Hotelles (44 page)

It wasn't just a vague resemblance. We had the same curves, the same long brown hair, green eyes, and freckles over our noses and cheeks. In every way, down to the specific shape of our face, the fold of our eyelids, and the fleshy indecency of our lips, everything was the same.

“I'll never be an Aurora,” I remembered promising myself the night before at the Hôtel des Charmes, with Louie at my mercy. And yet that is what I had been, ever since the second when David—or was it Louie or Rebecca?—had seen me in the Belles de Nuit catalogue . . . and in each moment after that: the miraculous night when David and I first met, his proposal on the boat . . . even during those times when I felt like a lowly ball in a game of racquets between the two brothers.

In the last three pictures, Aurora was wearing a little corolla dress that fell just above her knees. Its giant flowers and cut were strikingly similar to the one the girl in wardrobe at BTV had chosen for me to wear on my first show. Had David given her the idea? Or had it been a coincidence, as he had claimed, that explained his impulsive decision not to air my show?

Seventeen years to find her clone. No doubt David had rejected dozens of potential candidates. Until me. Until I appeared, the ghost of another woman, the palimpsest of a history that was not my own and that they wanted to thrust upon me.

But I wasn't more perfect than Aurora, Aurora the madwoman, Aurora the untouchable, the frigid—no more than she had been before me. That's where Louie and his mission came in: erase the pure memory of the saint and make me into a full and sensual woman with desires and orgasms, where the original had gotten lost in a world stripped of all pleasure, a place of suffering. That had been the reason behind every rendezvous: my sexual education. “All I do is reveal,” he had said in a moment of sincerity. Reveal to me the infinitely colorful palette of pleasurable options, while preserving me intact for his brother. That is why he had never penetrated me. That is why he had upheld the distance between student and teacher.

The last picture also came as a shock. It had been taken at the Sauvage Gallery the night Louie and I had first met. I hadn't realized someone had taken our picture. We were facing each other. Looking at each other intensely. Both lost in that strange tension between us. It wasn't the best memory I had of him. And yet it acted like liquid magic, exciting the silver salts of my memory: Louie who had watched over my mother; Louie who had given Sophia what she'd needed to survive in a time of desperation; Louie who had found a job for Fred; Louie who had written my name into the city . . . Louie who, despite his brother's mission for him, had been like a guardian angel in these troubled times.

Louie who, to use Rebecca's words, had done it all for me. Only for me. And in spite of his brother.

“Is everything okay, Mademoiselle?”

I was panting and lost like a little girl in my rumpled wedding dress, holding my stack of photographs. The nurse who ran into me in the hall caught me at my lowest. My sobs were long and uninterrupted, at once heavy and comforting. Before leaving my mother's side, I had said my tender good-byes, kissing her forehead, then her cheeks. There was nothing more I could do. I could not bear to see what would come next. I had closed her eyelids, still warm and trembling, over her pupils, where the light was slowly dying, two little flames that death would soon extinguish forever.

The nurse asked again:

“Are you okay? Do you want to sit down? Or have a glass of water?”

What could I say? That I had lost a mother and gained a lover in the same moment? That I was leaving my mom's deathbed to run into the arms of the one I loved? That at last my physical desires and my heart were in alignment? That I could finally give free rein to what I had felt during our promenades and also, though more fleetingly, when we'd met at the Hôtel des Charmes? And that the more the real Louie—who was so different from all the masks he wore and so close to the picture Rebecca had painted—showed himself, the more my doubts disappeared?

I could have said nothing. Or opted for something prosaic.

But I chose otherwise. Another angle.

I let a gentle smile spread over my tear-soaked lips.

“Thanks. I'm
going
to be fine . . . I'm going to be much better, now.”

38

N
othing was less sure. I was just a disheveled bride with tears running down my face. I tiptoed down the hall, which smelled of bleach and ether. I pitched from wall to wall, a tiny metallic pinball shooting into my new life. I was ready . . .

. . . and yet still so uncertain. Just a hair away from collapsing onto the green linoleum. Incapable of seeing beyond my present pain.

Annabelle = Aurora. A simple equation, but one I simply could not wrap my head around, much less accept.

And what if that declaration in pictures was Louie's final ruse? What if I was entering into the last phase of David's plan, a plan his brother had carried out—for reasons that still escaped me (guilt?)—to the letter?

However, I had seen him be sincere, thanks to his tell, his dimple. “There's something else,” he had murmured the night before as I was leaving the room. Something else to tell me, to show me . . . or to inflict upon me?

 

THE PEOPLE WAITING FOR BUS
378 took no notice of my outfit or distress. They were too busy toting heavy bags and ruminating over their own problems. I couldn't be the first disheveled bride they'd seen riding the bus. That was one of the benefits of poor neighborhoods: everyone had too many of their own issues to care about those of others. A form of indifferent respect protected everyone's individual misery.

At last the bus came, and the compact little group pressed up against the automatic door, which opened with a
shhk
.

