Patrice dropped her black leather skirt to the floor, pulled her pink angora sweater over her head. "I wish there was a mirror," she said, standing there in her demi-bra and bikini panties. "Which one are you going to wear?"

"I don't know," Lydie said. "I might not dress up. I might just help the photographer."

"You d.a.m.ned well are are going to dress up," Patrice commanded. "Now choose a dress." When Lydie wasn't fast enough, Patrice grabbed a green one off the rack. Forest-green satin, it was supple and liquid and dark as the woods. "Put it on," Patrice said. going to dress up," Patrice commanded. "Now choose a dress." When Lydie wasn't fast enough, Patrice grabbed a green one off the rack. Forest-green satin, it was supple and liquid and dark as the woods. "Put it on," Patrice said.

Light filtered through the skylights; several fluorescent lamps running the length of the warehouse were burned out. Others cast diffuse light through the enormous s.p.a.ce, making it even gloomier.

Patrice tugged the zipper gently, and the dress closed around Lydie's body. When Lydie turned around, Patrice gasped. "Michael is going to die when he sees you," she said. "You might just wear that little number to his big opening as well."

All the big moments, the turning points of Lydie's life were suddenly parties. The emba.s.sy party, Michael's opening, the ball. She could almost believe, though she had never thought such a thing possible, that the outcome of her marriage hinged on whether or not she attended Michael's party.

"Michael came to see me," Lydie said. "After I saw him in the Tuileries with his girlfriend."

"His girlfriend?" Patrice asked. "You saw her? Who is she?"

"Anne Dumas." Lydie felt reluctant to say the name: it carried such weight for Patrice. But Patrice took the news in silence. She reached for Lydie's hand and held it.

"You know," Patrice said after a while, "one of Anne Dumas's 'three women' was the Marquise de Brinvilliers. Does that name ring a bell?"

Lydie shook her head.

"A murderer. She poisoned anyone who got in the way of her happiness. She used to volunteer at Paris charity hospitals so she could practice poisoning patients in order to perfect her technique. She knocked off her father, her brothers, her husband..." Patrice trailed off.

"What does that have to do with Anne Dumas?" Lydie asked.

"She wrote that section best," Patrice said. "She devotes more s.p.a.ce to Madame de Sevigne, but she really got inside the head of the murderer."

"I hate her," Lydie said.

"I don't blame you," Patrice said. "What happened when Michael went to see you?"

Lydie s.h.i.+vered as she recalled the kiss. "I'm all stirred up. I think about Kelly, because at least there's something I can do do about her." about her."

"I don't get it," Patrice said, frowning.

"I don't know how to act with Michael. I just don't. Sometimes I want him back so badly...then I remember he left me to be with Anne Dumas. But with Kelly...I can help her get to the United States. I'm doing it-I've filed a pet.i.tion for her."

"How you can compare the two is way way beyond me," Patrice said. "I want what's best for her too. But Kelly is no subst.i.tute for Michael." beyond me," Patrice said. "I want what's best for her too. But Kelly is no subst.i.tute for Michael."

"No kidding," Lydie said, feeling impatient with Patrice. "Of course Kelly and Michael are separate. But it feels good to help Kelly."

Patrice and Lydie took off the ball gowns, dressed in their own clothes. They stepped out of the warehouse into bright autumn suns.h.i.+ne.

"Bright out here," Patrice said, s.h.i.+elding her eyes. She dug into her bag for the car keys.

"This is a nice car," Lydie said, leaning on its hood as she waited for Patrice to unlock it.

Patrice had been concentrating on fitting her key into the lock, but her head snapped up and she grinned at Lydie across the car roof. "Want to drive it?"

"You're kidding," Lydie said, but already she felt the adrenaline start to flow.

"I know it's not a Maserati or whatever you're used to, but Didier makes it fly. Why not give it a go?"

Lydie and Patrice crisscrossed in front of the car, Patrice handing her the keys. The keys felt solid in Lydie's hand. She felt confident unlocking the door, strapping on her seat belt.

"Seat belts?" Patrice asked from the pa.s.senger seat. "Race car drivers wear seat belts?"

"Safety first," Lydie said, smiling. She switched on the ignition, felt satisfied by the engine's soft murmur. It sounded nothing like her car, whose engine noises at optimal performance resembled a mutter or a hacking cough. Backing out of the s.p.a.ce, then pulling forward onto Avenue Guerin, she drove the car slowly, with care, getting a feel for it.

"Floor it," Patrice urged. "I want to see you in action."

