Paris: The Novel

affairs, none really satisfactory. She’d concentrated on her own work.
    And she’d made a small name for herself. She had written three well-received art books, and two works of fiction based on the lives of artists. Not only had these sold well in America, but to her great delight they had been published to critical acclaim in France.
    And then she’d found Phil. Or, he would say, he’d found her.
    Phil was her friend. He was her husband now, and she couldn’t be happierabout that fact, but above all he was her friend. He wasn’t tall and handsome like Frank. He was somewhat round. He didn’t have eyes that made her go weak at the knees. His eyes were brown, and gentle, and amused. He’d been a doctor, recently retired. Her children liked him. That was important. Just as important, so did her mother. After she’d been with him for a year, but not yet married, Marie had told her: “I’ve left Phil a bequest in my will, dear, that I thought you ought to know about. I’ve decided to leave him that painting of Saint-Lazare in the snow. The one by Norbert Goeneutte.”
    “But I always loved that painting,” she’d cried.
    “Yes, dear. I know.”
    When Claire had asked Phil what he thought about a Parisian pied-à-terre, he’d been unequivocal.
    “I think you should do it,” he said. “You’ve family there.”
    “I don’t care too much about Jules’s family. And if Esmé wants to see me, he can get on a plane. He’s free, and he’s got all the money in the world. And I’m pretty much happy staying here with you, you know.”
    “You mean you won’t take me to Paris?”
    “Not for months at a time. You don’t speak French.”
    “So I can learn. It’ll be a project.”
    “I’m not going to ask you to do that for me.”
    “The offer’s open.”
    But she’d put the idea out of her mind, and spent a very pleasant summer sailing and seeing her grandchildren, and Phil’s.
    And then Esmé, with his cheek and sense of humor, had sent her a telegram.
    COME AT ONCE.
    “This is ridiculous,” she’d said.
    “Why don’t you go?” said Phil.

    It was perfect, of course. It was delicious beyond all words. It was on the Île de la Cité itself, with a quaint living room with old beams, and two bedrooms, and a view over the Seine one way, and a glimpse of the flying buttresses of Notre Dame the other. It was romantic. It was fun.
    “You can be on either the Left Bank or the Right in a five-minute walk,” the agent pointed out, when she and Esmé inspected it.
    “It’s Friday,” Esmé said. “I’ll give you dinner tonight. Then we can goto the château for the weekend. I’ve already told them you’ll want to see it again on Monday. Then you can make up your mind.”
    “You’ve already planned all this?”
    “Yes,” he said.

    They had dinner in the Marais quarter. Claire had always found that part of Paris interesting. Since the days when King Henry IV had built the lovely brick square of the Place Royale, the Marais had been home to so many of the great aristocratic
hôtels
, as they were called. But when the court had moved to Versailles, the nobles had little need of their Paris mansions, and many fell into disrepair. The aristocracy had usually gone to the Saint-Germain quarter, after that.
    But if the grand old mansions had been split into tenements, and parts of the area had become a thriving Jewish quarter, and other parts had filled with poorer folk from one or other of France’s colonial possessions, whose streets, rightly or wrongly, had a bad reputation at night, one old square had retained its magical charm. The old Place Royale was called the Place des Vosges now. Apartments in its quiet brick mansions were favored by international stars and the artistic rich. It was chic.
    And it was in a quiet restaurant under the old colonnades that Esmé and Claire enjoyed a mellow dinner, and talked of the old days when she ran Joséphine, and met Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein, and many others. And Esmé told her that he was thinking of buying an apartment in the Place des Vosges himself, and how André Malraux was cleaning up the whole area, and restoring the old mansions, and how they were planning a huge new cultural center over in the southwest corner of the Marais that would be like a sort of modernist cathedral when it was built.
    But he was careful not to mention the subject of her pied-à-terre at all.
    The next day they drove down to the château. Esmé didn’t spend as