Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Yves led them from Shakespeare and Company, through the gate into the Square René Viviani, and along its gravel paths between a church and a garden, where one boy chased another around and around the manicured hedges.
I’m on a walk with my father, thought Sabine, as they exited onto Rue Lagrange. An ordinary, everyday walk that fathers and daughters, families of all kinds, take on an ordinary day. They arrived at a square of market stalls.
“Bienvenue à La Maube,” said Yves, “more formally, the Marché Maubert. We will buy some things and eat somewhere special, yes?”
They bought cheese from the fromagerie booth, and slices of ham and chicken, and then Yves took them to La Maison d’Isabelle, a boulangerie on the edge of the market that boasted having won best croissant of Paris and ?le de France. Sabine’s mouth began to water.
“Order to your heart’s desire,” he said.
Sabine shifted uncomfortably. She didn’t want her father to think she was taking advantage. “No, it’s OK thank you. I can pay.”
“Ah bah non,” he said, lifting his shoulders in a “you’ve got to be kidding” way. “You are my daughter. This is the first time we spend together as friends. Allow me this small pleasure, buying you pastries. Especially, if I can help it, award-winning ones.”
She looked at Aubin as if he might know what to say. He just nodded.
“Let me confide in you a secret about all this travelling I do. In London, New York, Toronto, people try to get me to move, but already I live in the best city in the world. I miss it when I am away. When I come back, I take the train from Charles de Gaulle straight to Quai Saint-Michel, without even taking my luggage home. I come here and order one of everything. Even as people are texting, saying, you are home, come take some wine with us—I go straight home and shut the door, and I do not open it until I have taken at least one bite from each pastry. So. Buy. Maybe you, too, will come to think that they taste like Paris.”
So she ordered one of almost everything. Each time she thought she was done, she saw one more thing she wanted. A piece of flan. A tarte aux abricots. A pain au raisins. An éclair. A religieuse. Imagine a pastry called a religieuse! Maybe it gave you a religious experience?
“It’s made to look like a nun in a habit,” said Yves, “or the pope’s hat. Let’s have two.”
The woman put the desserts into a box. The croissants and pains au chocolat came in small paper bags twisted closed at the corners.
The baguette, still warm, was wrapped in a piece of paper, twisted closed, too.
Sabine couldn’t hold back her child-like grin.
Yves looked like he was having fun, too. For once, she decided not to worry.
“Let us eat on ?le Saint-Louis, un peu comme des flaneurs,” he said.
“What’s that?” asked Sabine.
“Someone who wanders so they can drink in ordinary life. It is the best thing to do to get to know Paris, better than rushing to see the Louvre and Notre Dame and the Tour Eiffel.”
“Except I want to do those things, too,” said Sabine. “You can’t come here and not.”
“Maybe, but you can do them slowly. Flaner gives you time to think.”
They walked down Boulevard Saint Germain, passing a newspaper stand with a huge poster for Yves’s latest film in its display case.
“That’s embarrassing,” he said.
“Why?” asked Aubin. “You’ve done amazing work. You are being recognized for it.”
“It is as if I am saying, look at me, how important I am. People don’t realize filmmaking is yes, art, but also a business.
There are many people behind every film—the crew, the cast, everyone in postproduction—well, not so many for me, because I continue to make films in this independent way, like a student, with three people in my crew, and sometimes only myself.
But most big budget crews have many people.
When you count marketing, publicity, sales, it’s more.
They all need the film to succeed, because there are many people to pay, and a machine to keep turning.
You don’t have the luxury to say on the last day of filming, I am onto the next film Monday morning.
You have to feed this marketing monster, too.
And it is hungry. It desires all of your time.
It forces you into meetings and screenings and interviews with the media.
It’s a fight between art and business. Anyway. This is too boring to discuss.”
“It’s not,” said Sabine almost in a whisper, wanting to hear all the details of her father’s life, wanting a hundred brush strokes to fill in a blank picture.
Marlow and Luc left the springs and got back to the parking lot. She stepped to her side of the car and opened the door to get changed, peeled off her wet bather, got into her clothing and peeked to see if he was dressed yet. He was. Too bad.
They stopped to buy a roast chicken and wine. On the way back to the car, he asked to see her Instagram video. She pulled out her phone and showed it to him. The magpie on the wall.
