Spring Collection (25 page)

“What kind of chaperone are you?” he said, looking at me accusingly.

“A total failure.” I threw up my hands in a gesture refusing to be conscience-stricken. “Chaperoning was never a primary career move for me in the first place. I don’t have the basic training for keeping tabs on three healthy but not necessarily obedient young animals.”

“This whole thing is like working with a film company on location,” Mike said in high irritation. “Take actors off a set, transport them away from home, put them in a hotel and they behave as if their normal lives don’t exist, as if nothing they do has any consequences. Once they don’t have to sleep in their own beds, no holds are barred—the bastards turn into wild animals roving the range. It’s an attack of mass hysteria, focused on the genitals.”

“But even wild animals, unlike models, behave in predictable ways,” I added helpfully. “And a nice peaceful range isn’t Paris. Well, I guess they’ll show up before the Lombardi show even if worst comes to worst.” I took a perverse pleasure in painting things in their darkest colors, in seeming not to care what had happened to my charges. Insouciant was the operative word here. “Chaperone” is a title I particularly dislike.

“Oh, fuck it!” he said in disgust, giving up on the subject. “Want to grab some lunch?”

“I wouldn’t mind. Here or somewhere else?”

“I’ve got to get out of this hotel or I’ll suffocate. Let’s go for a walk and get a sandwich or something. Maybe we can get into the Louvre for an hour. Might as well do
something
useful.” He looked utterly disgruntled.

“Swell. I was actually planning to take April to the Louvre today.”

“This is probably my twentieth trip to Paris and
I’ve never been there yet … something else always comes up.”

“I’ll go get my coat and meet you back here.”

“Wear comfortable shoes,” he said gloomily.

On the way back to my suite I considered the enormous gallantry of his grudging invitation. Lunch with me was obviously the booby prize of Mike Aaron’s wasted day. I didn’t even know why I’d accepted except that I had nothing better to do. I went to the closet to find my coat and unexpectedly met my eyes in the mirror.
Oh, balls!
Who was I kidding? I was as excited as if I were back in high school, I looked as brimful of expectancy as if I were waiting for my first prom date.

I looked at myself in horror. Horror mixed with a kind of thrill. A thrill mixed with a kind of defiance. I was sick and tired of being cast in the character of reliable Frankie-the-twenty-seven-year-old-duenna, something Justine had lumbered me with only a few days ago, thank you very much. Give a dog a name … it wasn’t fair!

It certainly wasn’t the bad-tempered, bad-mannered Mike Aaron of today who got to me, it was the memory of the kid I’d been who would have given anything to take a walk in Paris with the Mike Aaron of her fourteenth year, that much I was certain of. Ah, give yourself a break, I thought. How often does one get to realize an old fantasy, even when it’s been long burnt out?
Go for it!

Quickly I stripped off my clothes and homed in on the Donna Karan black cashmere sweater worn with her black stretch pants, a combination that guaranteed lithesomeness, if there is such a word. It looked a little severe, I thought, studying the result. Almost too thin, if there is such a concept. I needed to balance all that seamless stretch of enticing, classic black with hair. And, thank you Lord! Only yesterday I’d washed my hair and braided it damp so I could pin it up out of the way.

I pulled out the tortoiseshell pins that held up my
topknot and brushed my hair out as quickly as I could considering how thick it was, all in ripples from being braided.

Oh, most definitely, yes!
Maybe Justine was right about my hair, maybe I had been neglecting a natural asset. What’s more, this was a look Martha Graham herself wouldn’t have disapproved of. She’d been known to use her hair in her dances as if it were a fifth limb. My long camel’s hair coat with the red shearling lining, worn swinging open, its belt dangling, a red cashmere muffler flung around my neck, the ends trailing down my back, and my favorite, well-polished, low-heeled black boots that reached to my knees, completed the outfit. The beauty part was that although the finished effect was intensely dramatic, there was nothing flashy or dressy or come-hither about the whole getup, even though I’d spent another ten minutes on my eye makeup. I looked like a dangerous highwaywoman on a supreme hair day, yet all I’d done was dress sensibly for a walk and a sandwich.

I stepped out of the elevator and walked right up to Mike. I vamped a wicked little rumba hip movement ever so slightly as I walked, a maneuvre no one but a brilliantly suspicious dance teacher could have noticed. He didn’t recognize me. “Ready to go?” I asked.

“Frankie?”

“Sorry it took so long. Gabrielle was on the phone and I had to lie a lot.”

“Frankie!”

I looked at him with a hint of lofty amusement, as if he were a younger brother. “Forget something?”

“Huh?” His expression was startled to the core.

Really, men are inarticulate, poor things.

“I asked if you’d forgotten anything,” I said patiently, pulling on my gloves and smoothing the fingers as meticulously as Marlene Dietrich ever had in any of her movies.

“No. I—never mind.” As we walked out of the hotel I had the strong impression that unless I was
totally mistaken—and I’m not in the habit of making certain basic errors—I had rid myself of that chaperone tag for once and for all. Even if you give a dog a bad name, every dog has her day, and today was mine.

“Which way?” Mike asked, gesturing up and down the avenue.

“Let’s nip down the Rue Byard and go straight to the river,” I suggested. “It’s a good shortcut, I’m in a mood to walk by the Seine.”

“You seem to know Paris pretty well.”

“I used to come here a lot with my first husband,” I lied exquisitely, walking briskly, which is almost impossible when you’re hearing a waltz in your head. Ever see anybody march in three-quarter time? It can’t be done, but Paris brought out my inner waltz. Could it be a Zen thing?

“First husband?” he asked curiously. “Anybody I know?”

“Slim Kelly.”

“The sportswriter?” he asked, incredulous and impressed.

Now why is it that men react that way? Status by insemination? Do men have any idea how gross their thought processes are? I could have been married to Ted Koppel and they wouldn’t have as much respect as they did for that riffraff, that cur, Slim, a living legend, as he had rarely failed to remind me.

“Yep.”

“If Slim Kelly was your first husband, who was your second?”

“I haven’t met him yet. But I’ve only been divorced a little over a year, it stands to reason that there’ll be a second.”

“And a third?”

“Time will tell,” I flung over my shoulder as I zoomed up the Cours Albert Premier, headed for the Place de la Concorde.

“Jesus, Frankie, do you have to walk so fast?” Mike complained.

“You said you were suffocating in the hotel. I thought you needed a brisk head-clearing walk.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to
run
past the most exciting view in the world.”

“Whatever you say,” I slowed down. “You may be a little out of shape.”

He glared at me, or at least he started to glare at me, but the combination of my hair and my superior grin—did I forget to say that my teeth are as great for teeth as my feet are for feet?—stopped him in mid-glare.

“Don’t start with me,” was all he said. We continued to walk upriver, while on the other side of the stone quay the Seine, powerful and determined, made its way toward the channel. Across the river lay one of the great Parisian perspectives, punctuated by the Eiffel Tower. The parade of classic buildings, one more beautiful than the next, all of them low and many shades of ancient grey, was dominated as in no other city I’ve ever known, by a great, blowing freedom of sky. I had the same carefree feeling here as I had walking on the boardwalk in Coney Island, although here I traded the sweep of white sand and the ocean beyond for architecture. Fair enough, so long as I didn’t have to choose between them, I thought, as I hit my stride and walked on getting into a zone of pure pleasure.

“Aren’t you hungry yet?” Mike asked.

I stopped and looked around. On the other side of the street was the bird market, just ahead of us was the Ile de la Cité and the towers of Notre-Dame. That meant that somehow we’d managed to walk right
past
the Louvre, which is like overlooking the Pentagon.

“I could become hungry, now that you mention it. Funny, the last thing I think of in Paris is food.”

“So I’ve noticed. If you don’t watch out, you’ll get as skinny as the girls.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I’ll tell you, if you’ll just stop this marathon. There’s a place to eat across the street and that’s where we’re going.”

“Whatever you say … big … guy.”

“Watch it!”

“Touchy, aren’t you?”

“Just hungry.”

We settled down in a glassed-in terrace of a tiny sidewalk restaurant called Le Bistroquet. I looked at the eloquent menu of hearty country fare.

“They don’t seem to have heard of sandwiches here,” I said.

“That was just a figure of speech.”

“Like ‘zaftig’?” I asked, studying the menu.

