Hotelles (21 page)

I knew Sophia would always be in my life. But our good-bye hug in front of Barlet Tower, just before the hordes of lunchers engulfed us, felt final.

I recognized a few faces from my induction in the elevator on my way back to the office. They gave me the silent treatment. No one dared ask how it was going, or if I had enjoyed my solo lunch. First-day hazing in full gear. But what did I know? Really, this was my
first
first day.

Feeling nervous, no doubt in part due to Sophia's revelation, I absently followed the troop out the elevator. After walking halfway down the hall, I realized I was on the wrong floor. Here were located some of BTV's studios and soundstages. The partitions were also made of glass, but there was no external light, and the hallways were much darker than on the top floor, where it was always extraordinarily bright. Despite the darkness, I immediately recognized two shadows occupying one of the smaller sets on my right. From where I stood, they could not see me, but I was afraid the slightest movement might alert them to my presence. So I stayed where I was, immobile, watching them. I was terrified they would suddenly come out and run into me.

David seemed calm and in control. His interlocutor, on the other hand, looked exasperated. She ran a nervous hand through her hair, her torso contorting gracelessly. From where I stood, it was impossible to be sure, but I would have sworn her chest was heaving more erratically than usual. Was she crying?

In any case, she was not speaking. Rather, she listened to her boss, who, I imagined, was talking in a measured and consoling tone, judging by the way he placed his hand on her arm, then shoulder.

Suddenly, Alice lost her composure and collapsed into David's arms. For his part, David held her for a moment—to me, it seemed like an eternity—before slowly pushing her away with characteristic gentility.

Really? You're sure . . . you prefer her over me?

When I was little, I used to hide behind the door to the living room to watch whatever movie was playing. I would try to think of what the characters were saying. I did the same here, imagining the words that might plausibly be coming out of the tearful woman's luscious lips.

Yes, she's the one. I'm sorry,
David would say.

Whatever he actually said, his words appeared to have calmed the beautiful blonde, as well as crucified her. She had clearly been taken down several notches. With her tail between her legs, she slunk out the studio through a small door hidden in the set, heading out the building, I supposed.

I was proud of him. He had killed her hopes, but without being brutal or gratuitously mean. He had acted like a good CEO, firm but just, concerned about the interests of the whole but also careful not to hurt any of its parts. Alice had been put in her place. I knew other rivals would present themselves one day or another, here or in one of the many cases when I would not be around to see. But his loyalty that day, which closed the door on an old temptation, opened the door to our mutual commitment.

I saw that my mix-up when I got off the elevator on the wrong floor had not been an accident. I had needed to believe in David, to see his love in the world—not just in the amazing presents. To see his love in action, not just hear it in words. The mute show I had just witnessed was worth more to me than all the gifts. I didn't care if he'd been married to an Aurora or even an Alice before me. I was the one he had chosen here and now, against all odds.

Above all others.

18

Isolation: A state or situation of being isolated (see To Isolate) or that is isolated.

To Isolate: To set or place someone apart from others.

I looked up the dictionary definition, but it didn't make me feel better. Cooped up in my office, I went from contemplating the sky and its infinite meteorological variations to consulting a dictionary that some anonymous hand had left here for me during the lunch hour. I also reread my notes from my meeting with Albane. They made me feel even more inadequate and maladapted. David had given me the nicest present in the world, but it was also a harsh mirror, in which everything I was not—not
yet
, my mother would be quick to correct—became painfully apparent.

 

I MUST HAVE DOZED OFF
because when Chloe burst in, wide-eyed and indignant, I started and felt dazed for several seconds.

“Is everything okay?” she asked, worried.

“Yes . . .”

“Because they're waiting for you . . . in conference room number three. Two thirty . . .”

She didn't say anything, but I could tell she was furious with me for ruining her beautiful scheduling—and on my first day, no less. But she was magnanimous enough not to notify me as to the number of minutes of which I was guilty. She gestured toward the door in a way that seemed to suggest I might miss it, and invited me to follow her, posthaste. As we wove through the maze of hallways, the characteristic click-clack of her high heels told me to hurry up.

 

I DON'T KNOW WHAT I
perceived first. His silhouette? His laugh? Or maybe the lavender notes of his cologne, which floated out of the room, inviting me in?

He was surrounded by three other men, including Luc Doré, whom I recognized by his silver mane and Buddha-like face. He was speaking loudly, copiously, and looked very much at ease. Yet there was something incongruous about his presence here. And not simply because of what I knew about him or the other circumstances in which we had interacted. I could tell from his excessive confidence: he was not in his element. He was playing a part, and even if it didn't show, this was an act. No doubt he detested his interlocutors.

“Elle!” Louie exclaimed when I at last entered his field of vision. “We had given up on you. I see you've already understood the name of the game here: power belongs to the one who makes others wait.”

