts” when they thought we were out of earshot. Still, they always left a tray of coffee and brioches for two at Tarentina’s door the mornings after she had an overnight guest.
I thanked Violeta for working on my dress and she muttered something indecipherable back, handing me the mound of leftover fabric, all tears and scissor cuts now. I walked over to the full-length mirror in the corner of the room and stared at my bare arms and legs,
trying not to think what my mother would say if she could see what I’d allowed to happen to her gift to me, a dress I would never get back.
“It’s too shor—”
Séraphine held up her palm to silence me.
“It’s perfect. One must break the shell to get the almond.”
“I really don’t feel comfortable.”
“Chérie, you must remember that to be beautiful or fearless, you only have to believe it and others will believe it, too.”
“I’ve never wanted to be beautiful.”
“Everyone wants to be beautiful,” she laughed but stopped herself when she realized I hadn’t meant to be funny.
“Chérie, you are only beginning to know who you are. Taste this night in your new dress. You can return to being the girl you think you are tomorrow.”
By ten o’clock, the crowd spilled onto the house’s terrace, through the foyer, drinks held to chests, filling the salon. The other girls were deep into the party while I hung back on the top of the stairs waiting to catch Cato’s arrival at our door. At midnight, I was still perched on the second-floor landing alone. Tarentina came upstairs for a fresh pack of her cigarettes, designer menthols she bought by the carton whenever she traveled.
“What are you doing up here? You look like you’ve been banished.”
She sat down beside me and handed me a cigarette along with her preferred gold lighter, though she had a whole drawer full of them, mostly engraved gifts from men.
I took my time lighting it to avoid responding.
“Lita, I insist you explain your sad face and why you’re sitting up here wrinkling your tiny dress.”
I told her about Cato, how we’d seen each other at the park and tonight at the pharmacy.
“So that’s why you wanted me to invite Sharif! Why didn’t you just say so? I never invite guys I’ve already slept with to our parties. They start acting like boyfriends and I can’t stand that. But I would have made an exception to get Cato here for you.”
“It doesn’t matter now. I invited him myself.”
“That was your mistake. You shouldn’t have invited him. You should have mentioned the party and not invited him. Men like to be tortured.”
She slipped her arm around my back.
“You can’t be so sincere. That sort of energy repels a man. I honestly don’t know who started the rumor that you’re smart. You have so much to learn. Luckily you have me to finish educating you.”
“How is it downstairs?” I was tired of talking about myself.
“Not too bad. Giada corralled most of the messy drunks into the garden. They can piss and puke in the bushes out there and nobody notices. I heard from Camila that Maribel and Florian left together.”
“No,” I said and pointed to Maribel’s closed bedroom door. They’d passed me on their way upstairs earlier.
“Ah, of course.”
“How’s Loic?”
“The usual. He and Dominique are the happy hosts of the party, behaving like a married couple. By morning they won’t be speaking and Dominique will be in a depression until it all happens again the next time. You know those chaste affairs tend to be the most twisted.”
With Tarentina, you weren’t required to respond in order for her to have a full conversation.
“Years ago, when I moved into this house I had a crush on Loic. I thought he was so nice to me, showing me around Paris, the way he is now with you. He never made a pass at me, but I assumed he was the timid sort, so I decided to make it easy for him, took off all my clothes and called him to my room. And do you know what he did when he saw me on my bed waiting for him? He covered his eyes, told me to get dressed, and left me lying there naked. Naked. So I asked him what his problem was and he gave me his miserable, gloomy Loic eyes and said, ‘You’re too good for me, Tarentina.’ I said, ‘Don’t give me that crap, Loic. We both know I’m not too good for anyone,’ but he just walked away. I learned something that day, Lita. I learned all men hate themselves a little bit. Some cases are more severe than others, but each man has a discreet personal self-hatred, and once a girl understands that, it makes dealing with them much easier. Take my father, for example. You know he killed my mother, yes? I’m sure someone told you by now.”
I nodded.
“He thought she was in love with somebody else and maybe she was, but so what? He shot her in the heart and held her as she was dying, cried all over her, and then wrote a stupid note about how he couldn’t forgive himself and that’s why he shot himself in the head. A woman would never do that. A woman would wash the blood from her hands, find a way to deny it, and get on with her life. But you see, men are born guilty. Women are built to forgive and love and forgive all over again. Men are built for war and because we live in mostly peaceful times, they just turn on themselves. My point is you have to learn to get through life without being sentimental about boys because they are never worth the trouble.”
