Anio Szado (5 page)

“She’s going to make me a partner.”

“When?”

“Eventually.”

“Oh,
eventually
. Well, that makes everything okay.” He twirled the cap from the whisky bottle on the table. “You said your first paycheck could be a while. How long is a while?”

“I have to prove myself. That’s how it works. Besides the regular work, you’ve got to bring in clients and commissions and help make the studio a success.”

“Goddamn it, Mig. There are loads of jobs for girls now. Good regular jobs, nine to five, punch the clock and cash the honest-to-goodness check.”

“Not in fashion. If you’re trying to make a name for yourself it can be kind of all or nothing.”

Leo poured another whisky and downed it, then went to the shotgun kitchen and came back holding my note. He read aloud: “ ‘I’ll tell you all about it when I get home tonight.’ Notice something? You called this place your home.” He flicked the paper close to my nose. When I didn’t flinch, he slumped onto the couch and drank. “That’s fine,” he said. “Stay as long as you want. But you’re going to have to make
an actual wage—
eventually
—or start digging into Papa’s treasure trove.”

“You have a mean way with words.”

“I’m just telling you straight. I can’t keep us in mink on my own.”

“I’ll get my own place.” How could I, though? I couldn’t chip away at my inheritance. I had promised myself (typed it up like a contract, signed it, and filed it away) that I’d use that money to start my own design studio one day. Any other use would “expressly constitute and represent” notice that I had given up on my dream—and on Papa’s hopes for me.

“Nah, stay. It’s not so bad having you here. Besides, Mother would kill me.” He opened a drawer in the side table and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a Zippo. After flicking the lighter and pulling smoke into his lungs, he let his shoulders relax. His head tipped back against the fraying brocade. He spoke through smoke rings. “At least you haven’t asked me where I was last night.”

“Where were you?”

“Leaving everything but my body on the poker table.” He emptied his lungs with a forceful sigh.

“I can get a second job to help with the rent. I can probably wait tables for Uncle Yannick.”

“You think so? Because I’m thinking an ‘all or nothing’ job is ‘all or nothing,’ if you know what I mean. Put it this way. If you’re ever not here when I get home, I’ll know exactly where you are. And I get home very, very late sometimes.” He picked up the wine bottle and filled my glass. By the time we left for the Alliance, I was woozy.

As I’m a tiny bit woozy now. But mustn’t nap in the airport, much as I would like to. A slack, snoring maw is not quite oh-so-Mignonne-NYC. I could catch a cab home, sleep. Or return to the studio, back to the fray.

Or give myself over to waiting, stranded by rain: unreachable, not at work, not at home, not away. Think through my talk for Expo. Inspiration is like reimagining a garment. Parse the elements, recut the pieces, use from the past what resonates today. There’s no backstitching in stories. Nothing can be locked in place.

“Tell me a good one, Miggy.” That’s what Leo used to say. “Use your noodle and lay on the sauce. Can’t remember? Make it up. Can’t know? Don’t tell me so. Borrow someone else’s story if you don’t like your own.”

Consuelo starts awake. The days are like this now: either she is all on, a whirlwind, or she is nodding asleep. Once upon a time, she could not have imagined growing sleepy in an airport. Airports were places of drama: of passionate reunion, of desperate waiting for news, of fears so acute they poisoned her veins and made her faint. She had been in her prime then. In her thirties—for love, not age, is the measure of a woman’s prime.

Love and passion—and, it follows then, fear.

There is the problem. She has nothing to lose anymore, nothing to fear. So little to stay awake for. At sixty-six years of age, she lives a quiet life in Paris with her gardener, she writes her memoirs, she sculpts. She makes it her life’s mission to keep her late husband’s stories alive. One above all: the story of their love. Without her love, he would have been nothing. Without his story, she would be nothing now.

An announcement is broadcast: New York–bound passengers, expect delays and cancellations. In Paris, it is a perfectly sunny morning, hot for late May. Consuelo takes off her cat-eye sunglasses, moistens a fingertip with her tongue, and smooths her eyebrows before approaching the counter at her gate.

The counter girl is putting down the phone. She looks more like a tourist than a representative of Air France, her scarf unknotting, her hat askew. Is she allowed to wear dangly earrings like that?

Consuelo loathes the 1960s. Its out-there aesthetic has left her behind. She asks, “There is a problem with weather?”

“A freak system’s stalled over New York. Nothing’s moving in or out. Could last a couple of days.” The girl chews gum steadily as she checks Consuelo’s ticket. “The Montreal flight should be fine, madame. Maybe some turbulence. Visiting family in Canada?”

How they underestimate her, these people. “I have an open invitation from the mayor of Montreal to return to the world’s fair. I was a guest of honor at the opening.”

“Expo 67?”

Consuelo detests the official, generic name. Expo means only exposition, ’67 is only the year.
“Terre des hommes
,
”
she says.

“Well, enjoy. Try to catch Expo, too, while you’re there.”

An hour later, she has finished a scotch and soda on the plane. She is resting her eyes, settling in for the long boredom of the flight. She would rather face a tempest than tedium—and just as well, for she attracts bad weather like a dog attracts stink. She was born in a cyclone and an earthquake. And a volcano. (As she ages, more details of her birth come to her, each more lurid and surreal.) She used to blame herself for the storms that threatened her husband’s planes. She suspected floods in India and mudslides in Mexico were somehow her doing. She was like the quake that had birthed her: her tremors spread wide.

She used to pray that the Lord would relieve her of her curse, but today her powers of disturbance have proven their worth. A freak system stalled over New York! Today of all days, when, according to the American fashion news, Mignonne Lachapelle means to fly from New York to Montreal. To the fair, to a podium. To take credit where no credit is due.

