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Author: Alice Adams
finally on the verge of leaving Derek when he craftily suggested a trip to Paris.
Six days in Paris!
He had business there; of course his business was the real reason for our trip, something to do with the Common Market, but still— We would have all our evenings together there: perhaps Paris would magically transform us?
I told Derek that I would much rather stay on the Left Bank, and although he said that he rather fancied the George V, we compromised on the Lutetia, Boulevard Raspail—a little too grand for me, and not quite grand enough for him, as things turned out.
On the plane going over, high above the Atlantic, over his third vodka, true to form, Derek remarked, “One thing I do like about you, Daphne, my girl, is that you’re not a child. Younger women—their problems—lamentable.”
La
mentable, accent on the first syllable.
He had been having trouble with a younger woman? Well, obviously so. And despite the number of times he had done precisely this to me before, that thought lodged itself within me like a barb. My response was Pavlovian, or something even more stupid.
Then, as we circled the hedge-crossed fields, the red-tiled country rooftops of France, Derek asked me if I had ever known anyone with a strong Southern accent. “Impossible to understand,” he said.
A very young Southern woman. Jesus Christ.
Nevertheless, there was Paris, gray and lovely, strangledin traffic, reeking of fumes—and poignantly, piercingly familiar. Or was I simply pierced with pain from Derek? At that moment it was hard to tell.
As we dressed for dinner, he remarked that he had noticed I did not go in for black lace underthings. He found them attractive, rather.
Why in hell didn’t you bring your young Southern twat in her black lace skivvies instead of me
?
Why do I have to hear this stuff
? I was silently screaming all that at Derek, although I could never have managed to bring out those words; they would have sounded crazy, or so I thought.
At dinner, Lucas-Carton, which was terribly posh and formal—not a good choice—for some reason I told Derek a very modified version of my history with Jean-Paul. Maybe in a feeble way I was trying to get back at him; if so, that was a total failure. An observation: people are never jealous when you want them to be, only when you do not. What Derek said was “Well, just as well you can’t see him now, I’m sure. Those middle-class Frenchmen always run to fat, and they get bald early on. You may have even passed each other in the street.”
Of course this was long before I had heard anything about the present Jean-Paul, although I somehow knew that he could be neither bald nor fat. Nor, for that matter, could he ever have been described as middle-class. But I was too depressed, too beaten down to argue. And I was certainly too low-spirited to think of trying to get in touch with Jean-Paul on that trip.
I didn’t even call Ellie Osborne, although I knew from Agatha that she was there.
I walked through streets that once had been familiar, and loved; I went to the Louvre, Notre Dame, Sainte-Chapelle. I stood on Pont Neuf and regarded the river. I had a solitary drink on the terrace of the Flore, where once Ihad shared a beer with Jean-Paul. An attractive blond man—a Dane, perhaps, some sort of Scandinavian—tried manfully to pick me up, with nice smiles, bright white teeth and sea-blue eyes, but I wasn’t equal to anything like that, not then.
Derek and I got back late on a Tuesday afternoon; he rushed up to Boston—to see his young black-laced Southern friend is what I assumed. Alone in my apartment, I unpacked and bathed, and lay down for a nap. I was incredibly tired.
I woke up at some strange pre-dawn hour, completely out of touch with time, with my place on the globe. I felt as an alcoholic woman must feel, waking and not sure how she got into that bed, nor what day it was.
And I wondered, How
had
I got into such a situation, so skewered with pain, impaled
Six days in Paris!
He had business there; of course his business was the real reason for our trip, something to do with the Common Market, but still— We would have all our evenings together there: perhaps Paris would magically transform us?
I told Derek that I would much rather stay on the Left Bank, and although he said that he rather fancied the George V, we compromised on the Lutetia, Boulevard Raspail—a little too grand for me, and not quite grand enough for him, as things turned out.
On the plane going over, high above the Atlantic, over his third vodka, true to form, Derek remarked, “One thing I do like about you, Daphne, my girl, is that you’re not a child. Younger women—their problems—lamentable.”
La
mentable, accent on the first syllable.
He had been having trouble with a younger woman? Well, obviously so. And despite the number of times he had done precisely this to me before, that thought lodged itself within me like a barb. My response was Pavlovian, or something even more stupid.
Then, as we circled the hedge-crossed fields, the red-tiled country rooftops of France, Derek asked me if I had ever known anyone with a strong Southern accent. “Impossible to understand,” he said.
A very young Southern woman. Jesus Christ.
Nevertheless, there was Paris, gray and lovely, strangledin traffic, reeking of fumes—and poignantly, piercingly familiar. Or was I simply pierced with pain from Derek? At that moment it was hard to tell.
As we dressed for dinner, he remarked that he had noticed I did not go in for black lace underthings. He found them attractive, rather.
Why in hell didn’t you bring your young Southern twat in her black lace skivvies instead of me
?
Why do I have to hear this stuff
? I was silently screaming all that at Derek, although I could never have managed to bring out those words; they would have sounded crazy, or so I thought.
At dinner, Lucas-Carton, which was terribly posh and formal—not a good choice—for some reason I told Derek a very modified version of my history with Jean-Paul. Maybe in a feeble way I was trying to get back at him; if so, that was a total failure. An observation: people are never jealous when you want them to be, only when you do not. What Derek said was “Well, just as well you can’t see him now, I’m sure. Those middle-class Frenchmen always run to fat, and they get bald early on. You may have even passed each other in the street.”
Of course this was long before I had heard anything about the present Jean-Paul, although I somehow knew that he could be neither bald nor fat. Nor, for that matter, could he ever have been described as middle-class. But I was too depressed, too beaten down to argue. And I was certainly too low-spirited to think of trying to get in touch with Jean-Paul on that trip.
I didn’t even call Ellie Osborne, although I knew from Agatha that she was there.
I walked through streets that once had been familiar, and loved; I went to the Louvre, Notre Dame, Sainte-Chapelle. I stood on Pont Neuf and regarded the river. I had a solitary drink on the terrace of the Flore, where once Ihad shared a beer with Jean-Paul. An attractive blond man—a Dane, perhaps, some sort of Scandinavian—tried manfully to pick me up, with nice smiles, bright white teeth and sea-blue eyes, but I wasn’t equal to anything like that, not then.
Derek and I got back late on a Tuesday afternoon; he rushed up to Boston—to see his young black-laced Southern friend is what I assumed. Alone in my apartment, I unpacked and bathed, and lay down for a nap. I was incredibly tired.
I woke up at some strange pre-dawn hour, completely out of touch with time, with my place on the globe. I felt as an alcoholic woman must feel, waking and not sure how she got into that bed, nor what day it was.
And I wondered, How
had
I got into such a situation, so skewered with pain, impaled