“You capture a moment and give it meaning,” he said. “You are a filmmaker.”
“I told you, this isn’t filmmaking. There’s no story.”
“Not by your definition. But, for example, some people are suspicious about seeing one magpie alone. That it is bad luck. They could interpret from your movie that something bad is going to happen. That is a story, no? I interpret that you see strength in the single magpie. Strength and beauty. That is a story, too.”
“You’re just a romantic.”
“True. But being a romantic is better than living a too-heavy existence.”
Sabine, Aubin, and Yves sat on a bench on the stone quay at the tip of ?le Saint-Louis, in a spot called Place Louis Aragon. Named after the French writer, its royal blue street sign read:
Do you know the island
In the heart of the city
Where everything is quiet
Forever
They each took a bite of a dessert and passed it along so the others could do the same.
“What’s next?” asked Yves. “What university have you chosen?”
“I haven’t quite,” said Sabine, letting the religieuse melt in her mouth. “Making my choice any day now.”
“What?” said Aubin, staring at her. “You just told your mother …”
Shit. She was a terrible liar. “I said I chose University of Toronto, and I was going to, but I didn’t go through with it.”
“It’s soon, no?” said Yves.
“Yes. Though technically I can choose anytime this summer.”
“What Sabine is not saying is that she got a hundred percent in her final marks in school, so she can do whatever she wants,” said Aubin. “The world is her mussel.”
“The world is your oyster,” Sabine said, laughing, shooting him a look to stop talking.
“One hundred percent?” asked Yves.
“Sort of,” said Sabine, focusing very hard on a bateau mouche gliding by.
“She is just being, how do you say, without pride,” said Aubin. “Every mark was a hundred percent. Every university said yes, with scholarship money.”
“Incroyable,” said Yves. “You should be proud in this matter. I am.”
Life was funny. She had a boyfriend who was not a boyfriend, and a father who was not a father, both proud of her.
“So if you have the pick of universities,” asked Yves, “why wait?”
“I guess I want to choose the right one. I’m not actually sure.”
“But life is never exactly right,” he said. “If one school is not exactly right, you have time, you can change courses, schools … You can adjust. But life is also short, so don’t wait.”
The Seine flowed around the island. People passed on electric scooters and bicycles.
Sabine unraveled the pastry of the pain au chocolat from around the piece of chocolate inside, saving it for last. Aubin flipped through his new book and talked about his dream job, hosting outdoor events at Maison Fortin with music, so people could drink and dance by the vineyards.
Sabine suddenly remembered the time and scrambled to her feet. “We’re going to miss our train.”
“Text your mother,” said Yves, unworried.
“Leave in the morning.” There wasn’t really another option, and there was no Wi-Fi in Mirabelle, so Aubin would have to text Guillaume and ask him to drive there to tell her mother—what?
Yves and Aubin chatted more about music, but Sabine was too busy dreaming up the next lie.
Marlow slipped into a maxi skirt and tank top and went to Luc’s house for dinner.
It was no different from hers in layout but was filled with books, newspapers, deep armchairs with worn springs, and faded footstools someone had needlepointed long ago.
His parents had lived there and their parents before them; stuff had piled up.
The rustic kitchen had a boarded-up fireplace, a table covered by a brown and orange tablecloth, a counter made from an old door on makeshift legs with two propane burners and a toaster oven.
Taps connected to a water heater mounted on the wall above a solid, flat stone slab sink with a rim.
He pulled mismatched glasses from a crooked sideboard, opened a bottle of wine, poured them a glass, and toasted her. “To a day of doing Haute-Marne like the locals,” he said.
“Enough stalling. Where’s my painting?”
He rolled his eyes and took her to a set of arched double doors past the living room. “This used to be the stables. My grandparents made it into a lounge. Now it is my studio.”
An easel. A table covered in half-squeezed tubes of paint. Old food cans filled with paintbrushes. Dozens of canvases—some blank, some half-painted, some complete. He pulled out a small one and showed it to her.
It was the layer cake of newer Nenier, old Nenier, and Mirabelle on top, at sunset, rendered in pinks, oranges, and yellows. Warm and sensual.
“There. Now, stop bothering me.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “When did you paint this? Do you paint every day?”
He sipped his wine and considered his answer. She sipped, too, feeling the warmth spread through her. She had not eaten enough today. She’d be tipsy in no time.