9 Like the World Around Them Didn’t Exist #4
“It’s nothing, really. I just thought you’d like knowing that he lived right next door to the gallery, that an Italian like him had an apartment in Paris.
He bought it on the rue de Seine, and one day he came into the gallery to calmly look at the paintings.
I talked to him. He was a normal guy, very polite, and he was interested in a Pollock that . . .”
“I think you sort of resemble Mastroianni. Sorry, it’s not just because you just mentioned him.
I swear I thought about it yesterday. I don’t know.
There’s something about you. The laugh, the nose, the look in your eyes, the way you hold your pipe.
I’m not sure. Maybe it’s the side part and the fact that your hair goes like this . . .”
Paulina pretended to comb through her hair, but only ever so lightly, suggesting that she was tracing an artfully messy coif back from a receding hairline. Smiling slyly, Jean-Pierre tried to look like the actor. He seductively put on the voice of an interesting man, an actor perhaps.
“You’re not the first one to say that.”
They laughed happily.
“And has anyone ever told you that you’re a big show-off?”
She put her head on Marcello’s shoulder to soften her words, in case they had seemed too harsh.
Paulina sensed he was a bit of a charmer, but an irresistible one at that.
How many women had fallen under the spell of such an attractive, elegant, and charmant man?
How many times had he counted the steps between Saint-Germain and Saint-Sulpice, arm in arm with a tourist or gallery groupie?
Before Paulina could go back to her question about the gallery’s name, Jean-Pierre tried to switch gears.
“You know who else lived on the rue de Seine?”
“Who?”
“D’Artagnan.”
“Oh, sure.” She looked up at him again. “Of course, and now you’ll tell me he walked into the gallery one stormy Thursday?”
“No, we hadn’t opened yet.”
“All right. And did Peter Pan ever stop by? Who do you take me for?”
“I’m telling the truth.”
Jean-Pierre took her hand as he realized Pauline was becoming frustrated. She admittedly was starting to feel a little ridiculous with all his bragging.
“D’Artagnan was a person.”
“Look, hon, I may not have read The Three Musketeers, but everyone knows it’s a book. D’Artagnan is a character written by Alexandre Dumas. Is that how it’s pronounced? Dumas, Dumàs? How do you all say it?”
A waiter left their change on the table.
“You’re absolutely right. Dumas wrote the novel, but D’Artagnan was a flesh-and-bone person.
I’m telling you the truth. And so was Cardinal Richelieu.
D’Artagnan was actually a Gascon musketeer whose name was something like Charles de .
. . something Castelmore. Aside from becoming famous for his swordsmanship, he used to frequent the literary saloons of the Le Marais district, my neighborhood, actually.
That’s how I know the whole history of the Gray Musketeers. ”
Paulina was silent, but her honey-colored eyes revealed that she still didn’t quite trust him.
“I just thought you’d like knowing that D’Artagnan lived right here four hundred years ago. That’s all.”
“Honestly? I don’t know if I should believe it. Or rather, Jean-Pierre”—she added affectionately—“I don’t know if I should believe you.”
“Se non è vero, è ben trovato, as the Italians say, right?”
“What do you mean, ‘the Italians’? I’m from Barcelona.”
“Oh, right . . .”
They laughed again. Maybe it was the nerves, or maybe it was because he knew how to rile her up, or maybe it was because he sometimes was a total asshole, but Paulina realized she had laughed more that day than she had in several weeks. Instead of it scaring her, she liked admitting it.
“Shall we go?” He was already standing.
“Let’s go. But you owe me something.” They both knew what she was referring to. “Or would you rather I ask my cousin?”
“You mean Julie?”
“I was talking about Anouk.”
Jean-Pierre wrapped his arm around her, holding on to her shoulder as they walked back toward the river to stroll down the rue des Beaux-Arts. The weather had cooled.
“Anouk. I’ll tell you, Pauline. I’ll want to tell you myself. But not today, not tonight, okay?”
They walked for a while without disturbing the silence.
Like them, the day needed to slow its pulse.
Jean-Pierre didn’t ask how many steps it was to the river.
