Gwenny June

by Richard Dorrance

  Chapter 45 – Filming at the Louvre

  The beginning of the second week of filming they left the grape growing region and went back to Paris. The crew met the first morning in the grand ballroom of the Intercontinental Grand, which Spielberg had rented for the week as their production headquarters. The production coordinator told everyone they were filming at the Louvre after lunch. Catherine, Jorgee, Anna, and Gwen looked at each other. Back there, again?

  Jorgee brought the car into one of the underground parking garages, where they were met by the female chief of security. How did Jorgee know these people, and contact them? Catherine never heard him do this. Jorgee wasn’t an old salt, doing this job for years and years, building up lists of contacts. He was twenty-seven.

  The security woman was the same person who came to the rescue of the ugly American left groaning on the gallery floor during a previous Deneuvian visit, and she thought of the incident. After the five French guys had roughed him up, after he had experienced the sharp toes of the French women, the chief of security had taken the man and his wife to her office to check his injuries, both physical and psychological. His body wasn’t hurt badly, but his pride was.

  “I want to press charges. Who are those nuts? I didn’t do anything. What kind of place is this? I want my money back. $5,000 for that?” He looked to his wife for support, who was as clueless as he was. She couldn’t say anything, wondering what had happened. It was like a tree limb suddenly falling on your car, parked in a parking lot, crushing the roof. A force of nature, out of the blue.

  “Let me get you some Perrier,” the security chief said. She was absolutely calm and collected. “Maybe a glass of wine. Please relax. We can talk.”

  “Talk my ass. Where’re the cops? Who are you?” The guy wasn’t slurring his words or anything, but the alcohol from the pre-gallery walk cocktail party still was with him.

  She handed him a bottle of water. “My friend, there aren’t going to be any police. You’re drunk. You insulted Catherine Deneuve, in public. And the charity already has cashed your check. I’m sorry for the incident, but, well, you went to a sensitive place, and, ah, the people of France spoke. Men and women. Again, I’m sorry. Can I get you a cab?”

  The guy and his wife looked at the security woman like she was crazy. She smiled back, neutrally. No police? Assault. No police? Museum. Are these people crazy? Kicked in the gut by sharp-toed women. Can I get you a cab? That’s it?

  He whined and his wife looked flustered, but that was the end of it. The security woman listened patiently for a while, then had the couple escorted out the employee entrance and into a cab. She handed the driver a twenty Euro note and said, “Dump him in the Seine.”

  Now, here was Catherine again at the museum. More fun?

  The security chief called the museum director, who came humming down the kilometer long hallway on a Segway. Madame Catherine, so nice to see you again. Madame June, Madame Stirg, welcome. Mr. Jorgee, welcome. Mr. Spielberg is here. His crew is here, in one of the galleries. This way, please.

  He led the way through the miles of galleries, the security woman keeping the ever growing crowd at bay, being gentle, understanding French cultural sensibilities. Jorgee supplemented the museum staff for bodyguard duties, ready to stop a too eager fan from planting one on Catherine’s mouth, uninvited.

  Everyone cooled their heels while Spielberg and the crew set the scene. Soon it was, “Places, everyone.” And the filming started.

  The museum director stood in the back, watching the process, when his buzzer buzzed, and the security chief’s buzzer buzzed. Situation, Gallery 44, just down the hallway. They looked at each other. Tend to the situation, or tend to Spielberg and The Deneuve? The security staff did not buzz both the director and the chief about the same matter very often, so this must be serious. Situation or Deneuve? The director was torn. He said to the security chief, “You go. I’ll follow.” He turned to an assistant museum director and said, “There’s something wrong down the hallway. I don’t know what, but something serious. I have to go.”

  Catherine was off camera, watching, and saw the Director leave, running. She asked the assistant museum director, who told her something serious was happening down the hall. Catherine walked over to Spielberg and took his arm. She said, “Steven, follow me. Bring the camera and the rest of the stuff.” He looked at her like she was crazy. No one stopped him in the middle of filming a scene. Well, almost no one. The look on her face convinced him.

  “Cut.” He stood on an equipment box and said, “Camera, sound, break it down, now. Follow me. Everything on batteries.”

