Lessons in French

“The people here can be so rude. That’s nothing but rainwater he’s drinking. It’s fine for a dog.”

I wanted to hug her.

“I totally recognize you,” I said. “You were in Branford, right? I’m Katie.”

“Christie.”

It turned out she was here doing the sort of paralegal job Mom wished I had. And she seemed so cheerful and blond and unconfused that I thought maybe Mom was right. Here Christie was jogging in the park before a normal day’s work, while I was subjecting a panting sheep dog to one of my anxiety attacks.

She and I had surely passed one another thousands of times in college, with no flicker of conscious recognition. To say she was a pressed and pretty WASP from prep school, and that I was a mutt who still could not place Groton and Choate, was too reductive. There had been more blending of worlds than that at Yale. But perhaps not so much that she would have felt this friendly, immediately locking me into a drink date at Les Deux Magots two Fridays from now, were we not the only ones of our species in the Luxembourg this morning. As I took in the pert ponytail and perfectly open smile, the INXS lyrics “You’re one of my kind” unfurled inside me. I remembered a passage from Proust where the narrator goes to a seaside resort for the summer and realizes that people from classes that would never interact in the city are delighting in one another’s company in a foreign atmosphere. The Proust, the INXS, the beautiful girl who wanted to know me, the river of Parisians going by, I suddenly saw it all in a Baroque X-ray.

As I fumbled in my bag for a pen to write down Christie’s number, I felt for the fifty-franc note that Clarence had given me to buy lunch on the way home. It wasn’t there! I felt again, found it, recalled my shock of shame at the tremble in Clarence’s voice as he had gone over what to buy with me.

“Get a poulet rôti, well done, and some céleri rémoulade. She likes jambon cru, but for goodness sakes don’t get any regular cooked ham. She can’t abide the stuff. Says it’s watery. You might pick up some of those puff pastry things with the béchamel and the chicken. She loves those when she’s not dieting.” No ham, nothing with mushrooms. No eggplant or peppers. No egg.

The man was terrified, reduced. He would have no time today for my musings about the Luxembourg as art, and neither should I. We were both in grave danger of fucking up.

I told Christie I would call her to confirm that I was free as the evening of our drink approached. I wasn’t my own master, I explained. “Well, I’m off at six every day,” she said with sweet certainty. “So great to run into you.” And she jogged away.

I pulled the crumpled money from my pocket. I walked to a poubelle with every intention of throwing away Olivier’s note, but buried it in the pocket of my jeans instead.

Then I led Orlando out of the park toward the food shops on our list. One by one, we hit them.

The baker slipped him one of yesterday’s croissants. The traiteur had a sliver of pâté for him, but none for me.

fourteen

Apparently, I did not err buying lunch because Lydia ate with pleasure, chattering about how each taste brought Paris back to her, how good it was to be here.

She did not mention the paint colors. She talked instead about the perfect crisp weather and how telling it was that Orlando liked me because he was such a good judge of character and would I mind spending a couple of hours with her in the office after lunch? She had some letters to dictate.

She was framing the day to make it pleasant, getting Clarence and me to smile. We agreed with her that the poulet rôti from the rue du Cherche-Midi was indeed the best and the most evocative of our little corner of Paris. Where in the States could you find a chicken like this?

“Have you explained the office system to her yet?” Lydia asked Clarence.

“I wouldn’t call it a system, exactly, my dear. ‘System’ is a trifle too serious, don’t you think?”

“Call it what you like,” she turned to me, “but Clarence and I are very private about our workspaces. He doesn’t come into mine, and I don’t go into his. It’s respectful, if you will. But it does mean that you, Katherine, as a neutral party, will have to carry messages from time to time.”

I almost said, “I know. Olivier prepared me for this.” And the deliverance I felt at not having slipped made me fear I could never come clean.

“So,” Lydia looked at me mischievously as we sat down in her office after lunch, she at her desk, I in a nearby chair, “I’m going to do something simply awful and I hope you won’t mind.”

I couldn’t think of anything funny to say back.

She gestured to a pile of envelopes. “I’m sinfully late answering some of these people. I’ve missed about ten invitations this past month, given no word, no sign of life. With Germany and Rushdie side by side, my social life is starting to look like Beirut. So, here’s where you come in. I’d like to blame some of this on you. Our line will be something like, ‘My new assistant is a Deconstructionist from Yale. She doesn’t do the date and time thing very well yet, but she’s a quick learner and we have high hopes for the future. So sorry your invitation had to be a casualty of literary theory,’ something like that. You can refine it. I’m sure you’re a better writer than I am. Is this terrible? Do you mind? I mean you don’t know these people. You don’t begrudge me a little scapegoating for a good cause?”