"Not here," Lydie said. "Too residential." She could easily believe, however, that Didier could make this car fly. She barely touched the gas, restraining it. When had she last had the urge to drive? It seemed like years ago. She had been behind the wheel, but only for errands; it hadn't given her pleasure for a long time. Now she drove through Neuilly, braking at stop signs, training her eyes on the horizon and whatever stood in its path. She felt the car, its big six-cylinder engine, wanting to get away from her, but she held it back.

"Is this a tank compared to your car?" Patrice asked.

"Yes, but this car is lovely," Lydie said, barely hearing Patrice. She was one with the road, and not only the one on which she drove. In a flash she saw past and future exit ramps, stop lights and race tracks. She held the leather steering wheel lightly, but as surely as she had at the start of races at Lime Rock. "Gentlemen, start your engines," the announcer always called. She smiled now, as she always did when she heard that. Didn't he realize there was a woman racing? Racing she would hold back, part of the pack, until that instant when she saw her chance and pulled ahead. She hadn't won so far. She loved to compete and wanted to win for many reasons. But she lived for the day when she would pull across the line first, drive to the winner's circle, take off her helmet and show the announcer her long hair, let him know that a woman had started her engine.

She felt that way now: as though she had started up after a long sleep. She entered the Peripherique at Porte Maillot, glanced at Patrice. The engine sounded good, the traffic was light. s.h.i.+fting into overdrive, she pressed down the gas pedal.

"Here we go," she said. But where, exactly, were they going? She sped along the highway that circled Paris, but she kept her eyes on the road. As a pa.s.senger she would sit back, enjoying the vista full of Parisian monuments: the Eiffel Tower, Montmartre, Notre Dame. She could imagine driving until she ran out of gas. Driving around and around Paris on the Peripherique, her mind on the road but the thought of Michael tingling in the background, with nowhere special to go, Lydie felt as if she had never had so specific a destination.

There will be plays at Court and a ball every week.

-TO F FRANcOISE-MARGUERITE, JANUARY 1674 ON THE DAY that the Salle des Quatre Saisons would be unveiled, Michael leaned against the great table, watching workmen adjust the lighting on paintings by Georges de la Tour and Nicolas Poussin. He thought they set a fine seventeenth-century mood to carry tourists through the painting galleries. Although it had been his second choice, Michael found Poussin's painting that the Salle des Quatre Saisons would be unveiled, Michael leaned against the great table, watching workmen adjust the lighting on paintings by Georges de la Tour and Nicolas Poussin. He thought they set a fine seventeenth-century mood to carry tourists through the painting galleries. Although it had been his second choice, Michael found Poussin's painting Apollo and Daphne Apollo and Daphne deeply moving. There was Apollo, baffled in his love for Daphne, tricked by Mercury, frustrated in friends.h.i.+p by Hyacinth, who lay slain at Apollo's feet. It seemed benevolent to have a painting of Apollo-G.o.d of poetry and painting-hanging in his Salle. Nicolas Poussin had died before finis.h.i.+ng it. deeply moving. There was Apollo, baffled in his love for Daphne, tricked by Mercury, frustrated in friends.h.i.+p by Hyacinth, who lay slain at Apollo's feet. It seemed benevolent to have a painting of Apollo-G.o.d of poetry and painting-hanging in his Salle. Nicolas Poussin had died before finis.h.i.+ng it.

Michael felt baffled in his love for Lydie. He thought back to springtime, when he had felt so sure he wanted someone new. Instead of trying to understand the dark things moving his wife, he had fallen for Anne. But his feelings had changed over time. Living apart from Lydie, he remembered how it had felt to fall in love with her. Not the second time, in Was.h.i.+ngton, but the first, in high school. Then it had seemed he saw her only from a distance. Across the room in French cla.s.s, with other boys at dances, with Father Griffin, their heads together as they discussed matters of obvious importance-ostentatiously, Michael had thought.

Caterers from Lenotre arrived, asking Michael where to set up the hors d'oeuvres. "Not on that table," he said, because he thought the information table was a prime attraction. Its maker from Burgundy had been invited, along with his wife, their children, and members of the preceding generation on both sides of the family. Curators from museums all through France, members of the American community in Paris, and government officials had been invited. Lydie had been invited.

The caterers set out platters of canapes, a goose sculpted out of foie gras, open-faced sandwiches of smoked salmon. Charles had insisted that champagne be served, regardless of cost. Michael felt pretty sure the budget wouldn't cover it, that Charles was making up the difference with his own money. But with the ministers and officials who were coming, this was a perfect opportunity for Charles to start lobbying for his next curators.h.i.+p.

