A Friend in Paris

by Jennie Goutet

  “Margaux.” Mishou puffed her cheeks as she blew out the air, firing off in rapid French, “What do we want with Margaux? That story is finished.”

  April’s brow creased further. “Margaux. Sa fiancée.” She pointed to Victor, then smiled at his grandmother. “Leur bébé?”

  Now he hoped it was his grandmother who hadn’t understood. He hadn’t quite found time to tell her about Matthias yet. Or, perhaps it was the courage that was lacking. His grandmother missed nothing, however. “Victor, why don’t you come give me a hand in the kitchen. You—” She steered April toward the living room sofa, and in English said, “Sit here.”

  In the kitchen, Mishou turned on Victor. “What is this story about a baby? And about Margaux? Last news, Margaux was in Monaco. And there was no engagement. And there was no baby. Is there something you should be telling me?”

  Victor sighed. “I’m sorry, Mishou. I haven’t had the chance to tell you yet. Margaux came back from Monaco a couple weeks ago, and she got back in touch with me. When we met for the first time, she brought a three-month old baby. He’s mine.”

  His grandmother turned to the counter and began unwrapping the cheese to put on the cheese board, her hands trembling more than usual. “And the part about her being your fiancée? I hope you’re not going to make that mistake. She is wrong for you.”

  “I had offered to marry her before, and she said no. After I found out we had the baby together, I felt it was the right thing to do and I offered again. She still refused. But now…well, I think she’s changed her mind and wants to get married. So we’re working on setting a date.”

  “It’s a mistake,” Mishou repeated. For a couple of moments, silence reigned in the kitchen as she took the empty salad bowl and mixed the vinaigrette at the bottom, then dumped the torn lettuce from the salad spinner on top of the sauce. She handed the bowl to Victor. “And that girl in there? April?”

  “What of her?”

  “That is precisely what you need to figure out,” she said, and turned to walk into the living room.

  Mishou smiled at April to let her know all was well and prattled off some simple phrases meant to put her at ease, but when she turned her back, April mouthed to Victor, Sorry.

  Oh mon Dieu. It wasn’t her fault. He just realized how little he had wanted to tell Mishou. Deep inside, he knew this would be the reaction.

  Lunch was onion tart and salad. April dug into it with relish, and that made both Victor and his grandmother smile. He ended up acting as translator for April and his grandmother since she had pretty much exhausted her knowledge of French. Mishou ordered him to ask if there had been any headway into the search for Lucas, but Victor already knew the answer to that. He briefly translated the question then answered in French. “No one knows where he’s gone. Honestly, I didn’t think he could be that resourceful.”

  Mishou nodded her head at April. “Is she in any danger?”

  This one, Victor wasn’t sure how to answer, so he asked April. “Do you feel like you’re in any danger?”

  April took a minute before responding, but finally shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not sure. I don’t think he knows where I go to school, and I’m no longer staying in the building. I don’t think it would be very easy for him to find me.”

  Victor translated that. He agreed, but felt her unease all the same. Mishou then asked what she was going to do about the paintings. When Victor translated this, April’s eyes filled with tears.

  “The paintings…nothing can be done. They’re lost forever. Except for the earliest two—the dock in Chile. He painted this lonely dock in Valparaiso. It was before he and my mom had me. They were visiting the country, and he took the time to paint one of the local fishing wharves. Except for that one, and the one of me as a child running through wildflowers, I watched him paint every one. I was with him when he worked on them, and I saw the paintings come to life. It’s not just the money—they were promised to be auctioned off. It’s the sentimental value, to know that they’re no longer in this world making someone’s home more beautiful. To know he lost this legacy…” April paused, her mouth quivering.

  Victor translated all that, his eyes not leaving April’s face. He had known she was upset by the loss, but now he saw that she was haunted by it. And he couldn’t find any words to bring her comfort.

  Mishou took April’s hands in hers. “You, ma chérie. You are his legacy.”

