The Light of Paris(62)
“Come on, Margie!” Dorothy called over her shoulder, and Margie rushed forward as the crowd parted for them, catching the end of their wake, and then they were inside.
By the entrance was a balcony overlooking the entire club, the dance floor already crowded. On the lower level was the altar of the stage, where a full orchestra was hurtling itself at popular songs, all the musicians so deep into the sound they were transported, the tendons on their fingers pulling music from their instruments, sweat standing out on their foreheads, half dancing themselves as they played. The floor was crowded, men in tuxedos and suits, women in dresses so filmy and silky they made Margie’s more modest dress look heavy as a duvet, packed together on the floor. From above it looked like a jittering, bustling beehive. Here and there, waiters darted along the edges of the dancers, barely averting one disaster after another, trays of drinks held above their heads, which they delivered to one of the dozens of tables lining the floor and ducked under the balconies above. Champagne buckets gleamed on tables, where people leaned their heads close together to talk.
Looking everywhere, taking in the dizzy glamor, the elegance, the energy that bubbled and fizzed like a thousand popping champagne bottles, Margie felt as though she might go off like a cork herself. Outside, she had felt frumpy and plain, the same Margie Pearce who had plodded through so much of her life, who had been given a single night of magic at her debut and had thought she would never have another, but in here she felt part of something exciting and exotic, and its refracted magic fell on her, illuminating the beads on her dress, making her skin glow in the dim light.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Sebastien’s American girl,” a man’s voice said in her ear, close and so intimate that Margie jumped back, her head narrowly missing clocking Georges in the face. He was cleaner than he had been the other night, wearing a tuxedo, even, his hair combed back instead of falling forward over his eyes. Alas, he was still sporting that silly monocle as though he might be asked to examine a document or a diamond before the night was through.
“Oh, bonjour,” she said, placing her hand over her heart to calm the beating. The noise and music buzzed around them, and she had to raise her voice to be heard, even as close as he was. His hand rested on her lower back.
“Bonsoir,” he corrected her with a smile. “What are you doing here, Sebastien’s American girl?”
“I’m not . . .” Margie began to object to being called Sebastien’s American girl, but when she stopped to think about it, she decided she actually liked it a little bit. “I’m Marguerite,” she said, reminding him, and feeling a little thrill of using her French name, which was so much fancier than boring old Margie.
“What are you doing here, Marguerite?” he asked. He guided her away from the balcony as more people pressed in behind them, greeting the owner, checking their coats. It seemed impossible that more people could fit into the club, yet they kept coming, slipping into the boxes upstairs, women sitting on men’s laps by the table, the tiny spaces on the dance floor filling in, couples pressing tightly to one another, glad for the excuse, and above it all, the band was still playing, the screech of trumpets wailing and the dance floor jumping right along with them.
“I came with some friends,” Margie said, though as she looked around, she didn’t see Dorothy or Arturo or any of the other people they had come in with, just an undifferentiated mass of celebration. She had grown to think how small a town Paris was, when she saw some of the same people again and again, the writers she saw at the Libe and then writing or arguing over a bottle of wine at La Closerie des Lilas, the girls from the Club she saw flirting with young men in bar windows, but here Paris felt infinite, like she would never see it all or know it all or meet the people in it, which was neither strange nor terrifying, only joyful, as though she had been given a gift with no end.
“Come drink with us instead,” Georges said. They reached the stairs and he offered her his arm and they walked down.
The Surrealists and a handful of other artists she didn’t recognize had taken over two tables in the back. Margie didn’t even have time to sit, because René saw her arrive and rose, bent to kiss her hand, and whisked her onto the dance floor without offering a formal invitation or waiting for her reply.
Men were so rare these days: Margie had read a newspaper story asserting that after the war, young women in Europe had only a one-in-ten chance of getting married, which she thought was probably exaggerated but nonetheless dreadfully sad, especially those who had offered their bodies as comfort for soldiers on leave and, when the soldier had been killed in action, been left with a squalling, hungry memory they would raise alone. But the Surrealists were all men, the core of artists Sebastien knew, and Margie, who had so often been sequestered among women, felt gloriously feminine and desired. She had never been much of a dancer, and had never even tried to shimmy or do the Toddle before, but the floor was so tightly packed it didn’t matter. She slid along on her toes, René gripping her hands, bumping into everyone else on the floor who was bumping right back, and when she was sweaty and breathless, they ran over to the tables and Georges poured her a glass of champagne, and then one of the other artists took her hand and swept her onto the floor for a slow dance, until the band exploded again and the floor erupted as though it were shaking, and they did the entire thing all over again.
Margie, who would have sworn her idea of a good time was staying at home with a book, far from exactly this sort of noise and crowd, was exhilarated. They danced for hours until she felt dizzy from the excitement and the champagne and the lack of sleep. People came and went along the table, and she ran into Dorothy dancing in the center of the dance floor and the two of them Charlestoned for a moment until their partners pulled them back and Dorothy gave Margie a huge wink over her man’s shoulder and Margie, to her own surprise, winked right back. Just think, on the ship on the way over, she had been too shy, too scared, to go into the ball, and here she was, dancing as though it came naturally.