Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [27]
Kelly entered the room, placed a crystal dish of small black olives on the tray table. Kelly’s head was bowed, and Lydie ducked her own to smile at her. “Thank you, Kelly,” Patrice said.
“Now, I am very interested to see what you Americans do about these olives,” Didier said.
“I plan to eat one,” Michael said, popping one into his mouth. He made a fist, held it to his lips like a microphone, and spit the pit into it: exactly the way he had seen French people do it.
“Very good technique!” Didier said. “Most Americans think olives are disgusting, and the ones who eat them make a mess of the pits. I was all ready to give you a lesson, but you don’t need it.”
Why would a man want to set himself up as a master of olive eating? Lydie wondered. She saw it as a way for Didier to establish himself as the oldest person, the only father, the only Frenchman in the room. Her father had behaved similarly about his own fatherhood, his Irishness. Whenever Lydie would mix him a half-and-half—the half beer/half stout concoction he remembered from Dublin pubs—he would sip it with an expression of amused tolerance on his face: letting her know it was well-enough made for an American girl.
“Now,” Didier said. “Tell me how you plan to desecrate the Louvre.”
“We’re going to build a great glass column and fill it with the fish of France,” Michael said, deadpan. From previous experience with other French people, Lydie knew why he had said it and what was coming next.
“You joke, my friend,” Didier said, “but it is no joke to me. Not after what has been done—that glass pyramid. Imagine! A glass pyramid rising out of the courtyard of the Louvre. It is a monstrosity. It is a fucking scandal. No, it is worse than a scandal. I am not religious, but I believe it is a sin. To ruin our ancient and beautiful Louvre with that vulgarity.”
Lydie, who had heard tirades about I. M. Pei’s glass pyramid before, was shocked by Didier’s vehemence. Since arriving in Paris, she had found two camps: those who loved the pyramid and those who hated it. What shocked her was the change in Didier, now too moved to continue speaking. He ate one olive after another. The fist into which he spit his olive pits looked charged, ready to strike. She believed that this was the real Didier, full of passion for La Belle France; his earlier manner, polite and refined, had been a smokescreen.
“I agree with you,” Michael said. “That pyramid doesn’t belong there.”
“I assumed you would like it,” Didier said. “After all, you have been brought from America to work on the Louvre. I assumed your work would be consistent with the recent changes.”
“Michael’s a preservationist,” Lydie said, feeling protective of him. Didier’s attack made her bristle in Michael’s defense, but what struck her at that instant was how far apart she and Michael were these days, that Didier’s nationalistic barbs could make her feel closer to Michael than she had in a long time.
And Michael hadn’t even noticed her help. He stared straight at Didier. “My ideas are conservative,” he said. “I’m designing an information center in the Salle des Quatre Saisons, and my objective is to remain faithful to the original architecture.”
“Don’t you love the main information center?” Patrice asked, laughing, obviously relieved the tension had been defused. “With that big sign telling you how to get from A to B, where to find the toilets, where to find the gift shop, where to find the Mona Lisa? As if those are the only things people come to see.”
“In a way they are,” Michael said. “According to what officials tell me, most people visit the Louvre to see two things: the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo.”
“Neither of which is French,” Didier said. “Italian and Greek.”
“Oh, chéri,” Patrice said. “Don’t be a poophead.”
“I apologize to you, Michael, and to you, Lydie,” Didier said. “But every