"Diane Arbus once said or wrote that she believes that there were things n.o.body would see unless she photographed them." Marcia offered her interpretations of the artist's intentions-"She wanted to capture life and give meaning to everyday existence" -that continued over dinner at the restaurant next door.

When Marcia discovered that Lena was a long-time friend of Cheryl's, she insisted on paying the check. With Cheryl's help they bought two pieces of Marcia's art the following week. Marcia encouraged Lena to take a photography cla.s.s with her on the one occasion they'd gone for coffee. The cla.s.s, Marcia emphasized with her hands more than her words, was a way to stretch to the next level and, if Lena was really interested in taking pictures, the cla.s.s would help to make her photography art.

"Your work is lovely, Marcia," Lena says.

If there had been a paintbrush in Marcia's hands for her dismissal of Lena's flattery, it would have feathered large circles around the room and touched every painting. "This is my home and and my gallery." my gallery."

"Thanks for remembering me," Lena calls to Marcia's back. There haven't been any invitations in Lena's mailbox for a long time, despite the change of address notices she sent to all of their friends. No dinners or movies, weddings, or parties. Marcia forgot-or Cheryl forgot to tell her-that Lena and Randall were no longer a couple: her metallic envelope was addressed to the two of them. The familiar unfamiliar sight of their two names together set off a sudden burst of tears. Lena promptly accepted Marcia's invitation, not so much out of fear that it might be retracted but with the knowledge that if she let it sit she would change her mind and Marcia might not think of her the next time around.

Lena breathes in the scent of c.u.min and curry and maybe nutmeg or mace. The house smells like home. Old home. She wanders around the condo. An artist, whose angular, steel sculptures she loves but can no longer afford, waves from across the room. A singer from a local jazz club Lena keeps intending to visit introduces herself and hands her a postcard with the date of her next show.

The living room and the smaller one across the entryway are full of men and women dressed in every type of clothes from holey designer jeans to African garb. Conversation and hilarity clash with the pianist who alternates between jazz and cla.s.sical music on an upright piano in the corner. Where Marcia succeeded with the artwork, Lena thinks, she left a lot to make up for with the acoustics.

A thirty-something man dressed in paint-splattered coveralls approaches Lena. "You look thirsty." He offers her a flute of champagne from a red enameled tray.

"Flirtation or kindness?"

"Duty. Just a starving artist doing nowhere near as well as my friend. Marcia asked me to help out. And as for flirtation..." He leans into Lena just enough so that she can smell the peach scent of his twisted hair. "I'm Imara, bartender-artist, and I'm game if you are."

Funny, she thinks taking a gla.s.s, how women, famous and ordinary, talk about the confidence they've gained by the time they reach fifty. Lena feels none of that. She swallows the bubbly liquid in two gulps to calm the tightness nagging at her stomach and takes another. Being single makes her feel like a fifty-four-year-old virgin; her confidence is nonexistent. "Thank you, Imara-bartender-artist."

Imara is close enough so that Lena can see the tiny moles across his sandy-colored nose. She steps back and away from him. She is not afraid of men; she has simply forgotten what to do. At thirty, before walking into a party, bar, or an afternoon gathering, Lena sought security in the easy hand-to-mouth action of smoking. Even then she found small talk useless; men seem to want conversations in shades of gray. She speaks black and white.

"Well, look who got out of the house!" Cheryl's voice booms from behind the server.

Imara-bartender-artist slips his card into her hand. "Call me."

"Your taste in men is as good as ever, Lena. Barely separated and flirting with that delectable young thing?" Cheryl's clothes coordinate with Marcia's paintings. Her form-fitting lavender pantsuit might have been simple on anyone else. The long jacket is slit on both sides from the waist down, and the fuchsia and turquoise pashmina across her shoulder matches her earrings and bold jade and silver jewelry. She is at once sophisticated and ostentatious.

"The end of January." Lena resists her new habit of rubbing her third finger left hand and instead motions to Imara. "The settlement papers are signed, but the divorce won't be final for four and a half months. h.e.l.l of a way to start off the new year. It's one of the hottest pieces of gossip since that newscaster's wife caught him with his a.s.sistant on the floor of his office."

