Wherever There Is Light (31 page)

Kendall was curious about his new interest and brought it up on the afternoon they visited Sacré-Cœur. In the rainy light the houses below the top of Montmartre were gray and brown with orange chimney pots, and after Julian commented that it looked exactly like the print of the van Gogh painting that Kendall had hung in her Greenwich Village apartment, it began to rain harder, and they ducked into a café for coffee and
macarons
.

“You're becoming an art connoisseur,” Kendall said.

She had intended it as casual observation, but he didn't react that way. Julian glanced into his
café crème
, and when he looked up, his eyes were as impenetrable to her as the darkest spaces in her dreams.

“All the slaughter in the war,” he said. “And people here still believe beauty is important. That it has meaning.”

He appeared confused, and Kendall didn't know how to answer him.

Julian forced a smile. “It makes a cynic feel like he's not as smart as he thinks he is.”

Something changed then for Kendall; she was less euphoric and, strangely, both hopeful and melancholy, the feelings filling her like a cistern overflowing a sun shower. All at once, Kendall saw herself in the past and present, a dewy-eyed girl in the Village and the wised-up woman in Paris. Had she attempted to explain her feelings to Julian, the words would have sounded like sentimental piffle, sadness on the cheap. But that wasn't true. Her feelings were a tangle of joy and longing, because Julian was right there, in the pearly light of a café with the door open and the murmur of raindrops dripping from the trees, and they hadn't run out of time.

“Thayer's having a gathering Saturday,” Kendall said. “Would you like to go?”

“I would.”

By late Saturday afternoon, as Kendall bathed, then washed and dried her hair and deliberated on which dress to wear, she knew, in a barely perceived part of herself, that whatever innocence and distance she had maintained with Julian was vanishing like fog off the Seine. She settled on an A-line frock the color of strawberry ice cream, a black-and-white sash belt that accentuated her figure, and leather, spaghetti-strap sandals. She dabbed a drop of Shalimar on the back of her neck, her throat, her inner wrists, and as an afterthought, between her breasts and the inside of her thighs.

Her afterthought was not an admission that she wanted to sleep with Julian but an application of her long-held conviction that options were a girl's best friend.

This, at least, was the story Kendall was telling herself when Julian called her from the house phone and she rode the elevator to the lobby.

T
hayer's family owns one of the largest insurance companies in Pennsylvania,” Kendall said, as she and Julian went up a graveled path in the Luxembourg Gardens. “At our final high-school assembly, we had to get onstage and announce where we were going to college and our goals. Thayer says she'll be attending Smith, then throws up her arms like she's belting out ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy' and says, ‘My greatest ambition is to reduce my father's net worth.' ”

If Julian was any judge of real estate, Thayer had made significant progress toward her goal by leasing the top floor of a majestic apartment building on the corner of Rue Auguste Comte and Avenue de l'Observatoire. It seemed as if every café denizen of Saint-Germain was drinking, smoking, talking, and laughing under the high, coffered ceilings—from the down-and-outers in their threadbare clothing, who collected cigarette butts from the cobbles, to the better-situated Americans and French in their stylish duds, puffing on Lucky Strikes and Gauloises, and the reek of smoke and unwashed bodies was sweetened by perfume that smelled like liquefied money. There was chintz wallpaper with a cabbage rose motif and Oriental carpets throughout the rooms, and windows with heavy drapes the exact shade of rosé, and Julian saw Arnaud Francoeur sitting with some men on balloon-backed, crimson-velvet chairs that looked as if they had been swiped from under the pointy nose of Louis Quatorze. A bar had been set up on the wrought-iron balcony, and at this golden-blue hour, as Julian got two glasses of chardonnay, he could see over the Gardens to the dark satin ribbon of the Seine.

People were lined up to greet the hostess in the master bedroom with its canopied bed spacious enough for a royal couple and a troupe of their most acrobatic paramours. To the right of the bed Julian saw four rows of four masks—two rows in porcelain, one in plaster, and the other in wood—mounted on the wall. Each mask was of the same demure young woman with short hair parted in the middle. Her eyes were shut as if she were sleeping, and below her cute, pug nose, her lips curved upward in a beatific smile.

Kendall said, “
L'Inconnue de la Seine
.”

“The Unknown Woman of the Seine?”

“In the late nineteenth century, a brokenhearted girl drowned herself in the river. Someone at the morgue was so infatuated by her face he made a cast of it, and pretty soon reproductions of the mask were selling like hotcakes. Thayer collects them. She thinks she looks like the girl.”

“Does she?”

“That's her standing in front of the low table.”

Thayer did bear a vague resemblance to the mask—honey-blond hair cut even with her ears, a button of a nose, and sensuous lips. That was it, though. Her smile was the opposite of demure; it was sexy bordering on lewd and matched her outfit—snug, flesh-colored turtleneck and slacks that emphasized all of the exuberant dips and swells of her body.

The line surged forward, and after Thayer swapped double kisses with Kendall, she said, “I'm so happy you could make it. Simon was supposed to be here, but I can't keep that man in town more than three days in a row. How'd you do it, Kenni-Ann?”

Kendall grimaced, obviously preferring not to rehash her romance with Simon. “I told him I liked his writing.”

Julian couldn't tell if Thayer was picking at Kendall or if she were seeking advice, though he was disinclined to give Thayer the benefit of the doubt. Her eyes were as disconcerting as the eyes of a
tricoteuse
, one of those ladies who celebrated the French Revolution by knitting and watching the guillotine go chop-chop in the Place de la Concorde.

“This is Julian,” Kendall said.