Paulina wouldn’t have known anyway. On the plane, she had read in her Paris guidebook, one of the Michelin Green Guides, that from door to door there were exactly four hundred steps between Saint-Germain and Saint-Sulpice. Everyone has their secrets.
The stall keepers next to the river were already gathering up their spread of old magazines, dusty books—three for the price of two—and vinyl records of chansonniers for tourists.
With their never-ending grumblings about the day’s earnings, the stall keepers, their fingers calloused by their work every evening, packed everything into boxes and tucked them all away into the big green wooden chest that functioned as an open-air shop.
They fit everything in a feat of engineering.
Afterward, they locked the chest with a flimsy padlock, and then it was good night until tomorrow.
Every so often, Jean-Pierre greeted a street vendor he knew from his midmorning coffee at La Palette.
He had a habit of closing the gallery for ten minutes and sneaking away for a small coffee at the century-old bar—wooden on the inside, filled with ivy on the outside—nearby on the rue de Seine.
Pipe still in his mouth, he absentmindedly began humming the tune Paulina had heard him hum before.
“Do you always whistle the same song? I noticed you do it yesterday at the wedding.”
“It’s a sirtaki, it’s true. I like it. It sounds Greek, doesn’t it?”
“It is Greek.”
“Not exactly. It’s from the soundtrack of the movie Zorba the Greek. Mikis Theodorakis composed it specifically for the movie, and the choreography he created was so impactful that it stuck. Now it feels like a traditional Greek tavern dance. What’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’re a movie expert too?”
“I don’t know anything, Pau, but the little I do know, I share. It’s a salesman’s trick. Anything to gain favor.”
It was the first time anyone had called her Pau since she had been in school. She liked it. Paulina was too long. She had always complained about it to her parents.
“I love dancing it. I love to mark the rhythm and feel it speed up. Slowly, slowly, slowly.” He pretended he was nodding off. “And then quickly, quickly, quickly until you can’t keep up anymore. Sometimes, I dance the sirtaki when I’m alone at the gallery.”
“You don’t even believe what you’re saying, Jean-Pierre.”
“I swear. I dance it, and it cheers me up.”
“So you whistle and dance there in the shop. I’m guessing you move the chesterfield couch out of the way so you don’t trip.” Sarcasm. It was her lifesaver again, helping her maintain her distance.
“You don’t think so? Look.” Jean-Pierre clenched the pipe between his teeth, took Pau’s hand, and placed it on his shoulder. “Follow me.”
“But . . .”
“Do everything I do . . .” He decided to put the pipe, an obstacle for dancing, into the pocket of his blazer.
“Jean-Pierre, no.”
“Come on.”
She had no choice. Lined up with their arms linked across their shoulders, Jean-Pierre sang loudly and outlined the steps.
One foot forward, now the other, one step to this side, another to that side, one leg up, one bend, a second bend, a jump on the other leg until the twelfth beat, then a turn and spin, each time a little faster.
Jean-Pierre worked himself up; the faster they danced, the louder he hummed the wordless tune.
Paulina feared she’d twist her ankle on the cobblestone wharf in her mid-heeled pumps.
She managed to slip off her shoes without interrupting the dance and finish the performance as she panted and laughed.
They were applauded. A couple dining on a nearby moored barge clapped and congratulated them from the deck. Neither Jean-Pierre nor Paulina had noticed that the elderly couple, halfway through a slice of melon, had paused their meal.
“I’m sweating . . .”
“It’s the onion soup, lady . . .”
“Sure, the soup. Have you no shame, Jean-Pierre? You don’t know what embarrassment is, do you?”
Paulina grabbed her shoes and found Jean-Pierre’s muscular arm supporting her as she put them on. Once they had recovered and their pulse was back to normal, they embraced and found the only way they could stop laughing. With a kiss. And another. Slowly.
“You’re not wearing the perfume from yesterday . . .”
Jean-Pierre had only meant to come off as observant and attentive to detail. But Paulina felt slightly disappointed. She couldn’t let that disappointment show.
“You can’t overuse Chanel No. 5. You don’t like today’s perfume?”
“I love it.” The gallerist was quick to clarify. He didn’t want it to look like . . . “Perfume is only an adjective. What I like is you.”
Tucking her hair behind her ear, Paulina pretended to ignore the comment.