"I'm sorry, Lena. I know it's been tough."

"It's been a b.i.t.c.h, if I do say so myself." Lena avoids Cheryl's eyes.

Imara-bartender-artist hovers around the two women until Cheryl takes another gla.s.s of champagne from the tray and points a finger of her free hand at Lena. Together they head for the table that Marcia has covered with food. Cheryl loads her plate with curried shrimp, chicken, and rice pilaf. Lena puts a teaspoon of each of the same dishes on her plate along with a dab of mango chutney.

"Eat, ladies." Marcia unloads another platter of food on the table. "And when you're done, Cheryl, take Lena to look at that painting over the fireplace."

"Art, my dear, gifted client, is not on my mind." Cheryl looks around the room. Her eyes pause at every man who is not attached to a woman. "There aren't many men here, and tonight this girl is on the prowl. Except for the champagne-serving cutie, and I a.s.sume Lena's got dibs?"

Falling into their old she-said, she-said rhythm, Lena lets Cheryl know that it's too soon for her to think about men. "But even I have to admit the pickings seem slim."

"Girl, you better forget that Negro and have some fun! Randall was always too stuffy. You need to be like Tina Turner and move on."

"She didn't run out and get a man-she got her life and career together." Lena pauses to see if Cheryl's face shows more than a momentary interest in Tina Turner.

A tall, lean man steps up to the table. Cheryl beams and points to the shrimp. She puckers and tells him to watch his lips because the curry is spicy. When his wife, sister, or girlfriend steps beside him, Cheryl turns back to Lena. "Well, Tina has both now."

Lena tugs Cheryl past the couple and tells her in one long breath how Tina has inspired her. How she makes sure that each purse she carries, like the one hanging from her shoulder now, is wide and deep enough to hold her wallet, cosmetic bag, keys, and Tina's autobiography.

"Why didn't you tell me? I love Tina Turner!"

"Her last concert of the year is next month in Nice." Lena tells Cheryl about Tina's villa in the hillside city next to Nice. "Bobbie sent me a first-cla.s.s ticket." Her voice is so low that Cheryl asks her to repeat what she said. Lena does and adds, "But I haven't finalized anything," understanding that the concept of postponement is completely foreign to Cheryl.

"Lena, Lena, Lena." Cheryl slaps Lena on the back so hard that she jumps. Neither one of them is fragile, but Cheryl is obviously the stronger of the two. "Don't tell me you've reverted to your timid thirty-year-old persona, have you?"

"I'm not used to taking trips alone. And, anyway"-Lena downs the rest of her third gla.s.s of champagne-"my contract with the museum won't let me."

"Remember? It's who who you know that gets you what you want." Cheryl winks in that way that means an idea is brewing behind her long eyelashes and clinks her gla.s.s against Lena's. Her face brightens as her lips form four words that lift a weight from Lena's shoulders. "Let's go to France!" you know that gets you what you want." Cheryl winks in that way that means an idea is brewing behind her long eyelashes and clinks her gla.s.s against Lena's. Her face brightens as her lips form four words that lift a weight from Lena's shoulders. "Let's go to France!"

Chapter 22.

Oleander-laurier-rose, the French call it-is a slender-leafed, bushy plant that bears cherry red or white flowers. In Northern California the deceptively beautiful plant lines freeway meridians and roadside pit stops from Oakland to Sacramento. In the south of France it is everywhere: near the beach, on the streets, in the park in the middle of Nice's downtown. The leaf of the oleander is poisonous and as dangerous as it is beautiful, and Lena wonders if this plant is another omen reminding her to be careful, to look closer before she judges.

