Girl in the Moonlight (18 page)

“So why me?”

“Why you? I’d thought you’d be happy ‘why you.’”

“I am. I’m very happy to see you. I hope you know that. It just gets a little confusing sometimes, you know?”

She reached out her hand and grasped mine, rubbing her thumb along my palm. “Ooh, calluses,” she said, leering at me. “That’s a real turn-on.” Then, “Poor Tricky Wylie. I can be a real pain in the ass, can’t I?”

I left my hand where it was. “Honestly?”

“Of course.”

“Yes.”

“Does it matter?”

“It should but it doesn’t.”

“So why do you put up with me?”

“You know why.”

She played with my hand in silence for a few moments. “You are too sweet, Wylie. I’m very flattered.”

“I’m not trying to flatter you,” I said, taking my hand back. “I’m trying to prove to you that you don’t have to keep playing these games with me. We aren’t teenagers anymore. Damn it, I love you and I think you should start loving yourself too.”

“I’d like that. Do you think it’s possible?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you always were the more optimistic one.”

I signaled for the check and paid. Outside, Cesca didn’t say a word but came right up and kissed me. “I’ve wanted to do that all night,” she said. “Come on. I’ll follow you in my car. Take me to your place.”

I AWOKE IN THE COLD AND DARK AFTER ONLY A FEW HOURS’
sleep. She stirred and asked groggily, “What are you doing?”

“I’ve got to go to work,” I whispered. “You sleep some more. Sorry if I woke you. I was going to leave you a note.”

I sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling the warmth of her
skin. I stroked her hair and kissed her on the cheek softly. She purred and pulled the covers around her. “Will I see you later?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Would you like to?”

“Of course.”

“Then maybe—but would you forgive me if I didn’t?”

I stood up and sighed. “Probably not, but it would be about what I’d expect.”

I walked to the door and opened it.

“Wylie?”

“Yes?”

“I just want you to know one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re the longest relationship I’ve ever had in my life. I hope that counts for something.”

I closed the door behind me.

When I returned to the pool house that afternoon in the fading light, I found the bed unmade, an empty coffee cup in the sink, and a few cigarette butts ground into a plate. But otherwise there was no sign of her. I tried calling her at the Playhouse and then at the main house. The only person who answered was the nurse who looked after old Mrs. Baum. When I asked for Cesca, she said, “I have no idea. Sorry.”

I even got back into my pickup truck still wearing my work clothes and drove to the compound. Except for a light in the main house where the nurse was keeping her vigil over a television set, the rest of the houses were dark, idle as children’s toys on a shelf. There was no sign of Cesca’s car. Once again she had vanished from my life.

I
N THE SPRING I WAS ACCEPTED TO THE HARVARD GRADUATE
School of Design. My father and Patty took me out to dinner to celebrate. The restaurant on East Fiftieth Street was French. My father had told me to invite a date if I wanted, but I didn’t have anyone to ask.

That night I stayed in the unfamiliar guest room of my father’s new apartment. Even though I’d had plenty to drink, I wasn’t tired. I stared at the phone. It was late. I picked it up and dialed Cesca’s number. It rang four times, five. I was about to hang up when I heard a sleepy voice.

“Hello?”

“Cesca?”

“Who’s this?”

“It’s Wylie.”

“Wylie? What are you doing? Do you know what time it is?”

“Sorry. I just wanted to tell you something.”

“What?”

“I got into Harvard architectural school.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. “That’s great, Wylie.” Then the sound of another voice.

“Are you alone?”

“No.”

“No, of course not. Look, I’m sorry I bothered you. I just wanted you to know.”

“Good night, Wylie. I’m very happy for you.” Before I could ask her anything else, she had hung up.

I moved to Cambridge in May to take summer courses to prepare myself. My father was more than happy to pay my rent and give me a stipend on which to live. I found an apartment on the top floor of a house on Craigie Street owned by a retired music professor. In the afternoons, she would play Chopin.

For the next three years, Cambridge would be home, but I would come whenever Cesca beckoned. There was a pattern to our reunions. She would be incommunicado for several months, or more, and then I’d receive a phone call or letter telling me to join her wherever she was. Gianni was by now a memory, not even the latest in a long line of men who had tried, and failed, to win her for themselves. At least, I remained a constant, probably because I was always ready to drop whatever I was doing and hasten to her side. Mostly I was summoned to New York. A few times it was to Amagansett in the dead of winter, when we were the only ones there. The snow deep on the ground, the refrigerator empty. Logs blazing in the fire. Once I met her on Cape Cod in the off-season in a large, gray modern house overlooking Cotuit Bay. There were vintage cars parked in the garage, expensive paintings on the walls, personal photographs on the shelves. An extensive wine cellar to which we liberally helped ourselves. We were all alone.

“What are we doing here? Whose house is this?” I asked.

“Shhhhh,” she said. “Come to bed.”

