Don't I Know You? (14 page)

I dashed out of the store with my cakes and decided to follow her for a few blocks. I felt a little bad for having eluded her like that. And what was the harm, really, if she had some compelling interest in me? She was an actor, and actors study other people. The streets were thronged and the crowds swam around Charlotte without a second glance; her singularity, her charisma, only flared on-screen. I had to jog to keep up with her. Then, when I turned down rue Mace I spotted Aipalovik admiring the ball gowns in the windows of a couturier's shop.

“Ten thousand dollars for a dress,” he said when I joined him. “But it's finely crafted, isn't it? The little crystal drops on the bodice.” He looked a bit worse for wear. Eric said that when he had left the bar at the Grand the night before, a big-boned American girl was touching Aipalovik on the arm and laughing whenever he spoke. His years as a hunter had made him attentive and highly observant, which the women here are not accustomed to.

I explained to Aipo that the French actress Charlotte Rampling had been following me for several days.

“Why would she follow you?”

“I don't know, but I was just at the market and there she was again.”

“Perhaps she was buying food.”

“No, no. She was looking at lavender. No Frenchwoman would buy lavender, it's for the tourists. She's obsessed with me for some reason.”

Aipalovik pondered this. “You know, when I'm hunting, I keeping thinking I see caribou in the distance. But it's usually not the case.”

“This is different. Come with me.”

I led him to the Majestic, where the minor celebrities stayed (the A-listers stayed out of town, at the absurdly deluxe Hotel du Cap). A white Rolls with tinted windows had pulled up and was disgorging new guests. It was always a kick just to walk through the lobby to view the haggard and wealthy in their finery. The orange-skinned men with the $15,000 chronometers on their wrists, and the women of full artifice, looking embalmed.

“The rich often seem unhappy,” Aipalovik observed as we threaded through the lobby. And there she was, standing near the bar, checking her watch with the tiniest of frowns. I plucked at Aipalovik's arm.

“Over by the floral arrangement, three o'clock.”

Charlotte had several small shopping bags at her feet. I was irritated for her sake by the late arrival of her Accompaniatrice.

“Her beauty is subtle,” said Aipalovik, “but powerful.” We watched as she drew one bare foot out of her shoe, like a deer.

“And she has a wound,” he said, his brow clouding a bit. “Look at her right foot.” He has a big nurturing side, Aipo.

It was true; I could see a blister on her heel that had been rubbed raw. It was bleeding a little. Cannes is very hard on the feet, with all the walking and the cobbled streets. That's why I always carry Band-Aids in my purse. I put a flesh-colored Band-Aid in Aipo's palm and he glided across the room. Charlotte turned a wary eye to this new, unusual person, dressed like a river guide. But after listening to him for a minute or two her face softened. She smiled. That guy, he had the touch. Swiftly he peeled the wrapper off, picked up Charlotte's foot as one would a horse's hoof for shoeing, and smoothed the adhesive strip over the curve of her blistered heel. The deed was done almost before she could register what was happening.

But Charlotte wasn't fazed. She slipped her foot back into its black flat and opened her handbag, ready to pay him, whereupon he looked horrified and backed away. Just then a flustered young man in jeans and a silvery shirt came to her side, scowling at Aipalovik. She kissed the man and put a calming hand on his arm. She shook Aipo's hand. The couple went and sat at the bar as he made his way back to me.

“She smells like heaven. And those eyes. I understand now.”

“Let's slip out while she's distracted.”

“Being in the same vicinity as you does not amount to predation,” Aipo pointed out, but I let it go.

The next night was Eric's screening. He was trying to be offhand about it, but he was terribly nervous, fidgeting so much in the morning films that I had to leave and slip into another one. But his anxiety was understandable. The day after the premiere, reviews would appear in all the industry papers and Cannes can make or break a film. Not to mention the fact that movies set in frigid landscapes have a bad track record at the box office. So we split up for the day. I was coming out of David Lynch's
Wild at Heart
when I all but collided with Charlotte.