I had left Duchesnois House in such haste that I had nothing on me except a little pouch with my keys and a pack of tissues that I had been using to sponge up tears and makeup. The taxi I'd taken to get there had been paid for by BTV. But I was completely without resources when the driver, a man with a shaved head and a hoop in his right ear, said:

“Your ticket, Mademoiselle . . .”

“Oh, right . . . ,” I stuttered.

I rummaged through my bag, dropped it in an embarrassing clatter, stooped to pick up my keys from amid impatient shoes, which were on the verge of crushing me and clamoring into the vehicle, when a firm hand helped me up.

“It's okay, she's with me.”

The face was not totally alien.

“Super. My congratulations to the young bride,” the driver said sarcastically. “But she still has to pay.”

The mystery man—brown hair, medium build, in rather elegant weekend wear—quickly dug into the pocket of his jeans and withdrew a two-euro coin, which he slapped onto the counter. The driver's tone seemed to have annoyed him.

“There you go. Happy?”

“Your change,” the other replied dryly. “And your ticket.”

My savior took the magnetized card, validated it, and guided me to a seat, where I collapsed without saying a word. My gaze was sucked into the uninterrupted row of miserable homes and concrete high-rises. Though the sun was shining, this part of the periphery, an industrial no-man's-land with housing projects and unending strips of highway, had a sinister poetry about it.

“You don't recognize me?” the providential man with the timid smile inquired.

I looked at him, then admitted:

“No . . . I mean, not really.”

“Bertrand Passadier. We spoke the other day on the RER train.”

One day months ago vaguely floated back to me, like thick fog. What was he doing here, on a Thursday at noon? Was he on vacation already? Had he taken the day off to visit someone? Regardless, I didn't care.

“Maybe,” I conceded.

“No, we did. I remember it well. You must have moved to Paris.”

I didn't respond. What could I say? How to describe the monumental fiasco that these past few weeks had been? How to share the ruins that my life had become? But a tiny germ of hope had just emerged, at my dying mother's bedside.

“I have. But I'm moving back to Nanterre.”

“Really? But what about your dress . . .” He looked at my outfit with surprise and curiosity.

“It's just a costume.”

“Oh. That surprised me, too . . .”

This poor guy was always a few steps behind my reality and my lies.

I searched nervously through my pouch, only to discover that I had left my phone in the conjugal bedroom, where I would never sleep again.

“Do you have a phone?” I asked, eyeing him bleakly.

“Yes, of course.”

“Could you make a call for me?”

“You mean for me to make it?”

“Yes.”

He withdrew the latest smartphone from his jacket and held it toward me.

“You don't want to borrow it?”

“No . . . No, I want you to make the call.”

I had no desire to hear Armand lecture me, catch the sound of the brouhaha of guests growing impatient behind him, or listen to David screaming for him to hand over the phone.

I dictated the number for Duchesnois House to a disconcerted Bertrand Passadier, whose index finger hovered over the green button.

“Who is supposed to answer?” he asked.

“It doesn't matter . . . the people I was staying with in Paris.”

“What do you want me to tell them exactly?”

“Just say you're calling on behalf of Aurora . . .”

The message seemed fairly obvious to me. That way David would know that I knew. And all the masks would fall, and the way David saw my face would become apparent to all: the image of someone who was not me. That of his dead wife, the one and only Madame David Barlet. His spouse for life. Or, rather, death.

“ . . . Aurora, that's your name?” He smiled, hitting on me like an idiot.

“Yes,” I lied. “Tell them that Aurora wants her things sent to Nanterre . . . And tell them that she's never coming back.”

“Are you sure?”

He had thought our meeting was just a happy coincidence, but now a shadow crossed his face as he realized how dramatic this situation really was.

“Yes.”

“And what if the person asks to speak with you?”

“Tell them . . . that I'm not with you. You're just a messenger.”

He nodded and did as he was told, repeating what I had said word for word. When I heard confused voices raised over the speaker, I made a sign for him to hang up and cut off the hysteria and efforts to talk to me. The driver, uninhibited by obstacles or traffic lights, had stepped on the accelerator, and the bus 378 was taking me far, far away.

“The place I just called,” he pried, though with empathy. “That's your wedding, isn't it?”

“It
was
, yes. But not anymore.”

“Are you sure?”

Again I didn't know what to say. I was not sure of anything. Except perhaps my survival instincts, which were telling me to get as far away as possible from Rue de la Tour-des-Dames.

It wasn't hard to imagine what chaos I had left behind me. David drunk with anger. A disappointed Armand. Sophia burdened with justifying my desertion. The other guests, speechless. No one daring believe this Hollywood drama. Everyone unsure whether to politely leave or to stay and comfort the groom I had left in the lurch.

The caterers were no doubt already packing up the foodstuffs, alcohol, sweets. The flowers were already drooping in their vases—an act of indignation—the water stagnating. Everyone was already starting to offer their embarrassed lines, giving false promises to help out in any way, and hurrying to escape this disaster zone, for fear that they, too, would be infected. Some misfortunes are considered contagious.

 

WHEN WE GOT OFF THE
bus at the end of the line with all the other passengers, my Good Samaritan of public transportation handed me his business card, of simple and cheap stock, the kind you can order online:

“Here . . . In case you ever need to talk. About anything.”

