A Paris Apartment

by Michelle Gable

  “Though not closely enough,” April grinned back. “You’re about a century and a half off. No, this is a Jean-Henri Riesener. He was the official ébéniste du roi—cabinetmaker to the king. It’s a copy of a piece owned by the royal family. See here? Marie Antoinette’s monogram is on the front.”

  Luc lowered onto his chair, squinting, looking vaguely thoughtful if not moderately fatigued.

  “Anyway, I’ll spare you more of my sermons. But have you seen this?” April said and reached behind her for the previously discarded sword. She heaved it upward and swung it around, grossly misjudging its heft and inadvertently thwacking Luc in the knee. He was less than one-half meter from receiving blunt-force trauma to the groin.

  “Mon dieu!” he yelped.

  “Oops, sorry. Is your knee okay?”

  “My knee is not the body part I’m concerned with. A very close call, Avril. My future children thank you.”

  “Good thing I’m only a little bit clumsy,” April said, blushing hard. “Anyway, isn’t this sword beautiful? You’re a dude. You should like weapons, right?”

  “I am in fact a dude, though not by the strictest American definition, I suspect.”

  “You are correct on that count,” April said and ran a finger down the sword’s blade. “I don’t know how we’ll value this, or if it has any value at all. I wonder if Marthe used it to scare away her overly pushy paramours. Or a rival!”

  April lunged forward and pretended to pierce the gut of Jeanne Hugo, though her imagined fictional violence did not stop at that one person. She wondered if anyone had ever stabbed an environmentalist, a venture-fund impresario.

  “Anyway.” April placed the sword back in its sheath. “Enough screwing around.”

  “Avril, why are you frowning?”

  “What do you mean, ‘frowning’?”

  “From the moment I walked in you have shown me a deep scowl.” Luc ran a finger between his eyes. “What’s wrong? Do we have another furniture crisis on our hands?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  April pulled out another folding chair and placed it across from Luc’s. At once her legs felt weak. She wasn’t twenty-five anymore. She couldn’t operate in a constant state of medium-to-high-grade stress and then expect to sling a sword around without suffering a few physical effects.

  “I’ve been thinking about Marthe a lot this morning,” April said, an accurate statement though not the full story.

  “This morning? I was under the impression you thought of Madame de Florian every hour of the day.” Luc chuckled. When April didn’t respond he gently touched her knee. “I’m only teasing, ma chérie. Tell me, what were you thinking about?”

  “The four-to-five,” April admitted. “Also known to Marthe and friends as the approved philandering hour.”

  “Ah, I see, the infidelity offends your puritanical sensibilities.”

  “No! Not at all,” April said, trying to put her thoughts into words that did not say too much. “Actually, there’s something to be said for the arrangement. Everyone agrees, so no one must discuss it. No one can get mad. It’s not scandalous. It just is. It’s like letting your teenager have wine with Sunday dinner. It demystifies everything.”

  “Are you suggesting a revival of the four-to-five?” Luc asked. “I’d venture to guess you could find widespread support for the idea, though probably only with the men.”

  “Yeah, the concept probably wouldn’t take,” April said. “Random question. Would you want to know if your wife was having an affair?”

  “I’ve never had a wife.”

  “Assume you did. Would you care?”

  “As with anything, it would depend on the situation,” Luc said. “In general, non. I would not ‘care’ as you say. It is not the worst thing in the world. Why do I have the feeling this is not a compulsory question?”

  April inhaled and studied Luc from the corners of her eyes.

  “My husband,” she started. “Well, he…”

  April shook her head.

  “He and I have this debate,” she added quickly. “A friend of ours, her husband had a one-night stand.”

  “Your friend.” Luc nodded with understanding. Of course this would be the one American subtlety he was able to interpret.

  “Oui.” April said but looked away, feeling no need to confirm his sudden mastery of American subtext. “The husband told her about this tryst. To be clear, it was not an affair, only a mistake in judgment.”

