Lauren nodded. “Please.” She picked up her bag and opened it. Inside was a small bottle filled with pills. She opened the bottle and shook a few into her hand, then picked up the juice.
The stewardess smiled. “Vitamins? All Americans must take their vitamins with breakfast.”
Lauren smiled. “Of course.” She wondered what the stewardess would think if she told her that not all the pills she took were vitamins. The red was an upper. She swallowed the pills with the juice as the girl placed the coffee in front of her. She lit a cigarette and turned to the window again, looking out. Ten years. It had been a long time. More than half her life.
Suddenly she felt a nervous tightening in her stomach. Janette would be at the airport. She wondered if Janette would recognize her. But it didn’t matter. She would recognize Janette. She saw her picture a thousand times a year, in papers, magazines, even on television commercials. What was it one of the news commentators had said? One of the ten most beautiful women in the world.
She remembered one time she had been with Harvey on the beach at Paradise Cove, lying on a blanket to keep the hot sand from burning them alive. But the sun was good, sending its warmth into her body while the breeze kept her skin cool. She rolled over on her stomach and opened the magazine. Almost the first thing she saw was a color photograph of Janette. It was an advertisement for a bikini. The copy was simple. “The Briefest Bikini, by Philippe Fayard for Janette.” Then in smaller letters under the photograph: “At better stores everywhere from $90.”
A shadow fell over the magazine. “Wow!” Harvey said. “That’s a dynamite chick.”
For a moment she felt a twinge of surprise. Or maybe jealousy. In some ways Harvey was an asshole. He never saw anything. He lived in a world that existed only between his surfboard and his dope collection. He never went anywhere without his surfboard—even at night there it was, tied to the roof rack of his VW. And in a cleverly concealed compartment in the door of the car were always at least twenty little plastic baggies of different kinds of grass. His mood collection, as he called it. A grass for every purpose from giggling to dreaming to fucking. Right now his primary interest was working with a friend of his up in Humboldt County to develop a grass that had no seeds, thereby eliminating the need to clean it, and of course with higher THC content than any other. It was a good thing his father never asked him what he did with his allowance, because he had already invested more than a thousand dollars in the project, which also included more than two hundred dollars which she had given him.
She looked up at him, squinting her eyes against the sun. “What did you say?”
“Dynamite chick,” he said, still staring at the photo.
She glanced around the beach. It was filled with girls, alive and real, with even briefer bikinis than in the photograph, yet here he was, impervious to them and staring at the magazine. “It’s my sister,” she said, handing the magazine up to him.
He took it, still looking at the photograph. “Yeah,” he said and then the gist of her words registered in his brain. “Did you say your sister?”
“Yes.”
“You never told me you had a sister.” There was a note of skepticism in his voice.
“It never came up before,” she said.
“I never saw her,” he said.
“How could you?” she asked. “She lives in Paris.”
“France?”
“That’s where Paris is,” she said shortly. She was getting annoyed. There was no reason for him to make all this fuss about it. She sat up. “I could use a toke,” she said.
He fished in his little paper bag and came up with a joint. He lit it and passed it to her. She took a couple of quick hits. As usual, it was the best. A Harvey special. She felt better, the annoyance leaving her.
He fell to the blanket beside her. “When did you see her last?”
“Almost ten years ago,” she answered. “When I first came here.”
“Did she look like then?”
She thought for a moment, then nodded her head. “I suppose so. But I was a little girl and she was my beautiful big sister.”
“When are you going to see her next?” he asked.
It was at that moment that she made up her mind. “This summer, right after graduation,” she said. “Ten years was a long enough time.
Long enough, she thought, looking out the window as the ground at Orly rushed up to meet the airplane. Long enough.
The immigration officer looked up at her in surprise as she passed her passport to him. “You’re French?” he asked.
She smiled. “Yes.” The passport she had given him was French, even though it had been issued at the Consulate in Los Angeles.
“I thought you were American,” he said.
“I live there,” she said. “This is my first visit here in ten years. I was only seven when I left.”
He smiled and stamped the passport, pushing it back to her. “Welcome home,” he said.
“Thank you.” She picked up her passport and went to collect her luggage. In the baggage area she saw a man standing, holding a small cardboard sign in his hand: “Mlle. Lauren.” She went up to him. “I’m Lauren,” she said.
He bowed. “Jean Bergére, service d’accueil, Air France. Your sister asked me to help you with your baggage. If I may have your baggage checks, please.”
“I only have one bag,” she said, giving him the baggage check.
“That will be simple,” he said. “Come, I will pass you through customs and then come back for your bag. Your sister is waiting outside.”
She saw Janette as she cleared the customs barrier. She stopped for a moment, looking at her. There was no mistaking her. She had a presence, a quality that radiated and made her stand out from the crowd. She stared toward her almost at the same moment that Janette saw her.
She hesitated a moment, then broke into a run, coming to a halt in front of her. They stood there just staring at each other, then suddenly she smiled. “Are you really my sister?” she asked in French.
