by Peter Mayle
“Don’t worry about it, Noel. I’ll say I have a headache.”
“You do that. Here.” Noel pushed a folder across the desk. “Tickets, car and hotel confirmations, and Mother Russia’s address and phone number. Don’t miss the plane. She’s expecting you the day after tomorrow.”
Andre slipped the folder in his bag and stood up. “Anything I can bring back for you? Espadrilles? Cellulite cream?”
Noel raised his eyes to the ceiling and shuddered. “Since you ask, a little lavender essence would be very nice.” The phone rang. Noel picked it up, waggling his fingers in farewell as Andre turned to leave.
The Riviera. Andre wrapped the thought around himself like a blanket before going out to face the frozen grime of Madison Avenue. A bitter wind, cold enough to split skin, made pedestrians flinch and lower their heads. The nicotine fraternity—those huddled masses yearning to inhale who gather in small, guilty groups outside the entrance doors of Manhattan’s office buildings—looked more furtive and uncomfortable than ever, their faces pinched in a vise of frigid air, sucking on their cigarettes and shivering. Andre always thought it was ironic that smokers were denied equal-opportunity privileges and banished to the street, while their colleagues with a weakness for cocaine could indulge themselves in the warmth and relative comfort of the office rest rooms.
He stood on the corner of Fifty-first and Fifth, hoping for a cab to take him downtown. The Riviera. By now the mimosa should be in bloom, and the more hardy inhabitants would be having lunch out of doors. The operators who ran the beaches would be adjusting their prices upward and wondering how little they could manage to pay this summer’s batch of plagistes. Boats would be having their bottoms scraped, their paintwork touched up, their charter brochures printed. The owners of restaurants, boutiques, and nightclubs would be flexing their wallets at the prospect of the annual payout, the May-to-September grind that allowed them to spend the rest of the year in prosperous indolence.
Andre had always liked the Riviera, the effortless, usually charming way in which it plucked money from his pocket while somehow making him feel that he had been rendered a favor. He was quite happy to endure the over-populated beaches, the occasional rudeness, the frequently grotesque prices, the infamous summer traffic—all these and worse he could forgive in return for an injection of south of France magic. Ever since Lord Brougham reinvented Cannes in the 1830s, the coastal strip had been attracting aristocrats and artists, writers and billionaires, fortune hunters, merry widows, pretty girls on the make, and young men on the take. Decadent it might be, expensive and crowded it certainly was, but never dull. And, thought Andre, as the arrival of a cab saved him from frostbite, it would be warm.
He was still closing the door when the cab took off, cut across the nose of a bus, and ran a red light. Andre recognized that he was in the hands of a sportsman, a cut-and-thruster who saw the streets of Manhattan as a testing ground for man and machine. He braced his knees against the partition and prepared to assume the fetal position recommended by airlines in the event of a crash, as the driver swooped down Fifth Avenue in a series of high-octane lunges and sudden-death swerves, cursing the traffic in a guttural, mysterious tongue.
At last the cab lurched into West Broadway, and the driver tried his hand at a form of English.
“OK. Where number?”
Andre, feeling his luck couldn’t last forever, decided to travel the last two blocks on foot. “This will be fine.”
“Fine?”
“Here. Right here.”
“You got it.” The brakes were applied with gusto, causing the car behind to lock its wheels and slide, very gently, into the back of the cab. The cabdriver jumped out, clutching his neck, and reverted to his mother tongue to deliver an agonized tirade in which the only two familiar words were “whiplash” and “sonofabitch.” Andre paid him and made a hasty escape.
The building he reached after a brisk two-minute walk had started life as a garment factory. Now, as with so much SoHo real estate, its humble origins had been thoroughly concealed by several coats of gentrification. The high-ceilinged, light rooms had been subdivided, partitioned, repainted, rewired, replumbed, rezoned, and, needless to say, repriced. The tenants were mostly small businesses in the fields of arts and communications, and it was here that Image Plus, the agency representing Andre’s work, had its headquarters.
