Chapter Twenty-One
The last time I went to the markets of Paris, I strolled. I lingered. I lolligagged.
This time I was efficiency personified as I tackled Port de Vanves. I was a businesswoman powering through table after table, row after row. I scanned quickly, writing off the items I obviously would never use on a necklace — candlesticks, picture frames, goblets.
I ignored the old clothes for sale, the chipped sets of china, and the antique mirrors. I stopped at a table with miniature figurines, tiny little cows and pigs and dogs and cats no bigger than thimbles. Some were brushed silver, some white porcelain. They were cute, and while I wasn’t so sure a cow was anyone’s favorite, there was something about the dogs and cats that spoke to me.
I asked the vendor how much. A round woman in a heavy tarp of a dress barked out a number.
“Too high,” I answered in French.
We bargained like that until she reached her rock bottom, and I scooped up nearly one hundred cats and dogs, tucking them in my wheeled shopping bag. I felt like a regular French woman, weaving her way in and out of the stalls, wheeling and dealing, snagging the best prices.
I continued on, passing strange-looking garden tools and old kitchen utensils, when I spied several tables full of brooches and pins. They were tiny things and would look so very French on a necklace, the perfect mix of new and vintage. I bought a few dozen, and then moved along to another aisle.
I walked past a table full of gray-haired men playing cards as they sucked on cigarettes. They were seated behind a counter displaying a messy array of hammers. I laughed silently, picturing a big, rusty hammer hanging from a slender silver chain. Yeah, that’d be a big hit, for sure. I looked ahead to the next set of stalls and spied a huge box full of antique skeleton keys. The box was at the foot of the card table, and it held hundreds upon hundreds of keys that must have worked in miniature locks because they were tiny, no bigger than thumbnails. They weren’t rusted. They had just the right look of weathered to them.
I asked the men how much.
“For the keys?”
“Yes.”
A man laughed, showing crooked, yellowed teeth. He took a drag of his cigarette, inhaling deeply. “No one’s ever asked before. You want to take them off our hands?”
“Maybe.”
“Five euros.”
I pursed my lips together and resisted breaking out in a smile. The keys were perfect. They were pretty, but they also said something. Keys were staples of charm necklaces, so they had universal appeal, but these particular keys had a unique look that stood out, a sense that they could unlock stories, or hearts, or secrets.
“Sold.”
I handed the man a bill, he stuffed it in his pocket, and gave me the battered cardboard box. I closed the tops, and managed to stuff the box inside my cavernous shopping bag. I wheeled it away, made a few more stops, then hailed a taxi. As we raced towards the Eiffel Tower, passing cafes full of people lingering on salads and breads and coffees, and bakeries peddling croissants and tarte normandes and chocolate eclairs, I replayed my three days in Paris. At a market in the Marais I’d found boxes of star, sun and moon trinkets, at a street vendor in Montmartre I’d stumbled across elegant glass hearts. I’d still have to do the hard work in assembling the necklaces, but I had the materials, and they looked both fresh and French. In the evenings, I’d taken myself out to dinner, at a bistro near Notre Dame, at a cafe tucked at the end of a courtyard, at a bustling Korean place around the corner from the hotel. I’d been alone, but Paris has a way of surrounding you so you don’t feel quite so lonely. I’d also stayed far away from the W Hotel near the Opera House, and from Bryan. The fact that I hadn’t set up my cell phone for international calling helped. No one could reach me easily.
The taxi driver stopped at the light at one of the boulevards, and I admired the buildings. They had that elegant centuries-old look about them with long, tall, open windows. When the light changed, the driver zipped across traffic, took a sharp turn and let me out at my hotel.
As I pressed the button for the elevator, the desk clerk called out to me.
“Ms. Harper. There is a message here for you.”
“For me?”
Perhaps it was Mrs. Oliver, but she was on her vacation. I hoped something hadn’t happened to my parents. The clerk handed me a small, white envelope. It was sealed, but my name was on the front. I opened it and unfolded a sheet of paper.
Kat — Remember when you said if I ever needed your translation services that I’d know where to find you? I do need help. Is there any way you can come to dinner tonight? The woman in charge of the padlocks has a My Favorite Mistakes necklace. She loves your designs, and would love to meet you. I think it could seal the deal. I hope you’ll say yes to dinner at 8. I can send a car for you.
—Bryan
There was a phone number for his hotel. I stared at the note, as if it would reveal my answer. Should I go? I still felt raw inside now that I knew the truth. I’d been tricked, and even if he felt he had to set me free during college, I’d rather he’d have told me he loved me before he left. Instead, he said nothing, and I was played a fool.
I was left empty-handed, a broken-hearted idiot.
