Spring Collection (31 page)

“I’m sure nobody remembers or gives a damn.” What was wrong with him?

“No, they remember—I can see them thinking that Mike and Frankie went to the Louvre and we didn’t, we missed out on it—it’s something you’d have to be a photographer to notice, but it’s there in their eyes all right. A sort of sadness, a kind of
deprivation.”

“That could become a real problem,” I said seriously, feeling my heart beginning to wake up and take notice.

“So what I thought is, you and I could sneak off to the Louvre today but we won’t tell anybody, never mention it. That way we’ll make reparations, even if we’re the only ones who know it.”

“Hmmm.”

“Don’t you agree that it’s the only right thing to do?”

“I’m really not sure, morally speaking,” I said thoughtfully. “You still told a lie, and this could be considered just another lie, coming on top of the first, a cover-up, compounding the first one. Maybe you should check with your rabbi.” No way you get away with this so easily, Aaron, I thought.

“Jesus!”

“Why not? If you can reach Him.”

“Frankie, will you please go to the Louvre with me today?”

“I’d enjoy that,” I made myself say sedately. “But why didn’t you just ask in the first place?”

“It made it seem like a date thing.”

“Well, is it or isn’t it?” I wanted to get this absolutely straight before I let myself get too excited.

“Well … yeah, it is. But date things—I haven’t done them in years. That’s kid stuff.”

“Not where I come from. Your problem is you
moved to the city. You’re too far from your roots. Manhattan has crazy rules … in Brooklyn we still do date things, all the time.”

“Could we possibly discuss this in person? I like hearing you tell me what’s wrong with me, but it’s more fun to watch you while you do it. This conversation is degenerating into what my mother calls ‘hanging on the phone.’ ”

“I’ll meet you in the lobby in an hour.”

“Can’t you make it sooner? Your phone’s been busy or I’d have asked earlier.”

“Date things never take less than an hour prep time,” I said severely, dancing wildly around the phone cord.

“I guess, if you say so.”

“See you later.”

I hung up and rushed into the dressing room. I’d already had my bath and I’d been brushing out and admiring my new hair when Lombardi called. After several cautious attempts I’d finally dared to use enough henna to turn into a dark redhead. It was, I had to admit, rather becoming. Hell, it was magnificent.

Donna, I implored silently, help me out here, I’ve never been a redhead before. I need your great brain, Donna, my own has turned to electrified marshmallow. I made my way through the row of hangers, trying to think redhead thoughts.

Green … obviously there were a variety of greens, the natural choice, but was I going to make my debut as a redhead wearing green like the majority of other redheads on earth? No, for my coming out I intended to make a major redhead statement, and not in any of the subtle browns, blacks or ivories, some of which I’d already worn. Justine had been wildly generous but when I’d eliminated all the obvious colors, all that was left was a tunic with matching trousers. The tunic had a generously cut turtleneck and a wide belt, and both pieces were made in a stretch wool in a fascinating color that wasn’t quite plum or precisely grape—more like an eggplant, a rich, luscious eggplant, a moody purple with a lot of black in it.

I held the tunic up to my face and even on the hanger I could tell that I’d found my answer. The eggplant made my hair come more burningly alive, in some way only an artist could understand. I was fast approaching a potential Paul Mitchell approval rating, I thought as I did my makeup with hands that stayed blessedly steady even though my mind was zigzagging with a thousand considerations. A
date!
And he’d figured out an absurd excuse to set it up, which made it so much more meaningful than if he’d just said, “Come on, we might as well go to the Louvre, I’ve got nothing better to do,” which would have been perfectly natural and in his style.

Fact. Mike Aaron, after almost a week of seeing me daily, wanted to get me off alone, without the others knowing. Was there any other way to view this development except as a sign of some degree, however small, of … interest, no matter how mild?

As I zipped up my wonderful eggplant pieces, I thought that if there was ever a day to begin to lead a redhead’s life, it was today. Big silver hoops for my ears, to match my belt buckle, and wide silver bracelets. The black coat over my arm, my black boots
—
I looked at myself in the mirror and shook my head in amazement. Why had I spent so many years dressing for a dance student role that was no longer mine, when I could have looked like a woman out to do damage of a very mature nature?