Image Plus had been founded by Stephen Moss, a young man with intelligence, taste, and a liking for warm weather. His clients were photographers and illustrators who specialized in nonfashion subjects—Moss, quite rightly, being wary of the temperaments and complications involved in anything to do with clothing and androgynous models. After the early years of struggle, he now had a tight, profitable little business, taking fifteen or twenty percent of his clients’ income in return for representation, which covered everything from career counseling to tax advice and fee negotiation. He had extensive contacts, a doting girlfriend, perfect blood pressure, and a full head of hair. His only problem was the winter in New York, which he detested.
It was this fear of freezing, as much as a desire to expand his business, that had caused him to take on Lucy Walcott as a junior partner. Nine months later, he had felt sufficiently confident in his choice to leave the office in Lucy’s hands during that first, suicidally unpleasant part of the year, from January to March. She was pleased to have the responsibility. He was pleased to have the sunshine in Key West. And Andre was pleased to be working with a pretty girl. As he came to know Lucy, he found himself looking for chances to extend the relationship, but he traveled too much, and she seemed to attract a new and dauntingly muscular young man every week. So far, they had yet to see each other outside the office.
Andre was buzzed through a steel door, which led into an airy open space. Apart from a couch and a low table in one corner, the only furniture was a large, square production desk built for four. Three of the chairs were empty. Lucy, head down over a computer keyboard, was in the fourth.
“Lulu, it’s your lucky day.” Andre dropped his bag on the couch and went over to the desk. “Lunch, Lulu, a real lunch—Chez Felix, Bouley, you name it. I’ve just picked up a job, and I feel an overpowering urge to celebrate. How about it?”
Lucy grinned as she pushed back her chair and stood up to stretch.
Slim and straight, with a mop of black, curly hair that made her seem taller than her official five feet six, she looked far too healthy for a New Yorker in winter. Her skin color was halfway between chocolate and honey, a glowing dark caramel that seemed to retain some of the sunlight from her native Barbados. When asked about her background, it sometimes amused her to describe herself as a purebred quadroon and to watch the polite nods of incomprehension that usually followed. She thought that getting to know Andre might be interesting, if he ever stayed in town long enough.
“Well?” He was looking at her, half smiling, hopeful.
She shrugged, waving a hand at the unattended desk. “Both the girls are out today. Mary’s got the flu, Dana’s got jury duty. I’m stuck here.” Even after her dozen years in New York, Lucy’s voice retained the sweet lilt of the West Indies. “Another time?”
“Another time.”
Lucy moved a stack of portfolios off the couch, making room for the two of them to sit. “Tell me about the job. It wouldn’t involve my favorite editor, would it?”
A mutual antipathy had grown up between Lucy and Camilla. It had started when Camilla had been overheard describing Lucy as “that quaint little girl with ruched hair,” and had grown steadily worse with further acquaintance. Camilla found Lucy distinctly lacking in respect and far too demanding on behalf of her clients. Lucy found Camilla arrogant and pretentious. For the sake of business, they managed to maintain a precarious, icy politeness.
Andre sat next to Lucy on the couch, close enough to catch the scent of her: warm, spiced with citrus. “Lulu, I cannot tell a lie. Camilla wants me to shoot some icons in the south of France. Two or three days.
I’m leaving tomorrow.”
Lucy nodded. “And you didn’t talk about money?” Two very large brown eyes looked at him intently.
Andre held up both hands, a look of horror on his face. “Me? Never. You’re always telling me not to.”
“That’s because you’re lousy at it.” She made a note on her pad, sat back, and smiled. “Good. It’s time you had a raise. They’re paying you like a staff photographer, and they’re using you on almost every issue.”
Andre shrugged. “Keeps me out of mischief.”
“I doubt it.”
There was a short, awkward silence. Lucy pushed back her hair, exposing the clean, delicate line of her jaw. She turned to smile at him. “I’ll work something out with them. You concentrate on the shots. Is she going to be there?”
