Five Minutes in Heaven

by Lisa Alther

  As though reading Jude’s mind, Jasmine explained to her, “Everyone in Paris talks about love, but only two hundred people actually do it.”

  “The rest of us prefer to watch,” said Philippe.

  Everyone laughed.

  The others decided to go to some private club to continue their discussions. Jude declined because she was exhausted from concentrating so hard to follow the conversation. They offered to drive her home, but she said she’d walk. When Jasmine looked alarmed for her, Jude promised to take a taxi. But she felt so safe in Paris after New York City that she foolishly went on foot wherever and whenever she pleased. The others embraced her and made kind comments about enjoying the evening.

  As she walked down the Champs Elysées toward the granite obelisk at the Place de la Concorde, Jude felt happy. Her apprenticeship was apparently working. The group she’d just left seemed to like her—apart from Martine, who didn’t like anyone. And Jude liked them. In fact, Jasmine and she were well on their way to a serious friendship. Her games had sometimes seemed malign to Jude in the beginning, but she now understood that they were the French version of a Maori welcome, intended to help newcomers feel included. And Jude finally did. There was no longer any doubt in her mind that the French were the world’s most charming and interesting citizens, from whom she had a great deal to learn.

  Jude’s senses were wide open from taking in the beauty of the women onstage. And from the sonorous flow of her companions’ voices, punctuated by Robert’s furia francese like a trumpet solo in a Baroque concerto. From the prickly feeling of champagne bubbles on her tongue, the salty taste of the creatures fresh from the sea, and the swirling scent of tobacco mixed with perfume.

  So stimulated did she feel, with the warm night breeze off the Seine ruffling her hair like caressing fingers, that she walked to a women’s club in the Marais called Marrakesh, which someone at work had once mentioned. The outside room contained a massive oak bar surrounded with high stools. As she perched on one and sipped a kir royale, she could see an inner room for dancing, which was ringed with low tables and easy chairs. Sinuously bulging marble columns held up the ceiling.

  Jude moved from the bar to the dance area and watched the room fill up with women, mostly young and casually dressed, although there were a few fifties-style butches in men’s suits and ties and a couple of transvestites in blond wigs, black leather shorts, and garters. There were also a few men lurking in the shadows, watching the women with the glassy eyes of prizefighters who’d just been knocked out but hadn’t yet fallen.

  Eventually, the dancing began, to music that was a blend of New Age synthesizer and classical guitar, along with what sounded like a team of crickets shoveling coal in the background. It didn’t seem to matter if you had a partner, because most dancers were just swaying to the music and watching themselves in the mirrored walls as the strobe lights pulsed.

  As Jude began to notice that she had drunk too much, the ponytailed woman from the strip club walked in with several other women. Jude scarcely recognized her with her clothes on, but the ponytail was unmistakable, with large spit curls below her ears, like Hasidic peisim. She wore cordovan boots to her knees, tight, faded jeans, and a white T-shirt with some kind of bone carving on a cord around her neck. She and her friends sat down two tables away and ordered drinks. As they lit Marlboros, Jude strained to hear their voices in the breaks between the songs. But all she could catch was a word with a lot of vowel sounds, which appeared to be the ponytailed woman’s name: o-eee-ah.

  After a while, one woman seized Ponytail by the hand and dragged her to the dance floor. The two writhed back and forth in perfect synchronicity, eyes closed, only inches between them. Jude wondered why she knew how to dance so well. Maybe she was a ballet dancer waiting for a break, supporting herself by her job at the club. But she wasn’t gaunt enough for ballet.

  Jude sat there watching admiringly as women of all sizes and shapes and colorings laughed and talked and danced and flirted. Sometime soon, once she had completed her novitiate in the convent of pleasure, she hoped to be able to join them. After several songs, Ponytail and her group got up and left. Shortly afterward, Jude did, too.

  That night, Jude dreamed about the woman. She was just standing there in her jeans and T-shirt, looking at Jude and saying nothing. Then she was gone. Jude woke up bemused not to see her standing by the bed, so real had she seemed. She looked at the clock. It was only 3 A.M., so she turned over and went back to sleep.