  April could’ve provided more details of her friend’s predicament. She could’ve said the husband was in Singapore for work. Closing a deal. There was a dinner and too much of some kind of liquor he’d never had. And there was a consultant. The two wound up back in his hotel room. He called his wife ten minutes later and confessed everything. One hundred days later the conversation continued to loop in her brain.

  “How big was the mistake?” Luc asked. “According to the couple, whose opinions matter, not according to anyone else.”

  “There was sex. But it’s never only that, right?”

  April pictured her husband’s hands running over someone else’s breasts, along her thighs, beneath her underwear. Troy had his mouth on her nipples. Yet another fact April didn’t need to recall or imagine.

  “What do you mean, ‘it’s never only that’?” Luc asked.

  “Well, there are many stops on the road to consummation.”

  “Ah,” Luc said. “So, what is the debate then? Between you and your husband? Though it must be said, debating others’ marital problems is a bit questionable.”

  He raised his eyebrows, challenging her.

  “Oh, she doesn’t mind,” April mumbled. “The debate is this: I think he never should’ve told his wife. Troy thinks it was admirable of the guy to come clean.”

  “And what does your friend believe?”

  “She wishes she never knew.”

  April had toyed with the thought since it happened, but this was the first time she bought it all the way. Though she was not proud of the statement, it felt good to say it out loud instead of think about in the abstract. Luc was not the first person to hear about this fictional friend. April told herself the lie, too.

  “Why’s that?” Luc asked. “Why wouldn’t she want to know?”

  “It put her in a bad position. If it wasn’t going to happen again, why tell her? To relieve his guilt? Get it off of his chest and onto hers? Who did the admission help other than him?”

  “Yes, it mostly helped him, although some might argue ‘Truth above all else.’ Isn’t honesty part of the reason she married her husband?”

  “Absolutely. But now she worries, she worries constantly. And the husband. He’s almost smug about it, his righteous truth-telling. The forgiving, for him, seems to be a foregone conclusion, an expectation. It’s as though, sorry I did this, but I’m not perfect so … read between the lines.”

  “She’s anticipating it might happen again.”

  “Yes,” April said. “And the anticipation is almost the worst part. Maybe she should implement Marthe’s four-to-five. Somehow get it included with all the other unspoken societal agreements. You open the door for old ladies. You throw out your trash. You are allowed the occasional meaningless tryst as long as it doesn’t disrupt your regularly scheduled program. No one is surprised. No one looks stupid.”

  “You don’t really believe this.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “Personally, I think it’s a fantastic idea,” Luc said. “If you want to know the truth—”

  Suddenly his phone rang. Luc looked at the Caller ID and grimaced.

  “Merde,” he said under his breath. “I have to go. Can we continue this conversation later?”

  “No. I mean, we can. But it’s unnecessary.”

  “I wholeheartedly disagree.” He stood. His knees creaked on the way up. “I’m sorry to dash off like this. I wouldn’t unless I absolutely had to. Do you mind that I’m leaving you here alone?”

 
“Of course not, alone is how I started.”

  Luc placed his folding chair in the corner, careful not to scrape its metal legs against the floor a second time. Walking back to her, he began with his usual smile, followed by the “au ’voir, Avril” she could nearly hear in her sleep.

  “Take care of yourself,” he said.

  April smiled weakly in return but did not get up. She couldn’t do it. Her legs (her body, her mind) lacked the power to stand. Though she now looked forward to their physical farewells April simply couldn’t muster the strength.

  “Bye, Luc,” she said, sounding like Chelsea or Chloe or any given American teenager. “See ya later.”

  “This will never do. Here.” He reached out a hand. “Lève-toi.”

  “Luc, just go, okay? I’m exhausted. You don’t want to be trifling with a grumpy—”

  Without warning Luc learned over and pulled April upright and ultimately straight into him. As she stood, fuzzy-brained and eyes blinking, Luc bowed his head and placed a delicate but firm kiss on one cheek: “Take care”—and then the other—“sweet Avril.”

  He turned and disappeared from the flat. April remained frozen for several minutes, surprised to find she could stand after all.

