R Is for Rebel (20 page)

“She's right,” Christine said. “I bet when you see Eliot, you'll find you can no longer abide the passive role you've created for yourself.”

Abigail laughed at the idea of herself as passive. She was painfully active. “I wish my mother could hear you call me passive. If I write one more op-ed piece to
The
Guardian
, I think she'll throttle me.”

They all laughed a bit, then Tully continued. “It's funny, isn't it? That you're able to put yourself out there for every disenfranchised woman on the planet, but you still aren't quite ready to put yourself out there for yourself?”

Abigail took a sip of her wine and set it back on the coffee table.

Tully continued, “Remember when you left me?” Abigail winced a little. “Sorry, that sounds accusatory, but you know what I mean. You said a few things about how I was hiding from the privilege of my upbringing, or dismissing its importance, or what have you, and I hated that. Then, after I realized the truth of it, I knew that's why I hated to hear it. I was so grateful in the end that I had a friend who could call me on that, that I could open myself to my whole self, not just the warrior or the revolutionary, but the granddaughter of the Duke of Bedford. Why did I have shame in that? I suppose you taught me to see that I needn't have.”

Abigail nodded.

“But the irony is, and I think about this still, how were
you
able to give me something that you yourself did not possess? For someone so impassioned, you have become one of the most self-effacing women I know.”

Abigail tried to hear the words without feeling the sting. It was not easy. She had spent so much time and effort and guts trying to build her foundation and her life, and now everyone she cared about was acting as if it all amounted to some sort of convoluted screen she had built up around herself, to hide behind.

Abigail slumped deeper into her couch. “I am erasing myself?”

“A bit,” Tully said.

“Oh, Tul, I'm really frightened. I've agreed to go to Paris, with Sarah James of all people, and I know Eliot will be there and I just don't even know anymore.”

“Good,” Christine said. “I like the idea of you not knowing.”

“Me too,” Tully added.

“Well, I don't. I hate the not knowing.” Abigail pouted and the other two started laughing until all three of them were in a state of lifted spirits.

***

Just after three o'clock on Saturday afternoon, the blue Range Rover pulled into the Place Vendôme, slowing in front of the Ritz. A hive of activity surrounded the car almost before it came to a complete stop. Without even realizing it, Sarah was able to command the same abject devotion from porters, valets, and bellman the world over that her mother and grandmother had always been able to elicit. She knew many Ritz employees by name, embraced two in particular, and before Abigail could get her comparatively shabby Tumi bag out of the car, the rest of Sarah's vintage luggage had been piled with architectural precision onto a shiny brass cart and wheeled effortlessly into the main lobby. The car was whisked away by a valet, never to be seen again for the following ten days.

“Isn't that so easy?” Sarah marveled, with genuine gratitude, looking around the now-empty sidewalk.

Abigail hoisted her computer bag farther up onto her shoulder and shook her head in mild amusement. “You are unbelievable.”

“I can't help it if people are accommodating.” Sarah winked and bent to pick up Abigail's other wheelie bag. “Now, let's go see if they upgraded us,” Sarah said with adolescent excitement.

The two-bedroom suite was so ridiculously over-the-top that Abigail did not even bother to comment on it. The gold, the marble, the silks, the fringed pelmets, the ironed pillowcases. It was a study in the art of glorious overstatement. Every surface was polished, every scent was evocative. Baskets of exotic Asian fruits, arrangements of hothouse flowers.

“I can't believe Devon lets you stroll right in—unattended, unescorted—to this den of iniquity,” Abigail said after they had deposited all of their bags in their respective rooms then joined up again in the shared sitting room. “Everything about this hotel, this town, is pure seduction.”

“Speak for yourself, Miss Nothing-Happened-at-the-Plaza-Athénée. As far as I'm concerned, this is all work and no play for Ms. Sarah James. I can predict, almost to a farthing, my entire year's worth of sales on the tilt of a certain buyer's head when a new style goes down the runway at the Dior show. The dinners, the lunches, every casual encounter is forming, strengthening, or destroying a business relationship for me. You'll see.”

