The Last Dress from Paris(6)
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How can something so uniformly gray also be so beautiful? Early-evening Paris is painted in the last strokes of daylight, looking like someone turned the dimmer lights down across the whole city. Elegant apartment buildings that span the entire block have rows of identical cream-shuttered windows, the regularity broken only by imposing double-height doors in bold red, deep sage green, or glossy black. Everything seems squeezed together too tightly. Some of the stone walls I pass that are darkened from years of built-up grime and pollution neighbor the pristine fashion boutiques, their windows beckoning early Christmas shoppers in. One has giant gingerbread replicas of famous Paris landmarks—Notre-Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower, iced and covered in sweeties, supporting mannequins perched in party dresses.
As I search for a free taxi, the lacy iron balconies above me give a hint of the Parisian day that is drawing to a close. A push-bike, seven floors up, stands on its back wheel, until it is presumably lugged back downstairs again tomorrow for the return journey to work. A solitary man, dressed all in slim-fitting black, stands high above the city, smoking, gazing out across the fading skyline like he might be working on his latest poem. A woman in towering black ankle boots clutches a wineglass in one hand, her phone in the other, teasing her lover, I imagine.
At Granny’s insistence and expense, I am staying at the hotel on the card, the Plaza Athénée, which according to her is “just across the road from Dior,” not that I’m planning to spend any time there. As my taxi lumbers across the congested rush-hour city, I see the tree-lined avenues are already stripped of their foliage, bronzed leaves now carpeting the cobbles below. Tourists fight for space among stressed locals hurrying home and the endless construction that seems to be hammering a hole through the heart of the capital. Great spaces open up where shopping streets may once have flourished, diverting us blocks off route. As we’re held at a set of temporary lights, I stare at the site where a building has been erased, leaving only a historic archway that seems to defiantly cling to life while everything around it is demolished. There is a patchwork of buildings swathed in temporary coverings while they are transformed beneath—like the world’s largest Christmas presents waiting patiently to be unwrapped and admired.
As we pull up outside the Athénée, I remember Granny’s parting words, Look for the red window shades, and now I see them. Every one of the windows facing onto the avenue Montaigne—and there must be at least fifty—has one, and the effect is so pretty it stops me in my tracks as I exit the taxi. Then a porter appears and says the words “Welcome to the Avenue of Fashion,” and I watch with some relief as my torn and dirty carrier bags are whisked away from me.
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Now I sit on the edge of my sumptuous double-canopied bed, in a room filled with red carnations, feeling like a million possibilities are flashing through the air outside my window. Like if I stepped out onto the balcony that wraps around my enormous suite, I could lift a hand high into the biting evening breeze and pluck some of that good fortune for myself. Heaven knows how Granny can afford this address. I’m high above the madness of the Parisian streets below, the honking horns, the nose-to-tail city grind, cars slowly pushing the one in front forward, up here on the edge of the stars, where everything feels weightless. I want to venture out. I want to be that woman. The one who throws her case on the bed and sets forth into a foreign city with not much clue where she’s going but knowing it will be thrilling.
For once, and I don’t say this lightly, I need to channel a bit of Mother. She’d be down at the concierge desk right now, map splayed across the counter, not caring how big the queue might be forming behind her, demanding a bulletproof list of the best this city has to offer. Why aren’t I? I want to, I really do. Maybe because I don’t know how to. My own world suddenly feels surprisingly small. I feel out of my depth in this foreign city.
I might start with the easy stuff. I’ll call room service, order a croque monsieur. Then I need to email Veronique, check that she’s still on for meeting later tonight. Work out logistics.
As I negotiate my way through the extensive in-room dining menu, something is gnawing at the back of my mind. The look on Granny’s face yesterday as she spoke about Paris. The way her eyes lit up as she talked about this hotel like she knew it so well. Why have I never bothered to delve deeper into the short time she spent here with my grandfather? I vow to ask her when I return.
2
Alice
OCTOBER 1953, PARIS
THE CYGNE NOIR
Tonight must be a success. Alice has spent the entire day ensuring it will be. Their first guests will begin arriving at the residence in two hours, which gives her just enough time to do a final check of the drawing room, to assure herself the flowers she ordered, pale nude old-fashioned roses, have arrived and been placed in the correct vases, in the correct positions. She will study the guest list one final time. Reread the notes Eloise, her social secretary, always expertly prepares for her, outlining any significant personal or professional developments pertaining to their guests. Subjects to be avoided, causes for congratulations, anything that may affect the mix of people in the room. Those to keep apart, those to maneuver together among the exciting medley of personalities who will mingle tonight beneath the giant portrait of King George and Queen Mary. Captains of industry, the minister of justice, the governor of the Bank of France, policy makers, fellow ambassadors to France, and a smattering of social trinkets, as Albert unflatteringly calls the more glamorous, less serious contenders—the beautiful ones that ensure the heavyweights will come to look and flirt and furnish themselves with enough interesting anecdotes to see them through the following week’s parties.