Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [34]
“He’s going to give me free rein. At least he says so now, but you know how people get. I’ll come up with something, then just watch. He’ll get into the spirit and start taking over. It always happens. Do you think it’s a mistake to work for a friend of ours? Remember Billy Jenkins?”
Michael glanced at her. She seemed open, enthusiastic about her work again, quite a counterpoint to the shuttered, introspective Lydie of the past year. “Billy Jenkins?” he asked.
“Yes, remember? He married Oona Lydon, that girl from my high school class. Remember I did a brochure for his motel chain and he refused to pay?”
“I’m sure Didier d’Origny is good for his debts,” Michael said.
Lydie snapped to look at him. “Of course he is—I’m not saying that. But the business with Billy has totally ruined my friendship with Oona, and I wouldn’t want that to happen with Patrice. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Michael said. He felt all twisted, deliberately misunderstanding Lydie so she would turn against him, allowing him to justify what he was about to do to her and their marriage.
“Michael,” she said, her voice conveying a warning.
He stared into space. Could it be possible that now, just as Lydie was turning a corner, he didn’t want her anymore? Lydie, whom he had loved since high school, when she was too high-minded to pay attention to him, a jock?
“Is it my imagination?” she asked. “Or are you mad at me?”
“I’m not mad at you,” Michael said. That was true: he was long past being mad at her. He knew that he should try to explain the way he felt, the way his anger had turned into frustration and then into indifference. But talking about it might make things better between them and that would mean giving up his dreams of Anne.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you were,” Lydie said. “Sometimes I hate myself. I think about what happened: how I’m a grown woman in my thirties and I let my life fall apart just because my father died. I mean, that’s not normal.”
“He didn’t just die, Lydie.” Michael glanced at her, watched her tuck her hair behind her ears, felt tender in spite of himself.
“Sometimes I think I had a nervous breakdown,” she said. “The way I just stopped functioning.”
“Well, except for the first couple of weeks you didn’t stop functioning.”
“No, I have. I just haven’t been feeling things. I mean, I get up in the morning and do my work, but that’s about it. I’m in a daze all the time.”
“I guess maybe coming to Paris was a mistake,” Michael said. “I thought getting you out of New York would be the best thing. But you weren’t ready to leave.”
“It’s not really fair to say we came to Paris because of me, because you wanted to get me out of New York,” Lydie said. “We came because of your work.”
“That’s true,” Michael said grudgingly, because that certainly wasn’t all of it. But did she know how hard he had pushed to get it, thinking a year in Paris would be just what she needed to forget?
“I used to think coming here was a mistake,” Lydie said. “But I’m changing my mind. I’m starting to feel better. I feel like …”
She laughed.
“What?”
“I feel just fine,” she said. The way she smiled at him he could tell she thought the tension between them had lifted. He smiled back, then pretended to read his book. He thought of Lydie in her school uniform, the skirt a muddy purple tartan he’d never seen since. She had carried her books in a khaki knapsack and worn hiking boots to school every day, somehow managing to look more beautiful and sexy than any of the other girls. It still hurt to recall that he had asked her out twice and been turned down both times.
Michael remembered how she had followed Father Griffin around. Her crush on him was so blatant, the way she hung around his office, took up any cause he espoused. The way she’d follow him anywhere and tutor so-called kids. Half of them were older than Lydie. Most of them had been kicked out of school and many of them were criminals. Michael remembered the time one guy grabbed Lydie’s purse—while she was sitting right