Hotelles (23 page)

“Do you think I can tell Annabelle our little secrets?”

The white-haired man shot a conspiratorial look at my future husband.

“Please do, sir! There will be plenty of others on D-day.”

Secrets? What were they talking about?

I shivered at the idea of what these two might be hiding, but I pretended to be excited as a little girl.

“Tell me!” I said.

“Okay, well, first of all, you should know that everyone on your list is coming.”

Even Fred? I wondered to myself.

“And you have to help me with the seating chart. You cannot let two hundred fifty people seat themselves at random.”

I had heard correctly: he had said two hundred fifty guests . . . more than my address book had ever contained.

“But how will we fit everyone!” I exclaimed, my eyes scanning the insufficiently large room.

“Barely. That's why we're going to set up two platforms in the garden. It's going to be tight, what with the stage, the bar, the safety perimeter for the firework display . . . But I've done a few simulations; we should be able to do it, and without feeling like we're taking the metro at rush hour.”

“And if it rains?” David inquired.

“I called your contact at the Weather Channel. He has promised me that not one drop of rain is to fall on Paris between the fifteenth and twentieth of June. That's a guarantee from the biggest weather service, the one NASA uses, I think.”

Armand was like a magician from an enchanted world that David was contriving to build around me. He had thought of everything.

“And about you know who?”

“She'll be here. Don't worry. She even promised to appear live on your show, Elle, at a date of your choosing.”

“Awesome!” David said with childlike enthusiasm.

“Depending on her availability and travels to France, of course,” Armand was quick to add.

I played dumb; it's what was expected.

“
You know who?
”

In reply, Armand rummaged through his pile of loose papers and withdrew the latest CD by an artist who would perform at our wedding, just a few feet from where I was standing: the biggest star of the last thirty years in person.

Not that I was a big fan, but who in the world wouldn't want such a celebrity at their wedding?

“However, her agent was very clear: a one-hour set, not a minute more.”

“What does that mean?” David asked. “About fifteen songs?”

“That's right. A dozen, plus about three encores. The time for a glass of champagne and a slice of cake would be a bonus, if she agrees to stay fifteen minutes after her performance.”

I couldn't get over it. Madonna wasn't just going to come to our wedding. She was going to sing for a whole hour!

David was also beside himself.

“Thank you for everything, sir.”

“You're welcome, David.”

“Now, if you don't mind, I would like a moment alone with Elle.”

“Of course.”

He quietly retreated, leaving a light trace of cologne in his wake.

While Louie could make my body tremble without touching me, David had the miraculous ability to erase all my childish worries with a few words: I did not doubt for a moment that all of Armand's miracles had been at his behest. With him, I was no longer a modest little girl who had been abandoned by her father and raised by a struggling single mother. I was becoming what he had seen before anyone else: competent, self-assured . . . winning. And it felt crazy good.

He spoiled me with attention and surprises. Still, I felt more like a spectator than an actor in the coming event, as though I were a guest at my own wedding. It was nice not having to handle the logistics, but it disassociated me so much from the process that I would not have been surprised if someone told me that the bride was some other woman. From my golden cage, I would have at least liked to choose the color of my perch or the contents of my feeder. This perfectly scripted event seemed like the exact opposite of David and Aurora's wedding, which had been so spontaneous, so passionate!

“I have one last surprise for you . . .”

A parachute jump from Duchesnois House in my wedding dress, like Johnny Hallyday at the Stade de France?

“Yes?” I simpered.

Our wedding was going to be broadcast live and all over the world on BTV?

“I haven't had the chance to discuss it with you . . . but I didn't want to do our honeymoon in just any postcard destination.”

Images of endless beaches and an azure sea faded out, but I didn't really regret it. I knew we had a lifetime, and all the means in the world, for that kind of caprice.

Exaggerating my enthusiasm, I coaxed him to tell me.

“So . . . where are we going?”

“To the sea . . . but not on the other side of the world. Here. I mean, in France.”

“You want me to guess, is that it?”

My playful suggestion threw him off.

“No . . . No. I just wanted you to know that this place means more to me than any other. Even more than here. And I wanted to share it with you.”

“Okay.” I nodded, smiling submissively. “But you don't want to tell me until we're there, am I right?”

“That's right!”

Suddenly he was beaming.

But my next question would squelch that.

The sea . . . A place so important to him that he couldn't imagine spending our wedding night anywhere else . . . A pilgrimage that, by the grace of our love, he considered therapeutic, I supposed. What other place could it be, besides the one where Aurora had died?

My thoughts and my tongue became one:

“The ring you gave me . . .”

“I know, it's too small. Armand told me you gave it to him to adjust.”

“That's not it . . . The ring, it was worn by someone besides your mother, wasn't it?”

He froze, suddenly stone-faced.

“You've given it to someone before.”

