When I looked up again, the model near Sacré-Cœur was gone.
I didn’t know why that disappointed me.
René moved on without ceremony, already scanning the next stall, the next possibility, the next lesson waiting to be uncovered. I followed, tired and alert and alive in a way that didn’t ask to be explained but I glanced around more than once. She might still be here…
René nudged my elbow again.
Subtle. Irritating. Effective.
“Clothes,” he said quietly, eyes forward. “Not faces.”
I flushed and refocused. He was right, damn him. This wasn’t aboutwhocaught my attention. It was aboutwhatcaught the eye—andwhy.
We moved on.
Past another stall. Then another. Until we stopped in front of a table that looked less curated and more worked. No soft draping. No delicate hangers. Just leather. Everywhere.
Belts coiled like sleeping animals. Bracelets layered and stacked. Bangles in different widths and finishes. Straps, cuffs,things that looked like they could hold you together or tear you apart, depending on who wore them.
The man behind the table looked like he’d been carved from his own materials. Late fifties, maybe older. Thick gray hair pulled back into a short tie. Beard trimmed but not tamed. His hands were the first thing I noticed—scarred, nicked, callused to hell. The hands of someone who didn’t outsource the hard parts of his work.
He spotted René and groaned.
“Oh non,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. “Pas toi.”
Oh no. Not you.It was hard not to laugh at the man’s tone if not his gesture. But I’d learned to moderate even my most basic responses around René. If I didn’t, he’d go out of his way to shock me and that wasn’t as fun as it sounded.
René smiled like he’d been waiting for that. “Bonjour à toi aussi, Luc.”
Hello to you too, Luc.
Luc snorted. “Tu viens encore me dire que c’est pas assez moderne? Pas assez brut? Pas assez quoi—intellectuel?”
“Are you going to tell me again that it’s not modern enough? Not raw enough? Not… intellectual enough?”
René stepped closer to the table, picking up a cuff without asking. “Je viens toujours pour quelque chose.”I always come for something.
That wasn’t a no.
“C’est bien ça le problème,” Luc shot back. “Avec toi, c’est toujours quelque chose.”
Always something with you.
Their rhythm was sharp and practiced, the insults too familiar to carry any real heat.
“Tu devrais arrêter de parler et recommencer à travailler,” René said mildly. “Tes finitions sont paresseuses.”
Calling his finishing a little sloppy seemed a bit personal, but no one asked me.
Luc slapped the table. “Paresseuses? Va te faire foutre. Ces finitions ont nourri ma famille pendant trente ans.”
Apparently, Luc thought the same thing, because he told Rene to go to hell.
René shrugged.“Alors nourris-la mieux.”
I stood there, absorbing it all, equal parts amused and fascinated. This wasn’t hostility at all, it was history. Luc had fed his family well this way for thirty years and all René responded with was to feed them better?
Ouch.
