“Nothing. Just… something funny a friend said.”
He nods.
The lying has begun.
And so it happens again. And again. And again. In June, when François leaves for Alberta, Canada, for a two-month stint (the glacial backdrop substituting for yet another alien world), and I am flitting between anarray of end-of-school activities and packing Julien up to spend two weeks with his friend, Topher, and Eryx Barlow at the Barlows’ home in the Bahamas, while making arrangements for Jane and her girls to come and visit once school lets out. In the midst of it all, I carve out time to be with her. At her place. At mine. Once, in a hotel room at the Huntley following lunch at the Penthouse restaurant, overlooking the Pacific. She’d planned ahead and booked the room in advance.
She, in an Alaïa jersey pencil skirt that clings to her ass. And slingbacks.
It felt decadent and dangerous. And afterward, watching her reapply her lipstick at the vanity, from my perch on the bed, I couldn’t help but feel giddy.
I can smell her. On my hands. In my hair. On my face.
My muse.
“Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?” She smiles at me in the mirror.
“I’m just… happy.”
“Good.”
“You’re beautiful. This is crazy. We’re going to get caught.”
“Are those thoughts related, or no?”
“Maybe.” I laugh, rising to make my way across the darkened room. My blouse and pants are hanging neatly in the closet, because God forbid I show up to the valet looking wrinkled, as if I’d been doing what I’d been doing.
Anouk is the opposite. While I take time to brush and reconfigure my bun, she musses her hair, smudges her liner. She looks like a very wealthy woman who has just been fucked. And I think she likes it.
“I want to interview you for my project. To accompany the photos.”
“About beauty?”
I nod. Her eyes are peeled to me as I button my silk blouse, tuck it into my pants, fasten my snakeskin belt. We are ladies who lunch.
“Yes,” I say. “But nothing surface or glib.”
She takes a moment, grins. “So probablynotabout my makeup routine,non?”
I smile at that. “No. Probably not.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Bon,” she says, peeling back the blackout curtains and then reaching for her purse. “On y va?”
“On y va.”
The week school ended, I put Julien on a private plane to Harbour Island with the tennis champion and his kids (evidently Cressida’s allotted vacation time with the children was in August), and Jane and her girls arrived for ten days of sightseeing and catching up with their cousin. In between trips to Universal and Disneyland and the California Science Center, slipping off to be with Anouk was impossible.
But on one Friday afternoon, Minnie Atherton, of the save-the-elephants fundraising boutique, invited me to her Malibu house for lunch, fulfilling the promise she’d made back in April. She’d assembled a handful of girlfriends whom she hoped I would adore and who would make the transition to LA easier, if not fun.
We lunched on her back terrace, overlooking Carbon Beach. A mere few yards from where the waves were crashing before us. Jane came as my date. Neither of us had ever been to a private home in Malibu, and we welcomed the adventure.
The day before, during a bike ride along the ocean—the sun in our faces, the wind in our hair, my happy place—I’d prepped her.
“Just warning you, there’s a ridiculous amount of wealth here.”
