Читать книгу Lessons in French - Hilary Reyl - Страница 17

A few hours later, I set out for the Luxembourg with the ever-sympathetic Orlando. I was afraid. I realized that the paint colors in the house, which had been congealing all around me as in a dream, might be very wrong. Lydia was going to hate the entryway. She was going to say the living room was too pale and the dining room was depressing. She was going to ask why anyone would paint a bedroom pea green. Why hadn’t I been more vigilant? But what could I have done? Maybe I felt guilty because I liked the Moroccan painters so much, loved their music and the way that Claudia spoke Arabic to them, but I knew they probably weren’t up to Lydia’s standards. “Who are those people Clarence has found? Not professionals?”

Would this disaster turn out to be my fault? I had never done the apartment walk-through with Clarence that Lydia had asked for, comparing his vision of the wall colors to mine, giving her a report. But she had mentioned the idea only once and I hadn’t thought it was my place to bring it up again.

I pulled Orlando down chestnut-lined allées, dragged him brutally fast to judge by the cross looks I drew.

Shit, were my German time lines all wrong? Had I hidden the Rushdie photos well enough? Lydia didn’t want Clarence to see them at this juncture, and Clarence, she warned, was always snooping. And what about the envelope of proof sheets, the one labeled “Book Burning in Bradford, January 14, 1989?” with the close-ups of the word “Satanic” as the flames were beginning to lick it, right before it was engulfed? Had I buried those proofs in the right drawer?

Was Marine, the snotty black and white printer, going to tell Lydia that I was a ditz when it came to photography? Would she say that my look was blank when she mentioned Magnum? That I did not know that Picto was the only photo lab in France? That I had no lay of the land? And would Lydia defend me while secretly wishing she had hired someone more with it? Or would she fire me on the spot?

Orlando was miserable. He didn’t like to run. “Your dog is dying of thirst!” snapped a passing businessman.

I stopped. Orlando’s tongue was hanging low and puckered. There was white phlegm webbing the corners of his mouth. Of course he was thirsty. How could I be so blind? I lead him to the closest puddle, which the poor dog began to lap furiously, and where I immediately drew more indignation. “C’est dégoûtant!” “Pauvre bête.” I burrowed my hands into my jacket pocket and fidgeted stupidly with the red note that Olivier had left under my door.

“Hey, you went to Yale, didn’t you?” It was a jogger.

Before I could answer, I realized with blinding certainty that I had to destroy Olivier’s letter before anyone saw it. I started to crumple the paper. I thought I looked like I desperately had to go to the bathroom because a shadow of disgust crossed the jogger’s face. But I quickly saw that she was not watching me squirm but focusing on the passersby.

“The people here can be so rude. That’s nothing but rainwater he’s drinking. It’s fine for a dog.”

I wanted to hug her.

“I totally recognize you,” I said. “You were in Branford, right? I’m Katie.”

“Christie.”

It turned out she was here doing the sort of paralegal job Mom wished I had. And she seemed so cheerful and blond and unconfused that I thought maybe Mom was right. Here Christie was jogging in the park before a normal day’s work, while I was subjecting a panting sheep dog to one of my anxiety attacks.

She and I had surely passed one another thousands of times in college, with no flicker of conscious recognition. To say she was a pressed and pretty WASP from prep school, and that I was a mutt who still could not place Groton and Choate, was too reductive. There had been more blending of worlds than that at Yale. But perhaps not so much that she would have felt this friendly, immediately locking me into a drink date at Les Deux Magots two Fridays from now, were we not the only ones of our species in the Luxembourg this morning. As I took in the pert ponytail and perfectly open smile, the INXS lyrics “You’re one of my kind” unfurled inside me. I remembered a passage from Proust where the narrator goes to a seaside resort for the summer and realizes that people from classes that would never interact in the city are delighting in one another’s company in a foreign atmosphere. The Proust, the INXS, the beautiful girl who wanted to know me, the river of Parisians going by, I suddenly saw it all in a Baroque X-ray.

As I fumbled in my bag for a pen to write down Christie’s number, I felt for the fifty-franc note that Clarence had given me to buy lunch on the way home. It wasn’t there! I felt again, found it, recalled my shock of shame at the tremble in Clarence’s voice as he had gone over what to buy with me.

“Get a poulet rôti, well done, and some céleri rémoulade. She likes jambon cru, but for goodness sakes don’t get any regular cooked ham. She can’t abide the stuff. Says it’s watery. You might pick up some of those puff pastry things with the béchamel and the chicken. She loves those when she’s not dieting.” No ham, nothing with mushrooms. No eggplant or peppers. No egg.

The man was terrified, reduced. He would have no time today for my musings about the Luxembourg as art, and neither should I. We were both in grave danger of fucking up.

I told Christie I would call her to confirm that I was free as the evening of our drink approached. I wasn’t my own master, I explained. “Well, I’m off at six every day,” she said with sweet certainty. “So great to run into you.” And she jogged away.

I pulled the crumpled money from my pocket. I walked to a poubelle with every intention of throwing away Olivier’s note, but buried it in the pocket of my jeans instead.

Then I led Orlando out of the park toward the food shops on our list. One by one, we hit them.

The baker slipped him one of yesterday’s croissants. The traiteur had a sliver of pâté for him, but none for me.