“Are you kidding? Blame me for anything!”

We had a hilarious afternoon going through her pile of neglected correspondence, pretending I’d misplaced letters and inverted dates. As I scribbled her responses on a legal pad to type up later, she painted me as a distracted intellect. It was flattering in a backhanded sort of way. With each completed reply, each fresh easing of her conscience, she grew more buoyant and more brazen in the lines she dictated until finally I had used some poor woman’s invitation to a chamber music concert as a bookmark in my Foucault and forgotten all about it.

With the opening of every envelope she gave me a quick portrait of the sender so that I would be able to recognize him or her when we did meet. The cast of characters sounded fascinating. And the events we had missed were fabulous. There was a soirée where we almost definitely would have seen “Sam” Beckett. There was a note from Salman Rushdie’s French publisher. We had to answer that one carefully. There were art openings and wine tastings, some in New York, some in Paris, a hunting party in England, a cocktail party for the New Yorker in Rome. It all blended into an enticing swirl of missed faces and events gone by, the stuff of future dreams.

“Thank you, Katherine. I could never have faced all that alone,” said Lydia as the sky through her office window started to darken. “Now, I think we’ve earned a peach Kir, don’t you?”

I dared to look at my watch to see how much time stood between me and Olivier. It was almost five o’clock. Three hours. I would have a drink with Lydia, excuse myself around six, spend half an hour showering and dressing, head back to the Marais and our horseshoe bar.

“Absolutely, it’s time for a Kir. We have earned it,” I echoed, flooded with relief at my complicity with Lydia.

“Listen, before we go knock off, I have to mention something. I couldn’t help but notice in your notebook some jottings about fashion journalism. I know Clarence is getting you to help out on his book. He’s having you transcribe the things he says into that little tape-recorder thing of his, isn’t he?”

I nodded.

“Well, I don’t mind,” she continued. “Really, it’s okay. It means he trusts you and I’m happy for him that he has someone he can rely on a little so he doesn’t feel so at sea in this whole process. This book is a big deal for him. He needs to publish. Nothing has happened in his career in years and it’s very, very hard for him. Very hard for a man with his intelligence, especially since I’m so visible. You understand, don’t you? This sabbatical is a crucial time for him. And there’s a big risk that he’s going to lose his focus on the fashion thing, for which he already has a book contract and which is where he needs to be concentrating his energy. He could blow it and start trying to publish articles on the whole Muslim fundamentalist fiasco. He keeps talking about translating his theories about capitalism into some explanation of what’s going on. And he’s in so far over his head he has no idea. If he tries this he will be a laughingstock, an absolute laughingstock. I love the man, but current events are not his strong suit, and what he needs right now is a critical academic success. So, anything you can do to help him stay on target and in the nineteenth century has my blessing. Does that make sense to you?”

“Absolutely.” My alliance had so shifted to my boss that I too saw Clarence in shades of pity.

“And there’s no need for him to know we’ve had this conversation. Obviously, we both want what’s best for him.”

“Obviously.” Line for line, I was reflecting back to her. I couldn’t help myself.

“Oh, and, if I’m not too tired, we may have to do a bit more work this evening.”

“A bit more?” My inner world shook.

“I doubt I can handle it, but if the force is with me we should begin transcribing some of the interviews of my German subjects. There’s a massive amount to do.” She dug her eyes into my face. “You look pale. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of work?”

“No, not at all. It’s just that I had plans tonight, but—”

“Oh, I see,” she snapped. “Well, never mind then. No work if you have plans.”

“Thanks.” I found I could still breathe. “I could do it late tomorrow night if that’s good. Or any other night or through the weekend.”

“You know,” she clucked, “we may just have to do tonight. We’ll see. We have a deadline tomorrow. But I’ll make a call to my editor. You should probably be fine for your plan. And I’m exhausted anyway. Although I feel better now after dealing with that avalanche of mail.”

Lamely, I aspired to buoyancy. “Cool.” But my voice cracked.

