The Girl on Paper (15 page)

‘I think I’m going to start teaching again,’ I said. ‘But not in the States. There are too many bad memories in Los Angeles.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘Maybe France. There’s an international lycée on the Côte d’Azur that seems interested in taking me on. I might try my luck there.’

‘So you’re leaving us,’ he concluded bitterly.

‘We have to grow up sometime, Milo.’

‘And what about writing?’

‘I’m done with writing.’

He opened his mouth to protest, but before he could say anything all hell broke loose behind me.

‘What do you mean, done with writing? What about me?’ yelled Billie.

Everyone on the terrace turned to look at us reproachfully. What with Milo’s cursing and Billie’s sudden explosion, we weren’t fitting in very well with the clientele of billionaires and celebrities. We belonged back in the projects, barbecuing
sausages, drinking beer and shooting hoops on an abandoned basketball court.

‘You promised to help me!’ said Billie angrily, still standing at our table.

Milo decided to put in his two cents’ worth.

‘It’s true that if you promised to—’

‘That’s enough out of you!’ I interrupted, holding my hand up to silence him.

I grabbed Billie by the arm and led her over to one side.

‘We’re both in denial,’ I said. ‘I can’t write. I won’t write. That’s just the way it is. I’m not asking you to understand, I’m just asking you to accept it.’

‘But I need to go back to my life!’

‘Well, maybe your life is here now. In this damned “real world” that you claimed you were so in love with.’

‘But I want to see my friends.’

‘I thought you didn’t have any friends!’ I shot back.

‘At least let me see Jack one more time.’

‘If you want someone to screw, you’ll find them by the dozen here.’

‘You’ve got problems, you really do! And what about my mom? Am I going to find dozens of them here too?’

‘Look, I’m not responsible for what happens to you.’

‘Maybe, but we had a contract!’ she said, pulling from her pocket the crumpled piece of tablecloth that had sealed our deal. ‘You may have a lot of faults, but I at least thought you were a man of your word.’

Still holding her by the arm, I made her walk with me down to the buffet by the pool.

‘Don’t talk to me about contracts – you haven’t honoured your side of the deal either!’ I said, gesturing toward the table where Aurore and her boyfriend were sitting watching our little show.

I’d had enough of deluding myself.

‘Our pact is null and void. Aurore has moved on – you’ll never get her back for me.’

She looked at me defiantly.

‘Wanna bet?’

I shrugged in confusion.

‘Go ahead, I guess.’

Slowly, she moved a little closer to me, gently placed her hand behind my neck and kissed me lightly on the lips. Her mouth tasted fresh and sweet. I shivered, caught off guard, and stepped back slightly. I felt my heart start to pound in my chest, as feelings I had buried for so long came bubbling to the surface. If Billie had stolen the first kiss, I was eager to give the second away.

Flashes of lightning lit the sky. Thunder rumbled in the distance and rain beat relentlessly down on the hotel, shaking the palm trees, battering the thatched parasols and studding the open water with thousands of little drops. I had been sheltering for the last hour on the covered terrace of a wine bar in a colonial-style planter’s house, which reminded me of parts of New Orleans. Holding my cup of coffee, I watched the holidaymakers fleeing the storm for the comfort of their hotel rooms.

I needed to be alone, to gather my thoughts. I was angry with myself, annoyed that I had been so thrown by Billie’s kiss, and that I had joined in her childish and degrading attempt to make Aurore jealous. We were not fifteen any more and this kind of petty game no longer worked.

I rubbed my eyes and tried to get back to work. I watched the cursor in the top left-hand corner of my screen blink at me reproachfully. I had switched on the old Mac that Carole had brought for me in the vague hope that this ancient machine, which had once been everything to me, would somehow kick-start the creative process. In my glory days I had typed out hundreds of pages on this keyboard, but the computer wasn’t a magic wand.

Unable to concentrate even for a few seconds, incapable of stringing two words together, I had lost my belief in myself, along with the thread of my story.

The storm made the air heavy and oppressive. I felt the old nausea rising as I sat frozen in front of the screen. Everything started to swim before my eyes. My mind was wandering, distracted by other cares, and at that moment, writing even the beginnings of a chapter seemed as daunting as climbing Everest.

I took one last sip of coffee and got up to order another. Inside, the room had the look of a British pub, with wood panelling and leather sofas adding to the warm and cosy feel. I went up to the counter, studying the impressive collection of bottles lined up behind the mahogany bar. I felt as though I ought to be sipping whisky or cognac, instead of coffee, and puffing on a Havana to the crackling sound of a Dean Martin record.

