From a Paris Balcony

by Ella Carey

  “Yes, we do.” Cat smiled.

  Loic leaned over and kissed Cat on the cheek.

  “Sarah, you’re going to have to come and sit with me, away from Laurent.” Cat moved her chair to make room.

  “He’s trouble. I’d keep away if I were you, Sarah,” Jacques piped up. His hair seemed to be sticking up even farther now.

  Laurent grunted and pushed back his chair. “I’ll buy the first round,” he growled.

  “Let’s stay here, for a moment,” Cat said, when the men had gone to the bar. “We can follow them soon enough. Please, tell me all about Boston. I love living in France but I do miss the States. I get back there every so often, but just not enough, and it’s going to be even harder now, with the baby.”

  When the party broke up, and Sarah had swapped phone numbers with Cat, and Jacques had told her to get in touch if she wanted to hang with a proper artist—an unsuccessful one, he said, unlike Laurent—Sarah found herself back out on the Rue Montaigne with Laurent.

  “Are you okay to drive?” she asked.

  Laurent tilted his head from side to side. “You know what,” he said, “the car’s going to be just fine here overnight. As long as I’m back here early in the morning, when the parking restrictions start up again, no one’s going to tow it away.”

  Sarah looked up and down the enchanting street. The top floors of the buildings all looked like apartments, sitting atop the most exclusive and fashionable stores in the world.

  “You have to walk along the Seine at night while you’re in Paris,” Laurent said.

  Sarah looked at the pavement. Things had been so hard since Steven had left. She had been through every emotion under the sun until she had ended up wrung out, feeling nothing at all anymore. And at the same time she had been through the process of grieving for her parents—she had only started to reach a sense of closure when she had been able to pack up their apartment.

  It was her father’s death that had been such a deadly blow. While Sarah had known that her mother was ill for some time, she had relied on the fact that her father would still be around, that she and he would care for each other in the ways that they always had. The depth of his suffering at the loss of her mother had shocked Sarah more than she cared to admit. The fact that he had suffered a heart attack soon after Sarah’s mother’s death had left Sarah reeling. Lost. And the fact that she had been embroiled in a divorce right at the time they were both clearly sick and needing her had left her feeling terrible guilt—the very worst part of grief had hit her hard.

  For some time she hadn’t known if she ever wanted to risk a relationship again. But lately, she had been thinking that there was no harm in just talking to other men; there was nothing wrong with making friends. Devastatingly attractive as Laurent was, there was nothing wrong with chatting with him while she was in Paris. Even if he were hardly ideal friendship material.

  “It’s just a walk.” His voice broke into her thoughts.

  “I’d love that.” Sarah kept her voice firm.

  “Good,” he said.

  They wandered along the quiet street. Lights shone onto the pavement from the shop windows. Sarah stopped to admire them and Laurent seemed happy to look at the pieces on display with her. He shared her appreciation of fine things, but in a different way. His eye was clearly drawn to color and shape, while she looked at intricacy and craftsmanship. She was enjoying his company. When they came to the Place de l’Alma, which was on the edge of the Seine, Sarah gasped.

  The Eiffel Tower was directly opposite them, lit up, sitting there—iconic, unchanging, classic.

  “Paris is all about pure grace,” Sarah said. She couldn’t help but sigh.

  “It is,” Laurent said. “Everywhere you turn, that’s what you see. I’ll always love Paris.”

  Sarah smiled.

  She walked with Laurent across the street toward the river after they had gazed at the Eiffel Tower for a while. Laurent clearly had the soul of an artist. No one who lacked sensitivity could begin to paint like he did. And yet, Loic had seemed to almost warn her off. She frowned at her thoughts. Why was she thinking in that sort of way? There was no call for her to do so. She must not get ahead of herself.

  Laurent turned left, following the path that ran along the edge of the Seine. Soon, they passed underneath a line of trees, their leaves trimmed into the neat, boxlike shapes that the French so loved. They passed couples, their arms linked. Walking through Paris at midnight seemed the most natural thing to do.

