“Design?” Genna knew she was getting close to insulting a guest, but he’d started it. She felt a twinge of regret at the prospect of upsetting Marsha, but it couldn’t be helped.
Her boyfriend was an ass.
“Very much so,” Colin said. “Fashions come and go, I grant you, but when all is said and done, there are constants in design that, well . . .”
“Don’t change?”
“Quite.” Colin put down his fork and took a sip of wine.
At least he couldn’t object to the wine since he’d brought it himself. And Genna had to concede that it was an excellent choice—a full, robust Côtes du Rhône that paired superbly with the bœuf bourguignon. But that was to be expected. An hour before they were due for dinner, Marsha had called to inquire about the entrée so they’d be sure to buy the right wine.
Colin may be an ass, but he was a cultured ass.
As the evening progressed, Genna learned that Colin had his future with Marsha mapped out. After buying an apartment in a fashionable Parisian neighborhood, they would get married, pop out their first child, acquire another property in a trendy part of southern France, and then round off with a second child. Of course, they’d have one of each—a boy first and then a girl.
Colin’s London drawl—part royal family, part pretentious cockney—set her teeth on edge. She wondered why he’d stooped so low as to get involved with an American when he seemed to consider anything associated with the New World, as he called it, beneath contempt. On the other hand, having a green card and the option to work in New York might come in handy should the European economy go sideways.
And Marsha herself had indicated she had substantial cash from the sale of her New York apartment.
At the end of the evening, after brandies were drunk and goodbyes said, Genna flopped onto the hard couch under the needlepoint Odalisque. She glanced up at the picture, its planes flattened by the angle, but its fuzzy texture untamed.
Her favorite part of the dismal evening had been the look on Colin’s face when he’d first entered the apartment and seen the needlepoint. His jaw dropped open, then shut, then open again in rapid succession, rather like the large and ugly grouper fish Genna remembered seeing on a long-ago Caribbean holiday. She’d wondered if she should rush forward with the offer of a stiff vodka. But Colin was British, and he did have manners. He clamped his jaws shut and smirked as he held out the wine.
“How lovely!” Genna trilled in her best hostess voice. Her third book, The Comfy Entertainer, devoted several pages to the subject of welcoming guests.
As hostess, your prime responsibility is to make your guests feel like their arrival in your home is the best of all possible events. But sincerity is key. A gushing welcome can put people off, making them uncomfortable, as if they had walked into a vat of oversweet fruit rather than the calm and comfortable warmth of your living room.
If guests bring a present, such as a bottle of wine or a houseplant, take it, admire it, and make sure it plays a role in the evening. If wine, drink it at the appropriate time. Never stash it away, no matter how inferior it may be to the wine you planned to serve.
Thankfully, the forty-euro price tag still stuck to the bottom of the wine that Marsha and Colin brought beat out the wine Genna planned to serve by thirty euros.
Genna heaved herself off the couch and went to bed. The evening had not been a total waste. She was happy with her bœuf bourguignon and it had been pleasant to have people to talk with, even if one of them had been Colin. The solitariness of her new life was mostly bearable, but there were moments, like in the quiet after guests departed, when she missed her old life.
She and Drew would sit together on the couch and drink mugs of steaming milk to blunt the booze. They’d talk about their guests, chuckling at foibles, comparing notes about who said what. They almost always agreed, their laughter shared and natural, their mutual contentment unspoken but always present.
Genna had trusted Drew with her heart and with her life.
She bit back a sob, chiding herself for ruining an already dubious evening with regrets about the past. Before she’d left Vancouver, her cousin George, who owned the basement suite she’d fled to, told her that one day she’d need to forgive Drew.
Never.
Chapter Six
Coffee Macarons
Studded with coffee beans and filled with milk chocolate
The next morning—a sunny Friday—Genna set off down the Boulevard Saint-Germain toward the Odéon Métro stop. The ten-minute walk got her blood pumping and head cleared from the effects of too much wine and too much Colin the night before.
She knew she should feel happy for Colin and Marsha. They were just starting their lives together, full of hope as they launched into an adventure that for Genna had turned out to be a good thirty years shorter than she’d signed up for.
One of the last times she’d seen Drew was the previous October at their third open house. As soon as he appeared at the door, his face dropped into hang-dog remorse, the expression he adopted whenever she was within hailing distance.
“Hi, Gen. Come in.”
She walked past him without saying hello, fighting the impulse to run upstairs to check the bedroom.
“Is the agent here?”
“Not yet.”
Genna turned into the living room and wanted to weep. Dirty mugs stuck to the side table, old newspapers and library books covered every other surface, and a ragged brown stain spread across the middle cushion of the cream couch. She knew the rest of the house would look even worse. The agent would have a fit and probably refuse to continue representing them. Genna could hardly blame him.
“You’re determined to sabotage any chance we have of selling this place.”
“I wouldn’t call it sabotage.”
“How about obstruction? Or severe blocking behavior? Or just plain being an asshole?”
“Come on, Gen, don’t be like that. I’ve said I’m sorry a thousand times.”
“Sure.” She started collecting mugs. In the half hour before the open house she could at least make a stab at tidying the place.
“I think we’re wrong to sell now,” Drew said as he followed her around the room. “The market’s not good.”
“House prices in this neighborhood have gone up twenty percent this past year.” Genna kept her back to him as she cleaned. They had had this conversation too many times. She could recite it in her sleep.
“If we sell, neither of us will be able to afford to buy another place in this area.”
Genna waited for the next line. It was always the same.
“If we stay together, we could buy something else around here. You know, make a fresh start.”
Predictable as ever. In fact, Drew had been predictable every day of their married life until the day he’d been unpredictable.
“I have no desire to buy anything in this neighborhood,” Genna said. “I want my half of the money out of the house so I can get on with my life.”
“Where will you go?”
“Paris.”
And as soon as she said it—her hands full of chipped mugs crusted with the furred dredges of two-week-old coffee, in a house she’d lived in for only two months, Genna knew it was true. She would go to Paris.