Hotelles (4 page)

4

L
eaving Paris for the suburbs was a disenchanting commute, a kind of downgrade. Being a small-town girl from Nanterre, about ten miles west of Paris, I felt the capital had a certain cachet or appeal. At night, when I boarded the RER train going west—at the Halles, Opéra, or Étoile station—it felt like I was riding a chariot of the condemned. Except that I got on every day.

My suffering would not end until I could afford my own apartment. And when I could, I knew I would rather have a run-down shoebox in the heart of Paris than a fully equipped one- or two-bedroom on the outskirts. I wanted to be in the center of the big city, the center of the action. The center of the world.

 

I COULD FEEL THE AGENCY
contract in my pocket that night as I boarded the train. The car's interior had recently been tagged, the benches and jump seats included. As soon as I sat down, I felt several sets of eyes on me. Male, of course. It still vexed me, even though I should have gotten used to it over the years. “I don't get why it bothers you,” Sophia would say. “Just wait till you're fifty and your boobs go down to your knees. You'll miss all the looks on the metro.”

In the meantime, every eye was killing me. I didn't know what to do with male interest. I juggled men's latent desires like a penguin with a frozen sardine. Nobody had taught me the rules of the game. My only choice was to stay on the sidelines and throw myself into the first escape that presented itself. Ignoring them and looking at the view—the train only slowed down enough to enjoy it at Nanterre University, which was the station before mine—did not dissuade them, nor did it lessen my embarrassment.

By accident, my eyes fell on the front page of
Le Monde
, which the man next to me was reading. He was in his thirties. He wore a suit and carried a black leather briefcase. One headline drew my attention.

“David . . . David Barlet,” I muttered, reaching for the newspaper.

The man on my left seized the opportunity.

“Umm, no . . . I'm Bertrand Passadier. And you?”

He extended a soft hand, which I did not acknowledge. My fingers were already curled around his newspaper. Ignoring him, I started reading the first lines of the article, which talked about the owner of a private broadcasting company that bore his name, the Barlet Group. Notably, the company owned the most-watched twenty-four-hour news station in France: BTV.

Squirming, the man next to me was desperately looking for a new way to catch my attention.

“You interested in television?”

“Umm . . . ,” I growled without raising my eyes.

“If you want, I could give you advice on good places to work. Barlet is okay. It's solid. But in the short term, you could do better.”

I wasn't listening to a single word this guy was saying. After skimming the piece on BTV's strategy of teasing its viewers, I contemplated David Barlet's portrait. I had already seen him on television and in the media pages of economic periodicals, but this was the first time I'd noticed his troubling resemblance to the deceased actor Gérard Philipe. It was striking. I could practically hear the handsome, soft, and familiar voice, telling me the story of
The Little Prince
or
Peter and the Wolf
on Mom's old record player when I was a kid.

But the similarity stopped there. The eternally young heartthrob was an expression of human fragility, whereas David Barlet was nothing but force, determination, the savage will to do battle, and the absolute certainty of reaching his ends. His face was more angular, and his build could fit right in on a rugby field. Moreover, his eyes seemed to jump from the page, challenging you.

“ . . . hardly more than three or four percent a year, which is nothing . . . ,” my harasser went on, talking to himself.

BTV. That's where I should apply once I have my degree. Barlet seemed to be beckoning me from the picture in the newspaper, I thought dreamily.

The jarring squeal of the brakes brought me back to reality, and to the blue-and-white sign on the platform that announced my stop:
nanterre
–
ville.

My station.

I immediately leaped from my seat, stumbling over Bertrand Passadier's legs as I went, and landed on the platform just as the doors clapped together behind me. Inside the train, today's suitor crumpled. His mouth grew slack, and his forehead pressed against the humid window. Waving the newspaper I'd taken hostage as I'd run off the train, I smiled weakly at him. I didn't feel badly about the theft. Looking at me from his column-framed photo, David Barlet congratulated my conqueror's attitude.

