Plum Blossoms in Paris (27 page)

Instead, I pluck
A Razor’s Edge
from my nightstand, where it has patiently gathered the Parisian dust blown through an equally idle window on its jacket like a talcumy grit. I insert the note in between its leaves, which swallow it whole. I hesitate, before blowing the dust off the book’s cover. Lying sideways on my bed, my raincoat forgotten, I crack the novel open. A clean, white space envelops me.

True love waits. Or it should.

I do not stop reading, except for some liquid nourishment and a crusty, two-day-old baguette. I do not look at a clock. The television is a dead zone, the bathroom no barrier to my dogged pursuit. Mathieu, outside the printed page, is not forgotten, but if I think of him—which is often enough, since he and Larry, the main character, are not unalike—it is more as a fixed point, the static company to our fountain’s statuary, and not as a living, suffering person in need of my touch or rebuke. I have no excuse for my callousness except this: sometimes books are more authentic than real life. And sometimes the stubborn character clutches at our imaginations, dangling by the skin of his teeth, refusing to release us to real time. And rarely, but memorably, it is a journey—of the imagination, yes, which ought never be trivialized, in spite of our slavish devotion to empiricism—that we take within a single step. Perhaps I’m in denial, or this is easy escapism. I don’t care. I have been seduced.

Larry Darrell, skeptic of the American Dream and seekerof his own, spends a year “loafing” in Paris, reading some good books, before his soul finds what it needs in a monastery in India. Simple enough tale. But told with the cutting social instrument of an Edith Wharton—or yes, yes, Henry James—and the wider spiritual aspirations of a Herman Hesse. It is a strange concoction: from the snobbish sitting rooms of fashionable Parisian apartments to the great caves of India. Yet it works because there is a consistently searching central character whose serenity and honesty are not desecrated by the superficial trappings of his mercurial society, and whose ego, whittled away by a conscious humbling, does not inflate with the wisdom he later attains. God, I like Larry Darrell. I like him more than I can say.

Loafing. I am quickly converted: this is to be my new creed. And judging from Mathieu’s apartment last night, he already has an amazing aptitude for it. Yes, I like him too, in spite of his father’s name. Staring out my window at the darkening Paris sky, a rumble of thunder guttural in the distance, I welcome the idea of an incorruptible state of reverie and accidental existence. In spite of the squawkers back home who, noisily grinding the wheels and cogs of their redundant machines, might balk at the idea of such applied, permissive leisure, I believe it might be the loveliest idea I’ve yet to adopt. To just do nothing, or something, as the spirit moves me. To scrape by. To sacrifice comfort for self-determination. To lean toward the next experience, confident that it will support my weight. This could be enormous living.

The only part still muddy to me, as the rain descends in sheets and I spring the latch on my window, is whether I will do it on my own, or with Mathieu beside me. I lean out and look, not to the cars and people below, but to the sky for an answer. The only response I get for my trouble is the slap of the raindrops on my flushed face and the faintest smell of wet pavement warming my nose with its ozone crackle.

It is getting late. My stomach reminds me that while idleness is nice, it does not fill the belly or pay the fatty rent on Paris apartments. Otherwise, more people might have taken it up by now. This could be a glitch in the grand scheme. I will just have to figure a way to live without money …

What the hell?

Oh … my … Lord.

A smattering of people stop, even in the downpour, even without umbrellas, to stare at the soaked madman clutching a handful of defeated daisies, serenading me from the sidewalk of Rue des Écoles.

He does sing.

“Your middle name is not Bell by chance, is it?” he yells up, blinded by the torrential rain.

“No. Margaret,” I call over the din.

