The Suitors (19 page)

“This is too much, simply
too
much! Just because this idiot charters private planes and helicopters to go have coffee in the Dordogne or in Moldavia where he requisitions entire hotels and dislodges all their clients, that doesn’t give him the right to do as he pleases!”

My mother was letting off steam in her bathroom, where she had taken refuge to explode in private.

“Don’t work yourself up into such a state!” pleaded my father, trying to calm her down.

“No, I mean
really
! That thing is expensive, the exhaust stinks, it makes a hellish racket, and it’s dangerous. Who knows if it’s even legal in the bay!”

“You know perfectly well that this Jet Ski will end up in the cellar, with all the rest of Charles’s presents. You can’t really see me revving up the motor just for fun!” my father replied, at which point I joined their company and added my two cents’ worth.

“At least that contraption might bring us more in line with our neighbors, because what do we look like, with our plastic kayak-canoe from the toy store in Juan-les-Pins, bobbing around next to their cutting-edge playthings?”

And it was true that wherever we went in the bay, we now seemed like amateurs in a world of professionals. Take children’s games, for instance. While we were satisfied with a sandbox on the terrace above the staff beach, our Russian neighbors provided their offspring with a miniature golf course, a go-cart racetrack, and inflatable castles featuring hiding places and slides worthy of an amusement park, all installed on a lot purchased for that purpose. It was the same situation with our antimosquito strategy, because our Saudi neighbor deployed extermination on an industrial scale with machines diffusing a blue light that vaporized the insects with ghastly zapping sounds, while we persisted halfheartedly in setting out yellow bug lights and saucers of citronella.

It was in the security department, however, that we failed the most ignominiously, since our alarm system, which we found perfectly satisfactory, looked ridiculous next to the armed guards of our neighbors and the motion detector lights that broadcast a booming electronic voice to explain, in a menacing tone and several languages, what dangers awaited any feckless fool who persisted in violating the perimeter of the property or its offshore stretch of bay.

And if you also considered the yachts at anchor, the Riva speedboats, plus the floating docks and rafts that formed ramparts around our neighbors’ beaches against intruders of all kinds, we had by some strange paradox become the only wealthy residents on the bay on whom it was physically possible to spy.

Which was precisely the mission of the yellow boat out of Juan-les-Pins that crisscrossed the bay every hour under the clearly feeble pretext of studying the underwater scenery, thus allowing its passengers to examine us as if we were exotic fauna for the sum of 12 euros per adult and 6 euros per child (between the ages of two and eleven). Hugging the shore wherever possible, this boat actually came right up to our beach ladder, meeting with a reception that depended on our mood. Although we usually sheltered behind our books or newspapers to
avoid the gaze of these vacationers who, camera in hand, hoped to grab a photo of some famous face or silhouette while snatching a glimpse of how the
beautiful people
live, we might also decide to wave cheerily at them, or hide in the grotto and launch a squirt gun attack.

My silly joke about the neighbors did nothing to cheer up my mother, of course, but she was not the only person whose patience and good humor were in short supply that day. I’d had a hard week in Paris. Too many patients, but above all I was missing Félix more and more as his month with his father dragged on. And I was worried about my ex’s mood swings and irresponsibility. To crown everything, Marie had gone off to who knows where to some conference or other, with a time change that meant we’d hardly spoken to each other since the previous weekend.

Frankly, I was in a tight spot, because my guests weren’t the kind to outshine Charles Ramsbotham. In fact, Mathias Cavoye was a walking cliché: a private dealer in the secondary art market, he was fifty, handsome, but getting on, with a nuclear tan and all the accoutrements of a seducer going gray at the temples but trying to look young in jeans and a blazer, with turtlenecks in the winter and colorful polo shirts in the summer.

I was fond of Mathias because he wasn’t pretentious, had never tried to hide the fact that his mother had a little grocery store in the Parisian suburb of Bourg-la-Reine, and he always invited me to the parties he gave at his home to fend off ennui. Until now, however, despite the many hints he’d made, I’d been very careful not to invite him to L’Agapanthe because I just didn’t trust him.

Was it because he was depressed? Hung out with celebrities? Or was constantly angling to swindle extra money out of every deal he made? I could just see him slipping coke to a pretty young thing to rev her up or keep her under his thumb. Bluntly put, with him and his pal Lou Léva, a starlet desperate to make it to the top, we were definitely in the demimonde, and it wouldn’t take my parents more than thirty seconds to figure that out. They would then conclude that I must have fallen on my head and lost all my bearings. Beyond the distinction they made between chic and cheap, my parents divided society into decent, respectable people and those who were not, a criterion based on moral judgments as antiquated as they were denigrated in our café society. This was one of the things I most liked about them, and I valued their good opinion enough that their parental disapproval would upset me. Especially since I had no intention of explaining to them that the whole
point about Mathias was that he was bringing us Béno Grunwald.