Thayer was shorter than Kendall and stood on her tiptoes to offer Julian her cheeks, and when he bent to kiss her, she rubbed her palms across his chest.

“Arnaud's told me about you,” Thayer said. “You were an interrogator at Nuremberg?”

Julian hadn't discussed Nuremberg with Arnaud Francoeur, but while in Germany he had mingled with Soviet intelligence officers and investigators. He assumed Moscow had a file on him and that Arnaud had read it.

“I was,” Julian said.

“You Jews deserved to get your pound of flesh on that one. Did you have to go to school to learn interrogation?”

Kendall answered her: “Pontius Pilate University.”

Julian swallowed a laugh and recalled how Kendall had stood silently by in the Village when Christina had made some crack about Jews. He liked this better, her speaking up.

Thayer had no reaction, and Julian wasn't sure she had understood the sarcasm. “There's Arnaud,” she said. “Arnaud, we're over here.”

Julian surmised that if Arnaud had mentioned him to Thayer, she also knew of Kendall and Arnaud's affair, which probably accounted for her cunning, raunchy smile. Kendall wanted no part of Thayer's
petit drame
. As Arnaud Francoeur approached—suntanned and in a white linen shirt and trousers so he looked as if he'd just docked at Newport—Kendall turned away and began speaking French to someone behind Julian.

“
Bonsoir
,” Arnaud said, and kissed Thayer's mouth. Julian noticed one of her hands touching the top of his leg and concluded that, whether Simon knew it or not, he was sharing Thayer with Arnaud.

Thayer said, “We were talking about Nuremberg.”

Primarily in English, because Thayer didn't know much French, Arnaud said, “Ah,
les Américains
and their legal finery. Even Churchill wanted to shoot
les Boches
.”

“You had a better idea?” Julian asked.

“
Absolument
. We should have fried the Nazis' innards in butter and served them with a cheerful, semisweet red from Premier Stalin's native Georgia.”

“Stalin likes eating people?” Julian said.

“Premier Stalin likes hungry people to be able to eat.”

“Maybe he shouldn't have murdered millions of his farmers.”

“Boys,” Thayer scolded them. “No fighting. Arnaud, I need to speak with you later, but I have to show Julian something.”

“No fight,” Arnaud said. “Only debate.
Salut, mes amis
.”

Julian watched Arnaud wend back between clusters of men and women.

“Come see these, Julian.”

Thayer stood aside so Julian could step closer to a low, round mahogany table covered with perfume boxes in a variety of exotic shapes and sizes with perforated tops. Some of the boxes were lustrous wood; some were pewter with figurines of goddesses, mermaids, and even Joan of Arc perched on the lids; and some were lazuline, morganite, emerald, ruby, and topaz glass and crowned in gold.

“
Cassolettes
,” Thayer said.

“Very nice.”

“I like that word,
cassolette
.”

Julian drank the rest of his chardonnay. Thayer reached over and curled her fingers around his hand before taking his wineglass and putting it on the table.

“Don't you like the word
cassolette
, Julian?”

He supposed Thayer thought she was being clever.
Cassolette
was also a reference to the natural fragrance of a woman. People were clustering closer to them.

“I practice using ‘
cassolette
' in French class,” she said. “Listen:
J'ai une cassolette agréable
.”

“Thayer,” Kendall said, “what are you doing?”

“Practicing my French.”

“All you need is this.” Kendall then spoke so fast that Julian had difficulty translating the sentence. Or perhaps he couldn't believe that Kendall had said it. But the clusters of men and women around them were snickering.

“What's that mean?” Thayer asked.

“Literally? ‘Bend me over the nearest chair and fuck me like a greyhound bitch.' ”

Thayer was agile—or nutty—enough not to be offended. “I like it,” she said. “Say it slowly.”

“We have to go, sweetie. We'll practice another time.”

With the Luxembourg Gardens closed for the night, they went down the Boul'Mich along the gates with the wind sighing through the trees and the leaves rustling like silk in the darkness.

Julian said, “So that's your friend?”

“Thayer's certifiable. I've known her forever so I'm used to it.”

Julian intended to walk Kendall to her hotel, but he didn't want the evening to end. At the fountain on Place Edmond-Rostand, they crossed the boulevard. The night was cool, so he had an excuse to put his arm around her, and thankfully, she didn't object. As Kendall stepped onto the sidewalk, she tripped, and Julian's hand slid down over taut, round flesh. Once Kendall regained her balance and Julian relocated his hand, she laughed. “Was that fun?”

“It wasn't not fun.”

“Did Thayer's
cassolette
routine get you going?”

“You did. When you told her I went to Pontius Pilate University.”

“You were thinking about Christina? That Christmas Eve at Chumley's?”

He nodded.

Kendall stopped and turned to him. “I knew it.”

Behind them candlelight shone in the windows of a bistro.

Kendall said, “I'm not that girl anymore.”

“You sound like you miss her.”

“Sometimes, but . . .
bof
,
c'est normal
.”

“So is liking the word
cassolette.
”

Kendall smiled as demurely as
L'Inconnue de la Seine
. “I like that word.”

“It's a lovely word.”

“You're thinking about it now—
cassolette
?”

“I am.”

“What're you thinking?”

“Guess.”

“That you want to think about
cassolette
somewhere else?”

“Good guess.”

“At my hotel?”

He replied by kissing her, restrained at first, until her lips parted and her arms went around him and their bodies pressed together, and the sole reason they were able to stop was that even in Paris, where passion was among the loftier virtues, it would have been gauche to make love outside a bistro on the Boulevard Saint-Michel.