  Catherine took his arm and led him out of the gallery into the long hallway, turning right.

  “Come on,” she said. Turning around, “Come on Gwenny, come on Anna, we have to help,” her intuition beaming at her.

  They marched down to an intersection, turned again, and entered a large gallery that barely contained a loud and disturbing voice. The voice was deep enough to be a man’s, but it came from a woman. She was standing in front of a large work by Picasso that he had painted in the 1930s. It showed a woman in front of a small house in a Spanish village. Two men stood next to a cart on which lay a body. The body was the woman’s son, killed in the civil war fighting. The woman in the painting was staring at the body, not comprehending the reality.

  The woman in the gallery was distraught. She was large and tall, wearing a brown dress, a brown cardigan sweater, a brown blouse, and brown shoes. She had pulled a bench from the center of the room over to the painting, and was standing on it, holding a box cutter in one hand. Her hair was tied into a pony tail, but a large lock had escaped the clasp, and stuck out to one side. This errant lock of hair combined with the grief on her face made her ugly, which was too bad, because she wasn’t an ugly person at all. She was hurting.

  Instinctively Spielberg grabbed a cameraman, pointed towards the woman, and said, “Roll.” Same with a long distance mike. Point it towards her, turn it on.

  “It’s always the same,” the woman said. Grief powered her voice, filling the gallery and leaking out into the hallway. “It’s always the same. Some people send others off to a war, a stupid war, and they come home dead. They come home, but they can’t live their lives like the rest of us. They’re gone, and they’re not coming back to us.” She spread both arms out to the sides, still holding the knife. “Just like in this painting. That’s us, that woman there, we get the cart with the body on it. We get to deal with that, while the ones that send the boy away sit in offices, talking. It’s always the same. They don’t know what they do when they send him away, and they don’t know what we do when he comes back. We sit at home without him. That’s what we do. We sit there without him. And the people in the offices don’t know.”

  The security chief had worked her way through the crowd and stood near the bench. She wasn’t listening to what the woman was saying; she was looking at the knife the woman was waving around. The woman looked down and saw the large credential hanging around the security chief’s neck on a lanyard, and she realized this person was there to stop her.

  “Get away. Get away.” She waved the knife at the security chief. “The people in the offices have to know what they do. They have to know what we do when the boy comes home on a cart. Get away now. I’m going to make those people in the offices hear me. They’re going to hear me when I mark this famous painting, in this famous place. They will see the mark, and they will know what it means.” She feigned another slash at the security woman standing below her, then turned to the painting.

  “My dear,” came in a loud but beautiful voice from the group of thirty people watching the event unfold. “I love your boy. I love the boy you lost. I know about him and I know about you.” The Deneuve was at the rear of the crowd when she spoke, but she raised her hand so the woman could see her. Captured by the v
oice, the women looked across the crowd, with her arm raised and the knife positioned to slash an arc across the painting. Deneuve took hold of Anna’s hand and moved. She didn’t push directly through the crowd towards the woman, but moved towards the side of the gallery and the perimeter of the crowd. She kept one arm raised and the other touching Anna. As they emerged from the crowd near the wall there was a line of sight between them and the woman standing on the bench. Catherine stopped and said, “Your boy. We love him. Everyone here loves him. We know. We see the painting. We see you and we see your boy. Stay there. We are coming to you.”

  The woman was mesmerized by the soft but commanding voice, and so was the crowd. The museum director and the security chief stayed still and watched. The people at the edge of the crowd moved inwards ever so slightly so there was a clear path between Catherine and the woman. Catherine gave an imperceptible tug on Anna’s arm, telling her to follow, then raised both arms in the air, pointing towards the mother. Slowly she walked forward. “We’re coming to you. We’re coming to you, and to the painting. We’re going to be with you, and look at the painting, and know about the woman in the painting, and know about you. We know about your boy. All of us here will be with you. With you and with the woman in the painting.”

  Catherine stood under and to one side of the woman. The security chief stood at the other. Everyone in the gallery watched, silently. Anna stood next to Catherine, utterly calm, a look of understanding on her face. Her muscles were flexed, ready for whatever came next. She would touch the woman kindly, she would follow Catherine’s lead, or she would protect The Deneuve, if it came to that.

