Randall is casually elegant in a tan suede jacket and what looks like a silk shirt underneath. Lena can't tell if he is thinner or heavier than the last time she saw him. She wonders if this were a picture, how she would photograph it. She would call it "Things I Don't Know about the Man I Used to Love" and cover it with question marks: Are his clothes new? Does he play new jazz or old on the CD player in his car? Has he slept with another woman as she has with another man? Did he enjoy it? Did her ghost linger at the foot of the bed as his has? Another corner full of z z's: has he thought more about the surgery to correct his snoring? Has he cut back on the three cups of coffee that get his thoughts started in the morning? Who takes his shirts to the cleaners?

"Hey, Randall."

To her surprise he rises to greet her with a bear hug and a grin. His look is sheepish and tentative. "I ordered for you. Pouilly-Fuisse is a good subst.i.tute for those chardonnays you love."

"Actually, I'm into Bordeaux these days." His surprise is obvious. Lena motions to the waiter and asks for his recommendation and ignores Randall scanning her face in a way that makes her want to blush.

The waiter sets a gla.s.s in front of Lena with as much flourish as Randall used to present her with gifts. She sniffs the wine, sips, and lets it linger on her tongue the way Harmon does with the first taste from a new bottle.

"Why are you in Paris?"

"I'm here with Cheryl and a couple of... friends." Lena watches Randall's effort not to criticize her friend cut lines on his otherwise smooth face. "I enjoy Cheryl's company. I always have."

"It's been a long time since we were in Paris, and if I'm not mistaken it was about this same time of the year."

The second time Lena and Randall came to Paris they held hands and strolled the Seine at midnight so they could see a full Paris moon. He'd held her close, slipped his hands in her pants, and made her want him to do more. They'd made love that night in a way that they never had before or since then; laughed long and hard the next morning, made love again and a baby. When she miscarried, Randall promised to bring her back to Paris, to re-create that night, but they never returned.

Randall is pensive in the way that Lena has forgotten. Two people who, two months ago, could barely stand to be in the same room together, who fought over money and all the possessions they had acc.u.mulated and acted as if they had never been in love, didn't have children together whom they adored. The same bitter taste that crept onto her tongue during those sessions is there now. It spoils the desire for food. When the waiter presents the menus, Lena orders a small fish entree, a salad, no appetizer. Randall's appet.i.te is hearty enough for salad, oysters, and a complicated-sounding entree.

"Knock, knock," he prompts her like she once did long ago, and she obliges with the proper response.

"Who's there?"

"TIDA's new CEO." Randall slides his hand across the table to hold hers. His touch is different. Understated. Foreign. Now she finds herself comparing Randall to Harmon instead of the other way around.

"I wanted you to be the first to know."

"Not afraid I'll ask for more money, are you? Is this"-her voice falls into the singsong inflection that Randall used to admire, her open arms indicate the beautiful restaurant around her-"another one of your bribes? Did you call Sharon?"

Randall ducks like a boxer, a quick move of his shoulders and head to the left then the right. "Low blow. Two low blows."

"You have a way of getting what you want."

The server sets their entrees on the table and lights the candles. Their talk drifts to Camille and Kendrick. Camille's first semester has started off with a bang; she loves her cla.s.ses and has already started making friends and concedes to being called Camille again. Kendrick has a clean bill of health from Dr. Miller, though he recommended their son see a campus counselor from time to time. He met a girl from Mississippi. Not his first relationship, but someone he really likes. The irony of Kendrick meeting someone from her parents' home state is enough to make them both chuckle and wonder, if like John Henry and Lulu, Kendrick will marry and live with this girl until death forces them apart.

Lena pursues the details of her children's lives that she should be familiar with. That they have kept from her. She has learned to live with not a word or an email from Kendrick and the one call from Camille-a concession Lena now presumes, with Randall sitting in front of her, to homesickness for the life she, they all, once had. Even though she and Harmon sipped their morning coffee in Internet cafes with the specific intention of checking her email. Even though she has sent long emails to them describing France. She loves her children: they are worthy of her love, but they do not understand that she is worthy of theirs.

