Destiny (79 page)

The temptation to demonstrate to Helene some of his own skills—she would, unfortunately, never see him play football—was suddenly strong. Lewis began to explain a few terms, to elucidate certain simple facts, and

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Helena listened quietly and attentively and occasionally asked quite intelligent questions. In the end they spent the entire afternoon discussing the stock market, and Lewis enjoyed himself very much. He, who had always been instructed, always lectured, was suddenly the teacher. It was a new role, and his pupil was his wife: Lewis found the experience almost erotic.

"Is it very difficult—to start a portfolio?" Helene asked him, the next day. Lewis gave a shout of laughter.

"Of course not! Do you want to try? Why not? I'll help you—^but later. When the film's launched. When you've had the baby. You've got other things to think about now."

"I know, Lewis," she said, and smiled at him obediently.

Back in Paris, Sphere procrastinated. At Simon Scher's suggestion, the budget for the new film was revised, and some changes were made to the script. Thad made these swiftly.

"Just tell me what they want, Lewis, and I'll stick it in. It's just words, Lewis, whatever they think they want, I can work around it. Just get the money."

This attitude of Thad's caused Lewis some alarm, but he concealed it. He had, by then, seen the master print of Night Game —Thad had perversely refused to let him see the rough cut, which, it seemed to Lewis, had been seen by half of Paris.

The moment he saw that print, Lewis's alarms faded. Whenever they reawoke, he reminded himself of its excellence and was reassured. Night Game was a wonderful film. It was startling, lucid, and gripping. It was simultaneously very sad, and at moments extremely funny. Thad knew what he was doing: forgetting the doubts of Rome, forgetting his current anxieties, Lewis felt proud. He had always had faith in Thad, he told himself; he had never really wavered; and now that faith was vindicated— triumphantly so.

And Helene—on film, even to Lewis, she was a revelation. He had read that there are some faces the camera loves: now he knew the meaning of that phrase. Seeing her on the screen, Lewis forgot he knew her; it was like meeting her for the first time, and he fell in love with her all over again. Later, having had a few drinks to calm himself, he explained that to the assistant director, the amiable Fabian.

Fabian smiled, and winked. "Mais, evidemment," he said with a shrug. "The film itself—it is hke a love letter to her, is it not?"

This annoyed Lewis. He tried to forget the remark immediately.

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Scher had also seen the film, in its final version, and had pronounced himself impressed. He went to see it again, with various advisors and aides, at the beginning of April. By the middle of April there was still no final deal for the next movie, and Lewis began to lose patience. At the end of the month Scher suddenly announced that he needed to see it again, this time with the chairman of his parent company Partex, a Texan called Drew Johnson.

Lewis was irritated. He despised Texans. He foresaw this whole saga going on for months more, and then disintegrating, just Uke all the others. One more bubble burst.

However, he still had no formal commitment from Sphere after months of hard work, so he had no alternative but to agree.

Drew Johnson proved the embodiment of all Lewis's Bostonian prejudices. He attended the private screening, together with his wife, Billy; she wore Givenchy; her husband a shoelace tie, cowboy boots, and a Stetson, Lewis sat beside them in the screening room, bristhng with the disdain of his class.

They went on to dinner at the Grand Vefour. The movie was not mentioned once. They went on after that to the Crazy Horse cabaret, renowned throughout Europe for its sauciness and wit. There Drew Johnson had a ball. He whooped. He applauded. He ordered magnums of champagne. Lewis sat in stony silence, and gazed at the beautiful strippers with a new and puritanical distaste. They did nothing for him at all. The biggest breasts, the slenderest thighs, the most salacious gestures, did not stir his body once.

A black Rolls-Royce Phantom collected the Texan and his wife from the club. They were staying outside Paris, with friends; Drew Johnson crushed Lewis's hand in a mighty paw, and invited him out to Orly to his plane the next morning.

Lewis went back to his hotel, wrote to Helene, and then—for once feeling despondent—decided to get smashed. Next morning, certain the chairman of Partex had loathed Night Game and the deal was off", he dragged himself, hung over, out to the airport.

The plane was a Boeing 707. Inside, it had antique linenfold paneling. On the paneling, their frames screwed in, were a Renoir and a Gauguin the Jeu de Paume gallery would have been proud to own. Lewis looked around him sourly, sat down on an eighteenth-century couch that had been converted to hold seat belts, and asked for a glass of tomato juice.

