A Paris Apartment (9 page)

“Oh. Linen. Why didn’t you say so? Sounds thrilling.” Birdie’s sarcasm ran a close second to her penchant for clumsiness.

April tore into the envelope. The owner’s funny, squiggly handwriting lifted off the page. April scanned the note, picking up only the key words.
Bonjour. Opéra. Métro. Fermez la porte.
And then the most important sentence of all:
Fromage dans le frigo
.

Cheese was in the fridge.

“I have to go,” April said. “Emergency.”

“I’ll get my catalog copy tonight, yes?”

“Oui. Good-bye, Birdie. I’ll ring you later.”

April clicked off the phone.

Carefully, she stepped across the kitchen floor, the bottle of wine still clutched to her chest. April swung open the door of the stainless-steel refrigerator. Though it was approximately one-half the width of even the most basic Costco model, it had all April needed inside, specifically, a glorious selection of
fromages
, not to mention truffled pâté de foie gras and several other delicacies the likes of which she’d not seen since last leaving the city. April almost sobbed with these strangers’ generosity. Or maybe it was only her blood sugar.

Displaying all the couth of a grizzly bear, April ripped off a hunk of Ossau-Iraty, put the bottle under her arm, and marched back into the living room. Gloves back on, she grabbed the diaries from the table. Then, only as an afterthought, April tracked down a corkscrew and glass, though the latter was not strictly necessary.

Slogging to the bedroom, April nearly tripped over her suitcase. She should unpack, and typically April was a put-stuff-away-first kind of person. But there was unpacking on the one hand and wine, cheese, and Marthe on the other. Organization would have to wait.

Still in her charcoal pants and a top she suspected was more polyester than the silk promised by the tag, April slid into the formerly made-up bed, uncorked the wine, and started to read.

Chapitre XIV

Paris, 5 May 1891

It’s been nearly two weeks since the glorious nuptials of
Jeanne au pain sec
and still people cannot stop speaking of the event.

The newspapers hit the street corners each morning, and I find myself unable to walk past. Instead I stop and pull a knife from the pocket at the hem of my dress. When no one’s looking, or no one’s paying attention, I slice through the twine and lift a newspaper from the top of the stack. Paper hidden beneath my coat, I scurry back to the
hôtel
to read the latest of Jeanne’s treasures.

It should’ve abated by now, a fortnight having passed. Yet each morning there it is, another enumeration of the wedding gifts bestowed upon Jeanne Daudet née Hugo. It’s as though every Frenchman squandered his life’s savings for the chance to purchase the couple an overpriced, impractical marital prize. It’s rumored she’s hired four people solely to unwrap gifts. Indeed there are not enough minutes in a lifetime to get through them all.

If only I had people throwing presents my way! It would solve my every problem. The paltry sum I lifted from Sœur Marie is almost gone. I’ve been frugal with money, even though it means staying in this dodgy
hôtel des femmes
from which I write. Montmartre is not the place for young girls raised in convents. The cabarets! The debauchery! The lawlessness! I have only participated a time or two.

With my ever-dwindling funds the
hôtel
has turned from sacrifice to luxury. At least the weather’s warming, and the rotten place is not quite so rotten. The water stopped freezing in the basin. I no longer sleep with every piece of clothing I own piled on top of me. This residence was all I could afford when I stole into the city three months ago. I cannot afford it anymore.

Several of my
hôtel
-mates work in nearby textile factories. They are forever trying to secure me a job. Alas, the wages are small and the penalties high. The girls have bleeding hands, rough complexions. The ones who are twenty look like they’re forty. The ones who are thirty look most of the way to dead.

One girl earns wages transporting materials from the windmills to the factories. Though a better option than working in the factories themselves, she is rather starting to look like the mule she is. Whenever I am tempted to take up a similar form of employ I ask myself what do we women have but our looks? Our charms, yes, but it’s difficult to charm after a twelve-hour shift.

In the
hôtel
we also have many of the girls,
les filles soumises
, who work on the rue Le Peletier. They say the money comes easily, this trading skin for coins. Well, of course it comes easily! They are paid a pittance. The men spend more on drink!