"Michel," Anne said, startling him. He turned fast. She wore a wig, the hair piled high on her head, and an ancient dress that looked as though it would fall apart if you touched it. She pirouetted slowly.

"It's...extraordinary," Michael said, spellbound. Anne looked exactly like a woman from the seventeenth century; she might have stepped out of the portrait of Madame de Sevigne hanging in her apartment. The dress was quilted brown taffeta trimmed with what once had been silver thread. The wig appeared to be new, with chestnut tendrils curling around the face and two large bouquets of hair on each side.

"Isn't it magnificent?" Anne asked, her dimples deepening. "I had the wig made."

"But why? Where will you wear it?" Michael asked. She made him think of women dressed in period costumes at Sturbridge Village and Williamsburg. He'd seen waitresses dressed that way at the 1964 World's Fair.

"I'm wearing it now, cheri cheri," Anne said. "What a silly question. I shall wear it to the party."

Suddenly there was a commotion behind the part.i.tion blocking the Salle from tourists. A very small and wiry man, dressed in a tailored black suit, burst through.

"Mademoiselle Dumas!" he said angrily, catching sight of her.

Anne glanced around, as if looking for an escape, then turned to face him. "What do you want?" she asked.

"Give me that dress," he said.

"It doesn't belong to you," she said.

"It belongs to the Musee du Louvre!" he said, stepping forward. "Look! Filaments are falling to the floor!"

Anne and Michael looked at the ground, and it was true; fragments of thread and fabric lay there.

"That dress is three hundred years old three hundred years old," the man said, growing red in the face.

"I repeat," Anne said calmly. "It does not belong to you."

"What happened?" Michael asked her.

"This man was kind kind enough to a.s.sist me in my research, by showing me, at my request, some antique clothing," Anne said. enough to a.s.sist me in my research, by showing me, at my request, some antique clothing," Anne said.

"Then it's true?" Michael asked. "That the dress is three hundred years old and belongs to the Louvre?"

"Yes," Anne said. "To the Louvre, not to him. him."

"I work in the Department of Material Culture," the man said. "Here at the Louvre. Now, I insist insist..."

"He is just an a.s.sistant," Anne said. She faced the man, who was approximately her height. "I am doing important research. I need this dress."

"Oh, my G.o.d," the man said, wiping sweat off his brow. "I should never have let you into the storeroom. It is absolutely against regulations..."

"He'll get into trouble, Anne," Michael said. "Give him the dress."

"This-from you?" she said, glaring at Michael. Then her lower lip began to quiver. "Fine, I will take off the dress."

"Oh, thank you," the man said, clasping his hands.

"Wait in your office," Anne said haughtily. "I shall bring it to you as soon as I am ready."

"Okay," the man said, still nervous but now hopeful, backing out of the room. Michael felt amused and embarra.s.sed. He had never seen Anne play-act so publicly before. She stood before him, pouting slightly. The contrast between her skin-smooth and pink, so healthy, and the fabric-stiff and decaying-seemed almost obscene.

"I had thought you would admire it," she said.

"I do," Michael said. "But I also see his point."

She waved her hand, dismissing the man. "He is a functionary. Don't worry about him."

"Anne, you are going to return the dress, aren't you?" When she didn't answer, Michael touched her cheek. "Where would you wear it?" he asked.

"I wish I could wear it all the time," Anne said, two big tears spilling out of her dark eyes. "I have never felt so whole whole as I do now. Or as I do now. Or did did, before he spoiled it. Standing here, in the Salle des Quatre Saisons..." She looked around, taking in the paintings, the table. "This room is truly a masterpiece, and I wanted to pay homage to you-its creator. On this, the day of its opening." Standing on her toes, she kissed his lips. Michael stood stiff, afraid to touch the dress. Was that his imagination, the sound of it tearing?

"I'm glad you like the Salle so much," Michael said, wondering how Anne's mind worked, whether at that instant she was was Madame de Sevigne. Madame de Sevigne.

"How I would love to see you dressed in clothes of the day," she said, smiling again, drawing herself to her full height, as she always did when preparing to quote from Madame de Sevigne, "'Find out something, my bonne bonne, about what the men will be wearing this summer. I shall ask you to send me a pretty fabric for your brother, who implores you to turn him into a fas.h.i.+on plate at minimum cost ...'"