  But Sarah’s thoughts were niggling at her. Laurent wasn’t making conversation again. While this had felt comfortable the first time she had walked through Paris with him, now Sarah found herself wanting to find out more. But how should she start?

  “I’ve talked my head off about me,” she said.

  They had reached the Pont de la Concorde. To their left the Egyptian column pointed to the night sky in the center of the elegant yet tragic square.

  Laurent strolled along next to her. He had his hands in his pockets now.

  Sarah tried something else. “It’s great that you have a career that you love so much.”

  She sensed him relaxing a bit. “If I’m not painting, I’m not very good company, I’m afraid.” He turned onto the bridge, leaning against the stone balustrade for a moment. “I’m probably not the easiest person to live with. Sorry you’re stuck with me.”

  “You’re not difficult to live with.” Sarah gazed down at the dark water. The river was still, silent, a deep millpond.

  “And you’re very polite.” Laurent moved off the bridge, walking farther up the Seine.

  Darkness cloaked the Tuileries Garden on their left.

  “No I’m not,” she laughed. This was becoming awkward. But Sarah sensed that it was better to stay quiet. She had the feeling that Laurent might be going to talk to her, and the last thing she wanted to do was discourage him.

  Laurent was quiet again. Was he waiting for her to ask questions?

  And then she stopped and stared.

  “Oh, wow,” she said. The Louvre was right in front of them, its ornate decorations lit up by spotlights in the dark.

  “I’m working there after this project’s done.” Laurent dropped this as casually as ever. “I’ve got an artist in residency program lined up.”

  “Of course you have.” Maybe it was the fact that it was late, maybe it was Paris, but for some overwhelming reason, she did not want to get to the end of this night and not know a bit more about the man standing next to her.

  “Laurent,” she said. “I’m going to come clean about what I said in the car. I just can’t help but ask you a question. It’s just that, well . . . you seemed so at home with your friends tonight, but . . . sorry. I don’t know. I’m being a nosy roommate.”

  She stopped on the spot. Waited. Had she gone too far?

  Something tightened in his cheek. “I’d been living with Eva for over eight years,” he said, his voice low. “I’d known her since we were teenagers.”

  Sarah leaned in close so as not to miss what he said.

  “I thought—assumed—that we’d spend the rest of our lives together. When I was working in New York, I decided I was going to ask her to marry me. But while I was in New York, she met someone else. And she moved out with that someone else, and they went to Switzerland, and they got married while I was away.”

  Sarah stayed quiet. She wanted to reach out a hand to him, but sensed this was not the thing to do. He didn’t want sympathy. He just wanted to talk. She could understand that.

  “You see, the thing is, as well as leaving, Eva took everything out of the apartment that we had bought together. Including all my paintings—the ones I had wanted to keep—all my early work, every last piece of the furniture that we had bought together, my music, even my photo albums; she cleared it out. I still don’t know where it is. I was so devastated about Eva that I haven’t followed up. I don’t know if I will. The things she took were only things, and I had to question t
heir worth in the end, but . . . the thing was, I came back to an empty space. There was nothing left—not her, not my work. It was as if everything I held precious had been obliterated in one sudden swoop.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense at the time,” Sarah said. But she wanted him to go on.

  Laurent shook his head. “I didn’t understand why. I had no idea what I’d done wrong. I kept questioning that. The only answer I have is that she wasn’t comfortable with my career. I think she was worried about being with an artist . . .” He looked down at the ground, made a face, and looked back up at Sarah. “I just—it was the loss of trust, of everything I’d planned, and of her. Of who I thought she was.”

  Sarah knew.

  “Eva and her husband are living in London now, and apparently, well. Eva’s having a baby.” His voice trailed off. “And I know I can’t keep on hanging with models and going out all night. It’s not me. It never was. You know, going out with old friends tonight has helped. I hope that makes sense.”

