The Ingredients of Love (20 page)

Aurélie blushed. “Aha,” she said. “And you?”

“Do you mean why such an enchanting man as me isn't married yet? Or what faults do I have?”

Aurélie took a sip of red wine and a smile crossed her face. She leaned her elbow on the table and looked at me over her clasped hands. “The faults,” she said.

“Hm,” I replied. “That's what I feared. Let me think.” I took her hand and counted on her fingers. “Eating, drinking, smoking, leading beautiful women astray … is that enough for a start?”

She took her hand away from me and gave an amused laugh. She nodded, and I looked at her mouth, wondering what it would be like to kiss it.

And then at last we were no longer talking about Robert Miller, but about us, and this rather conspiratorial meeting became something like a real date. When the waiter came to the table to ask, “Can I get you anything else?” I ordered another bottle of wine. I was just beginning to feel in seventh heaven when something happened that was not foreseen on my romantic menu.

Even today I still ask myself if the mysterious author would not have sunk into obscurity with me taking his place if that absurd old woman hadn't suddenly sat down at our table.

“Un, deux, trois—ça c'est Paris!”
A dozen good-natured waiters had gathered to one side of the hall in a semicircle. They bellowed those words at the top of their voices. It sounded like a battle cry, and rang out at La Coupole every evening (sometimes several times). Because among the crowd of guests there's always one whose birthday it is.

Half the room looked up as the waiters marched across in a line to the table where the birthday girl was sitting. They were carrying a gigantic cake on which a whole lot of sparklers were spraying out light like a little fireworks display. It was a table two rows behind us, and Aurélie Bredin, who was facing in that direction, craned her neck to get a better look.

And then she suddenly stood up and waved.

I turned around in astonishment and saw a gleeful old woman in a garish purple dress sitting alone at a table with a massive dish of oysters in front of her. She shook every waiter's hand. And then she looked in our direction and waved delightedly back.

“Do you know that lady?” I asked Aurélie Bredin.

“Yes, of course!” she cried enthusiastically, and waved once more. “That's Mrs. Dinsmore. We met yesterday, at the cemetery—isn't that
terribly
funny?”

I nodded and smiled. I didn't find it all that terribly funny. It was half past ten, and I had the uncomfortable (but justified) feeling that the pleasant twosome at our table was now at an end.

A few minutes later I made the acquaintance of Mrs. Dinsmore, an eighty-five-year-old American, who floated over to us in a cloud of Opium. She was the widow of a conductor, mother of a bridge-building engineer son in South America, grandmother of three blond-curled grandchildren, and muse to numerous artists who all had one thing in common: They had all celebrated wild parties in La Coupole with Mrs. Dinsmore. And they were all already pushing up daisies.

There are some people who sit down at a table and take over the conversation straightaway. Gradually the others stop talking, every other theme gutters out like a dying candle, and after five minutes at the latest everyone else is listening spellbound to the stories and anecdotes of these powerful personalities, who operate with broad gestures and are undeniably of great entertainment value—but who can hardly ever be stopped.

I'm afraid Mrs. Dinsmore was someone like that.

After the eighty-five-year-old with her silver-gray waves and her bright red lips sat down between us exclaiming, “What a delightful surprise, child—let's drink a Bollinger to that!” I no longer had even the slightest opportunity to attract Aurélie Bredin's attention.

The champagne was immediately brought over to our table in a silver cooler brimming with ice cubes, and it was impossible to ignore the fact that Mrs. Dinsmore was the absolute darling of Alain, Pierre, Michel, Igor, and whatever the other waiters' names were. Suddenly our table was the center of attention for the serving staff of La Coupole. And our peace was at an end.

After two glasses of champagne I abandoned myself to the charisma of the old lady, who was talking uninterruptedly, and watched with fascination the feathers on her little purple cap, which bobbed up and down with her every movement. Aurélie Bredin, who hung on Mrs. Dinsmore's every word and seemed to be enjoying herself a great deal, glanced over at me every time we both started laughing at the comic experiences of the extraordinary old lady. The more we drank, the funnier it got, and after a while I was having as much fun as everyone else.