 

MY MOTHER MAUDE'S HOUSE IS
less than a mile from the station. An average brick home. No garden if you don't count the tiny roadside patio. Taller than it is wide, with three cramped floors. For as long as I could remember, I'd lived there, with her, just the two of us, nobody to come and break our happy routine.

Since she had gotten sick, I'd made an effort to be around more often. I tried to help her as much as my classes and work would allow. It was hard for her to do basic things now: cleaning, errands, cooking, bathing, etc.

“How are you, my Elle? Were you in class?”

Though she still had a full head of hair, her skin had grayed. A waxy mask highlighted her wrinkles and froze her facial expressions. It was still her, but sometimes I had trouble recognizing her as my mom, the beautiful woman who had made my fatherless childhood a warm cocoon.

Some days she didn't get out of her old damask robe. An insignificant detail. But it was the kind of thing that made me cry. Never in front of her, though; later, in my room.

“No . . . Sophia just wanted to talk to me about a job one of her girlfriends might have for me.”

“Something interesting?”

“Yes . . . No . . . I'm not sure yet.”

She was always thanking me and telling everyone how proud she was to have given birth to such a nice daughter. Children were so ungrateful these days. As for me, I would never forget all the mornings she'd gotten up before my alarm to go to work. All the Christmases when she had nothing but still managed to make me feel like a princess. And my college education, for which she had sacrificed everything, and at an age when other people start to take it easy. So even though I wasn't making much, I tried to help. Sometimes I was even able to spoil her a little.

“Here, this is for you.”

I handed her a small white cake box tied in a turquoise ribbon.

“What is it?” she inquired, her eyes glazing over like candy.

“An assortment of macaroons: strawberry, raspberry, cherry . . .”

That they came from Paris made them all the more special. But I'll admit it, sometimes I cheated. Sometimes I bought treats at a chain patisserie on my way home and put them in a fancier box I'd brought with me that same morning. The important thing wasn't the brand. What counted was the ritual that united us.

The doorbell rang, interrupting our little moment. Felicity, the old house cat who never went out anymore, glued herself to my legs and meowed lazily.

“Oh, shoot, yeah . . . I forgot to tell you. Fred called to say he was coming by to pick you up. It must be him.”

I suppressed my irritation and went to open the gate. Fred was waiting on the other side, helmeted and perched on one thousand cubic centimeters of motorcycle—black and still warm. Fred, my boyfriend of three years. The only guy I had ever introduced to Mom. Fred Morino, unemployed sound mixer, loved martial arts and big cylinders. Lanky, blond, muscular, and covered in leather. In my eyes, his major quality was that he'd put up with me throughout my years in school. Fred, a lover such as you can find by the dozen in this neighborhood: dark, tough, raging against the world.

“Hi, beautiful! Why aren't you dressed?”

“Dressed for what?”

“Umm . . . the movies! It starts in twenty minutes at La Défense. Your mom didn't tell you?”

“No.”

“Okay. Well, do you still want to go? We'll have to hurry.”

“Fred . . . I don't feel like it tonight. I'm going to stay with her.”

I didn't have to turn around to feel my mom's eyes on us. I knew she was looking through the stained glass on the entry door.

“Did she relapse?” he asked sympathetically.

“No. It's just me. I don't really feel like it.”

The motorcyclist considered me for a moment. His legs were still straddling the machine. Then he fixed his gaze on the house.

“You wouldn't have blown me off like this six months ago, would you?”

He wasn't bitter. He just wanted—needed—to know.

“Six months ago, my mom wasn't dying, Fred,” I said between clenched teeth, afraid Maude would hear.

“Remember how we were going to get an apartment together?”

He wasn't whining, just listing his complaints. And I cannot deny that as the weeks went by, what with the new direction my life was heading, I was creating more cause for dispute.

An apartment together, yes. A wonderful, fully equipped one-bedroom in Nanterre. We had gone to see several. But it was everything I didn't want.

“You know I don't have the money,” I began. “If I'm going to pay for Mom's treatment in the States, I'm going to have to—”

“Twenty-five thousand euros, I know,” he interrupted, exasperated. “You've told me a hundred times.”

