“My friend Barrow has written quite a bit on the subject and considers himself an expert,” said Gaston, leaning toward Audrey so that he could hear Favre. “It is one of his obsessions. It’s quite something to hear him go on about it. He was rambling something about a mysterious circus that had no physical building.”

“Oui,” said Favre. “It was rumored to have existed in Paris in the 1920s. Guests received tickets and were told where to go and voilà—a building would appear—out of nowhere.” Favre had once been the ringmaster of the Rivoli Circus, and he could tell a good story. “But”—he held out a finger—“only to the ticket holders. If the person next to you wasn’t holding a ticket, they did not see a circus in front of them at all.”

“Sounds a bit like Willy Wonka and the golden ticket.” Ben was playing with the stem of his wineglass. While she had been excited to be here with Ben, the illusion of Todd hung heavy over the evening, dampening what would have been her first date. And is this why she’d manifested Todd? Was she secretly afraid of moving on?

“We French are a little mad,” said Gaston with a wink.

Lara spied one of the boys who had been talking to Margot. As he went past her table, she reached for him. “Can I ask you a question?” She was up out of her seat, the momentum of his movement taking her several steps.

The man turned around to face her. From the smell of him, he’d had quite a few drinks. “Sure, darlin’… anything.”

“The woman I saw you with tonight. The one in the gold dress.”

The boy smiled and Lara could see the overlap in his front two teeth. “Margo. Yeah, I don’t know where she went to. I love those retro-looking woman, all Bettie Page.” He winked at her and Lara was nearly toppled by the whiskey on his breath. “She a friend of yours?”

“Something like that,” said Lara.

“I’d love to have her number.”

Smiling, Lara started back to her table, calling over her shoulder, “I don’t think she has a phone.”

When she turned back toward her own table, both Audrey and Ben were staring at her. Gaston was still talking and it didn’t sound like she’d missed much, but she was relieved. Someone else, drunk though he was, had seen Margot tonight. She wasn’t hallucinating.

“It was quite the destination for the rich and famous at the time—particularly your ‘Lost Generation,’” said Gaston, still on the subject of the painting. “According to Barrow, Josephine Baker, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Man Ray, and F. Scott Fitzgerald were all guests of Le Cirque Secret. Giroux was the only artist permitted to paint it, though, and that was significant.”