The Last Time I Saw Paris (29 page)

She touched the little diamond necklace, asking herself if it had been a guilt present after all.

And why is it, she asked herself wearily, that despite my “self-discovery,” I still veer between thinking I care about him, and thinking what a bastard he is? And yet I do love Dan. Don't I?

 

On their way to Cannes, Lara picked up miniskirts and cute little tops and tiny, very French bikinis for her daughter and Dan's younger sister at a little boutique. She also bought a simple pale-green tank suit that she knew made her look better than she had in the red because it was one whole size larger. She struggled into it in the cramped little dressing room and took a look in the mirror. She felt like a Reubens maiden, all breasts and bottom, still pink from the sunburn. She only hoped that in the next few days the
new green suit and Lancaster suntan lotion would change her into a bronzed South of France sylph, kind of like those makeovers on television where women began as overlarge and unstylish and emerged a half hour later svelte and groomed, with sexy eye makeup and red lips, wearing a flattering new outfit.

They were driving slowly along the coast to St. Maxime and Lara consulted the map anxiously. “Okay, we turned inland here, on the D24. … Oh, no, it's the D25,” she corrected herself quickly. Dan heaved a sigh, swung around, and tried the roundabout again until they finally got the road leading back to the Provençal autoroute.

Soon they were following the
circulation,
winding around roundabouts on the outskirts of Cannes, on their way to the famous Croisette.

The long seafront avenue was lined on one side with grand hotels and couture boutiques and cafes, and on the other with a coarse, sandy
plage,
covered from end to end in awninged beach bars, striped chaise longues, and half-naked bodies. White-jacketed waiters patrolled the beach with trays of tall, cool drinks for the pampered guests from the expensive hotels and bowls of water for their little dogs, who sat panting beneath the sun umbrellas.

Dan snagged a tiny parking spot vacated by a turquoise Harley and they squeezed out of the Renault then strolled hand in hand along the Croisette, eyeing the French matrons glistening with gold jewelry and walking spry little apricot poodles that exactly matched the color of their hair. At backpacking youngsters who munched on slabs of pizza as they walked; at old men sitting on benches, wrinkled and brown from decades of sun, wearing striped matelot T-shirts and espadrilles, with berets tilted rakishly to one side; at harassed
young mothers chasing after children and dogs; and at pale holiday-makers from sun-starved northern countries heading toward the beach clutching brightly colored towels.

Lara spotted the shoes in the window of a boutique near the Carlton. Towering heels, sling-backs, black suede, expensive. The symbol of her new self. Her liberation from the past.

“I have to have them,” she said, remembering Delia. She drew the line at a garter belt, though, and instead bought lacy-topped stockings, the kind that stayed up on their own while cutting off your circulation. Who cares about circulation? she thought, happily pacing the boutique's expensive gray carpet in the stilettos, when
amour
is on your mind.

Getting daring, aren't you?
the voice of her conscience reminded her.
Remember, you are a married woman, forty-five years old, a doctor's wife, mother of two grown-up children. …

No, I'm not, she thought confidently. I'm Lara Lewis and Dan Holland's lover, on vacation in France.

But despite that she still said, “Let's have a drink at the Carlton.” She told herself she had to do it just to remember being with Bill that last time.

It was eleven-thirty in the morning and the terrace was already crowded. Silver-haired men in immaculate linen jackets and panama hats and large gold nautical-looking watches talked business. Their women, expensive in white, their bronze shoulders gleaming, hair sleekly coiffed, dark glasses even larger and darker than Lara's, talked shopping.

Dan ordered Kir royales as they took in the scene.

“It's a long way from Ocean Avenue, Carmel,” he said with a smile.

“They say travel broadens the mind.”

“I enjoy having my mind broadened. I can't wait to tell Hallie that I was sitting here on the terrace of the Carlton right next to Mel Gibson.” Lara craned her neck. “Gotcha.” He laughed, then leaned across the table, gazing into her eyes. “Is this our kind of France?”

His face was so close to hers they could have kissed. “Is this the France we have come to know and love?” Lara whispered back.

They shook their heads. “Then where do we find it?” Dan looked at the urbanized hedonists surrounding them. “Where do we find the backwater with the cold rosé and the nightingales and the
lit matrimonial?”