  Part Trois

  Chapitre XL

  April tried to ignore the quickly flipping calendar as the furniture in Marthe’s flat continued to dwindle. On the plus side, each remaining piece required more effort than the last. April saw anomalies. She had questions that required more research. Time. She needed more of it.

  Inlaid with boxwood and ebonized lines, the piece has a breakfront demilune red griotte marble top above a paneled frieze. There are three drawers and two hinged side drawers with laurel-leaf decoration and a central tablet inlaid with fleurs-de-lis. Two long paneled drawers are inlaid sans traverse with a marquetry center [repainted?] panel featuring a basket of peaches and flowers, flanked on each side by a hinged door simulated as two short drawers. The commode stands on hairy lion-paw feet and features acanthus legs [refinished?]. Each foot rests on a plinth.

  Questions upon questions, ever more excuses to keep working, to stay in Paris. Maybe she could stretch her trip a few days. The best thing about research was it could never be fully exhausted. And, as April told Peter and Olivier and anyone who cared to listen, she was waiting on an interview with Agnès, Madame Vannier, a woman who could well prove the most intriguing research source of all. Thankfully she was not yet dead.

  It was a Wednesday afternoon and April sat in one of her folding chairs inspecting a bronze figure by Aimé-Jules Dalou. April had seen his sculptures before, in museums and the Luxembourg Gardens, but she’d never held one in her hand. Usually his works were on a grander scale, standing as monuments and not household decorations. Where did Marthe secure this piece, April wondered? Was it from Boldini or Montesquiou or the shit tycoon? Or did it come from Dalou himself? Marthe had to be the sole woman in history for whom all these possibilities had an equal chance of being true.

  This statue, like so many of Dalou’s, was a nude, a woman with a rounded back and bottom, both knees tucked up into her chest. She sat on a rock, undressed, resting chin on shoulder and contemplating the stream below. April felt a little like Dalou’s nude at that moment: curled into herself, totally exposed but showing nothing, the inevitable dunk into cold, fast water minutes away.

  April snapped a picture of the statue with her phone. She had a camera she used for work, but this photograph she would e-mail to Troy along with a breezy comment about how it’d look great in their apartment. Feel free to buy this at auction! Just kidding. (Not really).

  But April remembered she could not share this with Troy. Well, she could, but he’d wonder why the hell April was talking home decor when she was supposed to be figuring out whether she wanted to stick around their apartment in the first place.

  They hadn’t spoken in four days, only e-mailed or texted, throwing out excuses about work and time differences to account for the lack of phone communication. Je vais tomber dans les vapes! I’m so tired I could pass out! Both fully comprehended the subterfuge, which left April to question why they bothered at all by now.

  “Zut!” April said to the BlackBerry screen. “No Dalou for me.”

  Like a rattlesnake, the phone buzzed in her hand. April tossed it to the floor as if it might have an actual bite. The BlackBerry rang on. April crouched down to pick it up.

  “Oh, Birdie, hi.”

  Was she relieved? Disappointed? She could describe furniture all day long, but not her own feelings when looking at someone else’s phone number.

  “Did you get the copy I sent last night?” April asked.

  “I did,” Birdie said. “Thanks. It’s now on Peter’s desk. The man is, by the way, annoyingly anxious for your return. He keeps asking when you’ll be back.”

  “How sweet. He misses me. Alas, my flight isn’t until July eleven.”

  “I know, I’ve told him 51,000 times but somehow he can’t remember longer than ten minutes. He, like, cannot function without you or something. It’s pathetic. He even asked if you can come back earlier.”

  “Earlier?” April balked. She thought of Madame Vannier. She thought of Troy. “No, I cannot do earlier.”

  “Yeah, I know, and I’m stalling like a bastard, but it’s not easy. The woman’s still alive, right? The heir?”

  “Yes. Still alive. For now.”

  “Good. I have a few interesting comps, like we talked about—properties sold within their own themed auctions versus part of a bigger group. There’s not a ton of one-for-one, but maybe it’s a start. Anyway, I’ll send you what I have.”

