The Paris Architect: A Novel

Adele came out of her study with a black portfolio under her arm. Bette rose from the sofa and took the portfolio from Adele. “How about a drink? You know—one for the road?”


Adele glanced toward the open bedroom door and nodded. Bette walked over to a black and steel liquor cabinet and helped herself to a generous serving of cognac.

“Save me a molecule or two of that, will you?” said Adele, tightening the belt around her gown.

Bette smiled and smacked her lips, then placed the cut glass tumbler on the top of the cabinet.

“Again, please forgive me for the coitus-interruptus, but like you’ve said before, business is business.”

“Next time, call first.”

“I’ll be sure to do that. Or maybe a singing telegram.”

“Take care,” said Adele in a singsong voice as she shoved Bette out the door.

“You will remember to come to the fitting this afternoon, around four? You will be finished with him by then?”

***

Bette found herself in the corridor and the door slammed shut behind her. She put her ear to the thick paneled door and heard shouting going on toward the rear of the flat. A smile came over her face as she walked to the lift. As she’d walked across Adele’s salon, she’d looked into the bedroom and seen a very distinctive black uniform draped over the footboard of the bed. She knew Adele adored anything in black, but that piece didn’t belong to her—nor did the Gestapo cap sitting on top of it.

Outside the entrance of Adele’s building, in the span of thirty seconds three men smiled and tipped their hats to Bette. This was nothing out of the ordinary. Last February she’d turned thirty-one, but she knew she was even more beautiful now than she’d been at nineteen when she began her modeling career. If Bette had believed in God, she would’ve thanked him for her long-lasting beauty. She knew that when she hit fifty, she would still be ravishing. Bette was a big believer in luck, and it was pure luck that she had turned out beautiful while her sister Simone had turned out as ugly as a bulldog. Just a freak happenstance of nature, she thought. Bette often shuddered when she envisioned Simone as a beauty and herself resembling something canine. It could’ve gone either way.

Bette had had to beat off men with a stick since puberty. Almost every day of her life, even Christmas and Easter, a man had called to ask her out. Bette thought it was wonderful to be beautiful. Besides the attention of men, there was no waiting in lines at stores, no waiting for tables in fine restaurants—and no paying for meals in those fine restaurants—and presents showing up unexpectedly on her doorstep. Poor Simone, her only hope of getting a man would be either to have her family pay someone to marry her or to be matched with a blind man. She was a sweet, gentle girl with a heart of gold who would make a wonderful wife and mother, but she was likely doomed to a bleak, unhappy life of spinsterhood.