Hidden in Paris (15 page)

“Johnny was American.”

“Famous last words,” Lola giggled.

This jolted Annie like a slap in the face and suddenly she was wide awake. How insensitive. Johnny was dead, killed for heaven’s sake. She needed to shut the bitch up. “So, tell me Lola, what else about you is fake?”

“My name.” Lola looked at her with naked vulnerability, her eyes almost imploring acceptance. “My real name is Laura. But there already was a Laura at the modeling agency that was booking me. I was only sixteen when I started modeling full time. I didn’t even object to being given whatever name. I lost my name and my education. The money was too good to pass up. I didn’t finish high school.” Now Annie felt like a schmuck. Hopefully Lola didn’t notice she had intended to hurt her.

“So you’ve been Lola for...”

“I’m going to be forty.”

“You don’t even look thirty!” Annie exclaimed.

Lola pointed to her face. “Here and here, collagen. Here, here, and here, Botox. It wears off, you know.” She had a small laugh. “If I don’t keep it up, you’ll see me age ten years over the next six months!”

“No shit!”

“Well, I hope not, but I’m pretty scared.”

Annie, for the first time, saw Lola not for who she appeared to be, but for the person Lola must feel she was. Deep inside, the glamorous Beverly Hills model was still flat-chested Laura, the domestically abused mother of two screwed-up kids. Lola was a woman in transition, a woman who had too often bet on the wrong horse, a woman ambivalent about growing older. A woman not unlike herself.

The next day, Annie was hurrying through the downpour and entering the overheated sixteenth arrondissement bistro where Lucas ate lunch almost every day. She spotted Lucas at a table near the window and made her way between tables. She dropped onto the bistro chair and wrestled with her coat. “
What’s the Plat du jour?
”

“
Confit de Canard
and scalloped potatoes.” I took the liberty of ordering for you.

Annie noted Lucas’s ski tan. “How was Courchevel?”

“
Une bouteille de Perrier.
” Lucas told the approaching waiter. He folded his menu neatly. “Courchevel was superb. The powder was divine. What did I miss?”

“Everything!” Annie proceeded to describe the week, wondering all the way, but never asking, with whom Lucas had traveled. “My heart goes out to Lola,” she said finally. “She really is a nice person, and genuine, no matter what she says about lying being second nature to her. And,” she added smugly, “she looks great for being almost forty.”

The plates arrived, steaming. Lucas put his napkin on his lap. “Sounds like you like her better.”

“She’s not such a bad girl.”

“Blonde or not, breasts or not, she’ll have no problem finding a man to worship her.”

“Did I tell you she’s almost forty?”

“You made that abundantly clear.”

“That’s because society doesn’t give women a chance. For us, thirty-five is the beginning of the end.”

“Her end has not come yet.”

“Hmm,” Annie said, looking at him quizzically. “Would I be wrong to assume that you wouldn’t mind paying homage to her plastic bosom?”

“Only as a public service, to help her regain much needed self-confidence.”

Annie shook her napkin angrily and put it on her lap. “Suit yourself.”

“Are you angry with me?”

“Why would I be angry? I just think the last thing Lola needs is to be treated like a sex object, particularly by a French macho man who can’t hold onto a woman for more than a week.“

Lucas put a hand over his heart. “I pledge to make it last more than a week!”

“You’ve got some nerve! What makes you think she’d want you?”

Lucas tried to appear humble as he said, “My reputation, as you know, precedes me.”

Annie studied his face. Was he joking? The thought of pouring her water glass down his pants occurred to her, but she was thirsty so she brought the glass to her mouth. “Oooh I see, we must be talking about Monsieur Le Penis. I’ll break the news to you, since you’ve been caught in a time warp. Size is nothing to women! Besides, I’m pretty sure you are not her type.”

“I’m
ze
French man. We have an international reputation.”

“
Ze
French male ego is at work, I see.”

“
Ze
ego and
Ze
penis are always at work.”

Annie smiled despite herself. “So? Who was there?” she asked.

“Who was where?”

“In bloody Courchevel, where else?”

“No one of importance,” Lucas answered. Annie chewed and looked at Lucas intently, but Lucas only stared back.

Chapter 11

The cab stopped in front of Annie’s house. At the moment, all Jared could feel was resentment. But when he lifted his eyes toward the house and took a breath, it was a breath of relief. There was something about this place, the maze of rooms, the toys everywhere, the loud kids, and that rare garden in the middle of the city that Jared had always loved. This was the house, the family he would have wanted to grow up
with instead of the poverty and grief he had been dealt.

On warm summer nights, when Johnny was still alive, they had gathered there, he and many others to eat Annie’s food, to drink large quantities of Bordeaux, to talk about politics, and to laugh. All of it ended, of course, after Johnny’s accident. Annie was in shock and wanted to be left alone. Jared stopped visiting, and he hadn’t been the only one. At a loss as to what the appropriate behavior should be, he had chosen to be a coward rather than a fake. Somehow, he got news through Lucas, and since
he
was kept informed, it had given Jared the mistaken impression that he had kept in touch. It was only as he handed cash to the cab driver that the reality of his desertion dawned on him.