The differences between Nice and Oakland, perhaps California, are mostly visual: Nice is old, centuries old. Nice is crammed with tourists. Signs and flags, all geared for tourist eyes, proclaim it as the fifth largest city in France. Nice is a winding city, flat and hilly; more complicated than it first appears. The cities smell the same: the air from the bay, the dampness, the hint of eucalyptus. The light is the same vague and wistful indescribable color that gives the skin a healthy glow and signals the beginning of the end of the day. Nice is red-tile roofs atop aged stucco buildings, small boutiques crammed one after another after another into ancient stone buildings, the singsong tones of a bundle of languages. "Bonjour," a florist calls out. "Bonjour." Lena mimics his greeting and stops at his window to marvel at the beauty and art of the floral arrangements, the rose petals intentionally scattered on the floor to please the eye and the nose. What is different is the absence of the familiar diversity of yellow, black, white, and brown faces; Lena hears it in language-French, Italian, Spanish, German.

Nothing is familiar. Not the yeasty smell of baking bread, nor the rapid movement of the small, two-door vehicles that resemble bug-eyed insects more than cars and scoot along the promenade, nor the endless stream of evening strollers, nor their full and throaty R R's. Lena allows this European reality to seep in and merges with the evening crowd. The guidebooks say that the French love the evenings as much as they do the days. Couples hold hands, toddlers waddle between their parents, teenagers roughhouse and tease. After two blocks she stops before an ancient portal, Latin words carved above its arch. V V's replace the letter U U, making the words even more impossible to decipher. By the looks of the nineteenth-century dates, the arch has a history all its own. Like Lena.

Once through the portal, Lena stands before the back entrances of restaurants in a blind alley filled with trucks and garbage cans that could place her anywhere in the world: the scent of discarded vegetables, overripe fruit, bones, and uncooked meat; trucks grind leftovers to unrecognizable garbage; men in white smocks and dirt-smeared ap.r.o.ns yell to one another as they pile the wiggling carca.s.ses of the morning's catch onto loading docks.

This alley reminds Lena of Randall's habit of taking her, wherever they traveled, through back streets to smell the real city. He would stop and talk to dockworkers and busboys, using his hands and face more than any foreign words he knew. "This is how you find out where the real people eat." She almost turns to look for Randall, to ask him to sit with her over a gla.s.s of wine. A gla.s.s of Beaujolais? She brushed wine on her lips the day he proposed. He said she tasted like violets and berries.

The alley leads to the corner and the wide Cours Saleya. Time to walk where Tina might walk, to smell what Tina might smell. Even though Nice is one city over from Villefranche, it is sophisticated and charming and, Lena speculates, a city that Tina might occasionally visit. The promenade of the famous Vieux Carre is crowded. Slender young men and women hand out sample menus to lure hungry tourists into overpriced and nondescript restaurants; people stroll everywhere-arm in arm, in tight packs, comfortable with brushing elbows. She inhales-there is a hint of mildew in the air-and sticks out her tongue to taste what she smells around her: salt, basil, garlic, lavender, and wine. She will come to know that Nice smells different each hour of the day and night.

A handsome maitre d' smiles. His badge is printed with his name, Pascal, and the words Bienvenue. Benvenido. Willkommen. Welcome. "Bonjour, Madame," he says, waving Lena into his dimly lit restaurant. She accepts his kind gesture. Pascal points to a front table so that the ever-present blues of the sky, the crackled faces of the ancient stone buildings, the vendors' striped tents and handmade crafts, the music, and the pa.s.sing crowds are set like a stage play in front of her. The streets are covered with cobblestones. Restaurants' tables line both sides of the Cours for as far as she can see. Cigarette smoke, fidgeting kids, quarreling lovers. Cups clinking against thick porcelain saucers. A roving band strums guitars in unison; a troubadour misquotes the lyrics to "American Pie."

"You are perhaps waiting for a friend, Madame?" The young man's accent is melodic. His question is not offensive. He hands Lena an oversized menu written in French and British English, the prices in euros and pounds. "Nope, not waiting for anyone."