"I won't beat around the bush, Lena, in case you're wondering why I asked you to meet me." He speaks while the server clears away their dishes and presents them with leather-bound dessert menus. Their habit, when they were married, happily married, was to share. One dessert. Two spoons. Lena shakes her head no at the waiter and the luscious pastry described in English on the menu. Randall frowns, waits, and when she repeats her decision he, too, declines.

"I've been mad at you for a long time. Even before we split up. You changed."

"I didn't change, Randall. I grew and you wouldn't keep up with me, that's all. Need I go over our session with Dr. Brustere?"

"I miss family. I miss home. I miss you."

"Why now, Randall? The ink is barely dry on our agreement."

"I let things go too far."

Not exactly an apology. If she still counted days, hours, and more, Lena would wonder how many times she wanted to hear him say he was sorry. She knows this man, knows this is as close as he will come to those words. Did he go too far by letting Kendrick's problems and Camille's insolence come between them? By putting work before his well-intentioned wife? Was seeing her as object, not partner, going too far? The third finger on Lena's left hand pulses, as it hasn't in a while-not that the finger hasn't ached, but she no longer acknowledges it.

"Since when do you flip-flop on a decision? What do you want?"

"It's not complicated, Lena. I want the woman who was with me when I was low man on the totem pole to be with me when I'm at the top. Did you expect some out-of-body experience?"

Their amus.e.m.e.nt mingles with the conversations around them and, to Lena, it feels precious. She takes Randall's hand. "I'm right here. That woman is, too, but not in the same way. I've slept with someone else who tells me he loves me, and I'm trying hard to get you out of my head."

Randall jerks at Lena's p.r.o.nouncement and squirms in his chair. Surprise shows in his eyes, his flared nostrils. He raises his open palms no more than an inch from the table. She knows that move: touche, he has done the same. Can they be born-again virgins a second time around?

"Now you sit here and tell me... what? You miss me? I have been through h.e.l.l on a slow, f.u.c.king roller coaster." Her words are unhurried and deliberate, and she knows the answer no longer matters because having the strength to say them is enough. "Why wasn't our love good enough two months ago, eight months ago, to make it through the tough time?" She raps her fingers on the table and waits for the answer to the question that has disturbed her dreams on countless nights when she sat in her apartment trying to understand the loneliness, when she made love with Harmon.

Randall leans close to Lena and lets their proximity, their old attraction, take over. She releases into him, smells him. Cinnamon and pepper. It floods. The longing, the heart-to-stomach-to-toes tingle. This is earnest Randall, s.e.xy Randall. She feels the familiar: fine hairs on the nape of his neck, his lips, the urgency of his tongue, his taste. Home.

"Other couples do it, Randall. They lose children, survive disease, infidelity, and they stay together. Their love was strong enough and, at one time, I believed ours was, too."

He releases Lena and hands her a box from his pocket. Cartier is written across the top. Inside a jeweled replica of the Eiffel Tower studded with stones the color of the French flag-blue, white, red-hangs from a platinum link bracelet.

Lena and Randall first visited Paris before they became big spenders, before Kendrick was conceived. They ate ham-and-cheese sandwiches from vendors on the streets, walked to avoid outrageous taxi fares, waited for the free days at museums so they could visit as many as they wanted. Queasy about their mutual dislike of heights, but determined to conquer their fear, they rode the elevator to the top of the world-famous landmark on their last night in Paris. Lena gave a box to Randall that night. Inside perched on a sateen cushion was a miniature replica of the tower, with a diamond chip on its top. It was the kind of gift young lovers shared on a first trip to Paris. He was to keep the inexpensive souvenir, a reminder of how their future would flourish and her promise to buy him a real one from Cartier someday.

