The Radiant City (33 page)

The Hotel Lutetia is on the corner, the entrance has a large striped awning and white planters with topiary puffball trees guard each side of the door. A red carpet covers the steps.

“You want to take a look in the lobby?” says Matthew, and she nods.

He takes her elbow and leads her up the stairs, chatting away to Joseph about the hotel. It was used, he says, to house the Jews who were brought back to France after surviving the concentration camps. At the entrance a man in a top hat holds the door open for them. His eyes skim smoothly over Saida, but trip slightly on Joseph.

Inside the revolving doors, the lobby is a gleaming place, with black-and-white tiles on the floor, red velvet chairs, more potted trees entwined by white roses, highly polished wooden columns and gold-and-glass display cases full of jewellery, shoes, handbags and pens. The cases stretch out in a long hall to the left and it seems infinite to Saida, like a mirror facing another mirror. In front of them the imposing reception area beckons, a curving desk of mahogany in front of three sets of dual columns in some sort of pale burled wood. Lush orchids grace the tables.

They walk past well-dressed men in dark suits and women who smell of expensive perfume. Two women stand near each other, talking into cell phones. None of these people pay them the slightest bit of attention.
We might be anyone. We might belong here.
Matthew leads them through the hotel bar, opulent with black-and-white carpet in an intricate mosaic design, and the same red velvet chairs. Groups of three and four sip cocktails and Saida notices a woman in jeans and black stiletto shoes with rhinestone buckles smoking a cigar. Joseph cranes his head to look at the ceiling, which is inlaid wood of different varieties and structured in such a way as to look almost three-dimensional. Mirrors in gold frames line the walls and soft lighting gives the room an air of quiet elegance and comfort provided. Joseph adjusts the collar of his jacket, turning it up around his ears, and looks sidelong in the mirror at the effect.

Through another door and they are in the brasserie. Having come through the lobby they are now at the main entrance of the restaurant, which is across from the bank of windows facing the street. The tables all have white cloths and the banquettes are black leather. Again, mirrors line the walls, in front of which hang brightly coloured posters in chrome frames. The carpet is red, the colour of ripened summer grapes, as are the leather cushions on the curved wooden chairs. The lights are large frosted globes.

Matthew speaks to a tall girl in a black pantsuit, gives her his name and says they have a reservation. She tells them one of their party has already arrived and asks them to follow her. She leads them to a table in the corner, on a banquette, set for four.

Anthony stands when he sees them, a huge smile on his face. He wears a red tie and white shirt under his leather jacket. “Hey,” he says, “happy birthday, Saida.”

“Technically my birthday was a few days ago,” says Saida, but she smiles.

“Listen, make it last as long as you can.”

They settle themselves and a waiter arrives to take their drink order.

“Oh, champagne, I think. Don’t you?” Matthew looks at her and she can only nod. “Good, champagne it is. And Joseph, what do you want?”

“Coke?” he says.

When the champagne comes, and colas for Joseph and Anthony, they toast Saida and wish her well.

“Have you seen this menu?” says Anthony. “It says the guy who runs this restaurant is Phillipe Renard. He studied at Troisgros in Rouen.”

“Is that good?” Joseph asks.

“Oh, yeah. He won the Prosper Montagné Prize
and t
he Coq Saint-Honoré.” Anthony points to something on the menu. “I know what I’m having.
Dorade
with seasonal vegetables in
pistou
sauce. What about you?”

“The chicken?” says Joseph.

“A good choice. Garlic, thyme. Mashed potatoes. Why not try the snails and mushroom
cassolette
to start?”

“Okay. Sure.”

“I can’t imagine a North American sixteen year old eating snails.” Matthew shakes his head.

“Why not?” Joseph watches Anthony unfold the napkin and put it on his lap, and then he does the same thing.

“We are a squeamish lot. What are you going to have, Saida?”

“It all looks very good. But perhaps the
dorade,
like Anthony? What do you call this in English?”

“Sea bream,” says Anthony.

“What about the figs with goat cheese to start?”

“Yes, fine.”

“What about wine?” says Matthew.

The waiter comes, recommends a wine, and takes their order. Everything around Saida seems to shine and flutter. It is just a brasserie, nothing special, full of tourists in comfortable clothes and a few older Parisians. But to her eyes it sparkles and gleams. A small silver bowl is filled with tiny orange and yellow roses. The tablecloths, clean as bleached sails. Polished wood, chrome, silver. Silverware that is heavy and pleasing in the palm. Delicate wineglasses. The room is a still point from the storm of traffic outside breaking like waves against the curb just on the other side of the window.

When the figs come they are purple and plump and the colour of yellow cream inside, brown seeds a sprinkle of popping texture. The goat cheese is crumbly and dense. Fruit and cheese rest on a bed of bitter greens. Their taste, soft and sweet on Saida’s tongue, leans into expectancy and is not disappointed by the sharp smoke of the
chèvre
cheese. There is fig vinegar on the greens.

“So?” says Anthony. “Taste this, too.” The
cassolette
has arrived in a small earthenware pot with a pastry top. He holds out a fat grey snail atop a mushroom that drips butter and he cups his hand underneath so as not to spot the table. She closes her eyes and takes the meat between her teeth. A little butter dribbles down her chin. The snail is hot and rich and chewy and oozing garlic; the mushroom is a kiss of something almost sweet.

She opens her eyes and grins at Anthony, Matthew and Joseph, who laugh at her. She gives Anthony and Joseph a piece of fig, a mouthful of cheese and they groan with pleasure.

“You know, I think I might go back to New York one day and maybe open a restaurant of my own,” Anthony says. “Like this, you know? Something really classy, but not so classy you can’t just go and hang out with your family, right? Someplace that’s about the food, not the glitz, you know?”

