Parisian Promises Read online

  Monica cried out, “Lola, I can’t see you, where are you?”

  Lola whistled again, and Christophe heard Monica’s panicked voice.

  “Monica,” he called out, “je t’aime!”

  The crowd applauded this proclamation of love. The lovers could not yet see one another in the dense crowd, but each one pressed forward, jogging through the human haze, towards the voice of the other.

  “I’m so sorry,” cried Monica. “Please forgive me. I love you, too.”

  “We will work everything out together,” Christophe shouted through the mob. “Come back and live with me at Les Charmilles!”

  Voices in the crowd shouted along with him, “Yes, make love at Les Charmilles! Make love at Les Charmilles!”

  During the student unrest of 1968, the dominant slogan of the protestors had been, “Soyez realistes, demandez l’impossible.” But as the church bells of nearby St. Sulpice and St.-Germain-des-Près rang out, and Monica and Christophe embraced, and many people in the crowd recognized that they had created a far better slogan, a more radical rallying cry for their times. “Make love, make love,” they sang out. It was not enough to be realistic and ask the impossible, in the words of their former slogan. The crowd was French, after all, and they understood George Sand’s immortal words: there is only one happiness in life, to love and to be loved.

  Lola, hearing the exchange between Monica and Christophe, did not whistle again. For once, she decided to stay silent and walk away. She’d kept her promise to look out for Monica, and now if was up to Monica to determine her own fate.

  Lola wondered if Paris had curtailed her own voracious appetite for love and life. Yes, she’d met famous, flashy people at Le Sept; and yes, she’d had a fling with a revolutionary dud and a pompous marquis; and, of course, her curves and her signature crimson curls had caused a sensation whenever she strolled down the Avenue des Champs-Êlysées––they always did. Had she lived in Paris in a different era, perhaps during La Belle Otero’s reign, she might have also been the toast of the town.

  But now she had a hankering to try her luck elsewhere––at the roulette of life waiting in Monte Carlo. Lola wrapped her recently acquired Hermès scarf around her neck and picked up her pace. She was sure that something thrilling was waiting for her down south. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

  Christophe wrapped a protective arm around Monica and escorted her through the throngs back to Madame’s ill-fated hôtel particulier. When they arrived at the gate, the two bodies had already been driven away by an ambulance, and the concierge stood by the main gate, holding Fifi in her arms.

  “It all happened so suddenly,” she was explaining to the police. “Serge was an old friend of Madame Caron de Pichet. He came by to see how she was doing, and I told him about a suspicious man who had been visiting her of late. I told him that the man was violent.”

  She lifted the sleeve of her sweater and showed them a man-size bite on her arm. The detective scribbling in his notebook frowned at the bite and nodded at her to continue.

  “Serge was very upset when he saw what the man did to me,” she said. “He and I went up to Madame’s apartment to check on her. Who knows what this devil could have done to Madame–– or Fifi?”

  The concierge tried to snuggle up to Fifi, but the dog growled.

  “Do you know the man’s name?”

  “One moment,” she said, and stepped back into her own apartment. When she returned, the concierge brandished a large envelope, from which she pulled three passports. “He asked me to keep this for him. You see, he has three names and he comes from three countries.”

  One of the inspectors took the passports away from the concierge and eyed her suspiciously. But the concierge smiled: she had a small audience around her, and she liked being the center of attention.

  “Well, obviously the devil had many aliases,” she lectured. “He was either a poet from Nicaragua, a Franciscan monk en route back to Haiti, or a chocolate salesman from Switzerland. You inspectors figure it out. But I suspect he was a nobody, a man without family or means, a vagabond devil.”

  Christophe pushed through the crowd to reach her.

  “I have to lie down,” the concierge was saying, feigning weakness in the legs, but one look at her sturdy stumps and no one believed her fake dizzy spell.

  “But what has happened to Serge?” Christophe demanded, trying to make sense of the scene.

  “Why, he tried to protect me from the devil,” blurted the concierge, “and he fought valiantly, like the Archangel Michael! And now Serge is dead––but so is the devil.”

  Monica put her arms around Christophe and held him tight. She felt the thumping of his chest against her own racing heart. Christophe’s heart agonized with the news of Serge’s death, but Monica heaved in relief knowing that she had escaped from the malignant grip, the hypnotic spell that Jean-Michel had cast on her––and on other susceptible lonely hearts he had taken down with him in his muddy vortex.

  Monica stroked Christophe’s back and consoled him. He had a heart of gold whose goodness radiated warmth and understanding. He had seen through the quagmire of her emotions and had chosen to love her through thick and thin––just as he had promised her back at Les Charmilles.

  “Where did they take my godfather, my guiding light?” he asked the inspectors, fighting back tears.

  One of the inspectors gave him the address of the mortuary, and Monica rushed into the road to flag down a taxi. Christophe turned to the concierge, his face drained and severe.

