Paris Is Always a Good Idea (23 page)

“Oh, fine. Absolutely fine. Excuse me for trying to help you,” she had retorted. “Fine, then I'd better just keep my mouth shut.”

Upset, she had fallen silent, even though he had immediately assured her that he hadn't meant it like that, and finally a tense silence had filled the cramped space in the little car.

When she later dropped him outside the hotel, he hadn't dared to touch her again. They had parted with a brief nod of the head, and Rosalie had promised to call him as soon as Max Marchais was in a fit state to be asked certain questions.

“We should at least wait until he's back home,” she had said, and Robert had sighed inwardly. “Perhaps we could visit him together, I'm sure that would make things a lot easier, don't you think?” She had looked at him with a hesitant smile.

“As long as we don't have to lie under a dusty bed again,” he had said, in a failed attempt to be funny. He could have immediately slapped himself for such a boneheaded remark.

She had clammed up like an oyster. Of course. He looked unhappily at her pale face, which betrayed no emotion.

“Well, then … I've got to go,” she had said finally, with a strange little smile, fiddling with her safety belt. “I'm sure René is waiting for me.”

René!
The thrust had hit home.

Grouchily, Robert kicked a pebble, which fell into the constantly running water of the Paris gutter. He had completely failed to remember that Rosalie had a boyfriend—the bodyguard, who was only too ready to defend her with his outsize fists. Robert smiled wryly, thinking of his first and hopefully last encounter with the French giant, who had already made it clear he wanted to beat him up because he had ostensibly insulted his girlfriend. A fitness trainer, well, well. (“He's a sports graduate and yoga teacher,” Rosalie had explained to him earnestly that evening in the Marly. “He's even worked as personal trainer for a famous French actress.”) So what? Admittedly the guy, thanks to his size and his velvet-brown eyes, was certainly not the kind of man women would fail to notice. Okay, he wasn't bad-looking. But what else did he have to offer? thought Robert with a degree of defiant arrogance. He couldn't quite work out what it was that Rosalie saw in the pragmatic René, and in fact he didn't really even want to try—it was certainly not a union of kindred souls. It was as clear as daylight that the pair were not suited for each other.

And then, strangely, he thought of Rachel.

Rachel: sensible, efficient, assertive, slick as a fashion plate, gorgeous. It had been she who had called him a second time as he was hiding under the bed with Rosalie. At a really awkward moment. She hadn't left a message, which made it clear that she was really displeased with him. He'd call her that afternoon when it was morning in New York.

If he told her all about the manuscript and explained to her that he had crept into a stranger's house to follow the trail of a mystery that closely concerned him, she'd surely understand why he had broken off her call to him. It would probably be better not to tell her that he'd been lying under a bed with Rosalie Laurent when she'd called the second time. And he wouldn't mention the kiss either. The whole business was already complicated enough.

He speeded up and arrived at the Quai d'Orsay. As he took his place in the line outside the museum and patiently edged forward bit by bit, he saw Rosalie once more in his mind's eye, standing laughing under the tree like Shakespeare's Titania. He tried to dismiss the vision and think about something else, but he couldn't help asking himself if he'd ever seen Rachel laughing as uninhibitedly as that capricious, contrary, willful and—yes, he had to admit it—exceedingly enchanting woman, who was only linked to him, if you looked closely at it, by the story of the blue tiger.

Was that a little or a lot? Or perhaps even everything? “How happy some o'er other some can be,” he thought briefly. Was this going to be his personal
Midsummer Night's Dream
?

The fact that, of all people, it was this young French graphic artist who had illustrated his favorite story and that he had only gotten to know her because of that seemed all at once to be a matter of fate.

And, as they worked together to uncover the mystery of an old story, hadn't a new story begun to develop—one that was far more exciting?

Deep in thought he went up to the window in the entry hall of the museum and bought his ticket.

