AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I glanced around the table. The women looked variously impressed, worried and a little stunned. Of course it was risky; isn’t it always when it comes to sex? But deep down in the most secret part of my heart, the part I wouldn’t even reveal to myself, I hoped that by giving Will permission to join S.E.C.R.E.T., by showing him how to please another woman, then setting him free to do just that, maybe, just maybe, it would bring him back to me.
SOLANGE
The guilt I felt when I said good-bye to my sweet boy in front of his dad’s building was especially potent. I had left him before, for more than a few days, but never for such an odd, decadent reason. I had told Julius the truth, kind of. I told him I had landed a coveted interview with Pierre Castille and had secured a promise from New Orleans Magazine for a cover story. The magazine was thrilled and even offered to cover expenses.
“Pierre Castille? You mean that rich dude who owns my building?”
“He does?” I said, forgetting momentarily that the Castilles owned half of the Warehouse District.
“I have a question for him,” Julius said. “Ask him when he’s going to upgrade our elevator system.”
“I’ll be sure to put that on my list.”
Watching Julius with Gus on the sidewalk, the both of them waving good-bye through my driver’s side window, I felt that pang again, that awful mother’s guilt that struck me like a low-grade fever.
Later that night, while packing, I burst into tears before finally pulling myself together. It’s just for a week! You deserve this little break! This is an adventure. You’ve snagged the mother of all interviews. Be … brave. It’s Paris! In the springtime!
And indeed, when I arrived, big, fat buds were bursting pink and white from the tiny trees outside the window of my unbearably plush suite at the Hotel George V. I glanced around the room in disbelief. With its dense red carpet, upholstered walls covered in gold damask and four-poster king-size bed, it might have been the nicest hotel I’d ever seen, let alone stayed in.
The first thing I did after checking in was to call Gus. It was late at night for me, but dusk for my boy. Julius answered from the eighth hole at the Audubon golf course.
“Hey there, just a sec,” he whispered. I could hear a whoosh in the background and some gleeful high-fiving. “Oh man, you should have seen that swing. The boy’s a natural!”
“You think we have a Tiger Woods on our hands?” I said, choking up. I missed them. I missed them both just then.
“Let’s hope. Then we can both retire in style, right, Gus? You got in okay?”
“Yeah, I did. It’s really beautiful here,” I said, playing with the curly phone cord, staving off the guilt.
“I bet. I’ve been picturing you there,” he said. “Walking the streets. The light on your skin …”
Things got quiet for a second, oddly so.
“Put Gus on for me?” I asked. Gus’s ebullience helped break the potent little spell that hung over his dad and me for a second.
“Mom! I sunk the ball in four shots! Dad says that’s amazing for my first time. Can I take golf lessons? It’s so cool you’re in Paris! I want to go next time. Maybe I should learn French. I know, I know, Spanish is important, but it’s not so different and besides …”
Gus always seemed charged with a special kind of energy when he got to spend long stretches with his dad. Boy energy. I loved it. After a good talk, we hung up, my heart a little less heavy.
Everything came to a quiet halt for a second as I sat on the edge of the downy bed. Be here, I told myself. Don’t be in New Orleans, be here. Gus is fine. He’s with his dad. Let it go. It’s only temporary.
I was wrapped in a towel waiting for the bath to fill. I would soon be eating mussels in wine with a nice Chablis, my feet encased in slippers. Matilda had told me whatever I needed was on the other end of a phone, answered by someone who would say, “Bonsoir, Madame Faraday!” (I didn’t have the heart to correct them; it was Mademoiselle.) What if I knew exactly what I needed but just couldn’t articulate it yet?
I padded to the marble bathroom and shut off the taps, stripping down to my skin. I turned to take in my body in the full-length mirror behind the door. There I was, my whole story staring at me through the mirror—my barely perceptible yet strangely symmetrical stretch marks just below my rib cage, my smooth, firm thighs from my jock days. My arms were good arms, my breasts were beautiful breasts. My hair was shiny; it was a good cut. In a few months I would be forty-two, and I had never felt more alluring. S.E.C.R.E.T. had given me that. It had quieted that internal critic, giving me this newfound sense of my womanhood, even adding dimensions to it. I was grateful and too tired to soak in a bath for long, so I got out, wrapping my damp body in one of the comfiest bathrobes I had ever completely passed out in.
A knock on the door woke me from what I thought was a brief nap. It was the bellhop bringing me pastries and coffee, for breakfast! Turned out I had slept the night. A thick card was perched on the tray between the butter and the sugar. I opened it like it was a Christmas gift to see the word Curiosity carved in elaborate scroll on one side and underneath, a handwritten query: Curious about what it would be like to go back in time?
My do-over step! I shivered, excited, nervous. I tried to take my time, to enjoy my breakfast in front of the Juliet balcony: café au lait, fresh fruit, bread and jam, but I was too excited to see Paris to linger long over food.
Just after the sun came up, I threw on a sweater and comfortable walking shoes and stepped out onto the Rue George V, where I passed a flock of nuns in traditional black garb funneling into the American Cathedral next door.
The air was balmy and sweet, and it clung to my skin like a hug. Armed with a good street map, I decided to trek towards the Louvre, through the Tuileries, backtracking over to the Centre Georges Pompidou, a building I had once read wore its “messy skeleton of pipes and ventilation” on the outside, on purpose, “to leave room inside for all the art.” I remember grabbing that as a metaphor for the kind of life I wanted to live, back when I thought I was going to be a glamorous lounge singer, before the practical concerns of life kicked in. I’d see the sights later; today was just for getting the lay of the land.
Strange to see for the first time a place that’s familiar to you only from books and movies. I don’t remember even wondering how Parisians actually lived, or about the price of real estate, or what their suburbs looked like or what kind of commutes these people would have or what the public school system was like. But that’s what I was thinking about that day, marveling over the riverside balconies, imagining life in some grand six-room apartment overlooking the Seine and the Eiffel Tower, throwing open the windows while wearing a white silk robe and sipping my coffee before waking up Gus for his bus. But would he take a bus in Paris? Or would I walk him to some ancient gorgeous building with old piping and stained-glass windows? Or would he be safe on his own? Would he make friends easily here? With other Americans? Or would I insist he make French friends?
Stop it, Solange. Be here now.
Sigh. Paris might be the only place in the world where you could fall in love with a room, a view, a street, or a neighborhood the way you would with a real person. That’s what was happening to me. My skin was flushed, my heart racing. I made a vow that we needed to bring Gus to Paris, an
