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‘Non, non.You Americans do not understandl’esprit.’
‘You feel their spirit?’
‘I sense what they have, how do you say,avoir terriblement envie de quelque chose?’
‘You sense what they have terrible cravings for.’
‘Précisément.I do. Not the exact food, but I sense if they have the craving to be comforted, or maybe they have the craving to be excited. Then, I know what they need to eat. It’s not so difficult, not the rocket science.’
‘And do you know what I have the craving for?’
‘You? Yes. To me, you are an open window.’
‘Book– I’m an open book.’
‘Exactement– you are. You have the craving for the good story. You want the grand adventure to tell your American friends in Boston. You will tell them about the witch with blue hair who lured you to her bed. You will tell them how she understood your desires, andcast’ – she paused for affirmation, and he smiled – ‘a spell on you.’
It was true. He did want to tell people about her, but not some schoolboyish bragging. She made him want to publish a paper in a scientific journal, to inform the world of the exquisite, magical being he had discovered. His phone was filled with photos of Noémie, but not one of them seemed to capture her. She hated the camera, and it paid her back in kind. Her nose looked too big or her skin too sallow or her expression too serious. He’d have carved a statue of her, if he could; he’d have painted a picture of her, just as she was now, laid back and naked, her skin faintly luminous. All he could do was what he had been attempting to do all summer: all he could do was capture her in words – or try to. At least then he’d have something to bring home with him. He thought about what the old guy in the shop had said abouttellingher. He didn’t know where to start. He didn’t know if she would laugh at him. He didn’t know exactly what to say.
‘Émie?’
She extinguished the cigarette, turned towards him and laid her head on his shoulder. ‘Hmm?’
He whispered into her hair, ‘I don’t want to go without you.’
She kissed his neck, just below his ear. ‘Then don’t go.’
‘I have to go sometime – you know that. Probably pretty soon.’
‘Then you must go.’
He turned on his side so that they lay with foreheads touching.Tell her. He heard the man’s voice in his head.
‘I want you to come with me,’ he said.
‘Youwantme?’
‘God, yes.’
She turned and swung her legs out of the bed, padded quietly across the floor to the bathroom and closed the door. He didn’t know what that meant.
Saturday
Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we call the dead?
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
Just Keep Swimming
Harry lay back and let the warm water of L’Hôtel’s swimming pool fill his ears. He watched shards of reflected light dance across the vaulted ceiling and listened to the persistent pulse of blood through his arteries. The place was like a church. Who built it, he wondered, and what would they have thought of rich Americans paying thousands to lie in it? And what sort of name was that for a hotel anyway?TheHotel, as if it was the only one.
Mind you, Jenny had struck gold again with this one, the final abode of Oscar Wilde. How did she do it? Even the name of the street was like something from a fairy tale: rue des Beaux Arts – the street of beautiful arts, was that it? Did movie-making count as art? Not his movies.Speed and Hot Saucewas not art, and its sequels,Speed and More SauceandHold the Saucehardly even qualified as movies. They were cash cows, simple as that. But this new one? Maybe.Someone at a Distancesounded arty enough, didn’t it?
It was Jenny who’d come across the novel on some nerdy blog about forgotten books. When she’d begged him to read it with a view to commissioning a script, he had laughed in her face. This, surely, was an art house job, not one for Saucy Productions. Jenny had a way, though, of persevering, until he had eventually agreed to read – just read, mind – the damn thing.
That was when Harry discovered that Jenny, for all her apparent sweetness, had a cruel streak. The book told the story of his life: the story of a content couple in early middle age with a sweet, happy daughter. It was the age-old, well-worn story of a man who, despite knowing better, fails to resist the temptation of someone sexy and new. It was the story of a guy who wanted his old life back, and Harry knew exactly how he felt. The similarities were uncanny. The guy even rode a bicycle alongside his daughter on her pony, just like Harry used to do with Caroline. He had put that into the film; it was his favourite scene.
He kicked off from the wall and swam a full length of the pool, flipped, swam back. It wasn’t a big pool. He went over again and leaned against the wall to catch his breath. It didn’t look as though Caroline would ever come around to forgiving him. Even though he phoned her on holidays and took her out for lunch every year around the week of her birthday, his daughter still avoided meeting his eye. Losing her trust was his greatest regret. It was the thing that was going to weigh him down, right to the end.
