Something shifts in the room then. I imagined it would. An inconvenient silence. She busies herself with closing containers, tweaking her lips, avoiding my eyes. Eventually, she pushes herself back from the table and stands to face me.
“I’m going to be late. For my lunch. But… you put your number in the card, yes?”
“I did.” I stand, awkward. Her robe is gaping, her perfume is bewitching, and we are in this intimate space.
“Ah, bon, comme ça, je peux te téléphoner.”
I follow Anouk then, through the maze of rooms and out into the sunlit foyer. Her husband is still swimming laps in the distance. A picture of determination. She leads me down the stairs, her kimono billowing at her ankles, like a paper kite in the wind, and I am reminded of an old photo spread. Ethereal, diaphanous; Kate Moss, a sprite in the sand. Enrique Badulescu.Harper’s Bazaar. 1994.
“Merci encore. For the gift. And for not killing me.” She smiles and takes my glass, kisses both my cheeks, and then eases me out the door.
It is not until I reach Sunset that I realize I can still smell her on me. Cloves and rose and cinnamon and sandalwood. Anouk.
IV.THERE YOU ARE.
LOS ANGELES.
FEBRUARY. 2015.
The studio had chosen our house in the canyon. Evidently, they’d leased it for Daniel Craig when he was shooting interiors forThe Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and he’d had no complaints. François fell in love immediately. The wood paneling, the long halls of glass, the interior courtyard lush with flora, the black granite plunge pool, the adjacent creek, the modernist ’70s vibe. He called it an oasis. The kids compared it to a tree house. And to me it was the ideal escape from another drab winter in Paris. The abundance of life. The flow of indoor and outdoor spaces. Nature spilling through the seams.
I felt it that night at dinner. The glass doors were cracked only slightly, but the fragrance of night-blooming jasmine had already begun to permeate the air. Sweet and heavy with promise. The children were buzzing about at the table. Full of adolescent energy and zeal. Their angular bodies popping up and down and up again. Make-Your-Own-Taco Night, because when in California…
“You know, we’re supposed to do this on Tuesdays.”
“Do what?”
“Tacos. Taco Tuesdays. That’s how they do it here,” Lucie says, ever the fount of anthropological information.
I watch her assembling grilled chicken andsalsa verdeand cilantro sprigs onto her corn tortilla. Her dainty wrists, her fuzzy bun, herfavorite sweatshirt from a family trip to Oxford. She was still wearing her ballet gear underneath. She was built like a dancer. No breasts, no hips. Puberty had yet to have its way with her.
“I did not know that. No.”
“What number is that?” She turns to her brother, a goofy grin on her elfin face.
“Sixty-three.” Julien barely looks up from his plate. His stack is far more complex. A burrito, perhaps? There’s a pimple on his right cheek that I desperately want to pop. Unruly curls. Braces. Ah, thirteen.
“Ohhhh, Cecilia. You are not doing so good.” François smirks.
My family was keeping tabs. Ways that I had not prepared them for living in America. Minuscule details that I’d forgotten to mention before the big move that for some reason or another they found essential. No licorice chewing gum. School notebooks with lined, not graphed, paper. The absence of curlicues at the bottom of the number nine. And now apparently, the fact that tacos should be consumed exclusively on Tuesdays. I had failed them.
To be fair, I’d never intended to move back to the States. Life was good in Paris. Full. But I hadn’t intended to make a life in France either. The decision was made on a whim. January 1997. The incident with Didier. The breakup with the boy from Connecticut. The pressure of my parents and law school. I registered for a class at ENSBA. Landed astagiaireposition with renowned photographer Philippe LeRoi, and never looked back. François showed up for an interview at the studio some two years later. Fresh-faced and all of twenty-six. I liked them younger. Blue jeans, a thrift-store sports jacket, a cashmere scarf, and a motorcycle helmet. A weathered camera case slung across his narrow frame. Inside, a vintage Hasselblad. Both hand-me-downs from his grandfather, he would eventually reveal. I found it charming.
François started at the bottom rung of interns, running errands and sweeping floors. But he took his responsibilities seriously, showed up early, left late, and watched every one of Philippe’s moves like a hawk. In four months’ time, when Gabriele, the second assistant, left to work in Milan, François stepped into his position. And we clicked.
Philippe liked quiet, and so Fran and I created our own sign language of sorts. A shorthand for lights, lenses, stands, and scrims. We figured out a way to move around each other, beside each other, neverdisturbing the subjects or the camera. Like a dance. And at the end of the day, we would head to the café at the corner and I would drink Lillet or red wine depending on the season, and he would drink pastis and we would talk about photography and art and film. Gordon Parks and Godard and Varda. And Philippe’s work, which was both commercial and fine art. Exquisite portraits: subversive, unexpected, often controversial. Philippe wasn’t afraid to make things ugly. We both liked that.
And then one day he invited me back to his walk-up in the eighteenth to see a short film he’d been working on, and I said yes. Fifteen years later, he sits beside me constructing Mexican street food with our children in a multimillion-dollar California tree house being paid for by the production. Our cat, Leelou, seeking warmth by my feet.
“Maybe Taco Tuesdays is a new thing.” I shrug, trying to deflect. “Maybe it’s West Coast.”
Fran stares at me for a moment. His eyes narrowing, the side of his mouth quirking. The hint of a smile. “Even I know that tacos aren’t just West Coast.” He’s teasing, which he often does when he’s in a good mood. He’s had a stellar day in preproduction. They’ve locked down an important location in Calgary. One of several dozen they were scouting. Everything has been going his way. Everything always goes his way.
On Sunday, François had attended a couple of Oscar parties with one of his agents, having just returned from a quick jaunt to Paris. His most recent film,Salut, Bordeaux!, a smart action thriller that had become an international hit, had been nominated for a handful of César Awards. He had hoped I’d attend the ceremony and accompanying festivities with him, but my concussion thwarted that plan. In the end it was likely for the best. The film came away with two technical awards only, and I did not risk bumping into anyone I did not want to see.
“Did something come for me in the mail?” Julien asks mid-bite. There’s black beans and salsa on his cheek. He still eats like a four-year-old. Yet another way I’d failed him. To the chagrin of French and Jamaican moms alike.
“I don’t recall seeing anything. What were you expecting?”