  “Thanks,” April said and sighed.

  “Chin up! Peter is totally on our side.”

  “Which is great, but I’m not sure he has much pull over here.”

  “When is this quote-unquote unreachable woman going to be reachable again?” Birdie asked. “Maybe she can sway the Paris office?”

  “That’s the hope, but she’s a wild card. She’s ill and in the hospital. So the timeline is a little hazy.”

  “What if you don’t get to talk to her before you’re supposed to leave? Can you, like, call her or something?”

  “Oh, I’ll talk to her,” April said. “I’ll stay an extra week. Two weeks. A month. I’ll show up at her deathbed if I have to.”

  She was surprised to hear herself say it out loud. As her upcoming flight loomed (July 11: two weeks), April woke each morning a little queasier, a bit more anxious. The reservation was made to get her home for her birthday. If she stayed in Paris April would spend it alone, though a lonely “celebration” was on the docket in New York, too. Lord knew it was better to be solo in Paris than in your own home. Yes. She would extend the trip. Peter said to take as long as she needed. There was no shortage of need.

  “Extend the trip?” Birdie said and laughed. “You’ve got to be shitting me. Peter’s head would explode.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Why do I feel as though you’re going to stay forever? Like you’ll somehow end up working for the Paris office?”

  “Sounds delightful, but I do have a job and a life back in New York.” Not that “back in New York” wasn’t terrifying. Not that April’s “back in New York” would look at all the same as when she left it. “I’ll need to return at some point.”

  “As long as you realize that. Because you will have to come home.” Birdie’s voice dropped as if delivering bad news. She added earnestly, “This is your home.”

  “I know,” April said. “Well, let’s see how much I get done in the next week or so. Remind Peter about the interview. Tell him I’m still waiting.”

  There was a slight hesitation, as if Birdie was about to issue her obligatory “sure thing” but decided instead to wait. Maybe she knew what would come next. Maybe she sensed a pause was exactly what April needed. On the other hand, she might’ve simply choked on some breakfast muffin as she had so many ti
mes before.

  Whatever the case, Birdie was silent a single moment too long. Enough so that April was able to slip in, before anyone could think better of it, “You know what? Tell Peter tough shit. Extend my return flight. By two weeks. For now.”

  Chapitre XLI

  Paris, 30 November 1893

  It’s been months since I’ve written in this journal. So much to tell but so little I can say!

  Well it’s happened. Yesterday the final letter from Pierre arrived. My guano gent knew the sorts of things I’d been up to and declared he’d no longer fund my exploits. To which specific exploits he refers I do not know. He told me not to respond, not to beg or plead or send any more imprints of my flesh. We are done. He paid for the apartment through the end of the year, and then I must find alternate housing. I will have to move! Next month! I cannot afford it. Where has the money gone? Into frocks and shoes and champagne, I suppose. I thought I’d made more!

  I went to Boldini. He would save me, I knew. Our relationship has developed into something more than I’d intended at the outset. It is one of kinship, not objects or necessities. Indeed he hasn’t bought me one damn thing, and more often than not I’m paying for his meal at Maxim’s!

  Over all these months I’d built goodwill. I was less expensive than any other paramour he might have entertained in his lifetime. As such, he should have no problem helping me through this sticky time. Why, I was downright cheery when I marched toward his flat, figures dancing in my brain. Giovanni would come through, I was certain!

  He was fresh from the morgue when I swept into his studio. I was glad for the good spirits in which the corpses always put him. It was the perfect confluence of circumstances. For a moment I was glad Pierre cut me off. No more distant noose around my neck! Able to spend time with Boldini, free of any sense of guilt! Not that I experience guilt, as a rule, but sometimes these feelings sneak up and surprise you.

  “I have great news!” I told Giovanni as I strode through the door and twirled for his benefit, the skirt of my gown fanning out behind me. “I am in love with you. I have ended my relationship with Pierre so we can be together without reproach, without the gossiping mouths of the dance hall girls and boys!”