Though I find this gamut of options most unappealing, I would be lying to say I have not considered each of them. In the end it is all too little money for too much suffering. Though suffer I will soon as well. If only I could bring myself to work in a factory or a
maison de tolerance
, I would not be in my current financial straits.

I have one week to devise a solution, a week if I eat sparsely and flirt with the
hôtel
manager. He is not so much a man as a gnome, but I am quite adept at looking the other way. My rent can perhaps be a few days late if I say the right words. The manager is lenient when someone makes him feel important, I suppose the same as most.

Now I will close this book and find more ways to watch my francs until something comes along to pull me from this mess. I came to Paris for a better life, and a better life I shall have!

Chapitre XV

Paris, 12 May 1891

Oh,
Jeanne au pain sec! Ma chérie
, you did help me after all!

These past few days have been murderous, simply murderous. The clouds, the sky, the air—they all pushed down on me with such force I could scarcely breathe. The reckoning was at hand, my final days as a Parisienne.

To make matters worse, the
hôtel
manager fled town on some unnamed and reportedly scandalous jaunt. He left operations to his old crone of a mother. Perhaps she is his wife. In either case, unlike her predecessor she refuses to take partial payment in batted eyelashes and flirtatious exchanges.

“If you don’t remit your weekly fee in the next eight hours,” she told me, “you are out on the street. There are others who want your room.”

This was no idle threat. Despite the absolute filth of the place, people were anxious to get a room. When Blanche succumbed to tuberculosis, two girls fought over her bed-sit before the coroner had even removed her body from the room.

“Eight hours?” I said, my voice like a frog’s. “But can’t I possibly have—”

“Eight hours!” she screeched, baring those brown-gray teeth of hers.

Nodding, I turned and staggered down the front steps.

Walking the boulevard, I sucked back the tears. Sœur Marie told me never to cry. It shows weakness. There is nothing worse than weakness.

So I walked. And I walked. The sun poured over me. I do not possess proper clothing for the weather or this city, the whole of my wardrobe appropriate for dank convents, certainly not Parisian streets in the springtime.

As the sun raged on and the outdoor cafés filled with smoke and happiness, perspiration ran down my forehead and neck. If I glanced in a window, which I did not dare, doubtless I would’ve seen my face scarlet and shiny. People looked my way askance. They stepped into the street to avoid me. One bicyclist almost mowed me down, perhaps on purpose. At the corner I stopped to reclaim my composure.

Sometimes catching your breath is the best thing to do.

I leaned against the railing of a café and dropped my head onto my chest. The patio was packed with men, smoking and drinking and swapping tales of the cabarets, the cancan girls, the pantomime shows. Cabarets, I thought. I could learn the cancan. Indeed, it was better than working in a factory or receiving chicken feed for opening my legs.

At once the wave of panic and self-pity began to recede. I lifted my head, and that’s when I saw it, tacked to the café window, a sign the (literal) color of a sunset. The woman on the poster smiled at me. She lifted her yellow skirts to display the round, smooth tops of her thighs. A feather popped up from the back of her head. She was beautiful, grand, even.

“Folies Bergère,” the sign read. The most renowned cabaret in the city. Even I, a convent girl, had heard of it. There were worse ways to earn money, I thought. Much worse.

After ripping the poster from the glass, I immediately proceeded to the dance hall, located just below Montmartre, in the Ninth. My feet ached by the time I reached 32 rue Richer, but I wasted not a moment to compose myself. If I waited too long I would almost certainly reconsider.

When I walked into the hall dozens of bodies hummed around me, all of them setting up for the evening’s festivities. A lithe woman hung from the ceiling as she changed a light in the chandelier. A short man with a long nose coaxed an elephant through a doorway. I saw three ladies dressed like men, two acrobats, and seven parrots bushwhacking the place-setters. It was a circus, and the show hadn’t even begun.

“Excuse me,” I said to the first person who acknowledged my presence. “May I speak to the man in charge?”

He nodded toward the bar, then promptly moved on to other things.