And, sure enough, someone went over to the piano and picked out the opening notes of ‘As Time Goes By’. I turned around to have a look, half expecting to see Sam himself, the piano player in
Casablanca
.

Aurore was sitting on a leather stool, dressed in a long cashmere jumper and lacy tights. Her seemingly endless legs were tucked under her and made even longer by a pair of ruby-red heels. She looked up at me as she played. Her nails
were painted purple and on her left index finger she wore a cameo ring. I noticed the stone cross she often wore to perform hanging round her neck.

Unlike mine, her fingers danced nimbly across the keys. She moved effortlessly from
Casablanca
to ‘La Complainte de la Butte’ before teasing out a little improvised variation on ‘My Funny Valentine’.

The bar was almost empty but the few remaining drinkers watched her with total fascination, bewitched by the aura that surrounded her, a heady mix of Marlene Dietrich mystery, Anna Netrebko sex appeal and Melody Gardot sensuality.

I was no different; neither cured nor immune to her charms, I fell under her spell. Seeing her again was painful. When she left me, she had taken all the vitality out of me: my hopes, my self-confidence, my faith in the future. She had bled me dry, banished laughter and colour from my life. But, most of all, she had numbed my heart, stifling any possibility of loving again. My insides were like scorched earth: nothing grew there; there were no trees and no birds; I was trapped in a never-ending winter. I lost any appetite or desire, save that of dulling all my senses by stuffing myself full of drugs to smother memories that were too raw to confront.

Falling in love with Aurore was like catching a fatal and virulent illness. I met her in the airport in Los Angeles, in the boarding line for a flight to Seoul. I was going to South Korea on a promotional tour; she was going to perform Prokofiev. I loved her from the moment I saw her, for the most insignificant reasons, or perhaps the most significant: a sad smile, eyes that sparkled as they caught the light, the way she pushed her hair off her face, turning her head almost in slow motion. Then
I fell in love with the inflections in her voice, her intelligence, her wit, her practical attitude to her own beauty. Later, I loved her for her secret flaws, for her melancholy nature, the chinks in her armour. We spent a few precious months wrapped up in each other, consumed by a happiness that carried us far above everyday reality – moments that seemed to last for ever, spinning in a giddy, intoxicating whirl.

Of course, I always knew there would be a price to pay. After all, I did teach literature, and I always bore in mind the warnings of my favourite authors: Stendhal and his ‘crystallisation’ theory; Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina throwing herself under a train, having sacrificed everything for the man she loves; the sad decline of Ariane and Solal, the two lovers in
Belle du Seigneur
, numbed by an ether overdose, in the sordid solitude of a hotel room. But passion is like a drug: knowing its devastating effects has never stopped anyone destroying themselves once they’re hooked.

Under the mistaken impression that she completed me, I told myself our love would last, that we’d succeed where others had failed. But the truth was that Aurore didn’t bring out the best in me. She revived the worst aspects of my character, habits I’d long fought to suppress: a tendency for possessiveness; for being fooled by a pretty face, falling for the illusion that beauty might be more than skin deep; and a feeling of smug self-satisfaction at having got one up on all the other males of my species by bagging such a gorgeous girl.

Although Aurore had learned to take fame with a pinch of salt and claimed to have her feet firmly on the ground, celebrity rarely has a positive effect on those admitted to its club. Far from healing wounds to your self-esteem, it tends to cut them even deeper.

I knew all that. I knew Aurore’s greatest fear was losing her
looks or her artistic talent: the two magic powers bestowed on her from on high, marking her out from all others. I knew how her steady voice could falter, that behind the facade of a
self-assured
icon hid a woman lacking in confidence, struggling to find inner balance. A woman who dealt with her complexes by cramming her diary full, rushing between world capitals, booking concert dates three years ahead and having a string of affairs followed by meaningless break-ups.

Yet right up to the end I still imagined I could be her anchor, and she mine. For it to work, we’d have had to put our trust in one another. As it was, she was so used to playing games and making people jealous to get what she wanted that the waters between us weren’t exactly calm. Ultimately, our ship had sailed, and sunk. We could probably have been happy stranded together on a desert island, but life is not a desert island. Her friends – wannabe intellectuals in Paris, New York and Berlin – sneered at my ‘trashy’ novels, while on my side, Milo and Carole found her snobbish, superior and
self-obsessed.

The storm raged, veiling the windows with a thick curtain of rain. In the hushed, classy surroundings of the Bourbon Street Bar, Aurore was striking the last few chords of ‘A Case of You’, which she had just finished singing in a smooth, bluesy voice.

