“Stop it! All your invisible makeup will run and suddenly you’ll be a lot more visible!” said Sami as the tears dropped down my cheeks.
I’m not what you would call a pretty crier.
“Okay,” said Sami. “Okay. I shall make you a martini. A very small one.”
His idea of a very small martini was my idea of a swimming pool, but I was grateful. We sat out on the balcony looking at the darkening sky—me with acute trepidation—and he listened very sweetly to the whole story, shaking his head at the right moments.
“Well, you see,” he said eventually, “it was a good thing, because it got you to Paris.”
I shook my head. “You’re telling me it was worth losing two toes to get here?”
Sami looked thoughtful.
“I lost my entire family,” he said.
“They’d be so proud of you,” I said, meaning it.
He laughed. “They’d be so proud of a successful accountant in Tangiers with wives and many, many children and a courtyard of his own, eh? Not this.”
“Well, I’m proud of you,” I said, clinking my glass to his.
“You don’t even have the balls to have sex,” he said, but he was joking, and he clinked back, just as the heavy old doorbell rang.
“Oh God!” I shouted, leaping up and spilling the rest of my drink so some of it went on me. Great, I would smell like I’d been in the bar all afternoon.
“Put your shoes on!” shouted Sami.
“Yes, yes,” I said, grabbing my bag. I couldn’t figure out if it was practical or slutty to pack a fresh pair of underpants and a toothbrush, so I’d zipped them away in the bottom compartment.
“J’arrive,” I called into the intercom, then went to the door. I turned back just as I was leaving. Sami was standing, silhouetted on the balcony, finishing up his drink, surveying his Parisian domain as if deciding which arrondissement he would terrorize that evening.
“Thank you,” I said to him.
“De rien,” he said, flashing me his bright grin. “Now, enjoy yourself or I really will introduce you to an amputee fetishist.”
“I’m gone, I’m gone,” I said.
- - -
I felt rather than saw the door on the first landing open, just for a second. It was the old woman who’d gotten so annoyed when I’d rung her bell by mistake. Didn’t she ever go out?
“Bonsoir,” I said boldly, trying to give myself a confidence I didn’t feel, but there was no reply and the door closed on me in the dark, leaving me feeling unnerved. I threw off the feeling and headed out onto the street.
Laurent was standing there in a casual but expensive-looking soft worn-in yellow shirt and jeans. He didn’t smile when he saw me, but instead looked at me rather appraisingly, as if noticing me for the first time. I tried not to blush under his gaze.
“You look nice,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said, wishing he was as nervous as I was. But he didn’t seem to be at all.
“Are you hungry?”
I was not hungry. I would have quite liked to get very quickly pissed, but I knew, I knew that wouldn’t help. This wasn’t giving Dave Hempson a blowie in his mum’s Vauxhall sierra.
I shook my head.
“Then do you fancy a walk? I’ve been hunched over a stove all day.”
- - -
I needn’t have worried about the ballerina shoes. They were light, but they fitted me beautifully, even on the toe end of my right foot, and were like walking on air. We crossed the Pont Neuf and headed down to the Louvre. As we did, old, wrought iron lampposts came on, pop pop pop over our heads, and the long chains of fairy lights that lined the Seine sprang into life, glowing in the dusk.
“I love this time of night,” said Laurent. “All the commuters have gone, all the day-trippers have vanished back toward…well, wherever day-trippers go, I have no idea.”
It was true. Above the scent of exhaust pipes and hanging baskets and garlic sizzling in the pans of a thousand restaurant kitchens was the sense of excitement, of the night beginning. Chatting about food, and restaurants, and bits and pieces, we turned into the grand place, and I nearly stumbled. Laurent proffered me his elbow without even thinking about it, and I took it. We walked under a huge stone arch, and I couldn’t help but gasp; even though I knew about it and had seen it in films of course, I’d never seen it before: we were in Place du Louvre. The huge glass pyramid—with another, slightly farther away—was lit up in glittering white and silver, as if it had drifted into the eighteenth century from outer space.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” said Laurent. At this time of the evening, the museum was long shut, and there were only a few people dotted here and there, taking pictures of the fountains and the amazing building of the Louvre itself. The rest of the huge space felt like ours. Above us, the stars were popping out.
“It makes me so proud, all of this.”
“You’re a proud kind of person though, aren’t you?” I said, teasing him.
He shrugged. “No.”
“Well, what kind of a person are you?”
“Well, I am dedicated, you know. I care about my work very much. Yes, I am proud of it. I want it to be the best, the best it can possibly be. Otherwise, what’s the point, you understand?”
I nodded.
“You feel this too?”
I thought about it. I did see—or felt—since I’d arrived here that I did understand the desire for excellence, for living in a way that didn’t settle for good enough. But I’d also seen what it cost—father and son not talking, Thierry ill, Alice.
“I only ever wanted to be happy,” I said quietly. It sounded like a low aspiration sometimes. Laurent shot me a sideways glance.
“Are you?”
I looked at him, wondering. Then I turned around and looked at the glorious vista spread out in front of us. I advanced toward the pyramid, my arms outstretched.
“I think you can be happy in Paris,” I said.
“Be careful!” shouted Laurent suddenly. “You’ll set off the alarms! They’ll think you’re here to steal the Mona Lisa.”
“Really?” I said, jumping back, slightly panicked.
“Uhm, no,” he said. “But I like seeing you startled.”
I turned toward him.
“Your mouth goes open like this—‘o’—and your eyes pop open,” he said. “I like it. I…”