Chapter Thirty

JOHN HAD HAD THE good sense not to book Charlie at the George Cinq. Instead, he chose the four-star Sofitel, across from the Gare de Lyon train station, where Charlie would depart in two days’ time for Aixen-Provence. The 4:15 p.m. got in at 8:20. A car with tinted windows would be waiting to whisk Charlie to La Villa Gallici, where he would remain, exclusively, until the following predusk, when the same car would drop him at the base of the Chemin des Vignes and he’d walk the half-mile to the mailing address Paula had provided, in his white jeans and white button-down shirt, her letter in one hand, a flower in the other. Wine and the Boodo Khan would round out his satchel.

While in Paris, at the Sofitel, there was a safe distance between Charlie and that half-mile walk. Two nights. Oh, the gorgeousness of time left, he thought on his first night in Paris, watching a waiter carve a leg of lamb right in front of his nose at the Gare de Lyon’s elegant Le Train Bleu. The rosemary was sourced right from Aix-en-Provence, the waiter had said, and rubbed the rosemary garnish into his palms and brought them to Charlie’s face.

“The smell of Provence,” said the waiter. “Beautiful countryside and beautiful people there.”

Upon his third and final leg of lamb meal, forty-five minutes before he was to board his train, the smell of Provence was terrifying. He’d forecasted their reunion every day for close to two months. The silence. The embrace, the life-clinging embrace that would bruise their rib cages but seal their souls. The lovemaking. No words for days. Then, one morning, she’d smile.

“Hi,” she’d say, and a ray of morning sunlight would activate her azure eyes.

Please come true, pleaded Charlie, while the waiter collected his dish of barely eaten lamb.

“Not to your liking?” asked the waiter.

“No, just—” He rubbed his stomach, and the waiter returned with a shot of alcohol so profusely aromatic it burned his nostrils.

“Voilà! Also, from Aix-en-Provence,” said the waiter.

Orange peel, more rosemary, maybe lavender? What is this bitter place where I’m headed?

*

Charlie couldn’t get to his hotel room fast enough. Stepping off the train, his feet sharing Provençal bedrock with Paula was just too much. He thanked God for the car’s tinted windows and the sullen driver’s wordless ride. He would need every hour of the next twenty-four to prepare for her. Practice the first hello over and over. Ask the hotel to clean and iron his colorless uniform. Try to sleep. Try not to drink until T minus one hour. Or T minus two hours. Haunt the hotel’s lobby and bar but cover his face with the Herald Tribune just in case. John had said that Aix was a small city through which coursed an advanced gossip network. “Like all the capillaries in your body. So lay low until the witching hour, and don’t take no for an answer. She’ll probably say no at first, Shannon Chang said that’s how it would all unfold. What a woman, right?”

“Uh, sure.”

The sun didn’t set in Aix-en-Provence until around eight, and Charlie needed the cover of dusk. He’d been disciplined all day.

12–1: Brisk walk around the hotel grounds.

1–2: Lunch. No wine nor garlic.

2–3: Shower prep and outfit prep in room.

3–3:30: Long shower, careful shave.

3:30–4: Wear outfit. Tuck in shirt.

4: To lobby bar. Drink wine slowly.

6: Back to room for physical inspection of self.

7–8: Back to lobby bar for courage. Vodka, soda, with excellent local olives.

8: To car.

The sunset was among the most beautiful Charlie had ever seen. The fading light didn’t soften the world, but clarified it, and Charlie couldn’t help but employ that mother of all French countryside triteness: “It’s as if I’m in a painting.”

But what a painting. The car was to wait for him indefinitely at the top of the Chemin des Vignes, a rural road. Sunflowers, vineyards, fairytale cows with soft brown circles on their hides. Charlie momentarily forgot why he was walking down this heavenly path. Nope, my pilgrimage will not be upstaged by a grove of olive trees. He steeled himself against the hypnotic skim-milk light and narrowed his eyes to focus only on the farm structures in the great distance. This must have been how World War II soldiers marched through rural Europe. Necessarily oblivious to the ancient countryside, or else they’d abandon the mission and disappear into a field of lavender. He’d passed several, but they were dull with October. He could make out the weathervane atop the main house. Her house. A silhouette of an iron rooster pointing to an opening. Another lavender field, but unlike the others, this one was vivid. Electric. This is what she wrote of, thought Charlie. This is her field.

I am trespassing. He began creeping, rather than marching. Progress was difficult, and he entertained becoming the AWOL soldier. But each step closer was the bravest moment of his life. Jee-Jee had once dispensed some wisdom: that for some people, walking across a room and shaking someone’s hand could be as brave as winning a Purple Heart.

*

When he saw her at the far end of the field, he stopped, dropped, and rolled, staining his white ensemble, crunching his ribs. He’d learned the maneuver during countless fire drills in middle school, but those were performed on cushy gymnastics mats. And while the purple field seemed so billowy, its ground was rock hard. Worse, the hard earth had broken the wine bottle. The Boodo Khan, saturated with Cote-du-Rhône, sounded one last time: “Comfortably Numb.” Then it burped and died.

