Are Snakes Necessary?

by Brian De Palma

  Dear It Wont Be Long,

  Really? Has the cancer gone to your head?

  Get rid of this jerk before he pulls your plug.

  If you’ve got money, you can pay someone else to be with you in the hospital.

  Jack the Ripper sounds like a safer bet than this vampire.

  Yours,

  Dottie

  After a few more days of this, the bloom is off the Dear Dottie business.

  “Man, there are a lot of sad dumb people out there.” Elizabeth has taken to talking to herself—and to the turtles outside.

  Lying low sucks.

  CHAPTER 23

  On a sunny Paris afternoon, Nick enjoys a citron pressé with Lester, a photographer friend. A burly man in his mid-40’s and in a plaid flannel shirt, Lester takes pictures for tabloid newspapers. He’s good at hiding behind potted plants and parked cars.

  At the vaguest whiff of a celebrated nose or leg or expensively redone cheekbone Lester uncoils, like a snake, and starts snapping.

  “Who do you think comes to a NATO conference?” Lester wants to know.

  Nick states the obvious. “Middle-aged blowhards come to NATO conferences. Actually,” Nick corrects himself, “ancient blowhards. Hard to believe you can sell pictures of any of them. Unless, of course, they come with Ashley Dupré or one of her cousins.”

  “Yup. As always, the wives, the girlfriends, the hookers, those are the only prospects.” Lester sips his citron pressé and changes gears. “How’s the film going?” he asks.

  “Barely. They’ve been rained out at the Eiffel Tower so they went to cover.”

  “Cover?” It’s an American expression Lester doesn’t know.

  “Where you go when you need bright sunshine and it’s raining.”

  “So what’s the cover today?”

  “A mental institution,” Nick says. “Laurent has a breakdown after Hildy goes off the tower.”

  Lester manages to avoid rolling his eyes. The movie business! What chaos. Best to just change the subject.

  “Have you done any work on your book?”

  Nick is all earnestness. “Remember that girl, Elizabeth, that vanished in Vegas? I still think there could be an idea there.”

  Lester does his best not to look dubious. “Hmm,” he says. “What’s the story?”

  “Right now,” says Nick, “I haven’t got one. But I took a ton of pictures.”

  “Maybe,” suggests Lester, “you need a new girl that has a story. You know. One with a beginning, a middle and an end.” Who wants to see a bunch of pictures of some girl that don’t add up to anything? Where’s the payoff?

  “Thing is, you can’t know the end of a new girl’s story,” Nick says, “until she’s not a new girl anymore. And most stories don’t have great endings.”

  “What do you consider a great ending?” Lester asks.

  “Well,” Nick says, “Vertigo’s got a great one. The picture I’m working on. Maybe the greatest ending of all time.”

  Sure, Nick knows: most people zone out when you tell them movie plots. Same thing when someone starts talking about their dreams. Zzzzzzz. Goodnight. Thanks for sharing.

  But Lester’s not going anywhere unless, of course, Kate Moss or Carla Bruni walk by.

  “Okay. Here you go. In Vertigo a man is madly in love with a mysterious woman. He follows her around because her husband thinks she’s possessed by someone named Carlotta, some distant relative who killed herself a long time ago. The guy worries that his beautiful wife is going to kill herself on the same day Carlotta died. She keeps talking about the tower where Carlotta jumped to her death. Our hero realizes there is a real tower just like the one she describes. He takes her there to show her that it’s real, not some phantom in her crazed imagination. But when they get there, she runs away from him and up the steps of the tower.”

  “Sounds like he’s a big dope,” Lester says. “He led her to her doom, right?”

  “Right,” Nick continues. He’s intense. “She climbs to the top of the tower. It’s pretty clear she’s going to jump.”

  Lester says, “Why doesn’t he run up after her?”

  “Remember the name of the movie? Vertigo. Guess who’s got it? Plus acrophobia, fear of heights. He can’t even look at the steps without getting dizzy and starting to black out.”

  “Okay,” Lester says, “so she jumps. He can’t save her. He feels guilty the rest of his life.” Lester shrugs. “That’s a great ending? Really?”