Cheryl and Lena, once inside their hotel room, had reverse reactions to the layovers and the twelve-hour flight. Cheryl was enervated. With barely a comment about the room's Provencal decor-the bedspreads' tiny cornflower blue and sunshine yellow flowers, the bra.s.s handheld shower head, or the wedge of the Mediterranean visible in a stretch over the ornate balcony rail-Cheryl s.n.a.t.c.hed a black gel mask from her carry-on, put it on top of her eyes, and crawled under the covers without unpacking her suitcase, without taking off her clothes.

"A gla.s.s of Beaujolais." Lena is energized. After months of sleeping to forget, she is eager to remember what life has to offer. She shuffles her feet in a careful, congratulatory dance under the table and points to the wine selection. When Pascal sets her gla.s.s in front of her, she raises it in a mock toast to him, to the crowd, to the sky and blinks back gathering tears. Last time. Last time. This is the last time she can feel sad in this wonderful place. She downs the entire gla.s.s of wine; unable to drink alone, she leaves six euros on the table and rushes back to the hotel.

"You promised you weren't gonna do that." Cheryl stops in the middle of the street and crosses her arms. "I know you're thinking about Randall. I can see it in your face."

Lena scratches her nose and sniffs in that way she's begun to do when she can't think of anything to say. The word anomalous anomalous pops into her mind. Another Auntie Big Talker word; she'd used it last week when she called to wish Lena well on her trip. While Lena prides herself on her vocabulary skills, she is not sure if what she is feeling is anomalous or just plain normal. The south of France is beautiful, but traveling with anyone other than Randall is something she has never done. pops into her mind. Another Auntie Big Talker word; she'd used it last week when she called to wish Lena well on her trip. While Lena prides herself on her vocabulary skills, she is not sure if what she is feeling is anomalous or just plain normal. The south of France is beautiful, but traveling with anyone other than Randall is something she has never done.

Lena sniffs again. This trip is all about opening up, like a short story she once read where the main character avoided her unhappy present by imagining herself drinking coffee elsewhere. When the character finds a friend, she has a hard time opening up and doesn't realize until the end that in fact she wants to do just that. Lena wishes to be drinking coffee elsewhere. Open up and let me in; not by the hair of my chinny, chin chin.

Adults, teenagers, and even a couple of preteens shout into cell phones. Lena checks her purse to make sure she has remembered to bring her own just as it rings. "Camille?"

"Hey, Mom. Just calling to wish you a good trip. You flying over New York?"

"I'm in Nice." A ma.s.s forms quickly in her throat, and Lena speaks slowly to keep her emotions in check. "How's the move going?"

"Dad's pacing outside my door, and Auntie stopped by. She dropped off the stuff you sent... you knew just what I needed..."

In the months after graduation, Lena repeatedly explained how much she wanted to help Camille move into the dorm. It was a mother's right to usher her child into a new life, just as she had ushered her into life at birth. Their discussions always ended the same way: both of them yelling-the anger of the pending divorce wearing thin on their nerves-leaving nothing resolved.

"Dad is a bit out of it, Mom. He's not doing as well as you are. I don't suppose you want to talk to him, do you?" Camille pauses, and Lena wonders what her daughter wants her to say, wonders if Camille needs to be reminded that her father is no longer her mother's responsibility. "He doesn't know all the little things to get. He even said that the move would be more... organized, if you... The bedspread you sent was cool... and the cookies were good. I... I... wish you were here. I'm sorry."

"You and your dad will be fine. I love you, baby girl." Because of their problems and Lena's desire to forget, she deliberately chose the day Camille was to move into the dorm as the day of her departure. In the letter sent along with the down comforter, sachets for her drawers, razors, boxes of tampons, earplugs, flashlight, boxes of tissue, paper towels, homemade chocolate chip cookies, and a bone-china dipping pot, Lena wrote that she looked forward to the day they could talk freely again, when they could get past the anger that gnawed at both of them and let their openness lead to a new and better relationship. She wrote that as Camille and her father searched the aisles of the local bedding store, while they lugged and unloaded her belongings into the dorm room, she would be flying over New York, looking through the clouds for the rounded dome and tight square rectangles of Columbia's campus.

