Not needing the exercise for once—since she’d been nursing Chloé, her pants slid off her hips—Aimée took the shaking elevator up. She reapplied Chanel red to her lips, blotted them with a café napkin and dabbed the napkin to her cheeks for color.
On the landing outside the apartment door stood a group of older women in a flurry of cheek kissing. No mistaking the hovering scent of Joy by Patou, one of the most expensive perfumes in the world. Or the uniform whitish-blonde coifs these women wore, each of them sporting a discreet fleur-de-lis, with a ministerial emblem or two pinned on the lapels of their cashmere jackets. This was the domain of generals’ and ministers’ wives, a rare breed that existed only in the quartier surrounding the école Militaire and les Invalides. Très “ancien régime” types who exuded an understated elegance that money couldn’t buy.
Not her crowd. Now or ever. Yet these women—not one under sixty—freshly maquillées, coutured and coiffed, earned her grudging respect.
Every last one of them turned the full beam of their attention on her, the outsider in their midst, as she clutched her scooter helmet and vintage bag. She felt like a counterfeit in the land of Hermès.
“Pardonnez-moi, I’m looking for Madame Uzes,” she said. “Désolée …”
“The tradesmen’s entrance is round the back,” said a voice from the crowd.
Welcoming, too. The wrong day to leave the Birkin at home. Yet her success depended on playing to their noblesse-oblige instincts.
“Mademoiselle, you’re looking for Belle, my niece?” said a woman in the apartment doorway, her white-blonde hair pulled back in a chignon. Chic and soigné. “We’re all Uzes in the apartment—confusing, I know.”
“Madame, the priest at Saint-Fran?ois-Xavier referred me to her as the head of the Christian Helping Hands program. She left me a message with her address. I’m sorry to intrude, but it’s vital.”
She saw a relaxing of couture-clad shoulders, almost heard a collective sigh of relief.
“Then come in, wait un moment,” she said. “I’ll join you before my friends and I are off to an evening reception at the musée …” Madame Uzes lowered her voice. “… that racy Dali retrospective.” One of the coiffed pack fanned herself with her hand, her diamond tennis bracelet flashing on her wrist, as if to say “racy” wouldn’t quite cover it.
Dali, racy? Maybe in 1963.
“Merci, Madame,” Aimée said, making her way through the group toward the door. Sanctioned and approved now by the ladies, she heard murmuring as she passed: “… all that volunteering … that handsome young priest …”
She was shown into a wood-paneled salon, where she faced a glaring girl of about eleven or twelve years old in a pleated wool skirt and matching blue cardigan, with white socks and black Mary Janes. A de rigueur outfit for the 7ème—one that had last been in style in the fifties everywhere else.
“Maman’s left me with the old dragons,” she said, shooting a look at her great-aunt back at the door. “Good thing you’ve come. Now they’ll have something to talk about.”
Aimée could just imagine.
The girl pointed to her helmet. “You’ve got a scooter?”
Did a little rebel’s heart beat inside the cardigan? Aimée sensed a possible mine of information.
She smiled. “It’s pink. I’m Aimée. And you?”
“Lisette. The only things that drive down this street these days are hearses,” Lisette said. “That’s the only way people get out of here.”
“Where’s your mother, Lisette?”
“Maman’s at a meeting. She’s always at meetings.”
“That’s right, ma chère,” said the elder Madame Uzes, joining them. “My niece Belle took over a monumental job. She spearheads that program, Christian Helping Hands.”
“Isn’t that where she works with des manouches?” Aimée asked.
“Bien s?r, she sponsors a program for Evangelical Christian Gypsies. Outreach in the spirit of Christian fellowship, open to all Christians. It’s rather like an agency that helps create or find jobs for them using their artisanal skills.”
Aimée couldn’t believe her luck. With a little insistence, she’d find a lead to Drina.
“Nobody knows how to do that work anymore, Maman says,” Lisette informed Aimée. “And they’re cheap.”
Aimée remembered her father’s colleague, who had been stationed at the commissariat here in the 7th, saying that the haute bourgeoisie would walk three blocks to save a franc on mineral water like anyone else. He’d meant it as a compliment.
“May I consult the list of artisans in the agency records, Madame?”
“Ah, I wish I could help you, but Belle handles all that. Je n’en sais rien.”
She needed to see those records. “Would you mind calling her? I hate to bother you, but it’s important. It’s concerning Drina and Nicu Constantin.”
“Do the Lord’s work, mais oui, je comprends,” she said and picked up her cell phone, a small graphite model. Hit speed dial, then shook her head. “Never picks up, my niece. Perhaps come back tomorrow.”
Tomorrow would be too late. “You wouldn’t know an address for Christian Helping Hands, would you?”
“Désolée. Talk with Belle.”
Nothing came easily. Disappointed, Aimée handed her a card. She noticed the gilt chairs with their faded upholstery and the sagging tapestry on the far wall. This fossilized place reeked of threadbare wealth. Antique military memorabilia cluttered the glass cabinets lining the hall. Several families, or a whole encampment of manouches, could live in this space in comfort.
“Lisette, will you turn off the lights?” said Madame Uzes, gesturing for them to leave the room.
Frugal, this Madame Uzes.
In a swirl of Patou, she joined the rest of her cronies at the door. Aimée needed to reach this Belle; she hung back, thinking in the hallway, where Madame was putting on her cashmere scarf. “Madame, pardonnez-moi, but may I use your salle de bains?”
“Lisette can show you …” The rest of her reply was lost in the buzz of the ladies’ conversations and laughter.