Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Karl and Georges entered the lobby, arms full of colorful flowers. Karl hurried into the back office, where a large selection of vases and containers were lined up on both desks.

Claudine had unpacked a vast collection of decorative objects from the wooden crates that had been delivered earlier in the week, including sterling silver vases that stood three feet tall, porcelain jars of exquisite color and delicacy (Limoges, Karl explained, giving a brief history as they were unpacked), and crystal bowls (Lalique, if you’re interested). They were all antiques and probably extremely valuable, but Claudine wanted them all used.

The plan was simple. Karl and Marie Claude would arrange the various bouquets and deliver them as needed ahead of the photographer, Gaspard, who immediately understood the situation.

He began outside in the bright morning sun, avoiding the shabby stable block that served as storage, instead shooting the now-imposing facade: through the black iron gates, close up to the freshly painted double doors, looking around the corner from the just-blooming rose garden. Even Napoléon got his own headshot and another of him curled up among the ferns in his favorite urn.

Bing and Vera, as well-heeled guests, looked amazing: Bing in his usual jeans and T-shirt, but also wearing a crisp linen sports jacket and a long silk scarf wrapped around his neck, Vera imposing and sophisticated in a pale pantsuit. Marie Claude and I, in white shirts and black skirts, smiled and went through the motions as Gaspard clicked away.

The tall silver vase filled with colorful blooms was strategically placed to block the credit card machine and the other, less attractive electronics, all necessary but not photogenic. I hadn’t been hiding, exactly. “I’m scanning their credit card,” I explained.

Vera shot him a look that could have stopped a charging rhino, and Gaspard blanched.

There was a flurry of activity as ferns and flowers were whisked into the salon, where Stavros, a red apron covering his white shirt and black pants, stood stiffly, waiting. Colin sat at a table covered in starched white linen, a bowl of spring-green ivy in the center, as though a three-star Michelin meal were waiting in the wings.

Another flurry as everything and everyone moved, and Gaspard was satisfied.

Stavros bent over awkwardly and tilted the copper coffeepot. Nothing came out.

Stavros looked confused. “I didn’t make any. It would just get cold.”

Gaspard shook his head. “Who cares if it’s cold? You can’t have him sitting there in front of an empty coffee cup. And where’s the food?”

Stavros looked blank. “Food?”

I ran out of the hotel, through the iron gate, and into the café across the street. “Simone?” I called.

The young girl hurried from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She was slightly flushed, her hair up in a ponytail, her black apron powdered with floured handprints.

She shook her head. “No. Josiane is here.” Josiane was the oldest of Stavros’s daughters, the mother of the four children.

She rolled her eyes. “Of course.”

Gaspard was standing out in the patio. I went out and touched him on the shoulder, and he jumped.

He nodded, and as we walked back inside, he glanced over his shoulder. “Did you hear her?” he whispered.

I felt a chill. I did not want any reminders of our longest-staying guest.

Simone arrived a few minutes later. Stavros had filled his coffeepot with espresso. Simone exchanged her apron for her father’s more photogenic one, arranged a few croissants and a peeled and sectioned orange on a lovely blue plate, and set it in front of Colin.

He nodded, and she went to work, pouring, smiling, listening with apparent fascination to whatever Colin was saying. Then she poured the espresso back in the pot and did it all over again, from the other side.

And again. And again. And behind the salon, in the bright sunlight, pots of fern and delphinium peeked through the tall windows.

Next came the office, its tall, glass doors open to the garden, pots of ferns clustered at the base of the elegant bookcase.

Upstairs, we had stacked mattresses high enough to be a stage set for Once Upon a Mattress with pillows plumped on pale quilts. Curtains billowed in a soft breeze. Thick white towels hung over the edge of a glistening claw-foot tub. In one room, Vera posed by the window, gazing out, so that Gaspard didn’t have to coach her into smiling. In another, Bing lounged on the outside balcony, sitting in a small chair, a wineglass on the marble-topped table. Both declined to sit in the tub, in chest-high bubbles, reading and sipping champagne. It had been Claudine’s idea, and I think she suggested the whole thing just to annoy Bing and Vera.

As we moved from room to room, Karl and Marie Claude rearranged flowers, positioned ferns, and strategically placed vases and bowls just inside the camera frame.

Back downstairs for a set of photos in the garden, with Bing on one of the benches, his arm stretched out along its back.

When he was done, Gaspard sighed. “He should be smoking a Gauloises,” he said, mentioning the famous French cigarettes. “American advertising is still very anti-smoking.”