Michael chuckled nervously. Had Anne already found him a seventeenth-century suit? He could imagine her begging him to dress up with her, how difficult it would be to say no. But he would say no. He had made up his mind; he wanted to be with Lydie. At that moment he felt a bizarre reversal of guilt, for being with Anne when he wanted to be with Lydie.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful to live in the Louvre, even for one night?" Anne asked. "I think of how it must look in the middle of the night, in the darkness, with moonlight coming through the windows..." She lowered her voice, took Michael's hand. "Let's do it! Let's spend tonight right here in the Salle."

"Anne, there are guards..."

She waved a dismissive hand. Her eyes glittered with excitement. "We'll be quiet as mice. We can stay upstairs, in the attic storerooms. Beds are there-even nightclothes from every epoch, including our own..."

"No, Anne," Michael said, knowing that "our own" epoch meant the seventeenth century.

"Oh, you are too rigid," she said, smiling up at him. "Don't you know that in France we value a lack of discipline? It is so important to forget the rules sometimes, to let your spirit be free."

Standing there, listening to the woman who had been his lover, Michael thought he deserved an award for lack of discipline. He had an impulse to run out of the Louvre, leaving behind everything venerable and ancient, into the bright suns.h.i.+ne. At that moment, gazing at Anne in her wig and crumbling dress, he wanted twentieth-century noise: traffic, loud music, loudspeakers blaring from the tour boats. Standing there with Anne, he felt that the air in the Salle des Quatre Saisons had not moved since the seventeenth century.

"What a trouper you are," Patrice said, turning to speak to Lydie in the backseat. "It's really big of you, making an appearance at this thing."

Lydie smiled, then resumed staring at the back of Didier's head. He drove his Citroen toward the Louvre in fits and starts, using the brake twice as often as necessary.

"Why do you say it's big of her?" Didier asked. "She is going because she wants to see the Salle des Quatre Saisons."

"She is giving Michael his due," Patrice said. "She's keeping her personal feelings out of it, and I commend her."

"I'm just staying long enough to say h.e.l.lo," Lydie said, uneasy about the whole enterprise.

Now Didier was searching for a parking spot. For some reason Patrice felt personally responsible for Lydie's decision to attend Michael's opening. It put Lydie in mind of a story her father had told her about a boy who convinced a pagan to attend Christmas ma.s.s and felt as if he had given Jesus a nonbeliever's soul for his birthday.

Curiosity, not Patrice, had made Lydie decide to come. She wanted to see Michael's work, and she wanted to see his response when he caught sight of her. She had not told him she was coming. She didn't want him on his best behavior, trotting her around, introducing her to people as "my wife." She wanted to slip in with the crowd, catch his eye, and see what would happen. Dressing as she had, however, she could not pretend she didn't want him to notice her at all. She wore a black dress by Azzadine Alaia, form-fitting to say the least, with a deep "V" in back.

She and the d'Orignys presented their engraved invitations to a guard and he pointed the way. "I know where it is," Didier said importantly. "We know Monsieur McBride."

Suddenly Lydie felt charged with antic.i.p.ation. The event was gala, after all. The man just ahead of them used an ebony walking stick although he had no limp. Women wore their best dresses. People chattered, craning their necks. Everyone looked important, although Lydie could not say why. Perhaps the occasion gave importance to the crowd, the way it would at ballet premieres, first nights on Broadway, presidential inaugurations.

They entered the Salle and Lydie blocked the door, taking everything in. Her gaze lit on a beautiful long table-it could only be the information table Michael had commissioned. A mosaic floor glinted here and there with tiny gold tiles. Beneath the smell of perfume and hot food, she detected the scent of new plaster. A tapestry covering an entire wall depicted men returning from a hunt. But above all, her eye was drawn to a painting between the doors.

She stared at it and tried to place the story: a scene from Greek mythology? There was Mercury-she recognized his winged feet. A dead boy lay on the ground before a G.o.d at once handsome and tortured. Herds of cows, a magnificent tree, Cupid, nymphs.

"It's called Apollo and Daphne Apollo and Daphne," Patrice said, coming over with a printed guide. "I can't tell who's supposed to be Daphne unless she's the one in the tree."

Now that Lydie knew the painting's t.i.tle, she remembered the story. "That's her-in her father's arms," Lydie said, pointing. "It hasn't been working out for her and Apollo."

"What's not to work out?" Patrice asked in her burlesque voice. "Check out Apollo."

Now Lydie began to look around, subtly she hoped, for Michael. There were Arthur Chase, Dot Graulty, Dot's husband. Her head averted, Patrice said, "Look over my right shoulder. See the tall guy?"

"Which one?"