You Deserve Nothing - Alexander Maksik [75]
“Shut up, Mom.”
“Both Rick and Julia are big fans.”
I forced a laugh.
“I should get back,” I said holding up my bag of croissants.
“Have a great rest of the weekend,” Mrs. Tompkins said.
“See you on Monday, Mr. Silver.”
When I arrived home, Marie was standing at the sink, washing dishes.
“Hi honey,” she said. “How was work?”
I spooned coffee into the old Bialetti and she wrapped her arms around me.
We drank our coffee and ate the croissants with raspberry jam. They were playing an old Sidney Bechet concert on TSF. It had begun to rain.
“Will, I’m so happy,” she said. “I’ve never been so happy. Never.”
I smiled at her. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair a mess. She was naked beneath one of my old shirts. She looked prettier than I’d ever seen her.
We lay in bed listening to the rain, the street noise outside. Marie told me how she wasn’t afraid of anything. How powerful she’d begun to feel, how confident.
“You see the way I walk around your apartment, Will? Like nothing can go wrong. Like I’m the queen of the world, the smartest, toughest, most beautiful woman in the universe? I’m going to feel that way in the street someday.”
I smiled at the ceiling.
“Laugh all you want, asshole. You’ll see.” She sat up and looked at me. “You know what I’m going to do? One day?”
I shook my head. It was hard to resist her when she was like this.
“You want to know what I’m going to do when you’re old, I mean even older than you are now? When I’m even more beautiful and you can barely get up those fucking stairs?”
I laughed. “Tell me.”
“I’m going to have my own school. Outside Paris. Like in Saint-Denis for poor kids who are getting fucked by France and it’ll be full of teachers like Ms. Keller and you.”
I watched her and listened. Her eyes so full of light.
“You think now just because I’m who I am at ISF, I won’t be someone else later? You think that, don’t you?”
“I like who you are now, Marie. More and more to tell you the truth. And I know you’re right. I know you’ll do all of it. Everything you want to do. I just have to look at you to know.”
“Queen of the fucking world, Will. You’ll see.”
“I believe you, Marie.”
She lay back down, resting her head on my chest. “You’ll see. A beautiful school. And out there, I’ll feel every day like I feel in here.”
I held her tight against me.
“Are you happy?” she asked.
I looked at her, touched her face, and said, yes.
It was true.
* * *
For a while there were days like these. Afternoons after school watching movies, making love in a chair by the window, lying in bed awake together in the early evening, watching the room darken.
Marie came after school and late on Saturday nights when she’d arrive long after I’d gone to sleep, bringing the smell of evening with her. She’d slide beneath the blankets, waking me with her cool body. We’d tear at each other and, particularly when she was drunk, she’d push herself against me desperately. And on those gray Sunday mornings, I’d play music she’d never heard—Keith Jarrett, Dinah Washington. It was always cold outside and there was never any sunshine—only the dull Paris grisaille and often, the steady rain falling against the roof like gravel against a drum.
Once, I was waiting for the doors of the train to close when Mia and Marie walked into the car. The three of us sat together—Mia at my side, Marie facing us.
“So what are you doing on this train?” Mia asked.
“Shopping with Ariel, hot chocolate at the Flore,” she answered, looking Mia in the eyes.
So she can lie, I thought.
* * *
Days later, I had lunch with Mia at La Palette.
“You seem better,” she told me.
“I am,” I said.
“I’m glad.” She looked at me briefly and then cast her eyes away. “You can tell me anything, you know.”
I nodded. “I know, Mia.”
“Are there a lot of things you don’t tell me?”
“I guess there are a lot of things I don’t tell anyone. Like most people.”
She touched my hand. “You’ll be all right, Will.”
“How are things with Olivier, the lawyer?”
She shrugged.
The café was filling with people.