Secrets of Paris (25 page)

“It’s very pretty on you,” Patrice said stiffly.

“Thank you, Mum. Thank you very much.”

Kelly jiggled her necklace the way Patrice, once as a lark having tea at the mosque, had seen Arabs handle worry beads. “I know about Lydie petitioning for you,” Patrice said.

“You do?” Kelly asked, looking worried.

“She told me. I’m happy for you.” As she said it, Patrice realized that it was true. On the other hand, she still felt an overwhelming sense of loss and betrayal. Didn’t she mean anything to Kelly? They had coexisted—harmoniously, Patrice had thought—for a long time.

“My only regret will be leaving you,” Kelly said. The pain in her eyes made the words ring with sincerity and was all Patrice needed to make her throat tighten.

“I will regret that also,” Patrice said. “But I know your dream has always been to get to the States. Paris was just a pitstop, right?”

“Excuse me?”

“A stopping-off place. Your halfway point between Manila and New York.”

“Yes, that is right,” Kelly said.

“I do have one fear,” Patrice said. “Our government sets limits on how many people of any one nationality it lets in. Such as eight thousand Brazilians, two thousand Egyptians, one thousand Swedes. The Filipino quota is one of the lowest—because so many Filipinos are already there.”

“I know,” Kelly said glumly.

“That’s not to say you won’t get lucky. But you should have a backup plan. Why don’t we try to make you legal in France first?”

Kelly looked skeptical. “I don’t think …” she said.

“I’m not saying you should stay here forever,” Patrice said gently. “But French working papers could give you security. Think of them as insurance—in case Lydie’s petition falls through.”

On the bus home, Kelly felt miserable. Americans had so many ideas. It was because they knew what was possible in the world. Become legal in France, Patrice had said, and now Kelly would have to go along with it even though it was the worst idea she had ever heard. It would make her feel like a traitor to the United States. For eighteen months she had lived in Paris, refusing to learn the French language.

“Think how much easier it would be for you at the market if
you knew French,” her sister Sophia would say, but Kelly did not care. She could not help learning a few words and useful phrases, but when it came to conversation, she wanted to speak English and only English.

She knew Patrice would probably move fast. One thing she had observed about Patrice and Lydie was that Patrice set her mind to something and did it right away while Lydie drifted a little. In many ways, she wished it was Patrice filing her petition for immigration to the States. That way it would be granted sooner. On the other hand, she liked Lydie more. Although she felt loyal, even sort of devoted to Patrice, she prefered Lydie’s company. She could imagine the day when she could tell Lydie true stories of the Philippines, of her dreams. With Lydie she felt like a woman; with Patrice she felt like a servant.

She disembarked at the Place de Clichy and walked quickly past the Quik-Burger and souvenir shops, turning right into the rue Biot. She ignored the men who spoke to her; she just walked straight ahead, her eyes on the ground. She stopped at the small
café-tabac
where Sophia was employed as a waitress.

Sophia stood behind the bar, brewing espresso into gold-rimmed green cups. Kelly went to her, wordlessly arranging the cups on a brown plastic tray.

“
Bonjour, mademoiselle
,” the café proprietor said to her. Kelly smiled and nodded. He was always friendly to her, and why not? Whenever she stopped in to see Sophia, he had her labor for free.

“What did your employer say?” Sophia asked.

“She was very angry, but she pretended to be glad for me,” Kelly said.

“Over there,” Sophia said, gesturing to a table where four tourists sat. They must have wandered off the Place de Clichy; they chattered happily, examining the souvenirs they had bought. Kelly set down the cups amid brass ashtrays stamped with the
word “PARIS,” porcelain salt-and-pepper shakers shaped like the Moulin Rouge, and guidebooks.

Laborers dressed in blue overalls lined the bar, drinking
café
or
pipperment get
, arguing about everything imaginable. Sophia liked to flirt. Kelly watched her now, speaking French to a cluster of them.

“I guess you’re too busy to talk,” Kelly said to her.

“No, stay,” Sophia said. She finished telling her story in rapid French, then joined Kelly by the cash register.

“Patrice wants to get French working papers for me.”

“Good—then you’ll stay here!” Sophia said, grinning. Sophia and her illegitimate baby were both legal. Sophia, alone among the Meridas, loved France, had lost her will to get to the States.

“Never!” Kelly said, scowling, helping Sophia set up the next trayful of cups.

T
HE ANNOUNCEMENTS CAME
nearly simultaneously. Charles Legendre had been appointed curator of the Salle des Quatre Saisons, and a party celebrating its opening would be held two weeks hence. With Charles as curator, all foot-dragging ceased. He proved to be meticulously aware of schedules, of deadlines. Where Michael had once hounded Charles for help in getting things done, Charles now hounded Michael.

“An opening in two weeks?” Michael asked. “That’s too soon. I still haven’t gotten the paintings I wanted …”

Charles leaned against his Marie Antoinette writing desk, managing to express immeasurable self-assurance in his slouch. He cocked one eyebrow. “You know the press has already criticized us for lateness in this matter. The Salle should be open to the public by now. Everyone wonders what has gone wrong, whether there has been a design fiasco. Don’t you want to kill those rumors?”
His eyes seemed focused on a point just above Michael’s head; Michael figured he was envisioning an imaginary plaque listing his curatorships. With a few more, maybe he would be Minister of Culture one day.

