Without Reservations_ The Travels of an Independent Woman - Alice Steinbach [26]
“Have you noticed how affectionate they are toward one another?” she asked. In fact, I had. It was not unusual for Frenchwomen to walk along the street, arms linked, heads tilted together in close conversation. In cafés, they greeted each other with kisses and parted with embraces. I liked the way they were able to express affection without being self-conscious about it.
I told Anne about the sad-looking middle-aged woman who performed on the street across from Deux Magots, the legendary Saint-Germain-des-Prés café. Small crowds would gather around her while she danced the can-can, wearing a black-and-gold dress, short black boots, and a cheap red wig fashioned into a topknot. Stark white makeup covered her sagging face; her mouth was a slash of purple. Midway through the performance, when she stopped to change from boots to high-heeled silver sandals, you could see the bandages wrapped around her swollen feet and toes.
“It’s a hard way to make a living,” I said. “I found it painful to watch.”
Anne nodded. “It’s a bit too close to what all women fear deep down, isn’t it?” she said. “Especially single women.”
I knew what she meant. It was the fear that, through bad luck or illness or having no one to lean on, a woman might wind up alone and poor. I’d discussed this fear with my friends. Of course we always laughed when we talked about it. But the image of ourselves as old women living in a rundown hotel was always there, in the backs of our minds. Far off in the distance and unlikely, but there nonetheless. After such talks we always parted with the promise that, when the time came, we’d buy a large house and move in together.
It was Anne’s first visit to Paris in ten years. She and her husband had celebrated her thirty-fifth birthday by staying a week at the romantic L’Hôtel on the Left Bank. They had divorced three years after the Paris trip. She had no children.
I told her that it had been almost ten years since I had visited Paris.
“It’s changed a lot, don’t you think?” she said. “And not for the better.” Now she found Paris too crowded and the food not as good as she remembered. Even the most beautiful square in all of Paris—the place des Vosges—had diminished in her eyes.
“I wonder if it’s really Paris that’s changed,” I said, “or if it’s us.”
Anne shook her head. “I don’t think I’ve changed that much at all.” Something about the way she said it suggested she considered this an accomplishment. And perhaps for her it was.
Anne told me she was anxious to get back to Los Angeles and her work. She’d been gone for almost three weeks and was beginning to feel nervous about her absence from the action. “Out of sight, out of mind,” she said, explaining how competitive it was in the film industry. She asked me how long I intended to stay in Paris.
When I told her that I was on a leave of absence from my job as a newspaper reporter, she shook her head in disbelief and, I thought, disapproval. “But don’t you worry about what could happen to your job while you’re gone?” she asked. “If I did that I’d practically have to start all over again.”
Her attitude annoyed me, although I didn’t know why. Perhaps it aroused my own fears of losing my place at work.
Then, to my complete surprise, Anne said, “It’s a bold thing to do. But maybe you’re used to doing bold things.”
I assured her I was not. But her remark secretly pleased me. It was the way I wanted to be seen, if only mistakenly so.
The thought put me in a good mood. I turned to Anne. “You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to go to the Ritz bar and have a drink.”
“I’m up for that,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to get a look at the inside of the Ritz.”
As we walked out of the café, we saw the woman in the gold lamé shorts sitting at a table, surrounded by admirers. She was smoking a cigarette through a long silver holder and signing autographs for the German tourists,