Girl in the Moonlight (27 page)

“Good morning,” I replied. “I’m here to see Francesca Bonet.”

“Ah, yes.” She lifted her glasses to her eyes and consulted her ledger. “Mr. Rose, is it?”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful. She’s expecting you. She asked you to meet her in the Garden Room. It’s just through there,” she said, nodding her head toward the back of the house.

I thanked the woman and walked in the direction indicated. There were several other groups in the room. Saturday was visiting day obviously, and there was a low hum of conversation. The far wall was a row of French doors that overlooked a wide terrace and, below, a formal garden. As in the lobby, there were carpets on the floor, oil paintings on the walls, and the room was painted in a reassuring neutral color with white trim on the millwork. Directly in front of me was a trestletable supporting several electric urns labeled
COFFEE
,
DECAFFEINATED
, and
HOT WATER
, as well as rows of white mugs and little baskets containing tea bags, sugar and sweeteners, stirrers, and napkins.

I found Cesca in the corner on a large striped sofa. She was reading a book, but when she looked up and saw me, she leapt to her feet and smiling widely shouted, “Wylie!” Everyone else in the room stopped talking as she threw her arms around me and hugged me tightly.

S
HE HAD BEEN IN BAD SHAPE. THERE HAD BEEN DRUGS. A
lot of drugs. And men. A lot of men. She had sold her store and traveled. She had returned to Barcelona. To reconnect with Lio and walk in his footsteps. But the city had seemed devastatingly empty without him.

After a week she fled. Morocco was first, but she then returned to the States and went to Los Angeles. She spent the first few weeks at the Beverly Wilshire and later rented an apartment in Santa Monica. Her accountant called to tell her she was spending too much money, but she didn’t care. She remembered wild nights in Palm Springs, driving down in an open car, high on peyote, the warm night air washing over her as she sang into the darkness. There were parties that lasted for days at a producer’s house in Malibu. There were famous movie stars. B-listers. Prostitutes. Drug dealers driving up in Bentleys. Swimming naked, having sex in hot tubs with multiple partners. She would wake up with strange men in strange cities. Once in Las Vegas, another time San Francisco. Her clothes torn. One morning she saw she
had a black eye. Other times men would steal her money. She didn’t care. Clothes could be replaced. Bruises healed. Money replenished. And then she’d go back out and do it all over again. All the nightclubs knew her. She spent thousands of dollars. She crashed her car and bought a new one. At some point, nothing seemed to matter much anymore. This is what she told me.

“There was one night. I was back in New York. I was staying at the Plaza. I had been out with an old friend, but now she had gone, and there were a bunch of people up in my room doing blow. It was late, and I remember looking around and realizing I didn’t know any of them. What’s more I didn’t want to. The whole thing suddenly seemed so vile, so pointless. Suddenly I felt that
I
had become vile and pointless. I just wanted to sleep, and I asked them to leave. At first they wouldn’t. They just laughed and ignored me and kept on partying. So I started screaming for all of them to get the fuck out. I took off one of my shoes and smashed the mirror that the coke was on. Coke and glass went everywhere. After they left, I found myself staring out the window at the park. I was on the fifteenth floor.”

She paused.

“It seemed so obvious. Just lean out a little. You know? It would be so easy. I would be dead, and everything would stop. So I climbed out onto the ledge. The park looked so pretty. I wasn’t scared at all, I remember. But then a woman who had been in my room returned. She had left her purse behind. She saw me on the ledge and started screaming. “Oh my God! Oh my God! Help! Help!” You should have heard her. At first I shouted at her to shut up, but by then it was too late. By then I had come back in. The mood had passed. The thought of falling silently to my death had a kind of elegiac simplicity to it. Other guests came. Hotel security. Finally, of course, the police. But once she started screaming, it became a spectacle, something public and tawdry, which was just exactly what I didn’t want. They took me
to Bellevue that night for observation anyway. It didn’t help that the police found traces of coke on the floor. Fortunately, Mare has a good lawyer. A couple of days later, here I was.”

We were outside at a little table. The weather was cool, and we sat with our hands in our coat pockets. Cesca had gone back inside to get paper towels from one of the bathrooms to wipe off the little puddles of rain that still remained on the chairs.

She was smoking a cigarette from the carton I had brought. The food sat mostly uneaten in its containers. She nibbled at a piece of the bread and toyed with a drumstick. I asked her if she was hungry and she said she wasn’t, at least not yet. She didn’t have much of an appetite these days. Maybe later. But you go ahead. I told her I’d wait too. There was a slight tremor in her hand. Lines under her eyes. Her cheeks looked thinner. Her lips chapped. Still, she radiated beauty, like a flame burning out through a shadow lantern. Seeing her brought back a flood of memory. Unexpected, unrequested, but unavoidable. The kicked pebble that precipitates an avalanche. Within seconds whole towns can be wiped out, lives changed forever.