Occasionally Mrs. Dinsmore interrupted her amusing monologue to point out other guests in the hall (for an old lady she had astonishingly good eyesight) and to ask us if we had ever celebrated a birthday in La Coupole (“You must definitely do it sometime, it's always great fun!”). Then she wanted to know when our birthdays were (and at least in that way I found out that Aurélie Bredin's birthday was coming up soon, on December sixteenth) and clapped her tiny hands in delight.

“April the second and December the sixteenth,” she repeated. “Aries and Sagittarius. Two fire signs—they go together wonderfully!”

I didn't know particularly much about astrology, but in this matter I was obviously glad to admit that she was right. Mrs. Dinsmore herself had been born on the last day of Scorpio. And Scorpio women were quick-witted and dangerous in equal measure.

La Coupole was gradually emptying—it was only at our table that the partying, drinking, and laughter carried on: Mrs. Dinsmore was obviously enjoying one of her more sparkling moments.

“It was at this very table—or was it that one over there, well, it doesn't matter—that I used to sit with Eugène to celebrate my birthday,” gushed Mrs. Dinsmore as one of the waiters poured us more champagne.

“Eugène who?” I inquired.

“Ionesco, of course. Who else?” she answered impatiently. “Oh, he was sometimes indescribably funny—not only in his plays! And now he's there in Montparnasse, poor thing! But I visit him from time to time.” She giggled dreamily. “I can still remember precisely—this evening I've forgotten exactly which birthday it was—it happened twice, can you imagine it? Twice…!”

She looked at us with her dark little eyes that shone like two buttons. “… that a clumsy waiter spilt red wine over Eugène's light gray jacket. And do you know what he said? He said, ‘Now I think of it, I never really liked the color of that jacket.'” Mrs. Dinsmore threw her head back and gave a high-pitched laugh, the little feathers on her head bobbing as if she were about to take off and fly away.

After this little excursion into the private life of Eugène Ionesco, which would surely not be found in any biography, Mrs. Dinsmore turned back to me.

“And you, young man? What do you write? Aurélie told me you were a
writer
! A wonderful profession,” she added without waiting for my reply. “I must say I always found writers a bit more interesting than actors or painters.” Then she leaned over to Aurélie, put her red lips quite close to Mademoiselle Bredin's delicate ear, which, as I noticed only then, stuck out a little, and said, “My child, he is definitely the right one for you.”

Aurélie laughed aloud, putting her hand in front of her mouth, and her outburst of hilarity bewildered me, as did the old lady's assumption that I was a writer—damn it, I
was
a writer, even if not a writer of great literature, and anyway I was definitely the right one. And so I relaxed and joined in the two ladies' laughter.

Mrs. Dinsmore raised her glass. “Do you know what? I like you, my boy,” she declared, and patted my trouser leg with her hand, on which she wore rings with strikingly large stones. “Just call me Liz.”

And when “Liz,” Mademoiselle Bredin, and I left La Coupole half an hour later than all the other diners—all the waiters bidding us a hearty farewell—to share a taxi that—Mrs. Dinsmore decided (“It's my birthday, and I'll pay for a taxi, that would be so much nicer!”)—dropped off first Mademoiselle Bredin, who, like Mrs. Dinsmore, sat next to me in the taxi (I was between the two ladies) and occasionally let her head with its sweet-smelling hair fall against my shoulder, then me, and finally the birthday girl, who lived somewhere in the Marais, I had to admit that the evening had turned out differently from what I had hoped.

But it was without question the most fun evening I had ever had.

*   *   *

A week later I was sitting on Sunday afternoon with Adam Goldberg on the red leather seats of the Café des Éditeurs, telling him about Aurélie Bredin and all the strange turns that my life had taken in the past few weeks.

We were actually waiting for Sam, who had arrived with Adam but had gone off to the Champ de Mars to buy light-up models of the Eiffel Tower for his children.

“Oh boy,” said Adam when I told him about my evening in La Coupole and Silvestro's faked phone calls. “You're skating on thin ice, I hope you realize. Couldn't you lie a little less?”

“Says who?” I retorted. “Let me just remind you once more—this whole business with the pseudonym and the author's photo was your idea.” I wasn't used to seeing my otherwise so imperturbable friend looking worried.

