And then, she wrote. She wrote the story of the couple meeting for the first time, the man asking the woman to dance, the way their bodies moved toward each other like an invitation, but the woman turned her head back away, blushing. She wrote about the way another man had come to the dance with only a few sous in his pocket, only enough for a single lemonade, and was terrified to think his girl might ask for something more expensive, but she saw the way his fingers moved on the lining of his pocket and suggested instead they buy one lemonade and share it.
She wrote the story of the couple whose inability to bear a child had fractured their marriage so irreparably, who were only there because the husband still loved his wife, loved her more for the trying, the endless months of tears and frustrations and blame, the doctors’ painful cures and their families’ ridiculous suggestions, and he had begged her to come with him, to go to this ball so they could simply dance and drink and laugh the way they used to—he had once thought her laugh was the most beautiful sound that had ever been, and he never heard it anymore, only heard her tears, which shattered him every time.
She wrote the story of the bartender who loved to dance, whose feet moved to the music as he poured drinks behind his counter, waltzing and foxtrotting along with the couples on the floor, and who, when the day was over, went home to the sixth floor of an old house, to an apartment that had only two rooms and a heating ring and was stifling in the summer and cool in the winter, but had the most glorious view of the Eiffel Tower, and he would pour some milk for his cat, and the cat would sit on the windowsill and drink it while he leaned on the windowsill and watched the world go by below and his restless feet continued to dance.
She wrote all these stories—of love lost and love found, of hearts broken and healed, of anger and sadness and loneliness, and joy and connection and hope. And as she did, the figures in Sebastien’s paintings came alive in her mind, until the ball was real to her.
And when she gave those pages to him, presented them shyly, tied together with a length of ribbon she had found hanging over a rosebush in the courtyard at the Club, he had taken them as though she had offered him a great gift. They lay in the grass in the Champ-de-Mars, the sun touching its gentle fingers to their skin, as Sebastien read every page, and Margie stared at the tip of the Eiffel Tower against a cloudless blue sky and wondered at the miracle her life had become. When he finished, his eyes shone with tears, and he had touched his fingertips to hers and said, “This. Exactly this,” and Margie knew no matter how many stories she wrote, she would never have a greater compliment.
Sometimes when Sebastien walked her home from the Libe, they would drift from the route and discover the most wonderful things. A carnival set up in the Tuileries, where Sebastien won her a toy and they rode the Ferris wheel and looked at the city spread out below them, and they went around and around until she couldn’t tell the difference between the lights of the stars above them and the lights of the city below them; the way they both sparkled with such impossible magic.
Another night they found themselves in the Pigalle, up by Zelli’s, and a prostitute asked Sebastien for a match, which he gave her, and they passed a few moments talking while Margie watched. She had never spoken to a prostitute before, had never even seen one as far as she could remember, and she looked greedily at the woman’s seamy glamor—the stockings with the tears turned to the inside and the dress that had once been brilliant silk and was now greasy and dull, and the makeup on her face that hid the acne and the purple smudges under her eyes but also, Margie grew to understand as she looked at this woman silently, was a sort of armor that shielded who she was and let no one inside, and Margie thought that was the most beautiful and saddest thing she had ever seen.