The Light of Paris(42)

Leaning forward, Sebastien lifted the envelope Margie had set aside, facedown. He looked at her questioningly, and she nodded. He lifted it between two fingers and read the address written in Margie’s sloppy scrawl and then, as though it answered some question, nodded.

“And what if you do not go home?” he asked, turning the envelope slowly. She could hear the crinkle of the paper against his skin.

“Oh. I couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be appropriate,” she started.

“You said this already.”

Flustered, Margie continued. “Well, Evelyn took most of our money. And I don’t know anyone here. The hotel is already paid for one more week. After that I don’t have anywhere to stay, and I don’t have enough money to live on.”

With a sigh, Sebastien dropped the envelope, lit a cigarette, shook out the match with his hand and dropped it in an ashtray on the neighboring table. He exhaled, squinting at her through the smoke. “You could find work. And Paris is cheap for you. So many Americans are here because it costs them so little. You can live in Paris no problem.” He snapped his fingers again and she looked at his hands.

“Who are you?” she asked, suddenly self-conscious that she was sitting here, confessing her worries to a stranger, a handsome young man who would not have found anything in her worth looking at if she had been at home.

He grinned at her again, took a slow puff off the cigarette and let the smoke draw a lazy haze in the air before he replied. “Je m’appelle Sebastien.”

“No, no. I know your name. But who are you? What do you do? Why are you talking to me?”

“Ah.” Sebastien tapped his cigarette end in the ashtray, rolling it around so the tobacco formed a pointed tip. “I am a painter, which I told you already. And I am talking to you because you look like you need someone to talk to.”

“Oh.” Margie deflated a little. Well, what had she thought? There might be about her something particularly appealing to French men? But would that be so wrong? Would it be so awful, once in her life, for someone to tell her she was beautiful? She had been told she was clever, even brilliant. But she wanted to be beautiful, wanted someone to say it. She thought she had been beautiful once, the night of her debut, that there had been some magic in her dress and in the night, blown in on the cold, cold air. But in the morning, the magic had gone, evaporated in the sunshine, and whatever beauty there had been had gone with it, and the only proof she had of it was the memory of Robert’s kiss. “Well, thank you.”

Sebastien leaned back, lowering his eyes in thought, smoking silently. “I have a solution,” he said finally.

“For what?”

“For you, of course. You must stay in Paris. I know a place where all the American girls who come here live. You will live there too. We will tear up this letter and you will write to your mother and tell her you are staying.” He picked up the letter again and then let it fall from his fingers, as though it were as worthless as sand.

“I can’t stay, Sebastien.” In her heart, she was already saying au revoir to all the things she might have done when she was here, watching the sun rise on the Pont des Arts over the Seine, walking the narrow back streets of the Left Bank, eating pain au chocolat whenever she wanted, drinking wine and writing in cafés, beside the artists and writers who had made Paris the place to be.

“You must! Leaving would be a waste. A waste!” He stubbed out his cigarette, leaned forward, looked into her eyes with his brilliant green ones, placed his hand on hers, soft, the fingernails edged with tiny moons of paint. She looked down at his hand on hers, the quiet pressure. “What is waiting for you in America that you must hurry back?”

What was waiting for her? Nothing. Nothing she wanted. Her parents’ disappointment. Closed, stuffy parlors and embroidery. Ladies’ benevolent societies. Mr. Chapman. She looked past Sebastien’s face, both serious and pleading at the same time, out the window again. The bell in the church tower was calling out the noon hour. The child had distributed the bread to the pigeons and was now sitting with his mother on the bench, insistently bending her ear about some issue of crucial small-child importance. Across the street, a vendor had arrived and was carefully hanging bits of fabric over the church’s fence as though it were a display case, and a flower-seller was happily accosting people, thrusting bouquets at them as they alit from the Métro. She didn’t want to leave this, didn’t want to break the promise she had made to herself without even giving it a try. She didn’t want to go home yet.

Her parents would be furious. And they would refuse to support her. She had—what, a few hundred francs? And then it would all be gone. But he had said Paris was cheap. And she could work, and her French would get better. She would be independent, like those girls in the boardinghouse. She’d have her own money, her own job, her own life, and there would be no one to criticize how she spent her time or what books she read or who she was.

Sebastien was still holding her hand, keeping her in place as though she were a rare and precious bird who might fly away. She thought of Mr. Chapman’s dry, nervous hands, his chapped lips. She thought of everything she had yet to explore—the grand cathedral at Chartres, Versailles, the open-air markets.

Margie took a long breath, as though she were raising her arms in the air to dive into deep water. “All right,” she said. “Where is this place you say I should stay?”