French Lessons (23 page)

Pascale calls out some commands and then takes her seat on her director’s chair. The chair reads
BIG BOSS
. It was a gift from an earlier crew and Pascale uses it for every film now. It is the “big” part that Pascale likes. She is barely five feet tall.

Again, the sky grumbles and Pascale claps and raises her hands to the heavens. A few people laugh.

And then they are ready to film the scene. Jeremy wonders how it has happened so quickly, but perhaps things have changed since the last time he watched a shoot. We’ll watch a scene or two and then move on, he thinks.

There is quiet and then a man and a woman walk onto the set. They are wearing bathrobes. They take off the robes and hand them to a young woman at their side. They are naked. There is a muffled gasp from the crowd. Pascale raises a hand and everyone quiets. A woman smacks the clapper board and the cameras roll.

Jeremy glances at Chantal—she is transfixed. And then Lindy—her mouth has fallen open. Jeremy wants to cover her eyes. But of course, she’s twenty, she’s seen naked boys before. Men.

Chantal shifts her weight and he feels the pressure of her arm on his. She doesn’t move away.

The woman is very young, barely older than Lindy. She’s blond and her skin is ghostly white—she looks like some cross between angel and child prostitute. Her body is impossibly perfect—small and curvaceous with breasts as round as apples. Jeremy sees that her pubic hair is shaved! No wonder she looks like a child. There’s something unsettling about what she offers—sex and innocence—something pornographic, he thinks.

She walks to the bed and lies down. She doesn’t seem to have any self-consciousness about her nudity. Jeremy wonders about children along the quai watching this. But we’re in Paris, he thinks. And for a moment, he wonders what kind of rating this movie might have. Of course, Dana has never done an X-rated film—it would kill her career. She’s a classy actress, like a younger Meryl Streep with a little more sass. She has never even done a sex scene in the nude.

Will someone cover the girl’s bare crotch?

The man walks around the bed, looking at the girl. He, too, is comfortable with his naked body. He has a large uncircumcised penis that weaves as he walks. Jeremy’s body tenses. He shouldn’t be here with these two girls at his side. Dana should not have invited them. He feels like a prude—this shouldn’t even be a public event.

He looks up. A camera moves in close. Dana is hidden from sight. No one has spoken a word.

The man is older than the girl, by a good twenty years. In fact, his body is a little slack—Jeremy sees with wicked pleasure that the man has a bit of extra weight around his waist. But it doesn’t concern him; he’s circling the bed and the naked girl as if he’s a lion tamer. Or the lion himself. The girl is his prey.

Dana steps forward. Someone has poured water on her and she’s dripping wet. Her clothes cling to her; beads of water drip from her chin. This is no summer rainstorm—it looks as if she’s stepped from the shower. Jeremy expects Pascale to stop the filming, to yell at the person responsible for overdoing the effect this way—but the camera keeps moving, Dana keeps walking toward the man, and the man keeps circling the girl on the bed.

“Look at me,” Dana says, her voice a throaty whisper.

The man doesn’t look. He walks by her and keeps walking. The girl on the bed makes a moaning sound as if she’s already having sex. Jeremy is disgusted. What is this? The girl follows the man’s eyes with her own—her pleasure comes from his attention. She’s aroused; even her nipples stand out from her perky breasts. How did she do that? Can a woman make her nipples erect as part of her acting training? She can’t possibly be aroused by this fool with the big dick, Jeremy thinks.

“Regarde,”
Dana says, her voice more insistent.

Thunder, right on cue. Was that real? Everyone looks up—except for the actors, who ignore the low rumble and the first drops of rain.

A few of the technicians look at Pascale, who gestures with her hand:
Keep going, keep going
.

The man sits on the edge of the bed. The girl curls toward him. Dana stops and watches them. Her face shows confusion, then pain.

The man takes the girl in his arms and lies down next to her. It seems as if the girl is a half second from orgasm already. Her body is writhing, her low moan is rising. Jeremy thinks she should be pulled from the movie—she is overacting. She belongs in a porn film, not in a serious film of Dana’s!

The man strokes the girl’s body, petting her as if she is, in fact, his cat. She purrs.
Oh, God, stop!
Jeremy wants to scream.
What is this?

Then Dana circles the bed, watching them. Her expression changes—is she enjoying this? Jeremy hopes that someone will let him in on the joke. Has Pascale made her first comedy?