He smiles, and his eyes crinkle with the mischievous look that made her love him the first time she saw him. The look that disappeared when he sat opposite her during mediation. "Some of our best loving happens after we argue."

Lena wipes her red lipstick from Randall's lips. "Are you ready for me to start my business? For me to devote as much time to me, to my photography, as I do to you?"

"Walk with me. Come back to the hotel with me. Let's see what happens."

Chapter 33.

Paris is a twenty-four-hour city. Troubadours, all night Rollerblade marathons, museum walks. Something goes on in the streets, the parks, the bridges all of the time. This is what Lena thinks as she walks back to her hotel. She feels alive, like the city. The Seine is quiet; the Bateaux-Mouches Bateaux-Mouches, docked in their slips, await the morning crowd of tourists. She squints at the Eiffel Tower on her wrist and the top of the real one. A rainbow of colors shimmers before her.

At the hotel, the doorman greets Lena without question but holds the door open, expecting, she imagines, Harmon not far behind. Lena smiles at Gaston. He is used to seeing her with Harmon at this late hour but is discreet enough not to inquire. This is Paris. "Madame Harrison, I would have sent a cab for you, if you had called, et voila! You would have not had to walk."

The bolt on the door clicks heavily when Lena turns the old-fashioned key in it. The room lights are on. Harmon sits in bed, in his lap the copy of Oth.e.l.lo Oth.e.l.lo they found at the English bookstore under the arcade on the rue de Rivoli. they found at the English bookstore under the arcade on the rue de Rivoli.

"'I do perceive here a divided duty,'" he reads.

The line is exquisitely matched to this moment, and Lena wonders if this is coincidence, fate, or plan. She wonders if Harmon has been up all night long in search of the perfect retort for her long absence.

His eyes trace her body from head to toe. They search her eyes and her clothes for the answer to what she has done.

"Did you sleep with him?" The contentious tone is still strong.

"I was tempted, but I didn't."

"Was that because of me, or didn't he try hard enough?"

"No, Harmon. It was because of me." She climbs onto the bed beside him, resists nestling into his side until he has said all that he has to say.

"Then where have you been?"

"I needed to think, and the bartender at the Crillon was quite accommodating. I guess it was that expensive champagne I kept ordering."

The look on Harmon's face is harsh. His clothes are messy, the room smells of brandy, but Lena sees no trace of intoxication. He seems, she thinks, considering his threats before she left, quite sober. Harmon sniffs at Lena's clothes and hair. Lena lets him, snuggles close to him, disappointed that he doesn't believe her.

"I never thought much about fate before our conversations. Now, you've got me thinking about it all of the time. I sat in that hotel bar and did nothing but think about it. But not for the reasons you believe. I believe that you and Randall are my tests. Brick walls fate has presented to see if I'm truly ready for the life I've been talking about."

"Either I'm a saint or I have an incredibly high tolerance for bulls.h.i.t-I guess that's why I'm a litigator." The tension in the room, on the bed, breaks when Harmon grins and settles back into his pillow. "What are you trying to say?"

"What I couldn't say to him." Lena fluffs her pillow and sits up straight in the bed, using the time to collect her thoughts, like Randall did earlier this evening. Some habits are hard to break. Now her clothes are rumpled in the way Harmon thought they might be when she walked through the door. "I love you. And, I love Randall. It might've been different if I had waited to leave him when I didn't love him anymore, but I wasn't sure then, and I'm not even sure now that that will ever happen. When I was married, more toward the end than the beginning"-her right hand drifts to her ring finger, and she lets it rest there-"I fell into the habit of doing whatever my husband wanted."

"I'm not him."

"I have a point to make. I loved unconditionally with little or no regard for my own needs." Lena slumps into the bed. Like Lulu did John Henry, she thinks, without the same result. "That was my choice. You understand?"

"That's not who you are now. Not who you used to be way back then, as a matter of fact. You were anything but that."

