The Light of Paris(60)

The menu was written on a chalkboard on the wall, dinner for two francs, which was ridiculously cheap, even for Paris, and was delivered by Rosalie herself, a short, stout woman with heavily accented French. The food was achingly good, and when they finished, Margie felt like she had been part of the real Paris again, and, more important, was almost full.

Ever since she had gotten to Paris, she had been hungry constantly. It was all the walking, she thought, much more than she was used to at home, where her mother insisted on taxicabs to carry them anywhere more than a few blocks in the city, due to her bad feet. And certainly it was the student portions on which she lived, trying to save money, eating what was cheap—bread her body ran through in moments, and inexpensive vegetable soup. She had walked by a café one day and seen a man dining on a sausage covered with mustard so spicy just the scent of it made her mouth water, and drinking a beer, and Margie, who didn’t even like beer, had almost wept with desire. Her savings meant she could splash out on a meal here and there, but there was an asceticism to her diet she found attractive, the constant rumble in her stomach a metaphor for her appetite for the city and all she wanted to draw from it, and she preferred to leave herself slightly hungry.

“So,” Dorothy said, when they had finished dinner and were drinking the last of the cheap wine that had come with it. It was sweet and slightly vinegary, but Margie was thirsty and it left a pleasant blur in her head that she wanted to hang on to. It made her love everyone in the room, these strangers with their theatrical greetings, their intense conversations, the laughter exploding and then disappearing into the crush of bodies, even the room itself despite—or because of—its dungeon-like air. “What are you doing in Paris?”

Margie hesitated, unsure of how to answer. Dorothy leaned forward over the table, as though she were expecting some thrilling confession, and Margie hated to disappoint her. In the dim light, she practically glowed, and Margie had seen half the men in the place looking over at her. Dorothy, of course, ignored the attention, or worse, didn’t seem to notice. That was always the way with beautiful girls. “I’m working at the Libe.”

Rolling her eyes, Dorothy pressed her hands flat on the table and leaned even closer, as though proximity could pull Margie’s nonexistent secrets out of her. “I don’t mean that. I mean why are you here to begin with? Why did you come?”

“I guess . . . I wanted an adventure?”

This answer seemed to satisfy Dorothy. She sat back up and slapped the table with her open palms, as if to say, “I knew it.”

“Me too,” she said. “I was going to go crazy at home. My parents want me to get married, but I wasn’t ready to settle down. They said I could come over here for a year. It’s been two already and I’m still not ready to leave.”

“They don’t mind?” Margie asked. Was there some secret to managing one’s disapproving parents she hadn’t yet learned?

“Of course they mind.” Dorothy threw her head back and laughed gaily. One of the painters sitting by them glanced at the tender skin of Dorothy’s throat with a hot flash of desire that made Margie’s stomach flip. Imagine having someone look at you that way, she thought. Imagine having everyone look at you that way. “But what can they do? They can’t make me come home. I’ve got my inheritance and my salary at the Libe. Besides, there’s no one to marry at home. All the interesting men are in Paris anyway, don’t you think?”

“When do you think you’ll get married, then?” Margie asked. Because you had to get married eventually, didn’t you? For all her talk, she knew everyone did get married, even if it was to someone like Mr. Chapman, who was old and stodgy and didn’t love her any more than she loved him, which was not at all.

“Someday,” Dorothy said with a breezy wave. It was the tone of a woman who knew she would always have plenty of opportunities to get married, who might not stay young but would always be beautiful and rich and smart and funny and charming, while Margie was only a few of those things and, it seemed, the ones that didn’t really matter. “What about you?”

“I don’t know,” Margie said, trying to match Dorothy’s casual tone. She wasn’t about to confess to beautiful, confident Dorothy that her best odds of getting married were to a short, nervous business associate of her father’s who was nearly old enough to be her father himself.

“I’m not getting married unless I’m really in love. Like in an Ethel M. Dell novel. Have you read her books? So romantic!”

“Yes!” Margie said. “She’s one of my favorites.”

“I just adore a good love story.” Dorothy rested her elbow on the table despite its stickiness and put her head in her hand, her eyes gone soft and dreamy. “Don’t you?”

“I do,” Margie said, and as much as the two of them had chatted about the books they had read and loved or hated, saying this aloud still felt like a confession. “My mother always said they were silly. I mean, she thinks all novels are silly. If it’s not ‘edifying,’ it’s a waste of time to her. Love stories especially. I feel so wicked when I read them, like I should be reading something better.”

Dorothy shook her head so her curls bounced prettily. “What’s better than a love story?”

“You know what I mean. Not better as in more fun to read. Better as in more important.” Margie ran her fingers along the edge of the table until she encountered something sticky, and then withdrew her hands and put them in her lap.