Insatiable (27 page)

“I would have thought Andrea would know by now that loving you is for masochists,” I told him. “I thought she understood she’d always be sharing you.” Was I speaking for myself? Surely not. I still figured I was above it all. I saw Jamey clear as cellophane. A playmate who would take me places in bed I’d never been. I knew enough not to count on him. There would always be other women. Eleanora Duse had said it of D’Annunzio: “His life is like a tavern. Everyone passes through it.” D’Annunzio was hot and a handful. I knew exactly why Eleanora put up with it.

It was several days before Jamey was to leave on the
QE2,
and he really didn’t have time to play, he told me when I called. I interpreted that to mean he was saving every moment to jolly Andrea out of her anger. But I had been invited to sample the ultimate in sleepover luxury. Augustin Paege, the thirty-one-year-old Bulgarian host of the Box Tree, a mannered little restaurant launched in upstate Purdys (its namesake opened later in Manhattan with a five-thousand-dollar loan from Bankers Trust), wanted me to do a test run of new lodgings he’d been gilding above the inn. “He’s sending a Rolls to pick us up,” I said. “A Rolls in a very English gray.” Jamey miss it? I didn’t think so.

The Box Tree family was waiting for us. There was champagne on ice—Louis Roederer Cristal. A Lalique flute was pressed into my hand as we entered the small 1775 farmhouse and Augustin Paege welcomed us. Paege, born in “austerity,” as he liked to put it, always hinting of connections with the banished Bulgarian royals, had unimpeachable style. He favored the Duke of Windsor look in country dress. His driver, in full livery, would chauffeur him about Manhattan in an open Jeep. Why not the Rolls? The Jeep was easier to maneuver.

Augustin was justifiably proud as he led the tour. Every stick of wood was period or had an impressive pedigree. He’d culled the Farouk estate. Upstairs, there was a bottle of madly expensive Romanee Conti on the table of the Louis XV suite, the private dining room, alongside fruit as shiny and perfect as any in a Renaissance painting.

“I didn’t realize cherries were in season already,” I said.

The humble innkeeper (as he often described himself) smiled. “They
are
at Box Tree.”

There were twin Napoléon beds with opossum coverlets in the Consulat Room, $190 a night. But we chose the François 1 suite at $220, where a canopied four-poster was dressed in bed linens fine as Swiss hankies (one thousand dollars a set from the purveyors to Buckingham Palace). Hundreds of Canadian lynxes had given their soft bellies to make the fur throw. Forsythia and lilacs were bunched in a giant tub. The alarm clock was Cartier. Caswell-Massey cologne, blended for George Washington, filled a jeroboam. The armoire was Louis XIII, its hangers like voluptuous sculpture. There were eucalyptus leaves to scent the crackling fire. Of course a Box Tree bathroom would have a bidet, Paege pointed out, and fat, fluffy towels big as most bedsheets, vast enough to wrap Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.

“Shall I unpack for you?” asked Kevin, our valet.

Too bourgeois to have a stranger unpack my sex toys, I sent Kevin away. I stripped to my chemise and undressed Jamey as he lay submissively on the bed. I wrapped him in the lynx. He got up and stood in front of the tall pedestal mirror. “I look good in anything I wear.”

“Give me that,” I said, spreading the fur on the floor. And he did.

Box Tree’s kitchen itself needed editing, I noted in my judiciously expurgated review. But there were dazzling details: a too-big portion of Stilton from a cheesecloth-wrapped round and splendid Mexican coffee. Everything was done with style and wit and exaggerated pretension. Jamey looked very country squire in his blue velvet jacket, helping himself to an orange from the bowl on the mantel.

“I bet they are upstairs now, redoing our room, rearranging the hairs of the lynx,” I said.

“I wish we were going to Italy,” he said. “You’d be wonderful in Italy. You’re so ripe.”

“Are we like Lea and Chéri, do you think? There’s about the same age difference between us as there was between Lea and Chéri. But they lazed away in bed and had all kinds of feasts, and she taught him about women, not that I can tell you anything you don’t know.”

Colette had written, “
Je suit gourmette, gourmande, gloutone.”

“Of course, the awful part is that he leaves her to marry that young girl,” I said, depressing myself.

“But you forget,” said Jamey. “He comes back and she won’t see him. She doesn’t want him to see her fat and old. And he is the one that’s rejected.” He took my hand and held it to his cheek. “I feel a little sickly. I think I’ll take an orange for later.”