"Then why the h.e.l.l didn't you acknowledge that that, way back when?"

"You made your mistakes. I made mine. The difference between the two of us is that I can forgive mine-even learn from them-and you can't seem to."

She curses him in her head for knowing her truth. If these days have meant nothing more than her gaining her own understanding, she is thankful. Through the window, and between buildings beyond, the hint of the soon-to-rise sun shines through and highlights the last of the double-decker boats on the Seine. She's always wanted to ride one of those and still has not. How many bridges cross that wide river, she wonders.

"There was a point when I wasn't sure I ever would find me. I sat on my bed and counted out the pills..."

Harmon scoots to Lena's side of the bed. Her body softens in his arms. When Harmon tightens his grip, she struggles to push him away, and he lets her beat her anger into his shoulders and chest.

"I'm going back to Nice."

Lena is not surprised at his reaction, but the speed at which Harmon jumps out of the bed is unexpected. "Hold on, baby. Bruce pulled strings to make reservations for dinner tonight. We can go tomorrow. I'll make the changes for us."

"It's done. I'm taking the train." Lena figures it comes naturally to men-pursuing their agendas and expecting women, this woman, to follow. Walking from the bed to the dresser, she collects her clothes. Urgency presses Lena, and she wants to march with the rhythm, boogie to its tune. Do whatever it takes to keep moving forward. The drawers rattle when they roll shut. Clothes spill out of her hands and onto the floor.

"I have to finish what I started." She takes her suitcase out of the closet, empties the drawers of the antique armoire. She stuffs pants, dresses, underwear, and three days' worth of the toiletries Lulu is expecting into the pockets and main compartment.

"And what about us?" If Randall had asked that same question, not tonight, but that rainy night they both seemed on the verge of tears, it might have been him in front of her; now not even his ghost stands off to the side. "Is he going with you?"

"I'm doing this on my own." She chuckles softly. "You've jinxed us both with your theories. It's not over between us, Harmon Francis. But I can't let you entice me back into the same coc.o.o.n I just wiggled my way out of."

Harmon steps between Lena and her suitcase. She has forgotten how his thick eyebrows almost meet in the center of his forehead when he frowns. In five steps she is on the opposite side of the room, gazing past the terrace to the rooftops and the Paris skyline she has come to love. Arms folded across her chest, her body language the only signal she feels can convince Harmon; a period to further conversation. Harmon has spent a fortune on this decadent suite. She doesn't want to feel obligated by his generosity or his attention. Paris has distracted her: this affair, the food, the melodious language, the endless waves on the Seine, the quaint streets, and even the Eiffel Tower peaking now in the distance above the tiled roofs. She doesn't want to feel obligated by anyone's love.

"Let me love you, Lena." He whispers his words, softly, seductively, and joins her on the other side of the room. Harmon doles his kisses lightly over her eyes, her forehead, her lips.

"That, you can do. But I'm still going. Alone."

She lets him press against her. Lets him carry her to the bed, lets him take off her clothes, wrap himself around her, move with her, pull her with him, suck her lick her love her, until they are one motion of loving, until she can do nothing else but bury her head in his shoulder to m.u.f.fle her cry.

Chapter 34.

The white man sitting across from Lena reminds her of Randall. Not his height or skin color or tone of voice, but his mannerisms. The way his hands slice the air and punctuate his words, how his eyes dart from the window to the train's pa.s.sengers to her face-seeing, constantly processing. The way he speaks to his teenage son beside him- lecture mixed with love.