Janette answered in English, her voice trembling between laughter and tears. “You better believe it.” Then she pulled Lauren close to her and hugged her tightly. “It is I who do not believe it. You’re so big and so beautiful. What happened to the little girl I saw last?”
Lauren’s own eyes were damp. “She grew up.”
“You’re taller than I am,” Janette said.
“American vitamins.” Lauren laughed. “But you’re even more beautiful than I remembered and much more than any of the photographs that I’ve seen.”
“C’est pas vrai,” Janette said. She turned and gestured. A young man dressed in a severe business suit and tie came toward them. “My secretary, Robert Bleu,” Janette said.
The young man extended a delicate hand. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Lauren,” he said in stiffly accented English.
“Pleased to meet you,” Lauren said.
“Robert will collect your luggage and bring it to the house. This way you can ride with me to the office and then the chauffeur will take you home.”
Lauren felt a slight disappointment. “Do you have to go to work today?”
“The collections are almost upon us,” Janette said, taking her arm and leading her toward the exit. “We have only three weeks left to the end of July and a thousand things to get ready. We have our showing right after Dior.”
Lauren found herself walking rapidly to keep up with Janette even though Janette didn’t seem to be moving hurriedly. “Is July usually a busy time for you?”
Janette laughed. “The busiest time of the year.”
“I’m sorry,” Lauren said. “You should have told me. I could have come another time.”
They went outside and a big Rolls came to the curb in front of them. The chauffeur got out of the car and opened the door. “Bon jour, Miss Lauren,” he said. “Welcome home.”
Lauren looked at him. A flash of memory echoed surprise. “René?”
“Moi-même
, Mademoiselle Lauren.”
Impulsively she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “I’m happy to see you,” she said.
“Thank you.” he said.
She got into the car, followed by Janette. She felt an excitement she had not expected. She looked at Janette. “Are Henri and—?”
Janette’s voice was hoarse. “No. They left a long time ago. René is the only one of the old ones still working for me.”
“Too bad,” Lauren said. “I would have liked to have seen them.”
The car pulled away from the curb. Janette opened the small cupboard in the center of the passenger compartment and took a cigarette from a box there. She pressed the lighter, then held it to her cigarette.
Lauren noticed a slight trembling of her hands. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Janette glanced at her. “Of course I’m okay.”
“You seem nervous.”
“I’m just tired,” Janette answered. “I worked until three this morning.” She pointed at an attaché case on the floor in front of her. “See that? It’s filled with things I have to do today.”
Lauren looked down at the black crocodile case, then back up at her. “You really push yourself, don’t you?”
“If you want to be a success in this business there’s no other way,” Janette said, dragging on her cigarette. “Someone is always out there waiting for you to fuck up. Then they can jump on you and tear you apart like wolves fighting over a carcass.”
“Do you really believe that?” Lauren asked.
Janette looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. “Yes. And you will see that I’m right. You’re young yet. But—in time.”
Janette lit another cigarette from the end of the one she had been smoking. Lauren watched her hands still trembling. A thought flashed across her mind. “Are you wired?” she asked.
Janette was puzzled. “Wired? What’s that?”
“American slang,” Lauren answered. “You seem uptight. Are you on uppers, you know, reds? Black beauties?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Amphetamines, speed. Mood elevators. Coke. Things like that.”
“Do I look like it?” Janette asked.
“Could be,” Lauren said.
“You Americans are way ahead of us in those things,” Janette said. “I do some cocaine. Not much. But the French would never know it.”
“You did some this morning?”
Janette nodded. “I told you I was very tired. I needed something to get me started.”
Lauren nodded. “I took a red on the plane so I wouldn’t fall on my face walking through customs.” She searched through her tote bag and took out a small tin box. She opened the box and took from it a small, thin, tightly rolled joint. “Two tokes of this and you’ll feel fine. You’ll stay up there but you’ll be relaxed.”
“How do you know that?” Janette asked.
“I have a boyfriend who’s the greatest expert in the world on different kinds of grass. This is a Harvey number ten.” She struck a match and lit the joint. She took two quick tokes then passed it to Janette. “Just two deep tokes. No more.”
Janette held it delicately in her fingers. Slowly she drew on the joint. The odor was delicate, like none of the grass or hash she had ever smoked before. Slowly she took her second toke, then handed it back to Lauren.
Lauren moistened her fingertips and pinched out the glowing tip, then carefully replaced it in the tin box. The tin box went back into the tote bag.
“I don’t feel anything,” Janette said.
Lauren smiled. “You’re not supposed to. But in two minutes you won’t be nervous anymore.”
They were silent as the big car rolled along the autoroute into Paris. Suddenly Janette turned toward her. “You know,” she said smiling, “you were absolutely right. Everything seems better now. I shouldn’t have let myself get so, how did you say it, uptight?”
Lauren laughed. “Just listen to little sister.”
“I should have asked before,” Janette said. “But tell me, how are Johann and Heidi?”