Andre nodded. “Dinner at the Colombe d’Or, sweetie. It’s one of her officially approved restaurants.”
“Just you and Camilla and her hairdresser. How nice.”
Andre winced. Before he had a chance to reply, the phone rang. Lucy picked it up, listened, frowned, and put her hand over the mouthpiece. “This is going to be a marathon.” She blew him a kiss. “Have a good trip.”
As the driver pulled away from the Royalton, Camilla reached for the phone, careful of her nails as she punched in the number. It had been a long but constructive lunch, and dear Gianni had been so helpful. She made a mental note to have a box of cigars sent to his hotel.
“Yes?” The voice on the other end of the phone sounded preoccupied.
“Sweetie, it’s me. It’s all set for Paris. Gianni’s arranged everything. One of the servants is going to show me round the apartment. I can have all day if I want.”
The voice became more interested. “The paintings will be there? Nothing in storage for the winter? None of them out on loan?”
“Everything’s there. Gianni checked before he left Paris.”
“Excellent. You’ve done very well, my dear. Very well. I’ll see you later.”
In the richly furnished twilight gloom of his study, Rudolph Holtz replaced the phone carefully, took a sip of green tea from a Meissen cup, and went back to the article he had been reading. It was from the Chicago Tribune, datelined London, and described the recovery by Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Squad of Norway’s most famous painting: The Scream, by Edvard Munch, valued at forty-five million dollars. It had been stolen in 1994 and found two years later in a cellar in southern Norway, wrapped in a sheet. Holtz shook his head.
He read on. A “conservative” estimate of the value of stolen or missing art around the world was well in excess of three billion dollars, according to the journalist, a statistic that brought a contented smile to Holtz’s face. How fortunate he had been to meet Camilla two years before.
Their relationship had begun socially, when they had met at one of the gallery shows Holtz routinely attended in his legitimate capacity of dealer in fine arts. While he had been bored by the paintings, Camilla had intrigued him. He sensed that they might have something in common, and this was confirmed during an exploratory lunch the following week. Beneath the banalities of polite conversation ran an undercurrent, the first signs of a meeting of minds and ambitions. Dinners had followed, the verbal fencing had given way to something approaching honesty, and by the time Camilla had taken to sharing Holtz’s four-poster bed, surrounded by the splendors of Holtz’s Park Avenue apartment, it was clear to both of them that they were made for each other, soul mates in greed.
Dear Camilla. Holtz finished his tea and stood up to look through the window at the sleet slanting down. It was past four o’clock, and in the icy murk of Park Avenue, fifteen stories below, people battled for cabs. On Lexington, they would be waiting in sodden lines for buses. How agreeable it was to be warm and rich.
2
“DID you pack these bags yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Have they been out of your sight since you packed them?”
“No.”
“Are you carrying any gifts or other items on behalf of someone else?”
“No.”
The girl at Delta’s business class desk flicked through the passport. Name: Andre Kelly. Place of birth: Paris, France. Date of birth: June 14, 1965. She glanced up for the first time, to check that flesh and blood resembled the photograph, and saw a pleasant, square-jawed face under cropped black hair, a face made striking by the green eyes that were looking back at her. She had never seen truly green eyes before and found herself staring into them, fascinated.
Andre grinned. “My father’s Irish. Green eyes run in the family.”
The girl colored slightly. “That obvious, was it? Sorry. I guess it happens a lot.” She busied herself with the ticket and luggage tags, while Andre looked around at his fellow passengers on the night flight to Nice. They were French businessmen for the most part, weariness on their faces after their having to deal with the New York weather, the New York noise and energy, the machine-gun rhythms of New York English, so different from the measured enunciations that Berlitz had taught them.
“You’re all set, Mr. Kelly.” The girl returned his passport and ticket. “Can I ask you something? If you’re Irish, how come you were born in Paris?”
“My mother was there at the time.” Andre stuck his boarding card in his top pocket. “She’s French. I’m a mongrel.”
