Which is not to say that when she saw Paras by the light of dawn, cropping grass inside the fence of the Place du Trocadéro, Frida knew that they were going to be friends. She knew nothing at all except that she had never seen such a thing before. Here was a horse, not attached to a carriage, a light, graceful-looking horse, wolfing down the grass. Frida plopped down on her haunches as if Jacques had ordered, “Frida! Assieds.” Frida stared. Frida barked two barks. The horse’s ears twitched, but it didn’t lift its head.
A dog had to be careful around horses. They had big feet and big teeth, and they could be quick or they could be clumsy. Jacques had sometimes liked to give the white carriage-horses a bit of apple when the drivers weren’t looking, but he had never allowed Frida to sniff or explore them. Even so, Frida finally stood up and hopped over the little fence and approached the horse, not so much to sniff the horse itself, but to investigate that item near to it, an item that looked very much like a leather purse. As far as Frida was concerned, there was nothing quite as fascinating as a leather purse. Humans carried them all the time—big and small, fragrant and not so fragrant, always clutched tight. Out of leather purses came all sorts of things, but most especially coins. When Frida and Jacques positioned themselves carefully on the street, Jacques picking tunes on his guitar and Frida looking alert and friendly, the coins had rained into their dish. Frida had come to understand that they were good things, mostly by watching Jacques smile as he counted them every evening.
Frida slid in her quietest and most bird-stalking manner toward the purse, nose out, head down, ears pricked. The horse continued to munch the grass.
Maybe if the purse had had a zipper Frida would never have been able to open it, and this story would have happened differently—Delphine would have found Paras and taken her home to Maisons-Laffitte, and Frida would have had to think of some other way to gain a friend. But in fact the purse had a magnetic snap, and opened quite easily. Once the flap was open, Frida pushed the purse a little bit with her nose, so that the contents were revealed, and what she saw in there was money. Yes, there was also a lip gloss and a hairbrush, but mostly there was money, made of paper, in all shades (a dog sees red as brown and blue as blue, green as pale yellow). She knew which ones Jacques found exciting—Frida did not have much experience with the palest ones, but once, outside Saint-Michel Station, when Jacques had been playing and singing, a tall man in pointed-toed boots and a big hat had walked by, stopped to listen to the entire song, and said, “Thanks, brother,” then dropped one of those pale notes into the bowl. Jacques had to snatch it up before it blew away. Now Frida nudged the flap closed and stepped back.
She bumped smack into the horse’s front legs. The horse was standing over her, staring down at her. That was how interesting the money was—she hadn’t even heard the horse approach. Frida froze, and the horse sniffed her, snorting a little bit (which was frightening), but not showing her teeth. Frida cleared her throat and sat—with dignity, she thought. The horse touched noses with Frida, then put her nose on the purse. Frida knew this meant, “The purse is mine.” Frida sneezed. She often did this when she was nervous. Finally, she managed to say, “Are you lost?”
The horse said, “I don’t know.”
Frida said, “Are you from around here?”
The horse said, “I don’t know.”
Frida had never been to the racecourse, even though it was only a few kilometers away.
Frida said, “What’s your name?”
The horse said, “They call me Paras, but my real name is Perestroika, by Moscow Ballet out of Mapleton, by Big Spruce. I am a descendant of Northern Dancer and Herbager, and I go all the way back to Saint Simon on my dam’s side.”
“What does that mean?” said Frida.
“Those are my ancestors. Some were very good racehorses—”
“Did one come from Moscow?”
“Where is Moscow?”
“It’s in Russia. You can hear people speaking Russian right here in Paris.” Frida had heard her human, Jacques, and another busker talking about this from time to time. They said that Russians loved Paris. She said, “You must know that ‘Perestroika’ is a Russian word.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Paras. She’d thought it was a nonsense word, like “giddyup” or “Wowsiedowsie.” It had a sharp rhythm, too, like the rhythm of a good trot.
Frida began to think that maybe the horse didn’t know what she had in her purse, either.
Paras said, “I am a filly, three years old, soon to be a mare.”
Frida said, “Filly? Mare?”
“Female.”
Frida thought, “You think I don’t know that just by your scent?,” but she didn’t say anything.
The sun was now completely up, but nothing was going on in the Place du Trocadéro, which never came alive until lunchtime, anyway. Frida picked up the handle of the purse in her teeth and walked away, to the part of the grassy area where not so many humans might see them. Paras followed her. Frida dropped the purse in the grass. For now. Frida sat and regarded the horse. She said, “What do you eat?”
The horse glanced around and said, “What do you eat?”
“Oh, it depends. Sometimes a little onion soup. A bit of steak, if I’m lucky. Lots of bread. Cheese. Old croque-monsieur. The occasional leg of chicken or lamb. Bones. It’s a varied diet around here. Heavy on the cheese.”
“Oats? Maize? Hay? Apples? Carrots?”
“Well, the Pâtisserie Carette has some nice apple tarts, and they serve grated carrots in some of the salads. But it’s expensive.”
“What does that mean?”
Frida regarded the horse some more. She was so big and yet so dumb. Well, “innocent” was a better word. Obviously, she had been taken care of her entire life and had no idea how the world worked. Frida offered, “Nice purse.”
“Is it? How do you know?”
“Have you looked inside?”
“Is there something inside?”
Frida didn’t say anything, and Paras returned to cropping the grass.
After a moment, Frida went over and lay down right beside the mound of dirt where the flowers had been in the summer and the spring. She didn’t curl up tight, the way she did to go to sleep. She assumed her thinking position, her head up, her forelegs out in front, and her hind legs tucked under her, a position in which she could keep her eye on things, but also relax a little. It was certainly true that a dog did not live all her life on the streets of Paris without learning how to recognize a sucker when she saw one. The horse seemed to like the purse, and Frida did not have to steal the purse in order to steal all or most of the money. She could nose it out of the purse and scoop it into her mouth and take it to her spot in the cemetery and secrete it there. She had a big mouth, and she was adept with it. If, for example, you grabbed a pigeon for your morning meal, you had to do something about the feathers, and Frida had done that sort of thing a few times. How to take the money was not the point.