“It was pretty unusual,” Matthews said.
“No kidding,” Rex said.
“We're putting Charley on the spot here,” Helen said.
“That's all right,” Rex said. “I'll be next.”
Gordon suddenly gave three sharp reports from near the Christmas tree. Several diners shouted, then laughed. Then everyone heard a fierce, yowling cat hiss. There was then a scramble of scratching claws and growling, and something hurtled past Matthews’ legs under the table, with something else hurtling after it. The French people — all small men and women in pastel sweaters and nice jackets — seemed vaguely dismayed. One of the men got up and made his way through the tables in the direction Gordon seemed to have escaped. He didn't seem the least bit surprised, only annoyed.
Rex glared at him as he sidled past. “Monkeys'll be next,” he said menacingly. “Then talking birds. This place is going to hell.”
“Everyone's going to Prague now, anyway,” Beatrice said. “Paris is finished. I wish I'd learned Czech instead of French.”
“Or Budapest,” Rex said, pronouncing it Budapesht, like Matthews’ colleagues at Wilmot College. “Now, there's a place you can really make some money. You oughta try to publish your books in Hungarian. What's the title?”
“It's the Paris of the east,” Beatrice said.
“What is?” Rex was pushing his empty plate away.
“Prague,” she said.
“Right. I've been there. Once was enough, though.”
“Behold, the alpha male,” Beatrice said, with reference to Rex.
“I'm a man only one woman has to marry, though,” Rex said.
Matthews pretended he hadn't heard Rex ask about the title of his book. He didn't want to hear himself say the words, if only for fear of what Helen might say. In truth, he didn't want to hear himself say anything. Half of his steak was uneaten. Helen had touched none of hers. Beatrice and Rex had cleaned their plates. He wondered if he and Helen could apologize and leave. Plead jet lag.
The Frenchman in the pink sweater and the ascot came back through the restaurant, carrying a small tan poodle cradled in his arms. The poodle was panting as though it was exhausted, its little tongue lolled to the side. The Frenchman was smiling as if everyone in Clancy's was happy to finally see the dog. Outside the big clean front window, it was starting to snow.
“Did you know Helen was a wonderful dancer?” Rex said, running his wide hand over his skull, through the new hair seedlings. “She was on her way to Radio City.”
“June Taylor, anyway,” Helen said. “They were on TV when I was a little girl.” She smiled and shook her head as though the idea was funny. “That was in Pittsburgh.”
“Except what happened?” Beatrice said.
“Helen would dance till she dropped,” Rex said, setting his hands on the table in front of him, lacing his fingers and staring down at them. He was paying no attention to Beatrice.
“We all did then,” Helen said, and looked like she might break into tears. “I'm tired. I'm jet-lagged, that's all. I'm sorry.”
“These two were a marquee item once upon a blue moon,” Beatrice said to Matthews by way of explanation. “In case you were wondering.”
“While it lasted,” Helen said, her eyes glistening behind her glasses.
“While we lasted,” Rex said.
“And they always do this,” Beatrice said. “They get drunk, and then they get overcome with everything. I usually just leave.”
“Don't leave now,” Helen said, and smiled sweetly.
“Turkwoz,” Matthews heard someone say at a nearby table. “It was Egyptian turkwoz — that's the very best. Better than that American garbage.”
Rex turned to look at who'd said this. He had phased out of the conversation for a moment, thinking about dancing with Helen in faraway Pittsburgh.
“That was a different era,” Beatrice said solemnly. “It was long before I came on the scene.”
“I don't believe in eras,” Helen said. “I believe it's all continuous. Now and then. Women and men.”
“Well, good for you,” Beatrice said, and she stood up to attend whatever was going on in the ladies’ room, leaving the three of them alone.
“Matthews isn't divorced yet,” Helen said. “He also has a daughter he almost never sees. I don't think he wants to be divorced, if the truth were known, which it always is eventually. But I think he needs to be divorced. You need to be divorced, Charley.”
“Helen always has plenty of opinions,” Rex said. Waiters were clearing away plates.
“I'm aware of that,” Matthews said.
“Don't you have to be pretty obsessive to be a writer?” Rex asked again.
“No. I don't think so,” Matthews said. “I don't think I am.”
“You're not?” Rex said. “That's funny. I'd have thought you needed to be. Shows you what I know anymore. About anything.”
ON THE TAXI RIDE back up the Boulevards St. Marcel and Arago it was snowing, the large heavy flakes seeming not to fall but to stay suspended in the yellow streetlight halos, backed by red taillights and darkness.
They had said good night to Rex and Beatrice on the snowy side street outside the restaurant. Dessert had ultimately been decided against. Helen said she wasn't holding up well, that it was only their second day, that her stomach was involved. Rich food. Drinking too much. Matthews’ translator was invoked. A need to sleep.
Beatrice and Rex both seemed to regard Helen with amazement that she could be whatever she still was, while they had “gone on” to be whatever they so clearly were: a nothing businessman and a bad-tempered counterculture failure, in Matthews’ view. Helen, he thought, was much better at being Helen than they were at being Rex and Cuddles.
Helen had stood in the snowy street in her pumps and peach outfit, and waved at them as their taxi disappeared toward the lights of the Bastille and wherever they lived in the suburbs behind Montreuil. Inside Clancy's the party wore on.
“I used to love Rex,” she said, putting a pill in her mouth, one she'd dug with some difficulty out of her handbag. “God, memory's a terrible thing. Whoever invented it — I'd like to get my hands on him.”
As their taxi passed the lion statue in the middle of Place Denfert-Rochereau, Helen gazed out at the rich old apartment buildings down Boulevard Raspail. Suddenly she said, “Do you have a belief in any spirituality of any kind, Charley?”
“Like what?” Matthews said. “Like church? We were Protestants. We gave at the office.”
“Not like church,” Helen said languidly. “I went to church. That's not the same as spiritual. I mean a conviction about something good that you can't see. That kind of thing.”
Matthews thought about Lelia. She came to mind, surprisingly. He hadn't seen her in more than a year and a half, and wasn't sure exactly when he would again. Her future, he felt, was something he believed in, although he wasn't currently acting on it. But he didn't want to say that to Helen. She'd turn it on him, as she already had.
“I do. Yes,” he said.
“And what would that be?” Helen said. She inscribed a little rainbow with her finger on the sweated window, fastened her gaze outside on the sky full of snowflakes.
“What would that be?” Matthews said. “Well. I have a conviction about the idea of change. I believe things change for the better. If they can. Sometimes we think they can't, so that's where the faith part comes in.” He didn't know why he'd said that and in that particular way — as though he were explaining it to a student. Only it didn't sound lame, and now that he'd said it he was satisfied it was true. He wished Penny could've heard it. It would've fixed her good.