Isabelle in the Afternoon Read online

*

  There was a pay phone at Le Select. It had a jeton – the token you bought to operate it – jammed into its slot. I asked the guy behind the counter if I could use the red Bakelite phone he kept next to the bottles of Pernod and Ricard. He placed it in front of me on the zinc counter. The rotary dial clicked like a spinning roulette wheel as I dialed the number.

  ‘Oui, allô?’

  She’d answered on the third ring.

  ‘Bonjour, Isabelle?’

  ‘Oui?’

  She sounded tentative. As in: Who is this?

  ‘C’est moi … Sam.’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘L’américain. Three days ago … the bookshop.’

  ‘Oh … Samuel. A lovely surprise.’

  Sem-you-el. She gave my name a quirky musicality.

  ‘I was just wondering …’

  I couldn’t complete the sentence. Merde.

  ‘Would you like to meet for a drink?’

  She’d just completed the sentence for me. Double merde.

  ‘Yes, I would like that.’

  ‘Good.’

  I could hear amusement in her voice. I could sense her thinking, A boy. A scared little American boy.

  ‘If you have my phone number, then you also have my address.’

  I glanced down at the card. This was all vertiginous new territory for me.

  ‘Yes, I’ve got it.’

  ‘Do you have something to write with?’

  I scrambled in my jacket pocket for my notebook and pen.

  ‘Ready.’

  She gave me the door code. She told me the street was off the rue de Rennes and that I should take the Métro to Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

  ‘At five?’ she asked.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Today. Unless you are busy.’

  Busy with what?

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘À très bientôt.’

  The last time – the only time – we’d spoken she had ended the conversation with ‘À bientôt.’ Now that ‘See you soon’ had been upgraded with a très. My French was still basic. But I had started to discern the subtle intricacies, the signs and meanings contained in the addition of a more alluring très.

  A crystalline January day. Cold. A hard blue sky. I walked and found myself deep in the 10th. A canal. Grubby streets. Tumbledown buildings. More walking to quell the anxiety within. The canal ran right down to the Bastille. Why this intrinsic fear? That afternoon on the canal, when I tried to walk off the worry – was that the moment when a perception began to take hold? My childhood had been infused with sad culpability. A belief – reinforced by my father – that I merited being kept at arm’s length. Not really worthy of love. A parental viewpoint that now had me wondering: how could a woman as rarefied and cerebral as Isabelle find this naive child of the Midwest worthy of her interest?

  The canal ran out. I ducked into the Métro. Some minutes later I was above ground in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Night. The electric dance of street lights and car beams and neon. I crossed the rue de Rennes. Bernard Palissy was a short, narrow street, number 9 a broad, low building. A publisher occupied the ground floor and had a severe display of its latest titles in a small picture window. I punched in the code on the pad. The door opened with a decisive click. I walked on into the courtyard. Cobblestones, narrow windows. Isabelle had told me to head to the far end and find her name on a list of bells. I rang once. Another decisive click. I opened the door to face narrow stairs. A voice – her voice – from above:

  ‘It is an alpine climb.’

  The banister was an oiled rope. The staircase was an upward spiral. It was a serious ascent. On each tiny floor were two doors painted maroon. I reached the fifth landing. The summit. Isabelle was standing in an open doorway, wearing a black turtleneck and a long, narrow, black wool skirt that held tight to her long, narrow frame. She had a cigarette between two fingers. I could see her sizing me up. She smiled, then leaned forward to kiss me on each cheek.

  ‘You deserve a drink after that effort.’

  I followed her inside. I was in a tiny apartment. A narrow rectangle of a place. The ceiling was low. It almost grazed my head.

  ‘I was worried you might be a tight fit here.’

  ‘The disadvantages of being tall.’

  ‘I like your height. The majority of French men are small – on every level.’