Claudine laughed at that, her head shaking. “You never liked sex with younger women,” she said. “You always liked us more experienced types.”

Bing put his arm around her shoulder and nuzzled her hair. “Yes. And thank you very much.”

Vera shook her head. “You two are impossible,” she muttered.

We ended back in the lobby, its chandelier gleaming, elegant tables placed between comfortable chairs, more ferns and potted palm trees strategically placed. Hotel Paradis looked magnificent.

The so-called guests all acted accordingly, and, with the exception of Stavros, all photographed beautifully.

Gaspard, clicking away, muttered, “Your real guests are going to be disappointed that there aren’t really as many ferns and flowers around.”

Claudine shot me a look, then smiled. “No worries. I can always get more.”

And did I mention that Bing looked … Never mind.

Gaspard sat down next to me at my desk in the back office, leaves and fallen petals littering the floor, the strong sent of carnations in the air.

I looked up at him. “Great question. The stock answer is yes, of course. That’s what we’ll tell them on Monday. Between you and me, there will be a lot of long nights ahead. But we know how long it took us to get this far, and it’s not an impossible task.”

Gaspard chuckled. “Claudine has an iron will. That alone might get it done.”

I nodded in agreement. “Yes. There is that. I’ve learned to never underestimate what that woman can accomplish once she puts her mind to something.” I glanced up at him. “Have you known her long?”

We went through his photos one at a time. It was tedious work, and he discarded half of them with just a glance, and then went back, studying each shot critically.

I left him at my computer and walked outside. It was late afternoon. Gaspard had spent the better part of the day at the hotel, and seeing how long it was taking him to review his work, along with all the editing I realized he wanted to do, it would be a while before I got the eight or ten pictures I needed.

Napoléon came around the corner, meowed at me, then darted off to the rose garden. I followed him. There hadn’t been any pictures taken of it, despite Karl’s insistence that his creation was going to become a major draw for guests. I liked the narrow side alley. The roses were just beginning to bloom, and there was a faint, sweet scent in the air. The intention had never been for guests to linger here. This had always been just a view from the upper floor with the possibility of pears and apricots at some future date. But Karl had insisted on a small bench, and it was there I sat, smelling the light scent coming from the flowering roses. Each was a different variety. Karl had explained in great detail each rosebush, its history, how long it would bloom, and when. He carefully planned for them to bloom at different times during the summer, giving a continuous show.

Napoléon wrapped himself around my ankles, purring, then jumped up on the bench and settled beside me, almost but not quite touching my thigh.

I shook my head. “No. Gaspard is going through all his pictures. He’s kept the ones he’s deemed worthy, and now he’s cropping or something.”

She came around and leaned her back against the stone side of the hotel. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I like it back here, too.” She sighed. “Those roses are going to be glorious in a few years. Karl will tend to them like beloved children.” She opened her eyes. “Things went well today.”

I smiled tiredly. “It wasn’t that bad, was it?”

She made a face. “Claudine is too much sometimes. In the bathtub?”

I laughed. “You know she only suggested that to get your hackles up.”

I thought about that, confused. “What do you mean?”

Vera narrowed her eyes, and I could practically see her deciding about what to say next. “I’m not sure she ever got over him,” she said at last.

I sat up straighter. “Bing?”

Vera nodded. “I’ve known her a long time. I wasn’t living here when it was happening, their affair, but I know her well. Bing moved on. She never did. It may be because of Philippe, and she feels the connection more strongly through him. But I had just moved here when he was married, and she was not good. At all. She hid it well from him. From everyone. But she would talk to me.”

I felt something deep in my chest, a heavy, dull ache. “Really?”

Her eyes were shrewd and watchful. “You like him.” It was not a question.

I waited a beat. “Yes. Even though he makes me crazy sometimes.”

She smiled. “I imagine he makes you crazy most of the time. He can be a very annoying man.”

I had to smile. “Yes, he can be.”

I nodded. “So I’ve heard.”

I had no idea what to say about that, so I said nothing.

Claudine had never gotten over Bing?

I sighed. I could certainly understand that. I imagined that once you’d given your heart to him, it would be almost impossible to have it handed back to you in one piece.

Gaspard did not finish until quite late, and I crawled into bed without getting any of my own work done. Tomorrow would be busy, I thought. I had to cut and paste the selected photos into my brochure, print off a hundred or so copies, and fold them. Then I would upload to the website, recheck every line of information and every link, and get us live.

No big deal at all, launching a website. I closed my eyes.

Right.

I was up and out of bed before Napoléon the next morning. The cat opened one eye, closed it again, and burrowed deeper into the bedclothes as I hurriedly dressed and grabbed my usual baguette and butter to take with me for breakfast.

