“Pas mal.” There it was again.Not bad.
“The series with all the faces fromJamaïque. Really exquisite,” she continues. “And the short film in black and white, the lovers inBroken. I’ve never seen anything like this. Like if you were to mix Merchant Ivory with Truffaut, but withdes Noirs.C’est exceptionnel. And the seriesBright Young Thing.Waouh!It’s visceral.…”
My breath catches. The latter was a series of intimate portraits I’d taken of Lorry the first summer we were together. The lines of hisface, the furrow of his brow, the flecks of gold in his arresting eyes. The backdrop, the lawn at his parents’ cottage in East Hampton. A six-bedroom gray-shingled Cape Cod on West End Road with a wraparound porch and a manicured yard that looked out onto the Atlantic. We were nearing the end of a memorable week in that house, and I’d shot him one afternoon, supine in the grass. He’d been teaching me about global warming, inspired by his current read, ironically titledCompost This Book!He’d had the weight of the world on his beautiful shoulders. Poor little Lorry Kenter, surrounded by endless privilege and wealth, and yet tortured. Somehow, I’d captured that, and then some.
“It was a lifetime ago,” I say.
“They’re really intense. Like you canfeelsomething is going on in those photos. With the boy. Who is he?”
“An old friend.”
“A friend? Who would look at you like that? Whoyouwould look at like that?” She smiles, coy. “I don’t think he’s just a friend.”
“Lorry,” I say. And as always, it catches in my throat. “I was utterly in love with him. And he broke my heart. Three times. Even looking at those photos, all these years later, is still painful.”
I didn’t tell her that it was like picking at a scab. A scab that had never fully healed. That was thickened and discolored and still oozed pus when I least expected it.
“I think we all have one of those,” she says.
A server steps out onto the terrace then, proffering a tray of minicupcakes. I decline, but Anouk smiles, selecting a red-velvet one. In LA, I’ve noticed, women typically abstain from desserts, or share one or two in a group. In France, desserts are taken very seriously. And not shared.
“So,” she says, mid-bite, while I am snapping the view with my phone, “where is he now?”
“Here, actually. In Los Angeles.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Not in seventeen years…” I pause. “… and nine months. But who’s counting?”
She nods, takes another bite. “Mathias Bonnaire. He was mine. I was seventeen. He destroyed me. I thought the best way to getrevenge was to become a big model, so he’d have to see my face everywhere. A reminder of what he gave up. And that eventually he would come crawling back. He did. But by then I didn’t want him.”
She finishes her cupcake, then crumples her napkin. “Dismissing him was delicious.”
For a moment, I say nothing, musing on her calculated vengefulness. I’m distracted by her tongue darting to lick a smudge of icing at the corner of her mouth.
“What does Lorry do?” she asks. “Is he an actor?”
“Oh God, no.” I laugh. I could not think of anything worse than dating an actor. Well, maybe a musician. I’d done that once. It was not pretty. Also,datewas a charitable word.
“I believe he’s now teaching mindful-awareness classes.”
“Noooo.Vraiment?Ici? What did you say his name was?”
I freeze. A realization setting in. The possibility that she could know him. “Lorry Kenter. Sorry,Laurence. Laurence Kenter.”
It takes her a minute, and I can see the wheels turning. “Lau-rence!” She says it with the French pronunciation. It makes Lorry sound far more alluring than he probably is. “Lau-rence Kehn-teur.”
“Do you know him?”
“Yes! I mean, not well, no, but he used to teach at the Meditation Station on San Vicente. I took a few of his classes and did a workshop with him once. He was really good. I think he opened his own practice.”
Of course he did. Of course she had.
“Seventeen years, huh? I assume he doesn’t know you’re here?”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“You should find him. Let him see how beautiful you are. How accomplished.”
