Axelle had reserved rooms at the Ritz, conveniently located on the Place Vendome, and resplendent with all the luxury Zoya had all but forgotten. It had been years since she had taken a bath in a deep marble tub, just like the one she'd had in the house on Sutton Place. She closed her eyes, and lay luxuriating in the deep bathtub full of warm water. They were to begin their shopping the following morning, but that first afternoon, Zoya quietly left the hotel by herself for a walk, and was overcome by the memories as she wandered the streets and die boulevards and the parks she had once shared with Clayton. She went for a drink at the Cafe de Flore, and then, unable to stop herself, she took a cab to the Palais Royal, and stood silently in front of the building where she had lived with Evgenia. It had been seventeen years since she died, seventeen years of good times and bad ones, and hard work, and her beloved children. The tears rolled slowly down her cheeks as the memories of her grandmother and her late husband overtook her. It was almost as though she was waiting for him to tap her on the shoulder as he had the night they met. She could still hear his voice as though he had spoken to her hours before. The memories were overwhelming as she stood there, and then, turning slowly, she walked to the Tuileries and sat on a bench, lost in thought, watching the children playing in the distance. She wondered what it would have been like to bring Nicholas and Sasha up here, easier in some ways than it was in New York, but there her life moved at a brisk pace, and her work at Axelle's had given her life new purpose. She had been with Axelle for five years by then, and it was exciting to be on the buying end, instead of just waiting on endless hordes of spoiled, demanding women. She knew the women so well. They were women she handled well, women she understood, and had known all her life. More than once, she was reminded of her own mother. And the men liked Zoya too, she was just as capable of dressing their wives, as she was of discreetly outfitting the mistresses they brought there. No word of gossip ever escaped her lips, no unkind critique, merely good taste and interesting suggestions. Without her, Axelle knew the success of her shop would never have been as great. “The Countess,” as everyone called her, added an unmistakable air of aristocratic chic to the lives of wealthy New Yorkers. But now, suddenly, she felt far, far from there. She felt young again, and at the same time sad, thinking of the new life that had begun for her when last she was in Paris.
As she took a taxi back to the hotel, her heart gave a little leap as she wondered if she might meet Vladimir Markovsky. She looked for him in the phone book that night at the hotel, but his name wasn't there. She suspected that he might have died by then. He would have been almost eighty.
Axelle invited her to dinner at Maxim's that night, but with a nostalgic look in her eyes, she declined and said that she was tired and wanted to get a good rest before they began their tour of the collections. She didn't explain to Axelle that her memories of Clayton taking her to dinner there would be too painful Here, she constantly had to close the doors to the past. It seemed only a step from St. Petersburg. All of it was so close now. She wasn't half a world away anymore. She was right there, in the places she had discovered with Evgenia and Vladimir, the places Clayton had taken her to. It was almost too painful to be there, and she longed to get to work, so that she could forget the past, and delve into the present.
She called Nicholas that night, at his friend's, and told him all about Paris. She promised to take him there one day. It was such a beautiful city, and it had played an important role in her life. He told her to take care of herself, and that he loved her. Even at fourteen, almost fifteen now, he wasn't afraid to show his emotions. “It's the Russian in you,” Zoya teased him sometimes, lately thinking of how much like Nicolai he was at times, particularly when she heard him tease Sasha. Her call to her daughter was equally typical, Sasha had given her a shopping list of everything she wanted in Paris, which included a red dress and several pairs of French shoes. In her own way, she was as spoiled as Natalya had been, and almost as demanding. She wondered what Mashka would have thought of them, or what her own children would have been like, if she had lived to marry.
It was a relief to go to sleep that night, and escape the memories. The trip to Paris was far more difficult than she had thought it would be, and she dreamed of Alexis, and Marie, and Tatiana, and the others that night, waking at four in the morning, and unable to go back to sleep again until almost six. The next morning, she was tired when she ordered croissants and steaming black coffee.