“They’re fine,” Lauren answered. “They send you their love.”
“I read somewhere that Johann has become an American citizen,” Janette said.
“Last year,” Lauren said.
“And you? Would you like to become an American too?”
“I never thought about it.” Lauren looked at her with clear blue eyes. “I feel American. But I guess I can wait until I am twenty-one to make up my mind.”
“Johann has been very successful?”
Lauren didn’t know whether it was a question or a statement. “I guess so,” she said. “I never paid much attention to those things.”
“According to the financial papers, he has one of the most rapidly growing conglomerates in America.”
“I don’t even know what a conglomerate is.” Lauren laughed. “All I know is that he goes to work early and comes home late.”
Janette was silent for a moment. “You should pay some attention to it. After all, you are a twenty-five percent owner of the de la Beauville wine company, which is the foundation of the whole conglomerate.”
“I know,” Lauren said casually. “He’s mentioned it several times but I really couldn’t get interested. Money isn’t that important to me.”
“What is important then?” Janette asked.
Lauren looked at her once again with those clear blue eyes. “Discovering myself. Learning what I’m all about. Then I’ll have time for other things.”
“But aren’t you worried that something might happen to your money?”
“What could happen to it?”
Janette didn’t answer.
“Even if it were all gone, it wouldn’t matter,” Lauren continued. “I could still manage. I don’t need very much.” She caught a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower as they turned off the Boulevard Périphérique and she broke into a smile. “There it is!” she said like an excited child. “Now I really believe I’m in Paris!”
The Rolls pulled to the curb in front of the salon on avenue Montaigne. The doorman in his formal uniform opened the door. “Bon jour, Madame.”
“Bon jour, Louis,” Janette answered as he reached in and took her attaché case from the car. She turned to Lauren. “Try to get some rest this afternoon. I’m having a small dinner party at home this evening. There are so many people who want to see you.”
Lauren looked at her. “You really don’t have to do anything. I’m happy just to be here.”
“Don’t be silly,” Janette said with a smile. “It will be fun to see their faces when they meet you. They all still think of you as a child.”
She crossed the sidewalk and went up the few steps to the private entrance next to the salon. As usual, she stopped at the top of the steps and looked up and down the street.
It was early July and the street lay smoldering in the heat and the humidity left by the early-morning showers. A quick check. Christian Dior was on the corner, Nina Ricci across the street. Farther up the block was the Plaza Athéneé. The street was empty; only a few early-morning tourists were coming out of the hotel to begin their pilgrimage. But there was no one in front of the salons, quiet and somnolent in the summer heat.
But she knew better. That was just the facade. Inside of each salon the pressure was building. Collections. Now, less than three weeks away. They all had to be going crazy. The scramble was on, the rumors were flying, and each house was working day and night to counter what they thought the others were doing. All were intent on grabbing the limelight, attracting the most attention from the newspapers and the publicity that resulted from the excitement. Hems up, hems down, shoulders broad, shoulders narrow, hips flat, hips round, colors bright, colors somber, silks, satins, wool, acrylics. Nobody really knew what would work, so all were going crazy.
Louis opened the door for her and she went inside. He opened the tiny elevator door, gave her the attaché case, pressed the button for the
third floor where her office was and touched his cap in a salute as the door closed in front of him. Her office was at the end of the corridor. It used to be Johann’s. But she had had it done over when she moved in.
The frenzy was in the air as she moved through the large general office in which the desks of the bookkeepers and secretaries and clerks ringed the walls and the doors to the private offices. A quiet murmur of “Bon jour, Madame” trailed her way to her own office, which was on the farthest end.
There were only three offices which had private rooms for their secretaries. Her own, Jacques’ and Philippe’s. She opened the door to her secretary’s office and for a moment felt a twinge of annoyance at seeing a girl sitting at Robert’s desk. Then she remembered that Robert was bringing Lauren’s luggage home.
The girl got to her feet. “Bon jour, Madame.”
“Bon jour, Sylvie,” Janette answered, moving to her own door as Sylvie opened it for her. “Any urgent messages?”
“Monsieur Jacques wanted to see you as soon as you came in,” the girl answered, following Janette into the office and placing the mail and other telephone messages on the desk.
Janette placed her attaché case on the desk and walked behind it. “Tell Monsieur Jacques that he can come right in.”
The girl nodded and left the room. Janette sat down and began to leaf through the messages. Nothing that could not hold. She looked up as Jacques came into the room.
They wasted no time on greetings. “You met Lauren?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“What is she like?”
Janette smiled. “Beautiful. What did you expect? American vitamins never miss.” She changed the subject. “Is that what is so important?”
Jacques dropped into the chair opposite her. “Philippe’s hysterical again. He’s screaming there’s no way he can make this collection with the budget we’ve given him. He says that Dior, St. Laurent, Givenchy have three times as much to spend as he does.”
“That’s right,” Janette said.
“He wants to see you right away.”
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