The Engagements

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  He laughed. “We broke up a year ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, first off, I have no time. We hardly ever saw each other. She was special, though. Smart, but from a family like mine. My mother adored her. I thought we’d get married for a while there. But all we ever did was fight. Fight, then make up, then fight again. The usual.”

  “Let me guess,” she said. “You fall madly in love with a lot of women as soon as you meet them. But then you go out once or twice, you talk all night long, you get them into bed, and you lose interest. It is no one’s fault, perhaps, but these women, they mourn for you, they beg you to take them back, and you feel nothing.”

  He cocked his head to the side. “Maybe.”

  “You are a man in a big city, and there are so many options you can’t help but gorge yourself like a boy in a chocolate shop.”

  “You sound like an expert,” he said.

  “Perhaps. You are un cavaleur. A pickup artist.”

  “I prefer to think of myself as a romantic,” he said.

  She laughed.

  “You’re not very impressed by me, are you?” he asked. He sounded delighted by the idea.

  “You’re young,” she said. “You can’t help it.”

  She could not stop mentioning his youth, as if to prove to herself that she was not flirting, merely educating the boy. She often enjoyed the safety of flirtation when it happened in front of Henri. Men were different to her now that she was married. But this felt more dangerous than the rest.

  “Well, what about Henri? How old is he, sixty?” P.J. said. “He must be thirty years older than you, am I right?”

  “Stop trying to flatter me.”

  “I’m serious,” he said. “What is it with gorgeous women and older men? You should give a young guy a chance for a change.”

  His words floated there for a moment, until the waiter came by with the champagne. Delphine felt as though they were two schoolchildren who had narrowly escaped being caught cheating on a test. She took a tiny sip of her drink to steady herself. This conversation must end. It wasn’t fair to poor Henri.

  “Henri is only fifty-five,” she whispered. “We are fifteen years apart.” Her age was something she wouldn’t share with just anyone, but this American, this whole night, seemed not quite real.

  “Neither of you looks your age,” he said. “You’re gorgeous. People must tell you all the time, don’t they? They must come up and stop you in the street.”

  Delphine laughed. “The drinks have gone to your head.”

  “No offense to old Henri, but he must get down on his knees every day and thank God he landed a woman as hot as you.”

  In fact, though she had spent a lifetime being told by men that she was beautiful, Henri had rarely commented on her appearance one way or the other.

  “My husband is more concerned with the beauty of instruments than the beauty of women,” she said.

  Once the words were out of her mouth, she realized that she too was very drunk. She should go home. She would finish just this one drink and leave. Meanwhile, she would change the subject to something neutral.

  “Do you like the music?” she asked. The piano player was halfway through a perfect rendition of “Night and Day,” a favorite of hers.

  “Very much. I’m a sucker for Cole Porter.”

  “Ahh, me too,” she said. “There’s an interesting history in this place when it comes to pianos. Marie Antoinette took her lessons here, back when this was the private home of the Duke de Crillon. And there’s a suite upstairs where Leonard Bernstein used to stay, with one of his beautiful wooden pianos in the sitting room. I’ve never seen it, but it’s supposed to be spectacular.”

  “Why don’t we go up and have a look?” he said.

  Then she felt it—his warm hand on her thigh. Delphine was surprised by how unsurprising she found the sensation. He leaned forward and kissed her.

  “I think you’re the most fantastic woman I’ve ever met.”

  “And how many times have you thought that before?” she asked, but she wanted it to be true more than he could imagine.

  “If I were to go to the front desk and rent a room, would you come upstairs with me?” he whispered.

  She could feel her nipples grow hard, her legs tingling.

  “I think I ought to slap you for suggesting something like that.”

  He kissed her again, his hand in her hair, and then rose from the table. “Give me two minutes.”

  Delphine waved to the waiter and calmly paid the check, as if she did this sort of thing all the time. The drinks were twenty euros apiece. She knew that the rooms were somewhere in the range of nine hundred a night. For all the time she had spent in this hotel, she had never once been upstairs.