To my surprise, my mother quickly composed herself after my father left for the beach, where Charles was already putting together the infamous Jet Ski. Then she asked me not about Mathias, but about his girlfriend.

“So, she’s an actress, is that it? Then why haven’t I heard of her?”

My mother affecting a shopgirl’s interest in show business, that was a new one for me, and I had to smile, given that she and my father knew nothing about
any
stars, not even the ones so famous their public appearances cause riots.

“Actually,” I replied, “I’d have been astonished if you did know her, because aside from her roles in two minor films …”

“Lou Léva? That’s her real name?”

“Of course not, what an idea! She must have chosen it carefully in the hope that the alliteration would help casting directors remember her name. But you can ask her yourself, she’s arriving with Mathias Cavoye just before dinnertime.”

“And young Grunwald?”

My mother invariably attached that adjective to all her close friends’ children. Irritated to think that I might have felt I was about to introduce her to someone “elegant” of whom she hadn’t heard, my mother probably meant to show me how familiar she was with the Grunwald family, and she twisted the knife with an innocent air while gossiping knowingly about them.

“How has he been doing? Because they haven’t a penny left, poor things, since they lost that manufacturing license, what was it for again?”

“A monopoly on photographic gelatin.”

“Oh, yes, that was it.”

“Actually,
young
Grunwald happens to be in his forties and he’s a lot more wealthy than his family!”

“Really! And how did he manage that?”

“Because he made a fortune!”

“Ah, he’s the one who married a model, or something like that?”

“Yes. Although I’m afraid he might turn out to be a bit of a show-off,” I confessed prudently to my mother, hoping that with her love of argument, she would immediately defend him if I went on the attack.

“Oh! That’s only natural if he’s earned a lot of money …”

“You’re right, of course, but I mean, is that any reason to arrive by helicopter—”

“What, he’s coming by helicopter? But that’s grotesque! Where will it land?”

“On a copter pad in Cannes, I believe.”

“That’s ridiculous. Besides, he’ll get caught in traffic. And it will be his own fault, too.”

“Whose own fault?” asked Marie, joining us in the bathroom.

“Darling!” exclaimed our mother delightedly. “When did you get here?”

“What’s wrong?” I asked Marie as soon as we were alone.

“Nothing, why?”

“Come off it, I know you. What’s going on?”

“Nothing, at least, not much, really … It’s stupid …”

“What is?”

“It’s a dog … in Rio … that I can’t get out of my mind. I found him on the lawn outside my room the evening I arrived. A little black dog with a white spot around his right eye. He sat down in front of the bay window. And he kept looking at me, without moving. Imagine! I tried to ignore him, then I closed the curtains, hoping
to forget about him. That was impossible, obviously. I couldn’t stand it, I let him into my room. He was full of fleas, thin, and
famished
. So I ordered him a steak and I gave him a bath. He didn’t struggle, was so relaxed, trusting.… No, but I mean, are you getting what I’m saying? I’ve lost my mind! I’m worried about a stray dog, in Rio, the city of favelas! Isn’t that pathetic?”

“Yes, particularly since you seem to be ignoring world hunger and global warming …”

“Meaning?”

“That you have every right to get emotional without having to fix all the problems of the world.”

“You don’t think I’m being silly?”

“No, I really don’t. Go on.”

“Afterward he fell asleep. I left him on the floor although I wanted to bring him up on the bed. In the morning I gave him the slip in the hotel garden before going off to work. I thought about him, though, all day long, and I came back early to the hotel that evening, hoping to find him outside my bay window.”

“And was he there?”

“Yes. He was wild with joy, and I ordered him another filet mignon.”

Her voice suddenly broke. “He was there every evening. And I gave him the slip as usual, the morning I
left, except that … And now I can’t stop thinking about him.”

“Poor dear, I’m so sorry. But I’d have been worried if you hadn’t reacted just like that.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it simply means that you’re human, that you’re very sensitive. Which doesn’t keep you from being strong, doing everything well, and seeming absolutely perfect. You know, we always use something outside ourselves to open the door to our emotions. And since wars, famines, and earthquakes are tragedies too vast for us to feel directly concerned about them, we find something closer to us to cry over, or something more specific, like a doll with a shattered eye, an episode of
Little House on the Prairie
, or a dog.”

“But in this case, he was the one who chose me, and … I abandoned him.”

“Yes, and in fact that’s what’s at stake here.”

“What is?”

“Abandonment.”

“But what are you talking about?”

“I’m saying that this dog embodied all the moments when you felt abandoned, as lonely as he was, with no one to give you a bath or order you a steak. But don’t worry, you’ll get over it.”

“You think so?”