Camille and Randall worked slower than she thought. "I'm with you, baby." Lena mutes her sniffs with a tissue so that Camille cannot hear while she tells Lena about her dorm, her roommate, and her cla.s.s schedule.

"You'll come at Thanksgiving?"

She nods as though Camille can see her confirmation through the phone. "I might even let Bobbie cook."

"Spare us," Camille jokes. "Auntie is better at selling selling cookbooks than she is cooking. Have a safe trip, and bring me back something really French. I love you, Mommy." cookbooks than she is cooking. Have a safe trip, and bring me back something really French. I love you, Mommy."

"See? Everything's going to be okay." Cheryl hands Lena another tissue while the man next to them pretends not to notice. "Be happy... we're in France!"

The knot in Lena's stomach loosens. Truthfully, Lena admits to herself, it unwinds a lot. "Now, if only I could get you to stop thinking about that d.a.m.n almost was-band of yours." Cheryl's made-up word rhymes with husband husband.

Like Tina, Lena must learn not to dwell in the past.

The bay is lit by thousands of glimmering lights. There is movement everywhere. The ebb and flow of the Mediterranean slaps noisily against the gravelly sh.o.r.e. Nice thrives at night. Tourists meander through the high-end shopping district, restaurants are filled inside and out, and late-evening diners sip dark coffee from small cups, red wine from oversized gla.s.ses, and chatter at each other. Filmy smoke drifts everywhere; every man and woman seems to hold a cigarette in his or her hand, elbows on tables, the white stick poised inches from their lips while they appear to ponder the next drag.

"For the life of me I can't understand why everyone smokes," Lena says. "I suppose that's who they are, the French. I mean, look at these women." Lena sweeps her hands in front of her. They are surrounded by tables full of women with hair turned up into flips or smoothed into pageboys, scarves tied carefully around their shoulders, expensive leather handbags, pedicured toes, flat hips and stomachs under skintight dresses, high heels when the rough edges of the cobblestone streets demand something more practical. "French women pay so much attention to everything else. Strange they don't care about their health."

"They're having fun. We're having fun. No preaching, no judging, just fun. Especially seeing as you fit right in." Cheryl cackles.

"Touche!" Lena beams, glad that she sports her not quite so high heels, which make her feel, more than her skin color, that she fits in. She perks her head at the soft background music. Tina sings "What's Love Got to Do with It" on the overhead speakers.

"There's your sign," Cheryl says.

"I love it." Lena picks up her camera and focuses on Cheryl and the gold and green awning above her. Click. Click. "It means I'm on the right track." "It means I'm on the right track."

"So the concert is"-Cheryl counts on her fingers-"eighteen days from now. That means we have time for a little exploring. The light in the south of France is extraordinary. Good for photographs. Lots of artists-Matisse, Chagall, and Pica.s.so-came here to paint. If I visit those museums, I can write off part of our trip. The train goes to Cannes and St. Tropez. And the nightlife in Monte Carlo-"

"Wait." Lena stretches out the palm of her hand like a stop sign in front of Cheryl's face. "You're going too fast for me. Plus, I want to check out Villefranche, where Tina lives. Let's look at our options, then decide."

"Expand your horizons. We need... diversion." Cheryl inclines her head in the direction of a dark-haired man on the opposite side of the cafe's terrace. Diversion for Cheryl, Lena recalls, means more than museums, means more than scouring the streets for historical sites, for the perfect cup of coffee or unusual architectural details. "These Frenchmen look very good, Lena. And who knows what French there is to learn from chatting."

"Men aren't what this trip is about."

"I know that, but let me remind you, like that man's eyes over there, you're not dead. It does not not hurt to look, Lena Harrison. Should I go over there and introduce myself?" Cheryl scoots her chair back and mocks the panic that stiffens Lena's face. The couple next to them ogles. Their French is cacophony of guttural noises and nasal blends. hurt to look, Lena Harrison. Should I go over there and introduce myself?" Cheryl scoots her chair back and mocks the panic that stiffens Lena's face. The couple next to them ogles. Their French is cacophony of guttural noises and nasal blends.