  “I will be sending someone to collect all of Mademoiselle’s Monica’s belongings. She will never set foot in this place again.” Christophe took a couple of hundred franc notes, and thrust them at the concierge. “Kindly make sure that all her belongings are accounted for and packed carefully, Madame.”

  The concierge knew she had been chastised by a true nobleman, and she didn’t mind so much. By his polite and refined rebuke, he had proven to her that he was a more evolved and perceptive person than she––and she couldn’t disagree. She was a mongrel and a scoundrel, she knew, someone who would consistently live up to her lowly reputation. She would decide in her own good time if she would steal an item or two from the Monica’s box of belongings, or if she would even pack them. The concierge knew how to take advantage of people, how to make them overpay for her services, but above all, she knew how to take secrets to her grave.

  Never once during the subsequent interviews with the police inspectors did the concierge ever reveal the devil’s true identity. Nor did she tell them about his valise with the false bottom and the documents it contained, revealing the address of two apartments near the Eiffel Tower. The concierge had found the keys as well, and spent many happy hours in anticipation of the gold mine she would find in these apartments, money that would enable her fly off and view all the birds in the Amazon. She started taking Fifi on walks around that quartier, so that the two could become a familiar sight on the chichi street. She would wait until the right moment presented itself, and then she would walk into the apartment and claim her pirate’s booty.

  The concierge carried the two mystery keys in the pocket of her grimy overcoat as a talisman of the dream life she would soon lead. As she walked Fifi on her sturdy leash, she rubbed one key, then the other, waiting for the magical moment. She took them out of her pocket, admired them and put them back in her pocket.

  “I’m keeping the golden keys to our future warm on this chilly day,” she said to Fifi, who growled at her. “Don’t be such an ungrateful mutt!”

  The concierge bent down to slap Fifi good and hard, to let her know who the top dog was. Fifi snapped back, biting the concierge’s hand so hard she drew blood, and took off running across busy Avenue Bosquet. The dog leash wrapped itself around the concierge’s hefty ankle and tripped her up. The keys which she had been caressing flew from her hand and were run over by multiple cars, crushing the dreams the concierge never deserved to so much as contemplate.

&
nbsp; Ever since the passing of the late Viscount, Madame La Vicomtesse had stayed in mourning, always dressed in black equestrian attire. The severity of the fit reminded her to keep a stiff upper lip and to hold unto the reins of Les Charmilles and its related enterprises. Most of all, her raven attire reminded everyone else that, despite the widespread knowledge of the late Viscount’s philandering, she had loved him and her heart bled for him––and she would always mourn his passing.

  But since Serge’s tragic death, she had taken to wearing a loose black gown, slouching with the weight of her melancholy. She spent all day under the arbor sighing––and crying. Once in a while, as a tribute to Serge, she would attend to the rose bushes, as Serge used to do. Mostly, she liked to hear Monica and Christophe chatter and hug and sneak a kiss as they went about the business of managing the vineyards, the horses, the personnel, and the grounds of Les Charmilles. She’d come to appreciate their pure, sweet love. Theirs was a love of epic proportions; of this fact Madame La Vicomtesse was certain. They had overcome an evil villain, and faced many obstacles, including her own interference and disapproval. True, Monica had temporarily stumbled into decadence, but they sacrificed and persevered, and now their love blossomed at Les Charmilles. Their every encounter seemed to create an aura of warmth, their love a shield of vibrant colors painting Les Charmilles with happiness and harmony.

  One afternoon, about two months after Serge’s funeral, Monica set up her easel by the arbor to paint. Madame La Vicomtesse walked up, her black dress trailing the ground.

  “What do you think of this composition, Madame La Vicomtesse?” Monica asked.

  “Humph, I’ve seen better, much better.”

  “What do you recommend that I do to improve it? Could it be the colors I’ve selected?”

  “Let me study it. Here, you received a postcard in the mail from Lola.” She handed Monica a sepia image of a 1920’s dancer.

  “Oh, so this is a photo of La Belle Otero!” Monica read the postcard over and over. “Lola is always referencing La Belle Otero. She drove Annie crazy with her admiration for her, and now she writes that Annie is down in the South of France and is asking her for advice on how to break up with the professor she’s been having an affair with.” Monica’s eyes welled with tears as she reminisced about her friends and their naïve aspirations for their year in Paris. Karen could not adjust to living abroad and returned to California, Annie’s academic goals had taken a back seat to the complications of her love affair with a married professor, and Lola’s lifestyle was less than admirable.

  “Is Lola not well?”

  “Oh, she’s fine. She’s Lola, after all. And whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.”

  “And what does Lola want?”

  “If I tell you, you might think less of her, Madame La Vicomtesse, I’d rather––”

  “Nonsense! First, I’ve asked you to please call me Agnès. Second, I admire Lola’s determination. What is it that she wants?”

