The Last Dress from Paris(75)
“You flatter me, Alice. I am very lucky. Monsieur Dior is very generous with his gifts.” She pauses and casts a quick look back toward the front door, over Alice’s shoulder. “You are the first to arrive. But everything is ready for you. Please, can I take you through?”
Alice nods. Her needs have been understood.
* * *
? ? ?
The two of them make their way up the narrow central staircase that winds through the town house, past a series of closed doors that conceal the making of Dior’s magic and the occasional woman in white overalls, a tape measure draped around her neck. A couple of floors farther up, they enter a room dominated by a huge gilt-edged mirror with an armchair set back a few meters from it.
“Our studio,” announces Camila. “And the very seat Monsieur Dior will view the early collection from.”
Perhaps on any other day, Alice may have cared about this priceless insight. There’s a large blackboard with the names of the mannequins chalked on it and a wall filled with fabric rolls. Alice is distracted by a small roll that has been partially pulled out from the others.
“You have a very good eye, Alice,” says Camila, noticing her interest. “And very similar taste to Monsieur Dior. He decorated some elements of the salon with the toile de Jouy pattern. He adores it.”
Alice traces a finger lightly along it, wondering what the beautifully repetitive detail of the fabric might feel like next to her skin. Wondering if Antoine would love it as much as she does. Before Alice has a chance to say another thing, the two are silenced by the door creaking open again. Alice’s heart is in her mouth, knowing who she longs to see, fearing who it could be.
His face is rosy from the wind, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his long wool coat, his lips gently parted, ready to greet her but lacking the words. He doesn’t need to say a thing. Alice can see the wanting in the narrowing of his eyes, the way they flick to Camila, willing her from the room. Alice feels the sting behind her own eyes, three weeks’ worth of tears trying to force their way out. She pinches her lips together through fear her emotions will overwhelm her.
“I’ll leave you,” says Camila. “Take as much time as you need. No one will disturb you in here.”
Alice is vaguely aware that she leaves the room, but she can’t drag her eyes from Antoine’s face. It’s so familiar, and yet she feels she is discovering it all over again. The smooth arch of his brows, partially hidden beneath the casual foppishness of his hair; the pink fleshiness of his lips, a look that hovers between deep distress and desire, with no clue which will triumph. The hollows of his cheeks are more pronounced than she remembers. She can’t recall who moves—it might have been her—but the next thing she feels is the tight crush of her ribs against his chest, the heat between her thighs, lips that start on her mouth but are quickly down her neck, every drop of breath sucked from her lungs, hands that sit on her lower back, pulling her in with such force she feels she might snap. One—or is it both?—of them is gently moaning. They drop to their knees, collapsing into a messy heap of clothes and shoes and limbs, their physical connection unbroken. Then he is quietly sobbing in her ear, and it is the most heartbreaking thing she has ever heard.
“Please, never ever do that to me again. I thought I had lost you, Alice.” She can feel his breath on the soft patch of skin behind her ear, how he is sucking in the scent of her.
“You couldn’t.”
He pulls back to face her, their hands clasped between each other.
“In the hours between kissing you goodbye and when I received your first note, I had. That’s how it felt.”
“It needed to be that way. You do know that? I had no choice. He was watching us. It had to look real. He would have known immediately if I had explained it to you.” She searches his face for some understanding.
“And now what? We spend the rest of our lives going through convoluted and protracted measures so that we can meet like this?”
They both seem to realize the strangeness of sitting on the floor of a small workroom in Dior, and both manage a small smile at the desperateness of it all.
“You are worth so much more than this, Alice. Please tell me the fact we are meeting today means you know that, and we are going to find a way to be together, properly. That this is not how it is going to be from now on.”
“I don’t have all the answers. All I know is that I love you and I can’t bear to be anywhere near him.” She runs her hand over his cheek and smiles again as he takes her fingers and kisses every one of them.
“Then leave him. You can move into my apartment today. What’s stopping you?”
“He is.” She hangs her head, knowing how weak that sounds—but also knowing it’s true.
“Only if you let him.” She can hear the undiluted exasperation in the force of Antoine’s words.
“He is in a position to make life very difficult for both of us, Antoine, and trust me, he will. If we humiliate him, he will not stop until he has done everything he can to ruin both of us. I hope we can find a way to be together and avoid that. Otherwise, what was the point in staying apart for these few weeks? We need to be clever about this. He’s expecting us to fail. Please, let’s not give him that satisfaction.”
Antoine pauses, breaking their eye contact. Alice watches the slow rise and fall of his chest, the acceptance, she hopes, that she is right, and he must listen to her.