I took it, but as soon as he disappeared around the corner pharmacy that faced the station, I threw it in the trash. I didn't need a Bertrand Passadier in my life any more than a Fred or a David.

 

Has Bertrand Passadier been masturbating to me these past couple of weeks? No, the real question is, how many times has he thought about me while masturbating? Had I made him come more than his other mental pictures,
or than those
bitches he no doubt ogles on the Internet?

We should all have some kind of radar, an erotic crystal ball, to tell us right away if we're going to sleep with someone who attracts us or not. How much disappointment would that nip in the bud? How much tension, conflict, how many wars, even, could be avoided with such a gadget? How much time and energy would be saved for more noble causes? Instead, we spend our lives running after the beautiful and sexy  . . .

 

Handwritten note by me, 6/19/2009

 

IT FELT STRANGE GETTING BACK
to Mom's silent and deserted house. I knew that from now on, I would be the only person there. And though I may have grown up there, I had the impression I was intruding on my mother's stuff, a collection of dusty old things. The whole house still smelled like something was burning. No one had thought to air it out after she'd been rushed to the hospital.

In the living room, next to all the pictures of me, I found what was left of the presents Louie had brought her. Every box and scrap of wrapping paper had been carefully saved. Macaroons, calissons from Aix, fruit candies . . . I inspected them, and idly tasted a few of the remaining treats. I did not want to imagine all the sorting that would have to be done, the trash bags that would have to be filled by the dozen, packing up everything from her life in plastic and taking it to the curb come garbage day.

In my room—I could not even remember the last time I had been there—I was struck by a shiny piece of silver paper crumpled up in the wastepaper basket. It gleamed in the midday light like a fallen disco ball, as comical as it was out of place. At one time, Mom would have emptied it right away, during one of her multiple-times-a-week cleaning sessions. But recently, she hadn't had the strength to make it upstairs, and had made do with minimal tidying.

The home phone rang from the entry, tearing me from my heavy thoughts. I hesitated for a second before running to answer it. After just two rings, it stopped, then started up again after three seconds exactly, then two more rings, then it stopped, and so on: Sophia's and my code, to be used in cases of emergency.

“Soph?”

“It's me. I don't have much time.”

“Are you still there?”

“Yes. I mean, I just stepped outside, but David won't leave me alone.”

“I'm so sorry . . .”

“Don't be, I swear. The man is insane. Ever since Armand got that phone call from your friend, he's been terrorizing everyone. Screaming at the personnel. He threw some people out who tried to keep him from going berserk . . .”

I had trouble imagining him acting so violent. And yet  . . .

“At the same time, he has good reason,” I admitted.

“That's why I'm calling: he knows you're at your mom's house. He's coming to get you.”

I could always barricade myself in, like Mom and I had done once when Fred came over drunk and angry. I trusted David to come up with better ways to persuade me than banging angrily on a glass door. Didn't he know important people on the police force?

“Thank you, my Soph.”

“No problem. But get out of there.”

She was right: I needed to leave, and fast. No sense waiting for a confrontation that would only turn against me, and from which I didn't expect to gain anything. The truth was written on my face, on each aspect of me that reminded him of his past. Of
their
past.

“Actually, is Louie there?”

“No, I haven't seen him.”

Louie's absence was no accident. He knew I would find his last present right before I was to be married. He knew it would come as a shock. Even the commandment echoed the snapshots and David's plot:
Thou shalt marry his fantasies.

After hanging up, I climbed the stairs four by four. The silver paper kept eyeing me from its receptacle. Despite its bling and the illusions of its reflective surface, it had been more authentic than any of the presents David had ever given me. Despite all the mystery, it had shown me something about myself that had been buried deep inside. It had given me permission to discover new sensations and desires.

Louie had told me a million times: the games he had made up for me had no other goal but to reveal me to myself. And they had nothing to do with his brother's twisted mind. They came from him, him alone, and his love for me.

What was I waiting for? What more did I need to spur me to action?

I seized the crumpled paper, and discovered a second ball made from the same material hiding underneath the first. The wrapping from his first package. That was just what I needed. That was how I would put an end to the cycle that had begun a dozen days earlier. At the very bottom of the wastepaper basket, I at last found the original box.

I knew what I had to do before running. I didn't have any doubts about the contents or the recipient. As luck had it, there were still condoms in the medicine cabinet, from back when I was with Fred. I took one and placed it in the box. Since I didn't have a blank card, I penned the following order on a Post-it:

10—I shall submit myself to my master.

Aren't the most binding commandments the ones the faithful write for themselves? The ones they choose and write, even in an act of submission . . . I liked the idea of playing with Louie's codes. Of stealing his rhetoric, at the risk of paraphrasing.

But the intention was all mine.

I want to submit myself, open myself up and get wet for you, forever. I want to invent new organs for myself, new orifices, new sexes for your pleasure. I want to change my DNA and give you a body the likes of which no other man has seen. I want to redefine the concept of submission for you. I want to be a woman to replace all others, the one who awakens both the beast and the gentle lamb in you, and at last reconciles both sides in you.