A pause. Then the young woman smiles. Tanya smiles, too.
“Okay. Let’s leave him there. . Let’s go somewhere else.”
“Come on,” Tanya says. “That way. I know another way out.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’ll go to the Hippopotamus. But first I have to stop at my place. It won’t take long.”
“Is it far?”
“No, it’s just across the way. . Whenever I get bored I come here to chat up the bartender. He’s very nice.”
“Is he your boyfriend?” Florence asks, naïvely.
“My boyfriends are never nice. . The nice ones are only my friends.”
“Too bad for you. .”
Tanya smiles.
“I like it that way. What about you?”
“Me?” says Florence, a little off balance. “I don’t know. . I don’t know. .”
“Still trying to find yourself?”
“I guess so,” says Florence with a dry laugh.
“Well, we’ll have a drink, and your little fit of depression will just disappear. You’ll see.”
“DARLING!” TANYA CALLS as she walks into the house. “Are you here?”
No reply.
“Where are you, darling?”
“In the bedroom.”
Tanya turns to Florence, who is standing by the door.
“Have a seat for a moment. I’ll be right back. .”
She hurries into the bedroom.
“What are you doing, my dearest? Still sleeping?”
“Get off my back, Tanya.”
“I went out for a drink, darling, while you were sleeping, and you’ll never guess what I’ve brought you.”
“Not another bottle of bloody perfume, I hope. I didn’t even know they sold that shit in the bars around here. .”
“Don’t make fun of me, my love. Tell me this: who, in your opinion, is tall, svelte, has lots of hair and the biggest pair of tits you ever saw?”
Fanfan sits up immediately.
“She’s here?”
“And she’s all yours, if you play your cards right.”
“Where did you reel her in?”
“Her name is Florence, and she is very nice. She cries a lot, and she’s not quite sure what kind of man is right for her at the moment. But that’s just how you like them. .”
“I asked you where you found her.”
“Right across the street. In the bar.”
“You didn’t have to go far, did you?”
“First she and I are going to the Hippopotamus for a drink. You can have her when we get back, if you’re still here.”
“Where else would I be? Why can’t I have her now?”
“You have to wait a while, my dear. . I promised to bring her to the Hippopotamus first. When we come back. .”
“All right, I’ll be here.”
“Don’t be mad at me, Fanfan, dearest. This is the only way I can keep you here for more than two days.”
“Okay, get out of here.”
The Club
IT HAS BEEN months since Madame Saint-Pierre set foot in the Bellevue Circle. She is there now to meet Christina, who is sitting at the back, almost hidden behind a pair of large Japanese screens. It may seem odd that these two women, one French and the other American, should even have met. According to Madame Saint-Pierre, it was at a soirée at the American Embassy, organized by Harry, Christina’s husband. They were entertaining an anthropologist, a tall, black woman with a sad but gentle face, a disciple of Margaret Mead; she’d been working for the past dozen years on the mysterious rapport that African people and their American descendents have with death. It hadn’t been a very enticing subject, and only a handful of people had shown up in the huge reception hall to welcome this world-renowned specialist in death. One of them was Dr. Louis Mars, who had given a talk — too long, according to some, but nonetheless fascinating — about the role of death in Haitian voodoo. What could have been a somewhat macabre, if not deadly boring, evening turned out to have been a charming event. Christina never laughed so much, and it was largely on account of Madame Saint-Pierre. After that they became good friends, phoning each other every week and, at least once a month, getting together at a restaurant (usually Chez Gérard, rarely the Bellevue Circle) to keep in touch, or in other words to confide in one another relatively intimately about their personal lives and to share information that each of them, separately, managed to gather about their mutual acquaintances.
“Sorry I’m late,” Madame Saint-Pierre says, “but I had to go to my dressmaker’s and it took longer than I thought it would. .”
“Françoise, I hardly recognized you! I saw you come in and I said to myself, ‘Now I wonder who that could be. .’”
“Good!”
“You seem so different from the last time we met. Two totally different women. I’ve never seen anyone change so quickly. .”
“All I did was have my hair cut, Christina. .”
“No, it’s more than that. . There’s. . I don’t know what it is. . A new kind of vibe coming from you. .”
Madame Saint-Pierre gives a juvenile burst of laughter.
“What’s going on, Françoise?”
Madame Saint-Pierre smiles. Christina sits back. The waiter comes.
“Just a Perrier for me,” says Madame Saint-Pierre.
“You don’t even want a sandwich?” Christina asks.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’ve already eaten?”
“No.”
“Are you in love, then?”
Madame Saint-Pierre turns violently red.
“Who with?”
“You don’t know him.”
Christina’s voice takes on the high-pitched tone of pubescence, even though she’s closer to the age of menopause.
“Tell me all!”
“I can’t, Christina. .”
“Oh, I see. . He’s married.”
“No. . Worse than that.”
“What can be worse than a married man?”
Christina’s bright, perceptive eye seems to capture something from the air.
“One of Duvalier’s henchmen. .”
“Christina! I don’t hang out with the secret police. .”
“Well, then it’s someone from the club. Is it that dentist you hate so much. .?”
“No-oo. .”
“What was his name, anyway?”
“I said no, it’s not him. . You’re not even warm.”
“So tell me. . I hate guessing games.”
“I can’t tell you who he is. . I’m too embarrassed, Tina. .”
“Oh, come on, Françoise. You’re not seventeen anymore.”
“No, but he is.”
“What? Françoise!”
“What I’m saying is, I’ve seduced a seventeen-year-old boy. .”
The waiter comes back with the Perrier and a slice of lemon. Madame Saint-Pierre puts the lemon in the bottle’s mouth and guzzles the entire contents in a single go, a feat that impresses Christina very much.
“That’s the kind of thing I’ve been doing for the past two weeks. . I can’t do anything the way I used to. . Even drinking a glass of water, I have to find a new way to do it. . You have no idea, Christina, I think I’m going crazy. .”
“It’s just that you’ve finally woken up, my dear. . Before you were asleep. .”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t know anything. . You’ve just told me. . You used to do everything mechanically. Now you have a sense of purpose. .”
“That’s right, but it’s a terrible thing. . He’s seventeen. . He could be my son. . He’s my dressmaker’s son. .”
“Is that who you were with just now, before coming here?”
A pause.
“Yes. . I hadn’t seen him in two days. . I couldn’t breathe. . I drove past the café and he was there. I couldn’t help myself. . He came out to join me in the car and we drove around a bit. He told me when to turn. I didn’t even know where I was. It’s a miracle I didn’t run over someone. . But an unbelievable thing happened to me. . I felt like a child who was lost in the forest, and I absolutely had no wish to find the path out. . I was reduced to the simplest terms possible, Tina. . Nothing mattered but this thing that never gives me a moment of respite. I would feel totally ecstatic one minute, and then the next feel as though I were falling into a bottomless black pit. It’s like a clock, you know, that never stops, not even when I’m sleeping. . I talk and talk and never say anything. . Please, Tina, please don’t judge me. . Say something, Christina, scold me if you must, but say something. .”