Losing the Light

by Andrea Dunlop

  “And what does this Jean-Claude do?”

  She looked out the window and an enigmatic smile crossed her face. The sun was still high. “He’s a graffiti artist. Though he’s finally being accepted by the fine-art community and has been selling murals for big bucks. He feels very conflicted about it.”

  “He sounds much more interesting than this boy toy I’m shacked up with, I have to say.”

  “You thought so until you saw the boy toy naked, then you were very interested.”

  I laughed. “I think maybe you should have been the fiction writer, Sophie.”

  “What fiction?” She nudged me with her bare toe, having slipped her feet out of her delicate metallic sandals the moment we’d sat down. “This is clairvoyance.”

  I smiled and leaned back to close my eyes. I hadn’t slept at all the night before, unable to shake my anxiety about this trip and the roulette wheel of possible outcomes that it presented—though now that I was with Sophie, I couldn’t remember what I’d been nervous about. Her way of talking about our future together seemed so authoritative; she had the certainty of someone who knows she’ll go on to do something special. How much we didn’t want to imagine ourselves in ordinary lives! We couldn’t take the idea of being funneled onto the conveyor belt of diligent workers that filled the cities. After the tests, after the homework, there was life, and this didn’t, couldn’t, mean two weeks of vacation plus sick days.

  I felt myself drifting to sleep. In the throes of my late-night insomnia I had promised myself I would talk to Sophie about Alex. Yet now, in the light of day, discussing it seemed terrifying. Our liaisons had happened in such a secret way, and I worried I’d somehow killed it in Paris, that if questioned, he might deny it all.

  When we got off the train in Paris, the memory of that night came back to me, rising up my spine and making my cheeks flush. If Sophie noticed how quiet I became as we ate our sandwiches during the layover, she didn’t say anything. She seemed equally lost in her own thoughts.

  “So tell me,” I said, resuming our earlier conversation as we settled into our train seats for the second leg of the journey, “do we still know Alex and Véronique in this future life? We are in France, after all.”

  Sophie smiled and ran her fingers over her head. “Véronique lives in Paris and we run into her at parties sometimes,” Sophie said thoughtfully. “And Alex gets very famous actually.”

  “Well, he’s so talented, after all.”

  “He becomes a big-shot celebrity and fashion photographer.”

  “So he sells out like us?”

  “It’s inevitable really. But he doesn’t have the excuse of having been a starving artist. You see, his grandmother leaves him all her money and the house in Cap Ferrat.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “But we lose touch with Alex.”

  “Until one day when you run into him at the boucherie of course.”

  “Yes. I decided to go myself instead of sending my cook, Corinne, because it was such a nice day, and then there’s Alex, who doesn’t trust anyone else to choose his meat for him.”

  “And you’d know him anywhere,” I said, “he looks just the same.”

  “He’s aged well, it’s true. Though between you and me, I think he’s had some work done. He spent some years in America and I think it made him vain. But, anyway, we reunite. And decide to come again for a weekend in Cap Ferrat.”

  “Do we bring our husbands?”

  Sophie shook her head. “No, the three musketeers, like old times.”

  It was now or never, I decided. Here in the safety of the story, I could let it be known. “Of course. And then one night after a little too much wine, Alex and I realize the truth.”

  “Ri-ight,” Sophie said slowly as though trying to guess a pantomime in a game of charades, “the truth.”

  “That we’ve been in love with each other all these years,” I said quietly, “ever since we met.”

  Sophie craned her neck to face me. For a long time her expression was inscrutable. I silently pleaded with her to understand. I hoped that even in the context of this game, my words had been blunt enough. At long last she smiled a big, wide smile and let out a satisfied little laugh as though to say, Ha, I knew it! And maybe she had known all along. Maybe I’d never been hiding it well.

  “You’ll have to get rid of the boy toy now, I suppose,” Sophie said, finally unlocking me from her gaze and leaning over to take a sip of her sparkling water, “although it would be very French of you to just keep sleeping with both of them for as long as possible.”