The kitchen had been slowly filling with cutlery, dishware, and copper pots. I made my café crème, examining the hodgepodge of plates, cups, and saucers. Claudine had managed to unearth dinner plates from the clown car of a storage shed, which seemed to give up box after box of preciously saved items dating back to prewar Hotel Paradis glory. There were deep bowls, tiny demitasse cups and saucers, and large platters, all white with scalloped edges.

The Fielding had specially made dinnerware, with the logo tastefully scrolling along the edges of the plates. Here, there was just a simple fleur-de-lis, a symbol found all over France, in the center of each plate, in a faded peacock blue. Simple, elegant, and lovely. Just what I wanted for Hotel Paradis.

The office had been painted by Colin and Marie Claude, and with Claudine’s state-of-the art equipment, it was now a pleasure to walk into every day. The old safe was still there, its heavy door removed, filled now with reams of paper, printer cartridges, and boxes of number 2 pencils. My desk was adorned only with the pictures of my nieces, the desktop, and a neatly organized stack of folders. The chipped bud vase held a single blossom of whatever Karl brought in every few days. My new happy place.

Gaspard had winnowed down his over one hundred images to twenty he deemed good enough for public consumption, and they were all stunning. They weren’t just beautiful photographs, they also captured the spirit of the hotel: the old-world charm, the slow and graceful pace, the quiet, unobtrusive service. We looked great.

I plugged the images into the website and slowly pointed and clicked every link to make sure there would be no surprises. Then, I clicked on the most important button on the screen, the one that made our website live and out there for all the world to see. I waited. I heard no fanfare of trumpets. There was no thunderous applause. Not one piece of confetti fluttered down from the ceiling.

I jumped. The man was like a ninja. I turned and would have scowled at him, but … we were live. “The website is up and running.”

He was sipping his morning espresso. “I see. And you’re … What? Waiting to see all those hundreds of reservations to come flowing in?”

He read down the list, his eyebrows raised. “All these places? Are you sure?”

He sat down at the desk across from me. “Okay. What do I do?”

I took a breath. “Of course I looked at them. I looked at almost one hundred different sites, and those are the ones with the most traffic. They’re highly ranked in other places, too. I spent hours scrolling through garbage to find the diamonds.” I glared at him. “How do you think I chose them? Coin toss?”

He shrugged. “That seems, well…”

His eyes narrowed. “Every night?”

I shook my head. “What else was there for me to do?” I muttered, then instantly regretted it. Talk about sounding like a total loser with nothing to do except troll travel websites. But it was my job.

I sighed. “And go where?”

Suddenly, walking and eating and seeing Place Sainte-Anne sounded like the best idea in the world, even though I had no idea what it was. After staring at the same series of walls and doors for weeks, I would have welcomed a trip to the city dump.

I gestured at the computer. “I need to finish the brochure, make copies, and fold them in time for the dog and pony show Claudine has planned for tomorrow.”

He thought. “Then let’s change places. I can probably do that much faster than all this.”

We switched, and once I found my rhythm, it became easier to copy and paste, click, and save. I finished just in time to see Bing standing by the giant printer, waiting.

A single slick sheet slid out. He looked at it briefly, then carefully folded it in thirds. “Here,” he said. “I think it’s very good.”

I looked at it carefully. Yes, it was good. It was great. The pictures were clear and crisp: the front courtyard, the open front doors, giving a glimpse into the elegant lobby, a smiling couple being checked in, the sun-drenched garden, the calm and classic bedroom. I would have booked myself a room in a heartbeat.

The text was in French, but Claudine and Colin had both said it was fine. I had an English version as well, but that could wait.

He held up his hand. “Tell Claudine she can do this. Tell her we’re taking a walk.”

He smiled. “There is nothing wrong with simple. Put on good shoes. I’ll meet you in the courtyard in ten minutes.”

I put my hands to my head, felt the wild curls, and made a lame attempt to pat them down. “Should I change? I mean, I probably look like a crazy person.”

He shook his head. “You look perfect,” he said, and left me sitting behind my desk, holding the brochure, grinning like an idiot.

Place Sainte-Anne looked like a picture postcard. The buildings were tall, half-timbered, with flower boxes spilling color from three and four stories up, open windows aflutter with lace curtains and the occasional cat, sitting in the fading sunlight. Everywhere there were people sitting and talking and eating. That, I had discovered, is what the French did. They found a good place with wine and food and sat for hours. No one was staring at a phone. Instead, they all looked at each other and talked. And talked. And talked some more.

