Last Train to Paris by Michele Zackheim Page B

everywhere.
    â€œNo Berlin, no job,” he shouted and left the newsroom.
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    One man, Leon, had threatened me. Another man, Ramsey, was threatening me, too. I felt torn in half—as if every man who was important in my life had a pronouncement about how I was to behave, including my father. It was funny. I felt I could do battle with my mother and survive—but the opinions of these three men petrified me.
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    I knew I had a few days to get things back on track. It was Andy who came to the rescue. “Quietly,” he said, “propose to New York that you write a series of six articles, one a week, on Germans living in Paris. It’ll make Ramsey look good. And it’ll give you six weeks to get yourself together. Now, come on—let’s go have dinner. At least when I’m with someone, I actually eat food.”
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    Later, we arrived home to find Madame Pleven, the concierge, fast asleep with her folded arms upon the table, cradling her snoring head. She was supposed to check all the residents as they came in and went out, but it was two in the morning and she had obviously lost her battle with wakefulness. Slipped into a crack beside her bell was a formal envelope addressed to me from the American Embassy.
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    Dear Miss Manon, I need to speak to you. There will be a Christmas party Saturday night at the Embassy. I would appreciate your coming about 9:00
P.M.
and we’ll find a quiet moment to speak. Formal dress is required.
    Sincerely yours, John Clancy, American Consul.
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    I had no idea what Clancy wanted to talk to me about. Perhaps, I thought, something to do with Stella’s disappearance? Perhaps he wanted to recruit me? I knew that some American correspondents had been convinced to feed information from their private sources to the embassy. But I had never been asked. Sexy and beautiful women were used for gathering information, not someone like me.
    Formal dress? That was a joke. Shopping for clothes in Paris had become a grim enterprise. The shelves were not stocked as they had been. Fabric was being manufactured for the army, not the fashion-conscious. People were mending, or refashioning, old clothes. Nevertheless, I needed to find a dress. Ridiculous. I hadn’t worn a dress since I left New York. Under the cold blue lights of the dressing room in La Samaritaine, I looked drained of blood–like a cadaver. Every pore, every blemish, was amplified a hundred times. As I was trying on dresses I became more and more depressed. Fancy clothes and I are not compatible. I settled for a pair of dark gray trousers and a teal-blue silk blouse. After all, I was a journalist, not a socialite. But I would wear Clara’s mink coat.
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    It was snowing, and by three in the afternoon it was dark. I walked to the boulevard to get a bath and a haircut. “Cut off the curls,” I told the barber, “I want my hair to look smooth.” The barber, Louis, shrugged as he whipped the blue-and-white-striped cloth around my shoulders. “You can’t smooth your kind of hair, Mademoiselle,” he said. “Your hair’s naturally curly from the beginning of its roots. I’ll have to shave your head to get rid of the curls.”
    â€œOkay,” I said. “Just do it, please.”
    â€œShave your head?” asked Louis, and I laughed.
    â€œNo, no,” I said, “just a regular trim.”
    When I returned to the hotel, I went to Andy’s room to ask if I could borrow a pair of Ruby’s galoshes to wear over my dress-up shoes. “Hey, Andy, you there?” I asked as I knocked and pushed the door open.
    The room was a pigsty. Clothes strewn about, a bed without sheets, a saliva-stained pillow without a case, an old green and black plaid blanket on the floor. It was freezing. There were empty whiskey bottles scattered here and there, old crusts of bread, hardened pieces of cheese. It was alarming; he had rubbed out his cigarettes