“Hey, Adam, what's up?” I asked. “You normally take every chance to tell me not to get my knickers in a twist, and now you're banging the big moral drum.”

Adam made a placatory gesture. “Fair enough, fair enough. But before it was just a professional matter. Now the whole thing's getting personal, and I don't like it.” He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “I think it's dangerous, my friend. I mean, she's a woman, André. She has feelings. What do you think would happen if she found out that you've been leading her by the nose? That you've deliberately deceived her? She'll make a hell of a fuss, come into the office and weep and wail to Monsieur Monsignac—and then you really can pack your things.”

I shook my head. “My plan's absolutely watertight,” I said. “Aurélie will never find out the truth—unless you tell her.”

Since my evening in La Coupole I'd had enough time to think about what I was going to do next. And I'd decided that Mademoiselle Bredin would, in the not too distant future, receive another letter from Robert Miller in which he would suggest a date for them to dine together in Le Temps des Cerises. I also knew exactly when that date would be: Aurélie Bredin's birthday.

But this time the letter would have to come directly from England. And that's why I'd asked Adam to take it with him after the reading and put it in the mail in London. I still hadn't thought of a reason why Robert Miller would then fail to turn up again in the end. I just knew that I would be there that evening—for some reason I would have to invent. And no matter what, it was clear that this latest cancelation, which would happen at very short notice, could not be passed on by me this time.

That would look just a bit too suspicious.

As I now sat with Robert Miller's English agent in the café-restaurant where editors and publishers like to meet to talk about high—and not so high—literature under the bookshelves on the walls, an idea shot into my mind that began to appeal to me more and more. But it would need to be refined a bit more to get Adam to play along. So I held my tongue and listened to my friend's objections.

“What if she finds out about the reading and comes to it? We can't bring my brother into the loop of your mendacious amorous intrigues. Sam had enough of a problem not telling his wife the real reason for his trip to Paris.” He looked at me. “And before you ask—no, he hasn't removed his beard. That's because my sister-in-law thinks the beard is very nice. She might have thought that he'd found a mistress, and Sam was not prepared to risk that.”

I nodded. “Okay, granted. Anyway there's nothing wrong with an author growing a beard, is there? But he mustn't blab. He hasn't got a wife. Because he lives alone with his little dog, Rocky—you remember?—in his silly bloody cottage.”

(Adam had been particularly proud of inventing Rocky when we'd been writing the author's biography. “Such a sweet little dog is always a draw,” he had said. “Women will flock to read about it!”)

“You can tell him all about that yourself soon enough,” responded Adam, and looked at the clock. “Where's he got to anyway?”

We both automatically looked at the door, but Sam Goldberg was taking his time. Adam sipped his Scotch and leaned back on the red leather cushions.

“It's also a pain that you can't smoke anywhere here anymore,” he said. “I wouldn't have expected you French to give in that easily.
Liberté toujours,
eh?”

“Yeah, it's a real shame,” I responded. “Does your brother know what's in the novel?”

Adam nodded. “So”—he returned to the cause of his apprehension—“what will you do if Mademoiselle Bredin gets wind of the reading?”

I laughed condescendingly. “Adam,” I said. “She's a cook. She has only ever read one book, and that chanced to be my book. She's not the kind of person who normally goes to readings,
tu vois
? And anyway, the whole thing's taking place in a small bookshop on the Île Saint-Louis. That's not her normal stomping ground. And even if she reads the interview in
Le Figaro,
it can't appear until the day after at the earliest and by then—
voilà!
—it will all be over.”

For the first time in my publishing career I was glad that the marketing in this case had been “suboptimal,” as Michelle Auteuil had put it. “But the better-situated bookstores were already all booked, and although Robert Miller is admittedly not totally unknown he isn't a crowd-puller that the bookstores would fight to get hold of—at least, not yet.” She looked regretfully through her black-framed glasses. “Given the circumstances we can count ourselves lucky to get the Librairie Capricorne. The bookseller is a charming old gentleman who keeps reordering batches of the novel, and he has his regular customers. The bookstore will be really full.”