Wherever we went, she was always mysterious about her
recent activity. While there were certain subjects that were off-limits, she was happy to bring me up to date on her family. She told me about Cosmo’s continued success and Carmen’s rapid progress through medical school. Lio’s disillusionment with the art world. He had been in a group show in Barcelona and had sold a few of his paintings. That he had not sold them all came as a surprise and disappointment to him.

Sometimes when we lay in bed, I could get Cesca to tell me about herself, her life. She told me about Freddie, the boy in Cadaqués. Others whose names I have forgotten. Why do you want to know all this stuff? she would ask. I don’t know. I just do, I would respond, believing, falsely, that such knowledge could be to my advantage. It was like Scheherazade in reverse. I figured that if I knew her better than anyone, she would prefer me over anyone. It was just a matter of patience. Eventually she would be ready.

But each time I was wrong. There were mornings when I would wake up and be surprised to find she was still there sleeping next to me. I would hope for this day at least that she wasn’t leaving. A few mornings, I even awoke to an empty bed but then found her making coffee. She told me once with regal insouciance that it was the only thing she could make. Like her mother, she abhorred domestic chores. After a day or two, whichever room we were staying in would be covered in her clothes. Underwear draped over a chair. Stockings balled up in the corner. Once I asked if she wanted some help cleaning up, and she looked at me quizzically. “Why would you want to do that?” She seemed genuinely perplexed. Hers was a life where people picked up after her or not at all. Chaos was preferable to order. She was a dropper of rocks in still water, the reflections in the ripples more interesting than a placid surface.

And then, inevitably, without warning, just as I was beginning to get used to her, and was even thinking this time she
would stay, like a cat rescued during a rainstorm she would be gone. We could have been having dinner one evening, talking about how much fun it might be to live in, say, Amsterdam or Rio, or at what moments we were happiest—and I would always tell her truthfully they were the times I was with her—and there would be no hint from her that her bags were already mentally packed and she would be leaving the next day. Maybe she didn’t even know herself. Maybe she was adhering to her own internal timetable, the circadian rhythms that ordered her life. Her disappearances, however, became more bearable over time. I grew to accept them as part of a natural order, like a bird’s migration or the peregrination of the stars. After she had left, my life resumed its normal course, like a town after a hurricane. Slowly, I would rehang the signs, repair the windows, pump out the basement.

If I was overcurious about Cesca’s life, there was no corresponding interest from her about mine. Rarely did she ask me a personal question. She didn’t want to know how I felt about my mother or why I had quit painting. When she first reappeared, she would inquire in a desultory way about how my studies were progressing, but she rarely listened long enough to hear what I said. Nor would she have been interested if I went into detail about the differences between Brutalism and Futurism, who my favorite professor was, or whether I felt that my thesis adviser should have more flexible office hours. I was not offended by her attitude because I knew how solipsistic she was. We learn to make allowances for those we love most. In Cesca’s case, she asked nothing from me she did not ask from herself.

After three years I graduated and, through a connection of my father’s, found work at the Paris office of a New York firm. When I told Cesca of my move, her response was “Paris! I love Paris.”

“Will you visit?”

“Of course, darling. Just try to keep me away.”

Through a friend of my mother’s, I rented a small, furnished apartment on the top floor of a house on the Île Saint-Louis that was a short walk from my office. It was charming, if cramped, and I had a view of Notre Dame. I went to work, struggling to adapt to my new job and my new culture. I had studied French in school and had a passable accent, but I was not a natural linguist, and it took me several months to get used to the speed with which the average Parisian spoke.

One night I returned home to find a message on my answering machine. Cesca’s voice saying: “Wylie, it’s me. I’ll be passing through Paris in a week or so. I’ll let you know. Big kiss.
Adéu
.”

I tried to call her back, but, as usual, there was no answer.

For the next week, I worked distractedly, rushing home from the office, wondering if that night there would be another message from Cesca, telling me to meet her at such-and-such a hotel on the Rue Whatever. Or to say her flight was arriving in the morning and to meet her. Or to just stay where I was—she’d be right over. In preparation for any and all such exigencies, I laid in a store of champagne, pâté, good coffee, even a small, enormously expensive tin of Russian beluga, all of which put a sizable dent in my meager weekly take-home pay.

But then there was the night I returned home to find another message. “Hi, it’s me. Look, I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ll be able to see you. I’ve got to go. They’re calling my flight. Next time, okay? Big kiss.”

So, I drank the champagne and ate the caviar by myself and tried not to be angry or disappointed. I consoled myself with the belief that there would be another call, another promise of a meeting, and that, at some point, I would see her.

Like so many before me, I soon found myself seduced by Paris’s charms. I was willing to overlook the challenges the city presented—the washer and dryers that don’t really work, the
inadequacy of the toilet paper, the bureaucracy, the perennial strikes, the inefficiencies, the dog waste on the streets, and the expense. As I settled in I made friends with colleagues, expats, a few old college friends who, like me, were temporary émigrés. I was doing well at the office. My projects included a Spanish bank, a Swiss shopping mall, even a hotel in Tokyo, where I was sent to visit several times. While I wasn’t lead architect on any, my work on them had gotten me noticed.

