“That would be better,” Margie said. And though she usually walked home to save the carfare, she was too embarrassed to admit it to Dorothy. They took the tram, as Dorothy said the Métro was too slow for her, to the Club, and Dorothy waited in the courtyard, smoking and talking with some of the girls there as though she’d known them for years, while Margie changed into her good blue crêpe de chine dress.
She picked Dorothy up from the courtyard and they headed down the street to Rosalie’s. Everyone talked about Rosalie’s, a tiny restaurant in the basement of a corner building only a few blocks from the Club, but Margie had never been, and when they arrived, she was torn between being thrilled they had and wishing they hadn’t. The place was filthy—the floor covered with undiscovered countries of spills, some of which sucked at her feet as they made their way between the tables. When they sat down, Dorothy, who looked so out of place in the dark and dirty room, like a firefly glowing in a dustbin, took a handkerchief from her bag and carefully wiped the previous diners’ crumbs from the table.
Despite the grimy appearance, it was an exciting, lively place to be—the men next to her with paint splatters on their shirt cuffs, two of the Surrealists from the café having dinner with two other men, their heads bent together conspiratorially, a gaggle of young girls in fashionable dresses, edged with shimmers of beads and tassels, making it seem as though they were endlessly in motion, laughing loud and wild in the corner. As was always the case in Paris, everyone here seemed to know everybody else, people coming in stopping to greet friends with shouts of pleasure, as though they hadn’t seen each other in years, though Margie guessed, given how small Montparnasse—and Paris in general—seemed to be, it might have been twenty-four hours at the most. There were long tables and benches, and when a newcomer decided to join his friends, everyone would shuffle agreeably to one side or another, the shape and form of the groups shifting, expanding and contracting, the pulse of the evening like a giant beating heart.
The menu was written on a chalkboard on the wall, dinner for two francs, which was ridiculously cheap, even for Paris, and was delivered by Rosalie herself, a short, stout woman with heavily accented French. The food was achingly good, and when they finished, Margie felt like she had been part of the real Paris again, and, more important, was almost full.
Ever since she had gotten to Paris, she had been hungry constantly. It was all the walking, she thought, much more than she was used to at home, where her mother insisted on taxicabs to carry them anywhere more than a few blocks in the city, due to her bad feet. And certainly it was the student portions on which she lived, trying to save money, eating what was cheap—bread her body ran through in moments, and inexpensive vegetable soup. She had walked by a café one day and seen a man dining on a sausage covered with mustard so spicy just the scent of it made her mouth water, and drinking a beer, and Margie, who didn’t even like beer, had almost wept with desire. Her savings meant she could splash out on a meal here and there, but there was an asceticism to her diet she found attractive, the constant rumble in her stomach a metaphor for her appetite for the city and all she wanted to draw from it, and she preferred to leave herself slightly hungry.
“So,” Dorothy said, when they had finished dinner and were drinking the last of the cheap wine that had come with it. It was sweet and slightly vinegary, but Margie was thirsty and it left a pleasant blur in her head that she wanted to hang on to. It made her love everyone in the room, these strangers with their theatrical greetings, their intense conversations, the laughter exploding and then disappearing into the crush of bodies, even the room itself despite—or because of—its dungeon-like air. “What are you doing in Paris?”
Margie hesitated, unsure of how to answer. Dorothy leaned forward over the table, as though she were expecting some thrilling confession, and Margie hated to disappoint her. In the dim light, she practically glowed, and Margie had seen half the men in the place looking over at her. Dorothy, of course, ignored the attention, or worse, didn’t seem to notice. That was always the way with beautiful girls. “I’m working at the Libe.”
Rolling her eyes, Dorothy pressed her hands flat on the table and leaned even closer, as though proximity could pull Margie’s nonexistent secrets out of her. “I don’t mean that. I mean why are you here to begin with? Why did you come?”
“I guess . . . I wanted an adventure?”
This answer seemed to satisfy Dorothy. She sat back up and slapped the table with her open palms, as if to say, “I knew it.”
“Me too,” she said. “I was going to go crazy at home. My parents want me to get married, but I wasn’t ready to settle down. They said I could come over here for a year. It’s been two already and I’m still not ready to leave.”