The Light of Paris(58)

Because of that, I was an overly generous tipper. Phillip was a stingy one—“If they wanted to make good money, they should have stayed in school,” he would say, which I always found infuriating, as though it weren’t a perfectly important and necessary occupation—who, after all, would bring him his Caesar salad if everyone went to law school?—and I had been known to sneak back to the table as we were leaving a restaurant under the guise of having forgotten a scarf or my gloves in order to give a larger tip.

“Am I keeping you from working?” I asked.

“Nah, it’s nice to have a break. I like talking to you. You’re funny. And you’re interesting.”

I peered at him suspiciously, licking my spoon. “Me? I’m not interesting.”

“Sure you are. You’re an artist, and you eat strawberries straight out of the garden for breakfast, and other than the art, you’re so different from your mother you might as well be from different planets. I like being around interesting people. Keeps me creative.”

“Me too,” I said.

Henry sipped his wine, looking at me thoughtfully. I went back to the lava cake to avoid his gaze. “How long are you staying?”

“I don’t know.” I didn’t want to think about leaving, honestly. I wanted to be here, with Sharon and Cassandra and Wanee and their friends. I wanted to be with Henry, who had fed me dinner and now the best dessert I’d ever had, and who talked to me like I mattered. And I liked talking to him. He made me laugh, and he got my jokes. In most of my life, I felt as though I were following a script, like I couldn’t say any of the things I wanted to say. I couldn’t even say them to Phillip.

“I wish I could help,” he said.

“You have helped.” I had finished the dessert and was casting longing glances at the plate. “You gave me really amazing food in my hour of need.”

“They do have grocery stores in Magnolia now, you know,” Henry said. He put down his wine glass and leaned back in the chair, slipping his hands into his pockets and stretching his feet out to the side of the table.

“I hear. And also indoor plumbing. My, how things have changed since my day.” I pretended to flutter my eyelashes.

“You’re welcome to eat every meal here, but as Sharon pointed out, we don’t serve breakfast.”

“I could eat this for breakfast,” I said, pointing at the remnants of my lava cake.

“Fair enough. The Kitchen Gastropub, now open for lunch, dinner, Sunday brunch, and diabetic comas.”

“That’s catchy.”

“Thank you. Doesn’t your mother feed you anything?”

“Ugh, it’s a long story.” I wasn’t about to spoil the mood and the sweetness on my tongue by launching into a long recounting of my mother’s and Phillip’s endless efforts to control what I ate, and my own chocolate-fueled rebellions. “It’s just nice to eat something real.”

“My pleasure.”

“I should get going,” I said, reluctantly pushing myself away from the table. “Should I pay Ava?”

“Nope. It’s on the house, remember? I invited you.”

“No, I couldn’t! You have to work next door to my mother; the least I can do is pay for the hamburger.”

“Don’t be silly. We’re neighbors. I told you, it’s on me. Come on, I’ll walk you out. I’m going to stay and help them finish closing up.”

Before I could object again, he had crossed the room in three quick, long strides and was standing by the entry to the hallway. I left a tip on the table for Ava, picked up my things, and hurried after him. “The restaurant really looks amazing,” I said. The rest of the rooms were empty, and I could hear singing and laughter and the sounds of cleaning from the kitchen as we passed by. “You did an incredible job.”

“Thank you,” he said. “But it’s not just me. A whole lot of people have worked their tails off to make it happen.” He held the front door open for me, and we stepped out onto the porch. Ava was wiping down the chairs and tables here, and I gave her a little wave.

“Well. Thank you for dinner. I owe you a favor, I guess.”

“Not necessary. And if you can’t make it to the grocery store, I’ll whip up a breakfast lava cake for you anytime you like.”

“It’s a deal. It was a pleasure,” I said, and I stuck out my hand for him to shake.

He took it, closing his hand warmly over mine. “The pleasure was all mine, Madam Spencer,” he replied, sketching a slight bow.

I giggled and gave an awkward little wave, and managed to make it down the front steps without tripping. A burger with Henry wasn’t exactly the same as wine with Surrealists at a Parisian café, but somehow I thought my grandmother might approve. Pausing on the sidewalk under an oak with a thick trunk obscuring the view of my mother’s house, I let myself linger for a moment, the darkness making me feel as though I was hovering between two places, floating in space.

The thing was, though, my grandmother hadn’t stayed in Paris. At some point she had given up and gone home, married Robert Walsh and become a mother instead of having affairs with delicious French men and writing stories in Paris, though I didn’t know why. Was that what I was going to have to do? The thought made the air feel thick and I pushed my hands against my stomach as though I could force my breath through. The Kitchen wasn’t a Parisian café, and my mother’s basement wasn’t a Parisian studio, but it felt closer to that kind of freedom than I had known in a long, long time, and I couldn’t bear to imagine I would come so close only to have it disappear when I tried to close my hand around it.