  When P.J. returned, he did not mention the price, or the fact that he already had a perfectly good room reserved somewhere in the Latin Quarter. He just extended a hand and said, “Follow me.”

  In the elevator, they pressed together, her back to the wall, his hands all over her body. His kisses were so strong that they felt almost violent. They walked the hall still kissing, bound to one another, absurdly knocking into the walls every few feet.

  He unlocked the door to their room and before she even heard it click shut he was lifting her by the backs of her thighs and up onto the bed, as if she weighed nothing. He slid off her panties, and then he was down on his knees on the floor, gently spreading her legs apart.

  After they made love, she did not want to go home. It seemed impossible that she should have to leave his bed. But it was after midnight, and what would she tell Henri?

  Delphine stood and picked up her clothes. He lay there, watching her put them on.

  “Would you go to Versailles with me?” he asked.

  She laughed. “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “I don’t see how I can.”

  “Find a way,” he said. “Please. Meet me here at ten.”

  On the taxi ride home, she felt so light that she had to press her palm hard against her chest to keep from floating away. She tried to warn herself that he was just an American boy wanting to get the most out of a French vacation—fine wine and the Eiffel Tower and a Parisian woman naked in his hotel bed. But it had felt like more.

  Henri was asleep when she came in. Her heart pounded as she slid into bed beside him. She thought the sound might actually be loud enough to wake him, but he did not stir. In the morning, when the alarm rang at seven, she hadn’t yet been to sleep. He rolled over and looked at her.

  “Quelles nouvelles? How was it with the American?”

  “Fine,” she said.

  “Was it that bad?”

  “It was all right. I’m just not feeling well now.”

  “My poor dear,” he said, speaking to her like a beloved child. “Do you need some of my special medicine?”

  The special medicine, which she had often fetched for him after too long a lunch, was just a fine scotch that he kept in the pantry.

  “No,” she said. “I think I might have caught your grippe intestinale.”

  She felt certain that he must sense her dishonesty, but then he said, “Why don’t you take the day off? I’m feeling better now and I don’t have any meetings today. I can mind the shop on my own.”

  And with that, both their destinies were set in motion.

  She lay in bed listening as he prepared for his day in the other rooms of the apartment. He brought her a warm tartine beurrée and coffee on a tray before he left.

  “Now don’t start organizing the closets or anything strenuous like that,” he said. “Just rest.”

  As soon as he was gone, she showered and dressed, taking her time with her makeup, her perfume, her lingerie. The night before, P.J. had told her that girls in New York, even the young ones, wore big, ugly cotton underpants. What had he called them? Grandma panties, something like that. Delphine selected a bra and thong made of delicate lace, in black and violet.

&n
bsp; She took the Metro back to Le Crillon. As the train stopped at one station and then the next, she told herself not to hope too hard. He might not even be there. But when she arrived, P.J. stood out front, and as his eyes met hers his face broke into a wonderful smile.

  In Versailles, they ate lunch at a sidewalk café, kissing at the table like teenagers. She pointed out the picturesque city hall, a palace unto itself, and the candy shops that sold perfect, tiny fruits and vegetables made of marzipan. They strolled through the village holding hands, and then up to the palace, where they kissed some more. They kissed in the Hall of Mirrors, and in the gardens, in the shade of Marie Antoinette’s oak tree, which, according to a plaque, the queen had saved from uprooting in 1790, not long before she was beheaded.

  “Down this road is the Cimetière des Gonards,” she told him as they walked back to the train that afternoon. “Edith Wharton is buried there.”

  He stared blankly.

  “The author,” she said.

  “Oh!” He looked embarrassed. “I don’t know much about French writers.”

  “Edith Wharton,” she repeated, trying to pronounce it the way an American would, assuming that her accent had him confused. “She was from New York.”

