Searching for Tina Turner - By Jacqueline E. Luckett Page 0,76
two men leave the table and step into the kitchen. Through the open door, both Cheryl and Lena watch them; their hands fly through the air, punctuating their rapid French.
“What is the matter with you?” Cheryl pouts. “Look at them. I’m sure they’re talking about you. You’re rude.”
“Good. Maybe he’s getting my message. Give me the car keys.”
“Jean-Pierre is all talk. You have to learn to ignore men like that. The more you resist, the more they pursue.”
“He’s a little talk and a lot of pawing, Cheryl. I want to go back to Nice.” Lena holds her hand out. Cheryl shakes her bag and the keys to the rental car clink. If they were in the States, Lena would have snatched the keys from Cheryl’s bag and let her find her own way back.
“What if I ask Philip to tell Jean-Pierre to get lost? We’ll have a nightcap and then head back to Nice. Just do it for me.”
Lena stands by the table, grateful that the restaurant is now empty. The night Randall gave her the yellow diamond flashes in her head—a different situation, but the plea is the same. While she waits for Cheryl to come to her senses, the voices of the two men discreetly arguing are still the loudest sound in the room. It is no surprise to either of the women when Jean-Pierre huffs out of the kitchen and heads straight to the front door without saying goodbye.
“Please, please, please, pay my impetuous friend no mind,” Philip says, returning to the table. His face is half smile, half know-it-all. “He has another engagement. Let me make it up to you. I invite you, mes amies, to my house for a petite nightcap before you head back to Nice.”
“I’d love to see a real French home. Well,” Cheryl says looking at Philip, “an almost-real French home.”
If they were in Oakland, Lena would have fussed at Cheryl and perhaps put distance between the two of them. At home she would still be married. No, at home and in France she is less than one hundred twenty days from being truly divorced. This anger comes from a place she has had enough of: fear.
A fake smile freezes on Cheryl’s face while she whispers in Lena’s ear so close that only the two of them know what is being said. “What is the matter with you? We are not nineteen, and you cannot be mad at me for doing something you think is wrong. Get it together, Lena. This is the single life. Enjoy.”
She shouldn’t care what Cheryl does or who she does it with. “I know.” Lena stands, arms limp at her sides, eyes blink rapidly to keep back tears, and considers the question she has not thought of before: is this what being single again is going to be like? Backward instead of forward when she needs to move ahead. Here, she guesses, her options are the same: to leave or stay; but she would never forgive herself if something happened to her friend. Fifteen minutes later they arrive at the door of a small building outside the walled city.
“Permit me to give you a tour of my apartment.” Philip uses French pronunciation: ah-par-tuh-MAWN. “Small by U.S. standards, but good-sized for this part of the world. Non?” The place is barely half the size of his restaurant; the kitchen is narrow and neat, with nothing on the single stone counter except a speckled canister, two espresso cups, and a bouquet of yellow daisies. An orderly stack of French, American, and Spanish cookbooks sits atop the small refrigerator. Philip opens the door to his bedroom. “This, as you can see, is the bedroom.” He tickles Cheryl, presses his leg into her thigh, his lips to her lips. When he pulls away his lips are tinged with Cheryl’s red lipstick.
“Make yourself comfortable, Lena.” Cheryl giggles. “I’m going to visit with Philip for a while.”
“Fuck on your own time, please. Like you said, we are not teenagers.”
“The French are so much more civilized about this kind of thing.”
Lena cuts her eyes, hoping that her friend will understand that she is serious. “He’s not French.” Isn’t this like being with Randall? Lena muses as she catches a glimpse of a neatly made bed with a white duvet before Philip closes the door behind them. Following somebody else’s agenda instead of her own?
Moving through the apartment, Lena peeks into the bathroom. A pitcher on the bathroom counter is heavy with sprigs of dried