Without Reservations_ The Travels of an Independent Woman - Alice Steinbach [23]
But then Susan had a habit of reinventing herself. When I first met her at an embassy party in Washington she was thin and blond and quite vivacious. We struck up a conversation that night, one that resulted in our having dinner together the following week. When she walked into the restaurant I hardly recognized her. Her hair was carrot-colored and her makeup very dramatic. Somehow, it suited her. She liked to change her appearance, Susan told me; it was a way of expressing her artistic talent.
Our friendship, I suppose, was built on mutual loss. She was newly divorced; I was newly separated. We were both in that strange passage from married life to single-mother-looking-for-love-in-all-the-wrong-places. But Susan was also wickedly funny, a quality I valued in a friend. Once when I complained about being at an age that required never looking at yourself in full sunlight, Susan’s riposte was immediate. “You know what can age you twenty years overnight?” she asked. “If all your friends got face-lifts the day before.”
As I climbed the steep streets to Susan’s apartment, I wondered if my reluctance to see her was simply anxiety about revisiting a time that, for both of us, had been confusing and painful. Five years had passed since I’d seen her, at a party to celebrate her move. She arrived with the man she was about to dump; I arrived with the man who, I knew, was about to dump me. We consoled each other with the contemporary maxim “a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” But neither of us really believed that. We left the party—without our dates—and went on to a jazz club, where, slightly tipsy, we promised we’d always be friends.
But were we still friends? I wondered. Or just former friends facing an awkward reunion?
Although Susan’s directions to her apartment—“Past the windmills on rue Lepic and you’re practically there”—had seemed clear enough on the phone, the steep, narrow Montmartre streets had a life of their own. After thirty minutes of confused wandering I arrived finally at an address that matched the one I’d written on a scrap of paper. Situated on a quiet, rural-looking lane, the small apartment building seemed a world away from the tourist-jammed streets around the place du Tertre. Here, there was an air of a country village. An apricot-colored cat sat on top of a fence, bathing himself in the sun. A woman entered a courtyard, her face veiled behind a huge bunch of lilies and baby’s breath. The sounds of Mozart drifted down from a window. It was a pleasant surprise; I hadn’t known such neighborhoods existed in Montmartre.
I rang the bell. Immediately the door opened. “I was watching for you from the window,” Susan said, hugging me. She led me into the large, airy room behind her. I recognized the furniture at once: the white sofas and black leather chairs, the faded Turkish rugs, the Matisse print on the wall, the old, burled-maple table Susan and I found together at a flea market. It was as though I were back in her Washington apartment. Even the placement of the windows was similar, except the view through them now was of Paris, not the Potomac.
“My God,” I said, “this is like entering the Twilight Zone.” We both laughed. She understood my shock at seeing the way she’d recreated her Washington home in the Paris apartment.
“I believe in change,” she said, laughing again, “but only when it’s for the better.”
I laughed again, thinking of her chameleonlike appearance when I first met her.
She led me into her bedroom. It, too, was just as it had been in Washington. It was strange, I told her, but all the old furniture looked even better here.
“I know,” she said. “It’s as if all these things have finally found the place that suits them best.”
I followed my friend into the small, sunny kitchen, where she set out fresh orange juice, croissants, butter, raspberry jam, cheese, and coffee. I watched her pour coffee and warm milk into