The party was packed with people shouting in a dozen languages and soon the barge began to glide down the river. There was a stereo blasting in the salon and couples danced, while women wearing originals from the rue Sainte Honoré shrieked as they greeted each other, as though they hadn’t seen each other in twenty years. The air reeked of perfume and the unique smell of Paris, that unmistakable melange of garlic, Gauloise smoke and café au lait. Lori and Randy disappeared and Jean-Paul was taken in tow by Angela, an attractive blonde, in her forties at least, Kelly thought cattily, who had once appeared in a Truffaut film.

Kelly wished someone would ask her to dance, but the men seemed afraid to approach her, somehow intimidated by her classic blond beauty. She wondered if she would always feel that way. Once, when she was a teenager, her father had said, “Beauty can be as much of a burden as ugliness, kiddo.” In school, the boys who had always been so brash, would fall silent and nudge each other when she went by. As she passed, she could feel their hot eyes on her body. She remembered how Brad would always stammer, “You’re so beautiful” in the car, before they began their nightly tussle.

“Beauty is only skin deep,” she had snapped, when she finally realized that all he was after was to brag that he had screwed the prettiest girl in the school.

“Who wants more … a cannibal?” he had retorted with a silly grin, and he couldn’t understand why she had began to cry.

She stepped outside the salon and found a spot not occupied by the embracing couples. Beauty didn’t merely snare those attracted to it, it trapped its owners forever, she thought.

She stood at the rail, holding a glass of wine and watching reflections of the city lights shattered like glass on the surface of the Seine. The light breeze of the boat’s passage ruffled her hair and she could hear the sounds of the stereo in the salon, thumping its way through an old Beatles tune. She was still annoyed because of the way Jean-Paul was acting. He was dancing with Angela, his slim tan body tightly pressed against hers, and he was murmuring something that made Angela’s eyes burn as though with fever. Just an hour before, at the club, he had told Kelly that she was brilliant, truly “éclatante” and now he was probably telling Angela the same thing. He couldn’t be the one, she thought. The boat was approaching the Pont de la Tournelle and ahead she could see the spotlighted towers of Notre Dame, bathed in white light. She remembered thinking that it was so beautiful and somehow sad too and her eyes began to water.