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After the writers’ group disbanded, John hit his stride as he marched toward his apartment on Boulevard Raspail, a street in the tony Sixth arrondissement, otherwise known as the Sixth. The sky was still light. So, when he crossed the Seine on the Pont des Artes, the thousands of padlocks that couples had locked to the chain link fence on both sides of the bridge gleamed gently in the dying light.
He and Cassandra had honeymooned in Paris, had gotten a lock engraved with their names and wedding date, and attached it in the middle of the bridge, near a post. John didn’t feel like trying to find it.
As the Seine roiled below him, he thought of how a person could cross the powerful Seine in approximately two minutes’ walk, but crossing the equally dangerous East River in New York City took half a day. He was reminded of the time, when he was four or five, when his father had decided to make him walk across the Brooklyn Bridge “to toughen him up.” They’d left his father’s Park Avenue apartment and taken the 6 train to City Hall. Then began the long walk up the interminable on-ramp. Finally they were on the bridge itself, above the restless East River. Then down the interminable off-ramp, before they were on terra firma in Brooklyn.
John had been wearing new shoes; they were causing blisters. They hurt. More and more. So he’d complained, a lot, as a little boy was likely to do.
His father didn’t acknowledge his first five complaints.
Another few footsteps.
“Daddy, will you carry me?”
His father turned on him.
“You’ll never be a success,” his father shouted. People walking near them veered away.
John remembered how those words had hit his heart and blown an aching hole in it. It had never healed. The pain was as real today as it had been that day, high above the East River.
A bateau mouche emerged from under Pont des Artes and chugged with its load of tourists downstream. John watched for a while.
Then he turned away and continued home, smarting from his father’s meanness. He just walked, covering ground quickly, passing Parisians, and tourists from all over the world speaking to each other in incomprehensible languages. Occasionally he passed someone who sounded American or British. The snatches of their conversations made no sense, but they distracted him from his memories.
“—quite a scene—”
“—that falafel place—”
“—just call your boss ‘Your Royal Highness’—”
At that, John spun around, but it was just two Asian girls chatting and laughing.
The people came toward him and disappeared behind him. John felt good as he reflected on the lunch he’d had with Brad Harrington yesterday. Soon, very soon, he’d have this fish not just on the hook but landed in the boat. In a good way, of course. John would invest Harrington’s money and take a broker’s share. The sailboat in Cherbourg needed a new GPS, to keep him off the cliffs of Dover. That was one way to spend part of his commission. Cassandra’s credit card was another.
Musing gently on his boats on either side of the Atlantic, and their relative strengths and weaknesses, he came to his door. The French porter greeted him. John disliked the words “porter” and “doorman.” In both languages, it referred to a man in service to a door.
He bounded up the marble stairs, with slight hollows worn out by centuries of footsteps, and unlocked his apartment door.
“Honey, I’m home!” he sang out. Then he told himself to shush, people were sleeping. The fourteen-foot-tall ceilings gave a lovely sense of gracious space. The parquet floor, with mahogany, oak and maple creating a chevron pattern, was polished to a sheen. A French aristocrat used to live here, he mused, and now an American one did.
Cassandra had left lights on for him. The Baccarat crystal bases of the lamps in the living room gleamed beautifully and sent little prisms onto the walls and the maple tables they stood on. The paintings on the wall were the work of some artist Cassandra had become enamored of in New York City. A visit to Sotheby’s, and Cassandra had herself some of her very own. Never mind they were moving to Paris in a month, a city with hundreds of galleries. No, Cassandra had to have those specific paintings. John still remembered the bill for insuring them and shipping them to Paris.
Well, there was more dough where that came from. He certainly was a success. In spite of his father. Filthy lucre, that was the scorecard, and John was way ahead of most men, including Philippe, in his off-the-rack suit, not tailored. That guy needed an upgrade.
He whistled softly on his way to the kitchen. He stumbled over some shopping bags. Both Dior and Chanel. Well, he’d see what these were about in the morning. He poured a half tumbler (also Baccarat) of organic milk. The French called organic food “bio,” pronounced “beeo.” Very amusing.
He put the glass in the sink and rinsed it with a little water, as he’d learned to do in college, when suddenly he’d found that there was nobody to clean up after him. Cassandra could care less, the cook did the dishes. He walked quietly past Emily’s bedroom door to his. It was closed, the signal that Cassandra was not in the mood. Oh well, that would change. At some point.