As he put his wallet back in his bag, he came across the book, bound in red-and-white-striped leather, that he'd bought in Shakespeare and Company and completely forgotten.
The Taming of the Shrew.
The book was still in his shoulder bag.

He'd wanted to hand it to Rosalie with a witty remark when the right moment arrived. But it seemed somehow not to want to arrive. Robert sighed. At that moment the omens were, it seemed, not looking too favorable for Petruchio.

 

Twenty-four

After more than two weeks in hospital, Max Marchais was exceedingly delighted to be back at home. He was so thankful that he even put up with Marie-Hélène Bonnier's reproaches with a smile.

“On a ladder with open leather slippers, really, Monsieur Marchais! How careless! You could have broken your neck.”

“You're right, as always, Marie-Hélène,” replied Max, happily cutting himself a slice of the crisp-roasted
confit de canard
that Madame Bonnier had prepared for him on a bed of salad.

“Really delicious, the duck. No one does it better than you.” He thought of the tasteless health food he'd been served in hospital and relished the tasty, tender meat of the duck breast that his housekeeper had, as he well knew, bought fresh at the market in Le Vésinet. “Simply divine.” He swallowed the duck and took a great gulp of Saint-Émilion from his balloon glass.

Madame Bonnier glowed red with pride. She didn't often hear such hymns of praise from her employer. “Well, yes, I know it's your favorite dish, Monsieur Marchais. And of course we're all glad that you're back here with us.”

Somewhat flustered, Madame Bonnier retreated to the kitchen, while Max asked himself with amusement who this “all” might actually be. It was not exactly the case that he knew hordes of people who had sorely missed him, old curmudgeon that he was.

It had moved him to think that Marie-Hélène had insisted on returning early from her stay with her daughter and granddaughter in order to take care of the house and oversee some urgent building work. Now that it was really important she would not leave him in the lurch, she had said. And you couldn't trust that gardener who had left all the lights in the house burning and hadn't even locked the sliding door in the living room properly. Anyone could easily have broken in!

That was rather strange, because Sebastiano swore to high heaven that he had locked all the doors properly—including of course the big sliding door in the living room. Now it could be that in all the upheaval he'd forgotten to, but even so Max would be eternally grateful to him, and not only because he kept the garden in impeccable order. It had also been Sebastiano who had picked him up at the hospital and driven him home.

“Clément could just as well have done that,” Madame Bonnier had said, somewhat offended. Clément was her husband, and these minor hostilities that had flared up between the housekeeper and gardener both surprised Max and made him smile.

When he got home, he found a bunch of flowers from Rosalie Laurent. How thoughtful. On the delightful get-well card she sent with it was a message: She was very much looking forward to visiting him in Le Vésinet very soon.

Rosalie had visited him twice more in hospital, each time waiting patiently until the energetic physical therapist who dealt with him every day (they never knew exactly when beforehand) had finished with her exercises.

She had brought a lavender-colored box of little cakes from Ladurée and told him that she was getting on well with the illustrations for the fairy-tale book and that having help in the store had turned out to be a godsend. She had also told him about René, who was obviously enjoying himself immensely in sunny California and was really inspired by the seminar and the mentality of the people there, all of whom were very sporty and health conscious.

Nevertheless Max had not failed to notice the searching looks Rosalie occasionally cast in his direction when she thought he wasn't looking.

“Is something wrong? Or do I look that awful?” he asked finally, and she had shaken her head in embarrassment and laughed.

“No, no, what could there be? I'm just glad that you're getting so much better.” He'd still felt that something wasn't quite right. Rosalie seemed more pensive than usual, turned in upon herself. As if she was waiting for something.

Well, yes, perhaps she's just missing her boyfriend, he said to himself. He himself was by now used to living alone and valued the advantages brought by not having to take other people into account. But recently he had noticed with increasing dismay that even he felt something was missing from his life.

As he lay in his hospital room he had had enough time to think things over. Just a couple of years ago, his peace had been most important to him; he quickly felt irritated or bored by other people and had always thought that he would never feel lonely, because there would always be interesting books for him to read.

