The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [47]
I looked over at the curtain. It had closed. I looked over at the young woman. She was back at her post as the pretty cashier. I looked back at the man on the bridge. He was still there. But not even for the whole of the night, I thought. "There is a quiet place that I know in the Jardin du Luxembourg," I suggested, and the scholar-prince smiled.
Although we strap time to our wrists, stuff it into our pockets, hang it on our walls, a perpetually moving picture for every room of the house, it can still run away, elude and evade, and show itself again only when there are minutes remaining and there is nothing left to do except wait till there are none.
"I will walk you to the train station."
No, he shook his head. "Train stations are terrible places for good-byes."
I returned to the bridge alone. I always do.
10
"DRUNK AND ASLEEP," I confess to my Mesdames. "He gave me a bottle of rum. A bonus. I drank it all and fell asleep in the park," I lie. Really, how else could I explain yesterday's absence? If I had been late by two or three hours, maybe, but my disappearance for the entire twenty-four hours of a Monday that my Madame and Madame had bought and paid for was too much even for them to ignore. They are furious but not at me. They are horrified that you had given me such temptations. My Mesdames both drink wine like the apostles but consider hard liquor medicinal or a cake flavoring. No other use would be respectable. GertrudeStein calls you a "cad," and Miss Toklas takes the opportunity to remind us all that a telephone, if only GertrudeStein would agree to one, could settle this matter easily. "I would ring him right now and tell him in no uncertain terms that he need not attend next Saturday's tea," Miss Toklas assures me. "Do not worry about tonight's dinner, Bin. An omelet. No. Fried eggs will be more than fine," she adds, expressing her amnesty, her charity toward me via a code that all French cooks understand and practice. A soufflé, she knows, would require the most effort. An omelet takes practice to perfect and therefore is second best. Poached is third. Fourth and least are eggs that are fried. The preparation can barely be called cooking. An insult, in fact, if there are guests expected at the table. A plate of fried eggs can inform a "guest" as no words can that an invitation to dinner has to be earned and not willed. The latter is a pet peeve of Miss Toklas, who has over the years grown to loathe those artists and writers who have had the bad manners to arrive at the studio door actually "starving." "Twenty-seven rue de Fleurus is not a canteen!" she informed GertrudeStein, after several young Hungarians with German appetites insisted on paying their respects, their visits scheduled suspiciously closer and closer to dinnertime. "GertrudeStein is not at home. In addition, she has asked me to inform you that she wants never to see you again," declared Miss Toklas, delivering the quick but cruel blow to their Hungarian pride and to their German stomachs. Sitting in the shadows of the studio, temporarily darkened in order to emphasize further the finality of the expulsion, GertrudeStein was somewhat sad to see them go. Tonight, though, there would be just my Mesdames, a meal en famille, as the French would say. A platter of fried eggs and a loaf of bread placed in the center of a family's table are never an insult. It is a ritual in intimacy. It is food that has no business with the outside world, food that no hired cook would ever dare serve. A family member, maybe a friend, but never a servant. I understand my Madame's gesture perfectly. With Miss Toklas on one arm and GertrudeStein on the other, I step into the circle that Miss Toklas has in that moment drawn. There is no visible trace of its outline, but I always know that it is there. I have sensed its presence in all of the households that I have been in.