  Monica read aloud a section of the postcard: “I’m so envious of your romance with Christophe. Perhaps one day I’ll fall in love too. In the meantime, I’m having a bitchin’ time with my sugar daddy in Monte Carlo!”

  “Humph, I see.” Madame La Vicomtesse always disapproved––but today she reconsidered. She had huffed and puffed with anger and disappointment when Monica admitted driving the getaway car for Rémy, but then she’d released her hound of an attorney and the matter was erased from all memory. Sometimes, she decided, it was better to forgive and forget. And Monica and Lola weren’t the first young women in the world to be led astray by smooth-talking men.

  “I think you’d better go to the stables and check on the horses,” Madame La Vicomtesse commanded, settling herself in a chair. “I’ll stay here and study your painting,”

  Monica walked over to Madame La Vicomtesse, kissed her forehead, and settled Serge’s wool beret on her cold head. “There, now you’ll be warm while you help me improve the painting.” Monica handed her a paintbrush and headed for the stables.

  From a distance she saw Christophe waiting for her by one of the paddocks, as if he had just turned out a horse, instead of bringing it in for the night. He was gazing at her with such intense love that she had an urge to run into his arms and kiss him.

  “Je t’aime,” she shouted and ran towards him. At the sound of her voice a horse neighed and its hoofbeats pounded the paddock. A sorrel horse galloped into view.

  “Rocky! Rocky! Is it really you?”

  Rocky approached the fence and leaned his neck over, and Monica climbed up to hug him. He nuzzled ever so gently against her, and she clasped his neck and rubbed his chest, their matching auburn manes fluttering in the afternoon breeze.

  Christophe approached both of them, smiling. He fed Rocky a carrot, and put his arm around Monica.

  “Now that Rocky is here,” he told Monica, “Les Charmilles is truly your home––and I promise to love you forever.”

  Afterword

  The Paris of this novel reflects the tumultuous era when I was a university student in France during the 1970s. Despite the social upheavals of that time, my personal coming-of-age journey in France was filled with good friendships, sublime cultural experiences, lightheartedness––and a few broken promises.

  I could not have written this novel without the inspirational memories of my friendship with the late Madame C de L. She epitomized the très chic, old money, eccentric, sexagenarian Parisienne. And I was the wide-eyed, wannabe academic she loved to shock with her antics, outrageous experiences, and bawdy recollections of times gone by. In the subsequent years since I last saw her, I have come to cherish the memories of our friendship, because I now realize she was imparting her off-kilter wisdom to me––the daughter she’d never had.

  With the exception of the characters of La Belle Otero, George Sand, Isabel Casamayor de Godin, and the female French Résistance members Francine Escande and Yvonne Dumont, all the characters in this novel are products of my imagination. My word selection and idiomatic expressions are representative of that era.

  My gratitude goes out to my insightful editors Paula Morris and Brooke Foster, my patient book designer Karrie Ross, my good friend and photographer Lisa Baker, Brigitte Aguilar for her administrative support and words of encouragement, and especially to the uniquely creative and technical team of Sarah and Kevin Bunch.

  I hope my French friends will enjoy this work of fiction. Nothing gives me greater joy than to sojourn often in France with my family. We’ve been fortunate to experience the unique richness of this wonderful country––from Champagne to Bordeaux––and hope to continue doing so in the years to come.

  Many thanks to my children, Loreal and Jay-Paul, who read my manuscripts and offer constructive suggestions. My heartfelt appreciation goes out to my son Peter, for his constant praise and support of my writing life. As always, I’m forever grateful to my husband Peter for loving me every step of the way.

  June 3, 2013

  Paris

  About the Author

  CECILIA VELÁSTEGUI continues to garner praise for her psychological thrillers with historical intrigue. She was awarded first place by the International Latino Book Awards for her novels Missing in Machu Picchu (2013) and Traces of Bliss (2012). Gathering the Indigo Maidens (2011) was a finalist for the Mariposa Award. The Association of American Publishers and the Las Comadres international organization have selected her novels for the National Latino Book Club. Velástegui is an accomplished public speaker, and has participated as a panelist at the 2013 Literary Orange and as a moderator at the 2013 Big Orange Book Festival-Chapman University. Velástegui is known as the Fabulous Fableist™. Her bilingual, children’s picture book, Olinguito Speaks Up – Olinguito alza la voz, debuted to international acclaim. It is a finalist in two categories of the International Latino Book Awards. Her other fables, Lalo Loves to Help and The Howl of the Mission Owl, were featured at the Orange County Children’s Boom Festival. Velástegui was an invited author
to the 2014 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the largest book festival in the country.

  Velástegui was born in Ecuador and raised in California and France. She received her graduate degree from the University of Southern California and speaks four languages. She has traveled to more than sixty countries, and serves on the board of directors of several educational and cultural institutions.

  She lives with her family in Monarch Beach, California.

  www.CeciliaVelastegui.com