“You promised that you would always look after me,” she said. “And yet, you quickly forgot all about me. You didn’t even know who I was when we ran into each other in Brussels.”
“That’s right,” Alexis said. “And when I said those words, I meant them. I’m not a liar and I’m not deceitful. Seeing you so distressed, I was probably trying to make you feel better. But then, very bad things happened, and everything went out of control. And my memory isn’t infallible.”
He caressed Anne’s hand with his thumb.
“But now we’re adults. You have to trust me. Especially since we’ve become very close. Am I wrong?”
“No, you’re not.”
“I haven’t shared such special moments with anyone for a long time as I have with you these past couple of days.”
Anne lowered her eyes. Did he know what thin ice he was treading on? Or did he not care about the possible risks?
21
The following day, Alexis adopted a more distant attitude toward Anne. Was it because they were at Phil and Lizzie’s? While Anne headed for the studio with the painter to take photos of his paintings, Alexis remained at the house with Lizzie. Concentrating on the task at hand, she took a bunch of pictures. Then she jotted down in her notebook the title and the size of the paintings that particularly interested her. Amanda still hadn’t replied to the telegram Anne had sent, which was not a good sign. When her boss was enthusiastic about an artist, she was quick to do something about it.
“Wouldn’t you like a San Francisco gallery owner to see your work?” she asked Phil.
“All I want is peace and quiet,” he said.
“He wouldn’t have to come here. First I’d show him photos of your work. But only if you tell me it’s okay.”
“You have someone in mind?”
Anne told her about her meeting with Benjamin Baxter.
“If he took an interest in your paintings, that might influence Madame Kircher’s decision,” she said.
“You haven’t been able to convince her?”
“I’m still waiting for her response.”
Phil put his paintings back where they had been hanging. When he was done, he muttered, “You’re going to have to talk to Lizzie about all this. I can’t decide if it’d be a good idea or not.”
“Paul is fragile and antisocial,” Lizzie told Anne. “I’m not sure he’d be able to handle the reactions and the critiques of his paintings if they were exhibited in San Francisco. In Paris, things would’ve been different. It’s so far away!”
“I understand.”
Embarrassed by Amanda’s silence, Anne was looking for a way not to disappoint an artist she knew had undeniable talent. Lizzie handed her a plate of chips.
“Let’s go out to the terrace,” she said.
While Phil set the table, Alexis watered the garden. Before stepping out of the house, Lizzie turned on the outside lights, and then set candle jars on the table. Anne and Alexis had bought some cheese and bread from a specialty store in town. Anne sat down and watched Alexis play with the Labrador. Barefoot, his sleeves rolled up, wearing a pair of old jeans—he was so attractive!
Night had long since fallen on Sausalito, but no one felt like leaving the terrace. Wrapped up in a tartan blanket, Anne didn’t pay much attention to what the others were saying. Alexis was sitting next to her. Phil had just produced some rolling paper and an envelope containing marijuana. After lighting the joint, he passed it to Alexis, who took a long drag, and then he passed it to Anne. Thirty minutes later, she and Lizzie were giggling uncontrollably, which made Alexis and Phil laugh too. The four of them had a disjointed conversation, until they began to get hungry. They headed for the kitchen, where they devoured chocolate candy bars and cookies. It was almost three when Alexis said they should leave.
“Come back next weekend,” Phil said. “We can all watch the moon landing.”
“I’m not sure I’m going to be able to,” Alexis said.
Anne wondered where he was going to be. Thinking they might not be together made her wince.
In the car on their way back, Alexis said, “I’m not going to be on my game for my students tomorrow.”
“You’re starting early?”
“Eight thirty! You’re lucky you can sleep in.”
“I’m going to return to France more tired than I was when I left,” Anne said. “But I’m having a great time.”
“Some friends of mine are letting me use their house in Carmel for the weekend. A beautiful, quiet setting. We could leave Friday morning and come back Sunday evening. What do you think?”
The fog had lifted when Alexis parked his car in the driveway of a medium-size villa. Not far from the beach, it offered a stunning view of the Pacific.
“The keys should be in that flowerpot,” Alexis said as he stepped out of the car.
As he went to get them, Anne took a few steps toward the front of the house. It reminded her of those built along the coasts of England: tiled roof, white wood facade, veranda, sliding windows. It was a charming house!
“Got them!” Alexis said, dangling the keys.
The front door opened on a vestibule strewn with an odd collection of objects.
“My friend John and his wife are garage sale nuts. They spend their weekends going to yard sales and flea markets, and they buy all kinds of stuff they don’t need. Some of it they give away to their friends. Not long ago, I received an old coffee grinder …”
The living room furniture was simple, and yet comfortable. Armchairs were set up in front of the fireplace so people could be nice and warm while looking at the ocean. A beige couch, a table, and a couple of benches made up the rest of the furniture. Glass jars filled with seashells sat on the shelves among books, and the newspaper rack was crammed with magazines.