“Let's go look,” Lara said.

T
he little Renault seemed to pick its own way to the Cap d'Antibes; Lara certainly wasn't navigating and Dan was just going with the flow. Then, quite suddenly, they had left the traffic behind and were on a quiet road running alongside the bay.

On their right were pink stucco villas half hidden behind shady umbrella pines. To their left, a couple of flimsy skiffs floated on the barely rippled sea, the fishermen lounging idly over their rods. The Plage de la Garoupe, a narrow strip of beach tucked into a curve of the bay, was lined with small cafes and beach chairs, and wooden sunbathing platforms built out into the water were scattered with beautiful suntanned bodies.

They stopped at the very last cafe for a glass of rosé and sat happily curling their bare toes in the warm sand. An umbrella shaded them from the midday heat and the air smelled of the sea and the sun, of the sharp, tangy pine trees, of basil and ripe tomatoes, of wine and lemons and suntan oil.

Charmed, they changed into bathing suits and ran to the sea. Tiny silvery fish darted around their ankles as they waded in, then swam toward the horizon. The shore became a mere shadow and there was nothing above them but the clear blue sky and the cry of sea-birds, and nothing beneath them but the depths of crystalline sea. The water felt like cool silk on their
skin as they floated on their backs, lifted by the glass-smooth little waves. There was nothing in this world but the two of them. Dan suddenly snatched her to him and kissed her. They submerged like two sexy seals beneath the waves, then popped up again, spluttering and laughing, and swam lazily back to shore.

Later that afternoon, they were strolling along the tiny back roads of the Cap, past little stores selling groceries and newspapers and batavia lettuces and delicious-smelling rotisserie chickens, and Polar ice cream bars, buckets and spades and beach balls in little nets, when they came across the Auberge du Gardiole, a small, square, purple-wisteria-covered
hotel de famille
set among the pines with a sign that read
Chambre à Louer.

Lara said it was exactly what they were looking for, small, homey, and very French.

They were in luck; a room—the last one—was available. It was on the second floor, and it was small and the bathroom was down the hall, but they loved it. It had a big, soft, downy bed with the long pillow the French call a
traversin,
a rock-hard bolster that might break your neck if you tried to sleep on it and didn't know that the secret was to look in the vast mahogany armoire, where, mysteriously, the pillows were stored. The wallpaper was flowered and so was the bedspread, though in a different pattern, and the tile floors were cool under their feet. This time their window overlooked a large, square terrace hidden beneath an arbor of vines, and all they could see was a carpet of greenery with a glimpse of white tables and tubs of hot-pink geraniums.

Lara turned from the window and melted into Dan's arms. “How could I be hungry again?”

“For me, you mean?”

She shook her head. Not this time. “I'm starving. I need fuel, I need cold rosé wine and dancing.…”

“Dancing.” Dan looked thoughtful. “Let's ask the
patron
where we should go.”

Lara showered, pinned up her hair for coolness, then put on a soft white skirt and a sleeveless black top that bared her shoulders and also showed off the diamond necklace.

She eyed the necklace doubtfully. Wasn't it about time to take it off? After all, Bill wasn't coming back. And neither was she. Not now, when she knew she was in love with Dan. Still, she hesitated. She couldn't quite bring herself to do it. Not yet.

On the hotel terrace, the little white tables and chairs were already filled with their fellow guests, all of whom seemed to be French and who murmured a polite
“Bonsior, m'sieur, ‘dame”
as they passed. Several had little dogs tucked discreetly under the table, all behaving themselves the way French dogs did. Most French hotels, Lara had found, catered for their guests' dogs, charging a supplement and providing special foods if required, and she thought how Dex would have been wild, yapping and racing around and causing mayhem. All of a sudden, she missed him terribly.

They drove into the old town of Antibes, clustered at the foot of the ramparts overlooking the beautiful Bai des Anges, a dreamy old fishing village with palm trees and plane trees, dusty
boules
courts and steeply sloped cobbled streets and a central
place.
There were sidewalk cafes and laundry strung between second-story windows; there was the cry of seabirds and the smell of the sea and rose-pink shadows on faded-stucco houses as the sun dropped into the Mediterranean.

