by Ted Mooney
All this he would have to address. Opportunity would present itself, and he would have to be ready. Yet for the first time in a long while he was unsure of his resources, uncertain even of what resources he might be asked to draw upon. It was like starting over, and he began to feel he’d put himself at risk. He had never worried about his age before. He recognized the warning signal. And though the feeling that now flickered over him, insinuating and perverse, seemed only distantly familiar, he knew quite well what it must be.
Max lay a little longer with the feeling, then undressed and took a tranquilizer and drank a beer and waited, stretched out in the dark again, for sleep to smear his thoughts away.
CHAPTER 3
THE AMERICAN NAMED Turner lived in an airy fourth-floor apartment in the quartier Bastille, and when Odile arrived the next morning with the suitcases she found him in the hall, very close to losing his temper. Two Corsicans, sweaty and unshaven, were maneuvering a large boulle-work cabinet through his doorway, banging it against the jamb at every opportunity and showering it with cigarette ash. Finally, when they succeeded in wrestling the intricately inlaid piece out to the elevator, Turner sighed and looked round to discover Odile and her bags.
“You are who, please?” he said in brisk French.
“The other Moscow courier. You talked before with my partner.”
“Ah.” He eyed the suitcases appraisingly. “Yes, of course. Come in.”
His living room was high ceilinged and sunny, painted linen white and furnished sparely with objects from other times and places: the marble buttocks of a Greek kouros, a leather stool from Africa, a Régence chair set against a Japanese screen, a Cibachrome image of brightly colored toothbrushes tumbled together. Odile took a slow circuit of the room, leaving Turner to bring in the bags.
“Everything go all right?” he said over his shoulder.
But his tone wasn’t interrogative; he didn’t even seem to be addressing her, and she ignored the question. Instead she said, “The train was filthy. I’d like to use your bathroom, please.”
“Down the hall and to the left,” he told her.
As she went, she heard him unzip the first of the suitcases.
The trip’s last leg, Warsaw to Paris via Prague, had left her wary and on edge. Although she had cleared Belorussian customs as promised, without anyone so much as mentioning baggage inspection, she afterward could find no trace at all of Thierry Colin. He had, as far as she could tell, simply disappeared. She looked for him everywhere, even venturing, as their train’s departure grew imminent, to ask a security officer for directions to the station’s lockup. But the man spoke only Russian, and in the end she had had no choice but to leave Thierry to his own devices.
Inspecting her image in the mirror, Odile now began to feel the strangeness of her situation. The events of the past week, which she’d half imagined casually recounting for Max over dinner, were already receding, breaking up, and she felt as if she were emerging from a fever dream to which she’d momentarily surrendered. Thierry’s disappearance, whether scripted or not, continued to alarm her, but now her concern carried an element of resentment. I can’t involve myself in this, she thought.
She removed her sweater and blouse, washed her face, neck, and arms, then dried herself with a guest towel and tossed it into the hamper. Fresh lipstick, a little perfume. She’d never had to work much on her looks. After surveying herself in the mirror, she put her blouse and sweater back on, flushed the toilet, and returned to complete her business.
“There are how many all told?” Turner asked, still in French. He had opened all the suitcases, and three or four of the banners lay spread out on the floor.
“Thirty in all. The most expensive was three thousand, and the cheapest was four hundred something, I think. You said not to bargain.”
“So I did.” He circled the flags, lingering over one from whose crimson field Brezhnev glowered, the famous eyebrows rendered in astrakhan. “Extraordinary. Better than I could have hoped.”
She sniffed. “What will you do with them now?”
Catching her tone, he looked up and for the first time seemed fully aware of her presence.
Turner was a man of medium build, erect in carriage but also agile, his movements light and understated. He had a slightly elongated face, black hair cropped close, and large rawboned hands that were strikingly at odds with the rest of him. Odile guessed he was about fifty.
“I didn’t get your name,” he said.