“How are you feeling now?” I asked.

She looked at me, sighed, and flicked her cigarette into the bushes. “Honestly? Very tired. But I don’t feel like killing myself anymore—if I ever really did.”

“That’s good.”

“Though there are times when I wouldn’t mind killing a few other people.” She smiled and I laughed. “Some of the people here are full-blown loonies. And that includes the staff. One of my doctors is desperate to sleep with me. But it’s nothing I can’t handle.” She lit another cigarette. “Maybe I’ll let him.” She shrugged. Then, “I haven’t had sex in weeks. I don’t always mind not having the drugs and the booze, but I would like a good screw.”

I looked away.

“Oh, Wylie, don’t be bashful. We can go behind the bushes.”

“I . . .”

“I’m just kidding. Actually I have almost no libido either. It’s all because of the damn meds,” she said. “They’re supposed to make me feel mellow.”

“Do they?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think they just make me boring, but, given the circumstances, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”

“You could never be boring.”

She smiled. “Thank you, Wylie. You always were sweet.”

“How much longer will you be here?”

“I can leave anytime I want. It’s an open hospital. No locked doors. I could get in your car with you and go, if I wanted.”

“Do you want to?”

“Oh sure. In a lot of ways. But I’ve always had a thing about commitment, haven’t I? I mean, I’ve never been very good at it. So I’m trying. My doctor and I have been talking about that. I think I’m going to at least stick things out here. Maybe if I can do that, well, who knows? Maybe when I get out, I’ll get a cat or hamster or something. Start small.” She smiled.

“That’s good. So when do you think you will leave?”

“A few more weeks at least. Frankly, I’m in no hurry to leave. It’s nice here. Quiet. You don’t have to think. I spend my days in therapy: talking to my shrink, in groups, weaving, doing tai chi. I’ve made a few friends. If they had wine here, it would be perfect.”

“Do you still want to drink?”

“You sound like my doctor,” she laughed. “Of course I still want to drink. You never lose the craving, apparently. But you do learn to manage it. Some times are harder than others, like around dinnertime. I mean, could you imagine going to Paris and not drinking wine or champagne? I mean, what the hell?”

“What will you do? Will you go back to New York?”

“Well, that’s kind of just it, Wylie. You’ve hit the nail on the head. I don’t really know what to do next. So I’m just hiding out here, really. Afraid to do anything.”

“But you could just go home, couldn’t you? Out to Amagansett?”

She nodded her head. “I suppose. It just seems so pointless. What am I going to do there? Write bad poetry? Take a cooking class? I can only walk on the beach so many hours a day. Oh, I’m thinking about something else maybe.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not really sure yet, but I have some ideas. I don’t want to tell you in case I don’t end up doing it, and you’ll think I’m even more of a fraud than I already am.”

“I don’t know what you’re going to do—and maybe you don’t either. But that’s not the point. The point is that the world is better with Cesca Bonet in it than not, I hope you realize that at least.”

She nodded her head back and forth, and sighed. “Is it, Wylie? Is it really? Tell me. What have I got that’s so great, huh? I mean, what have I done? Cosmo’s a successful musician. Carmen’s a doctor. Lio was a painter. They all did things. They all contributed. Made the world a better place. A more beautiful place. Me? I just flit about. Never serious about anything or anyone.”

“You’re being unfair to yourself.”

She squinted at me for a moment, then looked away. With her left hand, she removed a thin lock of her hair that been caught in her mouth. “Am I? I don’t think so.”

“Look, just because you can’t point to a canvas on the wall and say, ‘There. That’s mine,’ doesn’t mean you haven’t done anything. Some people have different gifts, different talents.”

“What have I got?”

“You have a gift that is more unique than being a painter, a
musician, or even a doctor.”

She looked at me. “What is that?”

“Think of the thousands of people who go to med school every year or paint. Most of them will just be mediocre. And that’s okay because, as you say, they’re making the world a better place, even if it’s in a small way. But they don’t have the gift you do, which is to inspire.”

“Inspire?” She snorted derisively. “Sure. I inspire people to get fucked up.”

“No. That’s not what I meant. You enter a room and people notice you immediately. You have an energy, a beauty, that I’ve never seen in anyone else. You have inspired me. You always have, ever since we were kids. Whatever I have done, I have done for you. There was never a time when I didn’t want your approval, your attention. Your love. Your image was always in front of me. Nothing meant more to me. And I’m sure I’m not the only one. You may not be a painter, but you can inspire painters. You may not be a poet, but you can inspire poets. It’s because you contain the life they want to capture. They can only reflect what you are.”

