Ava Fodor, a slightly plump, frizzy-haired nineteen-year-old American au pair in Paris struggles with being less than perfect. Jean-Michel is Ava's fussy, exacting first French boyfriend whose provincialism drives her up the wall yet who educates he...
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For the next two weeks, I performed at Teddy's on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights and for all six of those nights Pierre Castel showed up for part of the evening to listen, converse with me during my breaks and then leave. His elusiveness drove me crazy. The fact that I was Arnaud's girlfriend and I was supposed to be desperately longing for his return, but somehow wasn't, was also driving me crazy. Who was I? A lightweight? A will o' the wisp musician drifting along in the willow world of nightclub entertainment and nightclub mores?
On afternoons after my last English student left and evenings I wasn't working, Pierre squired me around town. His enthusiasm for everything we visited matched my own, probably because he wasn't a Parisian. We were both free to marvel at the wondrous beauty Paris offered, untrammeled by the mandatory blasé attitude of a native Parisian. "Je m'en fou. I could care less," the expression I'd heard used so frequently there, never once crossed either of our lips. We were like two outer borough New Yorkers romping around the island of Manhattan.
One mild early-December afternoon we decided to explore Montmartre, the hilly neighborhood where nineteenth and twentieth century artists such as Toulouse Lautrec and Modigliani had painted. It was a well-known tourist destination, which neither Pierre nor I minded, counting ourselves among them. We climbed the five hundred or so stairs to Montmartre's most famous landmark, the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur. There, in the main square before the enormous white church, a street performance was in progress.
Four acrobats, two men and two women, flashed back and forth across the square in dizzying gymnastic sequences. They wore black and white harlequin leotards with yellow-gold trim. Lithe and graceful, the entertainers teased the crowd, provoking, then retreating from the audience in a series of flips, cartwheels, and shoulder stands. Suddenly, the more attractive of the two female performers landed directly in front of us, breathless and flushed. Her animated eyes raked over Pierre, ignoring me altogether.
Like a déjà vu, the castle courtyard in Sancerre flashed into my head, where I'd watched Arnaud exchange looks with the court lady with the green scarf. The scene still smarted, although I knew it had meant nothing.
I glanced at Pierre, steeling myself to be strong. He was a French man after all.
But he wasn't gazing at the young, female acrobat only inches away, her not-unpleasant sweaty scent filling our nostrils. Instead, he stared bashfully down at the cobblestoned square like any homespun, right-hearted American man would do in the company of a female he was with and an attractive female stranger in front of him.
"Ça va?" he asked, his eyes sweeping up to mine. No guilt or hint of wandering attention showed there.
My heart warmed.
"C'est merveilleux, non? It's marvelous, isn't it?" I asked, meaning how he hadn't allowed his attention to be diverted to the lightly clad woman in front of us.
He nodded, breaking into a smile. The performer gave Pierre a disdainful look, then she cart-wheeled back to the center of the square.
The rest of that afternoon, I had plenty to think about. One month earlier, I'd been madly in love with Arnaud. But the logistics of loving someone who wasn't there and not in regular touch were having a not-so-surprising effect. In the absence of any sort of commitment between us, and buffeted by Pierre's discourse on the je t'adore, je t'aime distinction, my heart was no longer certain of Arnaud or of my feelings for him.