  A few evenings later, as she walked home from work, Jude decided to celebrate the return of her appetite for life with an early dinner at a restaurant near the Porte St. Denis, to which her Guide to Gay Paree had given three stars. Apart from the huge fourteenth-century stone portals from an early town wall that blocked traffic in the middle of the street, the area was dominated by luggage stores. A prostitute stood on the corner near the alley where the restaurant was located.

  Inside were only a dozen tables. Grouped around two were several more prostitutes, one dressed in leather. Another wore a feather boa and a black ribbon around her neck with a crucifix dangling from it. They were chatting and laughing and eating a lot, apparently stoking up for a long night. A couple of other women in street clothes sat with them. One, Jude realized, had long black hair sweeping down from a ponytail atop her head.

  Jude sat down. A pleasant woman in black leather trousers came over to describe the menu and take her order. As she sipped Sancerre and tried not to stare at the group in the corner, she wondered whether her own features were becoming as familiar to Ponytail as hers were to Jude—the long, narrow nose with a slight hook where it joined her brow, pale eyes that narrowed when she smiled, high cheekbones that were flushed even without makeup. Jude kept hearing that word with all the vowels—o-eee-ah.

  When the hookers got up to hit the streets, so did the woman. As she reached the door, Jude heard someone call her Olivia. So at least that mystery was solved. Before exiting, Olivia turned her head Jude’s way. As their glances met, Jude thought she noticed a flicker of recognition in the woman’s blue-gray eyes. And then she was gone.

  Having lost her appetite at the sight of those eyes, Jude rearranged the food on her plate, hiding a duck leg under a lettuce leaf. She tried to figure out if Olivia was a prostitute. But the others were in costume, whereas she was wearing just jeans and a T-shirt. But maybe that was her costume.

  After paying her bill, Jude walked down the alley and turned into the street. Although she looked around for Olivia or her friends, she saw no one familiar. For a moment, she considered going back to the strip club alone, just so she could watch Olivia again. But it was too early, and Jude wasn’t dressed up enough. Besides, she couldn’t see going by herself and being pointed out by the waiters as a lecherous lesbian, and she didn’t know any men to invite as her cover.

  In any case, she could feel an obscure longing starting to stir, and she didn’t want to encourage it. She planned to give herself a break and take life lightly from here on out.

  For the next couple of weeks, she read through a stack of English and American novels and wrote reports for Jasmine. She sent postcards to two dozen friends in New York. She planned visits to publishers in London, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen. She organized a new address book, eliminating many Tennessee and New York City entries and adding some French ones. She also pruned her large pile of business cards, many of which she had no memory of receiving, though no doubt she’d promised letters and lunch dates. Life was like a motel, and your job was just to change the sheets and get ready for the next guest.

  THE MORNING OF HER FLIGHT to London, in the taxi north through Paris toward the périphérique, Jude was startled to find herself scrutinizing each woman they passed for a black ponytail. Even though she hadn’t seen Olivia since that night at the restaurant, she realized that she had been halfway looking for her whenever she had turned a corner. Not to be able to do this for three days in London seemed suddenly unbearable. As they approached Charl
es de Gaulle airport, her agitation increased.

  At the departure terminal, marchers were circling, wearing signs saying that Air France mechanics were on strike. Relieved, Jude told the driver to take her back to Montmartre. As they retraced their route, Jude took a good, long look at her cacophony of emotions, and she was appalled. Was she becoming infatuated with a woman she’d never even met?

  That night, she dreamed again of Olivia standing before her in blue jeans. Slowly, she smiled. Then she said in French, “If you love me, you must tell me so. Do not be afraid, because I love you, too.”

  Waking up the next morning, Jude recalled the dream. It was the first time she’d ever dreamed in French. What did it mean? Or was it just her solitary brain slipping its gears? It would be absurd to say that she loved a woman she’d seen only three times from across the room. Besides, she was finished with all that nonsense. She didn’t want anything heavy anymore—just some good times and some tenderness.

  LATE THAT NIGHT, JUDE sat at a corner table in Marrakesh, smoking a Dunhill and nursing a kir. The thrill of spending her evenings watching the Eiffel Tower until its spotlights switched off at midnight was beginning to pale. She wanted someone to watch it with her. It was past time to emerge from her widowhood. So far, she had exchanged le regard with three candidates, but none had clicked.

