replaced by a rueful scowl. She let out a long, slow breath. “After that, we used condoms.” She turned and managed a smile that filled me with a rush of desire.
“We’d better slip out of here, if we’re going to keep talking.”
“Yeah. I guess so. But I want to see Manet’s Olympia, first.”
“I think we passed it. Come this way. It was in that other room.”
We retraced our steps and found the painting.
“Yes, look at that!” she whispered. “Look at the maid. No one probably ever sees her. They’re all gawking at the mistress, or the whore.”
I stared at the prostitute in her inclined position, on the pale pink shawl and white bed linens. Her high heels seemed to mock any sense of respectability. Her hand over her private essence created a sensuousness all its own. Her breasts and legs shimmered with invitation! But the hardened and solemn stare of her eyes evoked an emptiness without joy. Then I looked toward the black maid. It was difficult to make her out against the equally black background. In her right arm, she cradles a large bouquet of colorful flowers. But the prostitute doesn’t even notice them.
“Look at those eyes of the maid. You can see their whites. What she would give for a paramour to love her, to send her flowers, to have someone wait on her!”
“It is magnificent. Almost disturbing,” I admitted. “There it all is. Life at a glance. Nothing lost. Her nudity. The uneasiness you are forced to feel, that you can’t escape.”
“Let’s slip out of here for some lunch.”
“OK! We’re not that far from La Place de Vendôme. Let’s find something there.”
Near La Place de Vendôme we found a delightful café, squeezed between two elegant jewelry stores. We seated ourselves at a small table, reminiscent of those marble-topped tables in Degas’s In the Cafe. The tiny restaurant radiated with light, dispelling any sense of depression one might bring into it. A large chandelier, suspended from the ceiling, brightened the entire café. Each table had been set with large white plates, dark green folded napkins, nickel-plated flatware, and tall stemmed wine glasses.
We ordered a salad, pâté of lamb, bread, and white wine.
“Here’s to you, kid!” I smiled at Julene.
She raised her glass and clinked it against mine.
“Careful! Cheap glass shatters you know.”
She laughed and rolled her large soft eyes. Her dark brown irises smiled back from their sea of aureoline white ocular spheres. Her nose was as splendidly chiseled and small as any of the painters’ models we had viewed. Her dark chocolate lips, tinged with ruby, and her delicate and slightly rounded chin, bestowed an unparalleled air of grace upon her.
“I could fall in love with you. You know that, don’t you?”
“Don’t you have anything better to do? What do you do, anyway?” she smiled.
“Oh, I work some, write some, travel some.” I glanced at her slender fingers. Just then she was toying with her wine glass. “I take long walks and reflect. It’s been a great sabbatical.”
“I guess so! Just what are you working on?”
“A new book. About Descartes, Pascal, Rousseau, and Kant. Paris invigorates me; helps me clear my mind of suppositions and allows me to think on my own. Plus, I’m interested in the existentialists, and being able to buy and read French editions of Marcel, Sartre, Camus, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir, and others has been exciting.”
“Sounds dreadfully morose,” she arched her thin eyebrows. “‘You are what you choose’ and all that garbage supposes an inner freedom only a few of us have. Certainly blacks aren’t that free. We’re still possessed by demons of hurt and anger. That’s why I like art. It’s concrete, imaginative, subtle,” she smiled, as she emphasized the last word. “It’s fluid, emotional, and all that’s good. Besides, it defies right or wrong, good or evil. It’s just what it is, and what you see. And what you feel. It has a life of its own. And sometimes it grasps you, like the works we just saw, or haunts you, like Benton’s July Hay. And it never leaves you in doubt, or with some ‘overwhelming question’ you can’t answer, if I might quote T.S.,” she chirped with smug playfulness. “It just leaves you with life, an instance of life. And that’s what makes it so great.”
“How triumphantly said! How delivered without anxiety or despair, if I might defer to a few heroes of my own.”
“Oh, by all means do! Far be it from little ole me to know the whole truth. I’m just plantation trash, Honey. Or have you forgotten?”
“Don’t be so snotty. No wonder Carl slammed you up against those boards and let you have it. Why do you need to be so feisty, anyway?”
“Why? ’Cause I’ve always had to fight for equality. Words are my only weapons, and art. I’m not as stupid as you think.”
“I never said you were.”
“I know,” she glanced away, with a tiny hint of hurt and embarrassment.
“Besides, your facial expressions and vocal tones are as deadly as any words.”
“It’s all part of my nature, my race. We’re basically still right-brained, emotional, imagistic, orrrrral,” she smiled, devilishly.
“Um! I’d like to know more of that orrrral part,” I grinned in return.
She shook her head from side to side. “You never give up. You’re as bad as any white devil I’ve ever met. Is that all you think about, sex?
“Only when a beautiful woman summons up my molten, erotic, and horny magma, my libidinous depths.”
She let out a prolonged, leisurely breath. “My, my. We really aren’t good for each other. At least not yet.” She looked at me warily, with a subtle blush about her eyes. I could detect it, in spite of her pale cafe-au-lait pigment.
“Tell me about yourself. Your real self. Beyond what you’ve already said.”
“I can’t do that right now,” she averred. “The chemistry’s too strong. Why don’t you tell me about yourself?” she suggested in earnest. The light from the chandelier overhead sparkled in her glass. She raised it and finished off her wine.”
“Let’s get some coffee and I’ll tell you—a little bit,” I volunteered. I nodded for the waiter. “Deux cafés noirs, s’il vous plait, Monsieur.”
“Bien sur,” he replied. “As you wish,” he said in English, as he began clearing our table.
Julene smiled and began anew. “Where are you from, anyway? And why did you become a Ph.D.? And why in philosophy? I could go on and on.”
The waiter wiped the table dry and looked at me a little stunned, as if I hardly qualified in his mind as an academic.
“C’est vrai,” I said, trying not to smile. “It’s the truth.”
He managed a polite grimace and
