The Last Dress from Paris(44)
“You waited? This entire time?” She’s so happy he kept his promise, but she feels obliged now to give him the option of returning home. “You must be so tired and cold, Antoine. Why don’t you go home? We can meet another time.”
“There is somewhere I’d like to show you.” It’s only then she sees the taxi waiting a little farther up the road, its lights dimmed, the low hum of its engine the only noise at this hour.
They climb into the back, and Alice allows her body to collapse heavily against his, aware of the tiredness washing over her, all the stress and irritation from the evening seeping out of her. He drapes an arm around her, pulling her closer, smiling as the sparkle of her beautiful dress falls across his legs, covering them both like a glamorous blanket.
“Where are we going?” Alice’s voice is heavy with exhaustion. But she trusts him, whatever their destination. She has a feeling it will be different and interesting and somewhere only he would think to take her.
“The heart of the city. I want you to see real Paris, Alice.” His arm closes in tighter around her, and she wants nothing more in this moment than to bury herself in him, to feel treasured and protected and wanted while the driver speeds them through the vast deserted streets, the Eiffel Tower looming behind them to the west.
* * *
? ? ?
The noise when they exit the car shakes any last thoughts of sleep from Alice; the blazing beam from the spotlights yanks her back into the loud, messy, stench-filled present. There must be two hundred people here and it’s not yet five a.m. Not one of them registers their arrival.
“Welcome to Le Ventre de Paris!” Antoine beams, sweeping an arm over the tower of produce that spreads out before them. “This is about as real as it gets.”
While her guests are sleeping off the excesses of last night’s party, curled up under the finest sheets, this part of Paris, the one that stands in the shadow of Saint-Eustache, is carving out its living. There is an energy pumping through the market. Antoine takes her hand, and they venture deeper into the makeshift alleyways that have grown out of towering wooden boxes of pears, swollen squash, spring onions, flour-covered loaves, and peaches the size of a strongman’s fist. Mud-covered pumpkins as big as car wheels mark their route. The floor is wet, blanketed with sodden straw. Angry dogs fight over scraps tossed to them by the sellers. Robust women twice the size of Alice, with filthy aprons pulled tight across their hips, make themselves heard above the crowd. Cauliflowers are thrown across the cobbled paths from one seller to another to be examined by the earliest buyers.
“It’s the restaurant owners who come first,” Antoine tells her. “The professional chefs and the hotel kitchen staff. They drive the hardest bargain because they buy in the biggest quantities. Later, when the sun is just rising, it will be the housewives and mothers with big families to feed, then the lovers to buy pastries and flowers.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” It’s astonishing, the sheer size of it. “Like a whole other secret city within a city.” Alice recalls with some relief that there is no formal dinner planned at the residence tonight and therefore no need for her own chef to be here competing for the best deals.
Antoine laces his fingers through hers, and they continue their route farther in, past a man who stands holding a dirty blade at his side, a pig’s head pinned with the other hand to a wet butcher’s block in front of him, a lit cigarette expertly balanced between his lips. Another man pushes a huge two-wheeled cart piled high with rubbish through the crowd, singing as he goes. Alice pulls her fur in closer to her body. It’s cold, but everyone around her is wearing much less to protect them against the chill of this November morning. No one seems to notice the temperature at all. Most are smiling, helping each other, united in their common cause. The tang of human exertion carries through the air, mixed with a meatiness and smokiness. While the odor is without doubt unpleasant, Alice finds herself freely inhaling it, lifting her nose to it, not avoiding it.
“You’ve obviously been here before?” Alice asks. Antoine has stopped and perched on a stack of empty wooden boxes, clearly enjoying the sight of her dressed so finely, ankle deep in vegetable offcuts and discarded potato sacks.
“Many times since Thomas first told me about it. I like to sketch people, but you get the best results when your subject doesn’t know it’s being watched. Where better than here? No one cares about us, they are all too busy looking after their own. I’ve spent hours here, feeling completely unnoticed, slipping between the stalls as if I were invisible.”
“Do you still have my sketch?” Alice feels a little vain for asking, but she has waited long enough.
“Yes. Let’s have a coffee and I’ll show you. I think we both need one.”
They dart into the nearest bistro, open early like everything else bordering the market to service the men and women whose working day started hours ago. They sit at one of the small round tables just big enough for two and order two black coffees. A man still wearing his bloodstained white butcher’s coat sits at the next table, hunched over a bowl of steaming stew, tiredness pulling at his eyelids. Three more are standing at the bar, sharing one newspaper and a carafe of red wine before they return to the market to finish their shift. Alice moves her chair beside Antoine, wanting more privacy.
“What do you think?”