“Who told you this rubbish?”

The man before me was no longer the seductive, honey-voiced David, but the captain of industry, a cold-blooded animal who led his life like a series of hostile IPOs.

“The ring, David . . . It speaks for itself. You and Aurora, you married in 1988?”

His features contracted. Suddenly, there was no difference between his face and that of his brother. His sweet expression had disappeared, and I felt like I was seeing a monstrous hybrid of the Barlet brothers emerging before my very eyes.

“1988,” I insisted. “It's the most recent engraving on the ring.”

“I don't know what you're talking about!”

He closed the small distance separating us with alarming rapidity. There he was standing before me, menacing.

“Aurora Delbard,” I bluffed. “She was your first wife . . . yes or no?”

“Is Louie the one who has been telling you this garbage?”

My silence was like a confession. I saw that David was fighting to control himself. With every breath, he seemed calmer, his discourse more ordered.

“I don't know what that bonehead told you . . . Yes, we did both meet an Aurora Delbard when we were in our twenties. What he clearly left out of his story is that he was the one who fell madly in love with that girl. He even wanted to marry her. Unfortunately for both of them, she fell in love with me.”

“What about you?”

“No, I did not.”

Without thinking, I suddenly grabbed his left forearm. He didn't have time to stop me before I'd seized his silk armband. He grimaced in anger. Or was it pain?

“So this thing you wear on your arm, it's not for Aurora? Are you sure?”

He tried to free himself from my grasp, but I held on tightly, like a mariner gripping a bulwark in the midst of strong winds and swells the size of buildings. Each of his efforts to liberate himself crashed into me like another wave.

“Let go of me! You're hurting me!”

“Answer me, David . . .”

He struck without warning. The immediate effect: I let go. Then a switch went on, which all women have, and I started crying.

“Elle, I'm sorry . . . I . . .”

I straightened, humiliated and racked with sobs, which my last shreds of pride and dignity tried to quell. I whispered in a gruff voice that was not my own:

“Fuck off! Fuck off!”

He must have understood that any effort to calm me would be in vain because he didn't try to stop or cajole me as I crossed the room. I grabbed my bag from the console in the entry as well as a cardigan I had left there.

On the other side of the monumental entryway, I noticed, without really thinking about it, that almost half of the sand in the hourglass had already dropped to the bottom. Felicity had her paws glued to the glass and was trying to catch the falling grains of sand. One foot out the door, enraged, I realized that the thing being consumed evaded me just as it did the animal's claws. Everything was going as fast as that sand, including my life.

20

W
hen you reach adulthood, you know how to listen to your body's signals without feeling like it's betraying you. You become determined. You forget your doubts. You take action. Your breath quickens, or perhaps it grows calmer. Your muscles contract or relax. I mean to say that you do not have to be an extraordinary woman to notice the physical signs that come from a desire to fight. Tension before the battle. The élan vital of defense or protection.

 

IT WAS NOT YET EIGHT
o'clock when I left Duchesnois House. I spent two hours meandering, and never even got the urge to sit or have a Monaco. Instead, I needed to maintain my martial resolve, my warrior force.

Please come home. We need to talk. Calmly. I love you.

 

As I walked, I erased each one of David's messages without so much as a reply. Every time I pressed the delete button, I felt my anger mount. He could send as many messages as he liked; my mind was made up: I was going to spend the evening at the Hôtel des Charmes. To punish him, no doubt, but also to find some of that strange form of comfort that comes from being submissive, as well as that light debasement.

With every step, I grew calmer. I imagined Louie's dark eyes and the way his lashes had fluttered at me when he'd uttered that word during our meeting at work: “Hotelles.”

I was going to the damned rendezvous to give myself to him but also to tear what shreds of truth I could from him. I wasn't playing them against each other. I was playing for myself, first and foremost. When I confronted him with David's version, how would he reply? Was the story with Aurora Delbard just an adolescent fling, one more episode in their endless rivalry? If that were the case, then why had David reacted so violently when I'd asked about his armband?

When at last I stepped inside the Hôtel des Charmes, after wandering the neighborhood with no other aim but to air out my fury, I was really wound up, ready to strangle anyone who got in my way  . . .

Monsieur Jacques, for instance, and his conspicuous gallantry.

“Hello, Elle . . .”

“I don't know what you and Louie Barlet are up to . . . ,” I snarled before he could offer his salutations, “but let me tell you, I won't be locked in one of these rooms. Shut me in again . . . and I'll report you! Do you hear me?”

He was dazed for a moment; then he straightened, regaining his natural elegance and self-assurance. He smiled affably and slowly replied, articulating each syllable:

“But what exactly would you have to report, Elle? Solicitation? Prostitution? Two or three of the hotel's regulars could testify to the fact that you offered them favors in exchange for cash. Is that really what you want, Mademoiselle?”

