The Woman in the Fifth (14 page)

Later that night, I opened my notebook and a piece of paper fell out of one of its back pages. It was the scrap on which I had written Lorraine L'Herbert's phone number. I stared at it. I thought,
What can I lose? It's just a party, after all
.

'It's not a party,' said the uppity little man who answered L'Herbert's phone the next afternoon. He was American with a slightly simpering voice and a decidedly pompous manner. 'It's a salon.'

Thanks for the semantical niceties, pal.

'Are you having one this week?'

'
Comme d'habitude
.'

'Well, can I book a place?'

'If we can fit you in. The list is very, very tight, I'm afraid. Your name, please?'

I told him.

'Visiting from . . . ?'

'I live here now, but I'm from Ohio.'

'People actually live in Ohio?'

'The last time I looked.'

'What's your line of endeavor?'

'I'm a novelist.'

'Published by . . . ?'

'That's pending.'

He issued a huge sigh, as if to say,
Not another wouldbe writer.

'Well, you know that there is a contribution of twenty euros. Please arrive with it in an envelope, on which your name is clearly printed. Take down the door code now and don't lose it, because we don't answer the phone after five p.m. on the day of the salon. So if you misplace it, you will not gain entry. And the invitation is for yourself only. If you show up with anyone else, both of you will be turned away.'

'I'll be alone.'

'No smoking, by the way. Madame L'Herbert hates tobacco. We like all our guests to arrive between seven and seven thirty p.m. And dress is smart. Remember: a salon
is
theater. Any questions?'

Yeah. How do you spell 'up your ass'?

'The address, please?' I asked.

He gave it to me. I wrote it down.

'Do come prepared to dazzle,' he said. 'Those who shine get asked back. Those who don't . . .'

'I'm a total dazzler,' I said.

He laughed a snide laugh. And said, 'We'll see about that.'

A
BIG FUCK-OFF
apartment near the Panthéon.

Those words came back to me that Sunday evening as I walked up the boulevard Saint-Michel in the direction of the Luxembourg Gardens. I had dressed carefully for the occasion: a black shirt and black pants and a black leather jacket I had bought at that second-hand shop on the faubourg Saint-Martin the previous day. It was a cold night, and the jacket didn't put up much resistance against the cutting wind. I was around fifteen minutes early, so I stopped in a nearby café and ordered a whisky. Not a single malt or some other premium brand. Just a standard Scotch. When the waiter deposited the little bill with the drink and I turned it over and saw that it cost eleven euros, I tried to stop myself from gasping. Eleven euros for a shot of whisky? Welcome to the Sixth.

I would have spent a good hour nursing the whisky and reading the Simenon novel,
La neige était sale
, that I had just picked up. But mindful of the seven-thirty cut-off point, I finished the Scotch, placed the necessary money on the table, tried not to think too hard about how eleven euros could buy me a day's food, and headed off to Lorraine L'Herbert's salon.

The address was 19 rue Soufflot.
Très haussmannien
. You walk around Paris, you see dozens of examples of Baron Haussmann's architectural left-behinds. This one was no different from the others: a large, formidable building, around six stories tall, with the requisite small baroque flourishes. Only given its location – just down the street from the Panthéon – and its elegant lobby, it was clear that this
immeuble haussmannien
was also a testament to imposing grand bourgeois values.

Which meant that, even before I had entered Lorraine L'Herbert's building, I felt shabby and humbled by it.

I punched in the code. The door opened with a click. Inside was a speakerphone. I picked it up and pushed the button marked with her name. It was answered by the American who had vetted me on the phone. Voices could be heard in the background.

'Name, please . . .
Votre nom, s'il vous plaît
,' he said.

I gave it to him.

'One second, please . . .
un instant
. . .' Then: 'Fourth floor left . . .
quatrième étage gauche
.'

The elevator was a small gilded cage. I took it to the top floor. Before it reached four, I could hear the sounds of loud conversation. When the elevator opened, I turned left and rang the bell. The door swung back. A short man dressed in black slacks and a black turtleneck was standing sentry. He had close-cropped hair and carried a stylish stainless- steel clipboard and an expensive pen.

'Monsieur Ricks?'

I nodded.

'Henry Montgomery. Madame L'Herbert's assistant. Your envelope, please.'

I reached into my pocket and pulled it out and handed it over. He checked that my name was – as instructed – printed on its front. Having verified that, he said, 'Coats in the first room down the corridor to your left, food and drink
dans la cuisine
. But after you've deposited your coat, you must come back here so I can take care of the introduction to Madame.
D'accord?
'

I nodded again – and followed Montgomery's pointed finger down the corridor. It was a very long corridor, with high ceilings. The walls were white. There was a big abstract canvas – in five sections – that covered much of the wall space. Each panel was a varying shade of green, the outer ones lightish in timbre, the inner ones amalgamating nearblackish hue. From my fifteen-second assessment, it looked like Imitation Klein or Rothko, and was showing its thirty years badly.

But I decided that now was not the moment to proclaim such thoughts at the top of my lungs. Tourette's hadn't seized me yet.

Instead, I followed the corridor to the first door. It was already open. It was a small room with a double bed and one of those plastic blow-up chairs that were popular back at the end of the sixties, but now looked like something out of the Paleozoic era. Over the bed (in what I presumed was the guest room) was a big garish nude of a blonde, brassy woman with Medusa-like hair and a multicolored (maybe psychedelic?) menagerie of wild animals and exotic flora sprouting out of her ample bush of pubic hair.

I couldn't imagine having a decent night's sleep beneath such a painting. Still, its cheesy Summer of Love garishness did hold my attention. I must have lingered a little too long for Montgomery's liking, as I heard his voice behind me.