  “Oui.” Relief travels up my spine and I smile. “But in the end, I’m an American. So I choose true love.”

  Sophie laughs. “The Hollywood ending.”

  Did Sophie believe in this future? Did I? Could I?

  “What do you think, chérie?” She reached out to stroke my hair. “A glass of wine in the club car?”

  I nodded and felt a wave of relief wash over me. The truth was out now and it wouldn’t divide us after all; Sophie and I were, in fact, indivisible.

  We had a couple of glasses of wine and stayed on in the club car for dinner. When we finally returned to our seats, we were nearly at our destination, and I drifted off. I woke up not long after with my body aching from the odd position it had contorted into. Normally I could never sleep sitting up, but sheer exhaustion from the night before aided by the peace of mind I felt after finally unburdening my soul had put me out. Sophie was still sleeping when they announced that we were approaching the station in Nice. She looked so young when she slept, the picture of innocence and loveliness.

  I leaned over and jostled her knee. “Soph.”

  For a moment she didn’t stir. She always slept soundly, even on trains apparently.

  Finally her eyelids fluttered awake. She looked around for a minute and then smiled. “Tell me we’re in Cap Ferrat,” she whispered, her voice raspy with sleep.

  “Only partly, we’re in Nice. Alex is coming to get us to drive us there, remember?”

  I didn’t know much about Cap Ferrat. Back then, I could scarcely imagine such a place; the most glamorous beach I’d ever been to was in Santa Monica. I knew that Cap Ferrat was on the seashore and that you couldn’t reach it by train. I had asked Nicole about it, and though she had not said so outright, I got the impression that it was the exclusive territory of the very wealthy.

  Sophie held my hand as we crossed the platform. After what felt like the perpetual chilliness of Nantes, the warm evening breezes seemed to announce that we were somewhere more welcoming.

  I could see people looking at Sophie and me. I felt rumpled but Sophie still looked perfect, her long hair tucked under her wide hat. In front of the station a long parade of gleaming luxury cars jockeyed with one another for position. Every few seconds, someone gave a cry of recognition and trotted toward one of them, their luggage tumbling along behind them. As I stood perusing the chaos, Sophie pulled her phone out of her gray purse.

  “Were we supposed to call him when we arrived?”

  “He said he would be here,” she said quietly. I could feel the same thought crossing both our minds in that instant. What if he didn’t come? Almost against my will, I imagined Sophie and me calling and calling him, waiting a couple of hours at the train station while the crowd of happy travelers on holiday and weary commuters around us thinned as the day’s final train came and went. Then finally, without another option, we would take a train back to Nantes and wait for an explanation. I would have this fantasy again many times in retrospect, no longer with a sense of dread, but with a sense of possibility, a blind wish that everything might still somehow be saved.

  But, of course, he did come. After a quarter hour that seemed to go on for half a day, Alex pulled up in a gleaming blue convertible with its rich, cream-colored soft top pulled back. It occurred to me that men like Alex knew how to make their entrances, knew to make you wait just long enough that you found yourself in touch with the exa
ct despair you’d feel if they were to abandon you, then they’d show up to save the day a moment later and fill you with the joy of their presence, the relief of having been rescued from their absence.

  Seconds ago I’d been standing there with an inexplicable but gnawing certainty that he wouldn’t show, but then he had appeared, coming around the car to kiss us and to swing our bags into the tiny trunk. He was sorry he was late and he would have called or sent an SMS but the streets of Nice confounded him and he had to keep his eyes on the road.

  Sophie climbed into the backseat without discussion—she knew now, after all—and I took a seat next to Alex.

  “Ready?” He turned to smile back at Sophie and then at me, leaning over to squeeze my bare knee as he did so. I nodded, almost delirious with happiness as we pulled away from the train station.

  “There is a quicker way through the back roads,” Alex explained, his voice nearly disappearing in the wind. “But I thought we should take the long way that goes along the ocean. You have never seen the Mediterranean before, isn’t that right?”

