Dinner Party
December 31, 1935. Paris. Dexter and Marcelle, bundled up in overcoats, scarves, and hats against the winter cold, walked down darkened rue de l’Universitié past the big closed doors leading into Gallimard Publishing and past the big closed doors leading into Sciences Po. They turned on a small residential street and walked up half a block to an apartment building and knocked on a large wooden door. The door groaned open, the hinges creaking in the frozen night, under the hand of an elderly concierge. Dexter whispered a name and the old woman pointed them towards the third floor landing, “Deuxième étage.”
Knocking on the apartment door, it quickly opened and Suzanne Bardoux smiled warmly. “Entrez.”
Étienne came up and eagerly shook hands. “Come into the drawing room. Turns out our other guests have met you before,” and he gave Dexter a devilish smile. Marcelle watched this male bonhomie skeptically but with more than a little interest at what the coded exchange might signal.
Étienne led them into the drawing room and as Marcelle recognized the other couple, Étienne added, “Marcelle, you remember Madeline?”
Marcelle smiled to herself and thought that, of course, this revelation would answer some questions and raise a host of others.
Madeline rose from the couch and held out her hand to Marcelle. “So nice to see you again, Marcelle.”
Marcelle stepped forward and kissed her on both cheeks. “Yes, it has been some time, hasn’t it?”
Étienne introduced the man. “Dexter, this is Jean-Paul. He lectures at École Normale Supérieure, naming the distinguished school for France’s ruling elite. “He’s a normalien himself, of course,” indicating that he was also a graduate of the school.
Dexter shook the hand and looked at Étienne sidewise and said, “Of course.”
Jean-Paul smiled and said, “We met at Madame Tabouis’s. Lunch, I believe.”
Dexter said, “Yes, I remember it well.” He turned to the woman and said with a mock frown, “Madeline, how could I ever forget?”
Madeline smiled, batting an eyelash, and said, “Your riposte to Geneviève was rapier-like. It was quite gallant of you. Rescuing me like that.”
Marcelle watched this with amused expectation; she immediately understood Madeline’s interest in Dexter. This was going to be a fun evening, watching him wiggle out of this, and she laughed to herself.
Étienne said, “Please be seated.”
Suzanne said, “Let me bring some wine.”
Jean-Paul, with great flair, recounted the anecdote about Foreign Minister Barthou at Madame Tabouis’s lunch the previous summer.
Étienne said to Suzanne with an arched eyebrow, “Foreign Minister Barthou was always very considerate of you?”
Suzanne laughed. “I was much too young. I believe Madame Tabouis would have been considered ‘young’ for him. Besides I was in the Quai d’Orsay. I believe his conquests were of the drawing room.”
Étienne smiled like a professor grading a prized student’s answer. “Very good.”
Suzanne turned to Marcelle. “You are lucky to be working for Premier Laval.” She turned to the group and expanded, “Everyone knows that when it comes to sexual intrigue, Premier Laval and Madame Lambert walk as saints.”
Madeline gasped at this, barely getting her wine down, astonished, but she now saw her opening. “Marcelle, are you continuing saintly?”
Marcelle laughed and looked at Madeline sweetly. “Less so than before.”
Madeline let her face turn momentarily crestfallen with disappointment; Marcelle had a hold on Dexter. Watching the realization cross Madeline’s mind, Marcelle smiled in small triumph.
Gazing at her friend Marcelle, Suzanne savored the moment, then said, “Let us go into the dining room for dinner.”
At the table, Étienne continued the conversation, looking at Marcelle. “Yes, we were wondering over the years just what interests Marcelle might have.”
Marcelle looked evenly at him, raised her wine glass, took a sip, and said nothing. Suzanne sort of laughed. Disciplined.
Dexter said, in a rather flip way, “Duty, perhaps?”
Marcelle quickly looked at him, not smiling. There were places not to go, her expression said.
Étienne watched and leaned back, stroked his chin, and looked across the table, saying, “Dexter is onto something.” Then he looked very evenly at Marcelle under arched eyebrows and said, “I think Dexter is right.”
Marcelle looked at him and made a slight nod; she was not going to dispute the point.
Étienne smiled broadly at everyone at the table and said, “Alors.” We continue.