Lara
and Dan absorbed it through their pores so that on cold winter nights far away from here, when the fog rolled in from the Pacific, they could say, Remember when? Remember the softness of the air on our skin, like walking through velvet? Remember the flavor of the special white Bellet wine from the hills above Nice? Remember the little bistro where we ate? Clafoutis, it was called, and we had
tapanade
that was the true taste of Provence, made from olives and anchovies and served with that delicious bread. We ate tiny
rouget
fresh from the sea and grilled to perfection, and a salad dressed with the best olive oil and fresh lemon juice, and a Banon cheese wrapped in its little bundle of chestnut leaves and tied with raffia. And then the
clafoutis,
which gave the bistro its name, a custardy pudding made with juicy black cherries, so good it melted in our mouths.…

Later, in contrast, Juan les Pins was jumping. Citroens and Harleys, Renaults and Kawasakis, Vespas and bicycles were parked cheek by jowl along the seafront. Noisy young people crisscrossed the road, dodging traffic with a laughing wave of the arm, and music throbbed through the warm night from a dozen discos.

Dan pulled Lara into a little beach bar with a wooden dance floor and a palm-thatched ceiling lit by twinkling tree lights. A hundred or so young bodies vibrated to the loud music. They edged to the outer limits near the sea and, pressed together by the throng, they wrapped their arms around each other and they danced.

The music changed to a love song. It was Jane Birkin singing
“Je t'aime”
in a sexy French whisper, an old paean to making love written by her then lover Serge Gainsbourg, the man they had watched on TV
in rainy Blois. Now Jane Birkin had grown-up daughters and Gainsbourg was dead, but that song lived on, as it would for generations of young holiday-makers seeking romance under the stars of the Cote d'Azur.

Tiring of the heat and the throng of bodies, they finally left to watch the “happening” on the street from a sidewalk cafe, sipping coffee and holding hands.

“This was a wonderful day.” Dan squeezed her hand.

“Yes, it was,” Lara whispered back, lost in his deep blue eyes, never wanting it to end.

 

Much later, snuggled in the
lit matrimonial
at the auberge, Dan heard a sound in the dark of the night. He opened his eyes, listening. He looked at Lara, asleep in the crook of his arm. Her long hair covered her face and he brushed it gently back with his finger.

“Lara,” he whispered, “do you hear it? It's the nightingale.”

She smiled in her sleep, nestling into his shoulder, and he lay back against the pillow listening to the bird's sweet song. Lara was so innocent, he'd had to teach her how to love. Now she was his to love. Forever. He knew that, at last, he had found what he was looking for.

 

They were up at dawn the next morning, anxious not to miss a moment of their last few days. They drove into Antibes early to catch the market and breakfasted, standing at a stall, on thin sweet crepes filled with tiny fresh raspberries dusted with vanilla sugar.

The market was a treasure trove, not just of beautiful
fruits and vegetables and flowers, but of crystal-beaded necklaces in jewel colors; of chic white linen chemise dresses—the same ones that were sold in Paris, the young vendor told Lara; of slinky silk pants and soft shirts in a dozen bright colors. There were T-shirts and shoes, sandals, belts and bags, straw hats, and scarves, and Lara had a ball picking out gifts for the Girlfriends, and for her children and Dan's.

She had forgotten for the moment that Hallie and Troy were not Dan's children, they were his brother and sister. And forgotten, for once, that Dan was so much younger than she. Somehow, it didn't seem to matter anymore. In France, they had become just two people in love.

Dan had disappeared, making some mysterious purchase of his own, and filled with new daring, Lara bought a very short white skirt with a slit that she knew would reach up to her butt and that would look great with sunburned legs, as well as a clinging black off-the-shoulder top—very sexy and something she would never have dared to wear in her “other” life as Mrs. Bill Lewis.

Dan returned carrying a small brown paper bag but refused to tell her what he'd bought. On their way back to the car with all the parcels, Lara began worrying about Customs. He laughed, but she was thinking of the things bought in Paris, and of the monogrammed boxes of the Countess's Agen prunes that had sweltered in the back of the car ever since the Dordogne. And of the old print of Gordes and the expensive black stilettos, though maybe if she just wore those the Customs officers wouldn't notice.