Upstairs after dinner, there was more Roederer Cristal in the ice bucket beside the bed, a box of Godiva chocolates, and the life of the Marquis de Sade on the bedside table, rosebuds on the fur throw, giant peonies on the pillows. Kevin drew the bath, scattering salts from the south of France “to exercise the skin,” and backed out of the room. Jamey climbed into the tub. There were sponges big as bowling balls, Italian toothpaste, almond soap in the tub, violet soap at the sink.

When I grabbed a towel to warm it in front of the fire for him, the thick glass shelf fell off the wall. It cracked the top of the toilet tank and fell into the tub, just missing him, because he was standing, ready to step out. The noise echoed.

“Maybe they think we’re killing each other,” he said.

“They are probably out there trying to decide if they should break in or be discreet,” I whispered.

“That’s what you get when you leave a volume of the Marquis de Sade on the night table,” said Jamey.

We crawled into bed, spilling pink peony petals to the floor. In the light from the fire, I watched Jamey lift the full-blown peony to his face. I could smell the scent from my pillow. He buried his face in the flower, purring and moaning. I felt my eyes fill with tears. I lay back beside him. What was wrong with me? Why was I feeling cheated? We’d shared a wonderful, silly, preposterously luxurious evening. Wasn’t that enough? I wiped my eyes, getting mascara on the queen’s own linens. Jamey was watching me.

“I can’t believe you’re jealous of a flower,” he said.

And incredibly, I was.

37

W
HAT
I L
EARNED ON
S
PRING
B
REAK

A
LONE IN PARIS BEFORE JAMEY’S BOAT DOCKED, I HAD TIME TO EAT OUT
with old friends, to rewire a light flirtation with Eric Rothschild, and to share a dinner with Julia and Paul Child. Julia swept into the lobby of my hotel. And as she swept, she knocked against the bouquet of flowers on the tall pedestal at the door. It tipped. I gasped. Behind her, Paul Child caught it mid-topple and set it straight. What a team, I thought. Not only did they adore each other, but Paul was always there, seemingly content to swim in her wake, picking up whatever she might bowl over in her exuberant passage through life.

Their love story, as they told it, was almost Victorian, sweetly eccentric. They had met while serving in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II in the Far East. “I was an old maid of thirty,” she told me. “And he was an old maid, too.” Before they made the final decision to marry, they went home to introduce each other to their families. “And to see if we felt the same way about each other in civilian clothes or if it was just the uniform,” she said, eyes twinkling at the preposterous thought. Of course she always made it clear that he was an equal partner.

I had toted all three volumes of
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
in a shopping bag for Julia to autograph when we met for lunch at Le Cygne two years earlier. She signed each one and then passed it on for Paul to sign. “They’re his books, too,” she said. The how-to drawings had been made from Paul’s photographs.

Le Cygne’s owners, Gérard Gallian from Grasse and Michel Crouzillat of Toulouse, did headstands to please us. Julia had met Gérard’s mother while filming a spot for her show in the Nice market. The courses of our $8.95 lunch kept multiplying.

“I get upset when the kitchen sends out extras and refuses to put them on the bill,” I complained, not wanting to make a fuss over the missing items on the bill in front of Julia and Paul.

“I think we should just enjoy it,” Julia cried in her wonderful bass falsetto. “Who knows how long it will last.”

That afternoon in Paris, I was taking all of us to the Tour d’Argent, on
New York,
of course. I remember we crowded into the restaurant’s small ornate elevator, and a bellman pulled a brocade curtain to hide the metal grille, wrapping us in a satin cocoon. Amazingly, the cocoon was air-conditioned, and illuminated by a bulb inside a glass rose held aloft by a cherub. On our large starchily cloaked table was a crystal duck, a box of matches, toothpicks, silver service plates.

Unfortunately, I was no longer anonymous at the Tour d’Argent, which most critics agreed was not the strong Michelin three-star establishment it had once been. The tall, startlingly lean patron, Claude Terrail, wearing his signature blue cornflower in the moiré lapel of his midnight velvet suit, greeted me, executed a snappy bow, and kissed the air above my knuckles. I introduced Julia and Paul, of course, and was shocked to see that he didn’t have a clue as to who she was—this legend among American foodies. Indeed, there was an instant buzz of recognition from the many American couples ringing the room in the prime window seats looking out at Notre Dame, fingers pointing, banquette bouncing as they spied their goddess. Julia smiled and nodded, and crinkled her eyes in a wink of pleasure in every direction. Paul muttered.

