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wonder how far apart they had grown. She couldn’t even ask him if he meant what she thought he meant: would it be a great relief to him if Lydie found a confidante? They stood there for a few seconds, hugging. Lydie didn’t want to let go.
    Later, stepping aboard the Métro, she tried to imagine Michael’s meeting with George. Michael’s contacts in France were not being as cooperative as everyone had hoped they would be. The work was not moving swiftly. It seemed that French architects and designers resented the assignment of an American to turn the Louvre’s Salle des Quatre Saisons into an information center. Even Charles Legendre, Michael’s assigned liaison, lagged when it came to introducing Michael around.
    Lydie knew that Michael planned to create a seventeenth-century atmosphere in the Salle. In spite of the conservatism of his ideas, he was having trouble convincing curators to find him paintings by Poussin and la Tour. He had located a master artisan from Burgundy to build an information desk similar to tables by A.-C. Boulle, cabinetmaker to Louis XIV, but the Ministry had sofar refused to approve the work order. One terrific plan for repairing the mosaic floor and another for redirecting the flow of tourists existed only on paper. And Michael’s worries were not eased by the knowledge that his French counterpart in the United States had already met the President and First Lady, who admired the new painting gallery he had designed for Washington’s National Gallery.
    Lydie had a vision of Michael shaking George’s hand, grinning a little too earnestly perhaps. His mother had once told Lydie that as a child Michael had suffered stomachaches whenever he felt he had disappointed someone—his family, a teacher, his basketball coach—and Lydie knew he still did. She felt a rush of sorrow and love for him, the man she loved more than anyone in the world.

    The photographer, the models, and Jean-Claude Verglesses stood on the sidewalk in front of Chinatown’s largest supermarket. Lydie waved, introduced herself to the photographer, and bumped cheeks with Jean-Claude. He wore a blue work shirt and had his blond hair tied back. He’s trying to look like a designer for rock stars, Lydie thought. She surveyed the street. Men were hauling carts of cabbages from a flatbed lorry into the store. Five old Chinese women dressed in black passed by; one spoke angrily to the lorry driver for blocking the sidewalk.
    “Remember, Lydie,” Jean-Claude said in French, “the dresses speak for themselves. Nothing elaborate, all right? I want a squalid backdrop for these things.”
    Lydie, who rarely did fashion work, nodded. Young designers who could not afford famous fashion stylists would hire her, then try to do the job themselves. “I think we could do something with those cabbages,” she said. Everyone entered the supermarketthrough the service entrance, and Lydie spoke to the man who owned the store. She had worked here before; he gave her permission to use his cabbages in Jean-Claude’s advertisement.
    The cabbages were round, smooth, cool green and white, and they echoed beautifully the lines of Jean-Claude’s pouf skirts. The models perched on the carts while Lydie and the photographer buried their feet and ankles in cabbages. Jean-Claude stood back and smoked. “Cabbages?” he said. “I don’t know about this. What is more French than cabbage? I said squalid and exotic.”
    Street light filtered through the open door. The storeroom had concrete walls; yellowed tape held a faded kung fu poster in place. Lydie smiled at Jean-Claude. “Tell me this isn’t squalid,” she said. He shrugged. A group of workers gathered to watch. The models tried to look detached, as if they weren’t standing in piles of cabbages. The photographer went to work.
    Lydie and her entourage moved from the supermarket to the kitchen of Maison de Chine to the warehouse of a Far East importer on Avenue Tolbiac. She had the models