Though he was at last revealing his true face, he managed to remain as courteous as ever. He was threatening me while maintaining all the tact and grace that the clientele—especially the foreigners—so appreciated in him.

“Not to mention, I could easily deny you access to the rooms at this instant,” he added, certain of his power over me. “And I do not believe that would suit you. Otherwise, you would not be here tonight, and right on time, I might add.”

So he was in on Louie's schemes. And he understood how badly I wanted to see him, though he was mistaken about my intentions.

I was going to counterattack. I, too, had a story for the police—and the punctilious justice system—about how his famous “rooms by the hour” were camouflaging a vulgar brothel. But a cheerful voice addressed me from behind:

“Elle? Elle, is that you?”

 

I QUICKLY TURNED AROUND, MY
nerves frayed, ready to smack the first person who crossed me, when I recognized my client from the week before, the forty-something sporty but awkward guy, the one who asked all those questions: “Which position do you prefer?” The one I had naively supposed would be my last.

“Hello . . . ,” I stammered, surprised and irritable.

But the worst part was not his unexpected appearance. He was with that perfect-bodied ethnic girl Louie had been parading the night we met, the Vine. Her ideal body was once again glued to her date. She gave me a haughty look.

Had she worked for Belles de Nuit? Now that the website and catalogue were gone, I had no way of checking. Regardless, I figured that with her thoroughbred body she could offer her services directly, without having to bother with an intermediary.

His look was more one of surprise than desire. The man exclaimed, too loudly for my taste:

“My word! You're everywhere!”

“Excuse me?”

“Wait . . . Didn't I see you five minutes ago in Place Saint-Georges?”

To be sure, I had been wandering the neighborhood, blinded by distress and haunted by ghosts, but I was almost certain I had not been there.

“Yes . . . Yes, that was me . . . ,” I confirmed so as not to trouble him.

 

I TOOK LEAVE OF THEM
as politely as I could, considering the circumstances, and hurried toward the elevators, where a bellboy was waiting for me. I was almost disappointed it was not Ysiam, my sweet and timid Indian, but a tall redhead with a stubby nose and cheeks more stippled than my own.

“La Païva, please.”

“La Païva,” the elevator operator repeated. “Fifth floor.”

The doors were silver: the same opalescent, iridescent color Louie used for his messages. Somehow, I understood that this floor belonged to him, perhaps exclusively, and that I was about to set foot in his kingdom.

Without saying a word, the redhead led me to one of the doors and inserted the keycard into the reader. The hinges creaked lightly as the door opened onto the most baroque room I had ever seen in this hotel.

Like the original—which is still open to visitors on the Champs-Élysées—this identical replica of the marquise's apartments was an extravagant profusion of precious materials and ornaments. The most striking element of the room, decorated in the style of the Second Empire, was without contest the wooden coffered ceiling, with its fine chiseling, inlaid work, and gilded ridges. Beyond the traditional square, the ceiling treatment was fashioned into ovals and diamonds that tapered in points toward the floor, like stalactites, and capped with a kind of knob.

Giant mirrors framed by antique columns flanked the room, and elegant bronze caryatids formed the base of a fireplace, which was oddly situated under the window. Was it purely decorative?

Floral tapestries picked up every nuance of the thick purple carpeting, which covered the floor and muffled the clicking of my heels. In the stupid hope of dominating my subject, I had worn my evening shoes, as defined by Rebecca, from my outfit number three. Six inches of lofty femininity and discomfort. That day of shopping with Rebecca seemed so far away . . .

I did not wait to be told to take them off and enjoy the direct contact of my feet against the generous and supple wool. In my own way, wearing my finest—read, Eugenie's necklace—I was in perfect harmony with my surroundings. I was not simply a guest; I
was
the Païva
.

I had just observed that this room, as opposed to the previous one, contained no apparent modern technological device, when a few notes of music filled the air around me, betraying the presence of an amplification device somewhere in the paneling. I recognized the piece . . . but I could not put a finger on its title or the artist.

“It's ‘Tunnels' by Arcade Fire.”

My heart thumped in fright. Then I recognized the voice that had spoken, that underlined the beating drums and wound through the piano's volutes. It had surprised me, but it was familiar. It was Louie's voice, of course. I felt a sense of relief; undeniable, irrepressible pleasure, even.

On the other side of the room, I heard the lock click. I was his captive again.

I was dazed for a moment, and then set myself to regaining the upper hand. I addressed him loudly and naturally, as though he were by my side. A rush of blood surged through my temples, the base of my neck, my lower abdomen.

“Could you stop the theatrics for a moment?”

“Theatrics? Erotic theater, then . . . and in which you have fully assumed your role, Elle. Do I need to play your performance from last night to convince you?”

That he had filmed everything was no surprise. Just another chink in my armor.