Even then, the self-important Monsieur Terrail was oblivious, so focused was he on himself and me. It was not a stellar night for La Tour d’Argent. Our duck, unashamed to wear its identification tag, #432,728, was dry. A good enough bean and lentil soup seemed strangely rustic for such a grand setting. Julia, with regret, pronounced her fish, the
barbue,
not just boring, not just a bit old, but rotten. In that voice: “Rotten.” And the sommelier, a little old man with caved-in cheeks and a wisp of white hair, got lost after delivering our fine red Beaune wine, and left us to pour it on our own. Our lunch for five cost $135, a princely sum for the time. No wonder I was indignant. America was shifting into the throes of a revolution, learning to cook French with Julia. And France was so full of itself, it hadn’t noticed: It had yet to recognize our own fiery Jeanne d’Arc.

Watching for Jamey on the quai where the boat train had lurched to a stop, I saw a bobbing head of curly dark hair. Jamey? No, sorry, look again. It was a young guy, taller, very handsome, and he was following Jamey. Were they lovers? How quickly my paranoia flared. Was this better or worse than a luscious blonde or a brunette with fat lips?

“This is Jon, from the boat,” Jamey cried. “I told him all about you. Can he stay with us?” The quick, distracted, perfunctory kiss at the train station got us off to a cool start.

“It’s a tiny room, Jamey,” I protested. I’d moved to the Plaza Athénée in his honor and been given a cramped cubbyhole.

“We can drop him at his hotel, then,” Jamey offered.

“We can’t. It’s at the opposite end of town. And we’ll be late for dinner at Regine’s.”

There were not enough taxis. I grabbed a door to stop one and threw his suitcase inside, looking around for him. “Jamey.” He had disappeared. “Jamey.”

He ran toward me, then back to Jon. They stood talking and laughing. The cabbie was going crazy, threatening to pull away with the bag in his trunk. Jamey and Jon were exchanging phone numbers. Jamey yelled, “Why did you do that to me?” He was furious as he settled beside me. My fantasy of our romantic reunion was threatened. “You didn’t let me say what I wanted.”

“Well, say it.”

“I was afraid to say what I wanted.”

“Well, you’d better start saying what you feel, or this trip is not going to work. I can’t know unless you tell me.” It had never occurred to me that I might not want to know all the specifics of what he needed.

He was calmer now. “That was the worst part,” he said. “The worst part is over. Now it can only get better.” At Regine’s, I suggested he choose dinner for us. He was instantly full of good cheer. So many options. How could he decide? The waiter suggested trying a little of everything. Jamey reared up, wiggling his nose like a racehorse.
“Mais oui.”
He kissed my hand.

Afterward in our tiny room, I bathed and got into a lacy new nightgown. He lay in bed, propped up on pillows, reading a girlie magazine, ignoring me. I had put myself to sleep—flushed, if not feverish—for the last few nights by imagining this moment. I was so hot. I snuggled close. He sighed. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, is it? Going with a porn star.”

“Damn you.” I rolled out of bed and onto the floor, pulling the velvet spread along with me. “I don’t need you. I have myself.”

He turned a page, smoked his cigarette, turned another. Finally, he switched off the lamp, lighted a candle with his cigarette lighter, and slid to the floor. “Bad girl. Bad girl.”

In the morning, I nearly slipped on the magazine, catching myself just in time. I studied a few wrinkled pages. What had turned him on? A woman draped over a Bugatti. The woman? Or the Bugatti? I supposed it didn’t really matter. We would be fine once he settled down and discovered what a perfect trip I’d planned.

The next night, we had tickets to Crazy Horse after dinner. I’d seen the revue before, brilliantly cast and performed by about fifteen or twenty remarkably beautiful women of every nationality, stripping, dancing, marching in unison, performing erotic skits in daringly suggestive leather bibs and harnesses. All had the same adorable S curve of the spine, and perfect standup tits. Clearly, the producer was an ass man. With one exception, each ass looked exactly alike. But that one was like a full-blown red rose in a tight bouquet of pink buds—the gorgeous bottom of Trucula Bonbon.

I didn’t need Jamey, electrically charged beside me, fired by waves of happiness, to know how erotic the show could be. “There’s not a flaw there,” he whispered. “Maybe I should be a talent scout for Crazy Horse.”

Back in our room, he danced with me and kissed me. “Such beauty,” he cried. “It makes a man feel unworthy. I would line them all up. It would make a great porn movie. About a man who leaves a great job to work backstage at Crazy Horse. How would it end?”

“Sadly, of course,” I said. “Like
The Blue Angel.
”

“You are going to get me Trucula Bonbon,” he said. “Yes, you will.”

And so there was a second night of mind-searing sex. Was he closing his eyes and seeing images of that ass? I couldn’t have cared less. After all, the body in ecstasy was mine.

