On the Boulevard du Montparnasse, the light had turned from the golden glow of the afternoon into the soft grays and lavenders of evening, the whitewashed buildings, untouched by Haussmann’s strict hand, glowing softly. Dorothy practically skipped down the street, Margie following behind her. When they reached the door she had been looking for, Dorothy waited for Margie to catch up, and then pulled the handle hard, letting out a rush of noise, of laughter and the cheerful undercurrent of clinking glass, and they stepped inside. “This is the Dingo. Absolutely everyone goes here. Come on.”
She began to thread her way through the crowd, and Margie followed. People seemed to part to allow Dorothy to pass, while Margie felt as though she were struggling through mud, awkwardly pushing people aside while trying not to be rude. “Pardon,” she said, again and again, though she was fairly sure she was shoving her way through piles of Americans. “Pardon.” Finally she broke through the press of bodies and found Dorothy already sitting at a table, half on the lap of a young man who had a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other and was therefore reduced (happily, Margie suspected) to nuzzling Dorothy’s neck with his lips.
“Margie, Margie!” Dorothy called out as though Margie had been tragically lost and finally found, instead of having been bare seconds behind her the whole time. “Come sit with us. This is Arturo,” she said, pointing at the man who was too busy kissing her arm to do anything more than raise his eyebrows in greeting, “and Pierre and Lila and Mimi,” she introduced the others who sat around the table, two women and another man. One of the women was looking furiously at Dorothy, and Margie suspected there was a date going on, or at least there had been before Dorothy had arrived. No one offered Margie a chair.
“I’ll stand,” Margie said. A girl from the Club passed behind her. What was her name? She felt guilty until the girl looked at her as though she had never seen Margie, despite their having sat at breakfast together twice in the last week. Margie took a deep breath instead and looked away.
At some point, someone arrived with a tray full of drinks, and Margie took the one that was offered to her, though she hadn’t ordered it and didn’t know what it was. At the table, Dorothy and her beau continued to canoodle. The other man and the two girls got into a dramatic conversation, and Margie drank her drink and then stood there awkwardly with the empty glass in her hand, jostled each time someone passed behind her. It was hot inside and she really wished she had something to read. There was a man at the bar reading a book, despite the noise of the crowd around him, and she seriously considered stepping over behind him to read over his shoulder, but the book, she could see from the cover, was in French. In high school they had read The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in the original French, and it had taken her a half hour to get through each painful page.
She was still looking longingly at the man’s book when Dorothy sprang up from the table. “Come on! We’re going to Zelli’s.”
The group of them, along with two other people they somehow picked up along the way, left the bar and disappeared down into the darkness of the Métro. When they came up again, they were in Montmartre, the hills spreading up above them. Despite the hour, the streets were busy, cafés overflowing with people talking over a bottle of wine, sidewalks crowded as couples and groups headed to another party, some of them laughing and singing as though they were in a show.
Margie followed the group down the streets, until they stopped in front of a building with a crowd outside. There was an astonishing blur of languages, shouts and laughter and bursts of song in English, French, Russian, Portuguese, Italian. In contrast to the cafés in Montparnasse, where the artists had an air—and more often than that, an actuality—of studied scruffiness, the men here wore suits, were smartly turned out and fashionable. The women’s dresses were stylish and new, and Margie felt dowdy and lost. She thought longingly of the café the other night, of Sebastien’s disheveled artist friends, their silly Surrealist sayings, the passionate argument over whether one of them had betrayed the movement by taking a portrait commission (Margie’s opinion: no, as things like eating and having a place to live were important).
“Come on, Margie!” Dorothy called over her shoulder, and Margie rushed forward as the crowd parted for them, catching the end of their wake, and then they were inside.