But when the people who meant something to you were no longer there, books strangely began to lose their meaning, too. Deep inside, and in spite of all the arrogance he sometimes showed, Max regretted not having a family. And by that he didn't mean his sister in Montpellier with her constant complaints. She had actually telephoned the hospital, because Madame Bonnier had gone over his head to let her know about the accident (“She is your sister after all, Monsieur”). As might have been expected it had not been a very pleasant conversation. Thérèse had first (for decency's sake) asked how he was getting on, and then she'd had nothing better to do than to tell him that a neighbor of hers, some tottering old fogey whom he didn't know from Adam, had just recently died as a consequence of a broken hip.

That was typical of his sister who, no matter what happened to you, could always come up with an even more horrific story. After the gruesome story about her neighbor she'd complained that he never came to Montpellier to visit her. And she used all the rest of the call to tell him in great detail about the
terrible
burst water pipe they'd had in the spring. “You can't imagine what that ended up costing, and the stupid insurance refused to pay anything because they claimed the pipe was already in a very poor condition.”

Who knows, perhaps the family in Montpellier was already speculating about his will. But they were making a very big mistake.

Family wasn't necessarily something positive, Max thought as he put the phone down grumpily after another quarter of an hour. And yet—he sometimes caught himself thinking that old age would certainly be easier to bear if there were someone with whom you could expect to share the future, in the certainty that it would continue and that something would always remain.

And yet again he thought what a great stroke of luck it had been that he'd given in to his publisher's importuning.

Without
The Blue Tiger
he would certainly never have met Rosalie Laurent, who had for him taken on something of the role of a daughter. Never mind the fact that he would never have set foot in the little postcard store on the rue du Dragon if Montsignac had not been so insistent about it.

Good old Montsignac! At the important moments in his life, whether good or bad, he had always been there. And this time, too, he had visited him in hospital.

Without any warning, as was his custom, he'd suddenly appeared in the room one morning in a dazzling white shirt that, as always, was stretched rather precariously over his belly.

“Well, well, you keep on inventing new ways of avoiding answering the phone, eh?” he joked. Then he'd sat down beside him, waved Sister Yvonne out of the room with a lordly gesture, and as soon as she had left the room with squeaking soles and a mistrustful look, he'd calmly taken a bottle of pastis out of his bag. “Never do that again, Marchais, my old friend! How could you give me such a fright? All the hopes of our publishing house rest on you.” He poured the pastis into two water glasses and they toasted each other.
“Santé!”

“I might have realized that you've only come because you want something from me,” Max had said mockingly, trying to conceal his emotion. “If you've got another idea up your sleeve, Montsignac, just forget it! I'm not going to write another line for you, I'd sooner fall off the ladder again.”

“Well, we'll see about that. There's a time for everything, that's what I say. And anyway you've got to do your exercises with that …
delectable
nurse”—Montsignac pointed at the door and grinned—“so that we can get you back on your feet,
n'est-ce pas
?” His eyes shone with amusement.

“But a little Christmas story, illustrated by your friend Rosalie Laurent—you can write that between soup and pudding.”

“Not if they both taste as disgusting as the food in this hospital.”

“You've been spoiled, my dear Marchais—I wish my wife could cook as well as your Madame Bonnier. Stupidly, she much prefers reading.”

They'd laughed, and now he had actually been home for several days and was just spooning in the rich crème brûlée that Marie-Hélène had served him in the dining room. With a sigh of satisfaction, Max wiped his mouth with his damask napkin and limped, leaning on his crutches and taking very small, careful steps, into the library. It was a wonder that he could move about so well so soon after the operation. The word “progress” had taken on a new dimension. Even Professeur Pasquale had been surprised how well the “Ward 28 hip” was doing and had finally given in to Max's constant pressure, allowing him to go through the necessary postoperation rehabilitation phase as an outpatient.