“You want me to live with you?” Nita said.
She knew she shouldn’t be surprised. This kind of thing was common in France, even if it was forbidden in India. Her first day living with Rajiv had been after their wedding night.
“Bien s?r.” He nuzzled softly against her neck, clearly trying to get her aroused. “I can think of nothing better than having my beautiful lotus flower all to myself.”
She pushed him away when Dao returned, and whispered that she would think about it. It would solve some of her bigger problems, like paying for the hostel and the fear that Rajiv would show up there one day.
“He’s very . . . French,” Dao said to Nita as they both stood in the communal bathroom at the hostel the next day, Dao applying a deep-lavender eye shadow.
Nita was brushing out her long wavy hair, counting to 101 in her head, just like she’d always done since she was a little girl. It was a ritual she had never given up. Her mummy had done that with her own hair, making sure she ended on an odd number for good luck. Nita, in turn, used to do the same with Sophie’s hair, also always ending at 101. She wondered if Rajiv had carried on the tradition after she left. She doubted it because she was not sure he had even known about it. Sophie’s morning and bedtime routines fell under Nita’s womanly responsibilities. She pushed the thoughts away and tried to bring her attention back to Dao.
“Does he always date foreigners?” Dao asked, now painting her lips a deep-mauve color.
Nita balked at her use of the word. “Probably not,” she said. “He’s never left France.” In her head, she counted seventy-one, seventy-two, seventy-three . . .
Dao shrugged. “Plenty of people from all over come to Paris, so that doesn’t really answer the question.” She puckered her lips and admired her handiwork in the mirror. “He seemed a bit possessive. Not that typical laissez-faire attitude most of the men project.”
Nita considered her words, not accustomed to having friends who were so outspoken with their views. Eighty-eight, eighty-nine, ninety. Her friends in India were always polite when speaking to her even though she knew they spoke their true feelings behind her back, just as she would have done to them. Her friendships in India had remained more on the surface, and it had taken some adjustments for her to get used to Dao’s style, even though she had decided ultimately that she preferred it.
“I’ve only dated one French man, so it is hard for me to say the difference,” she said as she completed her last stroke of her brush at 101.
Laughing, Dao said, “Well, that’s fair enough.” She faced Nita directly rather than catching her eye in the mirror. “I’m just saying girls who look like us need to be careful here. I just wonder if he needs someone exotic in his life. I meet those guys all the time in this city. You know the type—the pasty ones who think dating someone ethnic says something special about them, even though all they are doing is indulging their colonialist fetishes. I saw it all the time in the UK too. The English may have the top colonialist-fetish slot, but the French are not far behind!” She turned back toward the mirror. “Men can be dogs, and you just never know what they’re really after. I should know. I’ve exclusively dated creeps in my life, so I’m quite the expert.”
Nita pondered her words but knew she had no experience from which to form any opinions on the subject. Mathieu was the only person she’d ever dated—if what they were doing could even be called that. She wasn’t sure it could, based on what she had seen on American television programs. All she knew was that she had very few people to rely upon in her new life, and she wasn’t in any position to be choosy.
Nita continued to earn the bulk of her money from posing for Simon’s and Julien’s art classes. It had taken her several weeks to pose nude again for Julien’s students, but the money from a nude session was ten times as much as she got from posing for Simon’s students in her traditional Indian attire. The wad of rupees she had traveled to France with was long gone, and she had to live on only the money she earned. Realizing how difficult it was to save, she began thinking more seriously about Mathieu’s offer to live together. She had overstayed her visa, and Mathieu had helped get her fake French papers so she could stay in the country and have something to show potential employers, but she was still far from fluent in the language. She accepted that financial woes would be a part of her new life, so his offer was the most practical solution. She just had to get over the shock of being an unmarried woman living with a man. Her cheeks burned whenever she thought about it.
Actually, she corrected herself, she had to get over the shock of being a married woman who was living with an unmarried man.
After posing at one of Simon’s art classes that January, she helped him put away his paints, and they walked to a nearby bistro to have a coffee. Simon pulled out one of the round-backed, tan wicker chairs for her.
They sipped on two steaming cups of coffee in quiet company. Her friendship with Simon had grown to become very comfortable and easy, the two of them often sitting in silence, watching people pass by on the sidewalks, occasionally speculating about what a person’s story might be. Nita loved that game. Loved guessing what led them to be walking along that street in that exact moment and where they would be going after they were out of Nita’s sight. She knew people hid their most intimate secrets, herself included. She often wondered what Simon or Mathieu or Dao thought when they looked at her. What they thought her story was. She was sure they could not have suspected the truth, and that was why she assumed every stranger who passed her with hands tucked into a thick woolen winter coat and a smile on their face had a story far more sordid and complex than the easy stroll down the Parisian streets would suggest.
“It seems we see less of you these days,” Nita said, staring at the people on the sidewalk.
“Oh?” Simon said.
“Mathieu tells me you have a new lady occupying your time.”
Simon laughed. “Does he?”
“He believes it to be true.”
“Seems like he’s gotten rather chatty, having you with him constantly now,” Simon said.
Nita had moved in with Mathieu on January 1, deciding she should start her new year embracing her new life. It hadn’t been difficult to transfer her meager belongings, including the painting he had given her, to his place. He had made no attempt to display it and had instead rested it with the image facing the wall, as if haunted by its return.
“He said you seem smitten,” Nita said.
Simon could not hide his smile. “I have met a new woman who doesn’t run from my bastardized form of the French language.”
It was Nita’s turn to laugh. “Your French still surpasses my own.”
“Men find a woman trying to speak their language charming. Women, on the other hand, find it tacky and trite when their language is being mangled!”
“You seem to have charmed her still.”
“For now, yes.”
“Tell me about her.”
Simon’s eyes lit up. “Call me superstitious, but I don’t like to jinx myself by talking about it so early. Let’s see if it lasts first.”