“Bonjour?” asked Paula. When no answer came, she shrugged and continued examining the field and the sky. Charlie had never seen her move so gingerly. An adagio. Ballet. And that smile. He’d also never seen her—never seen anyone—maintain a radiance for so long. John had said that when girls smile in nature, it’s a hippie affectation, “A pot thing.”

This was different, a communion between the blue light of heaven and the matching irises that Charlie had claimed as his own. They’re no longer mine, he thought. They’ve never belonged to me. They’re hers, as is this reverie. God help whoever disturbs her.

Sometimes she would move close enough so that he could see her leather sandals and painted toes, tangerine orange. A new color for her. How cheerful. And with that, he prayed for her happiness to continue unfettered, forever; vowed to remove himself from the field as soon as she was safely distant. She didn’t need to be rescued or saved. How absurd. How arrogant. How selfish.

“Stay lavender,” he whispered, then trembled. He was cold with her warmth, like his one experience handling dry ice: Jee-Jee’s delivery of Maine lobsters, the one huge claw that had defied nature to break its band and yawn at death. Charlie had been burned by a smoking piece of lobster ice. Delightful. Awful. But he let it remain in his palm, smoking cold but also smoldering.

Paula’s quintessence had found his body, and he had never been more in love with her. Walking back to the waiting car, he beamed as his ethereal wife had; the ether had found him, too.

“At last,” said Charlie. “The Dignidad,”

*

He booked a flight home for the following evening, then had his pre-flight lunch at the hotel bar next to a man in a green suit, whose foppish handkerchief poured out of his lapel pocket like a bouquet of dying Provençal flowers. The man was having a working lunch, going through stacks of folders, each containing a photograph of younger people, Charlie’s age. He wondered if they were lost or wanted. The man wore a badge on his belt. Criminals, thought Charlie, although of the photos he could see, they all seemed perfectly innocent.

“Are they in trouble?” asked Charlie.

Bothered by the interruption, the man whipped around and frowned at Charlie. He was handsome, like Errol Flynn, but an ornery Errol Flynn for sure. Jee-Jee harbored great disdain for French bureaucrats, calling them amateurs d’échec. Failure lovers.

“They might be in trouble,” the man responded. “You Americans like—how do you say? Car wrecks, yes?” He snickered and continued working.

At least the asshole was drinking wine at a work lunch, and a bottle all his own, at that. At one point, frustrated, the man slapped down a folder, which opened to the picture page, and there she was, Paula Katherine Henderson Green, smiling right at Errol Flynn.

“Oh my God,” said Charlie. “That’s—I know her.”

“Yes? Well, she is here working without the visa. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

“What does that mean?” asked Charlie.

“It means, she is taking a job away from the French, and will be sent home at once. That is what it means.”

Jee-Jee had also said that the failure lovers were, to a man, utterly bribable; these inducements were the reason they chose the petit bourgeois career in the first place.

“Well,” said Charlie, “I happen to know that the girl in your folder will be a credit to your motherland.”

At this the man simply shook his head and brushed away the notion as if he were shooing a fly.

“Well,” said Charlie, wishing he’d asked his father about how exactly to do bribes, “I could, monsieur, offer you a reward for being optimistic about my friend staying in the country.”

Slowly the man closed Paula’s folder, patted it gently.

“You do know that it is a serious crime, bribing an officer of the nation? You, Monsieur, could end up in some serious trouble. The jails in Aix?” He whistled. “However, much could be forgiven if you made a donation to, maybe, the local zoo?”

“The zoo?”

“Yes, it is a place I like to go on my day off. The animals are French animals. Brave and beautiful.”

He’s crazy. “What sort of donation?”

“Including les insects, there are six thousand creatures, ten franc for each would amount to sixty thousand francs.”

Ten thousand US, thought Charlie. His savings from Martine’s, and the leftover funds John had given him for the trip: “How do I know you will let her stay?”

“Feel this,” said the man, showing Charlie a raised seal on the front of Paula’s document. “Without this official stamp, I cannot act. Case closed, as you Americans like to say.”

“I don’t understand,” said Charlie.

“I will give you the raised paper for safekeeping.” He slapped his hands, finished business. “However, I will need your passport number, and it will be entered on a list of people who may not ever again visit France. She has no use for bribe makers, monsieur.”

“I can never come here again?”

“Oui. I mean non.”

“The love of my life. I may never see her again?”

What a sacrifice, the man thought. He puts her heart before his. He must be part French.

“If she remains here, I’m afraid not,” said the man. “If it is of any consolation, I salute you. Might you be part French?”

“I am.”

“Bien sûr. Of course.”

Charlie had John call the front desk and arrange for the clearing of the funds while the man waited in the lobby, maniacally grinning at a Côte d’Azur vacation brochure. Within a half hour, the bills were counted out in front of Charlie. What crisp bills, the five-hundred-franc notes. The sound of French money: somewhere in between the sound of a whip and the sound of the wind. No more France for me, he thought. American bills don’t sound like anything at all.

“Here’s your envelope,” said Charlie to the man.

“And here is your friend’s paper. The zoo animals also salute you, monsieur.”

“I guess this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” said Charlie.

“The French do not care for the Casablanca movie, monsieur. Très irréaliste. Not realistic. Non.”