We changed the subject, but I was unburdened by the worry that had weighed on me.
“How was your day?” I asked.
“Superb. I quit my job.”
“Why?”
“To make my own things.”
“That is fine,” I said.
“Yes, it is,” she replied, setting a pot on the stove to boil. “Are we not free?”
“We are free,” I said. “But free has a cost, too.”
“Do not be so bourgeois. It is why the world is so miserable. Everybody does false things their whole life, for money or whatever else, but they do not understand it means they then have to live in a false world. We have shelter, and we have good food to eat, and we have each other. What else do we need that we do not have?”
I was struck by her liquid intensity. “Nothing at all.”
“I am so happy with you.”
When I awoke the next morning she had already gone out, leaving me a note to say she wanted to be alone with her thoughts before the rest of the city arose.
She had left a loaf of fresh bread and pastries, and I made coffee, then dressed, folding her note into my pocket, like a talisman, as I went to hole up in my room.
By the time I sat down, the answer to the previous day’s silence was there with me, and I hummed with inspiration all afternoon. By evening I had made enough progress to ring Davidson, who suggested we meet for dinner to discuss the revision.
“In the framing story the director has made three films on three continents in twenty-four months, all for money,” I started, “but has spent his first fuel and is exhausted. He is isolated from society, which to him seems to have traded its soul for material things. He is sick in himself to know how close he has come to doing the same, but finally accepts he does not value what it values, does not think as it thinks, or love what it loves, and yet he loves it. He disappears, hoping to discover a new energy and recover himself, not understanding that the him he thought he knew before no longer exists. He walks the streets of old Europe, streets he knows and streets foreign to him, rummaging the pockets of his life, thinking of his parents, who were split up by the time he was born.”
“What was that like?”
“His mother was a great beauty, who remarried while he was still young, and sent him away to live with his grandparents. When the grandparents die he goes to live with his mother and stepfather, but it does not take. He is an outsider, even when he succeeds. It was the desire for acceptance that fueled his craving for success, so when it does not prove what he thought it would, his psyche presents its cracks and through them, all the rest surfaces.”
“He goes to Switzerland and throws himself to pleasure,” Davidson nodded. “He sleeps with a woman from every country.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
“Did you just roll your eyes at me?”
“Of course not. I only rolled my eyes. The pursuit of material pleasure leaves him depleted — creatively, emotionally, psychically — until, in his collapse, he must find a new purpose, an internal sense of where his true home is. This becomes the movie he needs to make in order to bury the past, and move into his next self. It is the question of how to be when there is no longer an external narrative to guide you, and the narrative you gave yourself in youth no longer holds.”
Davidson laughed. “Yes. It was just like that. Everything except the coup de grâce. So you think you figured me out?”
“You? No, but I figured out your movie. That is not life as we said yesterday, except maybe slantwise. In a story something happens and there is a reason for it. And if something should happen to blow up, no one is truly hurt. In life things are not that way.”
“There are signs in life,” he said wistfully, “when we are awake to them.”
“Signs, maybe, but that is not the same as meaning.”
“Which is why we need stories, and why they must be true, and characters must be true unto themselves.”
“Too much,” I said, leaving to meet Genevieve. “I have a date.”
It was mid-evening, and the city was cast in rose gold as I stopped to buy flowers from a street vendor before climbing the cobblestones up the hill. Someone in one of the flats along the street was listening to Edith Piaf on an old record player, and I felt free and light. I was in my own story, and where I belonged and where I was supposed to be.
This feeling of utter peace and belonging rose in me, I knew, not because I adored Paris, but because I was in love, and that is all I ever need to feel truly home.
11
Genevieve was downcast when I arrived back at the apartment, so I suggested we go to the Cinémathèque to lift her spirits. There was a retrospective of Noir, New Wave, and Neorealism playing, and a Truffaut movie was just starting when we reached the box office. I went to purchase tickets, but she made an elaborate pantomime of standing conspicuously still, like a spy in an old movie, until the usher turned away momentarily and she snuck into the theater. When I found her in the dark she was in a lighter mood, and by the time we walked back into the torpid night air it was as though nothing had ever been wrong.
On the sidewalk out front someone called my name, and I looked up to see Davidson. He was on a date with a blonde named Elsa, who had hypnotic cat eyes. They were both in full eveningwear, dressed for something formal, but had just exited the Fellini film. I asked where they had been.
“We were at a party earlier,” Davidson answered. “It was uptight, so we left.”
Elsa was stunning in her gown and a pair of emerald earrings that matched her eyes and cost a car each. I know what they cost the same way I knew Davidson’s midnight-blue evening suit had been cut for him in London, and that his shoes were hand-stitched for him in Milan, and what they cost, because Davidson told me. He did not buy brands, he had things made no one else had, and took mischievous pleasure in pricing all of it.
They cut a glamorous figure, especially compared to us in our blue jeans, but he suggested we join them for dinner at a place he knew near Montparnasse. We agreed, and the four of us piled into a taxi, through a part of the city. We arrived at what turned out to be a two-star restaurant, where we did not have reservations. But the wool of Davidson’s suit whispered power, and the emeralds shone money. The maître d’hôtel got the point and seated us at a high table in a corner by a big picture window, which opened onto the street and caressing night air.
We ordered oysters from Normandy, and Champagne from deep in the cellar, then white lamb, with a Burgundy from high up the hill. Our spirits were awake with pleasure and the conversation was interesting and lively, making us feel princely, as Davidson pondered the sweet wines. While he pored over the list Genevieve stood, excusing herself, and Elsa left to go with her, leaving us alone.
“She seems good for you, if you are not still too wise for that sort of snare,” I ribbed him.
“We will see. I spent an hour talking with her mother at the party, so maybe she is.”
“I see. Next you’ll be taking her home to meet yours.”
“You jest, but you do not know what you are saying when you bring my mother into this.”
“I did not mean any offense.”
“It’s not that. My mother, my mother is a different sort. Do you know how many women I have introduced to her?”
“No.”
“Two. Do you know how many I have dated?”