“Yes,” he said.
He set his chisel and wooden mallet aside and wiped his hands. They sat in the two club chairs by the bay windows and talked for a long time.
“This could be our house,” Dana said at one point.
“I would build us a much nicer house,” Jeremy told her.
He discovered in the first weeks after meeting her that he was more than ready to give up short-term relationships and one-night stands. Dana offered so much more than all of those many women he used to date. And then there was something new: real love, responsibility, taking care of someone. Fatherhood-that, too, changed him and made him want nothing else than what he had.
“What are those?” Jeremy asks Chantal, interrupting his own thoughts. He’ll be the good student again, pointing at some ratty thing nipping at the heels of a graceful deer.
Chantal offers vocabulary words that he’ll never use. He thinks of his dog at home, a pet sitter taking care of her and promising long walks in the hills. He needs a long walk in the hills. He’s been city-bound too long. These animals remind him that he needs air, space, motion. Everything about this beautiful museum is wrong. The animals are trapped inside.
“Let’s move outside,” Chantal says.
Jeremy glances at her. Does she read him so easily?
“The grounds are beautiful,” she says, as if he needs further urging.
She’s right, and Jeremy breathes more easily. Once they’re through the front door, the Jardin des Plantes spreads out before them. They walk through gardens that represent different ecosystems while Chantal offers the French names for different flowers, trees, wild ferns. On a central path in the large park, the children follow their teachers in two straight lines, like Noah’s animals. The air is thick with woodsy smells, and Jeremy remembers the evening after the rafting trip in Costa Rica. They had camped in the jungle along the side of the river, and the river guides had cooked fish wrapped in banana leaves on an open campfire. Lindy told Jeremy that she had a crush on their river guide, a wiry, dark-skinned young man who had taught them to spin the boat in the rapids. “Don’t tell Mom I like him,” she had said. “I won’t,” he told her. It was the first time she had offered a secret. He held it close to him, an extraordinary gift.
“I want to live in the country one day,” Chantal says.
Jeremy is surprised. She has told him so little about her life.
“Why not move?” he asks.
“My boyfriend loves Paris,” she says. “Though he told me this morning he’s thinking of moving to London.”
“And you?” He tries to ignore the twinge of jealousy. Of course she has a boyfriend. And what does it matter?
“I spend a lot of time in this garden. This is my favorite spot in the city.”
Jeremy looks around with different eyes. He wants to know why she loves this particular garden and yet he won’t ask. He thinks he might come to know Chantal if he knows this garden.
“Will you move to London with this boyfriend?” Jeremy asks.
“I saw him kissing another woman this morning,” Chantal says. “Maybe I deserve a better boyfriend.”
The sky darkens and then flashes white. A growl of thunder follows immediately.
“Let’s go inside,” Chantal says.
“No. We’ll duck under the trees,” Jeremy tells her. “Let’s watch the storm.”
She looks at him, surprised, and then her face lights up. They can hear the high-pitched shrieks of the children, who dash back into the closest exhibition hall as the skies open.
Jeremy wraps his hand around Chantal’s upper arm and leads her deeper into the woods. They step over a low fence-a sign reads INTERDIT!-and under the wide canopy of trees. The rain hits the back of Jeremy’s neck in sharp little stabs. And then they’re protected, the thick shelf of leaves and branches above them sheltering them from the downpour that surrounds them.
It is wild. The sky is almost as black as if day had changed to night. Peals of thunder roll across the sky, bumping into one another without a break. And the rain! It comes down in solid sheets, loud, crashing on the paths, the lawn, the tree canopy above them.
Chantal presses against Jeremy’s side as if frightened. But he sees her face-she is thrilled by the storm. He smiles to himself, glad that they didn’t run for cover.
And finally there are no words-even the jumble of French and English in Jeremy’s mind slows and quiets. There is only this: the lashing of wind at the trees, the pounding of the rain on the earth, the clamor of the sky.
Jeremy can smell Chantal’s shampoo-something like tangerines. He breathes her in.
He made love with Dana last night when they returned from their street fight sometime after three in the morning, having walked all the way from the Marais to their hotel near Saint-Sulpice church. She had turned to him as soon as they climbed into bed.
“I need you,” she whispered, and he glared at her. Did she need sex or him? He pushed her back on the bed and, pinning her shoulders down, climbed on top of her.
“What do you need? Say it,” he said.
“You.”
“Sex,” he said.
“You.”
“You don’t need me,” he said. He leaned close to her and she reached up for his mouth-their kiss was full of hunger and rage. They tore at each other, tangling themselves in the sheets, and at one point Jeremy felt Dana’s mouth on his neck, her teeth sharp. They turned each other over and pushed each other back, each fighting to overpower the other. They had never done this, never been rough or scrappy in bed. Their lovemaking was always tender, intimate; their eyes always locked on each other. This time, they barely looked at each other.
When Jeremy came, his orgasm seemed to go on for a long time. And then Dana didn’t wait for him to pleasure her-she took his hand and pressed it between her legs. She held it there and moved against him, her body scrambling for release. When she found it she called out his name.
“Are you all right?” he asked her, when they slid into their sleeping positions, his body curled against her back, his arm wrapped around her and curled between her breasts.
“I need to come home to you,” she said softly.
The storm stops as suddenly as it began. Chantal moves away from Jeremy’s side. It makes him catch his breath, as if he might stumble without the weight of her against him.
“Merci,” she says simply.
“Avec plaisir,” he tells her, smiling.
“Regarde,” she says, pointing out toward the expanse of gardens. New light spreads across the lush greenery, bouncing off drops of rain as if electric. Everything looks newly sprouted, astonishingly different. It’s as if he hadn’t even seen the garden before.
She does not name what they are looking at.
They step carefully through the wet grass and over the small fence and back onto the path. Chantal lifts her closed umbrella and laughs. “What a silly thing it is.”
“I hate to leave,” Jeremy says with real regret, “but we need to meet my daughter.”
“Of course,” Chantal says.
“I asked Lindy to meet us across the street at the mosque.” He pauses, searching her face. “If that’s okay with you.”
“That’s a very good plan,” she says. “I would have suggested it myself.”
Jeremy feels a swelling of pride, as if he has written an A paper. A schoolboy’s crush, he thinks. What a fool.
And yet there is some comfort in naming these odd sensations swirling through him today. As if now he can put it in its place. It is translatable, after all.
He wonders suddenly: Did Lindy sleep with the river guide that night? The next day, at the airport in San José, she had sobbed before they boarded the plane, and she wouldn’t talk to her mother. When Dana went to the bathroom, Lindy whispered to Jeremy, “I want to stay with Paco. I can’t leave him.” Jeremy kissed the top of her head. “Is this love?” he asked, smiling. “Of course it’s love!” she shouted, and stormed off.