I blushed. The rest of the group turned toward me. They introduced themselves, everyone except for Luc, who gave me a friendly hug.

“Welcome, Elle. I didn't have a chance to tell you again this morning, but we're all very happy you're joining the team. Truly!”

He placed both hands on my shoulders as he said this. The gesture was purely friendly—Luc was a hands-on kind of guy—but I could have sworn I saw the elder Barlet brother wince. Though it only lasted a moment, he was annoyed to see me in the hands, however chaste, of another man.

“Louie, are you staying with us?” asked Luc.

“Hmm . . . Why not? After all, the visual design of a new prime-time show
does
affect the station's image. Doesn't it?”

The others murmured agreement.

I hadn't seen Louie since his altercation with Fred two days before. He looked tired, his features more hollow than I remembered. A supreme and sublime injustice: the change highlighted everything about him that was most pure and sensual, his animal side. Despite his infirmity, he reminded me of a wild beast whose every movement expressed all the force and energy of life on the verge of bursting forth. Barlet Tower was his glass cage. He accepted his fate, but like any wild animal, he could not help looking for a way out, a road to the jungle where he could run free. He would devour his keepers and trainers if the moment ever presented itself.

“Chris, will you show us your work?”

Chris, a lanky blonde with a beard, was like so many other young graphic designers in that he looked like a teenager. He opened a laptop he'd been carrying under his arm, and after a few taps on the keyboard, his ideas appeared on the screen.

“Right, so this is more of an urban look.” He played up his British accent. “Concrete, all gray, post-hip-hop . . .”

Decoded: giant letters made to look like graffiti on a brick wall.

“ . . . and at the same time really laid-back,” he finished pompously. “More Berlin hippie-cool than New York speed. See what I mean?”

I didn't like it at all, even if I did get his pretentious vagaries. I didn't say anything, of course, but it must have shown because Luc gave me a look and asked:

“Elle? What do you think?”

“Umm . . . I'm having trouble forming an opinion based on one idea. Can we see the others?”

The artistic director didn't say a word. I had just entered his enemy camp, along with all the other uncultivated jerks without any visual sense who weighed in on his creations like they were choosing wallpaper. He hated me already. It was obvious.

“Yes,” he said, his voice pinched. “There are always other options . . .”

Meaning: bad options.

As he went through other designs featuring logos, credits, and some aspects of the set where I would soon be parading around, I felt Louie's presence behind me. From the smell of his cologne—the vanilla was beginning to dominate the floral notes—as well as his feverish natural odor, I could tell he was only a step away. When he leaned over my shoulder, no doubt under the pretext of getting a better view of the screen, I could feel his breath on the back of my neck—I had put my hair up, using the famous comb—where one rebellious strand of hair was idly floating.

Every time he exhaled, I grew weaker. The skin on my neck shivered at each breath of sweet, hot air. In spite of myself, a tremor ran up my spine like a confession.

“I like the more bucolic theme,” I said abruptly, my voice haggard.

A naive ambiance that recalled Henri Rousseau's exotic paintings. It was more of a tropical forest scene than one of the countryside in Vendée.

As I said this, I turned toward Luc, forcing the man behind me to step back. Social reflexes, the ones we learn when we are young and which the body performs instinctually, can be really useful sometimes.

He shot me an angry look. And I knew that, here or elsewhere, I could not escape him so easily. The palpitations in my stomach, as well as the iron fist gripping Mount Venus below, were flagrant proof.

“Okay,” said the grizzled director, “but why nature?”

“Well,” I improvised, “firstly, because it seems less obvious than an urban design for talking about culture and society.”

And
bam!
in Chris the aesthete's face. And a point for me, judging from the way Philippe Di Tomaso was nodding his head. He was a short man whose coloring and general physique resembled a crumpled prune. He had yet to say one word.

“Also, it seems like a good way to signal to our audience that we won't just be dealing with what's going on in Paris. And that decentralization is a key feature of our project, and that we're not bohos without any connection to real life.”

“Not bad,” Luc Doré said approvingly, a smile growing across his face.

I had gone with the first thing that came to mind, the kind of marketing mumbo jumbo my professors in school had always warned against. But it seemed to have pleased the people in my meeting. I was beginning to discover that, in the working world, a little bit of well-crafted bullshit could achieve more than thoughtful considerations.
Sigh.
It was better to impress than convince.

“Louie? Your opinion?”

“On Chris's designs . . . or Mademoiselle Lorand's lovely speech?”

His eyes bored into mine. I was petrified, and absolutely incapable of reacting. Nevertheless, deep inside my stone body, I could feel some of my organs beating like crazy: my heart, of course, and also my sex, that traitor, which was stirring.

Could he tell? When his eyes finally drew themselves away from my face, they traveled over my black dress, lecherously wandering through every fold, as though it were a thin veil of mist.

