Dating Game полностью

“Non, ” the imp said, and she wondered if she had mistaken the entire group and they were playing with her. If so, she had missed the right crew completely, and had no idea where they were now. “It is me, Monsieur Belmont,” he said with a look of vast amusement. “Your name is Paris? Like the city?” She nodded, relieved at least to have found them, although it was hard to believe that this boy was Jean-Pierre Belmont, who was a considerably well-known photographer in Paris. “Paris is a man's name,” he corrected her. “He was a Greek god in mythology,” he said with interest.

“I know. It's a long story.” She was not going to explain to him, with subtitles, that she had been conceived on her parents' honeymoon in Paris. “Do you have all your bags?” she asked him pleasantly, still trying to figure out who was who. But if he was Belmont, the other two were obviously his assistants, although one of them looked old enough to be his father.

“We have everything,” he said in heavily accented but coherent English. “We have very little bag, only cameras,” he explained and pointed, and she nodded. There was something vastly charming about him. She wasn't sure if it was the accent or the hair or the earring, or maybe the smile. She kept wanting to laugh every time she looked at him. And the red-headed boy looked like a baby, and was in fact Jean-Pierre's nineteen-year-old cousin. Belmont himself was thirty-two, Paris discovered later, but looked nowhere near it. His whole demeanor and style was that of someone infinitely younger. He was the personification of charming, outrageous youth and totally Parisian.

She told him she would be back in a minute with the car, and left the three of them with a porter, and five minutes later she was back, and the two assistants and the photographer himself proceeded to pack her station wagon with such speed and precision that it looked like some kind of puzzle. And moments later he was in the passenger seat, the two others were behind them, and they were on their way to the city.

“We go to the hotel or to see the bride girl now?” he asked clearly.

“I think they're expecting you a little later. I thought you'd like to go to the hotel first, rest, eat, shower, and get ready.” She said it carefully and clearly as he nodded, and seemed very interested in his surroundings. He spoke to her again a few minutes later.

“What do you do? You are secretary… assistant… to the bride mother?”

“No, I plan the wedding. Bixby Mason. Flowers, music, decoration. We hire all the people to do the wedding.” He nodded, having understood what her function was in the scheme of things. He was quick and alert, and extremely lively. And as he looked out the window, he lit a Gauloise, papier mais, with bright yellow paper made from corn, and a pungent smell like no other filled her station wagon.

“Ees okay?” he asked politely after it was lit, remembering that Americans weren't nearly as amenable to smoking, but Paris nodded.

“It's okay. I used to smoke a long time ago. It smells nice.”

“Merci,” he said perfunctorily, and then chatted with the others. Although she spoke a little French, she had no idea what they were saying. They spoke far too quickly. And then he turned to her again. “Ees a good wedding? Beautiful dress?… Good?”

“Very good,” she reassured him. “Beautiful girl, beautiful dress. Handsome groom. Beautiful party. It is at the Legion of Honor Museum. Seven hundred people.” The Delacroix family controlled an enormous French textile industry and had moved to San Francisco during the Socialist regime, and then stayed there, to protect their fortune from French taxes. But they still spent as much time in France as they could get away with.

“Big money, yes?” he inquired, and Paris smiled and nodded.

“Very big money.” She didn't tell him, but they were spending two and a half million dollars on the wedding. More than respectable, to say the least.

She drove him to the hotel without further ceremony, and arranged at the hotel desk for someone to pick up their van and deliver it to them. All they had to do was show their driver's licenses and sign the papers. She handed Jean-Pierre Belmont a map of the city, and showed him on the map where they had to be at six o'clock.

“Will you be okay?” she asked, as he blew a cloud of smoke in her face inadvertently, and someone at the desk asked him to put it out. He found an ashtray full of sand a few steps away, and came back to Paris at the desk. “Call me if you need anything,” she said, and handed him her card. He was going to be doing portraits of the family and the bride.