“My name is Odile.”
“Look, Odile. Do you know how these things would have ended up if somebody hadn’t intervened? They’d have been cut up to patch blue jeans and line motorcycle jackets. Made into scarves and curtains and dishrags. You saw what it was like over there. We’re doing these people a favor. They’ll thank us for it someday, I promise you.”
The passion behind these words—but she wasn’t sure it was passion—caught her off guard. Before she could stop herself she said, “And in the meantime you make a pile of money.”
“Well.” He inclined his head tolerantly. “If this weren’t a profit-making enterprise you wouldn’t be here, would you?”
In another room the phone rang, the answering machine picked up, a voice spoke in French and English.
“But it is,” Turner continued, walking over to his desk, “and you are.” He took a set of keys from his pocket, unlocked the top drawer, and removed two brown envelopes. “What about your partner? Are you picking up for him too?”
“No,” she said quickly. “He’s …” But she hadn’t prepared this speech, and now saw that she’d been waiting for Thierry’s disappearance to be revealed as merely a misunderstanding on her part, a trick of perspective that Turner might instantly correct. This was not to be. “He couldn’t make it this morning,” she decided to say. “But he’ll be in touch.”
Turner nodded, tossed one of the envelopes back into the drawer, and handed her the other. Inside were sixty five-hundred-franc notes, which she flip-counted and put in her purse, giving him back the envelope.
“Happy?”
She shrugged. “Why not?”
“Good. So am I.” He produced a business card and wrote a phone number on the back. “Maybe we can work together again sometime.”
“No, I think that would be difficult,” she replied, accepting the card without looking at it. “Impossible, more or less.” But Turner smiled as if she’d given him an altogether different answer, and she said no more.
As she was leaving, she stopped to admire a display she hadn’t noticed earlier. Arranged on a plain white pedestal and illuminated by pin lights were five tiny Egyptian heads, antiquities in stone. Their sparely carved faces radiated an unsettling power.
“Those,” Turner said, “are my soul’s delight. I could look at them forever.” Seeing her hesitate, he waved her forward. “Go ahead, it’s okay to touch.”
She reached out and took one of the heads carefully in her hand. Carved from pink limestone, it was about the size of her two bent thumbs pressed together, weightier than it looked but easily held in one palm. Beneath a helmet of stylized hair, the oval face was distant and impassive, its full mouth and languid blank eyes touched with just the faintest trace of a smile. Odile had never before held anything so anguishingly beautiful. “Are they very old?”
“Fourth Dynasty,” said Turner. “The one you’re holding probably dates from around 2600 BC. That one and the one in basalt”—he pointed to a similar piece—“are real. The other three are fakes.”
She replaced the head among the others. “Why do you keep them if they’re fakes?”
“They’re good fakes. Unique pieces in their own right.” He let his gaze linger a moment longer over the objects. “Anyway,” he said, looking up brightly, “I do keep them.”
In the hallway, waiting for the elevator, she took Turner’s card from her coat pocket and tore it up.
As trying as the last few days had been, on balance the trip had to be counted
as a success. Experiences had been had, and money made. That, after all, was the point. She checked her watch, then dropped the scraps of card through the elevator shaft’s wrought-iron fretwork and took the stairs five flights down to the street
THAT AFTERNOON, Max met with his business manager, Eddie Bouvier, at a country-and-western-themed brasserie near the Place de la République. The sky had brightened, and they took a table outside.
“It’s normal,” Eddie was saying. “Absolutely. My own daughter, when she turned thirteen, suddenly everything was the fault of the ‘patriarchy.’ Sexist this, chauvinist that. It was horrible while it lasted. Worse than being in America.”
“How long did she keep it up?”
“Six months, a year.”
“With Allegra it’s more personal. She blames me for the divorce, I think.”
“And is she right?”
“In effect. I suppose so, yes.”
