Sylvie, after much hemming and hawing, had agreed to meet Marine at Le Mazarin for lunch. As she walked down rue Fabrot, Marine realized she was ten minutes early. As a splurge—she rarely bought makeup but was a sucker for face creams and lipstick—she walked through the automated doors into the air-conditioned Sephora. The blast of cold forced her to hug her chest, but she knew that in a few minutes she’d be used to the artificial temperature. Looking up at the vaulted stone ceiling, Marine smiled. This particular branch of Sephora was special, and she had been coming here for years. The gothic vaults above her head dated from the fourteenth century; the shop, in a former life, had been a chapel in the couvent des Grands-Carmes. The soaring ceiling permitted it to have a mezzanine, where she had often played Lego at the children’s table with Charlotte, while Sylvie strolled around filling her metal shopping basket with creams and scents. The head of a carved angel, with a ghostlike face and hollowed-out eyes, watched the shoppers: A medieval security guard, thought Marine, and she selected a pale-pink lipstick. She thought of the histories and secrets—women’s—that these old walls hid and protected. Even now, the mostly female shoppers and employees each had their secrets, their joys and their pains. She was making her way to the caissier when a young employee, dressed in Sephora’s black-and-white uniform, tugged gently on Marine’s arm. “Excuse me, mademoiselle,” the girl said.
Marine swung around, agitated at first as she didn’t want or need assistance, but she saw that the girl was still in her teens, so she smiled. “Yes?” Marine asked.
“I just have to tell you that if your hair was redder, and you weren’t so tall, you’d be a twin for Isabelle Huppert.”
Marine beamed at the compliment and thanked the sales associate.
“And with your beautiful fair and freckled skin,” the girl continued, “don’t forget to wear sunscreen.”
Marine once more thanked the girl—knowing that it was not a sales pitch but instead kind advice. She paid for her lipstick and walked out into the midday heat. She turned right onto the cours Mirabeau and zigzagged through the hordes of locals and tourists to the Mazarin, just a few doors down.
“Salut, Marine,” Frédéric said as she walked through the café’s swinging front doors. It wasn’t air-conditioned in the café, but it was several degrees cooler inside than outside on the crowded terrace. “Sylvie’s upstairs already,” he continued, before shouting an order for three glasses of rosé to the barman.
“Thanks, Frédéric!” Marine said as she quickly walked up the carpeted steps.
Sylvie raised her left eyebrow when Marine sat down at their table. She saw the small black-and-red Sephora bag and asked, “Shopping?”
“Lipstick,” Marine said.
“Let’s see.”
Marine took out the lipstick and put some on.
“Subtle,” Sylvie said. “Very you. Good choice.”
Another waiter came and took their order. Both women chose salads because of the heat. “How dull,” Marine said, smiling, to the waiter as she handed him back the menu, “to order a salad in a restaurant.”
The waiter nodded and left, and Sylvie said, “Is the Lego table still upstairs?”
“I didn’t go up there,” Marine said. “I hope so.”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about when Charlotte was little,” Sylvie said, resting her elbows on the table and holding her chin in her hands.
“About Charlotte,” Marine said. “I’ve been concerned—”
Sylvie held up her hand. “I know, I know. I’ve been unfair, keeping you—and Antoine—in the dark, not explaining what’s going on.”
“You have been gone an awful lot,” Marine said. “But I want you to know that I love spending time with Charlotte, and that I trust you. I know you must have a good reason.”
Sylvie reached across the table and squeezed Marine’s hand. “I’m so lucky to have you,” she said. “I’m feeling very blessed right now.” The waiter came back and placed the salades niçoises before the women.
Marine picked up her fork. “Go on.”
“You see, at the Arles photo symposium—”
“I knew it,” Marine said. “You met someone.”
“Re-met.”
Marine stared at Sylvie. “You don’t mean to say . . .?”
“Yes,” Sylvie said. “And I’m over the moon—crazy, crazy, crazy in love. And so is he.”
“But Wolfgang is married.”
Sylvie shook her head. “Divorced, three years ago. When we had that affair, Wolfgang wasn’t happy with his wife, but their two kids were still small. Now, the kids are out of the house, one studying engineering at a university in Cologne and the younger studying to become a midwife in Copenhagen, so they amicably divorced. He said he worried for two years about contacting me, then told himself that he’d leave it to chance if we’d meet each other again.”
Marine smiled and didn’t say aloud that of course they’d meet again, as both were successful European photographers. Marine had seen Wolfgang’s work at exhibitions in Paris, and she thought it odd that they hadn’t “run into each other” sooner. “Does he know . . . ?”
“I’m going to tell him this afternoon.”
“Sylvie!”
“I promise!”
“And Charlotte?”
“I’d like you to be there with me,” Sylvie said, “when I tell her.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary . . .”
“Please, Marine. I’d be an emotional wreck. You know I would.”
Marine remembered one of the first times she had been invited to Sylvie’s, before Charlotte was born. Sylvie had answered her apartment door weeping. A cat was stuck at the top of one of the tall pine trees outside Sylvie’s balcony and was too far to reach. He had been crying for two days, keeping everyone who shared the courtyard awake and distressed. They paced around the terrace, Sylvie crying and Marine calling to the cat, and ended up calling the fire department.
“All right,” Marine said. “When?”
“Tonight?”
“I’ll come over before dinner,” Marine said.
Chapter Twenty-three
Aix-en-Provence,
Saturday, July 10, 2010
No matter how many times he drove
