Page 15 of The Girl You Left Behind
Around us the flags fluttered in the late-afternoon breeze. I could hear them flapping, like the erratic pounding of my heart. I struggled to think of a polite way to extricate myself, but he broke in again.
“I realize, mademoiselle, that shamefully, despite our acquaintance, I do not know your name.”
“Bessette,” I said. “Sophie Bessette.”
“Then please allow me to buy you a drink, Mademoiselle Bessette.”
I shook my head. I felt sick, as if in the mere act of coming here I had given away too much of myself. I glanced behind him to where Mistinguett was still standing amid her group of friends.
“Shall we?” He held out his arm.
And at that moment the great Mistinguett looked straight at me.
It was, if I’m honest, something in her expression, the brief flash of annoyance when he held out his arm. This man, this Édouard Lefèvre, had the power to make one of Paris’s brightest stars feel dull and invisible. And he had chosen me over her.
I peered up at him. “Just some water, then, thank you.”
We walked back to the table. “Misty, my darling, this is Sophie Bessette.” Her smile remained, but there was ice in her gaze as it ran the length of me. “Clogs,” one of her gentlemen said from behind her. “How very... quaint.”
The murmur of laughter made my skin prickle. I took a breath.
“The emporium will be full of them for the spring season,” I replied calmly. “They are the very latest thing. It’sla mode paysanne.”
I felt Édouard’s fingertips touch my back.
“With the finest ankles in all Paris, I think Mademoiselle Bessette may wear what she likes.”
A brief silence fell over the group, as the significance of Édouard’s words sank in. Mistinguett’s eyes slid away from me. “Enchantée,” she said, her smile dazzling. “Édouard, darling, I must go. So, so busy. Call on me very soon, yes?” She held out her gloved hand and he kissed it. I had to drag my eyes from his lips. And then she was gone, a ripple passing through the crowd, as if she were parting the sea.
So, we sat. Édouard Lefèvre stretched out in his chair while I was still rigid with awkwardness. Without saying anything, he handed me a drink, and there was just the faintest apology in his expression as he did so, with—was it really?—a hint of suppressed laughter. As if it—they—were all so ridiculous that I could not feel slighted.
Surrounded by the joyful people dancing, the laughter, and the bright blue skies, I began to relax. Édouard spoke to me with the utmost politeness, asking about my life before Paris, the politics within the shop, breaking off occasionally to put his cigarette into the corner of his mouth and shout, “Bravo!” at the band, clapping his great hands high in the air. He knew almost everybody. I lost track of the number of people who stopped to say hello or to buy him a drink: artists, shopkeepers, speculative women. It was like being with royalty. Except I could see their gaze flickering toward me while they wondered what a man who could have had Mistinguett was doing with a girl like me.
“The girls at the store say you talk toles putainsof Pigalle.” I couldn’t help myself: I was curious.
“I do. And many of them are excellent company.”
“Do you paint them?”
“When I can afford their time.” He nodded at a man who tipped his hat to us. “They make wonderful models. They are generally utterly unselfconscious about their bodies.”
“Unlike me.”
He saw my blush. After a brief hesitation, he placed his hand over mine, as if in apology. It made me color even more. “Mademoiselle,” he said softly, “those pictures were my failure, not yours. I have...” He changed tack. “You have other qualities. You fascinate me. You may believe otherwise, but I can tell: You are not intimidated by much.”
I thought for a moment. “No,” I agreed. “I don’t believe I am.”
We ate bread, cheese, and olives, and they were the best olives I had ever tasted. He drank pastis, knocking back each glass with noisy relish. The afternoon crept on. The laughter grew louder, the drinks came faster. I drank two small glasses of wine, and began to enjoy myself. Here, in the street, on this balmy day, I was not the provincial outsider, the shopgirl on the lowest-but-one rung of the ladder. I was just another reveler, enjoying the Bastille celebrations.
And then Édouard pushed back from the table and stood in front of me. “Shall we dance?”
I took his hand, and he swung me out into the sea of bodies. I had not danced since I had left St. Péronne. Now I felt the breeze whirling around my ears, the weight of his hand on the small of my back, my clogs unusually light on my feet. He carried the scents of tobacco, aniseed, and something male that left me a little short of breath.
I don’t know what it was. I had drunk little, so I could not blame the wine. It’s not as if he were particularly handsome, or that I had felt my life lacking for the absence of a man.
“Draw me again,” I said.
He stopped and looked at me, puzzled. I couldn’t blame him: I was confused myself.