“So why be upset? When she starts going out with boys, that’s the time to worry. Then I will be sympathetic.” Eddie tossed back his espresso and cast a moody eye over the pedestrian traffic. “Bastards,” he added darkly.
Max had gotten to know him in the course of an all-night poker game at Cannes the spring he and Odile had moved to Paris. At the time, a business manager was the last thing Max thought he needed—another salary to pay—but as he listened to Eddie deconstruct the financing of each of the films they’d seen at the festival that day, independent efforts all, he found himself enthralled. Eddie knew how to make the numbers dance, how to play his cards. The next day over lunch Max had retained his services and begun a friendship that had survived both disappointment and triumph, professional and personal. It was an alliance that seemed to comment on the folly of men and their plans, men like themselves.
“So,” Eddie said, signaling the waiter and offering Max a cigar, “are you going to tell me what’s on your mind, or should I guess? You want to know whether the divinely unobtainable Isabelle H. can be detached from the deal I risked my health to put together for you. Correct?”
“Something like that.” Max spoke around the cigar as he lit it.
“Are you sure she won’t do the picture? It is possible, don’t you think, that she’s waiting for you to put her at ease.”
“Out of the question. To put her at ease I’d have to light her up like a Botticelli. I told everyone right from the start that I’m going to shoot this film in natural light. If she can’t live with that, why didn’t she say so then?”
“You wouldn’t have listened.”
“True. But she would’ve gotten it out of her system.”
Eddie was amused. From inside the brasserie came the voice of Hank Williams, singing of whiskey and women and lonesome death. The waiter delivered two more espressos.
“Let me ask you this then, Max. Are you sure this is the film you want to make right now? Maybe you have another project in the back of your mind, something more suitable to the circumstances.”
“More suitable to Isabelle, you mean?”
With an equivocating shrug, the Frenchman seemed to invite Max to speak his mind.
“I don’t know, Eddie. Lately I’ve been rethinking things. I mean, why not get rid of some of the artifice? Shooting in natural light is a step in the right direction. But what about actors? Can anything be done about them? Who the fuck knows?”
Chewing on his cigar, Eddie stared hard at his friend and associate. “So you’re in transition, creatively speaking.”
“What I need you to tell me is, one, can we keep our financing without Isabelle, and, two, do I have to make the film I said I would?”
They smoked in silence while Eddie pondered. Once he’d thought it through he said, “The answer to your second question is no. These guys should understand how you work by now, but if they want to be difficult we’ve got a letter of intent with their signatures on it and language I can work with.” He pursed his lips and expelled a puff of air. “Unfortunately, it makes no difference, because the answer to your first question is also no. No star, no financing. Maybe they would accept a substitute, someone with the same box-office draw, but I wouldn’t want to bet on it. Investors are like children: they remember only what they were promised.”
“You know what?” Max said after a moment. “I don’t want their money. Tell them the deal’s off.”
Eddie looked at him evenly. “You’re sure?”
“Certainly. I’ll go to video before I let those morons tell me how to make films.” He dropped his cigar to the pavement and ground it out with his heel.
“Your decision,” Eddie said, picking up the check.
“I need to reassess, take a fresh look at things. Maybe I will shoot some video.”
“Do what you need to, Max. Just don’t fall off the map. White Room/Black Room gave us a touch of box-office credibility, and people want to know what you’re doing next. Your name’s in the air. It would be a pity to let that go to waste.”
“Thanks, Eddie. Point taken.”
They stood, shook hands, and as they parted company Max felt his head grow clear. It was like a reward. And he wondered, as he walked, if there would be more of that to come
NORTH BY NORTHWEST was playing on the television, with the soundtrack turned up very loud. Books, videotapes, and DVDs had been pulled from their shelves, furniture upended, drawers and their contents strewn across the floor. One wall was badly stained where a bottle of burgundy had been hurled against it, and the room stank of scotch and cigarette smoke.
Odile put her groceries on the kitchen table. Scanning the damage, she felt sick to her stomach.