Again with the all-black wardrobe, the almost mousy hair, the basilisk gaze. A face that teetered provocatively on the fulcrum between youth and age. The Band-Aid was still visible on one heel.

I lingered in the lobby, brandishing my presence, then went out into the sunlight and headed along the boardwalk of the Croisette, walking slowly. The sunbathers were out in force and the noon light dazzled on the sea. I stopped beside the golden Cannes carousel, where the ticket seller was a Jayne Mansfield lookalike, except that her one arm had been amputated below the elbow. The arm was neatly rounded at the end like a sausage. She could still swing a smart handbag from it though. I watched the carousel turn, empty except for two teenage girls. I could feel Charlotte close behind me. We were tethered.

That night Eric's screening seemed to go over well, but it's impossible to judge reactions at Cannes, where the audiences are either jaded or overly partisan. Rob Lowe was fantastic as the slick American colonizer, and people leaped up to clap at the end. That might have been as much for Aipalovik as anything else—he was irresistible on-screen. Eric sat rigidly beside me. His nerves made it impossible for me to fall under the spell of the story, but the images of the polar seas and pewter skies were still ravishing. The more the world behaves like a blockbuster action movie, the more I long for silence and space on the screen. Watching the film also told me something new about Eric, his passion for this subtle landscape. It's always a surprising act of intimacy to see things through his eyes.

Afterward Eric's distributor hosted a reception in the Cannes apartment he rents during the festival. The Canadians all came out to support Eric and Aipalovik, some young French filmmakers crashed the party, a few critics floated by scarfing up the appetizers, and at midnight everyone went out onto the balcony to wait for the fireworks to begin. The nightly display is always artful and protracted, like dinner in a Cannes restaurant.

When I went back in to fetch Eric there she was, talking to him. She must have slipped into the screening unnoticed. But why would she want to see a little Canadian film about the high Arctic?

This time her black dress exposed the tops of her shoulders and had a single row of jet beads. A DJ was playing loud disco, so she was bending in close to listen to him. Her hand rested on his upper arm. I stood back and watched Eric, who was flushed, animated, eager to please. I should have gone up to them but a curious passivity overcame me. Finally they gave each other European double-cheek kisses and they parted.

I crossed the room to my husband.

“Wasn't that Charlotte Rampling?”

“Yes,” he said, still rosy-faced. “And she loved the film! She adored it. She called it a master class in stillness.”

“Well, it's certainly a far cry from
The Night Porter
.”

“She said she'd love to work with me sometime. Her agent's going to send me a screenplay she's been working on, with the guy who wrote the biopic about Rodin's mistress, what's her name…”

“Camille Claudel.”

“They've got their investors all lined up, and now they're looking for a director. Someone under the radar, she said. Can you believe it? Charlotte Rampling!” His face shone like a child's.

My reaction was intensely physical. The blood roared into my head until the music seemed to come from some room far away. I drained my glass.

“I'm sorry, but working with her is out of the question,” I heard myself say in a firm unspousal voice. Outside, the fireworks had begun, pillowy explosions.

“What are you talking about?” Eric said, taking the glass out of my hand as a waiter swam by with a fresh bottle. “Why not?”

“It's just—I've been watching her operate. She's trouble, Eric. You've never been good with trouble.”

“Really? I ran into the director of that chimpanzee movie she was in, and he had nothing but good things to say.”

He looked at me then with an expression of confusion and concern but my words were already there between us, irredeemable. Aipo will back me up, I thought. Aipo gets it.

Then our host came over with an American producer who wanted to congratulate Eric. I left them and joined the others on the balcony. Charlotte stood at the rail with her young man, watching the lights burst against the blackness of the sky, outshining the stars. Pink, silver, blue, then blinding flashbulb bursts of white, with gunshot sounds. A paparazzi dazzle. The display seemed to go on forever, then escalated into a final thunderous salvo as the people around me exclaimed and applauded. It really was a spectacular show.

I clapped too. But inside my head it was absolutely quiet and still, like her.