Dana sits at the edge of the bed. She reaches out her hand and lets it rest on the man’s hip. He’s facing away from her, covering the girl with his caresses. He doesn’t seem to notice Dana.

It’s a fantasy, Jeremy decides. The bed, the naked lovers, the distraught woman. She’s imagining this. And in a rare moment of poor cinematic taste, Pascale has brought the fantasy to life. On a bridge in the middle of the Seine.

Spare me
, Jeremy thinks.

He turns to Chantal. He’ll shake his head, show her his disgust. But she doesn’t take her eyes from the scene in front of her.

The rain gathers force. No one moves. A red umbrella appears above Pascale’s head. The crowd along the Seine leans forward over the barricades and peers—what can they see? Jeremy wonders. Do they see the man’s cock, the girl’s shaved vagina? Do they see Dana’s look of desire? What does she desire? The man? The girl? He wants to scream
“Arrête!”

And then—thank God!—Pascale yells, “Cut!” and calls, “Bravo!” The crowd applauds, as if they were at the ballet and the performance was exquisite. Jeremy can’t imagine what everyone is so goddamn pleased about. He’s the only one not cheering.

“It’s art,” Chantal says, almost breathlessly.

“What?” Jeremy barks.

Chantal looks at him, surprised.

“That was beautiful. She has the most expressive face.”

Jeremy feels like a prude. Maybe everyone was looking at his wife’s face when all he could see was a penis and a vagina.

Dana walks over to them, grabs Jeremy’s arm, and calls, “Follow me!”

She wraps one hand around Jeremy’s elbow and the other around Chantal’s arm. She maneuvers them toward her tent at the far end of the bridge. Only then does Jeremy realize that the skies have opened and the rain is pounding on them.

“Lindy!” he shouts. He feels a sudden panic, as if she has disappeared in the middle of this chaos.

“I’ll be there in a minute!” Lindy calls back.

Jeremy turns—she is right behind them and then she turns toward a young man with a clipboard and begins talking to him in French.

“Let’s get out of all this!” Dana shouts.

“All this” is the storm, the relentless grumble of thunder, the clatter of rain on the iron bridge, the movie people herding equipment in every direction. And Pascale is braying over the loudspeaker. Jeremy can’t understand a word she says.

Dana’s assistant opens the flap of the tent as if she’s been waiting all day to save her boss from the rain, and Dana shouts, “You’re a love!” as they rush through—first Dana, then Chantal, then Jeremy. The assistant follows them and leads Dana behind a screen, where she helps her out of her wet clothes. Jeremy knows the young woman—she’s been with Dana for a couple of years now. He likes her more than most, because this is all she wants—not her boss’s job, just this: to make her boss’s job a little easier. She’s a simple girl, and there aren’t many of those in the movie industry.

“Don’t say a word,” Dana says from behind the screen. “I know what you’re thinking. I know you’re horrified.”

“You’re horrified?” Chantal asks Jeremy.

“He’s horrified. I warned him. But still—I wanted you to come. Wait. Let me dry my hair. Go on, Elizabeth. Would you get them hot tea? I can do the rest.”

Elizabeth emerges from behind the screen. She hurries to a makeshift kitchen: hot pot, small fridge, all set up for a few hours’ shoot on a bridge in the middle of the Seine. Jeremy is still amazed by what the film industry can pull off—not only on the screen, but for the working lives of its stars.

“Is it the nudity?” Chantal asks Jeremy quietly. Does she not want Dana to hear? No, she is encouraging me to speak, Jeremy thinks. She knows that in a moment Dana might answer for me.

And oddly, he wishes Dana would answer for him. He doesn’t quite know why he’s so upset. It’s not the nudity—it’s the absurdity of the scene. It’s something else: It’s Dana.

“You would not do that,” Jeremy says to Dana as she steps from behind the screen, wrapped in a plush robe, a towel turban around her wet hair.

“What would I not do?” Dana asks.

“You would not sit there and watch them.”

“You don’t know my character,” she says simply.

“No one would watch them.”

“It’s a fantasy.”

“But it’s a playing-out of someone’s inner desires. To watch her husband and his lover? That’s absurd.”

“What would I do?” Dana asks.

“I don’t know,” Jeremy says quickly. “I guess—you’re right—I don’t know your character in this film.”