  April looked at Mishou in silence, then nodded.

  Mishou held on to her hand. “You need to stay here. I would like for you to stay here.” She indicated for Victor to translate it, and when she saw that April meant to protest, she said, “I will consider it an insult if you prefer struggling to find some place to stay rather than accepting the invitation of an old woman.”

  When Victor translated that, April laughed as, he was sure, his grandmother had meant for her to do.

  “Well, okay then,” April said at last. “How can I refuse?”

  Chapter 16

  April moved in the next day. She was increasingly glad to leave Penelope’s home, as she could feel the tension between Penelope’s parents that flowed as an undercurrent in all their conversations. As she was packing her things, April paused and turned to Penelope.

  “I wanted to let you know how grateful I am for your friendship, and for getting my security deposit back, and for taking me in even though things weren’t easy at home.” She stopped short, her eyes filling with tears.

  Penelope was sitting on the bed, putting on lipstick in front of a hand mirror and looking very much like her usual self, which was to say, completely on top of a well-ordered life. April was reminded of the one time Penelope had shown a different side. “If you don’t mind me asking, was your parents’ fighting the reason you were crying that time I saw you in the studio? The day I came to have dinner with your friends?”

  Penelope continued to blot the lipstick with her finger until April was sure she wouldn’t answer. Finally, she looked up. “Les gars. That’s what we call ourselves.” It sounded like lay gah. “It means the folks,” Penelope explained. “We all come from pretty well-off families, but we’re just normal folk to each other since we’ve been friends since elementary school. Anyway, we all decided we would like both you and Victor to join us for our next dinner.”

  April gave a startled glance at Penelope’s grin that accompanied these words. “Are you sure? I mean, yes. Absolutely. But Victor too? I would be glad for his sake. Honestly, I don’t get the impression he has a lot of friends. But you know, we’re not…” She chewed her lip. “He has a fiancée and everything.”

  “The célèbre Margaux? Are you sure you’d only be glad for his sake?” Penelope leveled her a questioning gaze that April couldn’t meet. She would be unable to lie and deny it, but she didn’t want to advertise it either. It was true that watching her friendship develop with Victor, and knowing nothing could ever come of it, was beginning to be a trial to her. A bittersweet trial, though, since she couldn’t imagine giving up the friendship.

  “I’m sure,” she answered, more firmly than she felt.

  Penelope let out a huff and grabbed a pillow and threw it at her. “All right. He can invite Margaux to our dinner, too. That will make us a perfectly uneven number, and we’ll have to take out another leaf in the table, but Victor is an honorable guy, so we’ll make this concession.”

  April smiled. It would be easier anyway for April to remember he was engaged—engaged!—if she saw more of Margaux and his baby. She wondered if he would bring Matthias.

  “It’ll be at Guillaume’s place again,” Penelope said. “I’ll give you the address so you can pass it on to Victor…and Margaux. Is he going to help you move into his grandmother’s apartment?”

  “No. He has a business meeting he can’t avoid. He said he would stop by later, though.”

  Penelope capped the tube of mascara she had just applied and swiveled on the bed to face April. “Tomorrow is our longest day at the studio. Wh
ere is your painting being held? I didn’t see it with the others.”

  “Which painting?” April asked, wondering if Penelope simply hadn’t recognized her painting, now that she’d mapped out the color in the sketches.

  “The one you called April à Paris. It wasn’t lined up with the other paintings when I was there yesterday.”

  “What?” April felt a twinge of panic. “I don’t know. It should be there. Last I knew, it was on the rail in the back.”

  “Well, I might have missed it. Don’t worry,” Penelope soothed. “I’m sure it will turn up. Or someone placed another painting in front of it.”

  When she saw April’s frown, Penelope stood and began pulling the sheets off the air mattress. “I was not crying because of my parents that day.”

  It took April a minute to realize Penelope was answering her question from earlier.