While the crowd applauded, she took a sip from the glass of Bordeaux perched on the piano and thanked her audience with a nod. Then she closed up the instrument to make it clear that the show was over.

‘Pretty impressive,’ I said, walking toward her. ‘Norah Jones had better watch out if you go down that road.’

She held out her glass, challenging me.

‘Let’s see if you’ve still got it.’

I placed my lips where hers had been and sampled the mysterious potion. She had encouraged me to share her passion for studying wines, but left me before I had a chance to learn the basics.

‘Um… Château-Latour 1982,’ I plucked at random.

My uncertainty brought a faint smile to her lips, before she corrected me, ‘Château-Margaux 1990.’

‘I think I’ll stick to Diet Coke. Fewer vintages to remember.’

She laughed the way she used to laugh before, back when we loved one another. She moved her head very slowly, as she did when she wanted to be admired, and a golden lock fell from the clip holding back her hair.

‘How are you?’

‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘You, on the other hand, look like you’ve just walked in from the Stone Age,’ she quipped, alluding to my beard. ‘Oh, and how’s your mouth doing? Did they manage to stitch you up?’

I frowned, confused. ‘Stitch what up?’

‘The piece that blonde took out of your lip at the restaurant. New girlfriend, is she?’

I dodged the question by turning to the counter to order ‘the same as the lady’.

But she wouldn’t be put off.

‘She’s a pretty girl. Not exactly classy, but pretty all the same. Anyway, looks like things are pretty explosive between you.’

I fought back. ‘So how’s it all going with Mr Sporty? OK, so he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he’s easy on the eye, I guess. You were made for each other. He’s the love of your life, or so I’ve read.’

‘So that’s the kind of paper you read these days? They
wrote such a load of crap about me and you that I’d have thought you’d know better. And as for “the love of my life”? C’mon, Tom, you know perfectly well I’ve never gone in for all that.’

‘Even with me?’

She took another sip of wine, got up from the stool and leaned on the window ledge.

‘Before you, I never had passionate love affairs. My relationships have always been fun, but I’ve never let myself get too carried away.’

It was one of the things that had come between us. For me, love was like oxygen. It was what made life sparkle, gave it drama and intensity. For her, however magical it might be, at the end of the day it was all just illusion and deception. Staring into space, she explained.

‘You make ties and then they come undone – that’s life. Eventually you go your separate ways, without necessarily knowing why. I can’t give everything to another person, with a Sword of Damocles hanging above my head. I don’t want to build my life on feelings, because feelings change. They’re fragile and uncertain. You think they’re deep and solid and then they’re swept away by a passing bit of skirt or a smooth smile. I make music because there will always be music in my life. I like reading because there will always be books. Plus I can’t say I know any couples who’ve stayed together for life.’

‘That’s because you surround yourself with artists and celebrities who are constantly jumping in and out of bed with each other!’

She was quiet for a moment, walking slowly out onto the terrace and placing her glass down on top of the rail.

‘Our problem was, we didn’t know where to go after the excitement of the early days had gone,’ she concluded. ‘We didn’t work hard enough—’

‘You didn’t work hard enough,’ I corrected her, feeling increasingly sure of myself. ‘You’re the one who gave up on us.’

One last bolt of lightning ripped through the sky and the storm was over, vanishing as suddenly as it had arrived.

I went on. ‘All I wanted was to share my life with you. I think that’s all love means, in the end: wanting to experience things together, learning from your differences.’

The grey sky began to clear and a patch of blue appeared amongst the clouds.

‘All I wanted,’ I tried to drum home, ‘was to build a future with you. I was ready to take anything on, to go through anything with you by my side. I’m not saying it would have been easy – nothing ever is – but it’s all that mattered to me. We would have overcome everything life threw at us if we’d just stuck together.’

In the main room, someone was playing the piano again. A few notes from a sultry variation on ‘India Song’ drifted through to us.

I turned and in the distance saw Rafael Barros approaching, carrying a surfboard under his arm. I started toward the wooden staircase to avoid having to meet him, but Aurore held me back, clutching my wrist.

‘I know all that, Tom. I know you can’t take anything for granted; nothing’s ever guaranteed.’

There was a fragile note in her voice. It was unsettling; the femme fatale’s varnish was cracking.

‘I know you only really deserve love if you give your whole body and soul to it, throwing yourself in and risking everything… but I just wasn’t ready to do that, and I’m still not now.’

I broke free of her grip and walked down the steps. Behind me, she added, ‘I’m sorry if I made you believe otherwise.’