Frank was smiling down at his hands in blissful recollection of this triumph. The American lit another cigarette and barely perceptibly winked at Cleo.
“What’s your thing?” asked Frank.
“You tell me,” the American said.
“You’re the expert,” said Frank.
“Well, I—” began the American.
“You want,” said Cleo, “what other people have.”
The American barked a laugh.
“You’re not wrong, honey,” he said. “But you’re also only half right. I want what other people have, sure, but I also don’t want what I have.”
Frank shrugged. “That’s just the human condition.”
“You don’t want what you have?” asked Cleo.
“I want more than what I have,” said Frank. He began counting on his fingers. “Two gold lions, two agencies …”
“Two wives?” said Cleo.
“Only if it was two of you,” said Frank quickly.
“Nice save.” The American laughed and slapped Frank’s back. He stretched his arms behind his head. “Here’s the thing. We want because we’re wanting. Both senses of the word. The lacking and the longing, all rolled into one. The more you find yourself wanting, the more you want.”
“So you’re a philosopher,” said Cleo.
“And you’re smarter than you look,” said the American.
“People only ever say that to women,” said Cleo.
“What am I?” asked Frank. “The court jester?”
The more the two men drank, the more competitive they became. Cleo watched them and wondered what ancient belief was at play that, despite their lives of great abundance, they felt there could never be enough for them both. The American bragged about the business school he’d attended in Beijing. Frank countered, triumphantly, that he’d never been to college. Cleo leaned drowsily back in her chair, forgotten. Now they were on the topic of high school accolades. The American had, appropriately enough, been something called an All-American. Frank revealed he’d been a competitive springboard diver, breaking state records in the ten-meter.
“I’ve got to see this,” the American said.
Cleo slid a cigarette from her pack, and he leaned to light it for her. They smiled at each other over the burst of flame.
“Well, it was a long time ago,” Frank said.
He picked up a cigarette and put it between his lips the wrong way.
“Hey.” Cleo reached to turn it around for him. “You don’t smoke, remember?”
“You two chimneys are leaving me out.”
“Back to the diving,” the American said.
The sullen waiter from the café returned, eyeing Cleo’s empty glass.
“Finished?”
“I’ll have another.”
A bell tolled steadily from the church’s clock tower. It was 11:00 p.m. The day before, Cleo had left Frank pacing their room, arguing with his art director in New York about a new hire, and walked to Matisse’s chapel. From the outside, it was simple as a sugar cube. Inside, it was like stepping into the center of a jewel. Stained glass windows splashed the white walls with colorful light. Matisse had used only three colors in the windows: green for the plants, yellow for the sun, and blue for the sky, the sea, and the Madonna. He considered it his masterpiece.
Her mother would have loved the architecture of the cathedral. She always said that a building should be two parts contentment, one part desire. Cleo had never understood what that meant, but now the phrase returned to her like a prophesy. Two parts contentment, one part desire. It seemed a good formula for living, though one she had not mastered yet. Her mother certainly never did.
Frank had not pressed her on the subject of her mother’s suicide, but he had taken to anxiously hovering in doorways, observing her as she read or watched television. He was looking for the cracks. She had been distant since they met her father, she knew. She had not wanted him to see her sadness, which was so ugly and so old. Grief wasn’t linear, she knew, but she hated to feel the old sensations return. She felt sluggish, low, in a way that she had not since living in London. She’d considered going back on her antidepressants, but she still hoped it would pass. And she was mostly doing a good job of hiding it. She washed her hair and ate dessert and tried to laugh when everyone else laughed.
But Frank had noticed. It was he who suggested France, the home of her favorite artists, for their delayed honeymoon. He was trying to cheer her up. And now that she was here, on this beautiful night in this beautiful country, she did not want to think about her mother or her sadness or Frank’s drinking. She did not want to think of anything at all.
The waiter refilled her glass, and she drained half of it in one gulp. She felt buoyed by the wine, beginning to enjoy herself. With the end of her cigarette she pushed the ash to the outer circumference of the white bowl. She looked up to see one of the teenage boys from the church walking toward her with the loose-hipped, swaggering posture of someone who knows he is being watched. The girls had disappeared, and only two other boys remained, regarding her with steady watchfulness as their friend approached.
“Avez–vous du feu?” he asked.
He reached her table and pointed at the lighter. She nodded.
“Parlez-vous fran?ais?” he said. “You speak French?”
“Un peu,” she answered, the pronunciation of even these small words reducing her to bashfulness. “And you? English?”
“I learn in school.”
“Your accent sounds pretty good.”
“No,” he said, blowing smoke from his nostrils. “Is not.”
His nose was square and blunt but his eyes were velvety brown, with long, thick eyelashes.
“I see you at the hotel,” the boy said. “You wear a, how do you say, yellow …”
He circled his hands over his chest and exploded into laughter, doubling over and staring back at his two friends. They waved from their mopeds and yelled something in French that Cleo could not catch. They were still children, Cleo realized. She suddenly felt very old, when what she wanted was to feel the opposite.
“Right. Well, have a good night,” she said.
She rose partially from her chair and looked around as if to catch the waiter’s attention.
“No, no.” He shook his hands out, releasing the imaginary flesh they held, and gave her a look of exaggerated contrition. “I’m stupid. My friend ask me to tell you that you are trop belle. Beautiful. Understand?”
She stared at him. A breeze hurdled the stone wall, sending the trees into a rustle of applause. Lavender, earth, a faint tang of salt.
“You come to a disco with us?”
“No.” She stood up, brushed the ash off her skirt. “Where is it?”
“Not far,” he said. “A stone’s throw.”
Cleo laughed.