Twenty-five thousand euros: that was the cost of this gene therapy treatment—our last hope—that only one clinic in the world could perform, and it was in Los Angeles. Typically, only movie stars and billionaires could afford it. Life had a price tag. But in my eyes, my mom's didn't. I would have done anything to save her.

Working at Belles de Nuit, for starters.

“Let me repeat myself. So long as I haven't gotten the money together, every cent I make is going to that fund.”

He nodded, suddenly wanting to be more agreeable.

And to think that at one point all I wanted was his body. And to think that he was one of the first men to enjoy my intimacy. To thrum mysterious chords of desire deep inside me. I couldn't relate to that initial excitement anymore. These days, I only saw a skinny motorcyclist begging for signs of tenderness. On the verge of tears and begging.

“Okay. But what if I treated you?”

“Not tonight . . . please don't insist.”

I reached out to caress his forearm. Firmly, but without violence, he pushed my hand away.

“I know what made you like this, Elle,” he said, on the offensive.

“Yeah?”

A discreet scratch alerted me to my mother's presence, a few paces behind me on the front steps.

“It isn't Maude's cancer. It's your fucking journalism.”

“Whatever . . .”

“Uh-
huh
, all your little bourgeois boys, them, your daddy's boys who read
Le Monde diplomatique
and go on TV to tell us to get off our asses and find jobs! They've got your head spinning!”

“Shit, Fred . . . my head isn't spinning, I'm exhausted!”

Sophia would have said the same thing. Ever since we had started to go separate ways—after college in Nanterre—class difference had opened up like a gulf between us. A “social fracture,” to use an expression dear to Jacques Chirac. For them, I was a traitor to the cause. I was rejecting my roots. And my ambition was putting me on the side of the haves. I wasn't any richer than Fred or Sophia, but in my own way, I had already joined the enemy camp.

“And?!”

My mom's voice hit me in the back. Her hand shook against the banister, she swayed on the steps, but she was ready to swoop down on my boyfriend.

“Is wanting to succeed a sin? Is it? What do you want? For my daughter to hang out on the back of your motorcycle for the rest of her life? Is that what you want for her?”

“Maude, I—”

“And then what? You have two kids, and then you dump her because you hate what you've done with your existence?”

“Mom . . .”

I grasped her shoulders and tried to guide her back inside. I was touched by her intervention. As sick as she was, she still only cared about one thing: protecting me. But I didn't want her to wear herself out.
I
needed to deal with Fred Morino. By myself.

From behind the half-open door, I heard the mechanical backfire of an engine igniting. He had left without further ado, in a deafening roar. That was his way of yelling.

 

THE NEXT DAY, I WAS
much happier taking the morning RER into the city toward Auber station. Rebecca Sibony had kept her promise. She had sent me a text message the night before. Late. She wanted to take me on a shopping trip, or what she soberly called a “makeover.”

When I arrived at Boulevard Haussmann, I immediately recognized her long, birdlike frame. She had a cigarette in her beak and was pacing in front of the Printemps entrance, a cell phone glued to her ear. She greeted me with a wink and a carnivorous smile that said,
Today, we are going to make you into a real woman, my dear.

Rebecca told me that today was about getting the basics I'd need for my missions. That included three complete outfits: one for daytime meetings and official events, where my presence was decorative or lent distinction (pantsuit from Zadig et Voltaire in charcoal gray, black lingerie from Aubade that peeked out from under the jacket, synthetic pearls from Agatha); a second for cocktail parties and small dinner gatherings (black sheath dress with a plunging back from Armani, purple lingerie from Lejaby, and earrings by Fred, studded with a fan of semiprecious gems); and one for galas and balls (a full-skirted dress made of pearls by Jean Paul Gaultier, pearl-gray lingerie by La Perla, and a diadem bracelet by Bulgari). We added three pairs of shoes, the heels of which gained an inch or two with each time of day: three for daytime, four for evening, and six for night.