  Stubbing out her cigarette, she glanced toward the doorway. And there was Olivia, alone, dressed in black stretch pants and a baggy blue sweater. As she searched the room for her friends, her face fell slightly. She sat down at a table and ordered a drink, which she sipped slowly, trying to make it last.

  Once the dance floor was full, Olivia got up and moved to the center, nodding to a couple of women who called her name as she passed. Wrapping her arms around herself, she closed her eyes and swayed to the music like an underwater plant. As the tempo picked up, she ran her palms down her torso and writhed gently to the beat.

  Jude considered and dismissed the idea of going out on the floor and dancing beside her. The Hully Gully she had mastered. Her Boogaloo was passable. But this New Age trance dancing escaped her.

  After studying the dancers for a long time, though, Jude got up and began to copy their languid movements. Slowly, she wended her way through the swaying, twisting torsos until she reached Olivia.

  Dancing beside her, Jude pretended not to notice her. Finally, she allowed herself to glance at Olivia, only to find Olivia watching her with sulky blue eyes. They held each other’s gaze for nearly a minute. Then Olivia nodded once, slowly, as though coming to a decision.

  They swiveled around to face each other. Eyes locked, they moved back and forth in unison, a pair of mating cobras. Then, with a contemptuous toss of her ponytail, Olivia walked away.

  Mortified, Jude kept dancing, not knowing what else to do. Olivia reached across her table for her cigarettes and headed for the door. At the door, she stopped and looked back, right at Jude. For a moment, Jude couldn’t breathe. Olivia inclined her head toward the street ever so slightly. Jude smiled, trying to stay calm.

  Olivia smiled back. Jude started through the crowd, moving toward the door. Olivia smiled more broadly, turned, and headed for the street. Jude followed, heart pounding like Japanese drums.

  Outside, Jude stood alone in the dark street, with Olivia nowhere in sight, feeling ridiculous. But then she spotted her under a streetlight at the corner, looking back for Jude.

  As Jude walked toward her, Olivia turned down the cross street. When Jude reached the corner, she turned, too. And there was Olivia, waiting halfway down the block. Jude began to trot to catch up, but Olivia started running, too, ponytail lashing side to side. The full moon was bathing the narrow streets in yellow, and the buildings were casting dark shadows as though at high noon. Olivia darted in and out of the shadows like a ghost.

  Running out of breath, Jude slowed down, suspecting that she was making a fool of herself by chasing this young woman through the nighttime streets of Paris. In any case, Olivia had outrun her, and now she didn’t see her. She glanced up and down the street several times, but Olivia didn’t reappear.

  Dejected, Jude walked toward the river to find a taxi back to Montmartre. It was probably just as well.

  But there by the Pont Marie stood Olivia, hand resting on the stone parapet, watching for Jude, smiling in the moonlight.

  Jude caught up with her. Before she could think what to say, Olivia put an index finger to her lips and shook her head. Then she reached out and stroked Jude’s flushed cheek with her fingertips. Jude shuddered. Their lips touched and Olivia’s tongue caressed Jude’s lower lip.

  As Jude gasped, Olivia whirled around and dashed across the bridge to Ile St. Louis, the silver Seine licking the pilings below. Turning down a tree-lined street, she paused in the doorway of a building with a huge, stone lion head above the lintel. Punching in the night code, she shoved open the heavy maroon door and entered. When Jude reached the door, breathless, it slammed shut in her face.

  Bewildered, Jude crossed the street, leaned against the wall above the Seine, and looked up. It was very late, and the entire building was dark. No lights went on anywhere to indicate the location of Olivia’s apartment. She began to wonder whether she’d hallucinated the whole thing. A firm grasp on reality had never been her forte. She touched the spot on her lip that Olivia’s tongue had caressed. It was still tingling.

  The Métro had stopped running, but Jude walked until she found a taxi by the Louvre. The driver, a woman, was wearing a gold silk shirt with lots of Afghan jewelry at her ears, throat, and wrists. She turned to look at Jude in the light from the dashboard. Her skin was olive, eyes and eyebrows dark, teeth a flashing white as she told Jude that the street she’d named didn’t exist.