  As if on cue, I gasped as the breathtaking expanse of dark ocean came into view as we rounded the corner. A full moon was rising, its reflection flooding the stirring waves. Sophie put her hand on my shoulder and shook it as if to say, Do you see this? Can you believe it?

  “You know Somerset Maugham had a house here,” Alex said, looking over at me. “Of Human Bondage. Do you know him?”

  I marveled at the perfect symmetry of things. “I do, yes.”

  As we made our way past the harbor, where the yachts ranged from big to aircraft carrier, and smaller sailboats swayed and knocked against one another, I had the sensation that we were on our way to our new home, instead of somewhere we would only be spending a few days. It suddenly felt as though the future that Sophie and I had laid out in such detail during our train ride was real and that we were heading toward it now, were already in it. I felt released from time, sure that anything was possible, that perhaps I would turn around and see not only Sophie sitting there but the fictional Jean-Claude in the backseat beside her. We were not our present selves but our future selves, with twenty years of history and friendship behind us. The days ahead were to become a jewel in our common past, something we would reminisce about for many years to come.

  When I think of it now, I see us hurtling toward our doom; there’d be no going back from what happened at that house. The moonlight, intensified by the sparkling sea and the gleaming white boats that swayed atop it, seemed to obliterate whatever we’d left behind us and illuminate all that might be before us. There were no bumps in the road, not a cloud in the sky, not a harbinger of trouble for miles and miles.

  IT TOOK us about forty minutes to get to Cap Ferrat from Nice. The town jutted out on a peninsula that was a short distance from Monaco; the landscape was dense with trees and surrounded on all sides by inky water, barely visible beneath the moon.

  The house was stark white and sharply modern with windows that encompassed entire walls and with massive arched doorways. Inside, a grand foyer opened up to a vast kitchen and living room. Alex continued on through the house as Sophie and I stood there gaping. Sophie reached out for my hand and squeezed it and we exchanged a wide-eyed glance.

  Alex laughed. “Don’t be shy, girls. Please, make yourselves at home!”

  I gazed at him standing there in his loose tan trousers and linen shirt that appeared fresh even after the long drive and thought that he never seemed quite so at home when he was in Nantes. This was clearly his natural habitat. I felt a longing to fit so neatly in a place like this, to appear like someone who belonged in a mansion by the sea. Most of all I longed to look right next to Alex, to look as if I belonged with him. I felt a blossoming joy as I let the idea enter my head that maybe I did look as if I belonged, that maybe it was how I saw myself that had been askew all along, and that the version that Alex and his lens saw was the real thing, which had been beyond my grasp until now.

  We sat on the patio, which stretched across the entire side of the house, and had a glass of wine before bed. Blue Grecian pots with forsythia crawling out the sides lined the railing at intervals. All that lay between the house and the ocean was a steep hill covered in greenery through which I could see a footpath leading down to the beach.

  “Is the beach private?” Sophie asked. The cove of pale sand below us was surrounded on either side by rocks and was completely deserted; it looked haunting in the waxing moonlight.

  “Plus ou moins. There is a hotel a ways down and the occasional intrepid tourist wanders through. But there will be no families with beach umbrellas and screaming children, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  I had never seen such an enchanted-looking place; it seemed impossible that the outside world could bother us while we were here. Though what happened there would spark the series of events that would seal our three fates.

  “I will take you to your bedroom,” Alex said as we drained the last of the bottle. “You both look exhausted and you must be well rested to enjoy your first real day of vacation tomorrow, yes?”

  We let ourselves be led to the bedroom, and Alex tucked us in and kissed us on the foreheads like sleepy children. I had never slept more soundly.

  “What would you girls like to do today?” Alex asked when we emerged the next morning. “Simplement aller à la plage? If you’re not in the mood for the beach, we could visit the Ephrussi de Rothschild museum or just relax awhile and go into town. Your wish is my command,” he said with a courtly little bow. “But right now you must come out onto the patio”—he pushed open a sliding glass door—“see it in the sunlight.”

