“Loved me and helped raise me. She did the same for you if you recall. Until you shut her out.”
She scoffs at that. “Don’t blame me. She’s not one of us, Matthew. She never has been and she’s a threat to the company. You have one job to do and I swear to God if you keep fucking it up, I’ll just do it for you.”
Arthur and I exchange a glance. We’re used to pretending to ignore the chatter of people who pay us to serve them.
When the metal gate to the elevator opens, a gorgeous woman trots out of it. Her heels click past me on the marble floor as she crosses the lobby and Arthur rushes to get the door for her.
“Good to see you, mademoiselle,” he says. She acknowledges him with a curt nod. Her short blond hair is cut into a pixie that few women can pull off, except maybe Mia Farrow and Jean Seberg. Matthew Swanson lingers behind, clearly not eager to join her. He turns his gaze to me.
“Why, hello. Lovely to see you again. Are you on your way to Stella’s? We just left her and I’m sorry to say she isn’t feeling well, so you may want to reschedule the cleaning.”
“I’m just dropping off a key,” I say.
“You’re soaking wet. I can go get you a towel to dry off.”
“No need,” I say as I walk out to the sidewalk, catching aglimpse of the tall, angry woman getting into the back of an emerald-green Jaguar and speeding away.
Matthew’s eyes linger on the bumper of the car. “That was my sister, Caroline. I’m sorry you had to listen to the two of us griping at one another. She’s a lot. Would you like to join me for a drink, maybe dry off and warm up a bit?”
“No, thank you, Monsieur Swanson.”
He laughs at my formality. “ ‘Matthew’ will do just fine. ‘Monsieur Swanson’ is better suited to my father.” I raise my hand to try to hail a taxi even though I don’t have the money for it.
“You’ll never get one. Join me and then I can have my driver take you back to your place. I’ll get you fed, warm, and home, safely, and preferably drier than you are right now. Maybe even a little tipsy.”
I’ve eaten nothing since a stale pain au chocolat this morning and my headispounding with hunger, my stomach slightly nauseous from being empty for so long. Curiosity about this strange, deliriously wealthy family is also gnawing at me. Who does Stella think will lock her away and what is the job Caroline needs Matthew to do?
“Why not? I can always eat.”
“A woman after my own heart.”
We walk down Quai Voltaire and I salivate only slightly as we pass by the green door of Sennelier, the oldest art supply shop in Paris, stocked floor to ceiling with wooden drawers filled with pigments and brushes. A couple blocks away, the gorgeous graffitied wall of Serge Gainsbourg’s family home, where he died only five years earlier, drips with fresh paint.
The dark and cozy café is a welcome relief from the storm. I’ve passed it many times, but my restaurant budget is limited. My roommates and I subsist mostly on grocery store noodles and cheap kebabs from Paristanbul, a take-out place across from our building. One of them, Colette, will cook us elaborate mealsonce in a while when we can afford ingredients, and the other, Lucie, often brings home expensive wine from her clients.
It’s a strange hour to be in a café. No longer lunch, much too early for dinner, and it’s mostly empty. I wonder if they’re even serving food. Most Parisian restaurants are fairly strict about mealtimes and only tourist traps serve consistently throughout the day.
I take a detour to the bathroom, where I comb my fingers through my soaking-wet blond hair and swipe on the red lipstick I always keep in my pocket. It was a gift from Lucie. As she always says, “Red lipstick is its own outfit no matter what else you’re wearing, even if you’re wearing nothing.” It’s a very Lucie thing to say.
I like this café before I even take a bite of their food. I like the gold faucets in the bathroom, shaped like the head of a swan. I like the spicy candle burning on the counter and the linen hand towels neatly folded next to it.
Many of the cafés lining the narrow Parisian streets could seem like massive clichés with their deep red walls, velvet banquettes, and gold fixtures. You’ve seen them dozens of times in dozens of Hollywood movies. Yet I’ve come to realize they aren’t clichés. The French just like what they like and they’re unapologetic about it. Why reinvent the wheel when the wheel is perfect?
A server appears to pull my chair out for me when I get back to the table. Matthew speaks to him in unaccented French.
“I ordered for us,” he says as he settles back into his own chair.
“Yeah. I heard.” I shrug off my coat, making an embarrassing puddle on the floor. “I’m capable of ordering for myself, though.”
“In French?” he smirks.
“Je sais comment commander mon propre dîner.”
“I’m sure you do know how to order from a menu, but there is no menu at this hour. You need to know what they have in the kitchen.”
“And you know?”
“I come here enough. I bring Stella here.”