“First I want to get
The Sacrament of Extreme Unction
,” Michael said.

“That is out of the question,” Charles said, his lips narrowing, reminding Michael of their original positions, with Michael asking and Charles saying no. “You may hang
Apollo and Daphne
in the Salle. It is an equally wonderful example of Poussin’s work.”

“Shit,” Michael said. Through Anne he had come to learn that in the chess game he and Charles played,
Sacrament
was king and
Apollo
was a rook. He knew that for the Salle des Quatre Saisons to attract serious attention, it needed first-tier paintings by Poussin, who had had Louis XIV’s support, and by la Tour, who had had Louis XV’s.
Apollo and Daphne
, lovely and moving as it was, was not strictly representative of Poussin’s style. For one thing, it was set outdoors. For another, with its flocks and herds and nymphs, it had a more amiable feel than most Poussins.

“I do understand your displeasure,” Charles said. “But it is out of my control.”

“You have a lot riding on this,” Michael said. “What are the critics going to say if we don’t have that painting—or one like it?”

Charles nodded solemnly. But then a little blush crept up his neck, and a smile touched his lips. “It’s Pierre, you see. He is so furious. You know, he really expected to be named curator of the Salle des Quatre Saisons. I said to him, ‘Pierre, if the tables were turned, I would give you the painting.’ He is holding on to it—just for spite! Can you imagine, he told some people that his appointment was a foregone conclusion?”

So, Didier had done more harm than good, Michael thought. It was never wise to flatter the ego of a pompous man. Neil Fallon
had taught him that. Michael remembered a story Neil told about a funeral director with a fleet of limousines and hearses.

The man smoked Havanas and drove a silver Cadillac and bored everyone with tales of his sons in medical school and his daughter the nun. He was taking bids from repair garages for the chance to service his vehicles. Neil, then a young man, hoped to befriend him and win his favor. He and Julia took the mortician and his wife to Patricia Murphy’s for dinner several Friday nights. He sent ebony rosary beads to the man’s daughter. He and Julia sat though each dinner listening to the mortician brag about his children and his business. Neil had subjected Julia to dinner conversation about coffins, embalming, hairdos for the dead, bereaved family members unwilling to part with a buck. He had felt confident he was winning the man’s trust; years later he told Michael, laughing, that he had believed the mortician was beginning to consider him a son—one who had gone into business instead of medical school. Neil lost the bid.

“Gaston will come with his men tomorrow,” Charles said. “To hang
Apollo and Daphne
. Don’t despair—it is a magnificent painting.”

“Right,” Michael said. He said good-bye and left the office. Usually while visiting the Louvre’s third floor he stopped in to see Anne. But today he took the back stairs to the street and began to walk west along the Seine. He remembered coming along here, but in the opposite direction, with Lydie last spring. She had gotten a blister. He reached for his back pocket, where he kept his wallet. He was about to check whether he still had any Band-Aids for Lydie’s tender feet, but he let his hand drop. This was the spot where she had stood on her toes to kiss him. Sometimes Michael imagined Lydie kissing someone else. If he ever actually saw her with another man, would it drive him home to her? He pondered
the concept of “possession.” If another man kissed her, would Lydie be more lost to Michael than she had been for the past year?

He cut through the Tuileries and walked up the rue Royale toward the Madeleine. Its Corinthian columns and clean lines gave it the look of a temple, more properly set in the Roman hills than this glitzy shopping street. He turned into the rue de l’Arcade and found his hotel.

“Bonjour,” he said to the surly Algerian desk clerk, who handed him his key without a word. He mounted the stairs. Room 320 looked over a quiet, thoughtlessly landscaped courtyard behind the hotel. Michael loosened his tie, took off his shoes, and lay down on the bed. The voices, now familiar, of two neighborhood concierges drifted up. Michael closed his eyes and tried to block them out.

What was he doing, lying on a hotel bed in the middle of the afternoon? He hadn’t slept last night. He had lain beside Anne, blinking into the canopy-swagged darkness, sweating. Yet seconds after he’d thrown off the covers, he’d begun to shiver. This had gone on all night. Somehow he had known he wouldn’t get
Sacrament
. Let it be Charles’s problem, he tried to tell himself. Soon Michael would return to New York, where everyone would know him as the American who had worked on the Louvre. They wouldn’t realize, as the French would, that his authority was insufficient to command the best Poussin to hang in his Salle.

The room was too bright. Michael propped himself up on his elbows, considered closing the room’s metal shutters. He felt acutely aware of the fact that he was lying in a hotel room. Everything proclaimed it: the cheap furniture, the thin walls through which he could hear a maid cleaning the adjacent room, the extra towels stacked on the bureau. Michael had never thought he was the kind of guy who would end up living in a hotel. He had
thought he was the kind of guy who would end up married to Lydie Fallon until one or both of them died.

Until Anne, Michael had never loved any woman but Lydie. His unrequited love for her had grown, secretly, in high school and ruined him for anyone else. It was a fact he hadn’t realized until after he’d left her. Michael had dated many women and even lived with one: Jean-Marie Fitzgibbon. He had considered asking Jean-Marie to marry him. But then he and Lydie had met through work and taken that trip to Washington. Michael had then realized what he had been missing all along: Lydie. Not that Jean-Marie wasn’t a great girl—she simply wasn’t Lydie Fallon.