  Sophie and I followed him, smiling. Our footsteps echoed in the expanse of the house and added to the pleasant sensation of our own smallness, a feeling augmented by the high ceilings and the light flooding in from the windows facing the Mediterranean. The brilliance of the sun over the sea made everything blend together; you could no longer tell where the ocean ended and the sky began.

  Though the house was spotless, it had an abandoned feel to it. I sensed that the fridge and cupboards would either be completely empty or freshly and very deliberately stocked. There’d be no condiments and salad dressings left over from recent meals, no steaks in the freezer. The house was opulent but strangely anonymous. There were pictures on the walls that I assumed were of various members of the de Persaud clan, but I didn’t recognize any faces.

  We opted to go to the beach since possible showers were predicted for later that afternoon and we wanted to take full advantage of the sunny weather while we had it. Sophie and I returned to “our” bedroom to change. I would have preferred to be assigned a bed with Alex, but since that wasn’t an option, I was happy to sleep next to Sophie. The room was spacious, done up in a tasteful nautical theme, and it appeared to be meant for children. Sophie and I hurriedly began taking off our clothes.

  “This place is amazing,” Sophie said quietly as she adjusted the triangles of her bathing-suit top and tied it securely in back. “I can’t believe we’re here.”

  “I know.” I instinctually turned away from her as I removed my top. “It’s already making me sad to think about leaving.”

  “Don’t say it, don’t even think about it.”

  We were both quiet for a moment. The windows in our room faced the sparse forest behind the house. There was no evidence of life in that direction; the sea lay on the opposite side.

  “Okay, I won’t.” I pulled a swimsuit cover over my head and dug out my sunglasses and a tattered novel. We then ventured down the hall and called out to Alex.

  “In here!” his voice echoed from a set of double doors.

  Sophie opened the door slowly, and again we were taken aback by the brilliant sunshine coming through the windows and over the ocean. This was obviously the master suite, done up in vivid Mediterranean whites and blues with a giant, pristine white bed in the center.

  Without warning, Sophie dropped the beach bag she
was carrying and with a running start threw herself facedown onto the middle of the bed.

  I laughed. “Sophie!”

  Alex’s head protruded from the giant expanse of a marble bathroom. He was smiling.

  “You said to make ourselves at home,” Sophie said to Alex with a mock-sheepish tone. “Come on, Brooke!”

  I looked at Alex, who grinned at me indulgently and shrugged. Slipping my sandals off, I tiptoed toward the bed and plopped down next to Sophie.

  “This is the best bed in the history of beds,” I said. Sophie reached out and squeezed my hand.

  “You two are welcome to sleep here instead of in your room,” Alex said, reemerging from the bathroom closet with three thick, blue-and-white-striped beach towels in his arms. “Of course, on the condition that I sleep in between you,” he added jokingly, or perhaps, I realized, not so jokingly. Sophie cocked an eyebrow at me suggestively.

  “We could sleep half the university in this bed comfortably,” Sophie said.

  “Allez, les filles, let’s get to the beach while the sun is still in the sky; there’s plenty of time for lounging in bed later.”

  We gathered up some fruit and beer and headed down the narrow, overgrown path that led from the house to the beach. I had the excited energy of a kid sneaking onto someone else’s property; it seemed we couldn’t possibly be allowed to be in this paradise unsupervised. At twenty we were not quite used to the idea of having free rein over ourselves, though we would never have admitted this at the time.

  We fanned our towels next to each other three in a row, and no sooner were we completely settled than Sophie leaped up again. “Merde, I forgot sunscreen. Did anyone bring any down?”

  I hadn’t and Alex was unconvinced of its necessity.

  “I’ll be right back. Do we need anything else?”

  “A few more beers maybe?” Alex said, lying flat on his back and pulling his hat down over his eyes.

  Then Sophie was gone back up the trail and Alex and I were alone with the ocean as our backdrop, the exact landscape of my fantasies.