“Yes and no. I’m spending a few days with a friend. She has a restaurant near here.”
“I bet I know it. Montmartre is like a little village, you know.”
“La Clamada.”
“Ah, the lovely lady from Provence! She’s a brave one, your friend. Her food is creative but reasonably priced. And unlike some, she hasn’t sold out to the tourists. I eat lunch at her place now and then—it has real character.”
Mia looked at the caricaturist’s hands and noticed his wedding ring. David, never far from her thoughts, returned to haunt her.
“Have you ever been attracted to a woman? I mean, other than your wife.”
“Maybe, but only briefly. Only for the time it takes to look at someone else—and to remember how much I loved her.”
“You’re not together with your wife anymore?”
“Oh, we’re still together.”
“So why the past tense?”
“Stop talking now. I’m drawing your mouth.”
Mia let the artist concentrate. When the man was done, he invited her to come and view the final product on his easel. Mia smiled as she saw a face she didn’t recognize.
“Do I really look like that?”
“Today, yes,” said the caricaturist. “I hope you will soon be smiling like you are in the picture.”
He took his phone from his pocket, snapped a picture of Mia, and compared it to the drawing.
“It’s very good,” Mia said. “Could you draw a portrait from just a photo?”
“I might be able to, as long as it’s a clear one.”
“I’ll bring you one of Daisy. I’m sure she would love to see herself as a work of art, and I think you have the talent to do her justice.”
The caricaturist bent over to rummage around in one of the portfolios propped up against his easel. He took out a stiff sheet of paper and handed it to Mia.
“Your friend is positively ravishing,” he said. “She walks past here every morning. Go ahead, take it. It’s a gift.”
On the finely textured paper was a gorgeous drawing of Daisy—not a caricature, but a real portrait, capturing her expression with skill and sensitivity.
“In that case, let me leave you mine in exchange,” she said, before waving good-bye to the caricaturist.
Paul had given them a whistle-stop tour of Paris, much to Lauren’s delight. With the kind of nerve that he alone was capable of, he had cut the line that stretched out at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, saving at least an hour. At the top, a spell of vertigo kept Paul a safe distance away from the edge, gripping the guardrails with shaking hands, while Lauren and Arthur admired the view. After taking the elevator back down again with his eyes clenched shut, he’d regained his dignity and led his friends to the Tuileries Garden.
Seeing children riding on the merry-go-round, Lauren was seized by the need to hear her son’s voice, so she called Nathalia, Joe’s godmother. She invited Arthur to join her on the bench where she was sitting. Paul took the opportunity to go and buy candy from one of the fairground stalls. Lauren watched him in the distance as Arthur chatted with Joe.
Without taking her eyes off Paul, Lauren took the phone from her husband, heaped words of love upon her little boy, promised to bring him a gift from Paris, and was almost disappointed to realize that he didn’t seem to miss her all that much. He was having a great time with his godmother.
She blew kisses into the phone and kept it pressed to her ear as Paul came back toward them, struggling manfully to carry three sticks of cotton candy in one hand.
“How do you think he’s doing, for real?” she whispered to Arthur.
“Was that to me or to Joe?” Arthur asked.
“Joe hung up already.”
“Then why are you pretending to still be on the phone?”