  He shook his head. “Oh. Right.”

  Back in Paris, they went to his hotel, a boutique property tucked away on a side street. He told her it had once been a convent. He undressed her in front of a narrow window, its wooden shutters flung open onto an alleyway. As he led her to the bed, she could hear pigeons flapping their wings, and laughter from the elderly matinee patrons smoking outside the art house cinema across the road. Then there was nothing but the sound of her own breath, mixed in with his.

  They lay in bed afterward, and he fell asleep with his head on her bare chest. Delphine couldn’t sleep. She looked around the room, and there was the Stradivarius, upright on a chair in the corner. She had the sudden urge to tell Henri that P.J. had just left it out like that, not locked away in the hotel safe. It seemed irresponsible, and yet there was something thrilling about it.

  She should go home. Henri would be back at seven.

  “I’ve got to leave,” she whispered, feeling exposed now, wishing she were tucked away safe in the country with her husband reading Zola or the latest Jean Echenoz in the next room.

  “Not yet,” P.J. protested, but she was already on her feet.

  When Henri walked through the door that night, she was lying on the couch in her nightgown, pretending to be asleep.

  P.J. called her cell around midnight. She had been waiting, clutching the phone in her hand, her whole body flooded with anticipation. At the first vibration, she ran to the bathroom off the hall to answer.

  “I need to see you again,” he said. “Can you come now?”

  She laughed. “No!”

  “Well, tomorrow then. Please.”

  The shop was closed from noon to three every day. They agreed to meet at Brasserie Élise at twelve-thirty.

  Her husband only nodded when she told him she had a lunch date with an old friend of her father’s, in town from Toulouse.

  “I have to go all the way back toward home,” she said. “He’s staying near the rue Cler.”

  She had planned these words, in case any of the neighbors should see her and somehow end up mentioning it to Henri. She thought she sounded stiff and rehearsed, but Henri replied, “You should take the car. I’ve got plenty of paperwork to keep me busy here.”

  “All right.”

  The brasserie was four blocks from her apartment. When Delphine saw P.J. waiting there, she took him wordlessly by the hand and led him home. Every mundane detail of her life was suddenly electrified—pushing open the heavy door to the courtyard, turning her key in the lock, stepping into the elevator and pulling the grate closed, his lips on hers as they rose up one flight and then the next. After they made love, she stood in the kitchen and watched him as he sat shirtless at the table, flipping through the pages of yesterday’s Le Monde. He looked like he belonged here. She could imagine years ahead, the two of them sitting in this same room in just this way.

  The next day was Friday. As usual, she and Henri were scheduled to go to their country house that evening. She had told herself there was no way out of it, and maybe this was good—she needed to take a breath, to shake herself out of this silly affair. She had never had sex like this before, not with Henri or anyone. But she must remember that P.J. was a performer, and a good one at that. He did a very convincing job of making love to her as if he really were in love, but that didn’t make it so. She had made that mistake all too often in the past.

  Delphine had told him that she would be gone all weekend. He protested, but she reminded him that they had an entire week ahead when they might meet again. She felt proud of her resolve, but by four o’clock it had begun to weaken. By five, her stomach was twisted up at the thought of being without him. At six, as they were closing for the day, she turned to her husband and said, “I’m not myself this week. I just don’t feel right.”

  He nodded. “The country air will do you good. I’m so excited for Monday morning. Did I tell you, Seamus O’Malley is coming from Galway?”

  She felt ill. She hadn’t been forceful enough.

  “He’s one of only four people in the world making top-quality uilleann pipes.”

  The words began to come out of her as if someone else were speaking them: “I wonder if you’d mind if I stayed behind this once.”

  He looked concerned. “I don’t have to go. We can both stay in the city if that’s what you prefer.”

  “No, no,” she said. “You go. I know you’ve been looking forward to the chamber music on Saturday. And I hope this won’t hurt your feelings, but I think it might do me good to be alone.”