Which moment had he preferred the night before? Which moment had titillated him the most? I remembered the egg as it was leaving me, sticky with pleasure, lingering like a misshapen member, laboring to get out . . . as though it were his penis.

“I think that what Elle has just said is actually very sensible.”

The producer was coming to my rescue.

“Really?”

Louie straightened as much as his cane and handicap would allow. He looked like a peacock on its territory, his posture expressing exactly how he saw us: vulgar farm animals.

“Yes,” Luc affirmed. “If we want to get viewers excited about a prime-time show on culture, we cannot limit our target audience to a small elite that spends its evenings at the Châtelet theater and its weekends in Bayreuth. We have to breathe more life into it!”

Based on the embarrassed silence that followed, I understood that Louie could put the station director in his place without so much as sneezing—and maybe even have him fired right there and then. But he contained himself and even abandoned my trembling body, which was overcome with waves of pleasure and pain, to focus on the man who had contradicted him.

“We want to produce an ambitious cultural program . . . not another
Farmer Wants a Wife
!”

“What are you proposing?” Philippe asked, fearlessly looking him up and down. “Special episodes on your little boyfriends in the Marais?”

To my great surprise, Louie did not grab Monsieur Prune by the collar—which he could have easily done—but remained as cool as a cucumber.

“No. I actually know how to differentiate between my personal tastes and our mission with respect to our audience. And, excuse me, but your example is stereotypical and offensive.”

“All right, well, what would you have?” Luc challenged.

“I'm not saying we should do a show for the privileged few. Au contraire. I think having access to pleasure is a fundamental right. In my opinion, exciting the brain is just as vital as bodily delights.”

A sultry look in my direction. I recalled his progressive, almost libertine speech from the Sauvage Gallery.

But was he still speaking of art and culture? No, cried my vagina, which was so wet it had spontaneously started to adhere to the strip of cotton in my panties. I discreetly shifted my pelvis, trying to unstick myself. It only made things worse. The fabric worked its way into my fleshy fold, grazing the pink button that was so hungry for contact.

“What do you want to talk about, then? The Eskimo art of smoking fish?”

“Not specifically,” he replied, his serious tone a striking contrast to Luc's sarcasm. “Unless it becomes fashionable here. When that happens, why not?”

“So you want to do a trend magazine, a society show?” said Luc.

“Yes . . . and no. I think our audience would get excited about the idea of knowing today what their neighbors won't be able to get enough of tomorrow. You can call them trends if you'd like; I call them nuggets. Things that are still uncommon today, but that everyone is soon going to want in their homes, in their wardrobes, in and of themselves.”

He paused to let the turn of phrase sink in.

“It could be a book, an album, an accessory, a recipe, or a new way of behaving in society. That's culture today. It consists of powerful and ephemeral phenomena that dictate what we do more than politics or religion. What moves crowds today? The pope? Protests against legislation? No . . . People get excited about the latest tablet, artistic flash mobs, sneak previews of steamy films. That's what titillates. That's what excites people.”

As though addressing this speech to me, and me alone, he stood and walked behind me. Then he took advantage of his newfound proximity to lean over me and rest his free hand on my chair, right next to the elastic of my sticky panties. I would have given anything at that moment to put my hand there . . . and push his hand away from me without making a scene, too.

He went on, pretending not to have noticed his effect on me, like a butterfly who has no notion of its devastating effects.

“It's a world of ideas where everyone can and must look for a way to make everyday meaning. Don't you see how our lives sorely lack sublimity?”

The others were silent. They no doubt had the intelligence to understand what Louie was saying, but were also smart enough to see how his idea, once it was fleshed out in images and shown on television, could be dangerous, subversive even. In other words, it was controversial, and it would be difficult to attract advertisers, who were typically drawn to simple topics that had already been proved to please.

Luc looked to his colleagues for support—Philippe had thrown in the towel, and Chris was quietly despairing over the fact that the conversation had veered so far from his ideas—then, receiving none, said:

“Okay, I am not saying it's not a good idea. But do you have an example of a specific topic so that we can get a better idea of what you mean? Something you could see being on the first show . . .”

“Don't you think we should invite Albane if we're going to discuss this kind of issue?”

I do not know what inspired me to brave the source of my torment, the man whose power over me—my sex could attest to it—grew with every passing day, every passing hour. Perhaps I was trying to break the spell while there was still time, while we were still surrounded by others, he and I.

He straightened brusquely, facing me again.

“I've already spoken with her.”

“What? When?” Luc protested.

“More than a month ago. She gave me fifteen minutes for a spot I've been developing.”

That was not a simple favor. Even a newbie like me could see that within the station's hierarchy this was a capital offense. The director of communication never should have arrogated to himself such power. He had overstepped the station's director and the producer.