  “No, no, no.” Nick doles out the real ending for Lester as if he were spooning him chocolate mousse. “It turns out she’s not really the wife. She’s just pretending to be. The husband knows our guy can’t climb steps. He killed his real wife, and when the fake one gets to the top, he throws the real one over the edge. Voila! Now he has the perfect witness to his wife’s ‘suicide.’ Complicated. But great. Takes a little work to think it through.”

  Lester isn’t listening. He’s still thinking about Nick’s problem. “What about that girl in your picture, Hildy? You must have a slew of pictures of her by now.”

  “She’s an old love story that doesn’t need retelling. I need to feel the rush and shoot it.”

  Lester stares off into space. “I remember the rush. I’m still making the child support payments.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Rogers is in the bathroom, running the water. He’s finishing a shave. Slowly, over the running water, he registers the sound of Fanny sobbing quietly in the expensive sheets in the big bed in the guest room of the Washington townhouse. (Rogers would never have another woman in the bed he shares with Connie.)

  “You promised. You promised.” She makes sad little sounds in between sobs.

  Rogers walks out of the bathroom in a towel.

  “She’s coming, Fanny. And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it,” says Rogers. Seeing him naked from the waist up, Fanny recalls that Rogers is known, to Senate staffers, as the Hunk of the Hill.

  The Hunk of the Hill is a heap of swill, thinks Fanny, giving herself a momentary reprieve from her tears, her fury.

  “When are you going to tell her about us,” she asks Rogers. He sits beside her on the bed.

  The hunk, the hulk, he twists his bulk. And screws his mouth into something like a sneer.

  “Oh, that’s a great idea, Fanny. A great, great idea. In an election year, why don’t I break it to my wife that it’s over, my wife of thirty years, my wife who is standing behind me while she’s dying? I can just break it to her on a romantic stroll along the Seine. Or maybe I can call a press conference and tell the whole fucking world.”

  Fanny is taken aback. She rarely sees the business end of the senator’s moods. “But you said you loved me! And you promised you’d tell her.”

  The senator reins in the rage. He’s a guy who’s made a career of concessions. “I will, Fanny, but not in Paris. I can’t. I proposed to her in Paris. Thirty years ago. On the top of the Eiffel Tower.”

  “Oh that’s romantic.” Look! Fanny and Rogers are taking turns with mockery and put-downs, playing a zippy game of emotional ping-pong.

  The senator is surprised to see Fanny ace a shot with withering sarcasm. He softens. “Wait until we get back. I promise I’ll tell her then. Now, be a good girl and get dressed.”

  Fanny decides not to be a good girl. Instead she picks up a framed picture of the senator and his wife and throws it at him.

  The senator ducks—fast reflexes—and it smashes against the wall behind him. Broken glass showers the floor.

  “What do you think you’re doing? That’s one of Connie’s favorite pictures!”

  He’s never been this angry with her before. But when Fanny gets out of bed and stands, naked, before him, his fury dissolves. The old hunger stirs in his loins. So what? She broke a picture.

  “Oh, honey,” he says, all milk and honey. “I’m so sorry. She never goes to these things. But suddenly, out of the blue, this time she changed her mind. And after the conference, I have to
get right back, this damn defense appropriation bill is up for another vote and—” He’s exhausted. But what he says next is true: “You know how much I need you…I just can’t do anything about it now.”

  Fanny half whimpers. “You say that, but you never do anything about it!”

  “Fanny, Fanny, Fanny. Once this is settled, I’ll talk to her. We’ll fix this—”

  Fanny marches into the bathroom. It begins to dawn on her that she has become a cliché, a camp follower in love with a married politician who, like the rest, lives on lies in the shadows.

  She dries her eyes on a particularly fluffy white towel. She looks at herself in the mirror with fresh eyes. “Hello, cliché,” she says to herself.

  Then Fanny watches herself gather composure. She holds her head up, gives herself a shot of her expensive perfume (Déjà Vu!), gives the towel a shot for good measure (a little something to remind him of her, when she’s gone), and smelling like a gardenia and peonies, hint of citrus, Fanny walks back into the bedroom with a solemn face.