And then I met Selene. It was at a party one night at an apartment in the First Arrondissement. The ceilings were fourteen feet high. Gilded boiseries. Ancient herringbone floors polished from years of use. The host was American, from Texas. Another classmate of my father’s, which was why I was invited. He had married a Frenchwoman, now in her fifties. Her tanned arms were like sticks, and she wore a chain of expensive-looking emeralds around her neck.

“Enchanté, Monsieur Rose,”
she said graciously. “
Bienvenue chez nous
. Please have a drink.”

I knew no one there and instead wandered from room to room, admiring the décor until I heard someone speaking in English. It was a tall, ash blond girl with large green eyes and a lovely figure. She was talking to an older couple.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I hope you don’t think me very rude. But I don’t know anyone here, and my French isn’t good enough to just strike up a conversation. I heard you speaking English and hoped you would take pity on me and let me join you.”

“But of course,” said the ash blonde. For the first time I noticed she spoke with an accent. The older couple drifted away.

“Are you French?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“You speak English very well.”

“Thank you. I lived in New York for two years. That helped.”

“I’m from New York.”

“You are! I miss it.”

“Where did you live?”

“On Central Park West. My aunt has an apartment there.”

Some men might have found her nose a bit too large, but I found it rather attractive. She was studying acting at nights and to support herself worked for a public relations firm. We flirted happily, and one thing led to another. There were dates, quick lunches, sex in semipublic places. For the first time in my life when I looked at a woman, I didn’t see Cesca instead.

After we had been seeing each other for several months, she invited me to stay with her family in the Vaucluse for Easter. We drove in her little car, and I was honestly surprised to see us turn down a long avenue lined with poplars and pull up in front of a good-size château. Two dogs, an old Alsatian and an equally ancient terrier, ran out to meet her, barking in mad delight. She knelt down to embrace them and let them lick her face. They then began barking at me, although their tails were wagging the whole time.

“
Tais-toi!
Stop that, you old idiots,” she commanded fondly, and gave me a kiss on the cheek to show them everything was all right.

As I was beginning to unload our luggage, two young men came down the front steps as well. Selene embraced them no less eagerly than the dogs and then introduced me. “These are my brothers, Achille and Horace.”

The former, who was very handsome with blond hair and electric blue eyes like those of Peter O’Toole in
Lawrence of Arabia,
gave me a firm handshake. As I was to find out later, he had just earned a commission in a French cavalry regiment after graduating from Saint-Cyr. The latter, the baby of the family, was still at university. He had his siblings’ good looks but seemed to conceal them behind large glasses and a shock of unkempt brown hair.

We put our bags in our rooms—Selene’s in her bedroom and mine in the guest room down the hall—and then she took me for a walking tour around the estate. It was a fine spring afternoon, just cool enough to require a jacket but not so cold one couldn’t detect the ripening of the earth. In the little village, we had an aperitif. There were only a few other patrons in the café, but she seemed to know them all, and was treated with a mixture of fondness and deference.

“I didn’t want to say anything to you before,” she said. In her accented English “anything” became “anyzing,” for example. “But my father (“fazzer”) is a count.”

“Does that make you a countess?”

She shrugged. “Yes, in a manner of speaking, but it doesn’t mean much anymore. The titles these days are purely courtesy.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” I really couldn’t understand. I secretly congratulated myself on having slept with a countess. Despite my democratic background, I was still young enough to be impressed by things like titles and châteaux.

“Because it can make things awkward. I had hoped you would like me for me and not because of my family.”

“I do.” I smiled. “It doesn’t matter to me at all.”

Afterward we strolled back to the château and, giggling like schoolchildren, snuck up the back stairs and made love on her childhood bed. It was an old room with old furniture. There was a cassette deck, a few porcelain horses on a shelf, a tattered Rolling Stones concert poster in French on the wall, a nearly empty closet, riding boots propped against a corner, and the small, creaky four-poster bed that barely fit us both.

I met her parents that night at cocktails. Still giddy from our lovemaking and the bath we’d shared, we walked into a long drawing room with eighteen-foot-high ceilings and tall windows that let out onto a view of a wide park. The furniture,
carpets, and paintings, which had once been quite grand, were worn with age and use. The silk on some of the cushions was threadbare, and, in places, the wallpaper was peeling. There was a large water stain on one of the walls. Still, it was quite a room.

A dapper looking man of late middle age, balding yet still quite trim and handsome, stood by the bar. He was wearing a velvet jacket of a deep purple, crisp white shirt, dark blue necktie, and pearl gray trousers. His slippers, too, were velvet, and they had little coronets on the toes.