He considers. “That will not work.”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“Ah, well.” He shrugs. And starts up again. Ahem, the rousing chorus, if you please …

The handful of onlookers clap, lobbing glances over at him, then up at me, hungry for the put away, as he moves haltingly into the next verse. I know better than they: the tune and timing are a little off. For this song happens to be stamped on my heart. My mom used to sing it to me when I was a wee little thing, and my dad later on, when I wasn’t so much. I think Mathieu must have cribbed it from the Internet because he is consulting his right hand for silent coaching while the daisies, pummeled by the rain, droop in his left. So he’s left-handed, I think coolly, checking off one more thing I have learned about him. Figures. Wasn’t Van Gogh left-handed too? All the crazy ones are.

But I am not so blasé as I would have myself believe. For yes
(oh, yes)
, there seems to be a smile sweetening this sour face that, weakened, I cannot tether down. Every girl who has seen
Say Anything
dreams of this moment, certain at that naïve age that it is due her, knowing, in turn, that
she
will not leave her own John Cusack out in the cold, with sore arms and a broken heart. It must be said, however, that I, lacking the proper imagination, never entertained the notion that my mystical troubadour would be doing the actual singing. And while the channeled Peter Gabriel easily has the better voice and range, Mathieu’s nothing-to-lose, balls-out, purely French interpretation of this little American ditty from the Gay Nineties obliterates the competition. Quite frankly, it is a tour-de-force performance.

He boomeranged to
me
.

They applaud as he finishes. I hold my appreciation. There is something I must acknowledge to Mathieu, but also to myself.

“Hey! Cyrano!”

“Oui, Roxane?”
he asks, falling to one knee.

“I’m going to outlive you by two decades, I hope you know. A woman lives ten years longer than a man, and you’re already five years closer to death than I.” I clear my throat, buying time. “So it doesn’t look good for you is what I’m saying.
If we
should stay together, that is. And did you also know that left-handed people die five years earlier—again, on average—than right-handers?”

He waves the daisies dismissively. “But of course we should: our candles burn at both ends. But ah, my foes, and oh, my friend, we give a lovely light.” He shifts to the other knee. “Besides, Idowhot bayleethen aergees.”

“What?”

“I do not believe in averages! I only believe in me and you.”

Nice.

“But there’s something else.”

“O, speak again, bright angel!”

“I don’t want any Jean-Pauls or Colettes.”

Losing his Shakespeare, Mathieu blinks into the raindrops. “Never?”

I shake my head, hair plastered to my cheeks.

He absorbs this while the onlookers disperse like marbles into the subsiding rain, disappointed by the murky conclusion of this performance piece. Mathieu shrugs, rises, and shakes some of the rain from his hair. “Okay.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

I swallow. It is impossible for him to get any wetter, so he waits patiently. Finally, my heart finding peace, I smile broadly and shout down, “So what are you waiting for?”

He presses his hand to his heart.

I give him lead. While I start to close the window, Mathieu, in lieu of using the more conventional stairs, tucks the flowers in the waist of his pants and begins to scale the wall of the Hotel California like a fauvist Spiderman, his red shirt splattered like an inkblot against the white wall. He steps on the huge potted plant, and wraps himself around a drainpipe, inching his way upward. Defying gravity and the slippery conditions, he reaches the wet bars of the mini-balcony on the second floor (first European, though I refuse to concede the logic), hoisting himself upward. Shimmying up the balcony, he stands atop the bars and surveys his kingdom.

I gape at him, certain that he will fall, if not to his death, then to a twisted ankle, which may sprain the romance of our reunion. I am learning that Mathieu can’t just seize a moment; he must catapult over it.

He smiles cockily up at me, the trigger for me closing my mouth and yelling, “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

The smile widens, his leather loafer finding traction on the wall. But he has no potted plant here, and the drainpipe hangs unconfidently from this section of the wall. Shifting his weight, he starts to slip. I, in turn, let loose a real girlish scream, flashing my hands to my face in horror. His left foot finds the bars and, wobbling dangerously, Mathieu eventually restores his balance. The daisies, however, are lost to the street. He smiles up at me again, but with a little more humility, the crazy loon.

I repeat my sensitive inquiry. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“What would you suggest I do? Knock on these peoples’ window?” He jabs a finger at it and starts to waver again.