  Penelope’s lip stiffened. “Although that didn’t help, of course. I’m worried about them, but they were happy when I was growing up, and I’m hoping this is just something they need to work through. Not the thing that will end them.” She wadded the sheets in a ball and threw them in the corner, picking up the pillow next.

  “It’s Arthur. I…had feelings for him.” Penelope licked her lip and darted a glance at April. “I’ve never told anyone that, except Guillaume and now you. No one knows.” April didn’t have the heart to tell Penelope she’d guessed it in an instant. “Anyway, he’d just told me he met a girl he really likes. She’s an art student in Mr. Chambourd’s studio, so of course she will be more talented than I am. He introduced me once, before I knew there was anything between them, and she’s a tall, gorgeous model-like thing. Not a gnome like me.”

  Penelope’s face was hard, and there was no trace of tears now. April sensed anger instead. She wouldn’t offer any platitudes for what was clearly very painful for Penelope. “How long have you liked him?”

  “Since I first met him two years ago,” Penelope said. “I brought him into our group, and I always thought we’d get together because we were the two artists in a group of professionals. We were the only ones who weren’t worried about pleasing our parents by getting married and beginning a life of métro, boulot, dodo.”

  “What..?” April pinched her brows in confusion.

  “You know. The routine.” Penelope waited for the light to dawn, and when it didn’t, said, “You take the métro in the morning. Then you go to the boulot. Your job. Then you go home and dormir. You go to sleep. Dodo.”

  “Métro, boulot, dodo,” April repeated, smiling. “I know nothing of that expression—or that routine. I’m not sure I ever will.” She thought about Guillaume, wondering if she should say what she had observed. No, she thought. That one’s up to him.

  Instead she said, “I hope Arthur will change his mind, but…you know sometimes opposites attracting can be a good thing. Getting together with someone who has a métro, boulot, dodo lifestyle brings more order to your existence, whereas you bring more passion to his. It can be a good thing. I mean…” Her voice trailed away when she saw Penelope’s obdurate expression. Okay. Not open to hearing this right now.

  “I’ll be happy to come to dinner and I’ll give the news to Victor. Thank you for confiding in me,” April said as Penelope picked up her suitcase, prepared to carry it downstairs.

  They went to the front door, and Penelope rolled the suitcase in front of her and kissed April on both cheeks. “You both will fit right into our group. I can usually tell about people, and I’m rarely wrong,” she said. With a sad shake of the head, she added, “Only Arthur.”

  Mishou opened the front door wide to welcome April in with a rush of words that she only understood the half of. “Victor…come tomorrow…rendez-vous…” Mishou announced. And then April thought she said she felt young having a roommate. She was afraid that trying to capture every word would result in her having a headache, but she had to try to make the most of it for Mishou’s sake, and for her own. April allowed Mishou to kiss her on the cheeks, the one language they could both understand, and smiled warmly at her.

  The room set out for April was small and dim with white nylon curtains and a wooden armoire in the corner. The bed was a little lumpy, but she had the space needed for her stuff. It was an odd sensation, for all that she was moving into someone else’s apartment, and a plain one at that, but April felt like she had come home. The bathroom contained a sink, bidet and bath in blue porcelain, with yellow and white flowered tiles covering the walls. The toilet was in a separate room, between her room and Mishou’s master bedroom.

  When April had unpacked her things, she wondered if she was supposed to stay in her room or if Mishou would expect her to keep company. She wasn’t used to living with anyone, so this was unchartered territory, but surely she could make an attempt to spend time with Mishou and make the older woman’s life less lonely. What would they talk about with the language barrier?

  She needn’t have worried. Upon exiting her room, Mishou called to her and brought her into the kitchen. She had laid out the flour, large grain sea salt, and butter. “Viens. On va faire une tarte,” she said.

  April looked at the kitchen counter and saw a quiche pan and the rolling pin, and it dawned on her. Mishou was giving her cooking lessons. April looked at her in wide-eyed delight. “Oui!”

