Hidden in Paris

Chapter 22


Althea had been standing close to Jared at métro station Beaumesnil, her icy hand in his warm palm. It was just after dawn and they had been walking all night or so it seemed. Sleepless nights in the streets of Paris were adding up. She felt spent, exhausted, cold to the bone. Jared, unperturbed by the temperature or the early hour, seemed lost in his thoughts. What were his thoughts? The station was mostly empty aside from a dozen men and women already on their way to work. It smelled of coffee and perfume, of warm sheets and hot showers, of dreams being put back together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Despite her exhaustion, she could not quiet down that newfound ability, that curse; she felt things now. Now she had desires and wants, she who had not cared about much of anything in her adult life. Even as they stood there in silence and exhaustion, she felt especially overwhelmed by her maddening need for Jared to tell her why he spent time with her. Who or what was she to him? Of course she did not dare ask. How she wanted Jared to kiss her. Why was he not kissing her? Did he not want to? But why then did he never let go of her hand? A frigid gust of wind found its way through the tunnels of the métro and through her clothes and she shivered violently.

“Tu as froid?” Jared asked, turning towards her. She nodded yes. What Jared did then was something wonderful and awesome. He opened his coat and let her take refuge against his chest. He then wrapped the coat around her and held her there. In one moment she was engulfed in the incredible pleasure of his scent, the muscles of his chest, of his warmth. At that moment, she could take it no longer. She raised her face toward his, dared to hold her body tight against his, and dared look into his eyes. “You’re very beautiful,” he told her.

She had closed her eyes, raised her chin, and whispered, “embrasses moi.” Kiss me.

When she felt his lips on hers the inside of her body, her heart, swelled, rose and spun. When the train arrived, she let Jared drag her like a rag doll into the car where they kissed all the way to the sixteenth arrondissement.

Nothing would taste or smell the same the week that followed; the espressos she drank in small cafés engulfed in the smoke cloud of Jared’s many cigarettes, the wet scent of deserted public gardens, the warm bread he hand-fed her at dawn when the boulangeries opened. She could now feel the world, see the world in new ways that astonished her. When Jared pointed to a strange person, a poster, a newspaper headline, an advertisement, a building, a tree, Althea saw those too for the first time. What Jared did, saw, thought, ate, and drank suddenly existed for her. And there was joy. Sometimes the sound of her own laughter would surprise her, and she’d be stunned by the possibility of her own happiness. She, Althea, had a boyfriend who found her beautiful, painted her for hours, kissed her, fed her. She lost herself in the sight of him. How he scratched his day-old beard, how he walked, how his hands held a glass, a fork, a paintbrush. She lost herself in his body next to hers, his scent, and now his kisses. But soon it was no longer enough, She began wanting for him to touch her body, but he didn’t. Why didn’t he? Did he not want to? What was wrong with her?

And then, just like that, they had a fight. It was late, almost dusk at the Cimetière du Père Lachaise. Jared had stopped in front of names like Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge Gainsbourg and rambled on about their genius while Althea watched the way his mouth moved. When they passed Jim Morrison’s tombstone and the dozen people taking pictures, she asked Jared if Jim Morrison was French.

He laughed. “Français? You don’t know who he is? You’re American.”

“I wasn’t sure,” she said impatiently. Jared should have known that she had not had a normal life where people have friends, listen to music, care, take pleasure in things. She had told him about herself, in simple sentences and he had listened. He knew about a lifetime spent in suspended animation, he knew about her jailor, the mother she never wanted to see again, the father too shut down from life to pay attention. Jared knew almost everything. Almost. He did not know there was a third jailer. And when she was with him she almost forgot she too was a monster.

The cemetery closing time was near and Jared took her in a corner to hide. They waited in silence for people to leave, the guards to make their rounds, the gates to close. “Why do you like cemeteries at night anyway?” she asked when they were finally alone and could move from their hiding place and sit on a bench.