  “Goodbye, Lee. I’m out of here. And I’m not coming back.” She’s not kidding. A phone call to her mom and she’ll be on the first plane back to San Francisco, courtesy of Loft Airlines.

  San Francisco? With Mom?

  She’ll think of something…

  Rogers reaches for her and tries to pull her close.

  “No,” she says and pushes him away. She slams her foot down on the floor. Her foot meets a glass shard from the broken photo frame. “Shit!”

  The senator rushes over, tries to comfort her, but she stops him in his tracks with a death glare.

  “Where are you going to go, Fanny? What are you going to do?”

  Is that concern in his voice, or is it anxiety?

  Fanny limps to the bed, finds her underwear in the pile, starts putting it on. She’s got three or four smart answers on the tip of her tongue, but sometimes silence cuts deeper. Like a piece of glass to your tender sole.

  Let him suffer. Let him wonder if he’ll ever see me again.

  Later that night Fanny is seated on a night flight to Paris. Her eyes are red from crying. She takes a little pill case out of her purse, dumps four tablets into her hand, and drops them into her mouth. She washes them down with a mini-bar size bottle of gin. She puts her earphones in place and listens to a Rosetta Stone tape. “Bonjour!” she says with a boozy slur. “Est-ce que vous avez une chaise?…Je n’aimer pas la moutarde.”

  And then she falls fast asleep. Bon Nuit Fanny.

  CHAPTER 25

  Jenny Cours could not be more excited. Fanny arrives home tonight, from D.C.

  She sounded rushed on the phone, said she wanted to get away—fast. Jenny booked her a trip back to San Francisco, texted her the departure information, didn’t hear anything further, and had no reason to think Fanny wouldn’t show up. She always did.

  Jenny was on the threshold of middle age when Fanny began to burst into womanly bloom. Jenny got a kick out of this. Without envy or regret, she celebrated her daughter’s impossible beauty and bright prospects.

  But Jenny doesn’t wish she were 18 again. Genuinely happy with herself and the choices she has made, Jenny looks on aging with pleasure and interest. This will be fun, she thinks, a whole new world. Jenny enjoys herself every bit as much at 45 as she did at 25. She likes the way she feels, lives and looks. Take that, everybody else.

  Right now, Jenny is just looking forward to Fanny’s arrival. At the last moment, she decided a surprise welcome committee of one very happy mom would make Fanny’s homecoming that much more festive.

  In fact, Jenny was so looking forward to Fanny’s arrival, she wasn’t sure what to do with herself. She’s already filled the house with tulips, Fanny’s favorite flowers, and spent hours preparing Veau de Blanc, Fanny’s favorite dinner.

  It’s funny to watch the passengers deplane into the concourse. Jenny, who has seen this scene a million times from the reverse vantage, feels a little like she’s fallen through an Alice-in-Wonderland hole in the world.

  She watches the first-class passengers roll their expensive bags past. Then come the business-class folks with their less expensive bags. Weird that America created such a rigid class system in the sky.

  All digressive thought fades when the economy-class passengers began to deplane and Jenny focuses her complete attention on Fanny, or rather on trying to find Fanny in the crowd.

  Fanny, however, does not get off the plane.

  Worse, when Jenny, confused and also concerned, inquires, she is horrified to learn that no one named Fanny Cours ever boarded the plane from D.C.

  CHAPTER 26

  Le Métro speeds under the Paris streets.

  The car has the vacant feel that subways all over the world have late at night.

  Nick, Lester and Jean, a middle-aged French reporter for Paris Match, have been drinking. It must have been a lot or the bumps along the way wouldn’t trouble their stomachs as much as they do. Jean’s especially.

  Aside from Jean (now hiccupping) and his buddies there is one other guy, unshaven and kind of creepy looking, in the car. (Not that anyone looks good under fluorescent métro car lights. Do they get special bulbs designed to make everyone look their worst or what?)

  Mister Unshaven-and-kind-of-creepy-looking eyes the shapeless brown wool coat on the seat across from him. A bit of movement reveals that the coat is attached to a pair of legs. Shapely legs. Shapely legs in black tights and black army boots.

  This image catches Nick’s eye and he instinctively takes out his iPhone and snaps a few pictures.