“Cocktail before dinner?” asked the dining-car steward.
“Yes, please,” Cary Grant said, as the train rounded a bend. “A Gibson.”
She switched off the TV. In the next room Max’s voice was saying, “No, I finally got through … Right … Well, you know Bastien, the usual connerie: ‘I’m her father, not her concierge.’ Meaning he hasn’t heard from her either.”
Standing in the doorway, Odile watched Max approach the window, the phone pressed to his ear, his body in profile. The light changed around him—it became a glow, a luminous haze, and she realized she’d been through all of this before, the same scene in every particular. Max turned around, just as he had the other time, his eyes widening at the sight of her, just as she remembered them doing.
“Wait, Rachel, she just walked in. I’ll call you later, okay? … Thanks, you too. Ciao.”
A beep as he turned off the phone.
“You’re here!” He stared at Odile. “Thank God! What happened? Are you all right?”
Odile stepped forward uncertainly. “Yes, yes, I’m … I’m fine.” She’d unbuttoned her plaid overcoat without taking it off. “You’re home early.”
He came forward and, slipping his hands inside her coat, pressed her to him. “Christ, Odile! Where have you been? I was starting to get seriously worried.”
“I’m sorry. There was a courier job, one just too good to turn down. I thought I’d be back before you even—” He kissed her on the neck, and for an instant she felt the sting of tears rise in her throat. This was her husband. This was her home. This was her life.
“And then when I saw this,” Max said, releasing her and waving his hand vaguely around the room: a cherrywood dresser with its drawers yanked out, a shattered mirror, clothes scattered in heaps. “I thought, well, you can imagine.”
She was shaking her head.
“Whoever did it must have been watching the house,” he went on, forcing himself to calm down. “I was only gone for a couple of hours.”
Drifting across the room, Odile picked her jewelry box off the floor, the earrings, bracelets, and rings all untouched. “What did they take?”
He grimaced, waving the question off.
She stared with growing unhappiness at the chaos visited upon them. “Very nice. We’ll call the police, no?”
Max sighed. “The police are likely to be mo
re trouble than they’re worth. Let’s see what’s missing first.” Then, looking her over once more, he seemed freshly troubled. “Where did you say you were?”
“Just picking up some packages and delivering them.” She grimaced. “How did it go with Allegra?”
“Not too well. I’ll tell you about it.”
Odile’s sense of déjà vu dissipated, things shed their luminosity, her dismay mounted. “And now?” she said, leaving him to decide what she meant.
“Now we put everything back,” he replied.
So, working methodically, Max in the living room, Odile in the bedroom, they began setting the place to rights. And while the actual damage proved to be less than they’d feared—the china was intact, the upholstery unharmed, only the one wall defaced—they felt reduced by the violation, which charged the air still, and they didn’t speak as they straightened up.
One of the intruders had left a large black turd in the toilet bowl, and Odile gagged as she flushed it away. There were other leavings: cigarette butts, candy wrappers, a scorched spoon that Max discarded. He righted the furniture, she hung their clothes back up, order was restored. Yet once they had sorted through everything and taken a mental inventory, separately and together, of the apartment’s contents—even, in their distraction, starting to count the silverware—neither of them could find anything missing. There had been no burglary.
“Vandalism?” said Max. “Hard to believe anyone would go to the trouble.”
“But what else could it be?” Odile said.
“Maybe someone’s trying to send us a message.”
Odile recognized his dry, half-sarcastic tone of voice. Puzzled, she dismissed it. “We’ll both feel better when we’ve eaten,” she said, moving to unpack the groceries.
As Max and Odile made dinner together, each maneuvering around the other by habit and cooking by rote, the rhythms of domesticity gradually reasserted themselves. On the radio: the music of Bebel Gilberto. Max poured Odile a glass of wine, another for himself. By the time they sat down to eat, they’d finished the bottle.
