The Last Time I Saw Paris (14 page)

 

Lara hadn't been able to face the Tour d'Argent, where she had gone with Bill, and instead had made reservations at Lucas Carton, a Michelin three-star restaurant on the Place Madeleine in the 8th Arrondissement. She glanced around, pleased with her choice. The turn-of-the-century restaurant was beautiful, with mellow belle epoque wood paneling and tall mirrors. Long banquettes were lined up against paneled partitions topped with antique etched glass, and giant urns held trailing greenery.

A cluster of stony-faced, white-aproned young waiters hovered near the door as an unsmiling maître d' checked their reservations. After an assessing glance, he showed them to a remote table near the kitchen. Lara glanced uneasily at Dan. She knew Bill would have complained about the bad table but Dan didn't seem to have noticed.

The unsmiling young waiters surrounded them, wafting enormous white linen napkins onto their laps. Lara ordered a bottle of Veuve Cliquot La Grand Dame from the sommelier, the same wonderful and expensive champagne Bill had ordered at the Tour
d'Argent, though of course Dan did not know that.

She inspected him from under her lashes, hoping she had done the right thing, bringing him to this smart, stuffy restaurant. She wasn't sure, though; this was so much more Bill than Dan. Sighing, she put on the little gold-rimmed glasses that she had been forced to wear ever since she turned forty if she wanted to read anything other than giant type, and turned her attention to the menu.

Dan was thinking how cute she looked in the little glasses. He caught a snatch of her perfume as she looked up. She smiled questioningly at him and he took her hand across the table. “I was just remembering you,” he said.

“Surely you can't have forgotten me already?” She smiled with the new confidence of a woman who knows she is loved.

His eyes held hers. “No, ma'am, Ms. Lewis. I could not.”

Lara felt that fluid heat in her body, and she was suddenly breathless from wanting him. Their linked hands transmitted tiny electric pulses that turned her knees to jelly. It was as if they were alone in the crowded restaurant, only the two of them in all of Paris.… The sommelier came back and reluctantly they let go of each other. He filled a glass and offered it to Dan.

Dan tasted the champagne, his eyes still linked with Lara's. “Delicious,” he said. And neither he nor the sommelier had any doubt that he meant the woman and not the wine.

The waiter handed them menus, enormous stiff cards full of items like a pan roast of frogs legs, and thyme-scented potatoes with cuttlefish ravioli. Unable
to find anything familiar, Dan gave up and asked Lara to choose for both of them.

He looked around the beautiful dining room, uncomfortably aware of the hushed voices and serious faces of the other diners. No one seemed to be having a good time and the smart restaurant felt like a temple dedicated to the art of eating. He tugged at his tie, feeling out of his league, out of place, too American. Then he dropped his menu and knocked over his glass.

He stared embarrassed at the spreading puddle of champagne and the shards of crystal on the immaculate white cloth. “Sorry,” he muttered as the disdainful waiters clustered around. He knew he should never have come here; this was Lara's husband's style, not his.
Bill
would never have knocked over his champagne glass.
Bill
belonged here. It was a place Lara would have come with Bill.

Ignoring his apologies, the silent waiters brushed away the broken glass, mopping and blotting, draping fresh napkins over the damp spot, bringing a new glass, pouring more champagne.

“It's all right, Dan, it doesn't matter,” Lara said, suddenly uneasy. His mouth was set in a firm line and there was a steely glint in his eyes. She knew he was asking himself why she had brought him to such a grand place, a place that was so unlike them. He must think she was showing off to him, Dan the blue-collar guy and she, Bill's wife, the sophisticated woman of the world. She thought sadly she hadn't meant it that way at all.

Sighing, she forced her attention back to the menu, knowing the food just was not Dan. It seemed easier to order soup to start; then, because it sounded so different, for the main course she chose veal sweet-breads
with crayfish and caramelized popcorn.

They waited in silence for their food to arrive. Lara looked at the other diners and Dan frowned down at his untouched champagne.

When their food did come, the portions were delicate, the presentation exquisite, and it was absolutely not Dan's style. He did not touch the sweetbreads.

The silence between them was now so deep Lara thought it made the hushed voices of the other diners sound positively gay. Oh, God, she thought, this is a rerun of the Tour d'Argent debacle with Bill. Only now the roles are reversed. Now
I
have become
Bill
!

She stared miserably at the dessert, a study in creamy minimalist decadence. Dan studied the pastry on his plate, then looked her coldly in the eyes. “I want you to know that this is the last time I ever order a fifty-dollar napoleon,” he said. Then he signaled the waiter for the bill. When it came, he snatched it from her. It was a stunning six hundred dollars. He paid with his green Amex.

Not knowing what to do, Lara let him.

T
hey were outside the restaurant waiting for a taxi. Lara's heart was stuck somewhere in her throat. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Dan's back turned indifferently away from her. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of the khakis that still bore the mark of the spilled champagne, and he jingled coins aimlessly. Oh, God, she thought, this is already a failure. Paris is over before it's begun.

The thought of the dingy hotel room and the two of them not speaking was unbearable, and on an impulse Lara told the cabdriver to take them to the Café Flore in St. Germain. She sat in her own corner of the cab and Dan sat in his. Neither said a word.

The Left Bank streets were thronged, the cafes bursting at the seams. By a stroke of luck Lara snagged a sidewalk table from a departing couple and sank thankfully into the little cane chair. Dan sat opposite. Their eyes met. His were like blue flint.

She gazed somberly back at him, faced with the horrible truth that she could never tell. She could never confess that she had taken him to the grand Michelin-starred restaurant to relive that honeymoon night with Bill. “I'm sorry,” she said quietly. “I know you hated it and I don't blame you.”