“I see.”
“Let’s be honest, Lita. Cato was kind of strange, wasn’t he? He didn’t speak at all that night, just sort of cowered in the corner. There was something primitive about him, like that feral boy they found running around the forest on all fours years ago. A scientist took him home and tried to make him normal, but he couldn’t handle captivity, so they had to let him loose again.”
“They did?”
“No, I made that up. I don’t know what happened because nobody bothered to keep record. Even freaks become boring after you’ve gotten used to them.”
She had me laughing so much that I didn’t notice the doorbell rang or hear the first time Loic shouted my name through the foyer. Tarentina and I leaned forward to see down the curve of the banister. Standing beside Loic at the bottom of the stairs was Cato, searching the faces of the party, looking everywhere but up, for me.
He kissed me on each cheek. It was the first time.
“I like your dress,” he told me.
I tried not to feel like a sham. I led him to the salon toward the bar. The room, thick with people and music. Romain watched us from behind the bar. He poured us each a glass of the pink punch I’d helped concoct earlier that afternoon. It was made of four or five different cheap rums from Monoprix, assorted juices, and a bag of sugar. Romain had warned us not to drink too much of it—the quality liquor was behind the bar for us residents and our special guests—but Cato took the glass he’d been served and I did, too, though I noticed, as we moved to the wall chatting with Saira and Stef, then Naomi and Rachid, he never took a sip. I didn’t have that kind of restraint, and it seared my throat, but I was too caught up in my growing wonder about Cato. We were quiet, but between us I felt a conversation, taking in the vibrato of music, a Euro electro pop techno symphony, and the pressure of bodies in the salon around us, until it suddenly became too much for us. We both looked to the glass doors to the garden and then to each other. Cato reached for my elbow and led me as if he were the resident and I were the visitor, through the party crowd to the terrace, across the garden to the stone bench at the far end of the property.
We sat together, maybe too close, because he moved a few inches away, and I worried that maybe Tarentina was right about my repelling him, but then he touched the top of my hand with his fingertips, light and quick, and I stared down at my palm hoping he would do it again. My parents, raised without physical affection, laid it on their children heavily, sloppy with hugs, forever pulling us into their chests, kissing our heads, making a wet mess of our cheeks. But Cato’s touch felt tantalizing and loaded with secrets I wanted for myself.
“I can’t stay long.”
There it was: He was already plotting his escape.
“You don’t say much, Lita.”
“I don’t know what to say most of the time.”
“Say anything. Say what you’re thinking.”
“Why do you have to leave?”
“I told you. I don’t like parties.” He looked toward the house. It was just as Théophile had described, lights l
ike stars replacing those lost in the cloud-quilted sky.
“Which one is your room?”
I pointed to the window above Séraphine’s drawn lace curtains. I’d left my desk light on, my journal open to a blank page.
“I have to leave, Lita.”
“I know. You keep saying that.”
“I have to leave, but I came tonight to ask you if we could spend some more time together before I go back home. Maybe tomorrow, if you’re not busy.”
“When you do leave Paris?”
“I should have left already.”
“Is something waiting for you at home?” I said “something” but I really meant somebody.
“Just home.” He stood up. “Can I come for you tomorrow around noon?”
I enjoyed his eyes on me waiting for my answer and the way they shone when I nodded.
“Will you see me to the door?” He reached out his hand until I gave him mine, holding my fingers lightly as we walked toward the house and sliced through the party. I went as far as the bottom of the front steps, fighting the impulse to follow him as he walked away into the falling fog.
6
We walked all over Saint Germain through the Luxembourg Gardens, down rue Mouffetard across the quai to Île Saint-Louis. We grazed each other’s shoulders when pushing through pedestrian patches but otherwise we did not touch.
We only spoke of the things around us; the street people, like the violinist at Étienne Marcel with the python wrapped around his waist, the guy playing the accordion for money over a drugged cat and dog tucked into a wagon, made to look as if they were sleeping together outside the Printemps department store, or the break-dancers dressed like clowns by the Pompidou. We’d stopped for a coffee at Café Trésor and eavesdropped on an argument between two lovers. They held hands across the small table until he pulled his hand away. He told her he wanted to leave her but she didn’t want to be left. We listened as she pleaded for reasons, and he finally admitted there was someone else, Ophélie, a girl they both knew. I thought she would cry, but she called him connard, stood up, and walked off. I was proud of her. I think we both were.
It's Not Love, It's Just Paris Page 7
