Read Online A Dangerous Fiction by Barbara Rogan - Free Book Online Page B

leverage.
    â€œI’m prepared to move ahead with this,” I said. “You could have your agent talk to Random.” That was clumsy. I was a lot more interested in having the book sale announced than actually facilitating its writing, and Teddy would know that.
    He didn’t say, “Not so fast.” He wasn’t that crass. But I heard it in his voice nonetheless. “I think it would be a good idea if you and I talked a little more first. Why don’t I take you to lunch one day and we’ll put our heads together?”
    I had no lunches free for weeks, so we made it for dinner the following Tuesday. I spent much of the intervening weekend fretting about it, trying to decide what I’d give him and what I wouldn’t. Then something happened that put Teddy Pendragon right out of my mind.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    Sunday night I went out with some friends from Paris, the Lepetits. Valerie was a painter, originally from Chicago, and her husband, Yves, was a jazz pianist. Hugo and I met them soon after we moved to Paris, in a jazz club on the Rue des Lombards. They were sitting at the table next to ours, and we couldn’t help noticing them, for they were an odd-looking couple: a stunning black woman nearly six feet tall and a diminutive white man some twenty years her senior. Midway through the set, Yves was called up onstage and introduced; then he sat in on a couple of songs. After the set, Hugo struck up a conversation. They knew Hugo’s work, of course, and admired it. Before long we were sitting at the same table, chatting like old friends. Hugo and Yves bonded over the music they both loved, while Val and I found common ground as Americans in Paris, both married to older men. After that we met often and grew close, even vacationing together several times in the south of France. For Hugo’s birthday, I commissioned a portrait of him from Val; it still hangs in his study. When Hugo died in Paris of a sudden massive heart attack, I would have been lost without Val and Yves, who saw to all the arrangements. When I decided to sell the Paris apartment, they handled that, too. We hadn’t met since Hugo’s memorial service in Paris, and I’d missed them badly.
    They were already seated when I arrived at the restaurant on West Fourth, and a great chord of gladness sounded in me when Val saw me and waved exuberantly. I blew past the maître d’ in my hurry to reach them. Yves kissed me on both cheeks, then Val enveloped me in a good old American hug.
    After dinner and a couple of bottles of wine, we went on to the Blue Note and the Vanguard. We drank some more, and in between sets talked about Paris and the old days with Hugo. Yves’s English was weak, so we spoke in French. When he left us to talk to a musician he knew, Val slid over till her thigh touched mine.
    â€œDear Jo,” she said, switching to English, “I feel so close to you.”
    â€œYou
are
close to me.”
    â€œI’ve thought of you so often. I always meant to call.”
    â€œYou should have.”
    â€œ
You
didn’t. And I was so afraid you were upset with me.”
    â€œWhy would I be?” I asked, surprised.
    â€œYou know.”
    â€œI don’t.”
    â€œThat night at the hospital . . .”
    All at once I realized what she was talking about. Hugo had been stricken at around eleven p.m., on his way home from a movie theater. I hadn’t gone, which is something I’ll always regret, but it was one of those noisy American films based on comic books that I loathed and he loved. The first I knew of his collapse was a call from the emergency room of the Hôpital Européen Georges-Pompidou. I grabbed a taxi and offered the driver double the fare if he could make the hospital in ten minutes. He did it. I paid, jumped out, and was approaching the door to the ER when it opened and Val emerged.
    We exchanged a few quick words.