“For the silence,” he answered. “And for the cats.” He looked at her and winked. “C’est plus romantique. Non?” She watched Jared take out a small boulangerie box from the depth of his pocket. “On mange,” he said and he opened the package and placed it between them on the bench. She took one look at the contents of the package, two coffee éclairs with glossy light brown icing. She felt anger rush through her. “I don’t want to eat that,” she said.

Jared ignored her, picked up one éclair and moved it gently toward her mouth. “They’re my favorite,” he told her. She jerked her head back and he considered her reaction with amusement. “Take a bite.”

Althea felt the familiar repulsion, the tightening of her hands into fists. “What happens if I don’t eat this?” she asked, rage in her voice.

“Then I’ll eat two,” he shrugged.

She fought to contain her tears. “What I mean is, I just think you should stop trying to feed me.”

Jared put the éclair down, licked his fingers. “You don’t like me to?”

She needed the truth. “I’m worried about being fat.”

He looked at her and frowned. “Tu es trop maigre,” he said shaking his head, “Much too thin,” he added with vehemence. “C’est pas bon ça.”

“Sometimes I feel that all I have in the world is my thinness,” Althea whispered.

Jared looked away. “That’s very strange.”

Althea’s eyes were full of tears. “Do you hate me now?”

Jared scratched his day-old beard looking unsure. “No, why?” He thought for a moment, then said, “Do you think that maybe you are sick?”

Althea’s body hummed with energy. She had heard this before. “I just want to be thin. What’s wrong with that? Everybody wants to be thin, but for me, suddenly, it means that I’m sick.”

“I’ll kiss you if you promise to eat some éclair, maybe not today, but one day.” Jared had moved close to her and held her face in his hands.

“You don’t understand, I’m really afraid to be fat. Really, really afraid,” she whispered when Jared’s lips were an inch from hers. Her secret out, tears fell freely from her eyes and down the side of her face.

“Promise you will try one day,” he said, “or I don’t kiss you.”

“But not today, right?”

“No, today, I’m the one who will be fat,” he said.



Lola brought the silk sheet to her chin to hide her grin. Everything was too perfect about this loft and about Gunter. What kind of man puts his mattress in the center of a room and sleeps on immaculate white silk sheets? She watched naked Gunter’s catlike body glide towards the bathroom. No bathing suit marks. She hoped he wasn’t the kind to go to the tanning booth, what a turn off. He had a perfect body. No, the perfect body. And this was the perfect room, white, light and airy, with high ceilings, piles of books on the shelves and the floor, incomprehensible artwork on the walls. Clean, Zen, and sensuous. Gunter was a travel journalist. He scoped the world for an upscale travel magazine, slept in lavish resorts, ate in opulent restaurants. And judging from his in-plain-sight selection of condoms—the ribbed, the fruit-flavored, and even the humorous ones—lovemaking was to him a lighthearted affair.

She stretched under the sheet. Wholly comfortable in his nudity, Gunter walked back to the bed, a joint at his lips. He crouched down next to her, offering her the joint along with a front row seat to his perfect genitalia. “No, no, no,” she said. “I don’t smoke. I’ve never smoked! Oh, f*ck it!” She put the joint to her mouth, feeling completely silly. Every one of her moves in the last few weeks had been a source of utter self-amazement. She was already an adulteress, what further harm was there in being a pothead?



Lucas could tell that Annie was not in the best of moods. When the temperature went up like this, the only reasonable thing to do was to leave Paris. Within a short hour-and-a-half train ride he could be in his cottage in Honfleur. But instead of packing his duffle bag and heading north in a first-class TGV, instead of looking forward to a few days of sailing along the coast, he had stopped by Annie’s house and invited her to take a stroll around the Bois de Boulogne. Annie had accepted, and now she was blaming him for the weather.

“I’m sensing a heatstroke coming,” Annie said when they had barely stepped out of her house.

Lucas took her elbow, “it will get cooler by the lake.”