Beside the bar stood a gentleman nearly six feet tall with black, curled hair and a black, curled beard. He wore rings on every finger and a floor-length red velveteen coat lined with fur. Not one for subtlety, I thought. Like the rest of the place, he was a performance of his own.

“Bonjour,” I said and marched to his side. I was still sweating, overheating. Staring at his coat offered no favors. I felt as though I, too, was covered in fur. “I would like a job as a cancan dancer in your establishment.”

I expected an assessment of my physique, perhaps a request to lift my skirt, which I was fully prepared to do. Instead he responded to my query with laughter. Really, it was more of a guffaw. My cheeks blazed. I did not know it was possible to be inappropriate in a cabaret.

“I’m sorry, Mademoiselle,” he said. “This is a professional establishment. No filles soumises at the Folies Bergère.”

“Filles soumises?”

The voice of Sœur Marie rang in my ears. Marthe, you must think before you speak. Always ask yourself if there is a gentler way to express your feelings. Alas, I was not in the domain of Sœur Marie any longer, and the Folies Bergère was no convent.

“Félicitations, Monsieur!” I sang as a most disingenuous smile stretched across my face. “You are the very first person to call me a submissive whore. To my face, anyway.”

“You’re the one looking for work,” he replied, smirking.

“If you care to learn the truth, I was raised by nuns, so am actually quite the opposite. But I understand your confusion. Since you are so accustomed to seeing whores it must be difficult to distinguish a respectable woman from a fille soumise. How sad for you!”

“Mademoiselle, such insolent talk is not advisable when trying to secure a job,” he said, knitting together his brows while a small smile dropped from the side of his mouth. “What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t. It’s Marthe,” I told him.

“Marthe? Just Marthe? Do you have a surname?”

Like any good orphan I did not. I knew I had to create something fancy, a name with flourish. I thought of the
hôtel grisettes
and their own pseudonyms. The girls always added a “de” before whatever whimsical surname they devised. This small word gave a woman countenance, they said, it gave her a history.
De
meant you were from somewhere instead of, like most of us, being from nowhere at all.

“De Florian,” I said. “Marthe de Florian.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mademoiselle de Florian. While I appreciate your inquiry, this is a prestigious establishment and not a place for wide-eyed villagers bumbling up from the countryside.”

“I’m have more savvy than you think,” I told him.

“I don’t doubt it. The point is, Mademoiselle de Florian, my girls are skilled dancers and performers.” He pointed to a poster on the wall, the same one that was right then folded up in my palm. “These girls have careers. They bring with them names we can use in advertisements, names that draw a crowd. You, my dear, are strong in beauty but lacking in name.”

“If you let me dance,” I told him. “The crowds will come.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I cannot allow it. It would hardly be fair.”

“Fair?” I started. “Let me tell you about fair.”

Suddenly I caught sight of a large brass clock hanging from the far wall. The minutes were disappearing. I would be out of the
hôtel
by nightfall.

“You have to help me,” I said, lips quivering. “I’ve nowhere else to go.”

A woman walked up then. A tall woman with cherry hair and the loveliest gown I’d seen up close. The bodice was made of the thickest, finest black satin, a dozen or more buttons running up the front. She’d tucked peonies into her décolletage. A wide gray skirt spilled out behind her.

“Bonjour, Gérard,” she said and placed her satchel on the counter. She removed a cigarette and lit it with one of the still-flickering candles. “Good night last night?”

“Terrific, yes.”

“I see Monsieur l’Éléphant is uncooperative as ever.” She exhaled one long stream of smoke in my direction. I tried not to blink. “And who is this?”

“Émilie, this is Marthe de Florian. Mademoiselle de Florian, this is Émilie.”

“Is she the new barmaid?” Émilie inquired. “Finally you listen to my pleas! You cannot run a cabaret on dancers alone.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “She’s merely—”

“Yes!” I sang before I could think better of it. “I am the new barmaid!”

“Pardon me?” Gérard said, eyes bulging.

“Very pleased to meet you.” I shot a hand toward this Émilie, Gérard scowling somewhere over my left shoulder.

“Thank god,” Émilie said and mashed her cigarette into a stool. “We need much help around here. And you’re pretty to boot. When can you start?”