“Let me show you the rest of the house,” Alexis said, heading for the kitchen.
There was an old-fashioned feel to the home.
“This is such a nice place,” Anne said. “Your friends live here all year long?”
“Pretty much. John is a colleague of mine. He comes back Thursday. His wife works in Carmel for an organization that protects the coastline. They’re in Mexico right now.”
“You visit them often?”
“Every two months or so. Sometimes I only come for the day. John introduced me to golf, but I prefer tennis.”
They wound up in the hallway, and Alexis showed Anne to a guest room with a glass door that opened onto the terrace. As she set her luggage down, Alexis headed for the room at the back of the house.
They spent the rest of the day walking on the beach, where unleashed dogs chased one another. At times, they waded in the ocean, Anne laughing out loud when waves hit her legs. When they came back to the villa, the sun was setting and some clouds were gathering in the sky.
“We’re going to have a pretty sunset,” Alexis said.
And he was right. Sitting on the veranda filled with the smell of petunias, Anne watched the sky go from blue, to pink, to indigo. With twilight, the birds grew quiet. As for humans, there was no trace of any of them, except for some lights in the house next door.
A whistling Alexis was busy in the kitchen.
Anne joined him and said, “I didn’t know you were a chef.”
“It’s one of my hobbies,” he said. “But in this country, you need to have a lot of imagination. Most products are so bland.”
“What are you making?”
“It’s a surprise! As a matter of fact, you shouldn’t even be in here. Why don’t you go put on a record in the living room?”
A few minutes later, the voice of Sarah Vaughan filled the villa. Was there anything more exhilarating than the moment they were living in right now, when it was still possible to put an end to everything before it was too late? Since they had arrived in Carmel,
everything had been a constant escalation of a mutual desire they were no longer hiding. On the beach, they had held hands, walked arm in arm, hugged a couple of times. And the long shiver she had felt when he held her tight against him on their way back to the villa!
After dinner, as cool air invaded the living room, Alexis crouched in front of the fireplace.
“There’s no summer or winter around here,” he said. “You can have a fire any time of year.”
When Alexis straightened up, Anne went over to him. Wrapping his arms around her, he noticed that she was trembling. He held her tight, and then slowly pushed her back to take in her face, her shimmering eyes. What he read in those eyes encouraged him to kiss her. Her lips were salty, as was her skin. As he kissed her, she put her arms around his neck. Through her clothing, he could feel the warmth of her body. Attacking the minuscule buttons of her blouse, he began getting rid of everything that was a shield between them. Becoming clumsy from his own excitement, Anne had to help him take off her skirt, which went flying across the living room. Then Alexis’s T-shirt and jeans came off. Standing naked in front of Alexis, she let him look at her. He put his hands on her breasts, and she lowered her eyes. Feeling no hurry, they kissed and caressed each other until they felt more confident, more comfortable, feeling less afraid and inhibited. In this house that held their secret, Anne slowly discovered what moved this man, at once familiar and mysterious. Attentive to his reactions, she responded to his caresses with some of her own, to the words he whispered with sighs and moans that she didn’t try to repress. She thought she had lived her entire life just for these moments, that her desire for Alexis made her feel intensely alive.
When Alexis rolled off of Anne, she became completely aware of their surroundings. There was no light in the room except for the candles she had lit earlier. After a few minutes, she turned to Alexis, smiled, and kissed him on the shoulder.
“You’re just as I imagined you were,” Alexis said.
“And how’s that?”
“I’m not going to tell you!”
“Careful! I might use torture to make you talk.”
“You? Torture? That’s a good one. You know, you’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a million years.”
Alexis threw a log on the fire, and then fetched pillows and a duvet from his room. It was no doubt very late, but neither of them felt like sleeping. Until now, Alexis had refrained from asking questions. Because it was easier this way? Out of fear of ruining things? Anne seemed to have made the same choice. …
Both of them curled up under the duvet, Anne whispered, “In Montmartre, I had a big crush on you. I thought you were handsome and different from the others.”
“Handsome?”
“Every time I saw you, I felt my face turn red.”
They laughed.
“Winning me over after thirty years … Talk about persistence!”
“You’re not kidding!”
Alexis winked and said, “And you find me as attractive now as you did back then?”
“Well, the passage of time does have a devastating effect on some people,” she said, smiling.
“Why, you …”
Wrapping his legs around hers, he leaned over Anne for a kiss.
“As soon as I saw you in Paris, I was attracted to you,” he said.
“You sure didn’t show it.”
“I couldn’t, for a bunch of reasons.”
For the first time, they broached a topic they had avoided, but not wanting to talk about it at length on their first night together, Alexis went back to the impression Anne made on him in Paris.
“When I came back to Canada, I thought about you and the time we spent together. How much I enjoyed it. I didn’t know whether we’d see each other again, but being with you stimulated me. You gave me a confidence I didn’t have before.”
Surprised, she leaned on her elbow and said, “A confidence you didn’t have before? At the age of ten, you gave the impression that nothing scared you.”