“What is she like, the role you play?” Chantal asks. She leans forward, eagerly taking it all in. For a moment, Jeremy had forgotten about her. They have switched to English. Chantal speaks perfect English! She has an American accent! Again, everything shifts in the kaleidoscope that is this young woman. I know nothing about her, Jeremy realizes. And I thought I—he stops his own thought. What did he think? That he wanted to sleep with her? That he wanted to love her? It seems ridiculous to him now. He’s as foolish as the man swinging his dick on the set.

Dana takes a teacup from her assistant and sips at it. “I play a wealthy American woman who has come to Paris with her husband. She shops while the husband has his business meetings. But at some point during the day she finds him strolling through the park with a young girl—”

“Who wrote this film?” Jeremy asks, interrupting her. His heartbeat is fast, his palms are damp. It’s clammy in this tent and the rain beats heavily on the canvas, creating a kind of hum like a beehive nearby.

“Claude,” Dana says. “The young man you met at dinner.”

“He’s a kid,” Jeremy snorts.

“A very bright kid.”

“What does he know about love?”

“You’re so funny, darling,” Dana says.

Jeremy looks at her, surprised.

She is smiling at him, her wide, gracious smile. She reaches out and touches his arm. “Not everyone knows love like we do.”

Jeremy is lost. He can’t find any words—in any language. His mind churns and comes up with nothing.

And then the flap of the tent flies open and Lindy dashes in, laughing.

“Oh my God, that was wild! Wild! How did that happen? I mean, the storm in the middle of the scene! It was like you planned it that way.” She shakes her body like a wet dog and water flies everywhere. She is radiant—the shine of her scalp seems to light up her face.

“And that girl on the bed,” Jeremy says. “That was pornography.”

“You’re still here,” Lindy says, staring at Chantal.

“Lindy—” Jeremy says.

Chantal stands. “I must go.”

“No,” Dana says. “She’s being rude. You’re my guest now. Please stay.”

Chantal looks at Jeremy. He nods. “No reason to leave,” he says weakly.

Chantal looks at her watch. “The lesson is over anyway. And I will be meeting two other tutors.”

“How do you speak English so well?” Jeremy asks.

“It is a long story,” Chantal says.

“I bet she had an American boyfriend,” Lindy says. “That’s the way to learn a language. In bed.”

Chantal smiles and her face flushes.

“I will walk you out,” Jeremy says.

“No need—”

“Please,” he insists.

She nods. She turns back to Dana. “It was a pleasure to meet you,” she says in French. “Thank you for the opportunity to watch you work.”

Dana steps toward her. She kisses Chantal on both cheeks.

“You are a lovely girl,” she says. “I’m glad my husband had a chance to spend his week with you.”

Again, Chantal’s cheeks flush. She turns to Lindy.
“Au revoir et bonne chance.”

“Why do I need luck?” Lindy asks.

Chantal just smiles.

She walks out of the tent and Jeremy follows.

The rain has stopped and the bridge is in the process of a remarkable transformation. A group of young men in black T-shirts that read Boss’s
BOYS
shovel sand on the wooden deck of the bridge. The bed is gone and someone has moved a palm tree into its place.

“Pascale has lost her mind,” Jeremy mutters.

Chantal laughs.

“This is like magic,” she says.

“I guess it is,” Jeremy says with a smile. “I’m a little too serious.”

“I like that,” Chantal says.

They are speaking French again—it is the language they have shared all week and Jeremy finds it hard to speak to her in English. He wishes she didn’t speak English at all; somehow that has changed things between them. If he gets stuck, he could have an out. But he didn’t know that all week. He just kept pushing on, into unfamiliar territory.

“You didn’t really need French lessons, you know,” Chantal says. “Your French is excellent.”

“But I needed you to guide me along the way,” Jeremy says as they walk away from the set and toward the Louvre on the Right Bank. “In French. And in Paris.”

“Sometimes I forgot that it was a language lesson,” Chantal says.

“Yes,” Jeremy tells her. “It felt more like—” He can’t think of a word, in either language.

Chantal glances at him, waiting.

“Thank you,” he says.

He has stopped at the end of the bridge. She will pass through the barricade and return to Paris; he will turn back and return to the wild world of his wife and his daughter and a bed on the bridge in the middle of the Seine.