Consuelo, if anyone, deserves the honor. It was her husband’s book, his art, their life. Mignonne only used him, and her, and the story Consuelo holds so dear. Consuelo had been planning to say so at Mignonne’s presentation, speak up and make a fuss, draw the attention of reporters her way. It is why she chose to fly to Montreal this day.

What fun it would have been! Now she wishes Mignonne would make it to the fair after all.

Consuelo would call off the storm if she only could. She would propel the designer from runway to runway, and cross their fates again. But how?

She had done it before, long ago: drawn Mignonne into her path, into her home, into her arms. What powers Consuelo had possessed then! But how had she done it? How had she set the stage and laid her traps?

She has always been her own best teacher. She settles deeper into her seat and casts her mind back.

In the dim evening light of a Checker cab in Manhattan in April 1942, Consuelo glanced seductively at her companion as she nudged her dark hair into place behind her ears, but Binty paid her no mind: he was practicing the words she had taught him for the night’s visit to the Alliance Française. She could teach him a hundred languages! Spanish, French, English … though he already spoke English … and if she concentrated, probably several more. But there were so many demands on her time. And why should she bother to educate him? He couldn’t even summon the decency to look at her. He was mouthing French words as he examined his manicured nails.

“Bonjour
,
”
he muttered, as though it were two words. Bone juror.

She snapped open her compact and dabbed at the tip of her nose, at her delicate nostrils and charming chin, and at the goddamn hollows below her eyes. Consuelo’s supple skin was her South American birthright. It had been the envy of her friends in Paris, and used to make her husband crazy with desire—but already, just four months after her arrival in New York, the city was sucking the life from her skin. She examined the compact’s applicator pad. Even in this light, she could see it was yellowing.
Just like her! The natural oils that kept her looking so much younger than her forty years were being sucked from her skin and absorbed into the cake of powder. The makeup had lost its delicacy; its pinkish bronze surface was becoming mottled and slick. Even the mirror turned against her. It didn’t reflect her beauty. It hated her. It glared.

Her old compact, gold-plated, bought in a tiny perfect Parisian store, had shown her features softened through a shimmering, translucent film. Too bad her husband had deflected it with his arm when Consuelo had flung it at him last week.

It was he who put the dark hollows below her eyes. They would be gone if she could sleep, if he would only let her lay her head upon his furry chest.

She raised her voice to speak to the cab driver. “It’s at the corner of East 52nd, with the flags.”

“I know it, ma’am.”

“Countess,” she corrected as the car drifted across lanes. She might have let his error pass if he’d called her miss instead of ma’am.

“Driver,” said Binty, “can’t you push it any faster? The comely countess and
moi
are dying for a drink.”

Consuelo giggled. Thank God for her little lover. He was so carefree compared to the men she had been with in France, especially when it came to his pocketbook. She had only to ensure that Binty was never bored. He was up for any excitement. As long as Consuelo was “happy, titled, and entertaining,” as he had said when they met, he would be happy too. She had slapped him once and kissed him twice, and taken him to her bed.

It was impossible for Consuelo to be boring. She had tried it once and failed.

“Are you nervous, darling?” she asked.

“I’m never nervous.”

“Tonio’s not the violent type. He’s probably not going to hit you. Especially not at the Alliance Française.”

“Another good punch-up thwarted.”

“It would be no joke if he did hit you. He’s very strong, you know. He’s awfully tall.”

“I’ve seen your husband. Several times.”

“Actually, he might hit you. Especially at the Alliance. He’s desperate to salvage his reputation there.”

“To hit or not to hit: which would you prefer?”

“If you take off your glasses, he might hit you.” The truth was, if Tonio loved her he would hit Binty either way; that’s what it came down to. Even his detractors would find that noble. Unless, of course, they thought the two men unfairly matched.

“It’s too bad you aren’t taller,” she said.

“I don’t need to be tall.” He held up his wallet as the taxi waited in traffic.

He was right. Tonio would never win over those who had become hostile to him if he hit Binty. So what if Binty was a
nouveau riche
American while Tonio was a French national treasure? If the expatriates had shown Consuelo anything, it was that neither literary awards nor an aristocratic name could protect a man from the venom of his countrymen. Wealth, on the other hand, was the great magnetic unifier—and Binty was moneyed in fabulous and intricate ways.

As for Tonio, the Germans had blocked access to his bank accounts, which were likely empty anyway. His royalty checks never lasted long. Back when he and Consuelo had lived together in France, they had burned through his checks faster than he could write. And his inheritance? Too small, and long gone. Tonio’s father had died young and his
maman
seemed bent on living to an old age. God bless the mother, though: if it hadn’t been for her horror at the prospect of a son’s divorce, Consuelo’s claim on Tonio would have vanished in a court of law. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the matriarch’s saintly closed-mindedness, they might never have gotten around to legalizing the marriage at all. But now Consuelo maintained every right to demand her share of her husband’s heart—as well as his new celebrity.

He had become a phenomenon here, the man the
New York
Times
called upon to explain the nature and vagaries of France, the only modern Frenchman to have his novel on every shelf. How trying it must be to have the Anglos clamoring for pieces of him, while his own elite compatriots seethed with jealousy. His life would be sweeter—and much easier—if only he would return to the bosom of her love.

What communion of souls they had known in their early days! In the stretches when he was not off flying over heathen lands, they had immersed themselves in all-night, wine-soaked dinners with delightful friends. She had insisted they surround themselves with beauty in their every hotel and home. An artist needed beauty: expensive antiques, closets glistening with fine French fashions, exquisite perfumes and cosmetics that were a woman’s duty to acquire. Such marvelous times. Consuelo had hoped against all odds to rekindle them in New York.