"Tomato juice?" Drew Johnson's bushy white eyebrows rose. "What's

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going on here? Billy, honey, ring the bell. Our friend Lewis could use a proper drink."

"No, thank you." Lewis gave his cut-glass accent full rein. "It's nine o'clock in the morning, and besides I have nothing to celebrate." He paused, and as the strain told, his temper snapped. "Look. Why not be straight with me, and stop wasting my time? You hated the film. Yes?"

"Hated it?" The Texan smiled. "How d'you figure that? Y'all taking a wrong turn there."

"Hated it. Disliked it. Probably didn't understand it. Either way, I don't know why I'm here, and I might as well leave." He put down his glass, stood up, and moved toward the exit. It was outrage at the hnenfold as much as anything that finally did it. He swung back.

"It's a good movie," he said. "Maybe a great one. I can see that, even if you can't. And I'm going to make damn sure Thad gets to make the next one. With or without your help."

There was a silence. Drew Johnson looked at his wife and began to smile. Suddenly he threw back his head in a great shout of laughter.

"You know, I was beginning to think you were some kind of a eunuch? Well, what d'you know? They got balls in Boston after all. ..."

Six feet five of brawny Texan advanced across the cabin, holding out its hand. Six feet three of elegant Bostonian looked at it with a doubtful disdain.

Drew Johnson's face sobered. His sharp blue eyes met those of Lewis.

"Well, come on now, boy. Even in Boston I guess you get to shake hands on a deal." He paused. "I authorized the financing last night. Your lawyers don't pick too many nits in it, and you'll find y'all just got yourself a backer."

Lewis stared at him. He reached out and grasped Drew Johnson's hand. He smiled.

"You know," he said, "I think I might just change the habits of a lifetime. Right now a drink would be just fine."

"Break out the bourbon, Billy," Johnson roared.

The deal was signed on the first of May. Lewis looked at its fifty pages of closely typed script, and felt a soaring pride. For the deal, he and Thad had formed their own production company. They called it Mirage, because Thad liked that name, and as joint directors, they both signed: Thad in a thin spidery scribble, Lewis with his Mont Blanc pen, in his bold hand. The day he signed, he called first Helene, and then his father. This

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moment, which Lewis had been promising himself for months, was sweet. Item by item Lewis lobbed the information down the line; it felt Uke a series of perfectly aimed grenades. A budget in seven figures. The possibility of a long-term partnership. Sphere Distribution. Partex Petrochemicals. Drew Johnson.

Impatience at his father's end changed to silence; after the silence came the questions—the exam. Lewis was eloquent; figures flew across the transatlantic cable, and at last he heard the note he'd wanted to hear so long creeping into his father's voice, grudging but there: respect.

Lewis smiled. "Oh, and by the way, I'm married," he added, and hung up.

Lewis had hoped that the deal with Sphere and the birth of Hel^ne's baby would take place in the same week. But it was not to be. The baby was late: "Nothing to worry about," Mr. Foxworth said. "Very common with first-time mothers." Lewis fretted; finally, late on the evening of May 16, Helene went into labor. Lewis rushed with her in a taxi to the clinic in St. John's Wood. Mr. Foxworth arrived, smooth in a pearl-gray suit.

Lewis paced the waiting room of the clinic, and smoked two packs of cigarettes. At four o'clock in the morning of May 17, Mr. Foxworth appeared at the door, undoing the strings of a green surgical gown. Lewis looked at him: it was like the movies; it was like the movies—only better, only worse. He stared at the physician in terror; one second stretched to eternity. Through the clouds of cigarette smoke, Mr. Foxworth smiled, indulgently: he congratulated Mr. Sinclair. Mr. Sinclair had a very lovely daughter.

Lewis was ushered into Helene's room. He was trembling. Discreetly, doctor and nurse withdrew. In her arms Helene held what seemed to him a tiny bundle, a little, little shape, swathed in a white wool shawl.