“When you put it that way, I'm not sure I want to.”

“Yes, you do. It's awesome. Millions of dollars in effort and potential revenue, years of styles, ideas, creative energy flying in every direction; music, art, beauty.”

“So, what's on for tonight? Are you going out? I might stay in—”

“Absolutely not! No staying in. You can sleep when you're dead. You're not getting any while we're here. You are my fashion prisoner. Go take a hot bath, or cold shower, or whatever kind of revitalizing ablution suits and be ready to go in an hour and a half. I'm going to swim for a little while then change. Dinner at La Coupole, then we'll go meet up with some friends who are having drinks in Montmartre. Casual. Well, dressy for you, casual for me.” Sarah turned back into her room, grabbed her swimsuit, crossed back to the door of the suite, and gave Abigail a half-wave in farewell.

Abigail marveled again at the woman her brother had married, and whom he'd dubbed the Botticellian stealth missile.

***

Eliot was on the final two laps of a forty-five-minute swim. It still seemed to be the only thing that cleared his mind, even though the window of postnatatory clarity was getting shorter and shorter. He felt like a drug addict who needed more and more of the stuff to achieve a shorter and less satisfying result. Marisa had gone to Tanzania as planned, and he was supposedly resolving his unresolved feelings for the Other Woman. He did a flip turn and swam the final lap, concentrating on his labored breathing to the exclusion of all else. He finished in the shallow end and stood, his muscles humming, his legs vibrating with the effort of his exertion. He pulled his goggles off, then smoothed the excess water out of his hair.

“Well, if it isn't Eliot Cranbrook as I live and breathe!”

He looked up at the fetching, familiar, mischievous blond. “At your service, Ms. James.” He bowed slightly, the water at his waist shifting slightly at the movement. “I figured you would be staying with your grandmother.” He walked through the water toward the few steps at the corner of the shallow end and started to climb out of the pool.

“Oh, god no! Could you imagine Cendrine taking messages from André Leon Talley?” Sarah laughed, then thought about it. “On the other hand, that might be hilarious. But, no, too much going on and I need the concierge and everything here. What about you? I thought you hated the Ritz.”

“It's not bad.”

“Your PR department is making you stay here, aren't they?”

“Well, of course they are. Do you really see me draped in gold satin atop Carrara marble? I'd be much happier in an attic room at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, but that doesn't jibe with their idea of what I'm supposed to
project
.” Eliot was drying off his lean torso and caught Sarah looking his way. “I thought you were happily married.”

She blushed. “I am ecstatically married, but you are quite the specimen these days. From an objective standpoint, of course. Do you eat? Or just swim and take astronaut pills marked ‘daily intake'?”

He tossed the towel over his shoulders then slipped on the hotel robe that he had worn from the dressing room, tying the knot at the waist with a firm tug. “Mostly the latter. Without the pills. Just the swimming.”

“Let's remedy that! What are you doing for dinner tonight? We just got here a little while ago and I was going to meet some friends for drinks, but let's fatten you up first!” Sarah's hands were clasped together in childish delight.

“Is Devon with you? I thought he hated this stuff.”

“Did I say
we
?”

“Yes. You said
we
. Who did you drag along this time?” Eliot finished collecting his room key and cell phone and turned slowly to give her his full attention.

She simply folded her arms, quirked her mouth, and widened her eyes. “Who do you think?”

His heart stopped flat for a few seconds then careened off in an arrhythmic stampede. He tried to stand still, unremarkable, unaffected, but thought she might have caught the transitory coronary. “I can't begin to imagine.”

“Can you not?”

“Bronte?”

“No. As you know, an eight-months-pregnant-with-twins Bronte Talbott Heyworth does not make for a congenial traveling companion.”

“Julie from your New York office?”

“She's here somewhere”—Sarah gestured loosely—“staying at the Intercontinental, running the show, as it were. But no, we aren't staying together. Here. At the Ritz.” Sarah never thought she had much of a mean streak, but watching Eliot squirm was divine. All she could think was,
Abigail, this is
SO
not over.

