Elin Hilderbrand - The Love Season

It only took a minute. Marguerite paced the floor in front of the painting, bringing the heels of her clogs firmly down on the parquet floor. She heard a catch in his breathing. She moved closer to the painting, her feet making solid wooden knocks with each step; she swung the long curtain of her hair in what she hoped was an enticing way. She heard muted noises-him rubbing his eyes, the whisper of linen against linen. When she turned around-she couldn’t wait another second-he was sitting up, blinking at her.

I fell asleep , he said, in English, and then he caught himself. Excusezmoi. J’ai dormi. J’etais fatigué .

I’m American , Marguerite said.

Thank God , he said. He blinked some more, then plucked a notebook out of a satchel at his feet. Well, I’m supposed to be writing .

About this painting? Marguerite said.

Les Parapluies , he said. I thought I was going to London, but the painting’s on loan here for six months so I find myself in Paris on very short notice .

That makes two of us .

You like it? he asked.

Paris?

The painting .

Oh . Marguerite said. She tilted her head to let him know she was studying it. She had been in Paris for two weeks and this was the first museum she’d visited, and here only because the Louvre was too intimidating. The little bald man who owned the hostel where she was staying had recommended it. Jeu de Paume. C’est un petit gout , he’d said. A little taste. The hostel owner knew Marguerite was a gourmand; he saw the treasures she brought home each night from the boulangerie , the fromagerie , and the green market. Bread, cheese, figs: She ate every night sitting on the floor of her shared room. She was in Paris for the food, not the art, though Marguerite had always loved Renoir and this painting in particular appealed to her. She was attracted to Renoir’s women, their beauty, their plump and rosy good health; this painting was alive. The umbrellas -les parapluies- gave the scene a jaunty, festive quality, almost celebratory, as people hoisted them into the air.

It’s charming , Marguerite said.

A feast for the eyes , Porter said.

When Marguerite entered the gift shop, she was overpowered by the scent of potpourri. Mistake , she thought immediately. It was a special corner of hell, standing in a space that used to be her front room, that used to have a fireplace and two armchairs, walls lined with books, and a zinc bar with walnut stools. Now it was…wind chimes and painted pottery, ceramic lamps, needlepoint pillows, books of Nantucket photography. Marguerite tried to breathe, but her sinuses were assaulted by the scent of lavender and bayberry. Her groceries and the champagne weighed her down like two bags of bricks.

“Can I help you?” asked an older woman, with tightly curled gray hair. A woman about Marguerite’s age, but Marguerite didn’t recognize her, thank God.

“Just looking,” Marguerite squeaked. She wanted to turn and leave, but the woman smiled at her so pleasantly that Marguerite felt compelled to stay and look around. It’s nobody’s fault but your own , Marguerite reminded herself. Your restaurant is now one big gingerbread house .

Porter Harris, his name was. An associate professor of art history at Columbia University, on his spring break from school, working on an article for an obscure art historian journal about Auguste Renoir’s portraits from the 1880s-how they were a step away from Impressionism and a step toward the modernist art of Paul Cézanne. Marguerite nodded like she knew exactly what he was talking about. Porter laughed at his own erudition and said, “Let’s get out of here, want to?” They went to a nearby café for a beer; Porter was thrilled to find another speaker of English. “I’ve been staring at the people in Renoir’s painting for so long,” he said, “I was afraid they would start talking to me.”

The beer went right to Marguerite’s head as it only could on an empty stomach on a spring afternoon in Paris when she was sitting across from a man she felt inexplicably drawn to.

“Marguerite,” he said. “French name?”

“My mother is an avid gardener,” she said. “I was named after the daisy.”

“How sweet. So what brings you to Paris, Daisy? Vocation or vacation?”

“A bit of both,” she said. “I’m a chef.”

He perked up immediately. Marguerite had always found it odd that when she first met Porter he was asleep, because his most pronounced trait was that of abundant nervous energy. He was exceptionally skinny, with very long arms and slender, tapered fingers. His legs barely fit under the wrought-iron café table. Marguerite could tell he was the kind of person who loved to eat but would never gain a pound. He lurched forward in his seat, his eyes bulged, and he lit a cigarette.

“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me all about it.”

Marguerite told. Les Trois Canards, Mère, vite frites , La Grenouille. Before she could even brag about her crowning achievement, Le Ferme, he was waving for the check.

I am boredom on a square plate , she thought. And that is why I am single .

It would be a lie to say that Marguerite had not entertained any romantic notions about her trip to Paris. She had fantasized about meeting a man, an older man, a married man in the French tradition, with oodles of money and a hankering for young American women to spoil. A man who would take her to dinner: Taillevent, Maxim’s, La Tour d’ Argent. But what happened was actually better. Porter paid the check, and when they were back on the street he took both of her hands in his and said, “I have a question for you.”

“What?”

“Will you make dinner for me?”

She was speechless. I love this man , she thought.

“I’m being forward, yes,” he said. “But all I’ve eaten for the past three days is bread, cheese, and fruit. I will buy the groceries, the wine, everything. All you have to do is-”

“You have a kitchen?” she whispered.

“My own apartment,” he said. “On the boulevard St.-Germain.”

Her eyebrows shot up.

“It’s a leaner,” he said. “Last minute, through the university. The owners are in New York for two weeks.”

“Lead the way,” she said.

Now that was a dinner party , Marguerite thought. Beef tartare with capers on garlic croutons, moules marineres , and homemade frites , a chicory and endive salad with poached eggs and lardons , and crème caramel. They drank two bottles of Saint Emilion and made love in a stranger’s bed.

All week she stayed with Porter, and part of the following week, since he didn’t have to teach until Friday. Porter was funny, charming, self-deprecating. He didn’t walk so much as bounce; he didn’t talk so much as bubble over like a shaken-up soda pop. As they zipped through the streets of Paris, he pointed out things Marguerite never would have noticed on her own-a certain doorway, a kind of leaded window, a model of car only manufactured for three months in 1942, under the Nazis. Porter had found himself in Paris on short notice, and yet he knew a tidbit of history about every block in the city. “I read a lot ,” he said apologetically. “It’s the only thing that keeps my feet on the ground.” Marguerite liked his talking; she liked his energy, his natural verve, his jitters, his nervous tics; she loved the way he was unafraid to speak his bungled, Americanized French in public. She liked being with someone so zany and unpredictable, so alive. He raced Marguerite up the stairs of Notre-Dame; he bought tickets to a soccer match and patiently explained the strategy while they got drunk on warm white wine in plastic cups; he bought two psychedelic wigs and made Marguerite wear hers when they visited Jim Morrison’s grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery.