Dreaming of Manderley

by Leah Marie Brown

  “Thank you, Xavier.”

  “You are welcome.”

  I turn back around and stare at the hotel, its windows glowing golden against the night, and recall the many snippets my aunt wrote to me about her visits. The mojito baba, so refreshing after a day in the sun . . . Their pavé de loup à la plancha is divine . . . Played tennis with Robert Redford yesterday . . . The concierge confessed he believes the ghost of F. Scott Fitzgerald haunts the hotel . . . You do realize Fitzgerald based the hotel in his novel Tender is the Night on Cap-Eden-Roc . . .

  A pang of sadness echoes in my heart as I realize how much larger and impersonal the world now seems in the wake of my aunt’s death. Tears fill my eyes, blurring the postcard-perfect picture of Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc at night. I blink them away before my contact floats off my eyeball and down my face.

  Xavier wraps his arm around my shoulders.

  “You are thinking of your aunt, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “You loved her much.”

  I nod my head.

  “What made her so special? What did you admire most about her?”

  I smile. “Some people color with their favorite crayons. Aunt Patricia colored with all of the crayons in the box. Bold, rarely used colors extending far beyond the lines. Her vibrancy and audacity inspired many. I like to think it inspired me—or, at least, it is inspiring me now.”

  “My family is from Brittany, a land of legends and many superstitions. My grandfather believed the dead continue to enjoy the hospitality of friends and loved ones long after they have stopped walking this earth. He said their spirits return to us whenever we speak kindly of them, that they flit unseen amongst us, happy to have been resurrected through love.” His rubs my collarbone with his thumb, a gentle, comforting gesture. “If that is true, your words and love resurrected your aunt just now, here, in one of her favorite places.”

  “That is such a nice thought. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  We turn around and begin walking down the Grande Allée toward the hotel’s world-famous pool and the sea, breathing in the sharp scent of pine needles commingled with the heady, incense-like scent of magnolia blossoms. We follow the path until it veers to the right, and come to the hotel’s poolside restaurant, with floor-to-ceiling windows that offer sweeping views of the sea.

  “I have wanted to visit this hotel ever since my aunt told me it was built by a newspaper mogul for writers seeking inspiration. This is a dream come true.”

  “I tried to get reservations at their restaurant, the one your aunt wrote you about, but they are hosting a special event.” I am about to thank him for even trying when he raises my hand to his lips and kisses my palm. “So, I booked their sky-top champagne bar instead. For the next two hours, we will be dining by ourselves. How does salty pan-fried panisse, grilled lobster, and chilled rosé sound?”

  “It sounds perfect.”

  * * *

  Later, after I have savored the buttery lobster and chilled rosé, after we have talked about everything and nothing, we are walking up the Grande Allée on our way to the parking lot, when Xavier grabs my hand and pulls me into a secluded corner of the garden. Hidden between walls of oleander bushes, we kiss until I am clutching the front of his tuxedo shirt and we are both gasping for breath.

  I rest my head on his chest and we stand locked in each other’s arms in the moonlight, the heady scent of spring in the South of France filling our senses.

  He reaches over my shoulder, plucks one of the pink flowers from the oleander bush, and hands it to me. I hold the flower to my nose and inhale the scent. Mmm. Roses and sweet pink bubblegum.

  “My aunt always said the scent of oleanders carried on a sea breeze was what heaven would smell like.”

  He plucks another flower and brushes the powdery petals along the line of my bodice, over the swell of one breast, and then the other. Teasing. Tickling. Promising something more.

  “What do you say, ma bichette?” he asks, holding my gaze. “Is this heaven?”

  My breasts react to his slight touch, tightening. My nipples harden, straining against the wispy fabric of my bra. When he notices my hardened nipples, he lowers his mouth to the place between my breasts. A quick kiss that sears my skin with the intensity of a red-hot brand. I can’t breathe.

  “Is this heaven, Manderley?”

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  He presses the flower to the place he kissed, slowly dragging the petals up my chest and throat, over my chin, around my lips. “And oleanders? How do you feel about oleanders?”

  “I . . . love them.”

  “Do you?”

  I can’t move. I am paralyzed by the power of his gaze, knocked senseless by the intensity of my body’s reaction to his touch. I am entranced by him, and if he asked, I would strip naked right here in the garden and offer myself to him just as he offered the oleander blossom to me. In my mind, I see him as a god. He is like the Greek god Pothos, the personification of yearning and desire, reducing mere mortals to quivering creatures consumed by hunger.

  Unfulfilled yearning can drive a person mad, can’t it?

  * * *

  The thirty-one-minute drive back to the hotel is excruciating as I try to imagine what will happen when Xavier walks me back to my room. Will he ask if he can spend the night? Will he try to make good on his promise to make “violent love” to me? What will I do if he does ask to spend the night making violent love to me?

  Anxiety and lobster do not pair nearly as well as rosé and lobster. By the time we reach my door my stomach is threatening to demonstrate its rejection of the buttery meat and bitter nerves.

  “I had a wonderful time tonight, Manderley,” he says, brushing a lock of hair from my face. “Merci.”

  “Thank you, Xavier,” I say, leaning against the door. “I will never forget this night.”

  “That was the plan.” I think he is going to ask me to invite him into my room, but he leans down and kisses my forehead. “Bonne nuit, ma bichette.”

  “Good night, Xavier.”

  He turns to leave. “That’s right,” he says, snapping his fingers. “Could I use your mobile?”

  I frown. “My cell phone?”

  “S’il vous plaît.”

  I fumble in my evening bag, pull out my iPhone, enter my password, and hand it to him.

  “Merci,” he says, taking the phone.

  His thumbs move over the screen and then he is typing something, perhaps a text or email. A few seconds later, my phone emits the swooshing sound it makes when a text is sent. He pushes the home button with his thumb and taps the screen again. Finally, he pushes the power button and hands the phone back to me.

  “Merci.”

  I take my phone, but I don’t slip it back into my bag. He winks and walks away. I wait until I hear the elevator ding before taking my key out of my bag and slipping it into the lock.

  I step into my room and close the door behind me, leaning against it. I push the home button on my iPhone and enter my password. The Contacts app is still open.

  Xavier de Maloret.

  My heart skips a silly, girlish beat, like it did when I was in high school and would write my first name on my notebooks and then add my boyfriend’s last name.

  I feel like Liesel when Rolf kissed her in the gazebo in The Sound of Music. I want to spread my arms wide and let out a glass-shattering Wheeeee! I am not sixteen going on seventeen, but I definitely want someone older and wiser, a Frenchman who makes my heart burst with joy simply by adding his name and phone number into my contacts.

  I have brushed my teeth and washed my face. My gorgeous gossamer Dior is hanging in its garment bag in the wardrobe. I am drifting to sleep when my phone vibrates. It’s a text from Xavier, quoting Bonjour Tristesse. It’s then I realize he sent himself a text from my phone so he could have my number.

  Text from Xavier de Maloret:

  I was rereading Bonjour Tristesse and came to the
part where Cécile says she kissed Cyril hard enough to bruise him so that he would not forget her. I couldn’t forget you if I wanted to, ma bichette. Bonne nuit et de beaux rêves, X.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The first thing I do when I wake up the next morning is reach for my phone to check for a message from Xavier. I hold my breath as I enter my password and then feel an exhilarating rush of adrenaline when I see a new text from him.

  Bonjour. I have a business obligation this morning. Would you like to meet for lunch? La Palme d’Or, Hôtel Martinez, at 1:30?

  Something comes over me, a feverishness, an unusual recklessness, and I answer yes before checking with Olivia to see if she has any plans. I am staring at Xavier’s name on my screen, humming I am sixteen going on seventeen, when Olivia knocks softly on the connecting door.

  “Come in.”

  The door opens and Olivia pokes her head through, focusing her gaze on the unoccupied side of my bed.

  “You’re alone?”

  I sit up. “Of course, I am alone.”

  “I don’t believe it. Not after the look he gave you when he saw you in that dress last night.” She chuckles low in her throat and climbs into bed beside me. “Someone should alert the CIA. You have unparalleled powers of resistance. There is no way I could have sent that man back to his room alone after he looked at me with that smoldering gaze. He was sex in a tuxedo.”

  I find it best to quickly change the subject whenever Olivia gets a little too . . . Olivia-ish. “Did you have a nice time last night?”

  She wrinkles her nose.

  “That bad?”

  “Turns out, I don’t like jazz that much. No wonder they called it the Lost Generation. One hour of listening to all of those wailing horns and pounding pianos and I wanted to get lost. I was crazier than Zelda. True story.”

  I laugh. “What about the jazz singer? Do you like Gaspard?”

  “The cat’s meow.” She holds her hand like a cat’s claw and pretends to scratch me. “Me-ow!”

  “I am glad. Maybe he will end up a character in your next screenplay. The handsome tennis pro who spends his days on the courts with society’s elite and his evenings in a smoky club playing seductive and forbidden jazz to a lost generation of poets and artists.”

  “Ooo, that’s good. good.” She rolls over, snatches a pen and pad of paper from my nightstand and begins scribbling. “I am writing that down in case Gaspard takes me to the absinthe bar again and the green fairy steals my memories.”

  “So you tried absinthe? How was it?”

  “Strong and bitter, like Jägermeister.” She tosses the pad of paper and pen back onto the nightstand and rolls onto her side, propping her head up with her elbow. “So, I take it you had a nice time with Monsieur X?”

  I grin and pull the covers up to my chin.

  “That good, huh?”

  “Oh, Olivia!” I cry. “It was better than good. It was the best.”

  “Even better than your date with Caden Foster?”

  “Caden Foster? Who is that?”

  “Wow!” Olivia whistles. “That must have been some date if it has made you forget all about Caden ‘Away with your fictions of flimsy romance’ Foster.”

  Away with your fictions of flimsy romance is one of the lines in a poem by Lord Byron. Caden Foster was my on-again, off-again college boyfriend. He asked me out the first time by reciting a Lord Byron poem. He had an artist’s soul, beautiful and extremely volatile, which is why we were on-again, off-again throughout college.

  I tell Olivia about La Grotte du Pastis, how Xavier held me close as we danced over the sea, and about the romantic dinner for two at Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc.

  “Hold on! He reserved the entire champagne bar at one of the world’s most luxurious hotels in France? Who is this Monsieur X?” She hops out of bed, runs to her room, and returns a few seconds later with her MacBook. “I think it’s time we employed a little Mr. Robot action.”

  “No! We definitely do not need to employ Mr. Robot action.” I reach for her MacBook, but she swats my hands away. “Didn’t you learn anything from your botched attempt to play the vigilante hacker? Besides, anything I need to know about Xavier I will learn from . . .”

  I let my words trail off because Olivia probably can’t hear me over the wild tap-tap-tapping noise her fingernails are making on the keyboard and because I am a little curious to see what she uncovers. To be more precise, I am curious to see if she uncovers a photograph of Xavier with Marine. In my mind, Xavier’s phantom ex is everything I am not: a tall, willowy slave to fashion, a Glamazon who commands attention with the power of her personality and the awesomeness of her beauty.

  “Found it!” Olivia’s eyes widen and her mouth hangs open. “Oh my God, Manderley!”

  “What? What is it?” I sit up quickly. “What did you find?”

  She lifts the MacBook and I press my hands to my face, covering my eyes. “No, don’t show me. I don’t want to see. It’s a picture of Xavier with some gorgeous woman, isn’t it?”

  “Yep.”

  I feel sick to my stomach. That little worm of curiosity that was nibbling on my resistance suddenly turns ravenous, devouring what is left of my insouciance. I pull my hands away from my face and look at Olivia’s computer screen. Displayed is a French website called Beaux Rêves. The bold azure masthead and neat columns of French text leave no doubt that it is the website of some type of news outlet.

  “Hold on. Let me switch the language.” Olivia positions the pointer over a small British flag icon at the top of the screen and clicks the button. The page reloads. “‘Beaux Rêves, a weekly lifestyle magazine capturing the luxury and glamour of the Riviera.’”

  She scrolls down, past articles about luxury yachts, designer timepieces, and boutique hotels, until she comes to a gallery with photographs of beautiful people at glamorous parties. A svelte blonde sipping a glass of champagne, a distinguished elderly gentleman laughing at the camera, a couple with their arms . . .

  “Wait! Is that me?”

  “Yes!” Olivia clicks on the picture and it grows to fill the screen. “You asked me if I found a photo of Xavier with a beautiful woman, and here it is. Look at you two! You belong on the pages of a swanky lifestyle magazine.”

  I grab my eyeglasses off my nightstand and put them on. I look at the picture and my heart skips a beat. The photographer at La Grotte didn’t just snap a picture of two people dancing, he captured a fleeting, intimate moment between a man and a woman. He captured one of the most intimate moments of my life. Xavier has his arms around my waist. He is looking down at me instead of into the camera, a confident smile coaxing the corners of his mouth, a dimple barely visible beneath his stubble. The dark background lends to the impression that we are alone even though we are surrounded by other dancers.

  “Look at you, gazing into the camera through your eyelashes like a little sex kitten, chin down, lips pouting.”

  It’s not the Lauren Bacall “look,” but it is as close to sultry as I have ever been. It is sultry-ish.

  “It was dark and I had my contacts in,” I say. “I was squinting to see the photographer.”

  “You don’t look like you were squinting. You look like you were flirting with your tall, dark, demonstrably devoted lover.”

  “It is a beautiful picture.”

  “It’s a keeper,” she says. “I would make it my screen saver.”

  She right clicks to save the photograph and then opens iMessage. She clicks on my name, attaches the photograph, and hits return.

  “Can you read the caption under the picture?”

  “I will read it only if you promise you will send the photograph to Reed Harrington and her squad with the message: Bonjour Bitches!”

  “I am not sending that message.”

  “Will you at least make the photo your Twitter profile picture?”

  “Olivia!”

  “Fine,” she says, turning the screen back and clicking on the caption. “‘Xavier de
Maloret, CEO of Théophilus, the oldest luxury ship builder in the world, was photographed at La Grotte du Pastis last night, dancing with an unidentified companion who wore a diaphanous Dior gown.’” Olivia stops reading and slaps my shoulder. “Unidentified companion! You’re the unidentified companion, Manderley! Oooh! That’s so mysterious. So film noir. I love it.”

  “What else does it say?”

  Olivia continues reading aloud. “‘It is rumored Monsieur de Maloret is in Cannes finalizing a lucrative deal to build a fleet of superyachts for perfume billionaire and hotelier, Thierry Lambert. The first, a 170-meter mega-yacht with submarine and helipad, is expected to be ready for delivery in three years.’” Olivia stops reading and whistles. “One hundred and seventy meters! How many feet is that?”

  “Over five hundred.”

  “Five hundred feet? Your boyfriend is building superyachts nearly as long as the Titanic.”

  “It is pretty amazing.”

  “I’ll say. A rich boat builder who gives you a Dior bag before your first date and looks way, way hotter than Mister Andrews.”

  I look at her blankly.

  “Mister Andrews. The man who designed the Titanic in the James Cameron movie. Remember, he told Rose DeWitt Bukater the ship was going to sink and there weren’t enough lifeboats?”

  “Yes, I remember. But, Xavier is not my boyfriend.”

  “What is he then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you better lock that shit down, Manderley!”

  “Why? Because he is rich?” I look at her the same way my nanny would look at me when she caught me reading books under my covers at night instead of sleeping.

  “Please.” She rolls her eyes. “Don’t even give me that face. Money might not buy happiness, but wouldn’t you rather be miserable on a superyacht than a row boat?”

  It’s terribly crass and gauche of Olivia to suggest I pressure Xavier to make a commitment just because we have discovered he is incredibly wealthy. I would point out the tastelessness of her comment, but I love my best friend and understand her obsession with wealth; and the security it provides stems from a childhood spent in poverty. She told me once they were often without utilities. One desperate winter, her mother cooked Christmas dinner on a camping stove and they wore Wonder Bread bags over their shoes because they couldn’t afford boots.