  A strange jumble of words—are they French?—emerge from the tangled coat, which Nick now sees covers not just a pair of legs and a girl, but also a canvas travel bag with a handle and wheels.

  Jean rubs his eyes. “I have to get up early, guys. Big perfume powwow this week.” He yawns and hiccups at the same time. “Why do I let you talk me into these things?”

  “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” says Lester. “The girls in there looked good at the time.”

  The coat rolls over on the opposite seat and guess who is under it? Red-eyed Fanny. She tries to adjust the empty coat sleeve over her head as she struggles to sit up. Her attempt is not even remotely successful.

  Jean gives Lester a nudge. “Too bad the girls in the bar didn’t look like that,” he says, directing Lester’s attention to Fanny; a little disheveled, she is, in fact, no less fetching for all that.

  “Yeah,” says Lester, “too bad. Think of all the money we would have saved if they looked like that and showed up drunk out of their minds.”

  Jean looks at his watch. “Mon dieu! I’m not going to be worth a shit in the morning,” he says.

  Lester is bored with Jean and his bellyaching. He looks away, studies the creepy guy and the girl on the opposite seat. The creepy guy stares blankly. Fanny, clearly very drunk, rolls over and goes back to sleep under her coat.

  The train pulls into the station. Lester gets up to leave and Jean, apparently struck by a memory that this is his stop too, gets up to go as well. Nick pockets his iPhone and stands. His stop is next.

  Lester eyes Fanny (or more exactly, her coat) and the creepy guy as he makes his way towards the door. “Keep an eye on her. She has another admirer,” he tells Nick. The doors slide shut behind him.

  Nick, relieved to be free of his buddies, looks over and sees that the unshaven guy has shifted his attention from Fanny’s legs to her bag.

  When the train pulls into the next station, he steps off the car and onto a deserted platform. No one boards the train.

  Nick is about to head towards the exit when, through the train window, he sees the scruffy man move towards Fanny. Nick shakes his head and runs back on just as the doors start to close.

  He walks over to the seat where Fanny lies, still fast asleep.

  The shady and vaguely threatening character registers Nick’s presence, walks past Fanny, and pretends to check the Métro Map posted on the wall be
hind her. It’s obvious to Nick that the directions the guy is looking for—the fastest path to Fanny’s bag —are not on the map.

  Nick moves in front of Fanny to get her attention. He fails. He nudges her leg. She rouses slightly, pushes the hair out of her eyes and smiles.

  “Est-ce que je puis vous aider?” Nick is nothing if not polite.

  Sadly the motion required to listen upsets Fanny’s precarious balance. As the train lurches around a corner, she starts to slide off the seat.

  Nick grabs hold of her and keeps her from falling.

  “Bonjour!” Fanny says brightly.

  “Hey.” Nick rolls Fanny onto her back. “Hey! Wake up!”

  Fanny smiles sweetly. “Je n’aimer pas la moutarde,” she says.

  “I don’t like it either,” Nick says, “C’mon. Wake up. If the cops find you like this, you’re going to wind up in jail.”

  Fanny regards Nick with interest. “Hey, you speak English. Are we in England?”

  “No,” says Nick flatly, “we’re not in England. We’re in Paris. But everyone in Paris isn’t French.”

  Fanny smiles sweetly, again. “Ought to be a law against that,” she says.

  “Law against what?” Nick wonders why he is having this conversation.

  Fanny tries to grab her train of thought before it chugs off. “A law against being in France and not being French.”

  “Well, there isn’t.”

  “Hey,” she says. “Did you say something about a cop?”

  Nick nods. Fanny wavers a little. She isn’t fully awake, but she’s interested. “Where is that cop?” she wonders.

  Nick remembers longingly that he was on his way back to his hotel, to bed. “You know, people who can’t drink…shouldn’t.”

  The train slows to a stop.

  “This is where we get off,” Nick tells her. He puts his arm around her and helps her off the train. He eases her and her bag gingerly down the platform, up the steps and onto the street.

  The Rue Saint-Honoré has a beautiful fairytale look; car lights glitter in the empty dark. Nick sets Fanny on a bench—she’ll love the view—and whistles for a cab.