Jamey was not a morning person. I knew that by then. But we needed to face breakfast soon so we could meet friends for lunch. A waiter wheeled it in. I set out the exotic fruits I had collected for him from Fauchon at ridiculous cost: mangosteen, fresh lichees, passion fruit, his favorite, our favorite, the fruit itself hidden inside its ugly pocked shell. Till now, he’d only tasted the fruit as sorbet. I opened the curtains just enough to wake him. He put on his glasses, glanced at the
Trib,
tossed it aside, then took the rose from its bud vase and sniffed it. “No smell,” he said, dropping it on the table. In the morning, he wore glasses until he’d showered and dressed and decided he felt like putting in his contact lenses. He looked younger and vulnerable in his glasses, like a student. He picked up the small brown mangosteen.

“Peel it like this,” I said.

He laughed like a child. “A new fruit.” He bit off a small piece of an opalescent white segment, and then another. He rubbed the rest of it all over his face. “Oh my. Oh my.” He was crying.

His tears reminded me of Don. But anything could bring Jamey to tears, not just sadness. He wept when he was moved by beauty. He was swept by emotion over a taste he’d never experienced before. I’ve never been with a man so in touch with his emotions. I found it moving that a man could cry over a peach. He was so unlike most men. Of course, his everyday needs were exhausting, too.

“I still need my regular morning grapefruit,” he said.

How could I possibly have overlooked the grapefruit?

“Why are you crying?” he asked. “Are you jealous of the fruit?”

“It’s good to cry,” I said. “Isn’t that what you always say?”

We boarded the night train for Lausanne, toting a massive picnic “just in case,” though we’d just put away dinner. It would be my second visit to the restaurant of Frédy Girardet, the hot new hajj for cuisinary pilgrims that spring of 1977. As a youth, Girardet had played soccer. He had never done a serious kitchen apprenticeship. He had helped out in the family bistro. Then, on a wine-buying excursion to Burgundy, friends took him for lunch at Troisgros. That lunch was an epiphany. He’d come home to this tiny town to astonish the locals and even himself. Girardet was handsome, with a sensual flare of features, blond hair brushed back from a high forehead. To hear him talk in his slow, almost uninflected deep purple satin voice was to know that he was driven by some transcendent vision.

“Yes, a salmon is only a fish, after all,” I wrote. “An artichoke is a thistle; watercress, a weed. But in Girardet’s hands a fish, a thistle and a weed become a poem that haunts.” I remember langoustines in a green chive cream, their flesh so fragile and tender, they might have been raw, or perhaps merely “cooked” for a minute or two with lemon . . . “as if all other prawns before these had been coarse imitators.”

“Come for a week,” Girardet had said. “I’ll cook you ten different dishes every day.”

Now I’d returned, saying very little to Jamey, for fear of diluting the pleasure of discovery. It was crowded at lunch. The restaurant was now often booked months in advance and the chef was not about to turn his Geneva regulars away. We were seated at a table for two, madame on the banquette, of course, Jamey with his back to the room. “Don’t they know who you are?” he asked. “We should be side by side at a bigger table.”

I promised we would trade seats halfway through so that he could look at the room instead of the wall. Sipping the very ordinary Swiss white wine Girardet wanted us to drink, I felt a certain anxiety. Memory has a way of exaggerating ecstasy. But not this time. With the first bite of a barely gelled sea creature, I relaxed. Girardet had been touched by the gospel of the nouvelle cuisine that had converted most of France, but he didn’t stumble into it willy-nilly. His control of heat was uncanny. He had discovered not how long but how little a shrimp or a fish needed to be cooked. The breast of a chicken emerging from his kitchen was so moist and delicate, you might think he’d invented a new breed of bird. He blanched parsley as if it was spinach, then simmered it in butter. A thin peppery broth was studded with small slices of achingly sweet melon and bits of raw salmon and
loup de mer
. Frédy grinned and called it gazpacho. Fabergé might have designed the ballotine, a mosaic of sea creatures with a core that was pale pink, moist, and soft as a ripe peach. It had to be salmon, but no salmon I’d ever eaten anywhere had quite that astonishing mouth feel.

Tears were falling down Jamey’s cheeks. “If there’s a heaven, this is what they’ll serve the good kids,” he said, licking a tear that had strayed to his mouth. He came to sit beside me on the banquette, refusing my hankie. “The tears feel good. When I was eighteen, I went to see Marcel Marceau the first time and it was like this. It was almost a religious experience. Another dizzying immersion. I decided to be a mime, not an actor, but a mime. I took some classes. But that was bold. This is brilliant. The unexpected. So exciting.”