Now, after three years of this, Annie was saving his ass. He carefully pushed away a confused mix of guilt and irritation. Being able to live here for very little money was a huge break. A gay couple from Italy was subleasing his apartment for a nice amount of cash until June. That money would keep him going for a while afterward.

In the street, the driver helped him pull his suitcases out of the cab, and Jared braced himself for Annie. But there she was at the front steps, waving at him. Jared hoped there’d be no sign of despair over Johnny’s death, that it would be all clean and digested. Lucas had told him she had changed, that she was going though a difficult phase. Jared had trouble picturing her as anything other than the gregarious, witty and fun loving woman of three years ago. But he had changed too. What he was like three years ago had nothing to do with who he was now.

Annie threw herself into his arms to hug him, an American habit she had never quite replaced with the more French kiss on the cheek greeting. The American hug, too close for comfort made him feel self-conscious and he kicked himself for arriving empty-handed. Annie, hands on her hips and head cocked to the side, examined him from head to toe. She punched him playfully on the shoulder. “Still as good looking as ever! Hey, when was the last time you got a haircut? Lucas’s right, you look a mess!”

Jared didn’t know how to respond to what weren’t questions. Yes, she was different. Entirely different, but how, he had not yet taken it in. Her face looked strained, her body, forgotten. She was wearing stained painter’s overalls and her hair was held together in a haphazard ponytail. She was not wearing make up but, just as Lucas had told him, she was still wearing her wedding ring. Lucas said she was not accepting Johnny’s death. It looked to him like a part of her might have died along with him. He fumbled with words and vague attempts at pleasantness until Maxence, Paul, and Laurent stormed out of the house to greet him.

“The Man!” Maxence said as a form of greeting, and Jared felt his body soften. The boys were barely recognizable after two years, especially Paul, who was a toddler last time he saw him.

“There’s a new secret handshake and a new password,” Laurent said. They threw Jared a Nerf ball and pushed and shoved him into the house. Maxence whispered in his ear, warning him about the new people living here.
All weirdos
.

Inside the house, there were no obvious signs of sorrow. The entrance’s wall, bright yellow stenciled with large orange suns, was basking in the light that came through the open door. Facing the front door was the dark stairway, and to the left, the living room with the fireplace where year after year he had lingered with Lucas and their then respective girlfriends. They had listened to Johnny’s record collection and had drunk Tequila until no one could stand.

Annie waved the children instructions. “Help Jared with his stuff.”

Gesturing for Jared to follow, Maxence and Laurent dragged the suitcases up the stairs.

“Can I go on your back?” Paul said.

“You remember that?” Jared hoisted Paul to his shoulders.

“I have a little surprise for you, for later,” Annie sang as he started up the stairs. “That’s all I’ll say for now.”

“Are we glad you’re here!” Maxence said in French. He jerked the suitcase up from step to step using brute force. “Way too many girls here. It’s becoming unlivable!”

“And they’re stupid too,” Paul added with passion as he strangled Jared with his legs.

“Shhh!” Maxence interrupted.

A silhouette was slowly descending the dark stairs, hesitant. Struggling to breathe and trying to take Paul’s hands off his Adam’s apple, Jared looked up right as her hair came to mask her face. Eye contact. Gray eyes he noticed, and then the shadow of her body coming down the stairwell. Jared’s heart made a leap in his chest.

Jared found himself in a small bedroom under the roof with the low-slanted ceiling. The walls, the bed spread, the furniture, the painted floor, everything a harmony of whites and creams, all conspiring to remind him of the very thing he was trying to forget: white canvases. A moment later, Annie entered his room without an invitation. He’d have to lock it from the inside from now on. “Are you ready for your surprise?” she asked as she surveyed the room where the contents of Jared’s suitcase, mostly black clothes, were already scattered everywhere like shadows. “There are two other rooms on this floor beside this one. One’s not usable; it’s never been remodeled and it’s full of junk. So I was wondering if you’d make a deal with me.”

Jared peered at her. “Depends.”

“You get rid of the junk for me, clean the room, plaster it, dry wall it, whatever it, and in exchange for that, I’ll let you use it free of charge and make it your atelier.”

Jared looked out the window. The woman he had seen in the stairwell shared the floor with him. “I’m all right,” he said. “Thanks anyway.”

“What good is it to have an in-house artist if he doesn’t have space to paint?”

“You’ve been talking to Lucas?”

“So what if your work isn’t selling? Neither did Van Gogh’s.”

“Old Vincent stuck with it and it eventually paid off. ” Jared brought a cigarette to his mouth and a finger to his temple like a gun.

“Please, don’t smoke in the house,” she said. Jared put down his lighter but kept the cigarette in his mouth. Annie had her hand on the doorknob. “I’m surrounding myself with people who have youth, beauty, intelligence, and talent but are too busy feeling sorry for themselves. Look at me—thirty-five, fast approaching forty, a dead husband, three kids, no marketable skills, and a house that’s on the verge of sending me into bankruptcy but do you hear
me
complain?” She shut the door rather angrily and he heard her grumbling her way down the stairs. He lay on the bed and lit his cigarette.