“Oh, really? Great. Well, have a nice flight.”
He joined the line shuffling onto the plane, hoping that he would have an empty seat next to him, or a pretty girl, or, a poor but acceptable third, an executive too exhausted to talk.
He had just settled into his seat when he felt a presence hovering over him; looking up, he saw the encumbered body and tense, thin face of a young woman dressed in the standard corporate uniform of dark power suit and attaché case, a bulging black bag slung over one shoulder. Andre got up to let her through to the window seat.
The young woman stood her ground. “They promised me aisle. I always have aisle.”
Andre checked his boarding card against the seat number, and saw that he was sitting in his allotted seat. He showed the stub to the young woman.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I’m window sensitive.”
Andre had never encountered this particular affliction and certainly didn’t want to hear about it for the next seven hours. For the sake of a peaceful flight, he offered his aisle seat to the young woman, whose mood brightened visibly. He moved across to the window seat, watching as she arranged documents and a laptop computer in front of her to create the necessary business environment. Not for the first time, the thought crossed his mind that modern travel was a vastly overrated pastime: crowded, tedious, often uncomfortable, and almost always irritating.
“Don’t you love travel?” said the young woman, her good humor now fully restored by her having had her own way. “I mean, getting to go to the south of France. It’s so …”
“French?”
She looked sideways at Andre, unsure of how to respond. He nodded at her and opened his book. She returned to the contents of her laptop.
The airline passenger seeking a few hours of undisturbed silence is most vulnerable during the serving of meals, when feigning sleep is out of the question and hiding behind a book while eating is physically impossible. As the trolley laden with gourmet-in-the-sky dinners approached, Andre was aware of occasional glances from his neighbor, who had abandoned her communion with the laptop and seemed poised for another attempt at conversation. And so, when the inevitable piece of frequent flier chicken landed in front of him, he slipped on his headset, bent over his tray, and tried to distract himself from the cooking by reflecting on his future.
He had to stop traveling so much. His social life, his love life, and his digestion were all suffering. He camped, nothing more, in his studio in Manhattan; cartons of books and clothes were still unopened, eight months after he’d moved in. His New York friends, tired of speaking to a machine, had virtually given up c
alling him. His French friends from university days in Paris all seemed to be having children and settling down. Their wives accepted Andre, but with reservations and some suspicion. He was known to chase girls. He stayed up too late. He liked a drink. In other words, he was matrimonially threatening and was regarded as a bad influence on young husbands not yet completely come to terms with the pleasures and constraints of domesticity.
He might have been lonely, but he didn’t have the time even for that. His life was work. Fortunately, he loved it; most of it, at any rate. Camilla, it was true, was becoming more eccentric and dictatorial with every issue of DQ. She had also developed a tiresome habit of insisting that Andre take close-ups of paintings, which, he had noticed, seldom appeared with the published article. But the money was good, and he was building a reputation for himself as one of the top interior photographers in the business. A couple of publishers had already approached him about doing a book. Next year, he promised himself, he’d do it: work at his own speed, pick his own subjects, be his own boss.
He gave up his halfhearted attempts to conquer the chicken, switched off his light, and leaned back. Tomorrow there would be real food. He closed his eyes and slept.
The familiar smell of France welcomed him as he passed through Immigration and into the main concourse of Nice airport, a smell whose components he had often tried to analyze. Part strong black coffee, part tobacco, a soupçon of diesel fuel, a waft of eau de cologne, the golden scent of pastry made with butter—it was as distinctive as the national flag and, for Andre, the first pleasure of being back in the country where he had spent so much of his youth. Other airports smelled bland and international. Nice smelled French.
The girl in the power suit was standing in the baggage claim area, checking her watch and chewing her lip while the black rubber caterpillar of the carousel made its unhurried, unburdened loop through the passengers before returning to its hole in the wall. Her expression was straight out of New York—frowning, impatient, fraught. Andre wondered if she ever allowed herself to relax. He took pity on her.