  “Let me up there with you,” said Catherine.

  She didn’t wait for an answer, but stepped up onto the bench, next to the woman. The woman still held the knife in the hand away from Catherine. Catherine kept her arms at her side, facing the woman, looking in her eyes. They stood there for several seconds, with not a sound in the gallery. Catherine turned, faced the crowd, and raised an arm. “We know the two boys. The one in the painting, and the one of this woman. We know they are gone, and care about them. We know the two women, and their loss is our loss. Those of us here, in this room, have lost these two boys. Raise your hands to this woman, now, tell her you are with her.”

  Every person in the room raised their hands and said, “We are with you.” The director of the Louvre said it, the security chief said it, and Anna said it. The woman chose to look at Anna, where she saw the look of kindness and understanding on her face. She saw that Anna knew her, and saw that the other people knew her and knew the woman in the Picasso painting. She wasn’t alone, as she had thought. She looked down at the woman with the credentials hanging around her neck, and handed her the knife. She didn’t say anything to Catherine, just nodded her head and climbed down from the bench. The security chief gently took her by the arm and led her through the crowd and out of the gallery.

  When the woman was gone, Catherine, standing on the bench like she was on a Broadway stage, said to everyone, “Well done. We did good. We did good.” She paused, then said, “Do you know why I am here?” By now the tourists had been told by the locals who the woman standing on the bench was. “I’m here because I’m making a film about Champagne. About how it enriches our lives. I am looking at paintings that have Champagne in them, that show how this wine has been part of world culture. Just now we were part of that woman’s grief, and we helped her. You helped her. So now, all of us will have some Champagne to celebrate her health, and the health of this Picasso painting. You are invited to drink with me, wherever the museum director says we should go.”

  Jorgee thought, 'Oh shit, here we go again, another party with a bunch of strangers, sucking up $100 bottles of juice.'

  The museum director knew what to do. He got up on the bench next to Catherine and said, “My friends, Madame Catherine Deneuve and the Louvre Museum invite you to a Champagne party, in thirty minutes, in the main restaurant. Please tell the staff person at the restaurant that you are with the ‘Picasso was Saved’ group, and are joining the Champagne party. Thirty minutes. And thank you for your assistance. Your valuable assistance.”

  He kissed Catherine on the cheek, jumped off the bench, and headed down to the restaurant to tell the staff there to prepare for the party. Champagne for fifty, and load up the tables with all the food they could spare on this short notice. Jorgee thought, “Thank God, it’s not our Champagne they’re going to guzzle.”

  Spielberg motioned to the cameraman to stand down. He turned to the assistant film director and the production coordinator, said, “Holy shit. I hope we got all that. Holy shit.”

  The party lasted two hours, with the press adding to the havoc, cameras rolling, Catherine presiding, everyone drinking and eating. The restaurant staff ran out to the nearest wine stores and bought every case of Champagne they had in stock. The Director opened the party to everyone in the museum; everyone, that is, who could squeeze into the restaurant. Why? Because the Picasso was worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 million.

  Late that night, back at the hotel, after Catherine had retired, Gwen and Anna sat alone, decompressing. Gwen said, “Don’t ever forget what you saw today. Do you know what really happened?”

  “Of course. Catherine helped that woman, and saved the Picasso. Amazing.”

  “Is that all?”

  “She got the crowd to help. She made them part of the solution.”

  “And.”

  Anna looked at Gwen; didn’t answer.

  “What was the most important thing that happened there in the gallery?” Gwen asked.

  “We helped the woman.”

  “Yes. What was the second most important thing that happened?”

  “We saved the painting.”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Catherine saving the painting was the third most important thing. Catherine teaching you was more important.”

  “Ummm….?”

  “What did Catherine do? She acted. She followed her intuition. She helped a person in serious need. She commanded a crowd.”

  Anna kept looking at Gwen.

  “Intuition. Half brain. Half heart. Mixed together in a special cocktail. Can’t explain it. The best human force to follow. You. You have it more than most. Gotta learn to follow it. Good things happen. The best things. Smartness. Empathy. Good decisions. Special with you, Anna. Special. You learned today from her. Don’t forget. Follow it. Do like her.”