I don't know why, but it occurred to me that my solitary exploration from the other night had not been accompanied by music. Except for the two actors on screen and their yelling and moaning, perhaps the best soundtrack imaginable  . . .

“Finding the perfect music for making love is a long-term project,” he said from behind the scenes. “For some, it takes a lifetime. I've spent years, and I'm still not sure if I've found the ideal score.”

I understood: if I wanted to make him talk, to bring him bit by bit onto
my
turf, I would first have to accept his rules. Only then would I gain enough leverage to convince him to give me a few crumbs of truth and a tiny glimpse into his past with Aurora.

“And what do you think sex music should sound like? I'm curious . . .”

My sudden interest must have startled him, as it took him a moment to reply. Then at last:

“A slow rhythm. Almost mechanical. For most of us, pleasure only comes with repetitive movement and stimulation . . . The accompanying music should mimic this regularity, this stubbornness to make the other come.”

“Okay. I'd like to believe you, but give me a few examples. I'm sure your mind is crawling with them.”

“Oh, you don't have to be a music buff. Some of the most well-known pieces are poorly disguised odes to sexuality—and its particular tempo. Ravel's
Boléro
, for instance, with its mounting crescendo and final explosion.”

The sonorous metaphor was indeed rather explicit.

“And what else?” I insisted. “Something you could play for us right now . . .”

“I don't know . . .”

“Something that would reflect who I am . . . ,” I urged. “Me.”

Challenging him like that was not going to give me the upper hand, but I thought it might balance our powers. I wasn't one of his bimbos to be sacrificed to his erotic whims. I was becoming his partner, a thought I found extremely comforting.

I had not paid particular attention to the bed until then. It was difficult not to notice it, however, as it was massive. The head- and footboards were wooden jigsaws, on which I made out cherub figures holding lyres and harps.

Sitting atop the bed, I found a mask. It wasn't like the white ones worn by the two anonymous lovers from the night before. It was more of a Venetian carnival mask. I was instantly reminded of one of the few erotic films I'd seen in my life, under the pretext of cultural edification: Stanley Kubrick's
Eyes Wide Shut
. It was also one of the few films in my pantheon of cinematographic memories that was capable of arousing me. In a flash, I recalled that magnificent woman, naked, perched atop heels as high as mine today, who ends up stretched out in the morgue, under Tom Cruise's bewildered gaze. He's ready to kiss her blue lips, an eternal kiss.

“This, for example . . . ,” Louie said after a while—the time it had taken, I figured, for him to find the right piece.

A pulsating rhythm filled the room, and I shivered as I associated a name with the deafening beat resonating throughout my body: I had always loved  . . .

“ ‘Karmacoma,' ” I said. “Massive Attack.”

“I see you know your classics. It's almost surprising, for someone your age. After all, you were only nine or ten when this album came out.”

“Isn't that the definition of a classic? Something that outlives the generation that saw its birth?”

The music was only one part of his choice. The lyrics were just as important. They expressed a message that Louie was not able to formulate by himself. The voice of the singer 3D in the mythical group from Bristol introduced itself into a silent dialogue between Louie and me:

You sure you want to be with me

I've nothing to give

Between stanzas, the persistent tempo and swaying flute urged my hips into movement. Without quite realizing it, I had started to dance. Slowly, almost imperceptibly. A trance: that was the effect of such music. And of all sexual encounters?

Don't want to be on top of your list

Phenomenally and properly kissed

But I could not let myself get carried away. I did not want to fall into his deceitful and perverse web, not again, though he had known how to affect me, plucking I don't know what invisible chord. I had to stay focused and steer us back to the issue that had brought me here:

“How old would Aurora be today?”

“I don't know what she has to do with this!” he said coldly.

“David says you're the one Aurora drove mad.”

“That's ridiculous! He's the one who married her! He's the one who—”

He interrupted himself, as though another part of him were muzzling the one talking.

“Who endured so much for her,” he finished.

At least he was now confirming that his initial story, the one in which David sacrificed everything for Aurora to an irreparable point, was probably close to the truth. His subsequent denials were simply part of the game he was playing with me.

“But you . . . You also loved her, didn't you?”

He met my question with prolonged silence, then turned up the sound. The music now hung on the walls like it was part of the decor, lending volume and presence. The room vibrated, was almost alive.

“You would have to ask the Louie of fifteen, twenty years ago,” he said. “I can only speak to what he feels today.”

I could not hear anything outside the suffocating, almost deafening pressure of the music, but I could have sworn something was moving through the room, around me. A stealthy movement. I stood still for a few instants, then walked toward the wall facing the bed. Something about it had changed, but I couldn't tell what. It was not until other, identical openings appeared around the room that at last I realized what it was: at least two dozen peepholes. Behind each one, an eye was watching me.