As one course moved to another, Jean-Paul shifted the conversation and asked Dexter, “You speak French like a native?”
Dexter replied, “I went to lycée here in Paris. Then the war started, and I had to leave in 1914.”
Étienne asked, “Then where did you go?”
“Oh, I went home to Connecticut.”
Suzanne asked, “What is Connecticut like?”
Dexter replied, “Oh, it is sort of like the south of England. Grassy and nice.”
Jean-Paul continued, “And did you finish your schooling?”
Marcelle spoke up, “Oh, yes, he attended prep school. That is like one of those English public schools.”
Madeline’s fascination took a leap, “Like an English public school?” She smiled waspishly and looked directly at Dexter, “That is where the boys learn, how shall we say—to play—with other boys.” She leaned forward towards Dexter and with great intent pronounced, “You must tell us all. Hold back nothing. Details.”
Marcelle roared with laughter and looked at Dexter, “Your admirer calls.”
Dexter took a sip of wine and began to explain, “It is not like that. In America boys are raised to like women.”
Suzanne broke in, “Raised to like?” She frowned and turned to Étienne, “Are French boys raised,” and she paused, “to like women?”
Étienne, with great aplomb, took on the tone of a teacher, and very pedantically said, “Like? No, they are raised to respect women. It is assumed that they naturally enough like girls, who of course eventually become women.”
Everyone laughed.
Madeline took another sip of wine—she was on her third or fourth glass—and said rather dreamily to Dexter, “You must tell me more about the prep school tête-à-tête, possibly some afternoon we could meet?”
Dexter quickly replied, “At a café.”
Jean-Paul gently said to Madeline, “But Dexter belongs to Marcelle.”
Madeline looked at him and said, “I know. But if Marcelle should tire of Dexter…”
Marcelle leaned back and looked at the ceiling, smiling.
Jean-Paul said in a soothing voice, “Madeline, for as long as we have known Marcelle, she has always been constant.” And he looked over at Marcelle and said with some certainty, “And so she will continue.”
Marcelle nodded in polite agreement.
Madeline moved on, “But Marcel and Suzanne and I are like sisters…and sisters share.”
Jean-Paul, looking at the others with an amused smile, said, “No, Madeline, they don’t share husbands.”
Madeline said, “But Étienne and Dexter are not husbands,” and she sat up and brightened, saying, “Yes, they should get married. Then they would be husbands.” She then sat up ever more straight, and primly clasped her hands on the table in front of her, and pronounced, “And everyone knows that husbands are the common property of the women of France.”
The dinner guests all laughed.
Jean-Paul nodded in an approving way and said, “In this arrondisement, perhaps. In France, no.” Then he said in a low voice to Madeline, “I think Marcelle makes husbands take a secret vow.”
Madeline’s eyes went wide. “A secret vow?”
Dexter broke in. “Then there is the threat of death.”
Madeline gasped, “Death?”
Marcelle looked heavenward and rolled h
er eyes.
Suddenly, small explosions were heard outside, bright flashes of light reflected on the windowpanes from fireworks down by the river. The conversation stopped, glasses were raised, and all at the table joined in, “Bonne année!” The New Year had arrived.
A half hour later, Marcelle said, “We must be going.”
Jean-Paul said, “Would you like to share a cab with us?”
Marcelle said, “Oh, no. Dexter only lives two blocks away.”
Suzanne said, quizzically, “You’re staying at Dexter’s tonight?”
Marcelle said, “Yes,” and turned to Dexter, “What was the American word you said I could use?”
Dexter whispered.
Marcelle said, “Oh, yes, ‘slumming.’ We’re slumming at the bachelor’s apartment tonight. No maid.”
She turned to Dexter, “What was the other idiom?”
Dexter whispered again.
Marcelle smiled, “Oh, yes, ‘roughing it.’ Mark Twain.”
Everyone laughed and shook hands around.
Outside, Dexter took Marcelle’s hand and they started to walk down the sidewalk in the frozen darkness. Marcelle looked up at Dexter, “Dexter, you know that Madeline means it.”
Dexter stopped, turned Marcelle towards him, cupped her face in his gloved hands, and said with great assurance, “They all mean it.”
She laughed, “I love you.”
He kissed her, and they continued walking, savoring their happiness together.