They walked down rue de Passy toward La Muette. “Give me my breeze,” Annie implored. “You promised me breeze!” Humidity wrapped around them like tentacles, but the tension and exhaust smell of the city did seem to wane as they approached the dark mass of Sycamores and Chestnut trees that was the Bois de Boulogne.

“The theme of the party will be Arabian Nights,” Annie said. He wondered again what guests she planned to invite since she had made sure to alienate everyone she and Johnny used to know. The thought had occurred to him that she had done it on purpose at the time, severing old relationships with Johnny’s crowd. She had been impossible, antagonistic, finding any pretext to shut off one friendship after another. He still saw a lot of these people, but she had made it clear that she didn’t want to know who was sleeping with whom and who had cheated on whom. Too many memories, too many worries.

For someone who felt too hot, Annie was walking fast, intent on getting from point A to Point B, instead of enjoying the stroll. She was preoccupied, he could tell. He noticed that her clothes were new. Had she lost weight? She was wearing a floating white blouse with folkloric motif, maybe something Russian, and cute shorts. Inside her sandals, her toenails were painted bright red. She continued walking fast beside him and talking about the party, but it felt as though she was making a point of not talking about something else. She seemed mad at him, in fact. “I bought scraps of fabric at the Marché Saint-Pierre,” she said, “and I’ve been sewing pillows since February. I really want the party to be outdoors in the backyard, a pillows-on-the-floor, eating-food-with-our-hands kind of party.”

“Because of the heat wave?” He asked, absentmindedly.

“I need a bloody project. My newfound sexual frustration’s so thick you could cut it with a machete.”

Lucas was glad she wasn’t looking at him as he fumbled with his sentence. “B-Because of the heat wave?”

“While Lola is joyfully going at it with her cute German guy. Gunter! Gun-f*cking-ter! How tacky! Could one have more of a cliché name?”

Clearly, this was going to be about Lola again. “What about her husband?” he asked.

“What husband? He’s playing dead. We’re all playing dead. Lola’s been heavily into tantric yoga. Down Dog, you know, head down, butt up for the last week. Her head’s in the sand, and she’s getting it on daily with the ‘F*ckanator.’”

Lucas wrapped his brain around the visual. “I’ve got a bad feeling about all this,” he said. “Someone needs to talk to her husband.”

They were finally entering the Bois de Boulogne, the temperature dropped by a good ten degrees and the air suddenly smelled of leaves and decomposing bark. Annie stepped over a dead branch.

“And why would that be? He’s a dick.”

“That is unfortunate, but not a crime. Am I the only one with a moral compass?”

“Oh puh-leeze,” Annie said. She bent down, picked a blue campanula, and put it behind her ear. “So, in terms of the party, you’ve kept in touch with people. Are there any couples we know that are not doing too hot?”

“Should I wonder about the morality of that one?”

“What morality?”

“In coveting thy guests’ husbands.”

Annie turned around. In the mottled light filtering through the canopy of trees, her face was shining. “It’s time to announce to the world that this respectable widow isn’t in mourning anymore.” She had a small smile. “I thought you’d be happy for me.”

As they emerged from the woods, light bounced off the surface of the lake’s water and blinded him. His eyes adjusted to the light. Around the lake, the large grassy areas were bright green. He was taken aback by the sight of dozens of couples, men and women dressed in business attire who lay entwined on the grass. The entire park was a grown-up’s recess. The business crowd from the nearby buildings had descended to the Bois de Boulogne Lake for a refuge from the heat, and was clearly taking full advantage of their two-hour lunch break. Those who were not already kissing or groping each other sat in the grass, biting into baguette sandwiches, and flirting. Everywhere, tucked in the shade of trees, on the freshly cut lawn, and on benches, couples kissed. Lucas felt embarrassed.

Annie whimpered, “I need to stop thinking about my loneliness, not have it thrust upon me at such a vulnerable time, thank you very much.”