But if my presence would help Made Here launch a new line of cufflinks fashioned from the leftover promises from the lover’s bridge, well, that seemed fitting, as well as the sort of thing a protege should do. It was business, after all. Only business.
I handed the paper to the clerk, and asked him to call The W and confirm a car for pickup.
*****
Orange flames glowed in the nearby fireplace, warming the restaurant. The waiter cleared away our dinner plates as Gabrielle Roussillon informed him that the meal was marvelous. She’d had rabbit and asparagus. I’d had chicken and roasted potatoes, and while I couldn’t vouch for the bunny, my French yardbird was indeed fantastic. The white tablecloth was now marked with a splotch of red wine from where Gabrielle had spilled some of her drink while talking with her hands.
Gabrielle was a chatty woman and had commanded the conversation. The pleasant byproduct of her loquaciousness was I could focus on her rather than Bryan as she told bawdy tales of the time she’d lived in Rome, and all her affairs with Italian men. I’d laughed, not simply to humor her, but because she was one of those in-your-face type of people, who could tell a saucy tale with a special sort of panache. She was curvy and broad-shouldered, with sheets of jet black hair. She wore a ring on her left index finger and mentioned a husband once or twice. I wondered if it was an open marriage. If he had a mistress, and she has misters, like her Italian lovers. It hadn’t seemed that long ago since she’d been in Italy.
She leaned back in her chair, and tapped a charm on her necklace. It was one of mine, and the charm was a pizza pie. “I don’t know if you remember this, but I ordered this one online from you a year ago.”
I flipped through my mental file of necklace orders. I certainly didn’t remember all of them, but a pizza pie charm stood out. “It’s not often I get a request for a pizza pie. I think I found it at a toy shop. I can’t believe that’s yours.”
“Small world. It’s for all my Italian men.”
“But, of course,” Bryan said. I didn’t look at him. I’d barely looked at him most of the night. My heart was still sore.
“And yours?” Gabrielle pointed at my throat. “What’s on yours?”
I walked her through some of my charms, telling her the same stories I’d told Bryan that afternoon in Washington Square Park of the English major I never became, and the building that I almost moved into.
“And that one?” Gabrielle touched my movie charm. “Were you almost a movie director?”
I laughed and shook my head. “No.”
“Then what is this for? Is it to remind you to stop watching movies?”
“Sort of.” I looked at the fireplace to avoid eye contact. I’d never told Bryan about the movie camera. I’d never told anyone but Jill what it stood for.
“Kat, Kat, Kat. A woman like me knows when a woman is lying. What is the movie camera for?”
I returned my focus to the French civil servant Bryan needed to charm. “It’s for a boy.”
“And who is this boy?”
“My first love. He was my first favorite mistake.”
“Ah. See! I knew it wasn’t just about the cinema. Tell me about him.” Gabrielle placed her elbow on the table and tucked her chin in her hand to wait for a story. I glanced briefly at Bryan. He was watching the two of us.
“I met him when I was seventeen.”
“Young love. The best kind.”
“And he was wonderful. And kind. And funny. He made me laugh. And he kissed like a dream.”
“So he definitely wasn’t a Frenchman, because they kiss like bores!”
“We used to go to the movies together all the time, and we made out in the theater.”
“That is why I say young love is the best kind. You can’t keep your hands off each other.”
I nodded, as waiters circled the small restaurant, clearing tables, and serving other diners. Low music played overhead, tunes like those sung by the torch singer who lived across from me when I called this city home. Songs of love gone away, or love gone awry.
“But he broke my heart.”
“And so you vowed to guard your heart from that kind of boy?”
“Yes.”
“And you still pine for this boy?”
“Yes,” I said, a hitch in my throat.
“You are beautiful and you are still so young. We cannot have a young, beautiful, smart woman in love with a boy who doesn’t care for her.”
“He does care for her.” The words came from Bryan. I turned to him, to look into his pine green eyes with their hints of gold. Those eyes practically infiltrated me with the way they knew me. “He always cared for her. He always loved her. He’s madly in love with her. She’s his Love, Actually. She’s his Casablanca. She’s the one he’d stop the bus for, the one he’d run through traffic for, the one he’d drive like a crazy man to the airport for and run through the terminal to stop the plane. Her name’s above the title for him. She’s the opening credit and the closing credit. She’s the love of his life.”
Then in a voice so low only I could hear, he whispered forgive me.
With the white tablecloth obscuring us, I reached for his hand. He laced his fingers through mine, squeezing tight. I squeezed back, and I let go of the hurt. I let go of the ache. I let go of the past.
“He is not a mistake then,” Gabrielle announced.
“He’s not. He’s the one,” I said.
Gabrielle raised her wine glass, now nearly drained of its contents. “So we drink a toast to love, and we drink a toast to business. You have a deal to buy the padlocks from the city of Paris.”