Gabi pokes her head out of the Snugli, watching the world. She’s a quiet baby and Riley loves her for it. She loves the weight of the baby pressed against her chest, the smell of her powdery scalp, the tufts of strawberry-blond hair that swirl on her head like a halo.
They climb the stairs from the métro and for a moment they’re blinded-it has stopped raining again, and the brilliant sun reflects from all the puddles that have gathered in the street. Riley finds her movie-star sunglasses and hides behind them. In Paris the women wear small, dignified glasses, arty things with frames of red, purple, bronze. She won’t give up her oversize tortoise-framed specs. They make her feel like Gwyneth dashing over to Paris for a little shopping expedition.
She pulls out her plan, the little blue book of maps that she carries like a Bible, and finds the First Arrondissement-then rue de Rivoli, where Philippe awaits. She has never arrived anywhere in Paris without getting lost. The streets are treacherous, evil places that might deliver you to a canal instead of a street corner. She will not ask directions-it’s useless, all that finger-pointing and hand-waving and word-flying.
But miraculously, the entrance to the courtyard of the Louvre is across the street, and in front of it is Philippe.
He waits for her to cross the street, then he steps toward her and leans forward to kiss her.
She pulls back.
“Les enfants,” she says.
“Aha. So now you speak French,” he says.
He shakes her hand. That is what they do when he comes to her apartment for her French lessons. And he shakes Cole’s hand and says, “Bonjour, monsieur.”
“Bonjour, monsieur,” Cole repeats, his accent perfect.
Philippe leans forward to kiss the top of Gabi’s head, and while he does it he sneaks a hand onto Riley’s neck. Both Gabi and Riley make some kind of whimpering sound.
“Arrête,” Riley says.
“Your French is very good, madame.”
“It’s the only damn word you learn here in the playgrounds. Arrête, Antoine. Arrête, Marie-Hélène. Arrête. Arrête.”
“You are spending time in the wrong playground,” Philippe says. “Follow me.”
He leads them into a passageway with windowed sides that show displays of ancient art-sculptures and relics, half-excavated buildings. Riley glances to each side as they hurry by. She still has not visited the Louvre. In fact, in a year of living in Paris, she has missed most of the tourist spots. That’s not where you go with two babies in Paris. These are adult playgrounds; again the day feels foreign and thrilling to her.
They enter the courtyard of the Louvre, and even though Riley has walked through here once, with Victor on a Sunday morning, both babies in strollers, she remembers only their argument about an office party that didn’t allow spouses.
“Why not?” she had asked.
“The French keep their private lives and public lives separate,” Vic told her.
“Why?” she asked. She felt like Cole-why-why-why?
“Maybe the wife shouldn’t meet the pretty assistant,” Vic said.
“Whose wife? Whose pretty assistant?”
“Theoretically.”
“That’s absurd. That’s crazy,” Riley insisted. “That’s so-so blind.”
“Blind is good,” Vic said.
“You think everything they do is good,” Riley argued.
“Sometimes we have to see the world through different glasses,” Vic explained calmly, as if talking to a two-and-a-half-year-old.
Riley has found a new pair of glasses.
Now she’s awed by the daring of I. M. Pei’s modern glass pyramid in the center of these lovely, ancient buildings. She looks around, eyes wide open. She hears a storm of language-French, English, Spanish, German, Arabic-and turns her head in each direction. Everyone comes from a different country, everyone speaks a different language, everyone gathers to look at this. History. Art. Grace.
“There is a café here,” Philippe tells her, leading them to one side of the courtyard.
“Do we have time before the filming?”
“I think so,” Philippe says. “We will sit for a moment and I will buy you a drink.”
They enter the arcade of the Louvre. Café Marly fills the vaulted space with lush red decor, gold and teal tones. It’s stunning and glamorous and it’s crowded with well-dressed people. No babies here, no wild two-year-olds, no breast-leaking moms. Riley looks at Philippe with a worried expression.
“We will not stay for very long,” Philippe says.
“Maman,” Cole says, pointing to the group of children playing with a ball in front of the fountain.
“Go ahead,” Riley says. “I’ll watch you from the café.”
Cole dashes off, his arms turning into airplane wings.
Philippe and Riley are seated at a small table with a perfect view of the courtyard and the pyramid. Riley keeps Gabi in her Snugli and pats the baby’s head as if to reassure her that Maman can have a glass of wine with her French lover at this fabulous café in the center of grand Paris.
“This pain au chocolat comes from the best pâtisserie in all of Paris,” Riley says, digging into her backpack and producing a somewhat squished bag.
“J’aime pas,” Philippe tells her.
“What?”
“I can’t eat chocolate.”
“That’s impossible.”
He makes that peculiar French face-raised eyebrows, puffed lips-that seems to mean all things: Who cares? What do you know? I think you’re grand.
Riley takes a bite of her pastry. It is perfect but so is every other pain au chocolat she eats.
“I wanted to look at you,” Philippe says. He’s looking at her, all right. Did she forget to get dressed when she ran out the door? Is there not a baby perched right there on her mountainous chest?
“So who’s the actress?” she asks.
“Dana Hurley. She is making a movie with the great director Pascale Duclaux.”
“Dana Hurley’s the real deal,” Riley says. “I’d love to see her.”
Philippe is staring at her, his mouth slightly parted.
“Where are they filming?” Riley asks, glancing in the courtyard at Cole, who swings his leg out to kick the ball, misses completely, and falls back on his butt with a hoot of laughter.
“On the Pont des Arts. Soon. We will have a glass of wine first.”
“I thought you drink beer.”
He looks confused. “Oh, the apartment. I am sorry. I did not know-”
“Wine is good,” she says quickly. “Let’s have wine.”
They order two glasses. Riley looks around. The café is crowded, of course, and all the tables seem to be filled with couples. One young couple has locked lips and, for a bewildering moment, Riley thinks the woman looks like a very young version of herself; the guy could be Vic before he grew up and became The Victor. Did we ever paw each other in public? she thinks. Never.
She remembers one time she kissed Vic in front of his parents the first weekend she met them in Ohio.
“My parents aren’t really comfortable with that kind of thing,” he had whispered, taking her hand so as not to upset her. They were sitting on the couch, mid-Super Bowl party.
“What kind of thing?” she whispered back.
“Sex.”
“That was a kiss. You want sex, I’ll show you sex.”
“Later,” he promised. He asked his father to turn up the volume on the TV so they could all hear the football announcers instead of his crazy girlfriend.
Philippe leans toward her across the table.
“Ce soir,” he murmurs.