management. He’d said it was essential if you had to be sure of sleeping in the actual room where Sarah Bernhardt slept in her coffin. Besides, whom did it hurt? Travel was not a science experiment requiring that one be strictly objective. They had integrity, they would tell the truth even if the hotel was bad.
The redheaded man said, “Madame Cordier would like to invite you for coffee. She will meet you at ten-thirty sharp, an hour from now, in the bar.”
This was the downside of the fruit and champagne: the annoying phone calls from hotel managers asking what they could do, and was there anything special Leo and Nina wanted—when all they desired was each other, and they could hardly say that. The obligatory handshake, the stiff chat in the lobby…
“Thank you,” said Nina. “I mean, please thank Madame. But I have a million things to do.”
What things? Nina hadn’t left her hotel room since she’d got to Paris.
The man said, “Madame is especially eager because you have a friend in common….”
And now Nina experienced one of those moments of blankness, like the brief lag it took her to process the fact that the TV wasn’t in color, the split second before the Provençal farm wife noticed the camera watching. This slight lapse threw Nina off, so that when at last she understood, she recoiled as if the red-haired man wouldn’t stop yelling Leo’s name, though in fact he had said it only once, and without raising his voice in the slightest.
E VERY PART OF MADAME Cordier, seemed to be tapping at once: her fingernails on the table, her foot against the floor, her high heels on the linoleum as she stood and straightened her skirt and tapped over to shake Nina’s hand.
She was small, in her early forties, doll-like, crisp and perfect. Her cap of blond hair, her dove-colored suit with its nipped waist and tiny skirt made Nina acutely conscious of having slept in her clothes. Everything about Madame was outlined in sharp pencil, while Nina, all in smudged charcoal, exuded an oily ring onto the page. She shuddered with furious regret. Why hadn’t she bathed and changed?
“Are you cold? We can turn up the heat,” said Madame in a high fluting voice. The woman who’d been screaming all night cried out once in Nina’s mind. Surely that wasn’t Madame Cordier, who surely didn’t live here. In fact, what was she doing here, this stylish overbred woman, in this unreconstructed crummy hotel on the far edge of Montparnasse?
The breakfast room had low tables and upholstered armchairs, like in a good hotel. Perhaps they’d been bought or stolen from a good hotel and left among the grimy mirrors, the scabrous checked linoleum, the spotty glare and furious buzz of the fluorescent tubing. Behind the small bar were two shelves of liquor bottles glued shut by dust, their labels stained sugary brown.
“No, thanks, I’m fine,” said Nina. “I think I’m still a bit jet-lagged.”
“In this direction, it’s terrible,” said Madame. “The other way I quite like it. Waking up all ready”—she widened her eyes—“at three o’clock in the morning.”
Ready for what? All at once Nina was certain that Madame had been Leo’s lover at some time during the decade or so that Leo had lived in France. What was Leo up to now? What else, what new bizarre trick did he have planned next for Nina?
It was uncomfortable being with Leo’s ex-mistress in a foreign country, her country, a cheap hotel, her hotel, which for some reason Nina seemed unable to physically leave. But it got Nina’s attention. She gave Leo credit for that. And as Madame sat down with a single gesture that left her back and shoulders straight, her knees perched at a graceful angle and the ideal distance from the awkward low table, Nina had a moment of near happiness: She liked being here in Paris, agreeing ever so smarmily with this chic Parisienne that transatlantic jet lag was an everyday inconvenience.
Madame motioned for Nina to sit,
The redheaded man said, “Madame Cordier would like to invite you for coffee. She will meet you at ten-thirty sharp, an hour from now, in the bar.”
This was the downside of the fruit and champagne: the annoying phone calls from hotel managers asking what they could do, and was there anything special Leo and Nina wanted—when all they desired was each other, and they could hardly say that. The obligatory handshake, the stiff chat in the lobby…
“Thank you,” said Nina. “I mean, please thank Madame. But I have a million things to do.”
What things? Nina hadn’t left her hotel room since she’d got to Paris.
The man said, “Madame is especially eager because you have a friend in common….”
And now Nina experienced one of those moments of blankness, like the brief lag it took her to process the fact that the TV wasn’t in color, the split second before the Provençal farm wife noticed the camera watching. This slight lapse threw Nina off, so that when at last she understood, she recoiled as if the red-haired man wouldn’t stop yelling Leo’s name, though in fact he had said it only once, and without raising his voice in the slightest.
E VERY PART OF MADAME Cordier, seemed to be tapping at once: her fingernails on the table, her foot against the floor, her high heels on the linoleum as she stood and straightened her skirt and tapped over to shake Nina’s hand.
She was small, in her early forties, doll-like, crisp and perfect. Her cap of blond hair, her dove-colored suit with its nipped waist and tiny skirt made Nina acutely conscious of having slept in her clothes. Everything about Madame was outlined in sharp pencil, while Nina, all in smudged charcoal, exuded an oily ring onto the page. She shuddered with furious regret. Why hadn’t she bathed and changed?
“Are you cold? We can turn up the heat,” said Madame in a high fluting voice. The woman who’d been screaming all night cried out once in Nina’s mind. Surely that wasn’t Madame Cordier, who surely didn’t live here. In fact, what was she doing here, this stylish overbred woman, in this unreconstructed crummy hotel on the far edge of Montparnasse?
The breakfast room had low tables and upholstered armchairs, like in a good hotel. Perhaps they’d been bought or stolen from a good hotel and left among the grimy mirrors, the scabrous checked linoleum, the spotty glare and furious buzz of the fluorescent tubing. Behind the small bar were two shelves of liquor bottles glued shut by dust, their labels stained sugary brown.
“No, thanks, I’m fine,” said Nina. “I think I’m still a bit jet-lagged.”
“In this direction, it’s terrible,” said Madame. “The other way I quite like it. Waking up all ready”—she widened her eyes—“at three o’clock in the morning.”
Ready for what? All at once Nina was certain that Madame had been Leo’s lover at some time during the decade or so that Leo had lived in France. What was Leo up to now? What else, what new bizarre trick did he have planned next for Nina?
It was uncomfortable being with Leo’s ex-mistress in a foreign country, her country, a cheap hotel, her hotel, which for some reason Nina seemed unable to physically leave. But it got Nina’s attention. She gave Leo credit for that. And as Madame sat down with a single gesture that left her back and shoulders straight, her knees perched at a graceful angle and the ideal distance from the awkward low table, Nina had a moment of near happiness: She liked being here in Paris, agreeing ever so smarmily with this chic Parisienne that transatlantic jet lag was an everyday inconvenience.
Madame motioned for Nina to sit,
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