“It must have been a long time since you watched any of my films. Believe me, I’ve looked worse.”
“Don’t hold it against me. I’m too busy with the restaurant to go to the movies. Do you mind serving these desserts? I want to close ASAP so we can get home and crash.”
Mia played her role to perfection until the end of the evening. Daisy was impressed: she would never have believed her friend capable of such a feat.
At midnight, the last customers left the restaurant. Daisy and her chef cleaned up the kitchen while Mia tidied the dining room.
When Daisy had finally locked up, they walked back to her apartment through the sloping streets of Montmartre.
“Is it really like that every night?” Mia asked.
“Six days a week. It’s exhausting, but I wouldn’t change a thing. The restaurant is like home to me, even if it’s hard to make ends meet.”
“Really? It was packed in there!”
“We had a good night tonight.”
“What do you do on Sundays?”
“Sleep.”
“And what about your love life?” Mia wondered again about the cigarettes left behind.
“Let’s see, love life . . . I must’ve misplaced that somewhere between the kitchen and the meat locker.”
“You mean you haven’t met anybody since you opened the restaurant?”
“I’ve been out with a few men, but none that have been able to deal with my hours. You share your life with a man who has the same job as you. How many other men would put up with you being away shooting films, things like that?”
“Share my life? Can’t say we share all that much these days.”
Their footsteps echoed in the empty streets.
“You think we’ll end up alone?” said Daisy.
“Maybe you. Not me.”
“Thanks a lot! Then what’s with all the moping? What’s stopping you from enjoying yourself a little?”
“I’m still married, at least for now. What’s stopping you? These men you’ve been out with, did you meet them at your restaurant?”
“Definitely not. I never mix work and play,” Daisy replied. “Except once. The guy used to come to the restaurant a lot—maybe too much. In the end, I realized that he wasn’t just there for the food.”
“What was he like?” Mia asked, intrigued.
“He was . . . not bad. Not bad at all, in fact.”
They reached the door of Daisy’s building. Daisy punched in the code and flicked on the light before climbing the stairs.
“How ‘not bad’?”
“Charming.”
“Go on . . .”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything! How he won you over, what it was like the first time, how long the romance lasted, how it ended . . . Everything.”
“If you really want me to tell you all that, let’s wait till we’re inside.”
Entering the apartment, Daisy collapsed onto the sofa.
“I’m beat. Could you make some tea? That’s the only thing you English people know how to do in a kitchen.”
Mia gave her the finger and slipped behind the kitchen island. She filled the kettle and waited for Daisy to keep her word and tell the story.
“We met one night in early July, last year. The restaurant was almost empty, and I was about to turn off the ovens. And that’s when he walked in. I hesitated at first, but what could I do? I let my chef and server go home. I could manage one last customer on my own. As I handed him the menu, he took my hand and asked me to choose for him. And, like a dummy, I fell for it and found the whole thing charming.”
“Why like a dummy?”
“I sat across from him while he ate. I even nibbled at a few things from his plate. He had a great sense of humor, was very upbeat. He wanted to help me clean up. I thought it was a funny idea, so I let him. After we’d closed the restaurant, he invited me to come for a drink. I said yes. We sat outside at a café. By the time we finished talking, we seemed to have solved all of humanity’s problems and the world was a beautiful place. He was passionate about food, and he wasn’t bluffing—he knew what he was talking about. I have to admit, it was like a miracle. He walked me home, didn’t even ask to come up . . . just a good-night kiss and that was all. The perfect man had just fallen out of the sky. After that, we saw each other constantly. He’d come to see me at the end of a shift and help me close up. We spent every Sunday together . . . until the end of summer. And then, just like that, he announced it was over.”
“But why?”
“Because his wife and kids had come back from their summer holidays. Please don’t say anything—I’m not going to discuss it. I’m just going to take a bath and then I’m going to bed.” And Daisy closed her bedroom door. Mia was taken aback—not only by her friend’s story, but also by Daisy’s dignity. If only she could see things that clearly herself . . .
Coming out of Chez L’Ami Louis, Lauren stopped to admire the old fa?ades on Rue du Vertbois.
“Paris is working its charms on you, huh?” Paul asked.
“Sure. That, or the gargantuan feast we just ate,” she replied.
They took a taxi home, where Paul said good night to his friends and shut himself up in his office to write.
Lauren got into bed and began tapping away on her Mac. Arthur came out of the bathroom ten minutes later and climbed between the sheets.
“You’re checking your email at this time of night?” he asked, surprised.
She placed the laptop on his knees. When Arthur realized what she was up to, she laughed out loud at his dumbfounded look.
He had to reread the first lines of what Lauren had written:
Novelist, single, hedonist, often works nights, loves humor, life, and serendipity . . .
“I think you drank too much wine tonight.”
As he closed the screen, he accidentally clicked the “Confirm Registration” button.
“He’d never forgive you, even for just messing around with something like this.”
“Me? You’d better start thinking of your own apologies—and fast—’cause I think you just hit the wrong button, sweetheart . . .”
Arthur hurriedly reopened the laptop, mortified at his blunder.
“Relax! We’re the only ones who have access to his account, and even you admit his life needs a bit of a shake-up.”
“I’m telling you—this is a hell of a risk,” Arthur replied.
“And what about the risks he took for us? Remember that?” she said, turning off the light.
Arthur lay in the dark with his eyes open for a long while. Hundreds of memories came flooding back to him—mad escapades and dirty tricks. Paul had even risked jail for him. Arthur owed his present happiness to his friend’s courage.
Paris reminded him of sad times, years of great solitude. Now Paul was going through something similar, and Arthur knew how heavy it could be to bear that weight. But there had to be better ways of helping him than a dating site.
“Go to sleep,” Lauren whispered to him. “We’ll see if anything interesting happens.”
Arthur snuggled against his wife and shut his eyes.
Mia tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep, the joyless events of the last few weeks going around and around in her head. Today had been by far the happiest day she could think of in a long time, even if she still missed David.