'Monsieur Ricks . . . Madame awaits you.'

'Sorry, I was just . . .'

I motioned toward the canvas.

'You approve?' he asked.

'Oh yes,' I lied. 'Especially as it's so representative of a certain epoch.'

'You know the artist?'

'Peter Max?'

'Oh, please . . . he was so commercial.'

And this guy isn't?

'So who's the artist?'

'Pieter de Klop,
bien sûr
.'

'Yeah,
bien sûr
.'

'And you know that Madame was his muse.'

'That's Lorraine L'Herbert?' I asked, hearing the shocked tone in my voice.

'Yes, that is
indeed
Madame,' he said.

He motioned for me to follow him. We walked back down the corridor, then turned left into a large reception room. Like everywhere else I'd seen so far, it had white walls, a high ceiling and bad pop art. This room, however, was also large. Around thirty by twenty. Though it was currently black with people – most of whom seemed to be wearing black (at least, I wasn't going to stand out from the crowd) – I could see that there were white leather sectional sofas dotted around the place, and a few more blow-up plastic chairs, and two more nude studies of Madame by the same artist. But I was steered away from the paintings by Montgomery. His hand firmly on my shoulder, he spun me around toward a voluminous woman – ample in all physical departments. She was nearly six feet tall, and must have weighed well over two hundred and fifty pounds. Her fleshy face was kabuki-like, courtesy of a pancake-based makeup that tinted her near-white, offset by big red-rouged lips. There were gold zodiac symbols dangling from her neck, and every finger had a ring, all of which seemed New Age in design. Her hair – now silver – was braided, and stretched down the length of her back. She was dressed in a kaftan and was holding a glass of champagne. With his hand still on my shoulder Montgomery leaned over and whispered something into Madame's ear. She immediately burst into life.

'Well, hey there, Harry.'

Her accent was thickly Southern.

'Madame L'Herbert . . .'

'Now, y'all got to call me Lorraine. You're some kind of writer . . . ?'

'A novelist.'

'Have I read anything of yours?'

'Definitely not.'

'Well, life's long, hon.'

She quickly scanned the room, and reached out for a guy in his early forties. Black cord jacket, black jeans, black T-shirt, small beard, intense face.

'Hey, Chet – got someone you should talk to,' Madame said loudly. Chet came over, eyeing me carefully.

'Harry, meet Chet. A fellow Yankee. He teaches at the Sorbonne. Harry's some kind of a writer.'

With that, she left us alone. An awkward moment followed, as it was clear that Chet wasn't going to make the conversational opener.

'What subject do you teach?'

'Linguistical analysis.'

He waited for me to react to this.

'In French?' I asked.

'In French,' he said.

'Impressive,' I said.

'I suppose so. And you write what?'

'I'm trying to write a novel . . .'

'I see,' he said, starting to look over my shoulder.

'I'm hoping to have a first draft done in—'

'That's fascinating,' he said. 'Nice talking to you.'

And he was gone.

I stood there, feeling truly stupid.
Harry's some kind of a writer.
Quite. I looked around. Everyone was engaged in conversation – looking animated and at ease and successful and interesting and everything else that I wasn't. I decided that alcohol was required. I went into the kitchen. There was a long table on which sat a dozen boxes of 'cask' wine in the usual two colors. There were three large pans of half-burnt lasagne and around a dozen baguettes in various states of disrepair. The cheap wine and the semi-scorched food hinted that – whatever about the big fuck-off apartment near the Panthéon and the twenty euro entrance fee – Madame did the 'salon' on the cheap. The outlay for the food and drink couldn't have been more than four hundred. Toss in an extra hundred for staff (there were two young women manning the 'bar' and making certain all the paper plates and plastic forks got thrown away), and the weekly outlay was five hundred tops. But there were over a hundred people here tonight, each paying the demanded entrance fee. A little fast math and Madame was netting a fifteen-hundred-euro profit tonight. Say she did forty of these a yeas. A cool sixty grand. And as it was all cash . . .

So much for Montgomery's bullshit about shine-or-don't-getasked- back.
The salon was a business.

But, as I quickly noted, it had its habitués. Chet was one of them. So too was a guy named Claude. Short, sad-faced, with sharp features and a black suit with narrow lapels and dark glasses, he looked like a cheap hood from one of Jean-Pierre Melville's fifties gangster films.

'What do you do?' he asked me in English.

'You know I can speak French.'

'Ah, but Lorraine prefers if the salon is in English.'

'But we're in Paris.'

'No,
monsieur
. We are in
Madame's Paris.
And in Madame's Paris, we all speak English.'

'You're shitting me.'

'I shit not. Madame does not speak much in the way of French. Enough to order dinner in a restaurant or scream at the Moroccan
femme de ménage
if her vanity mirror is dusty. Otherwise . . .
rien
.'

'But she's been living here for . . . ?'

'Thirty years.'

'That's crazy.'

'Paris is full of anglophones who haven't bothered to learn the language. And Paris accommodates them – because Paris is very accommodating.'

'As long as you are white.'

Claude looked at me as if I was insane.

'Why should such things concern you? This salon . . . it is a wonderful
souk des idées
.'

'And what
idées
are you peddling, Claude?'

'I peddle nothing. I am merely a pedagogue. Private French-language lessons. Very reasonable rates. And I will come to your apartment.' He proffered me a business card. 'If you are trying to improve your French . . .'

'But why improve my French when I can come here and speak English with you?'

He smiled tightly.

'Very droll,
monsieur
. And what is your profession?'