“I knew it! That’s why you’re so snippy, isn’t it? Come on, admit it, you’ve never forgiven me for calling you ‘zaftig.’ Frankie, that was a compliment!”

“Not where I come from, airball.”

“Zaftig—voluptuous, yummy, good in the hands, something to grab onto on a cold and stormy night, sexy, fuckable, for Christ’s sake.
Fuckable!”

“Stop screaming.”

“Didn’t I just say you’d better not get too skinny?” He pounded on the table. “I meant it, damn it! I married a model once, nobody wore clothes better than she did, but Jesus, there was no comfort factor there, no room for cuddling, not with those elbows. Her hip bones were like swords, her pelvis could give you a serious bruise in a delicate place, and there was no joy at her bosom—it was before implants.”

“So why did you marry her?”

“Damned if I know. In bed she was like a praying mantis made out of iron, a very temporary turn-on. I was just a kid and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll bet anything your second wife was another skinny model. Photographers never learn.”

“I never married again.”

“Smart move.” Break my heart, he didn’t.

“So do you agree to forget about my calling you … zaftig?”

“You remind me of Slim Kelly. He used to call a pizza a ‘Guinea Pie’ and he insisted that I shouldn’t get upset because when he was a kid, Guinea Pie was shorthand for the best food in the world. He just wouldn’t understand that I objected to the expression on principle.”

“I promise never to say ‘zaftig’ again. If.”

“If?”

“You never say ‘airball’ again.”

“Oh, Mike, I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize that
bothered
you. It’s ancient history, after all. Dearie me, I didn’t mean to be tactless.”

“Look, Frankie,” he said, gritting his teeth, “there’s an airball in every shooter’s life. Bill Bradley says that the hardest thing he’s ever had to do in his life was to forget missing the last shot in the 1971 Eastern Conference finals because for the next
twenty
years cabdrivers reminded him of it. That’s United States
Senator
Bill Bradley!”

“Are you trying to tell me that nobody’s perfect?” I asked incredulously.

“You
are
an interesting bitch, aren’t you?”

“I was wondering if you’d ever notice. Schnoz and all.”

“Ah, shit!”

“I forgive you, I forgive you,” I said hastily, laughing helplessly at the expression on his face. My laugh told him how okay it was. “I can’t listen to another apology and another explanation of how aristocratic my nose is. For the record, I have always adored my nose and fully understood its natural distinction. Got that, Mike?”

“Sometimes I sound like a gold-plated asshole,” he muttered.

“Elegantly put. Shall we order?”

There’s a funny kind of moment that happens when two people who’ve had a background of mutual put-downs decide to declare a truce. It’s an awkward
and silent moment while both of them wonder what they’re going to talk about from now on, since they’ve abandoned the mutual hostility that fueled their relationship.

Mike and I buried ourselves in the menus, frowning dramatically, miming the difficulty of choosing among so many possibilities, pondering the potential of the Bistroquet’s kitchen as if we were two restaurant critics.

“Have you any ideas?” he asked finally.

“I thought, maybe, the stew?”

“Which stew?”

“That’s the problem, there seem to be three of them. Do you have a clue?” I asked.

“A steak and French fries, can’t go wrong.”

“Same for me, but no fries.”

“Just a steak on a plate?”

“With some … green beans?”

“You’ve got it.” He ordered in the kind of French we’d both learned at Lincoln.

“Wine?” he asked.

“Yes, please, a glass of red,” I answered. I never drink at lunch, but what the hell.

After the waiter filled our glasses, he held his up. “Here’s to playing hooky,” he said, gesturing out at the busy street just beyond the glass of the terrace. “If you’re going to do it, this is the place.”

“Is it ever,” I agreed fervently.

“Did you ever actually play hooky?” he asked after we’d clinked our glasses.

“Once, but I told my mother in advance so she wouldn’t worry if the school called to find out what had happened to me.”

“You must have been one reckless, rebellious kid.”

“Yeah.” I giggled at the idea. “In my next life I’m coming back as Madonna. But in this one I was a pussy cat, a good little modern dancer pussy cat.”

“So what happened? How come you’re not still dancing?”

“In my third year at Juilliard I had a really bad fall
and wrecked my knees beyond repair. You can dance with bleeding feet but not with bad knees.”