“Frankie, this is just a date,” I said to the mirror, sternly. “Only a date. Nothing to get in a tizzy about. People have dates all the time. They don’t mean anything special. Just a way to get through the day.” The sound of my voice only made me feel more nervous. I don’t normally talk to myself out loud.

I walked into the lobby feeling so self-conscious that I had to fight the need to put on my sunglasses, but I felt dramatic enough without going over the top. Mike was standing there with his back to the elevators, looking massively impatient. I stopped for a minute before he saw me, just taking him in from head to toe.
It wasn’t just his height or the field of energy he walked around in that made him stand out in that lobby. It was also the details; the fine, unkempt shape of his head, the arrogance of his big, handsome nose, the confident line of his lips, the muscles in his strong neck. And there was not one single camera hung around his neck! Oh, help me, Lord!

“Am I late?” I asked, slipping around into his field of vision.

“No, half an hour early.”

“Then why are you looking like that?”

“Like what?”

“Impatient.”

“I didn’t know I was. Oh, shit! Hi, Jordan. Hi, April.”

“Frankie! What did you do to your hair?” April asked, gasping.

“My God, it’s—too beautiful! And where’d you find that marvelous thing you have on?” Jordan demanded.

“Sorry, girls, Frankie doesn’t have time to gab. Hurry up, Frankie, the guys in the darkroom won’t wait forever.”

“What darkroom?” April demanded curiously.

“The
Zing
darkroom. Maxi Amberville sent me a fax—she wants Frankie to look at the contacts and let her know what she thinks.” He grabbed me by the arm.

“Can we come too?” Jordan suggested with lively interest.

“Maxi’d eat me alive if I let models see contacts. You ought to know that. See you later, girls.”

“Why don’t we all meet for lunch somewhere fun?” April said. “I’ll let Maude know, she can join us.”

“Impossible,” Mike said firmly. “Frankie and I have to go scout locations in the Paris sewers. No lunch for us today. Go shopping, you two, take the day off. I’ve worked you hard enough.”

“Sewers?”
I heard April wondering, as we escaped toward the lobby door and into a taxi.

“What lies you’ll tell not to tell a lie about a lie you’ve told,” I marveled.

“I can’t believe my imaginative capacities. Do you think they guessed?”

“They’ll never find out,” I said, comfortingly. “I almost believed you myself.”

“But there is a famous sewer system and people really visit it.”

“We should swing by the sewers after the Louvre,” I suggested, “if that’s going to trouble you.”

“Maybe another time. It’s dark down there, alligators all over the place most likely, like in New York. And sewers don’t count, they don’t give you the aesthetic stature of going to the Louvre.”

“But they do show that you have a genuine interest in history, Mike. And archaeology
And
sanitation. What is civilization without sanitation? That makes three more areas of superiority we’ll appear to have. The girls will develop heavy-duty inferiority complexes—you should never have mentioned sewers. Did you see the look on Jordan’s face? She was really impressed.”

“I’m going to have to teach you not to laugh at me.”

“You and who else?”

I guess I must have given him a smile loaded with redhead power because the next thing I knew Mike was kissing me in a way that shut me up as effectively as if I’d fainted. I may have actually fainted, because the next thing I clearly remember was the cab stopping. Could we have been kissing all the way to the Louvre? Considering my condition, the fact that I was more or less paralyzed, gasping for breath, yet more alive than I’d ever been in my life, there was every reason to believe that was what might have happened. One thing was certain, I hadn’t played hard to get.

“Frankie. Open your eyes. I have to pay the driver.”

“Bribe him to go away and leave us here,” I whispered,
keeping my eyes closed tightly, “make him rent us the taxi.”

“I would but he’s already stopped his meter and there’s a policeman looking inquisitive and a couple of people who’re waiting to get into this taxi. We have to get out. Let go of me, just for a second, you beautiful, silly baby.”

“I can’t. I would if I could but I can’t.” I really couldn’t. I’d been waiting at least half my life to feel like this, but I’d never dreamed it would be so—there were no words for it. Whatever I was feeling, language couldn’t express it.

“Sweetheart, we’re at the Louvre.”

“What about the Louvre?”

“We’re going to go in, remember? We have a date.”