Pulling her cell phone from her purse, Lena notices that it is still on. Another text message from Randall tells her that he is delaying his return to the States while she changes hotels. A year ago, eight months ago, she would have been in awe of his confidence, his presumption. Thanks for the bracelet, Thanks for the bracelet, she texts back. It would have been better to tell him in person, she thinks. Thinks again of all of those months he would not take her calls, communicated with her by email and through his lawyer. And now he is as eager, as impatient for her response as he had been when he first proposed. She types awkwardly on the phone's mini-keyboard-thinks if she had them she would send the lyrics from "Silent Wings" so that he would understand: she texts back. It would have been better to tell him in person, she thinks. Thinks again of all of those months he would not take her calls, communicated with her by email and through his lawyer. And now he is as eager, as impatient for her response as he had been when he first proposed. She types awkwardly on the phone's mini-keyboard-thinks if she had them she would send the lyrics from "Silent Wings" so that he would understand: Good luck, Randall. I always knew you had it in you. Good luck, Randall. I always knew you had it in you.

The train sways from side to side and creates rolling waves of nausea in Lena's stomach. She opted for the long, leisurely ride back to Nice to clear her head and refocus, maybe even the possibility of jumping off along the way for photographs before the train zips off to its next stop. She expected a constant and soothing clickety-clacking motion, a steadiness that would allow her to read. Instead, she catnaps while a different kind of France speeds past her window. Gone are the rows and rows of buildings, museums, and monuments to ancient heroes. Oleander. Laurier-rose is everywhere. It looks like Napa Valley wine country. Brown hills, green fields, grapevines, and rose bushes hide their secrets. Modern skyline turns rustic. Chateaus sprinkled here and there, mysterious steeples, flagstone walls, and empty pastures.

Lena raises her camera to the window and snaps pictures of the pa.s.sing countryside.

"Are you a photographer?" It is the son who speaks, not the father. This young man's perfect English grounds her to the States, to Oakland, and reminds her of her own son. It makes her feel like Kendrick is near. It makes her know how much she misses him, misses Camille.

"I'm thinking that's what I want to be when I grow up." She pushes at her hair, her gray roots more prominent than they had been when she started her trip. "Sounds funny, coming from a mature woman, doesn't it?" She wants her words to make her seem soft. Young.

"The only thing funny is that you don't think you're grown up."

"What are you? Nineteen?" She doesn't feel any wiser than the youngster in front of her. "At nineteen you think you're grown. At my age you don't want to be grown up anymore."

Eyes still on the pa.s.sing scenery, the father leans forward in a slight bow of unspoken agreement. The smile the teenager gives to Lena seems to say he understands and that all adults say the same thing. The seats are arranged in groupings of four, two seats facing each other, so Lena can't avoid his eyes.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm on a mission." She likes that he talks to her. Remembers when conversation between her and Kendrick came easily.

"What kind of mission?" He raps the cigarette pack in his breast pocket. This is a no-smoking car. Between the time Cheryl bought the first pack of cigarettes and now she has smoked almost a pack herself. If it didn't kill, she'd keep it up.

"I'm going to the Tina Turner concert." Lena taps Tina's autobiography. "And afterwards I'm going to walk right up to her and ask her to autograph this." Only Cheryl, Bobbie, and almost Lulu have heard her phrase her goal so bluntly. Even with Harmon she'd beat around the bush. Lena fingers the disposable camera. If Lulu could see her now, she'd be thrilled.

"You're doing what, Lena?" Lulu acted as if her daughter said that she was going to the moon to eat cheese.

When Lena explained that she and Cheryl were going to the south of France to see Tina Turner, nothing but the fact that her daughter was traveling without a man shocked Lulu. "I would never do such a thing!"

"This is my life now, remember?" She held back tears so that Lulu wouldn't worry. "I'll be gone for a little over three weeks." She couldn't bring herself to the whole truth, made it more Cheryl's idea than hers. Didn't want Lulu to toss negative vibes her way. Doing her pa.s.sive-aggressive "No you can't, but you'll sure do great" speech. So she left it at that and figured she would tell Lulu when and if she ever found Tina Turner. Lulu never asked another question about the trip, but she bought Lena eight packets of gum, chewable indigestion tablets, a small package of travel toilet paper, two disposable cameras, a journal, and ten travel-sized packets of detergent.