The Light of Paris(11)

He didn’t seem to notice. He was still watching the fire, and then, abruptly, he pulled himself out of his trance and slipped a hearty smile back onto his face. “Quite right, quite right. Shall I get us a drink?” he asked, but didn’t wait for a reply. He pushed himself up from the chair and was out of the room before Margie could say anything.

It wasn’t until he was gone that she really took in that she was sitting alone in a bedroom with a man. She’d never been in such a circumstance before, hadn’t even countenanced the idea that it might happen before she was married. Was it terrible she didn’t feel it was so wrong?

She knew what she should do, of course. She should leave this party and all its shocking business behind and go downstairs and get her coat from the check before it closed and her mother’s fur went into whatever purgatorial limbo happened to coats in the coat check past closing time. The hotel doorman would get her a taxicab and she would say her address loudly and confidently, as if she traveled by herself in the middle of the night all the time, “3241 R Street,” and she’d go home and ring the bell and her father would pay the taxi and she could be safe in her own bed in an hour, her dress hanging on the wardrobe door and this night nothing more than a beautiful dream with a queer ending.

But she didn’t. She sat by the fire wrapped in the coverlet, and in a few moments Robert came back carrying a champagne bucket in one hand and a pair of glasses between his fingers. She heard a rush of music and conversation when the door opened, which stilled again when he closed it.

“I hope you like champagne. There’s gin, but that’s an acquired taste.” He put the champagne bucket on the end table and pulled out the bottle, sweating and chilled from its ice bath, and used a napkin to gently tug out the cork. It sprang free with a sharp pop, and Margie could hear the fizz as he poured her a glass.

“I do like champagne,” Margie said, although she felt sure she had been on a roller coaster of it all night and it was long past time for her to get off. Still, when he handed it to her, she took it, sipping at it gently, letting the bubbles pop against the roof of her mouth, savoring the sweetness on her tongue.

“You don’t want to be out there? At the party?” she asked. Robert poured himself a drink and then, to her surprise, clinked his glass against hers as he sat down on the sofa, so close she could feel the warmth of him. Though she had touched him a dozen times that night—when he had walked her down the stairs, when they had danced, his hand against the small of her back—this felt blushingly intimate.

“Not tonight. Those girls are tiring. All they do is gossip and talk about dresses and marriage. I’d rather talk to you, Margie.”

“Thank you,” Margie said, dazzled by the compliment, small as it was.

“So did you enjoy the ball?”

“Very much so,” Margie said with a smile, and it all came back to her. The discomfort she had felt at the shock of the party had faded, the light-headedness from the alcohol was blurring into something quieter, a buoyant contentment, and when she stretched her feet out, she could see the roses marching down the front of her dress and the toes of her pretty satin slippers. And even if Robert were simply biding his time with her, she could pretend it was something else, and no one would ever have to know.

“When do you go back to school?”

“Not for ages and ages,” Margie said. She lifted her arms over her head and stretched. The fire and the champagne were making her toasty, and she let the coverlet slip down into her lap.

“I’m leaving for Europe right after the New Year.”

“Oh? Is it for work?”

“God, no,” Robert said, and took an enormous slug of his drink. “I am on a quest, Margie, to avoid that particular responsibility for as long as possible.”

“You don’t want to take over the business?”

“Not even a little bit. What about you? You aren’t in some God-awful rush to get married and start popping out children and turn into your mother, are you?”

“Goodness, no,” Margie said with a shudder, and took a large swig of her champagne in imitation of Robert, who laughed charmingly. “My mother is the last person I want to turn into.” And then, a little ashamed of herself for speaking ill of her mother aloud, she turned to him frantically. “You won’t tell her I said that, will you?”

He smiled, his teeth blindingly white, and gave her a slow, raffish wink. “Not as long as you promise not to tell my father I’d rather die than take over the helm of Walsh Shipping. Right now they’re so grateful I’m not pushing up poppies in Flanders Fields, they’re letting it lie, as long as I do little services like this and keep the family name clean. But eventually they’ll ask, Margie. Eventually they’ll demand it.” He was growing sadder and more morose as he talked. “We’re doomed, you know. Doomed to turn into our parents.”

“No!” Margie stood up, throwing off the coverlet and stamping her foot. “I won’t do it. I’m going to be different, you’ll see. I’m going to be a writer, and I’m going to live in Europe, and I’m never going to get married—I’m going to fall in love again and again, and no one can stop me.”

Robert looked up at her as though he were deciding something, and then he drained his own drink, stood up, and, to Margie’s complete surprise, slipped his arms around her as though they were going to begin a waltz. “Of course you are,” he said, and the sadness in his face was gone again, so far gone Margie wondered if she had only imagined his gloomy prophecies. “You’re going to live in Paris and drink champagne from a shoe and write books like no one has ever read before,” he said, and he swept her around the room as though they were back on the ballroom floor, guiding her expertly between the furniture without even seeming to look at it. Margie laughed, tilting her head back and watching the ceiling spin above her as they danced in the quiet room, the crackle of the fire and the pale thumps of the party outside their only music. “And I’m going to go to Italy and live as a marquis, and never, ever think about cargo or shipping or tariffs or any kind of freight at all.” Margie laughed again, and then he abruptly spun to a stop.