Lucas guided her toward the dirt path that circled the lake. Would Annie let him rent a rowboat for an hour? Would that sound too romantic? She would probably laugh at him. What had she meant by not “being in mourning” anymore? But Annie began walking faster. He had to hurry to catch up.

They passed a couple lying in the grass. The woman, in her forties, pretty but not stunning had her business skirt as far up as decency permitted in a public park. She stared at the sky as the man, in a white shirt, caressed her thighs with the tip of his finger and whispered in her ear.

“The French in heat!” Annie mumbled after they had passed. “The way men can be so completely satisfied with themselves is beyond me.” Annie was apparently going from edgy to furious before his eyes and for no good reason. It was one thing to sense when Annie was egging him on for a fight, but stopping her was another thing.

A pack of strollers advanced on the path, pushed at high speed by closed-faced nannies. Inside the strollers, babies looked right through them. Annie and Lucas stepped onto the grass to avoid a stampede.

“And look at this,” Annie cried out. “Where are the moms? Can you tell me where these poor babies’ mothers are? I’ll tell you exactly where they are: frolicking in a park like this one. They’re busy cheating on their husbands while their babies turn into zombies.”

Lucas thought he saw tears in Annie’s eyes, but she was walking fast again. Good mood or not, he was glad to be with her in the park on a hot day like this one. He enjoyed her furious presence, the now cooler breeze, the lace of fresh new leaves above their heads, the tiny wild daisies on the grass, the baby ducks on the lake, the dirt path that absorbed his footsteps, the smell of Annie’s shampoo when she was close enough. She wasn’t in mourning anymore.

Annie came to a halt, made a 180-degree turn and brutally put her hands flat on his chest. It felt nothing short of being punched. “What’s with you?” she muttered in a rage. “You’ve gone mute? Have you turned into a f*cking zombie too?” Her eyes were filled with tears. Her cheeks were red, and there was a mist of sweat over her upper lip. As always, her bangs were too long and fell over her eyes. She was beautiful. Her hands on his chest made Lucas’s breath quicken.

“I’m not sure what we’re talking about,” he whispered.

“Of course, you never listen to a word I say.”

“Men are self-satisfied, the babies are zombies, and the mothers are...irresponsible?”

“Exactly,” she cried out. She stood erect facing him, shorter than he was by a foot. Her bangs covered her eyes completely.

Lucas did not mean to move his hand. His hand moved itself, rising slowly, approaching Annie’s face, and his fingers brushed away the hair from her eyes. Annie did not move. She looked at him. And the way she looked at him... he didn’t know what that look meant. But his thumb stayed on her forehead, then he caressed her cheek. Her wet eyes had a crazy glow, an angry glow, maybe an expectant glow. Lucas knew that if he stopped right now, everything would return to normal, his relationship with Annie would go on as it had, crucial, reassuring, unfinished. But he did not feel reasonable at the moment. He enveloped her chin with the palm of his hand. Annie was motionless, still looking at him with eyes overflowing with tears. With his other hand, he cupped her neck, and he felt Annie softening. A slight softening, but a softening, nonetheless. He approached her body, did not let go of her chin and her neck, that elusive suppleness guiding each one of his moves. When he brought his mouth to hers, the impossible happened. Annie, instead of tensing, instead of jerking back, became lighter and softer, a surrendering with which he was very familiar. He kissed her and she melted further, and his heart beat wildly, as wildly as he always hoped it would, the day he would, at last, kiss her.

He was the one who stopped. They were still in the middle of the dirt path. Annie was lost for a moment. He, however, knew that he would have the rest of his life to kiss her if he played this moment just right. He had, after all, nearly a lifetime of experience seducing woman. He guided a now weightless Annie away from the path and laid her onto the daisy-sprinkled grass. He laid down next to her and kissed her again, and she kissed him back like any other couple on the lawn by the Bois de Boulogne Lake.