Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [31]
“Are you positive?” Michael asked, suspicious of how casual Arthur sounded.
“I’m sure. You can get the contractors in here right away. Here’s my proof: call George when you get home and tell him what I said.”
Michael broke into a wide smile. Arthur, George’s old college friend, knew how nervous George was, how he would hang on every word of an explanation and transform it into a promise. “Really?” he asked.
“Really,” Arthur said. “Call George. And keep up the good work.” He waved and left the room. His footsteps echoed to nothing.
Michael knew where to find a phone. His sneakers made no sound as he ran past the main staircase, past the headless Victory of Samothrace. Lydie will like this, he thought, and he called her first. But she was not home. The phone rang and rang, its tone foreign, distinctly French. No phone ringing in the United States made a sound like that, something between a honk and a buzz.
Michael found his international calling card and dialed a lengthy series of numbers. He held the receiver away from his ear, waiting for the circuits to click and connect. The receptionist had just told him George was gone for the day when Anne Dumas walked by.
“Anne!” he said.
“You look happy.” She smiled up at him.
“I am. My project is moving along a little better.”
“That is good news.” She touched his sleeve. “Come talk to me,” she said, and Michael knew that she had been waiting for this moment too.
She led him to a staircase in a private section of the Louvre and they sat on the cool steps. Michael’s elbows touched the stone wall on one side, Anne’s bare arm on the other. He sensed the bareness of that arm right through the fabric of his jacket. She smelled faintly of perfume; she wore no makeup, and Michael noticed the sun had lightened the tips of her short, dark hair.
“How is Madame de Sévigné today?” he asked.
Anne sighed. “She is fine, thank you for asking. It is such a beautiful day out, I think she must be sunning herself in the Tuileries. I sit in my office on the top floor, gazing at the Seine, I envy her for being so free on a summer day.” She laughed then, the cutest, most feminine laugh Michael had ever heard. “It is nice of you to play with me.”
“Play?”
“Yes, you know—humor me. When I write about history I pretend quite a bit. I pretend to know the person, I pretend to follow her around. Not everyone understands that.”
“Does Jean?” Michael asked.
“Oh, Jean.” Anne sighed. “He understands, but it makes him impatient. Although we have taken a house in Brittany for August, I am thinking of not going. We are not getting along.”
“That’s too bad,” said Michael, feeling his heart beating hard inside his chest.
“Don’t feel too sorry for me. Where will you and your wife go for August?”
“We’re staying in Paris.”
Anne leaned toward him, touched his sleeve again in a way that seemed to Michael shy and charming. “Ah, my fellow prisoner of the heat. You know that Paris in August is unbearably hot? Do you swim?”
“Yes, but not in the Seine,” Michael said, knowing the remark was stupid as soon as he said it.
“Actually one can swim on the Seine—at the Piscine Deligny. Do you know it? It’s that great barge tethered to the quai, across the Pont de la Concorde.”
Michael knew it; Lydie called it the “Floating Pickup Joint” because the one time they had tried to swim there the entire pool had been packed with attractive people standing in chest-high water. None of the lanes were free for swimming. The impression was of bodies slick with suntan oil, a cacophony of voices, the water turquoise and sparkling.
“I don’t think it’s possible to swim at Piscine Deligny,” Michael said. “To wade, yes.”
Anne laughed. “Oh, did you go there on a Saturday or Sunday? It’s terrible then. Instead you must go early on a weekday, because then it is empty. I go three mornings a week and swim laps. You should try it.”
“Maybe I will,” Michael said. He stared at Anne, willing her to look at him. If she did, he would kiss her. But she seemed to be gazing at his hand, at the fingers of his left hand. One of which wore