Difficult to describe precisely, the taste of that eighth or ninth cigarette of the day, a mix of ozone, blond tobacco and early evening angst on the tongue. But he recognized it every time. It was the taste of lost love. Alex started smoking again whenever he lost a woman. When he fell in love again he would quit. And when love died, he'd light up again. Partly it was a physical reaction to stress; partly metaphorical the substitution of one addiction for another. And no small part of this reflex was mythological indulging a romantic image of himself as a lone figure standing on a bridge in a foreign city, cigarette cupped in his hand, his leather jacket open to the elements.
He imagined the passersby speculating about his private sorrow as he stood on the Pont des Arts, mysterious, wet and unapproachable. His sense of loss seemed more real when he imagined himself through the eyes of strangers. The pedestrians with their evening baguettes and their Michelin guides and their umbrellas hunched against the March precipitation, an alloy of drizzle and mist.
When it all ended with Lydia he'd decided to go to Paris, not only because it was a good place to smoke, but because it seemed like the appropriate backdrop. His grief was more poignant and picturesque in that city. Bad enough that Lydia had left him; what made it worse was that it was his own fault; he suffered both the ache of the victim and the guilt of the villain.
His appetite had not suffered, however; his stomach was complaining like a terrier demanding its evening walk, blissfully unaware that the household was in mourning. Ennobling as it might seem to suffer in Paris, only a fool would starve himself there.
Standing in the middle of the river he tried to decide which way to go. Having dined last night in a bistro that looked grim and authentic enough for his purposes but which proved to be full of voluble Americans and Germans attired as if for the gym or the tropics, he decided to head for the Hotel Coste, where, at the very least, the Americans would be fashionably jaded and dressed in shades of gray and black.
The bar was full and, of course, there were no tables when he arrived. The hostess, a pretty Asian sylph with a West London accent, sized him up skeptically. Hers was not the traditional Parisian hauteur, the sneer of the maître d'hotel at a three-star restaurant; she was rather the temple guardian of that international tribe that included rock stars, fashion models, designers, actors and directors as well as those who photographed them, wrote about them and fucked them. As the art director of a boutique ad agency, Alex lived on the fringes of this world. In New York he knew many of the doormen and maître d's, but here the best he could hope for was that he looked the part. The hostess seemed to be puzzling over his claims to membership; her expression slightly hopeful, as if she was on the verge of giving him the benefit of the doubt. Suddenly her narrow squint gave way to a smile of recognition. "I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you," she said. "How are you?" Alex had only been here twice, on a visit a few years before; it seemed unlikely she would have remembered. On the other hand, he was a generous tipper and, he reasoned, not a bad-looking guy.
She led him to a small but highly visible table set for four. He'd told her he was expecting someone in the hopes of increasing his chances of seating. "I'll send a waiter right over," she said. "Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you." So benevolent was her smile that he tried to think of some small request to gratify her.
addiction for another. And no small part of this reflex was mythological indulging a romantic image of himself as a lone figure standing on a bridge in a foreign city, cigarette cupped in his hand, his leather jacket open to the elements.
