“I’ll start over,” the acrobat said. “Why are you following us?”
Naturally, I was at a loss for what to say.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he continued. “We’re quite flattered. We’ve never had such a loyal fan before. But still we have to ask.”
I glanced over at the other acrobats. They were huddled together, staring, and then, after they caught my eye, pretending not to stare. It was my habit to lie to strangers, because how would they know the difference? On the flight over, my husband and I ended up in different rows and I told the man sitting next to me that I was a geologist. Talking to someone who didn’t know me, who couldn’t separate the truth from the lie, always gave me the most ruthless sense of freedom. But today was a different kind of day.
“To tell you the truth, I was watching you perform while my husband was telling me something important and I missed what he was saying,” I said. “That’s the best answer I can give.”
“Can’t you just ask your husband to repeat himself?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “I think he went home without me.”
“And where’s home?”
“America,” I said. “Connecticut.”
“I see,” said the acrobat. He looked over at his comrades, then back at me. He said his name was Jean-Paul and invited me to sit at their table. I accepted. Jean-Paul informed the maître d’ and carried over my wine bottle. He introduced me to the other acrobats, Alain and Dominique. They moved their chairs to make room, pushed their glasses together. With the face paint and the masks, I couldn’t really tell the difference between Alain and Dominique. Both had light brown hair and greenish eyes. Jean-Paul I could distinguish because he was the tallest, with dark hair and dark eyes.
“This woman is alone in the city,” Jean-Paul said once we were settled. The table was in a corner and I was sitting next to him, facing the street, Alain and Dominique across from us.
“Not anymore,” Alain — or Dominique? — said. “Acrobats know how to treat their fans.”
“There’s so much competition now,” Dominique — or Alain? — said. “Musicians, puppet shows, mimes. You practically have to set yourself on fire to get noticed.”
“I love acrobats,” I said, unsure if that was even really true. “I’ve loved acrobats ever since I was a child.”
Our food arrived. All three of the acrobats had ordered coq au vin. We ate quickly and in silence. I was relieved that I wasn’t the only one too hungry for polite conversation. After our plates had been cleared, Jean-Paul presented me with an open cigarette pack. I took one. It was slender and white. I’d never had a cigarette before. My husband was an environmental enthusiast and thought smokers were the scourge of the earth. He had actually used that word, “scourge.” I inhaled deeply and didn’t cough. I felt the smoke move through my chest like something alive.
“Would you like to go to a party tonight?” Jean-Paul asked.
“It’s an acrobat party,” Alain/Dominique added.
“We’d have to get you a costume,” Jean-Paul said. “Or at least some face paint and a mask.”
“I didn’t know acrobats had their own parties,” I said.
Jean-Paul explained that most acrobats in Paris were the children of acrobats, that it was a time-honored vocation. “We have our own networks,” he said. “Our own social clubs.”
I tried to imagine a crowd of people with painted faces and masks. “This isn’t some kind of sex thing, is it?”
“Not at all,” Jean-Paul said. “Or at least not usually.”
I told them I was in. The acrobats clapped, their bells chiming. All the wine was gone. When the check came, I took out my Visa and slapped it down on the table. My card had a twenty-thousand-dollar limit. I always told my husband that I didn’t need a card with such a high limit, but he said it was good for our credit to have so much power and to use it responsibly and, in any case, there might be an emergency. My husband had been right about that. I was having an emergency. I was the emergency. And I was glad to have power to burn.
After the bill had been settled, Jean-Paul took out a tube of white face paint and a tiny makeup brush. He moved his chair closer to mine, then leaned toward me and asked me to close my eyes. Without sight, noises were magnified: the soft hiss of a match being lit, dishes clattering, the distant, lilting wail of a siren. He used his fingers to paste the paint onto my face, over my eyelids and down the bridge of my nose. It felt like cold mud. He pressed my cheekbones as he swirled the paint upward. I imagined a white line moving up the center of my forehead and then fanning out like a breaking wave. I could not remember the last time my husband had touched my face. Before finishing, Jean-Paul evened out the job with the makeup brush, its bristles pricking my nostrils and the edges of my mouth.
Jean-Paul told me to open my eyes. I gazed into the compact mirror he held in front of me. Everything was white except for my eyelashes and eyebrows and pupils. When I grinned, my teeth looked yellow against my painted skin.
“Voilà!” he said.
At the table, the acrobats used the makeup brush and the compact mirror to touch up their own faces. Then we went to a costume store on Rue Eblé. Inside, the acrobats picked out a black masquerade mask lined with silver glitter and a black silk robe. I charged the costume on my Visa. Outside, in an alley, Jean-Paul helped slip the mask over my face and then tied the silk sash of the robe around my waist. His fingers were nimble, slender.
The party was in the Marais. We took the metro. We sat in a row, in our face paint and masks. People didn’t stare as much as I had expected, as I had hoped. The only ones who really gave us a second look were children. The overhead lights flickered and hummed. When our stop came and we stood, I realized gum was stuck to the bottom of my sandal.
Aboveground, I followed the acrobats down Rue Saint Sébastien. There were restaurants with outdoor patios and nightclubs with neon signs nestled in the windows. The streets were made of beautiful stone. We walked single-file. I was at the end of the line. Once, I got distracted by a couple eating on a restaurant patio, another pale and inelegant pair, but I only had to listen for the bells to find the acrobats in the crowd. We turned onto a cobblestone side street. The stones looked wet even though it hadn’t rained. We stopped outside a gray building with a little blue awning. We rang the buzzer and went inside.
When the elevator reached the sixth floor, we found the corner apartment open and people spilling into the hallway. They all had on white face paint, but some had blue stars ringing their eyes or a red joker’s smile or yellow comets on their cheeks. Some wore jumpsuits, like my acrobats, others tights and tunics. A woman in a turquoise one-piece bathing suit, a beaded dolphin covering her stomach. A man in a floppy jester hat with bells. Everywhere was the sound of bells.
“This is the party,” Jean-Paul said. He set the violin case down by the door. I followed him inside.
The apartment was bright and full. French pop music played on the stereo. The floors were gleaming hardwood. At the other end of the room, a bay window looked out onto the street. People were standing elbow to elbow, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee. I couldn’t get a good look at the layout and décor. The apartment had been overrun by acrobats and their followers.
Jean-Paul, Alain, and Dominique spread out, shaking hands and slapping backs and waving to masked figures across the room. Right away, my Teva sandals made me feel like an impostor. I needed high heels or ballet slippers or even bare feet with crimson toenails. I wandered into the kitchen. Glass bowls filled with punch sat on granite counters, alongside champagne glasses and cocktail napkins. Tiny charms in the shape of acrobats dangled from the stems of the glasses. Costumed partygoers leaned against doorjambs, propped elbows on counters, talked in rapid-fire French. I had expected this party to be unique, a once-in-a-lifetime event, but it was the same as any other party, really, except everyone was masked and speaking a language I couldn’t understand. I ladled some punch into a champagne glass and drank it. Then I walked around with the empty glass in my hand.