“I could be your sous-chef,” says Joseph. “New York. The Bronx, yes!”

“The Bronx? No. Manhattan, my man. But sous-chef? Step back, now. I just don’t see you in that capacity.”

“No?”

Anthony punches him on the shoulder. “Naw, baby. You’re more an out-front kind of guy. You can be my partner. Handle all the money and such. I’m not so good at that. Yes, sir. I can see it now. ‘Joe and Tony’s Brasserie Fran
ç
ais.’ I am dead serious about this. What do you think? Are you with me? Take you too, Mom. Naturally we’d need your expertise, since you are already an experienced restauranteur. Man, I could do it up right.” Anthony leans back and rests his arms along the back of the banquette. Without meaning to, he brushes the head of the woman at the next table, who wears her silvery hair in a rigid swoop of hairspray and bobby pins.

“
Oh
!
Alors
!
”
she says and makes a sucking noise with her teeth. Her companion, a grey-skinned man with broken blood vessels along his cheeks, glares at their party. Rather, not their party. He glares at Anthony. He glares at Joseph.

“Sorry,” says Anthony, patting the lady on the shoulder. “Sorry.”

“
Zut
!”
she says and jerks her shoulder away.

The man continues to glare.

“Do I know you?” says Joseph, in French.

“Joseph!” Saida puts her hand on her son’s arm.

“No?” says Joseph to the man. “Then what are you staring at?”

Saida’s grip tightens. The man blinks slowly and then leans in close to his female companion to say something Saida cannot catch. The woman nods and her lips purse, her eyebrow arches.

“Ah, shit,” says Anthony.

“Fucking racists!,” says Joseph.

“Joseph, please.” Saida looks from Joseph to Anthony to Matthew. She has never seen this expression on Anthony’s face. It frightens her. Such a lovely dinner.

“BHLF,” says Matthew.

“What?” says Joseph. His eyes flash beneath the frown.

“Bald Headed Little Fart. The problem is, it’s gender-specific. Good for the guys only.”

“Not necessarily,” says Joseph, and then he laughs, and Anthony, after a moment, laughs as well.

“How about a little glass of wine for Joseph, even though it’s not his birthday? Mom, what do you say?”

“I say, yes, fine.”

When the main course comes, the couple next to them leave and they all toast their parting. “To BHLF’s past,” says Anthony. A young German couple who smile and say “good evening” take their place.

The fish is like salted honey in a savoury, milky sauce. The vegetables are jewels— emerald asparagus, beans and spinach and bright orange baby carrots. Saida and Joseph share bits of food. Perhaps it is the wine, but Joseph talks more than Saida has heard him speak in weeks. He talks about his friends who live in the
banlieue
, as though he does not remember telling her he had no friends who live there.

“Rashid’s mother is a cleaning lady for these rich women in the 16th, and now she loses half her customers to Portuguese and Filipina cleaning ladies, and they don’t say so, but she knows it’s because they don’t want Arabs around them.” She tries not to interrupt him, not to make him stop speaking. She breaks crusty bread into small pieces, and dips them in the sauce. “There are kids who live in this garage out there. They’re really screwed up. Glue and gasoline all day long. One looks about nine, but he’s almost my age. He won’t live long.”

“No parents?” says Matthew.

“Not that he wants to go home to.”

He talks about the police who won’t go in these neighbourhoods and when they do, maybe once, maybe twice a year, they find all kinds of assault weapons and sometimes even explosives. Saida meets Matthew’s eyes and he winks at her.

“Just because a guy walks down the street without his papers, the
flics
should not have the right to hassle him, heh? What if he just forgot them? A guy should have the right to just forget sometimes without being called a criminal.” He points at Matthew with his fork. “I bet you do not get stopped, checked, do you?”

“Nope, can’t say I do.”

“That is what I mean. It is different for us.” Joseph tilts his head from side to side and cracks his neck. The sound makes Saida twitch. “In my world, just because a guy’s got a record, it doesn’t make him a bad guy.”

“It doesn’t make him a good guy either, you know?” says Anthony.

“What?”

“Everybody in the world’s got it hard one way or the other. Stay mad at the injustice, let go of the resentment. That stuff will give you cancer.”

“You don’t understand,” says Joseph.

Anthony laughs. “Yeah, the black man with the metal plate in his skull doesn’t have a clue. I want the plum tart for dessert, what about you?”

The waiter, tipped off she suspects by Matthew, has put a candle in her tart.

Later, when Saida and Joseph are at home, Joseph looks at her and says, “Do you think Anthony meant it, when he said he’d take me to New York one day?”

Joseph lies on the couch, his arms behind his head. The blanket is pulled up to his waist and he is naked above. The hair under his arms is very thick and there is hair on his chest, a silky thatch over his muscles. His eyes are focused somewhere on the ceiling and he chews his lower lip, the fleshy, slightly misshapen bulge. Saida remembers the fig and thinks that one day very soon, if not already, there will be a girl nibbling on this fruit. It will not be long, she thinks before he moves beyond his mother’s house for ever.
Oh, let him be safe!

“I think Anthony says only things he means. But you mustn’t raise your hopes, Joseph. Sometimes we can’t make things happen no matter how much we want to.”

“I think he means it, too,” says Joseph.

The phone rings at five o’clock in the afternoon.

“Saida,” calls out Anthony, “it’s for you.”

She is up to her elbows in minced lamb. “Can you take a message?” She never gets phone calls, unless it is her father or Ramzi, and they are both here. It can only be someone selling something she does not want.

“They say they have to talk to you. Saida?” Something in his voice makes her look up. “I think you better take it.”