  She took my coat, her fingers touching the sleeve of my sweater. I wanted to envelop her. Instead, I lit up a cigarette. Isabelle reached over to a shelf in the kitchen alcove and took down two large bulbous glasses. Putting them on the table, she reached for a bottle of wine and a corkscrew. She extracted the cork with instinctive ease. She poured out about three fingers of wine into each glass. A swirl of deep tannic red. I wanted to reach for mine and down it in one go. Dutch courage and all that.

  ‘We need to give it five minutes. A wine must breathe.’

  I took a deep steadying drag on my cigarette. Isabelle reached for me, threading her fingers through my free hand. I sat on the sofa, telling myself: don’t pull her toward you.

  She came down beside me. Her grasp of my fingers tightened.

  ‘Kiss me.’

  One beat later we were entwined. My mouth deep against hers. Her hands around my head. Her tongue within me. Her legs open, then thrown around me. Rocking me back and forth, back and forth. Augmenting passion: immediate, crazed. Pulling off each other’s clothes. Her underwear: black, simple. She grabbed for my belt. Pulling down my jeans. Her hand taking me. Her skin freckled like her face, translucent. Her triangle of hair. My finger stroking her. She let out a hushed howl. She grabbed me, guiding me in. I pushed down. As deep as I could go. Now her howls were not hushed. Now she was digging her nails into my back. We were possessed. Amok. No past knowledge of such craziness, such freedom. I tried to hold back as long as possible. I came in a wild burst, the effect electric. I muffled my gasps. I slumped against her. She was still shaking. I was aware of the rapid metronome of her heart. The dampness of our skins. The way we were conjoined. Her hand taking mine. Clutching it. The solidarity of shared passion. She moved a hand to either side of my head. Grasping me. Looking long and hard into my eyes. I saw questions. She kissed me. She ran an index finger down from my forehead to my lips.

  ‘You can come back,’ she said.

  I smiled, trying to cloak my anxiety. The anxiety of being so smitten. She lit us cigarettes. She reached for the wine glasses, handing me one, then she clinked her glass against mine.

  ‘À nous,’ she said.

  To us.

  *

  That night I knocked on Paul Most’s door.

  ‘I’m writing,’ he shouted over the lethargic clack-clack of his typewriter.

  ‘I’m buying the drinks if you want an excuse to stop writing.’

  ‘Excuse accepted,’ he said.

  Five minutes later we were huddled over Calvados and cigarettes in a corner of Le Select.

  ‘So when did you fall in love?’ he asked me.

  This question threw me. Because it also had me wondering: am I that transparent?

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ I said.

  ‘Bullshit. You’ve just become a resident of that country called Smitten. Let me guess, the beautiful, elusive Isabelle …?’

  I said nothing, staring down into the dark copper veneer of my apple brandy. Most reached for my pack of cigarettes.

  ‘Your silence says it all: guilty as charged.’

  Now it was my turn to light up a fresh smoke.

  ‘Have you ever fallen hard?’ I finally asked.

  ‘Sure. Around thirty-three times. And always with a high sense of irony accompanying the downward plunge. But that’s not you, sonny boy. “How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?”’

  My lips tightened. I drew down hard on my cigarette and threw back the remains of my Calvados.

  ‘Go on, call me an asshole,’ Most said.

  I
remained silent.

  ‘That’s you – the ever-polite farm boy.’

  ‘I wasn’t raised on a fucking farm,’ I hissed.

  Most smiled. And said, ‘Checkmate. Let me guess: you’ve never felt this way before, never known passion like—’

  I held up my hand, like a cop halting traffic.

  Most smiled again.

  ‘Here’s the thing,’ he said. ‘I’ve had one or two of these arrangements during my time here. They work just fine as long as you understand the married Frenchwoman is playing by one set of rules … and you won’t get hurt as long as you accept her rules and don’t think you can impose yours on it. Trust me: your heart isn’t going to get what it so badly wants.’

  To which I could only think what I could not express:

  How could Isabelle and I have made love like that and not both be in love?

  *

  I phoned at ten the next morning. A mistake. Too early. Too eager. As the roulette-wheel dial phone at Le Select spun round, I told myself: Not yet. Not now. Wait. Even though she had said to ‘Call me tomorrow’ as I left her that first afternoon. Since then I’d played back every moment of what had just transpired. Blindsided by it all. Now fearful of its possible loss.