She looked up, and Lewis approached the bed. He looked down at the shawl, at the tiny perfect face. He saw smooth pale skin, eyes tightly shut, and a little frown between the brows, as if the baby concentrated hard on sleep. As Lewis bent forward, the baby screwed its face into a tiny fierce grimace. Its lips parted, and it made a small rubbing, seeking movement, pressing its cheek against the shawl. It seemed disgruntled. It wriggled slightly, freeing one hand. The hand was plump-backed, with dimples for knuckles; there was a deep crease where hand met wrist, and Lewis saw, as the tiny fingers clenched and then relaxed, that the fingernails were the color of tiny shells. They needed cutting.

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Lewis began to cry. Gently, he reached forward and touched the new-bom skin. The baby moved again, snuffled, and the shawl fell back. This seemed to alert her momentarily: she opened her eyes. Lewis stared. A little fuzzy cap of jet-black hair. Eyes that were the strongest, darkest blue he had ever seen.

"Isn't she beautiful?" Helene said softly, anxiously.

"She's lovely."

Lewis went to touch the soft black hair, and then drew back. The baby looked in his direction with wide unfocused eyes. Lewis wished then, wished passionately and sadly, that the baby's hair had been fair, like Helene's, like his own. He hated himself for the wish at the instant he felt it. He could hardly fall now at the very first hurdle, when he had been so confident of his ability to stay the course. He turned back to Helene awkwardly, trying to hide what he felt. He reached for her hand.

"Her eyes are beautiful. And she's so . . . I . . ."

He heard himself failing, heard himself flounder.

Helene seemed trusting. She lifted her face to his, with a smile of tiredness and serenity.

"Kingfisher blue," she said. "The color of a kingfisher's wing."

Lewis looked down at the baby uncertainly. It was not how he would have described the color. Helene's grip on his hand suddenly tightened.

"I wonder," Lewis said in a flat voice. "Will they stay that color?"

They decided to call the baby Catharine. Because of her delicate little triangular-shaped face and the wide-spaced blue eyes, which reminded Lewis of a Siamese kitten his mother had owned, this quickly became shortened to Cat.

Like her namesake. Cat was simultaneously aloof, and immensely demanding. When Lewis or Helene held her, and cooed at her, and stroked her. Cat appeared indifferent. She would screw up her eyes and look away. But the second she was laid in her crib—fed, bathed, changed, ready for her nap—she would start to scream.

She would cry, on a mounting plangent penetrating scale, until she was picked up again. Then she would stop—until they laid her back in the crib. Lewis found it charming at first, then, as the lack of sleep began to tell, irritating. Helene never complained: she would climb out of bed and go to her at all hours of the night. The days seemed to Lewis to be one long chain of operations: bottles to sterilize, bottles to make up, diapers to change, diapers to soak. Lewis sometimes made up the formula, and some-

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times held the baby while she fed—when, briefly, she was quiet—^but diapers, he felt, were hardly a man's domain.

After two weeks he suggested that, rather than waiting until they were almost due to leave for Paris, as had been planned, the nurse should join them now. Helene refused. They had their first quarrel, during the course of which Lewis told her that she cared more for the baby than she did for him, and at the end of which he drank half a bottle of whisky, which at least enabled him, he said snappishly the next day, to get a few hours' sleep.

The day after that, having sulked until he felt better, Lewis repented. If he could then have made love to Helene, he told himself, he would have felt that the distance between them had been banished. But the doctor had forbidden intercourse for a month, and Helene seemed not to share Lewis's enthusiasm for alternative methods of release. She climbed into bed each night and fell instantly asleep; Lewis lay beside her, stiff in every muscle with a mixture of sexual frustration and moral indignation, his nerves taut as piano wire. He was waiting for the first wail. Sooner or later—usually sooner—it always came.

By the third week, when the telephone calls from Thad became more frequent, and the packing began, Lewis looked down into Cat's httle triangular face with a sense of injured reproach. It seemed to him so unfair. This was not his baby, and yet he had welcomed it into the world. He had set out to love it; he had promised himself he would take care of it—and how did it repay him? Did it seem to sense his concern, his magnanimity? No, it did not.

He decided to say nothing. He would keep the peace. The nurse was arriving that day; three days from now, he and Helene would be in Paris. Alone.

When, finally, the day came for them to depart, Lewis felt a certain triumph. It was not just that he looked forward to being alone with Helene, or even to getting a night's uninterrupted sleep, it was also the fact that his will had prevailed. Helene had not wanted to leave the baby. Right up to the very last minute she had attempted to change Lewis's mind.