That Paris Year by Joanna Biggar

Author:Joanna Biggar [Biggar, Joanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-9826251-5-6
Publisher: Santa Fe Writer's Project
Published: 2010-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Eve grew tired of sitting on my version of a throne. Encouraged by a brave, rare showing of sun, we were drawn out into the world of daylight and walked toward the river. Spring is too strong a word, as no green even whispered along the exposed limb of any tree, but the strong dose of afternoon sun gave hope. And on the strength of it, booksellers returned briefly to their kiosks along the Seine. Across the river, whose surface rippled liquid silver in the stiff new breeze, Notre Dame seemed to throw off some shroud of gray sleep and find the new light intrinsic in ancient stone and glass.

In that little indentation along the Left Bank, where Shakespeare & Co. is set back from the river as if on a small square, I caught our reflection in a window. A street sweeper cleaning up around the outdoor book racks saw us, too. Two tall young women, one dark and pale, a classical look, Greek maybe; the other voluptuous, with hair like a crown of fire. Arm in arm, we strolled past, lost in conversation. But I saw him pull upright, pause, catch a little of our words on the wind. Maybe enough to confirm his suspicions, ah yes, that we were foreigners, des étrangères, drifting predictably along this path every year like newly feathered birds, chirping away in lightly accented French. Maybe he couldn’t quite tell where we’d flown in from. Maybe he was thinking that some lucky mec—perhaps a guy with a broom just like him—had already got his hooks into me, for I was saying, “Roland, I think about him all the time even when he’s not there.”

Maybe the smile as he tipped his cap to us carried a response. Eh, Roland mon vieux, you’re a fool if she spends too much time thinking, old man, instead of being there in person to do the job properly. It’s a question of French honor—la patrie—mon vieux. As for the redhead, oh là là, lucky devil who gets a piece of that business. A job for a real man, a street sweeper perhaps… The cap went back on his graying head, he muttered, “Eh bien, the first long-stem roses mean the coming of spring,” bent once again over his broom, and we went on along the river, following our own narrative.

“Oh, J.J., it was just perfect,” Evelyn was saying. “I could just hear the wheels turning under that ridiculous lampshade of a hairdo—God, did I tell you how ridiculous she looked? So when le marquis, my marquis, suggested going to his ‘hideaway’ after the ‘too boring trial we’d all been enduring,’ Edith leapt like a cat. I mean, it’s not like he invited her exactly, but she was purring. So the three of us, plus a couple of his really strange friends, you know, getups like those engravings in Balzac novels, linked up and marched out together, like a royal procession, people sort of bowing on the sidelines. She was beside herself, especially when, whom should we meet on the way out but Charles.

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