  Jude insisted it did.

  She snarled that she’d been driving a taxi in Paris for five years and had never heard of it. Therefore, it didn’t exist.

  “But your singer Dalida lived at the end of it. She committed suicide there.”

  “This is impossible,” she said. “How could Dalida have committed suicide on a street that doesn’t exist?”

  “Look, I live there myself. I know it exists. Please just look it up in your street guide.”

  She shrugged in the shadows. “Why should I look it up when I already know it isn’t there?”

  Jude was beginning to wonder whether she had passed through a black hole when she entered Marrakesh that night and had emerged in a parallel universe. Finally, she persuaded the woman to drive her to Place des Abbesses.

  After crossing the square by the Bateau Lavoir, Jude was delighted to discover that her street was still there, dozing in the moonlight. She concluded that her driver was probably accustomed to driving men who gave her large tips just for the pleasure of her profile during the ride. She hadn’t wanted to waste her time on a woman, especially one who was bewitched.

  CHAPTER

  18

  JUDE BEGAN TO LIVE FOR THE DARK. Leaving the office at the end of each day, she returned to her apartment, where she bathed, dressed, made herself up, and sat at her glass doors, welcoming the descent of dusk over the city. She passed the time trying to figure out which building among the thousands spread out below her was Olivia’s. She could see Notre Dame. Olivia’s street was somewhere to the east. Once it was late enough, she went to Marrakesh and sat at her corner table. But for the first two weeks, Olivia failed to arrive.

  On the fifteenth night, Jude walked from Marrakesh to Ile St. Louis along the route they had followed in the moonlight. As a half-moon rose over her shoulder, she stood by the wall above the Seine, gazing at Olivia’s darkened building. Every few minutes, a bateau mouche went by, illuminating her in its spotlights. But she outlasted them all, leaning against the wall until the moon peaked and began its trajectory toward dawn.

  Then she hiked back to Montmartre, slept for a few hours, and went to the office, where a lunchtime debate was underway over whether the loss of Alsace-Lorraine during the Franco-Prussi
an War had incited French enthusiasm for a colonial empire. As she listened in the shifting ribbons of light from the pierced dome overhead, she found herself nodding off, chin on her chest.

  When she awoke, she slipped from her chair and out the door. Back in her office, she grabbed the phone directory. But then she realized that she didn’t know Olivia’s last name. So she dialed the strip club and asked the woman who answered for Olivia’s home number, explaining that she was a friend from America. The woman asked if Jude was her friend, why didn’t she know her phone number? As Jude sat in silence trying to think of an answer to this trick question, the woman hung up.

  Each night for the next week, Jude stood by the wall above the Seine as the moon waned, waiting for Olivia to come home. But she never did. On the seventh night, it finally occurred to her that maybe Olivia stayed at a lover’s. Was one of the women she’d seen her with at the bar or the restaurant her lover? For a moment, she was limp with jealousy. Steadying herself with one hand against the rough stone wall, she tried to talk herself out of this, since she’d never even officially met the woman.

  Looking down at the water, which was paved with sheets of silver light reflected from the streetlamps, she tried to figure out why she always ended up on the banks of some river—the Holston, the Hudson, now the Seine—obsessed with someone who had vanished.

  The next night, she wandered through the alleys around the strip club with a handful of lavender tulips, in the company of several other flower-clutching perverts, searching for the stage entrance. After an hour stationed before a steel door they had decided was the one, they watched it swing open. As they held their collective breath, a white poodle pranced out, lifted his leg, and peed against the wall. His owner, who looked like Peter Lorre, leered at them from the doorway.

  Finally, Jude decided to go back to the club as a paying customer so that she could at least see Olivia onstage again. Shopkeepers sometimes called her monsieur because of her jeans and boots and androgynous build and because many French men were themselves androgynous. So Jude went to the hairdresser’s and got a spiky punk clip. Experimenting with her eyeliner pencil, she gave herself a fairly convincing five o’clock shadow. She bound her breasts with an elastic bandage. Then she put on a black T-shirt, a black silk blazer, jeans, and her cowboy boots. Just to check, she stopped in at several shops en route to the club. And for once she was pleased when everyone called her monsieur.