There were giggles and whispers in the dark staircase as Jared came downstairs for dinner later on, but those stopped the instant the children saw him. The boys were sitting on the steps with a little girl and a toddler. They all looked at him in silence, moving to the side as he made his way between them.

“
Bonsoir
,” he said.

“
Bonsoir
,” Maxence said. The other children stayed silent and he felt strangely excluded. As he stepped into the dark hallway and away from the stairs, the children’s whispers and giggles returned.

Jared walked toward the kitchen and opened the door to bright lights, loud conversations, humid heat, and the rising smell of
Coq au Vin
. Standing at the stove, all six stove burners going at once, Annie was like a percussionist, noisily opening and closing lids, stirring, adding ingredients, cranking up or reducing temperatures under bubbling pans of various sizes and shapes. Close to her, Lucas stood in her way, and she bumped into him every time she needed to get to the cutting board. The woman Jared had seen in the stairway was peeling vegetables and glanced briefly at him before disappearing in her task. Next to her was a beautiful woman with closely cropped black hair who flashed him a sexy smile.

“Jared! At last, honoring us with his presence,” Annie exclaimed. “Lola, Althea, here is Jared, Don Juan
extraordinaire
and famous painter on a ridiculous sabbatical.”

Unable to gather who was who, Jared gave a small “salut” in the direction of the women. Lucas poured a glass of wine and offered it to him. Jared went to sit at the table. The red-haired woman turned her face away and suddenly all he could see was her hair.

Lucas peeked over Annie’s shoulder into a pot. “You left the rooster’s bones in?” he pointed out.

“It’s chicken, ” Annie said, chopping parsley at high speed.

“
Coq au vin sans coq
?” Rooster cooked in wine without a rooster. Lucas seemed to put a great deal of thought into his reasoning. “But then,” he said “Don’t you have to work around the bones as you eat. Wouldn’t it be better to use a boneless rooster?”

“The bones give the dish its flavor. God forbid you’d have to put in the effort and
work
around the
bones
!” Annie turned to the dark-haired woman. “Lucas was born with a silver spoon, filled with boneless rooster, in his mouth.”

“What do you mean?” Lucas asked.

“An American expression. Hey, why don’t you tell Althea and Lola your theory on wrinkles, you know that bit about rich wrinkles and poor wrinkles.”

Lucas turned towards the dark-haired woman. “This is not my theory. It’s a known fact.”

“Tell them,” Annie insisted.

“Rich people’s wrinkles are horizontal from time spent smiling in the sun, on a boat, or on a golf course,” Lucas explained. “Poor people’s wrinkles are vertical. Furrows between the eyes, creases around the lips, lines on the cheeks, lines obtained from a life of worries over financial woes.”

“Interesting you’d say this in front of a widow on the brink of bankruptcy,” Annie spoke to the women as witnesses. “Isn’t this elitist, and revoltingly macho?”

“Elitist perhaps, but why is it macho?” Lucas asked.

“Because I’m approaching middle age, or will be in the next ten years.” Annie looked at the beautiful dark-haired woman, who was laughing. “I guess this must be why women find him charming.” Annie grabbed a large knife from behind Lucas. “I’m immune though. Lucas, please sit down, you’ll get wounded standing there.”

The beautiful woman extended a graceful hand towards Jared, which he shook. “Welcome, we’re glad to have you,” she said languidly. She was flirting with him, that much he recognized.

“Sorry. I don’t speak English very well,” he said, looking at the red haired woman.

“I’ll have to hurry and learn French then,” she smiled. Lucas came close to her and whispered in her ear and the woman giggled. Lucas at his best. His approach seemed self-defeating if Lucas’s goal was to seduce Annie. Annie, using a butcher’s knife as long as her forearm was chopping mushrooms at great speed, ignoring them. The red haired woman stood up and brought the peeled vegetables to Annie. She put the peels in the trash and left the kitchen without a word. Jared got up to leave the kitchen as well but Annie interrupted his motion by grabbing his arm.

“You better not have become a vegetarian or something,” she said. “There is an endive and beet salad, and for dessert, a
mousse au chocolat
.” She added, speaking to no one in particular, “Jared, he is too independent to be having dinner with us every night, but tonight, he is bestowing on us the honor of his company.” Lucas was giving the shorthaired woman a wine tasting lesson, twirling her glass by putting his hand over hers; neither of them paid attention to Annie.

“What did you say her name was?” Jared asked Annie in a low voice so that the other two wouldn’t hear.

“Oh, yeah, Casanova is waking up? Lola is married with children and Lucas has obviously claimed her for himself from the moment she landed here.” She stepped toward the refrigerator angrily.

Of course he wasn’t asking about
that
woman. “Stop calling me Casanova and Don Juan.
D’accord
?” he said.