She kept looking at me, a serious expression on her face. Then she picked up my hand and squeezed it. “Thank you,” she whispered.

We sat there for several minutes holding hands, saying nothing. Eventually she said: “You know, they force you to strip away your life, places like this. To tear down the artifice and see yourself for who you are, and only then can you begin to rebuild yourself. What I’ve realized is that my whole life has been empty. I’ve been able to stick at nothing. Commit to nothing. Apparently I couldn’t even commit suicide properly,” she added with a wry smile. “Now I have decided that I have to commit to something. I can’t be a fuckup my whole life.”

“What have you decided to commit to?”

She laughed. “That’s just it. I’m not sure yet.” She paused
and then looked at me. “Is it too late for us? Maybe that’s it. What do you say, Wylie?”

I didn’t say anything but instead just stared at my feet.

She laughed again. “I thought so.”

It began to rain once more. Soft droplets. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk,” said Cesca, standing up.

The clinic was situated on about one hundred acres of land. Like many such institutions, it had once been a private estate. The old barns and stables had all been converted. Cesca pointed out the greenhouses and organic garden, where patients grew the vegetables that were used in the kitchen. We came to a large pond that was fenced off with wire. Signs warned against swimming. A family of ducks swam placidly on the surface. “They had to do that to prevent people from drowning themselves,” said Cesca. “But I don’t think that would stop anyone who was really serious about killing themselves, you know? It’s one of the things about this place that makes me laugh. They pretend they’re doing so much to help but really all they’re doing is putting up a little bit of wire.”

She laughed and shook her head.

“You don’t still think about killing yourself, do you?”

“God no. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. It appealed to my romantic nature.”

She put her arm through mine. It felt so natural. That was the way things had always been with us. I had never been so comfortable with anyone in my life. We just slipped into a groove as though we had never been apart. “So how are you, Tricky Wylie? What’s new with you?”

“I’m fine. Work’s good.”

“And love? Are you still with that pretty blonde Cosmo was so mad about?”

“Yes. Kate. Um, as a matter of fact, we’re engaged.”

“You are? Congratulations.” She stopped and faced me,
smiling, and grabbed both of my hands. “That’s wonderful news.”

“Thank you.” I was blushing with relief.

“When’s the big day?”

“June. In New York.”

“Good for you. Poor Cosmo,” she said, shaking her head and smiling. “He’ll be so disappointed.”

We walked on a little farther. “That’s why you left that night, isn’t it?” she asked after several moments of silence.

“Yes,” I conceded.

“I thought it might be something like that.”

“I’m sorry. I . . .”

“Don’t. Don’t say that if you don’t mean it.”

“I do mean it. I am sorry I couldn’t be there for you. But I had to make a choice.”

She nodded. “So I guess we know whom you chose.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Well, you’re the one who’s engaged to someone else.”

I stopped and turned to her. “Damn it. That’s not fair. I asked you to marry me. A number of times. And each time you shot me down. Remember Paris? That really sucked. I honestly thought you were going to marry me, and then you just disappeared. Do you know what that felt like? So don’t go around acting as though I never asked. Because I did.”

“I was wrong.”

“What were you wrong about?”

She laughed lightly. “Oh, I’ve been wrong about a lot of things. But what was I wrong about exactly with you? I should have treated you better. And I should have said yes—and meant it.”

“It’s too late now. I’m already engaged. The wedding’s in a few months.”

“I understand. It’s my fault.”

This was not what I wanted to hear. Not now. For years it
was all I had wanted. Nothing more. I gazed about the woods, the silvery gray of the still-barren tree trunks. The milky white complexion of the sky. The compact dirt of the path at my feet. The dead, wet leaves lining the forest floor. Anything to avoid looking at Cesca.

“Don’t do this. Please.”

“Don’t do what? We’re encouraged here to apologize for our mistakes. It’s part of the treatment. I know I’ve hurt you, and I want to apologize.”

I looked at her.

“So, yes, I apologize for the way I treated you, Wylie. I know I played with your heart and took your love for granted. I guess I knew I could because there was so much love from you it would always last. For what it’s worth, it made me feel wonderful. That no matter what I did, someone out there would always love me. Who forgave me. It was an incredible comfort. A luxury you can’t imagine. It was like a wonderful jewel you keep in a special box and only wear on special occasions. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t love you too. I want you to know that. I did love you. Very much. I still do. At least in my own way.”