The Light of Paris(41)

“Those are lovely,” she breathed.

Waving his hand as though he could dismiss the air that held the compliment, Sebastien took another sip of coffee. “Not so. They are only things I draw to remind me of what to paint later. Like making a note for a story, oui?”

“Oui,” Margie said, and this time she didn’t correct herself, because Marguerite felt like someone who would say oui instead of yes, even if she was American.

“So what are you doing in Paris all alone?”

Margie sighed. “I was here with my cousin. I was supposed to be her chaperone.”

“Where is she?” Sebastien looked around. For once, Margie was grateful Evelyn wasn’t there. If Sebastien saw her, it would be, “So long, Margie.” It had always been that way: when Evelyn was around, Margie might as well have been invisible—and not only to young men, but to waiters, or porters, or shop clerks. She’d actually had to snap her fingers in front of the face of the porter when they were getting off the ship, he had been so entranced. She had once seen a man walk into a lamp post on the street because he had been so busy watching Evelyn. It had sounded with a loud bong, and the poor fellow had seemed so surprised, and had looked at the lamp post with such personal offense that Margie had to smother a laugh in her hand.

“She met some friends on the ship when we came over, and now she’s run off with them.”

“Run off?”

“You know. Left me to spend time with them.”

“I see.” Sebastien frowned, piecing the story together in his mind. His English was impeccable, but Margie wasn’t sure how much of what she said was clear. She had never thought so much about idioms, about the way they crept into your language and became untranslatable. She remembered, years ago in high school, missing a meeting with her French teacher, who had then accused Margie of putting a rabbit on her—“Tu m’a posé un lapin!” What a silly thing to say, Margie had thought, but in the end, was it any sillier than saying, “You stood me up!” What did that even mean?

“So she is gone, but you are still here.”

“Oui.”

Sebastien broke into another smile then, wide and disarming. “So this is better, then! Now you have all of Paris and none of her.” He spread his arms wide, as if to take in the entirety of the city and offer it to Margie.

“No, no,” Margie said. “I . . .” She tried to think of how to explain it. “You see, I was only here to be with her. I was meant to take care of her. And now I must go home.”

At this, Sebastien looked so horrified that Margie almost laughed aloud. “Leave Paris?” He spread his hand over his chest, as though Margie had wounded him. “You have just arrived!”

With a shrug, Margie tried to ignore the tug at her own heart. She knew. Oh, how she knew. For every word she had written to her mother, she had composed ten in her heart illuminating how unfair the whole thing was. “I know. But I can’t stay here alone. It wouldn’t be appropriate.”

“Is this a . . .” He snapped his fingers in the air and squinted at the sky, looking for the word. He really was terribly attractive, Margie thought, so attractive she forgot to question why he was sitting there talking to her. She had originally thought his hair was the color of burnt caramel, but as he moved his head in the sunlight, it lit up a dozen different colors—strands of corn silk, of strawberry blond, of deep chestnut—and his eyes blazed green, the lashes around them unfairly dark and thick. He had slim hands with long fingers, and when he moved them in the air when he spoke, she watched, transfixed, picturing herself capturing one of his hands and holding it against her face, just for a moment, just to feel how real he was.

“A punishment? Is this a punishment?” He looked pleased at himself for having found the word.

“I suppose it is,” she said, and the thought made her blue. “My mother . . .” she began, unable to bring herself to finish. Margie’s feelings about her mother were too complicated to explain.

A woman with a small child had arrived and was sitting on a bench outside the church. She had given the child a baguette, and he toddled around, alternately pursuing and pursued by the pigeons as he tossed crumbs in the air. At another table in the café, a man with a mustache sat, nursing a drink and writing in his own notebook, his meaty hands so large they nearly eclipsed the paper. Beside him were two French women, their heads bent together as though they were telling the most important of secrets. It was punishment to take her away from the sights she had not seen—la tour Eiffel! Napoleon’s tomb!—but it was punishment of a harsher sort to take her away from this, from the simple pleasures of Paris, from this place where she could sit alone in a café without anyone speculating on her virtue, where she could write for hours without being interrupted by her mother’s criticisms, where she could watch the parade going by, this brave new world that had such people in’t.

“Well,” she said, pulling herself out of her own sulk, “I’ve written my mother and told her Evelyn is gone. She’ll write back and send me money to come home.” She left out the parts she didn’t want to think about—her mother’s fury, her own disappointment, the storm awaiting her when she got back to Washington. And, she thought, as she was pushing those thoughts to the back of her mind, her parents’ anger wouldn’t be the worst part of going home. It would be Mr. Chapman. Because this had been her chance at escape, and she had ruined it. And now she had no more excuses. Mr. Chapman waited at the other end of the journey like a thin-faced executioner. She wanted to drop her head on the table and weep.