“That's okay.”

The busy waiter wiped off the little marble table then placed a saucer in the center for
I'addition.

Knowing that Dan must be hungry, Lara asked for a
croque monsieur
and
deux fines.

When the toasted ham and cheese sandwich and glasses of brandy finally arrived, Dan stared at them; then glanced up at her, and that slow grin that had so charmed her in the beginning spread across his handsome face.

“Now
we're in Paris,” he said. “My kind of town.”

Lara let out her held breath in a sigh of relief, wondering if there was something to be said for the old, familiar marriage routine after all. Having a lover was like learning a new game: all the rules were different.
She
had to become different.

Dan devoured his sandwich, then ordered a second one. Cautiously happy again, he held her hand, sipping brandy, watching jugglers and fire-eaters performing on the sidewalk and a little terrier turning somersaults.

Later, with the grand-restaurant debacle hopefully behind them, they wandered the streets of the Left Bank. Lara stopped to admire the beautiful shoes in Maud Frizon on the rue des Saints Péres, then she saw a gauzy draped dress in Angelo Tarlazzi that she knew would be perfect for her daughter, Minnie, and then she fell in love with the entire shop window of beautiful lingerie in tiny Sabbia Rosa, especially a silk and lace teddy in a color like whitewashed peaches that looked as though it weighed less than an ounce. She told Dan, enviously, that she had never owned lingerie like that, and that it would be too expensive, and, anyhow, they would never have her size, but she admired it for a long time.

They browsed the chic boutiques on rue du Cherche-Midi, and lingered over the window of Debauve & Gallais on the rue Napoléon, tempted by the
luscious-looking chocolates, then drifted happily along the rue Jacob with its antique shops and little cafes and small, funky hotels.

Dan stopped outside the Hôtel d'Angleterre, staring through the plate-glass doors at the tough, gray-haired dragon lady in charge of the front desk. He glanced meaningfully at Lara. “Wait here,” he said and went inside.

Lara looked at him, leaning against the counter, chatting to the concierge, who obviously ruled the place with an iron hand. He was apparently asking her for a room and she shook her head, brows raised, shoulders raised. He might as well be asking for the moon, Lara thought, turning away with a sigh, remembering their dingy little hotel room with its thin walls and the sound of the trains rushing by. It just wasn't what Paris was about, not for a pair of lovers seeking paradise. She wondered gloomily how long love could survive there. About as long as in a grand restaurant, she guessed.

She swung around as the glass door opened again. Dan took her arm and pulled her inside. “Welcome to Paris, madame,” he said with a triumphant grin.

Lara didn't know how Dan had managed it, since he spoke no French and the concierge spoke no English, but she guessed good old ail-American charm had won through. The dragon lady had given them a room under the eaves—blue-toile wallpaper, dark beams, ancient stone, an antique clawfoot bathtub, lace curtains, and those tall windows with shutters found only in France.

“It's heaven,” she cried, bouncing on the
lit matrimonial,
testing it.

“It's
Paris,”
he said, laughing at her.

It's Dan, she thought, loving him.

Dan took a cab back to the station hotel to collect their things, while Lara explored their new quarters.

Flinging back the shutters, she saw that their room faced a flowery interior courtyard with little round tables and chairs, where they would indulge in
café complet
the next morning.

She turned down the canopied bed, fluffed up the pillows, inspected the toiletries in the bathroom, which had stone walls and beams dating back to the revolution, and was thrilled to discover from the hotel brochure that she was in what had formerly been the British embassy.

She ran a bath, emptied the little vial of fragrant oil into the water, stripped off her pretty dress and the Monoprix underthings, and pinned up her hair. She was wallowing in the fragrant bubbles thinking what heaven this was when Dan got back.

He leaned against the door, arms folded, looking, she thought with a shiver of anticipation, devastatingly handsome, and adorable, and sexy and
oh, my God, how she wanted him.
She hadn't felt this way in years; she couldn't ever remember feeling this way about Bill.

“You look like a true Frenchwoman,” he said.

She threw him a provocative smile, running her hands the length of her body. “How did you know where I was?”

“Easy. I just followed the trail of lacy undergarments and the scent of French perfume.” He was pulling at the knot in his tie, walking toward her, unbuttoning his shirt. He tugged it off, let it drop to the floor. She watched mesmerized as he unzipped the chinos and stood naked in front of her. His taut erection
told her how much he wanted her. . . she hadn't seen an erection like that on Bill in years . . . in fact she had hardly seen one at all in a long time, and for an instant she wondered if this was a mistress thing, whether Bill reacted like this to Melissa, taut and strong and ready for her. . . the Younger Woman. Well, Dan was a Younger Man and his erection snapped to attention whenever he looked at her. . . the way Bill's used to . . . hadn't it?

She shook her head; right now all that mattered was her lover. Her love . . .

“Room for two in that tub?” Dan asked, and laughing with relief that love was back again, she welcomed him into her world.

Bubbles clung to her breasts, tangling in the fine golden hair on his chest, popping and crackling as their bodies met. Her skin was slick under his hands, smoother than any silk, and her long, dark, softly curling hair escaped from its pins and floated free on the water. He thought she looked like a Pre-Raphaelite maiden in a painting, except that she was warm and alive and slippery as an eel as he tried to hold her, kissing her mouth and her hair and her eyelashes, gently running his tongue along her ears, down her neck, and over the little diamond necklace she always wore.

Crazy for her, he helped her out of the tub, wrapped her in a towel, and carried her to the bed.

He traced the curve of her breasts with tender fingers, ran his hand over her rounded body, kissed the soft curves. He had once told Lara he didn't know what love was. Now as they lay together he asked himself that question again.