She walked to the phone and picked it up. She called her boss, the head of the school, at her home.
“Did you go to the funeral?” Stella asked. “There were so many people there. I didn’t see you.”
“I was there,” Josie said.
“That poor woman,” Stella muttered.
“Listen,” Josie said. “This might be bad timing. But I wanted to tell you that I won’t be back next year.”
“Let’s talk about this on Monday, Josie.”
“I have to do it now. I’ll finish up classes. But that’s it.”
“What are you planning to do?”
“I don’t know,” Josie said.
“You’ve been very distracted. Is something going on?”
Josie mumbled her goodbye and hung up.
She walked back into her bedroom. She was thankful for the darkness again. The room smelled rank. For a moment she remembered Simon’s smell and she felt an ache in her chest. She covered her face with her hand and breathed in her own sour smell instead.
She walked to her dresser and picked up an envelope. She saw the drawing of the Eiffel Tower. At the top of the tower she saw two tiny figures. One had long hair; the other was very tall, with two green dots for eyes. She touched his mouth with her finger.
She opened the envelope. In two and a half weeks she would go to Paris. She didn’t know what would happen after that. But for now, she had Paris to get her through her days.
Josie and Nico finally find a spot from which to watch the film shoot. Nico has led her to the top deck of a floating restaurant on the edge of the quai. It’s a long boat, with beautiful teak floors and deck chairs and white umbrellas. There’s a bar at the far end of the boat, crowded with people, all with drinks in hand. Josie and Nico squeeze past the crowd and lean against the railing with an unobstructed view of the bridge.
Next to them, a waiter has opened a bottle of champagne as if this were a premiere or a national event of great importance. He pours champagne, and the group-young office workers, perhaps, all escaping work to watch the filming-clink glasses.
“I’m not convinced that this is art that will last for a hundred years,” Nico says.
A bed sits in the middle of the Pont des Arts. It’s just a bed-a frame and mattress, thrown onto the wooden deck of the pedestrian bridge. A naked woman sprawls across the bed, on a rose-colored sheet. She’s young and beautiful, and the enormous crowd on both sides of the river seems caught in a kind of reverential silence.
“Stop being a grump,” Josie whispers. They are pressed together against the rail of the boat. “Isn’t that Pascale Duclaux?” She points to a woman with a wild mess of red hair, perched in a chair at the edge of the set. “She’s a very serious director. This may very well be great art.”
“A bed on a bridge? A naked nymph?”
“And a man,” Josie says. “Check out the old man.”
A gray-haired man, also naked, circles the bed, his eye on the lovely girl. Dana Hurley, the American actress, stands at the edge of the bridge, her back against the rail, watching them. Unlike the other two, she’s fully dressed. The man doesn’t seem to notice her.
Then the man stops for a moment, his penis wagging between his legs, and he looks up, as if searching for something. He seems to catch Josie’s eye and he holds it, a half smile on his face.
He’s no older than Simon, Josie thinks. So why does it bother me so much that he’s stalking this girl?
She looks away, breaking his stare. When she looks back, he resumes his awful walk, around the bed, as if roping the girl in.
The skies rumble and, in an instant, rain pours down. This part of the boat isn’t covered-everyone turns and pushes back, under the white umbrellas or down below, under the deck. Josie stands there, watching the bridge, the bed, the girl, the man.
“Come on,” Nico says. “This is crazy.”
“Go ahead,” she tells him. “I want to watch.”
“There’s nothing to watch. They’re going to wait for the rain to stop.”
But the director signals for the cameras to keep rolling.
Josie keeps her eye on Dana Hurley. Dana doesn’t run. She’s already soaked, her hair matted to her head. She walks toward the bed as if she doesn’t have a care in the world. She won’t lose her man to a young girl. She won’t lose anyone to cancer or plane crashes. If something terrible happens the director will call “Cut!” and Dana will saunter back to her tent, where a fawning assistant will bring her a towel and a glass of champagne.
Josie realizes that Nico is right: This is not great art-this has nothing in it that will last longer than a day. The only thing that lasts is love, even when it’s gone.
“Please,” Nico says. “Come inside.”
She turns to him. He is the nicest man she has ever met. For a moment she feels unburdened by grief. Even the sound of his voice offers something like hope. Yet she can’t go to Provence with him. They are writing an ending to their own movie, a fairy-tale ending, and she no longer believes in fairy tales.
“I need to go back to my hotel,” she tells him.
“Now?”
“I’ll pack my bags,” she lies. It is so much easier than saying goodbye. “I’ll meet you at the train station at six.”
His face lights up. Thunder crashes and, in an instant, lightning blasts through the gray skies and all of Paris shines in its glow.
Riley and Philippe
She decides the minute she wakes up-with Cole pressed against her back, Gabi’s tiny feet in her face, and Vic gone at some ungodly hour of the morning-that she will meet her French tutor somewhere else, anywhere else other than in this apartment. She usually has her lesson at her kitchen table. Today she needs to get out. She slides Gabi’s feet-powdery-smelling baby feet-away from her and glances out the window. Rain. She hates Paris. It’s the secret shame that she carries inside her. What the hell is wrong with her? Everyone loves this fucking city.
Riley has lived in Paris for a year, long enough-or so everyone says-to learn French, the métro system, and how to dress. She’s a dismal failure. She should also have friends, cook soufflés, and have the energy to have sex with her husband in the middle of the night. Except there are always children in her bed in the middle of the night, and she has no energy, day or night. But she’s what her mother always called “a tough cookie,” and so she tells no one that she’s miserable. Besides, who would believe her? She’s living in Paris.
Here’s what she has accomplished in a year in Paris:
1. She had a baby-no mean feat, since she never understood a word that the doctors and nurses at the clinic barked at her all day and night.
2. She has gained thirty-five pounds and lost twenty-five pounds and still eats a pain au chocolat every day, even though she can no longer blame it on the cravings of pregnancy.
3. She has learned where to buy paella at the street market near her home and serves it out of a bowl to the astonishment of Vic’s co-workers.
4. She has lost contact with most of her old best friends from New York because she can no longer send them emails extolling the virtues of expat life.
5. She has convinced her mother-every day-not to visit. Yet.
6. She has watched two-and-a-half-year-old Cole learn French, make friends in the playground, lead her home when they are lost, and say the words, “It’s okay, Mama,” so many times that she worries that one day she’ll murder someone and he’ll pat her hand and say, “It’s okay, Mama.”
7. She has lost love. She had it when they moved here, and sometime during the first few weeks, while she and Vic were unpacking the dishes and books and Cole’s toys, she misplaced it and hasn’t been able to find it since.