“I probably missed out on a brilliant career as an actor.”
More seriously, he added, “Back then, I basically did what my parents expected of me. I was an only child. My father dreamed that I’d become a professor. That’s what I did. I was going through the motions in a profession that I never really picked, and you’re the one who broadened my horizons.”
When Anne woke up in the room where they had spent the last part of the night, the sun was filtering through the venetian blinds. Taking a few seconds to fully wake up, she then put on a bathrobe. Breakfast was waiting for her in the kitchen. Alexis had left a note on the table: I’ll be right back. She glanced outside. The car was there. Still sleepy, she put a piece of bread in the toaster and drank a few sips of coffee. The clock said eleven-forty as she cleaned the dishes. Without wasting time, she went to the bathroom for a shower. When she stepped out, the phone rang. It was the first call at the villa since they had arrived. She waited for silence to return, feeling that she was in a place where she didn’t belong. What had Alexis told his friends? That he was coming here alone, since his wife and son were in Canada? Not without some apprehension, she wondered how he would behave after this night that had brought them so close. Did he regret spending the night with her? Was he feeling guilty about it? Ill at ease, she got dressed and headed for the living room. Through the window, she saw Alexis walking toward the house, arms filled with driftwood.
Anne opened the window and said, “Hi there!”
“You’re up,” Alexis said with a cheerful tone that reassured her.
A moment later, after he set down the wood, he took her in his arms and kissed her.
“I went for a jog on the beach,” Alexis said. “It’s a beautiful day.”
22
In the afternoon, they walked around Carmel. The town had some nice galleries and boutiques, and Anne bought some presents for her daughters and Thomas as well.
“He’s my godson,” she told Alexis. “I’m debating between these two pairs of binoculars.”
As they took the shopping bags to the car, he asked her about the boy, and then Isabelle and Aurélie. Far from embarrassing her, the questions made Anne feel good. Up until then, she had thought that he wasn’t interested in her family life, and she told him as much.
“I’m interested in everything about you,” he said.
Before going back to the villa, he showed her a steeper section of the coast. Leaving the car, they strolled along a rocky path at the top of the cliff, with a terrific view of the ocean down below. They sat on a large rock and enjoyed the sight of the Pacific. There was no one else around.
“I discovered the ocean only recently,” Alexis said. “When I was a kid, I used to go to the mountains.”
“My parents took me many times to Granville in Normandy. Back then, I’d lay on the beach all day long.”
“Where else did you go?”
For the first time, she talked about her vacations at her grandparents’, swimming in the Indre River, bicycle rides through fields of sunflowers, the fairgrounds, playing with the village kids …
“Do you still go there?”
“Yes, to see my grandmother and Bernard. Sometimes my parents join us. … It’s the only link I have to my childhood.”
“Your family didn’t keep anything in Montmartre?”
“My father sold the apartment when he and my mother settled in the Touraine.”
“You guys lived on Rue Gabrielle, right?”
“Your memory is coming back?”
“Only snippets. I do remember hanging out with Bernard, sometimes getting into trouble.”
“You’d be surprised if you met him now. He’s settled down big-time.”
Bit by bit, Anne told Alexis of her years without him. She talked about when she and her family came back home from the exodus,
the Montmartre folks who had vanished, the air raids, running to the bomb shelters, the cold, the hunger, the fear.
“Some people snitched on others,” she added, and suddenly remembered her neighbor.
“While everyone thought she was collaborating with the Boches, she was working for the Résistance. Until the very end, she did that. What courage!”
As she spoke, Alexis imagined the teenage girl growing up in a place he never should have left. What would have happened to their relationship if there had been no war? Would his father still own the bookstore? Would Alexis have kept on seeing Bernard and his sister? The emptiness that had separated them for so many years was filling up with Anne’s recollections. He now knew what she had hoped for, accomplished, what had made her the woman she now was, a woman who intrigued him, charmed him.
Anne was about to tell him everything, and then thought better of it. Learning that she had been in love with him when she was nine and that she had never forgotten about him might scare Alexis. It was best to let him think that their reunion was pure coincidence!
Not caring whether it was day or night, they fell asleep after making love, both fervently discovering the other’s body once again. Not hiding the thrill she experienced each time he caressed her, Anne was enthralled by their compatibility. When she caught a glance of her own reflection in the mirror, she saw her feverish expression, the intense glimmer in her eyes. Never had she felt so complete.
When Alexis asked to take some pictures of her, her first inclination was to say no. She was afraid the camera might steal their secret! But then she changed her mind. Wouldn’t she need proof that these three days had actually taken place?
After he took a series of photos, Anne grabbed the camera.
“My turn!” she said.
“Wait,” Alexis said, setting up the timer. “Let’s take a picture of the two of us.”
While waiting for the camera to click, she thought of the importance that this picture would hold for her after she and Alexis left this place.
I Looked for the One My Heart Loves Page 14