  “Victor, you’ve been distracted lately.” Margaux's sharp voice caused him to pull the phone away from his ear. “We really need to get started with the wedding if we’re going to actually have one in six months. That’s a really short timeframe under the best of circumstances. But if you don’t start committing to some of the details, we’ll never make it.”

  Victor loosened his tie. The business meeting with Brunex Consulting had gone really well. He was taking his grandmother’s advice to heart and was actually considering putting a pause on his own M&A business. Instead he would attempt to manage one of the smaller boutiques they were planning to buy as a subsidiary to a larger acquisition. Yes, directing Brunex would have been a mistake. But directing one of the subsidiaries would be just the challenge he needed, and he’d probably be too far under his father’s notice to suffer much from his scrutiny. Brunex Consulting was located in Dubai, but this particular boutique firm was based in Paris, which meant he could take the risk without uprooting himself from everything that was familiar. April had been right, though. It wasn’t just about money. It was about finding satisfaction in the process.

  It was hard to shift from his world to Margaux's, but when she cleared her throat, he snapped to attention.

  “When does your dad want to meet?” he asked.

  “This weekend. You haven’t even approved the guest list, and how can we reserve anything without knowing what the final numbers will be?” He heard a tapping noise and figured it was her pen. She did that when she was nervous. “I suggest you come to the meeting prepared.”

  Victor couldn’t keep the irritation out of his voice. He hated when she treated him like a little boy. “Tell your dad I’ll come Saturday night. I’ll have the list approved. Is that all?” he asked.

  “Well…” Margaux seemed to hesitate. “You haven’t told me lately that you loved me. Not since I’ve been back.” Victor gripped the phone with his right hand and rubbed his forehead with his left. She wanted him to say that now? He had said it, and more. However, the fact that she wanted him to say it gave him the tiniest glimmer of hope. Perhaps the wedding would not be a mistake after all. If he could just remember what it felt like to be in love with her before. The completeness he felt when she loved him, too—or at least he thought she loved him—when he was with her family. Everything had felt right back then. And now they had Matthias. Maybe everything would turn out all right in the end.

  When Victor remained silent, Margaux said, “My parents are beginning to wonder if this wedding is going to happen or not.”

  Ugh. She had managed to utter the one thing that was sure to douse him in cold reality. She just cared about what her parents
thought, not about him. But then there was the baby. He was not going to let his baby grow up in a broken home if he had any say in it. “I’ll come Saturday at eight,” he said. “And I’ll make an effort to be more involved in the planning. Your parents will not need to worry.”

  Victor hung up the phone with Margaux and grabbed his briefcase. He had held the meeting at his office, but now he rushed to April’s art school. He wanted to be there on time since he had told Mishou to tell her he was coming. He arrived just as she was exiting the school.

  “Victor. I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said. He looked to her left, and the sight of Ben brought on a surge of jealousy—completely unreasonable since Victor was not available.

  “Bonjour,” he said, offering his hand. Ben shook it, and Victor leaned over to kiss April. “Did my grandmother not tell you I’d be coming here today?”

  “Oh, she said many things that I didn’t understand.”

  He laughed. “I hadn’t thought about the communication issue. I thought we could go together to her place so I could see how you settled in.”

  “Great,” April said. “I’m actually free earlier than expected because the studio was closed for spring break. Our teacher is sick, and the director has already left for the week, so there was no one to open it for us.” She turned to Ben. “Let’s get lunch another time, okay?”

  Victor saw his scowl before he turned away, but April hadn’t noticed. “Your grandmother taught me how to make a tarte à la moutarde. Do you know what that is?”

  “Of course I know what that is,” he said, feigning insult. “It’s only her very best dish. The one everyone begs a piece of whenever there’s a neighborhood party. Did you do a good job?” he asked. “Are you pleased with the result?”

  “It tasted so scrumptious,” she said, looking up at him with shiny eyes. “And the thing is, I think I can reproduce it. I’m going to bring it for when we have the next dinner with Penelope Duprey and her friends.”