 

Jimi and Agnes

“My son came across this online,” Rose said to her editor at the
Star
. “It's amazing how some people spend their time.” She showed Ellen a video of three men sitting around a Ouija board in London, England. They were trying to have a conversation with Jimi Hendrix but the spirit world wasn't cooperating. “Maybe that means he's still alive,” one of them joked. The marker immediately scooted over to YES. “So where is he living now?” they asked. The heart-shaped marker, gliding on its three felt-tipped legs, searchingly spelled out the word T-A-O-S. Taos, New Mexico.

“Now, take a look at this.”

Rose opened up a fansite called
Where's Jimi????
featuring many photographs of black men with Afros who bore little resemblance to the legendary guitarist. But one picture stood out. It was a snapshot of a thin, dark-skinned figure with a corona of gray hair getting into the passenger seat of a car driven by a mannish-looking old woman. In the parking lot of a Winn-Dixie near Albuquerque.

“What are you suggesting,” said Ellen, who had a weakness for some of Rose's crazier story ideas, “that you jump on a plane to New Mexico and try to track down Jimi Hendrix?” Both of them were thinking about the story Rose had written about the academic who had “proven” that the lost city of Atlantis once flourished off the coast of a small Bahamian island. Unsurprisingly this turned out not to be the case, but Rose's story became the second-most-popular feature in the paper that year.

People no longer read the news in search of what's true, Rose concluded. They'd rather have an opportunity to believe in something.

Ellen was studying a budget sheet on her laptop. “If you come up with a Plan B for another story when this one turns out to be a hoax, and how can it not be, I'll talk to Ken about it. He's a huge Hendrix fan, as you know.”

Ken was the newspaper's publisher, and Ellen's ex-husband. They had a bantering Bogart-and-Bacall relationship that Rose liked to be around. Ken also took pleasure in assigning stories to Rose that she had absolutely no interest in or knowledge about, like Brazilian soccer scandals. But sometimes she would come back with fresh perspectives on these mysterious subjects. He would read her copy, chuckle, and say things like, “How can you not know that about the world?”

Rose felt lucky to have landed somewhere with friendly editors who indulged her ideas and still cared about commas. But it wouldn't last. A job in print journalism was soon going to be like working as a blacksmith, or a calligrapher. Sixty people had been laid off at the paper only the month before. Finding Jimi Hendrix alive could save her neck.

What she hadn't mentioned to Ellen or Ken was her hunch about the identity of the old woman driving the car. Very few people could have recognized her, but Rose was sure she did—it was the distinctive profile of the minimalist painter Agnes Martin. Born in Saskatchewan, now in her late eighties, Martin had spent much of her life in seclusion, living in the New Mexican desert, although her work continued to attract international attention.

Ever since Rose had seen an exhibit of Martin's work in the Whitney she had developed a peculiar attachment to her paintings, which are nearly all the same: pale luminous canvases, like windows, empty of narrative and covered in a faint grid of pencil lines. They have a powerful, wordless presence and are almost impossible to reproduce.

The polar opposite of journalism.

*   *   *

The house was a plain white adobe affair out in the desert with a rodent's skull for a doorknocker. Rose lifted the little head and let it fall several times. When Agnes Martin had refused to answer her emails, she decided to just fly there and show up. A gallery in Taos had given her directions. If worse came to worst, Rose thought, she could always write a piece about the “energy healing fields” near Sedona, Arizona. Someone had recently died there in a peyote ceremony.

It was dusk, abruptly cool. In the distance, lavender light still pulsed above the mountaintops. The door opened and an “oh” escaped Rose. She had expected someone taller than the man who stood there, ash-haired, slightly stooped, wearing an emerald-green brocade jacket over the frill of a white shirt. His long fingers were covered in silver and turquoise rings, and a bone cuff circled one wrist. It was Jimi Hendrix.

He showed no surprise at this unexpected visitor, said nothing whatsoever, and led Rose through a velvet curtain into a room where Agnes Martin sat with her legs planted at the end of a long wooden table. Large and squarish, she wore black robes with men's oxfords. Her thinning silver hair was gathered in a little bundle of braids at the back of her neck. She looked like some strange Shakespearean king.