  “It makes sense.” Sarah smiled. For some reason, a sense of warmth had come into her system. She loved that Laurent had talked to her. She felt pleased—of some use, finally, to someone else, perhaps for the first time in the last year.

  Laurent was looking down at her. His expression was difficult to fathom. It was as if he were thinking about whether he should say something more.

  “Okay,” he said, his voice softer. “Now you tell me. Why did you really come to Paris? The family history is compelling, but why right now? There must be a reason for that.”

  Sarah folded her arms around her waist. “I had to leave Boston,” she said. Her words came out with too much force.

  “I sensed that.”

  Sarah turned to the river. She wished she had a stick or a stone that she could hurl into its depths. “Cheating husband,” she said. “My mother was dying at the time, and I don’t know. I was just overwhelmed. And then, my father died a couple of months after my mother. He had a heart attack. He didn’t want to go on without her. I felt guilty, as if I hadn’t been there enough for him. As if I’d been too focused on my silly divorce. It was just . . . like you say. Everything gone. Like that. And then you are faced with the future . . . Coming to Paris was like a lifeline. Finding out the truth about Louisa is a connection with family—if I couldn’t make any sense of the present, then perhaps I could learn from the past . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Laurent took a step closer to her. Sarah focused hard on the river. A barge appeared—its slow pace laborious to watch. For some reason, it irritated Sarah. For some reason, she wanted to speed it up.

  “But you know, being here, being away, has helped. I’ve been able to look at everything from a distance. And I’m coming to see that, perhaps, what I thought was right wasn’t so great after all.”

  “That’s good,” he said, and he reached out, placing a hand on her cheek for a moment. “But I’m sorry.”

  Sarah turned, looked up at his face. “You know what is strange? I thought I had everything all lined up. I would be married to Steven for the rest of my life. We would have a family. My parents would be there for our children. You know—I thought things would be regular. Normal.”

  “Sarah.” Laurent sounded intimately close. “I’m not sure I should say this, but if Steven wasn’t going to be there for you at a time like that, then he was hopeless. Sorry to be blunt.”

  Just before Sarah could catch them, words came out in a whisper. “Anything could happen now.”

  Laurent caught her eye. “Yes. It could.” And suddenly, he leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.

  It was very French, Sarah thought, as he lingered close for a moment before moving back, just a friendly kiss.

  But something inside her tweaked. And she still could not stop the grin from spreading across her face. “It’s so strange,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You. You are in exactly the same position as me.”

  He tilted his head to one side. “I know.”

  “But you’ve taken your freedom and your career is completely stellar, it’s just that your lifestyle is a little . . .”

  He leaned out then, pulled her into a rough sort of a hug. “Don’t go there,” he muttered into her ear. And then, as quickly as he had pulled her toward him, he took a step right back. “We should go home,” he said, his tone completely different. “I have to work tomorrow, and you, you have to decide what to do next with your investigations. You really need to think about that.”

  He moved toward the street and, after a few moments, waved down a taxi.

  Sarah struggled with her thoughts—happiness, for some reason, even though nothing at all was secure, and sadness, because she quite simply didn’t want the evening with Laurent to ever, ever end.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Paris, 1894

  Louisa alighted from the carriage outside the Duvals’ Paris house in Ȋle Saint-Louis, her mind still concentrating on her encounter with Marthe de Florian. The footman handed her onto the cobblestones. Henry wouldn’t be up yet but she was impatient to talk to him about the woman, even though she suspected any such conversation between them would only end badly. The simple fact was, Louisa felt that she had a right to know. She had a right to know about this woman. What was her relationship with Henry? Did they have a past? Louisa had become even more sure that Marthe had to be a courtesan, a demimondaine—otherwise known as a high-class prostitute—who seemed quite content to hold court over Louisa.