  Is that what’s called a duality? Does your introduction to proper passion set up a terrible dance of headiness underscored by the prospect of it all slipping out of your grasp? Which makes you even more anxious to try to shore it up. Even though you have no idea at such an early juncture what, if anything, this might be.

  ‘Bonjour, Samuel. You are calling rather early.’ Her tone formal, amused, corrective. ‘How’ve you been since yesterday?’

  ‘Missing you.’

  Fuck. Too heart-on-sleeve.

  ‘Lovely to hear that. It was a wonderful few hours.’

  ‘When can we have the next wonderful few hours?’

  ‘Mon jeune homme …’

  ‘I could come over later.’

  ‘I would truly like that. But I must head off for the weekend in a few hours. Monday, 1700 hours?’

  ‘Uh … sure.’

  ‘You sound hesitant.’

  ‘Not hesitant. Just stupid.’

  ‘You are hardly stupid, Samuel. I look forward to our next rendezvous with great pleasure.’

  I felt despair. Why was I getting the impression: this is a one-sided crush? But as soon as these questions formed between my ears, I silenced them. Instead, I said:

  ‘Monday it is then.’

  ‘Merveilleux. Bon weekend, Samuel.’

  End of conversation.

  I must head off for the weekend in a few hours.

  Monday now seemed a faraway date, protracted, distant. My reckless-desire scenario: to call her back, insist on a passionate hour today. Or to show up at the rue Bernard Palissy and …

  Destroy everything with the immaturity of the impulsive.

  I pushed away the phone. I ordered another coffee. I went back to my newspaper and notebook. I opened Pariscope and programmed the films and jazz gigs and free organ recitals in churches that would fill up the time until Monday. I gave myself the illusion of staying busy.

  The weekend bled away. I tried not to live in the realm of raised expectations. I tried to tamp down my fear of her last-minute cancelation (even though she’d given no indication so far that this could be on the cards).

  Monday morning landed with the slam of an outside door. Heading down the hall to the bathroom, I saw Paul Most in the hallway, two suitcases by his feet.

  ‘Well, hello, stranger,’ he said.

  ‘I knocked twice. No answer.’

  ‘Otherwise engaged. Now, otherwise leaving.’

  ‘Any reason why?’

  ‘My father left this life two nights ago.’

  ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘The platitude is appreciated.’

  ‘It was meant.’

  ‘I know that. I am in a sour place. Papa was not a nice man. But I must do the correct thing. The burial is Wednesday. My mother tells me I was not cut out of the will. Which was also her way of informing me: show no disrespect, be there for me, and I won’t go legal and legislate against you.’

  ‘So this is it. The final exit. No return?’

  ‘I’ve done my time here. I’m now at that juncture where I would have to stop living as a transient and get a place, get a carte de séjour and find work and declare Paris home. To get the papers I would need to marry. There are candidates. But beware these bohemian Frenchwomen who espouse free love and no strings. They all have this bourgeoise underside. They will start talking commitment, property, babies. It’s all programmed into them at an impressionable age. The veneer of sexual freedom often disguises future domestic entrapment.’

  ‘Will you dodge all that back home?’

  ‘Of course not. Within five years I’ll be married and doing something academic and limiting. Unless I decide before then to make the big Faustian pact and follow Dad into advertising. He was the ultimate J. Walter Thompson exec. Slick, smart, all success, no presence. Never rated me.’

  I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged me off.

  ‘Is this your idea of consolation?’ he asked.

  ‘Solidarity.’

  ‘What will that bring me?’

  ‘The momentary belief that someone else gets it.’

  He hung his head, then hoisted his bags.

  ‘America beckons.’

  ‘I look forward to reading your book.’

  ‘It will never see print.’

  ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘Because I know trash when I read it.’

  Declining my offer of assistance, he trudged down the stairs. I peered in his room. All his books had been left behind. Stacks of unused notepads. Bottles of wine and booze. I called down to him.

