That Mad Ache by Françoise Sagan

Author:Françoise Sagan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books

And thus she spent a marvelous two weeks. Paris had been given back to her, along with her status of loafer — and also the money she needed to enjoy that status. She quickly returned to the lifestyle she’d gotten so used to, but now as an impostor — and naturally, the feeling of playing hooky greatly enhanced her pleasure, even in simple things.

One day, upstairs in a restaurant on the rive gauche, she discovered a kind of café-cum-library, and from then on she spent her afternoons there, reading books or chatting with various strange characters at loose ends, mostly alcoholics, who haunted the place. One of them, an aristocratic-looking old fellow who went around proclaiming he was a prince, asked her if she would care to join him for lunch one day at the Ritz Hotel, and the morning of that grand event she spent an hour getting dressed, trying to figure out which of the many cute suits that Charles had bought her had the most fashionable colors. And thus she had an exquisitely unreal lunch at the Espadon, sitting across from this eccentric gentleman who most gravely lied through his teeth to her, recounting his life in a fashion inspired a little by Tolstoy and a little by Malraux — and she, to be sure, returned the favor and lied right back at this eccentric gentleman, inventing a story in her best Scott Fitzgerald style.

He, in a word, was not only a Russian prince but also a historian, while she was an American heiress with a dollop more culture than usual. Both of them were dreadfully adored and dreadfully wealthy, and as the various maîtres d’hôtel fluttered solicitously about their table, they casually dropped Marcel Proust’s name, for it turned out that her lunch companion had been on intimate terms with the great writer. At the end, he sprang for the bill, which certainly had to put a sizable dent in his upcoming month’s budget, and they took leave of one another at four o’clock, each of them utterly enchanted by the other.

When she got home, she told Antoine a thousand anecdotes about all the little goings-on at Le Réveil, and he was clearly amused. She took particular pleasure in lying to him because she loved him so much, and because she was so happy, and because she so truly wanted him to share in her happiness. One day, of course, he would find out; some day, even though she’d told Marianne not to do so, the office phone would ring and Marianne would answer it and blurt out that Lucile had been “away” for a month — but rather perversely, this sword of Damocles hanging over Lucile’s head simply added an unexpected little twinge of excitement to each day that went by. She bought a series of ties for Antoine, as well as numerous art books and records for him, and whenever they talked, she would go on and on about all her advances, her free-lance assignments, and whatever else came to mind.

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