“I’ll be happy when I get a pair of Paolo Zachari’s shoes.” She pulled away from him as she spoke and headed for her room. “That sow Violet de Frémont has him at her beck and call, apparently.”

“Ah. Shoes again.” They were both reflected, dimly, in the tiny golden tiles that covered the walls. Two vague shapes, some distance apart from each other. He watched his reflection moving toward hers.

“It’s late.” She had her hand on the doorknob now. “Time for bed.”

He felt sad and heavy. Even his reflection looked sad. He thought about his wife giggling with her appalling friend earlier that evening. He remembered the contempt he’d seen in Lulu’s black-ringed eyes, the sneer at the corners of those red lips. Lulu was his enemy. He knew it now, with great clarity. And she was ever-present, or so it seemed. He could almost see her reflection in the golden wall tiles, along with his own and Genevieve’s.

“But you can join me,” she said. “If you want to, that is.”

( three )

ON THE AFTERNOON FOLLOWING the Countess de Frémont’s party, Genevieve made her way to Rumpelmayer’s, an Austrian salon de thé on the Rue de Rivoli, where she and Lulu met regularly—often when Lulu had just ended a love affair and wished to celebrate or console herself with a dessert.

She took a seat at her favorite corner table, beneath an arch, with a prime view of the comings and goings of the room, and she was already halfway through a Chocolat l’Africain (Paris’s best hot chocolate in a cup, prepared to a secret recipe) and a praline cake filled with almond meringue when Lulu arrived, still wearing her dress from the previous night. Some of the candy wrappers had gone, leaving only dangling threads. Her makeup looked thick and crumbly, and her curls were flattened.

“I’ll have a chocolate mousse,” Lulu called to the waitress. “And a café noisette.” And then more quietly, to Genevieve, “Am I being followed?”

Genevieve peered without seeming to peer. “Who should I be looking for? A gendarme? A fanatic? A wronged wife?”

Lulu shrugged. “Any of those, I suppose. But particularly Joe Lazarus.”

“Oh, dear. Has something happened?”

“He just won’t take no for an answer.” Lulu took off her wrap and sat down. “He’s following me about as if he’s my shadow. I should never have slept with him, Vivi. I don’t know what I was thinking of. He has such short legs. And his feet turn out. Walks like a penguin. I didn’t really notice until I saw him without his trousers, but once you’ve seen it you can’t ignore it. And he does this thing. He…” But a waitress came over with cutlery and napkins to set her place, and she let the sentence go.

“So the mousse is for poor old Lazarus.”