“Well now, it’s time for that drink. What do you say?” And she stood up, opened the office door and yelled down the hallway, “Clarence, darling, Katherine and I are ready for our crème de pêche!”

fifteen

After Kirs with Clarence and Lydia, and her joking assurance that he and she were going out in the neighborhood tonight for a proper bourgeois grande bouffe to celebrate her arrival, pity I couldn’t join them, I went to dress for my final date with Olivier.

I showered and primped. I even dabbed perfume from my free sample collection. Chanel No. 5. Then, after two applications of lotion, I dressed. Black leggings and an off-the-shoulder gray dress in softest sweatshirt material. I put on mascara. I pulled on heels.

I slipped a fresh pair of underwear and some flats into my bag, locked my door, unlocked it to get a lipstick and a book to stare at on the Métro. Then I headed down flight after flight, my heart skipping to the music of the unaccustomed heels.

As I hit the bottom stair and faced the marvelous prospect of the courtyard, the door to Lydia’s apartment swung open. It was as though my first step into the night air had triggered a spring. Out popped Lydia in a silk paisley bathrobe.

“Christ, it’s freezing,” she said. “Come in! Come in! Hurry! The heating bills on this place are killing us.”

“I was just heading out actually.”

“Yes, I can tell. Nice shoes,” she added, ushering me into the foyer. “But you might want to take them off. We have a long night ahead of us, my dear. You have to understand that you did not sign on for a nine-to-five job. No time clocks here. No punching in and out.” She gave my face a look that managed to be both cursory and searching. “Of course, if that’s not what you want …”

“No, no, no. I mean yes.”

Although I had no idea what I meant, she took my words as a declaration of my readiness to get down to business. We had to transcribe those German interviews right now. History was marching forward and we couldn’t afford not to meet it head-on.

Steadying a tremor as I hung my coat, I asked if I could have a couple of minutes to call and leave a message for the cousin I was supposed to meet. I didn’t want him to worry.

This was not, I assured myself, a total lie, as this was the night I had promised Étienne to go to his dinner party. I was breaking two dates.

She said fine, showing no interest. But I felt compelled to add, as we walked down the hallway right past Portia’s room, all lavender and perfume bottles, that Étienne had invited me to his apartment near the Bastille tonight, that he was the one whose family I’d lived with as a kid, whose parents had retired back to Orléans, and that he was in Paris now, doing some kind of art.

“Oh, well that makes me feel a hell of a lot less guilty. You can see your cousin anytime if he’s local, can’t you? Tell him you are standing him up in the name of truth and beauty.” She laughed, closing her office door behind us.

I went to the phone book beside the Rolodex to look up the Fer à Cheval, wondering if Portia would be waiting for Olivier tomorrow at the airport in New York, ditching school, holding some expensive bottle of champagne.

There was a knock at the door. Clarence.

“Lydia,” he said. “This is ridiculous. This can wait until tomorrow and you know it. The poor girl has plans of her own. She’s been working all day.”

“Clarence, you have no idea what you’re talking about. If you did, you would eat your words. Things are happening too fast in this world for us to pause now. There will be time later. Now leave us be.”

“But I thought you and I were going out to dinner. I thought you wanted a grande bouffe tonight. What happened to the bouffe?”

“Look at me, Clarence.”

“You look fine.”

“I’m wearing my bathrobe. I am obviously not going anywhere, not with you or anyone else. We have plenty of roast chicken left over if we get hungry. The Berlin Wall could come down tonight. Now get out.”

I managed to find the number for the bar while, just feet away, Lydia busied herself with contact sheets and notebook pages.

I remained remarkably steady.

“Fer à Cheval, bonsoir!” Background jazz felted over a hum of voices. I wondered if one of them was Olivier’s, if he had shown up early to meet me. I looked at my watch. I was supposed to be there in half an hour.

I tried to sound casual. “Bonsoir, Michel, this is Kate, the American girl you met on Wednesday night.”

“La copine d’Olivier?”

“Yes.” A copine could either be a girlfriend or friend who was a girl. There was no way to tell. “He’s my cousin,” I said meaningfully.

Had Lydia heard Olivier’s name through the receiver? If she had, she gave no indication, and I had to assume that she was too consumed with her place in history to bother about my social life.

“Ah, bon? Your cousin?” Michel laughed.

“Yes, just please tell him that Kate cannot make it to the dinner party tonight. I have to stay at work. Something important has come up.”

Would I like to speak to him, Michel asked? He was right here.