  “Have I done something wrong?” he asked.

  “Of course not. Every now and then a woman needs some time to herself, that’s all.”

  “All right,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”

  She showed up at P.J.’s hotel, expecting him to be waiting for her. But of course, he was off seeing Paris. She went into the lobby, where a self-service bar had been set up. She poured a glass of white wine and placed a five-euro bill in the basket. Then she sat at a table and watched for close to an hour as tourists came in and out, clutching their shopping bags and street maps. She imagined the worst: that he had gone back to New York, or that he would enter the hotel with some other woman. When he finally came in and saw her there, he went right past, and had to look back twice before realizing.

  “It is you!” he said, blissful. “I thought I’d imagined you sitting there. I haven’t thought of anything but your face since you left me yesterday.”

  They walked along the Seine, past the bouquinistes hawking old paperbacks and posters. The tour boats glided along, their occupants waving wildly from the decks. Delphine and P.J. waved back, two flâneurs with no plans, no obligations. Though this was Paris, her city, it felt altogether different with him in it. Even the trees that lined the water were suddenly more alive, their branches ending in perfect green starbursts.

  They stopped into a café for dinner. When they returned to the street, she was surprised to see that the sun had set. She asked him what time it was. One a.m.

  Dozens of young revelers gathered on the riverbanks, singing and dancing, smashing empty wine bottles on the cobblestones. P.J. laughed, looking over the ledge from the sidewalk.

  “Should we go down there?” he asked.

  She started to protest, to say that she was too old for something like that, and it struck her—her life had become so stagnant, so serious, but she wasn’t old at all. She kissed him, taking his hand and pulling him down the nearest set of steps to the water.

  They spent the rest of the weekend in her bed, talking and making love for hours, until one or the other of them finally realized that they hadn’t eaten all day. Late Saturday night, she cooked him rare steak.

  On Sunday morning, she woke
alone and found him in the living room. He had opened the shutters, and was looking out. Light poured in across the floor.

  She took him through the bustling outdoor market beneath the elevated train tracks on the boulevard de Grenelle, where she went twice a week. A hundred stalls lined the path, each concerned with beauty and presentation as much as taste. Some sold the ripest fruit, ready to be eaten: cherries and berries and rhubarb, giant tomatoes and eggplants and artichokes, mushrooms long and thin, or wide and fat; others displayed thirty different kinds of olives in plain square bins and any herb or nut you could imagine. P.J. took a picture of the poissonneries, with their silvery fish heads and mussels and trout, translucent purple poulpe on a bed of leaves and ice. She pointed out the fromagerie, run by a father and daughter, with two dozen wheels of cheese, which they cut up and carefully wrapped in pale blue paper. The charcuterie had vats of beef bourguignon and paella, petits poulets rotating on a spit. The purveyor flirted with every old lady pulling her cart, his white apron smeared with blood. The flower stalls had roses and calla lilies in peak bloom. A profusion of heavenly smells hung in the atmosphere, so alive with the pleasure of good food and drink.

  They strolled home along the avenue de la Motte Picquet, eating bright red fraises. She watched with pleasure when he took in the quiet view of the Eiffel Tower, which was hers every day.

  “I don’t want to leave Paris,” he said.

  “So don’t,” she said. “You are an artist. You can live anywhere.”

  Just then, she believed it was true. Maybe they could go on like this forever. The thought of his leaving was unimaginable.

  “My life is in New York,” he said. “Don’t answer this now, just think about it. Would you come back there with me?”

  “You know I can’t,” she said.

  He nodded. “What I know is that it’s completely inconvenient, but I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  “Don’t say that,” she said, even though she felt like she was falling in love too. She reminded herself to be strong—men like this made promises they never could keep.

  “I’ve given it lots of thought,” he said, “and I am positive that it’s the real thing. It’s not because we’re here in Paris, or because you’re unavailable, or even because you’re beautiful. I love you. That’s all.”