  ‘What about all your stuff?’

  ‘Past tense. Help yourself.’

  ‘That’s kind of you.’

  ‘I’m anything but kind. And I know that in time this Paris idyll will also seem to you like the last illusion of freedom before you did what most of us Yanks end up doing: the usual conformist dance.’

  Our last words. A front-door slam. He was gone.

  I went into his room. More than a hundred books. A stack of yellow writing pads. A collection of pens. About a half-dozen empty black notebooks. Grid paper. Pencils. Four unopened bottles of red. Two eaux de vie. Vieille Prune. The remnants of a life in transit. I felt a strange chill on the back of my neck. That sense that everything we accumulate – all we pile up, everything and everyone we connect with – is inevitably left behind. None of us avoid this fate. Which is why we must sidestep timidity when it comes to the present tense. All we have, in essence, is the here and now.

  And all I had – and wanted – at this very moment was Isabelle.

  *

  We fell into bed the moment I walked through her door. All over each other. Naked in moments. Crashed across the duvet. The four-day respite had built up vast desire. Pulling me in. Spreading her legs to take me deeper. Then closing them. Forcing me even further within. Her groans mounting. My arms encircling her. The aroma of her perfume – something lavender, subtle – wafting into me. My fingers on her nipples. Hearing her breath quicken. The crazed rhythms of our back and forth, back and forth. Her cries mounting. Her hand plunged against her mouth as she let go. Moments later the pressure within me detonating. A sudden explosion that landed like a punch to the head, then cascaded into the deepest sense of release. I fell against a pillow, spent. She turned toward me, her fingers stroking my face.

  ‘Mon amour.’

  It came out in a whisper. I whispered back:

  ‘Mon amour.’

  A long, deep kiss. Then she was out of bed, her tall frame shadowed by a candle aglow on her desk. Her red hair astray across her face. The luminosity in her eyes.

  A visual miniature that still stays with me: the naked beauty of Isabelle, moments after we had brought each o
ther to a place of rapture. The swaying of her narrow hips as she did fast, practical things for our benefit. Opening a bottle of wine. Finding glasses. Retrieving her pack of Camel Filters, a steel Zippo lighter, a chipped café ashtray.

  I understood so little of life then. But I was still able to grasp the wonder of all these simple elements coming together and it engendered something approaching gratitude. For having this perfect moment with this dazzler of a woman about whom I still knew virtually nothing, but with whom I was in bed under an eighteenth-century roof in twentieth-century Paris.

  ‘How was your weekend?’

  As soon as it came out of my mouth I regretted the question’s banality, its quasi-probing of matters personal. I sensed her shoulders clench. A momentary shudder of disapproval.

  ‘It was just fine. Restful.’

  ‘You went away?’

  ‘To our place in Normandy. Near Deauville. There’s a beach, la Manche – the Channel. English weather in France. Beautiful gloom.’

  Our place. The first time she had used a plural pronoun to describe her life outside of this tiny, under-the-eaves space.

  ‘You chose it for its gloom?’

  ‘For its beach. For being two hours from Paris. Me, I love the blue of the South. The brilliance of the light. That whiff of Afrique du Nord when you disembark from the train at Marseille Saint-Charles.’

  ‘Why not have a place there?’

  ‘Paris–Marseille is nine hours by train. A world away. Impractical for a weekend out of the city. Also, the family has always had a place in Normandy.’

  ‘Your family?’

  ‘Not at all. The family with means. His is an old family, with deep connections in the military, the upper levels of the Republic and, of course, the financial establishment.’

  ‘And you? No family with money?’

  ‘My parents were both teachers in lycées. Bookish, interesting, self-contained, quietly dissatisfied. My father wanted to write novels. My mother thought she should be a high-level academic. Instead they taught school. Because of that, because of the limitations of la vie quotidienne, they became disenchanted with their union together. So they both got involved with other people. Which led to the usual chaos. They divorced. And remarried mirrors of each other. The human need to repeat.’