“I'm not ready to see her, Sarah.”

Now she really did feel mean. “Oh, Eliot.” She reached out her hand and stepped toward him; he stepped farther away and shook his head.

“It's nothing to do with you, Sarah. I have too much going on right now.”

That line of defense Sarah could dispute. “Please, Eliot, we are all busy. Look at me. Do you think I have time to be showing my sister-in-law how to be a grown-up? I'm supposed to be wooing you into buying my company, not, you know, helping someone woo you!”

He looked down at the tiled pattern in the mosaic floor, then back up at Sarah. “Where are you guys going for dinner? Can I have any advantage… element of surprise? I honestly don't think I can walk into the Posen show Monday morning and see the two of you in the front row and behave naturally.”

“There's the man I know and love. Strategic thinker. Element of surprise. I like it. Let's see… we will be at La Coupole tonight from ten o'clock on. Give or take. I don't want to appear too obvious.”

“All right. I may or may not be able to make it.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Whatever, Eliot! If this all works out the way I think it will, you are most definitely going to be
making
it
.”

“Very funny, Sarah. I'll try to be there.”

“I suppose that's the most any of us can promise.” She gave him a quick hug before he could slip away. “Hang in there, Eliot. It's all going to work out for the best.”

“You sound like my mother.”

“I'll take that as a compliment.”

“So you should. Enjoy your swim, Sarah.”

“Thanks, Eliot.” He was nearly to the door of the changing rooms when she called after him in a sing-songy baiting tone, “See you later!”

Eliot managed to get into the men's locker room, the smell of chlorine and cleaning fluid working as a sort of modern-day smelling salts to keep him on his feet until he went to the far end of the antiseptic room, and down one short row of lockers, to collapse gratefully onto a small teak bench.

He put his head down, nearly to his knees, trying to convince himself that he was still catching his breath after a vigorous hour of exercise, rather than trying to tamp down his first full-fledged panic attack. He felt entirely out of control. The abstract feelings of loss, confusion, and disorder were not even the half of it. His physical body was an erratic, unfamiliar combination of mismatched parts. His lungs were starting to burn; his heart was palpitating in random beats, one minute a shallow, rapid flutter, the next a thudding pounding with empty pauses between hard beats; his scalp was tingling, his fingertips throbbing, his feet leaden.

He opened his eyes cautiously and saw his hands clenched onto his knees, and he forced himself to relax the muscles of his shoulders, then his arms, then slowly, each finger. He relaxed into his own breathing, trying to ride the wave of unfamiliar fear, rather than grasp after it. He felt as though he were coming up from a rough tumble in the ocean, breathless, disoriented. He relaxed further as his heartbeat returned to a normal pace, with only the occasional erratic thud, and realized, after the fact, that he must have been deathly pale as he felt the warmth of blood seeping back up his neck and cheeks.

Eliot could not tell whether he had been sitting there for ten seconds or ten minutes, but in either case, a lifetime had passed. He had often heard of people suffering from panic attacks, confusing them with heart failure, foolishly checking themselves into hospitals while clutching their chests. Or he had supposed them foolish. Eliot stood, testing the strength of his legs to hold him before pulling his full weight off the bench.

A Ritz employee, a masseur or weight trainer perhaps, turned the corner toward the area where Eliot was recovering his senses.

“Ça va? Is everything all right, Mr. Cranbrook?” the attendant asked in quiet French.

“Yes, thank you for asking.” Eliot answered in French as well. At least he hadn't lost any of his basic faculties: speech, language recall. “I gave it a rough go in the pool and just realized I forgot to eat lunch this afternoon. Just a bit light-headed, I think.”

“Let me bring you a bottle of water and a bit of fruit, shall I?”

“Thank you, I'd appreciate that.”

Eliot watched as the trim, young man in the fitted white T-shirt and white exercise pants moved toward the other side of the room, then returned with the drink and food.

“Are you sure you are well, sir?” the man asked as he handed Eliot an apple and a bottle of Evian.