“How would she have this?”
“You tell me. It was in our bedroom closet. In Paris. In the box behind your sneakers.”
He looks at me, dumbfounded.
“What the fuck was she doing in our bedroom, François??”
“I don’t know, Cile. I don’t know.”
“What did you do with her?”
“Putain! I didn’t do anything.Je te jure! I didn’t touch her. I told you a bunch of them came to the house after dinner forun petit digestif. And she was there. I told you this. But I didn’t touch her.”
“She was in ourbedroom??”
“We were all in thesalon, Cile. Maybe she stepped out to go to the bathroom. I don’t know. I don’t remember. I wasn’t watching her the entire time. But I promise you I didn’t take her in there. I’m not stupid, you know.”
For a moment, I watch him. His eyes shifting from blue to brown and back again. And I genuinely don’t know whether to believe him.
“This is how it’s going to continue, isn’t it?” I say, eventually. “This is how it’s always going to be. I can’t trust you. I may never be able to trust you again. I don’t want to live like this, Fran. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don’t want to doubt you.”
“Then don’t,” he says, grabbing my wrists. His eyes, his face, hissoul imploring. “Don’t. I’m here, Cile. I’m here. I love you. I fucked up, I know. And I’m sorry. But I’m here.J’suis là.Je suis là.”
For a moment, I don’t say anything. He is crying. For the first time in as long as I can remember. And something inside of me breaks.
“I’m sorry you don’t like LA. I’m sorry America isn’t all the things it promised to be. But all of this… everything… none of it matters if I don’t have you and the kids. Go to Paris if you have to go to Paris. If you feel stifled here. Go. Make your art. Live your life. I’m going to finish these movies,” he says. “And then I’m coming home. I promise you; I’m coming home.”
I don’t know what it is about the way he’s said it, but I desperately want to believe him. And I begin to think that whatever detours we have taken these past few years—whatever meandering journeys through art and muses and infidelities—maybe all along we’ve been heading toward the same place.
In the days following, as I pack and make arrangements and clean out my studio, I unearth all my photos of Anouk. The shoot in her pool house, the snapshots from Sri Lanka, from Napa, from Deep Cove. And while each brings back a specific memory, my response to them is peculiar. Not a shattering devastation, like revisiting the Hamptons photos I’d taken of Lorry, so much as a quiet melancholy. The loss of a friendship. Someone who was once dear to me who betrayed me and moved on.
And really, I have no reason to continue to wallow. She was not my entire world. Not the way Lorry had been at one time. Not like Fran, or the kids. What we’d shared, no matter how immediate and intense, pales in comparison to what I have at home. And I realize then, that with Élodie, perhaps Fran felt the same.
I don’t hear from her again before we leave. On one unseasonably warm evening, I find myself in her neighborhood. My car leading me toplaces I wasn’t certain I wanted to go. And for a long time, I sit there, on the other side of the meridian, staring at the tall hedges and the imposing security gate. Knowing what exquisite enigmas lay beyond. The discreet butler, the Ironman husband, the audacious son. And Anouk. Beautiful Anouk. And as much as I want to hate her, as much as I want to label her as vengeful and malevolent, I cannot. Because I have come to know her and her eccentricities far too intimately. Because part of me understands that her behavior was a response to a lifetime of being admired, objectified, consumed. Entrenched in her bubble. And because part of me still sees her as the girl I left behind, on the beach.
It is time for me to let go.
XLVII.THE MORNING AFTER.
CABO SAN LUCAS. 1996.
SUNDAY.
Cecilia was exhausted. She hadn’t slept. The incident on the beach playing over in her head, disjointed and glitchy, like a Super 8 film. Had she missed something in translation? A subtext? A nuance? Could she have done something differently? Anything at all?
A bunch of them had met up for dinner at a local seafood place the night before. Cecilia had not had an appetite, but she went with the hope of seeing Anouk. Of checking to make certain she was okay. Of getting to the bottom of what had happened. But Anouk did not show. Neither had Didier.
And so she’d gone back to her hotel room and made numerous attempts to reach Lorry, but to no avail. When he didn’t answer his phone in Manhattan, she’d called his parents in Greenwich; it was the weekend, after all. But at each turn she was confronted by an answering machine. And she didn’t feel comfortable leaving more than one message, for fear that she would look like a clingy girlfriend desperately trying to hang on to the younger boy who’d decided they should be taking a “respite.” Which was indeed what she had become.
And so that morning, bereft and bleary-eyed, she and Marc and the other assistants packed up their belongings and took the vans over to Querencia Bay to pick up the others en route to the airport. As usual, Didier had requested they come to his casita to overseetransferring his luggage—including his cameras and equipment, and the bag of shot film, colloquially known as “the football”—because he did not trust the bellhop or resort with something so valuable. Marc headed directly over, but Cecilia took a quick detour to the front desk in the reception hall to pick up a package Sarah had left for her.
The makeup artist had taken an early flight to Miami but had told Cecilia at dinner that she would have something waiting. Cecilia was surprised to find a small shopping bag of beauty products. A couple of blushes suitable for her complexion, three lip glosses, a facial wash, a clay mask, and the Japanese eye cream. Inside was a small note:CECILIA, LOVE TO SEE A WOMAN IN A MAN’S JOB. KEEP DOING WHAT YOU DO.—S.
Cecilia was touched by the gesture. She knew makeup artists often handed out partially used or unused products to the talent following a big shoot, but no one had ever set anything aside for her before. No one had viewed her as more than the photographer’s second assistant. Most could not remember her name.
She was still inspecting the items in her bag as she made her way through the winding paths to Didier’s casita, which was why she almost missed it. But something familiar crossed her peripheral vision as she neared the fork by the row of southern-facing oceanfront suites. She turned her head. And there, in the archway of one of the entrances, just a few yards down the path, she spotted a mane of hair. Dark, wild, unmistakable.
Rafaella was beneath the portico, her back against the arch, and standing in front of her, leaning in, with his hands pinning both of hers to the wall above her head, was Elliot. Elliot Lyons-Thorpe with his perfect hair and posh-boy-pretty face. Cecilia was in such shock that for a moment she could not look away. His face was buried in the side of her neck. Her eyes closed, mouth ajar. His body pressed up against hers. Their fingers entwined. Rafaella lifted a skirted leg to wrap around his narrow hips, and Elliot dropped one hand to move between her thighs. Cecilia’s breath stopped.
