After the Reunion Read Online Free PDF Page B

heads. She could tell two of the models were on cocaine—they kept taking a reinforcement backstage between changes, until finally at the end of the day they were so glassy-eyed one of them nearly fell off the runway. Annabel went to almost every show; some to buy, others, like St. Laurent, just to drool. And she went to some just to get ideas of what was going to be happening. She would grab a bite to eat in stand-up bars between shows and appointments, fighting the mob of people and thinking how, for all of them at least, Paris was far from a gastronomic adventure.
    Her last afternoon a woman she knew slightly from New York invited her to go to a disco that night with a group of people, but she said no. The next day she would have to get up early to go to London to see what the kids were wearing on the streets. Her head was spinning and she was tired. She just wanted to do something passive and relaxing, like go to a movie, so after the last showing she took a taxi to the Champs-Elysées, where there were a lot of movie theaters, and saw to her delight that Gone With the Wind was playing, in English with French titles. It was her favorite movie, since she had always thought of herself as Scarlett O’Hara anyway.
    Waiting in line to buy her ticket, an attractive young man with touseled black hair and interesting topaz eyes smiled at her. She smiled back. He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket and looked as if he might be a university student.
    “This is supposed to be a very good movie,” he said to her in French. He had a merry voice which she liked.
    “ Oui, ” she said.
    “You’re American,” he said in English. He had a French accent.
    “Oh, God,” Annabel said. “I said only one word and you knew.”
    “It’s okay,” he said. “I have an ear. I go to a lot of movies. It’s what I’m studying. It’s my dream.”
    “Well, this is an extraordinary movie,” Annabel said.
    “You’ve seen it before.”
    She thought. “Eight times.”
    “It must be fantastic. You come to Paris to see Gone With the Wind. ”
    “Not exactly. I came for the Prêt-à-Porter . This is my relaxation.”
    He sat next to her in the theater. He didn’t speak to her at all during the movie, which she appreciated, and when it was over he turned to her and smiled. “May I invite you for a coffee?” he asked.
    Annabel smiled back at him. “Only if you liked the film.”
    “I loved it.”
    “I hope you’re not lying to get on my good side.”
    “But if I am, that’s a compliment, isn’t it?”
    “It is,” Annabel said, and took his arm.
    They went to a café on the corner and took a table inside because the night was chilly. His name was Mathieu and he was twenty-three. She wondered if he was going to be her Paris fling. Frenchmen were supposedly very attracted by the sophistication of an older woman.
    They talked for two hours about their lives and their work, and had three coffees, and Annabel decided he was definitely sexy. It grew on you. The line of his cheekbones above where he had stopped shaving was covered with pale down, almost baby fuzz, which she found touching. He seemed tender, but there was nothing childish about him; he was a charming, sweet young man, and he seemed eager to make a good impression on her.
    She thought how truly inane the progress of a conversation with a stranger was; you revealed things that were interesting but not too personal, just enough so that he thought he knew you, and he did the same. You couldn’t share too much or you’d scare each other off. And that was a date.
    She told him where she’d gone to college; and she admitted she’d hated it, because that was amusing. She didn’t tell him why she’d hated it, that she’d been an outcast; that was all so long ago anyway. She told him, when he asked, that she was divorced, that she’d married the wrong man. She omitted the details of just how awful it had been to be married to a fool, because after all these years that