“Really?” I tried to remember. Mike Aaron had kissed me, God knows how often. He’d called me beautiful, he’d called me baby, he’d called me sweetheart, and he expected me to remember something about a date?

“Yes, really. A Brooklyn-style date.”

“I guess maybe you’re right,” I sighed languidly, opening my eyes. I unclasped my hands from around Mike’s neck, finger by finger, and released him, or semi-released him, kissing his jaw with tiny kisses from his earlobe to his chin, and then down his neck, while he fumbled for his wallet. His neck alone was a place a person could kiss all day without getting bored, I thought as I pried myself reluctantly away. I felt that if I broke the contact between his skin and my skin some rending, terrible thing would happen.

Mike seemed to feel the same way because he managed to get his wallet open and pay the cabdriver with only one hand, while holding me very tightly with the other. All the way from the cab to the entrance to the Louvre, he hugged me hard with both his arms clasped around my shoulders, while he kissed the top of my head, which is not an easy way to walk, but in Paris who notices? We had to separate at the escalator, but we still managed to hold hands, and at the bottom we
peeled off to one side and stood up against the first wall we came to and kissed a lot more, until it became a clear choice of stopping or making an outrageous spectacle of ourselves in full sight of everyone visiting the major tourist attraction in all of Europe.

“Just a whirl, darling,” Mike muttered in my ear, “we’ll just give it a quick whirl since we’re here.”

We managed to stagger over to a brilliantly lit display that showed us what was exhibited in the 198 galleries of the Louvre, and exactly how to get to each one of them.

“We could try the Crypt of the Sphinx,” he suggested. “There shouldn’t be anybody there. Or what about the Mastaba of Aakhtihotep, a Fifth-Dynasty sepulchre? Place probably only gets ten visitors a year.”

“Neither of them
sound
like the Louvre. They might just as well be in the antiquities department of the Met,” I pointed out with what small wits I retained. “We’ll have made this whole trip without getting any authentic Louvre lore to prove we really came, in case anybody asks, and you know they eventually might.”

“But think how cozy it sounds. A crypt, a sepulchre—we’ll have them to ourselves.”

“Mike,” I said warningly, seeing exactly what he had in mind.

“There’s no law against it, darling, darling, darling. I’ve simply got to kiss you some more.”

“Me too, but not rolling around on the floor of a public building,” I said regretfully. “Look, why don’t we head straight for the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace and get them over with quickly. That’s what people expect you to see in the Louvre.”

“We’d better do the Mona Lisa too. That’s the biggie.”

Nothing
in the Louvre is quick, believe me, unless you’ve brought a skateboard. Those illuminated maps that make it all look so simple are diabolically deceptive. By the time we’d negotiated the trek from the Venus de Milo up the two staircases that led to the Winged Victory and then another staircase up and
through a large gallery to the Mona Lisa, we’d had more than a major museum experience. We took one look at the large, jostling crowd blotting out what must be the Mona Lisa and turned away, down a long, wide, picture-hung, windowed corridor overlooking the Seine. It was called the Grande Galerie and it led, according to a sign, to an exit.

“Now I know why I never came here before,” Mike said. “Call me a Philistine but this place is just too big. If you spend more than an hour in a museum your brain stops taking in and appreciating the things you see, and we’re already overdue.” We both walked quickly in the direction of the arrow.

“Why, oh why, didn’t I listen to your suggestion about the Crypt of the Sphinx,” I cried regretfully.

“Because you’re a lady with ladylike delicacy and I respect you for it.”

“I am? You do?”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t want you to keep it up for too long.”

“When do you want me to stop?”

“I’ll tell you, in fact I won’t have to tell you, you’ll know.”

“Stop talking to me like that. It makes me dizzy and we’re not out of here yet.”

“Dizzy? Head-whirling, fall-down dizzy? Want me to carry you?”

“No, crazy dizzy. Like this.” I took the palm of his hand and pressed my mouth to it and then quickly tasted it with my tongue. He jumped two feet straight up.

“Don’t
do
that!”

“I was just showing you exactly what I meant.”

“That wasn’t fair … unless you’re ready for serious trouble, in front of all these guards. Oh, Frankie, darling, do you believe this hall? It’s fucking
endless,”
he said as we walked as quickly as possible, reading the names on the walls.