“Yes, absolutely, that is what I suggest you do.”

“No thanks. They are probably American, and keep a gun.”

“The only gun I have touched in the last ten years of my entirely American life was owned by a Frenchman,” I reply, crossing my arms over my chest. “And I live in Ohio.”

“Yes, well,” he grumbles, spitting something out of his mouth. “Reach through your bars and give me a hand, will you? All I need is ten centimeters.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Not until you admit it.”

“Daisy, give me a hand!”

“Should have thought this out a little more, eh?” I yawn, and extend my hands above my head.

He hangs his head and braces himself against the wall. “You want me to admit a technicality.”

“No. I want you to shout it from the rooftops.”

“It is not possible.”

“That’s not the can-do attitude I’d expect of a—”

“Shut up.”

“That’s more like it.”

He shifts his feet again. His left loafer slips off his foot and slaps to the ground, crushing the daisies. “Oops.”

He lifts his head and owns the thing: “I am an American! I am a half-breed American whose mother’s name was Flora Jean! Her ancestors owned slaves! She spoke with a twang and called me her little ‘Bonbon’! She was the most … She was the most …” He breaks off, shaking his head.

His mother’s memorial service program was in that bag. Her picture, aged, but still lovely, on the front, with her name underneath:
Flora Goodwin. 1953-2004
. There was a striking similarity to Catherine Deneuve. If Ms. Deneuve had been from Billings, Alabama.

“She was the most beautiful thing I ever saw,” he finishes. Mathieu looks up. “Until I met you.”

I swallow the knot in my throat and ask, “Now, was that so hard, Yank?”

I give him my hand.

He makes it to the top, to me.

The people down below close their mouths and move on.

“There are these things called stairs.”

“I was in the mood to climb.”

“Those aren’t good shoes for climbing. You should have a pair of tennis shoes, with a good tread.”

Mathieu shrugs.

We squeeze into the three square feet of my balcony, two soggy, prideful people unsure about how to proceed now that the great moment of reconciliation has arrived. He is probably a little miffed at me for, well, any number of things. And I am still unsettled about last night’s revelations and the conflicted message I received this morning by his smug, desperate hand.

Cartoon name indeed.

We confront one another warily, like circling animals, sniffing out the intent of the other. But our bodies, forsaking pride, are ripe with betrayal, warming to the other’s treason, arguing their plans in a language too slippery for words. I list toward him, and our waists touch. The stem of the small, lone daisy poking out of his pants quivers comically.

“You’re soaked,” I murmur, embarrassed.

“Yes.”

“How long did you—”

“Six hours.”

“Sorry.”

“I would have waited more. But as your name pounded around in my head, I began to recall this song that I heard on an advertisement once. The words to the chorus came to me throughthe water.” He looks at his hand, streaked with ink, and smiles. “I wandered into a nearby library and copied the lyrics.”

“I liked it.”

He searches my eyes. “Did you?”

I take his hand in my own. “I loved it.”

“Daisy, about my mother—”

“I don’t care.”

I run my hand over his cool, wet face, which is starting to shiver, like his body has just snuck up on him. His teeth are chattering too, and he looks all vulnerable and defiant at the same time. There are raindrops on his lips I would like to kiss away. I trace the scar on his cheek, and ask, “How did you get this? I have wanted to know.”

He reaches up to remove my hand, but stops, pressing it more firmly to his face. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply. “I was walking along Le Pont Neuf one morning with my mother when I was six,” he says, eyes still closed. “This was just before she went back home. I was thinking how happy I was because she let me hold her hand that day.”

He laughs quietly, not afraid to humble himself. I can see his eyes moving behind the membranes of his eyelids, like he’s living a dream. “Such a little thing, but it meant something to me. Usually, she hated to be clung to, slowed down. That damn American speed. But this day she allowed it.”

I confuse the pulse of his words with my heartbeat.