French is a musical language, and to hear an entire street of people, all talking, was like listening to a symphony of words.

We sat and ordered wine. It was too early for dinner, especially in France, where people ate the main meal of the day after the sun had set. We sat and drank, munching on a small dish of nuts, not talking so much as watching the crowds and making quiet commentary.

He laughed. “You are very gullible sometimes.”

We did. Walking could be tricky in the older parts of the city, where the cobblestones were old and uneven, but that’s where the good walking shoes came in. We moved slowly, looking into shop windows and reading the menus posted outside various cafés. Finally, Bing found whatever he was looking for, because we sat and ordered more wine.

How did he know what I’d love? My hackles started to go up, but I realized my reaction was a little over the top. He probably did know about local specialties. Why shouldn’t he order? If I was going to get defensive every time the man offered anything …

He shook his head, and I dialed.

Dad answered. Dad always answered. I know that they didn’t have caller ID on their phone, yet my mother somehow always knew when I called and did not answer. It had been that way for years. And I also knew, having lived with them both for two years, that she answered the phone on a regular basis. Sometimes, the universe had a way of telling you things you wouldn’t ordinarily know.

Usually, I got a litany of small complaints and sly observations about the local political climate. But not today.

I felt my stomach lurch. “Since when?”

He sighed. “Wednesday was three years.”

Three years since his wife, Sara, had died after a brief but brutal bout of cancer. Three years since he had to quit his job in IT to care for his twin daughters. Three years in a less demanding and lower-paying job at a big-box store that allowed for flexible hours to work around the girls’ school schedule. Three years since he started drinking vodka every night to numb the pain.

I closed my eyes and tried to breathe slowly. “What did he say?”

At the height of his drinking, eighteen months before, in the weeks before and during rehab, the twins had moved in with my parents. It was then that I really began to know them, and they became more than just my little brother’s kids. It wasn’t just that they had become a distraction from my own seemingly endless troubles. They burrowed deep into my heart and stayed there. I had been the one to take them to and from school and ferry them to all their activities while my parents scrambled to try to piece their younger son back together. I had been the one they talked to. Dreamed with. Cried to. And now, I was in France.

Of course.

Vivian was the twins’ other grandmother, Sara’s ultraconservative mother, who had embraced her recent widowhood with religious fervor, telling anyone who would listen that her recently deceased husband had in fact been murdered by the deep state. It would have been laughable if it didn’t directly spill into the lives of the two little girls.

Yes, I did know, and for the first time since I’d set foot in France, I wished I were home.

The golden glow of the early evening disappeared abruptly. It didn’t matter that I was away from work, in a beautiful old city, drinking wine with the promise of a fabulous meal before me. It didn’t matter that tomorrow, Hotel Paradis would be officially introduced to the world after weeks and weeks of backbreaking work. It didn’t matter that Bing and I had managed to spend the entire afternoon together without my feeling like I needed to smack him upside the head because of his mansplaining.

My brother was in trouble again, and I was on the other side of the ocean, unable to help. And my two precious nieces were once again in the line of fire.

He sighed. “Sure. Bye.” He hung up.

I clicked off the phone and stared at the screen. Two beautiful, smiling little faces beamed up at me. Those dear little girls …

I cleared my throat. “My brother is an alcoholic. He slipped again.”

I lifted my eyes to his, and the kindness reflected back almost broke me. “It’s just that he has two daughters, and he’s had to raise them by himself the past few years, and we all thought he’d kind of turned a corner.” I shrugged. “But he turned back.”

I thought. “Not about that. Instead, tell me about Philippe. Will he be back this summer?” Was I really interested? Not really, but it was the safest thing I could think of. And it was as far away from my own problem as I could get.

Bing signaled for more wine. “Yes. He’ll be here in a few weeks, I think. When Marie Claude and Eliot are gone.”

Something in his face changed. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Bing sighed. “I don’t think he will ever get over her. Watching them together was like nothing I’d ever seen before. They were like two souls in a single body. Remarkable.”

Our food was set down, what looked to be a white fish, grilled beautifully, with slender stalks of asparagus and tiny roasted potatoes. My wineglass was refilled.

I thought about the times I had told myself I’d been in love. High school didn’t count. Besides, that had been 99 percent lust. My first husband had been a sweet man who was my best friend, and yes, I had loved him. But leaving him had been more of an inconvenience than a heartbreak. But Tony? Two souls … yes, that had been us. Two souls in a single body. But were we really? Had we ever been that, when one could have so carelessly turned away from the other?

He nodded. “Maybe.”