Free Grace by Calvin Baker

himself to pleasure,” Davidson nodded. “He sleeps with a woman from every country.”
    â€œSeriously?” I asked.
    â€œDid you just roll your eyes at me?”
    â€œOf course not. I only rolled my eyes. The pursuit of material pleasure leaves him depleted—creatively, emotionally, psychically—until, in his collapse, he must find a new purpose, an internal sense of where his true home is. This becomes the movie he needs to make in order to bury the past, and move into his next self. It is the question of how to be when there is no longer an external narrative to guide you, and the narrative you gave yourself in youth no longer holds.”
    Davidson laughed. “Yes. It was just like that. Everything except the coup de grâce . So you think you figured me out?”
    â€œYou? No, but I figured out your movie. That is not life as we said yesterday, except maybe slantwise. In a story something happens and there is a reason for it. And if something should happen to blow up, no one is truly hurt. In life things are not that way.”
    â€œThere are signs in life,” he said wistfully, “when we are awake to them.”
    â€œSigns, maybe, but that is not the same as meaning.”
    â€œWhich is why we need stories, and why they must be true, and characters must be true unto themselves.”
    â€œToo much,” I said, leaving to meet Genevieve. “I have a date.”
    It was mid-evening, and the city was cast in rose gold as I stopped to buy flowers from a street vendor before climbing the cobblestones up the hill. Someone in one of the flats along the street was listening to Edith Piaf on an old record player, and I felt free and light. I was in my own story, and where I belonged and where I was supposed to be.
    This feeling of utter peace and belonging rose in me, I knew, not because I adored Paris, but because I was in love, and that is all I ever need to feel truly home.

11
    Genevieve was downcast when I arrived back at the apartment, so I suggested we go to the Cinémathèque to lift her spirits. There was a retrospective of Noir, New Wave, and Neorealism playing, and a Truffaut movie was just starting when we reached the box office. I went to purchase tickets, but she made an elaborate pantomime of standing conspicuously still, like a spy in an old movie, until the usher turned away momentarily and she snuck into the theater. When I found her in the dark she was in a lighter mood, and by the time we walked back into the torpid night air it was as though nothing had ever been wrong.
    On the sidewalk out front someone called my name, and I looked up to see Davidson. He was on a date with a blonde named Elsa, who had hypnotic cat eyes. They were both in full eveningwear, dressed for something formal, but had just exited the Fellini film. I asked where they had been.
    â€œWe were at a party earlier,” Davidson answered. “It was uptight, so we left.”
    Elsa was stunning in her gown and a pair of emerald earrings that matched her eyes and cost a car each. I know what they cost the same way I knew Davidson’s midnight-blue evening suit had been cut for him in London, and that his shoes were hand-stitched for him in Milan, and what they cost, because Davidson told me. He did not buy brands, he had things made no one else had, and took mischievous pleasure in pricing all of it.
    They cut a glamorous figure, especially compared to us in our blue jeans, but he suggested we join them for dinner at a place he knew near Montparnasse. We agreed, and the four of us piled into a taxi, through a part of the city. We arrived at what turned out to be a two-star restaurant, where we did not have reservations. But the wool of Davidson’s suit whispered power, and the emeralds shone money. The maître d’hôtel got the point and seated us at a high table in a corner by a big picture window, which opened onto the street and caressing night air.
    We ordered