"They've probably never seen American blacks before, except on TV. They're probably saying something racist, about ugly Americans or worse-ugly black folks."

"Don't think racism, Cheryl, we get enough of that at home. Maybe they're staring because we're beautiful; maybe they're staring because you're talking so loud."

"You know the French are very racist," Cheryl whispers.

"The world is racist, but I'm not going to let it keep me from having a good time." Lena opens her handbag and pulls out a pen and the little orange notebook filled with things she wants to do, places she wants to see: Matisse and Chagall museums, the early morning markets, a jazz concert in the park atop Cimiez, and a cooking cla.s.s. On the inside cover she draws a series of horizontal and vertical lines. The lines turn into boxes and she labels them with numbers.

Cheryl reaches over and shuts Lena's handmade calendar. "All we need to know is that Tina's concert takes place in eighteen days. We have our tickets. We'll worry about how to get there when the time comes. Otherwise, no planning."

Lena grins, glad that Cheryl is with her, despite her flamboyance, despite her disorganization and toss-it-to-the-wind outlook.

Cheryl motions to the waiter. "Gauloises, s'il vous plait."

"Since when do you speak French?" Secondhand smoke catches in Lena's throat.

"Please, everybody knows 'please.' Gauloises are cigarettes."

When the waiter returns, he brings a pack of unidentifiable cigarettes and tells Cheryl that Gauloises are hard to find these days. "C'est la vie," Cheryl says and accepts the compact, blue pack. "It doesn't matter." She opens the box top, pulls out two cigarettes, and hands one to Lena. Putting the cigarette between her lips, Lena strikes a match and leans into its flame.

Chapter 23.

Cheryl approaches the last roundabout before Vence: five-foot-wide, circular cement mounds of gra.s.s and flowers built at one-mile intervals in the middle of the road to the hilltop city. At each one, multiple thoroughfares converge and crook, snakelike arrows direct traffic left, right, or straight ahead.

Lena points to a tall tower. GARAGE/STATIONNEMENT is stenciled in white letters across its front. The tower's cement angles are almost an insult to the weathered merry-go-round and the frilly, lace curtains in the restaurant windows behind it.

When the elevator lets them off atop a gra.s.sy mound, Lena and Cheryl follow a cl.u.s.ter of people to a narrow opening in a fifteen-inch-thick stone wall.

Inside lies a medieval city: winding streets no wider than eight or ten feet, dusty colored bricks, open markets with tables of eggplant, oranges, leafy greens, and more lined in even rows that resemble art more than food for sale; whole, wall-eyed fish and inky squid atop ice-covered bins, pigs' heads, tails, and feet; wine and pungent disks of cheese.

"It's like-" Cheryl whispers.

"We stepped back in time," Lena finishes, "or more like into a fairy tale."

Lena removes her camera from its case, focuses the lens: a whole fish ogling them from atop a bed of greens and ice, the word traiteur traiteur printed in calligraphy across a striped awning of what looks like a delicatessen, laundry dangling from a window, a small chalkboard with the specials of the day- printed in calligraphy across a striped awning of what looks like a delicatessen, laundry dangling from a window, a small chalkboard with the specials of the day-plats du jour.

"Food now, pictures later." Cheryl flips through the pages of a small guidebook and wanders in the direction of a restaurant she read about that serves a great coq au vin.

Lena snaps pictures without compromising Cheryl's search. Each turn reveals more of the city's charm. Click: Click: a rusted door. a rusted door. Click: Click: a flowering tree beside an old church. a flowering tree beside an old church. Click: Click: a watchtower. The stone streets are spotless. Wine shops, clothing stores, bookstores, shops selling postcards and the ever-present images of a watchtower. The stone streets are spotless. Wine shops, clothing stores, bookstores, shops selling postcards and the ever-present images of cigales cigales carved into music boxes, the tops of ceramic crocks, and scented soaps; all of southern France loves their melodious cicadas. carved into music boxes, the tops of ceramic crocks, and scented soaps; all of southern France loves their melodious cicadas.