The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [58]
But that was only part of it, and not to admit it would be to lie to herself. Dr. Paul Osborn hurt, and she cared that he hurt. On one level she wanted to think that caring and concern were part of an instinctive female nurturing. It was what women did when they sensed pain in someone close to them. But it wasn’t that simple and she knew it. What she wanted was to love him until he stopped hurting and after that to love him more.
“Bonjour, mademoiselle,” a round-faced, uniformed doorman said cheerily, holding open the filigreed iron outer door to her building.
“Bonjour, Philippe.” She smiled and went past him into the lobby, then quickly up the polished marble stairs to her apartment on the second floor.
Once inside, she closed the door and crossed the hallway into the formal dining room. On the table was a vase with two dozen long-stemmed red roses. She didn’t have to open the card to know who’d sent them, but she did anyway.
“Au revoir, Franqois.”
It was written in his own hand. Francois had said he understood and he had. The note and flowers meant they would always be friends. Vera held the card for a moment, then slid it back in its envelope and went into the living room. In one corner was a baby grand piano. Across from it, two large couches sat at right angles to one another, with a long ebony and leaded-glass coffee table in between. To her right was the entrance to the hallway and the two bedrooms and study that led off it. To the left was the dining room. Beyond that was a butler’s pantry and the kitchen.
Outside, the low-hanging clouds obscured the city. The overcast and grayness made everything feel sad. For the first time the apartment seemed huge and ungainly, with-out warmth or comfort, a place for someone more formal and much older than she.
An aura of loneliness as bleak as the sky that sealed Paris swept over her and, without thinking, she wanted Paul there. She wanted to touch him and have him touch her, the same as they had yesterday. She wanted to be with him in the bedroom and in the shower and wherever else he wanted to take her. She wanted to feel him inside her and to make love to him over and over until they ached.
She wanted it as much for him as for herself. It was important he understand that she knew about the darkness. And even if she didn’t know what it was, even if he couldn’t tell her that it was all right for him to trust her. Because when the time was appropriate, he would tell her and together they would do something about it. But for now, what he had to know more than anything, was that; she would be there for him, whenever and for as long as he needed.
31
* * *
THE 1961 movie West Side Story starring Natalie Wood was playing in its original English-language version at a small theater on the boulevard des Italiens. The film ran 151 minutes and its second show, starting at four, was the one that Paul Osborn would attend. When he was in college he’d taken two successive film history courses and had written a lengthy paper on translating stage musicals to the screen. West Side Story had been the centerpiece of his discussion and he still remembered it well enough to convince anyone he’d just seen it.
The theater on the boulevard des Italiens was halfway between his hotel and the bakery where Kanarack worked and had Métro stations within a five-minute walk in any of three directions.
Circling the name of the theater with his pen, Osborn closed his newspaper and got up from the small table where he’d been sitting. Crossing the hotel dining room to pay his breakfast bill, he glanced outside. It was still raining.
Entering the lobby, lie looked around. Three hotel employees