  Of course, she knew that these women only turned to prostitution out of desperation, and her conscience persisted with questions surrounding her own beliefs about women’s equal rights. She did not want to judge Marthe de Florian, but when confronted with her so close to home . . . the situation in which she found herself was confusing. If she were honest, it almost seemed as if her beliefs were being tested right here in Paris.

  And yet, what she struggled with was this. The thought of Henry, of her husband, being with one of these women made Louisa feel ill. Were they—she hated to think about it—lovers? Half of her knew she would be naïve to think that they were not. But the other half of her still hoped. She still wanted to believe that Henry would not betray her now, to believe that even if he had a former relationship with the courtesan, he would stop it out of respect for his marriage.

  She stopped in the middle of the cool marble entrance hall at the Duval house. And told herself she was definitely being unsophisticated. Everything she had seen since her arrival in Paris had pointed to the fact that Henry was not going to change his way of life, not for her, not for the future of his family, not for any reason at all. Waves of disgust seeped through her, along with indignation at the brazen manner in which the courtesan had approached her at the Bois de Boulogne. Suddenly, the hall in which she stood seemed even colder than usual.

  Marthe de Florian didn’t seem to care in the least that Louisa was Henry’s wife. It just didn’t seem to factor at all. It was as if the courtesan was above the rules of normal society. It was as if she had thumbed her nose at every rule that had been dreamed up, while being a terrible product of the restrictions on women in society, and at the same time being utterly owned by men. Louisa frowned, took off her hat, and went into the salon. The nightingale moved a little on its perch. Louisa stroked the bars of its gold-leaf cage.

  She sank down on one of the delicate sofas and closed her eyes for a moment in the silence. Louisa hated to think how one stopped the cycle—wealthy men handing over jewels, apartments, carriages, dresses; women having no shame, selling their bodies for material gain, enjoying the perks of high society life in return, being seen where it mattered, at Longchamp, at the opera, at the theater. Where did it end?

  The answers were education, universal franchise, and freedom of opportunity for women. Coming to Paris and seeing so many desperate women in the streets had only made Louisa’s convictions stronger.

  “Louisa.” Henry appeared, dressed, which was unusu
al this early in the day. He wore a coat. He was clearly about to go out.

  “Good morning,” Louisa said, stultified by the paradox of her own situation. Who was she dependent on? What was her role in all of this? She ran a hand across her forehead. But her mind simply would not stop.

  Henry leaned against the mantelpiece. He looked at the clock, checked it with his fob watch. Sorry to interrupt your plans for the day, she wanted to say, but instead, she held her breath.

  Henry pulled a miniature portrait out of his pocket. He was admiring it, smiling in some sort of secret way.

  Louisa sat up. She had to talk to him. So she stood up, moved over to where he stood. And gasped as she looked over his shoulder. Henry held a perfect miniature of Marthe de Florian in the palm of his hand. Marthe’s hair was swept back but strands of it fell across her cheeks, and one of her arms was thrown up behind her head in a most suggestive fashion.

  He placed it on the mantelpiece, under the gold-edged mirror.

  “For God’s sake, Henry,” Louisa whispered. “What will everyone think?”

  “I don’t see the problem.” He adjusted the miniature slightly, so that it was dead in the center of the space.

  Did he think the courtesan only had eyes for him? Was he so innocent as to think that a woman like Marthe de Florian loved him?

  Louisa laughed then, a hollow, empty sound. He thought he was sophisticated, and yet, he was blindingly naïve. She walked back to the window. Stared at the leaves outside that were sun-dappled and moving gently, as if nothing was wrong at all.

  Suddenly she saw Henry for what he was. A charlatan. A fool. Someone who was simply trying to avoid the reality of his life by being in Paris. Someone who thought a courtesan, a coquette, cared about him.

  Louisa stared out at the street. Her mind had become clear. In one instant, she had ceased being intimidated by Henry. In one instant, she realized that there was simply nothing she could do that would change him. In one instant, she made up her mind. There was only one thing to do. There was only one thing that was remotely palatable right now, and urgency propelled her to speak.