The Suitors

by Cecile David-Weill

  The drama in question had been running for a long time, though, and my mother shared the philosophy of one of our neighbors, who made it a rule never to rent her house more than three years in a row to the same person, to make sure of remaining the lady of the manor. My mother was therefore preparing to banish Georgina from L’Agapanthe once she had laid the groundwork with enough cutting remarks in that regard.

  And yet Georgina was a nice person, who never spoke ill of anyone or had any intention of vamping my father. She would naturally have loved to have a touch of romance in her life, but she wasn’t prepared to go to the mat over it with my mother, whose temper she feared as deeply as she appreciated her hospitality. Besides, she was independent and happy to be so. Born Miro Quesada, she was the daughter of a man known as the Guano King, just as Patiño was the Tin King. A Peruvian, she came from a family that had Spanish roots and numbered among its members two presidents, many intellectuals, some newspaper magnates, and one hero of the hostilities with Chile during the War of the Pacific. With no need to work for a living, Georgina de Marien began traveling after the death of her husband, but she neither went off to spas nor embarked on short cruises. Rather, she traveled like a diplomat sent from post to post and had gone in succession to London, Rome, Barcelona, Hong Kong, and New York.

  Friday, 6:00 p.m.

  Hidden behind his Paris-Turf, Frédéric greeted me when I showed up at L’Agapanthe that Friday like a puppeteer announcing the arrival of Punch and Judy, with a jolly “Are we ever going to have fun!”

  Charles Ramsbotham, who had shown up shortly before I did, had just broken all the rules in the book by giving my father a Jet Ski, even though he knew perfectly well that all guest gifts ought to be purely symbolic gestures.

  A man of concrete and practical mind, Charles could never remember any of these rules of savoir vivre for very long, for he had no patience with such subtleties. As a guest, he thought it shameful to offer what he considered “crud,” which was doubtless suitable for the impecunious friends of my parents, but not for him, for his lifestyle was so opulent that one might well have thought him even wealthier than he was. Indeed, his generous character and personal ethics impelled him to treat his friends with the same lavish generosity with which he indulged himself. This led him, every year, to offer my father some costly gadget such as a GPS or a satellite telephone with worldwide coverage, a device that had the considerable merit of keeping Charles temporarily occupied (until he had mastered the operating instructions and tested his gift for his hosts) in a house where he was bored stiff.

  “This is too much, simply too much! Just because this idiot charters private planes and helicopters to go have coffee in the Dordogne or in Moldavia where he requisitions entire hotels and dislodges all their clients, that doesn’t give him the right to do as he pleases!”

  My mother was letting off steam in her bathroom, where she had taken refuge to explode in private.

  “Don’t work yourself up into such a state!” pleaded my father, trying to calm her down.

  “No, I mean really! That thing is expensive, the exhaust stinks, it makes a hellish racket, and it’s dangerous. Who knows if it’s even legal in the bay!”

  “You know perfectly well that this Jet Ski will end up in the cellar, with all the rest of Charles’s presents. You can’t really see me revving up the motor just for fun!” my father replied, at which point I joined their company and added my two cents’ worth.

  “At least that contraption might bring us more in line with our neighbors, because what do we look like, with our plastic kayak-canoe from the toy store in Juan-les-Pins, bobbing around next to their cutting-edge playthings?”

  And it was true that wherever we went in the bay, we now seemed like amateurs in a world of professionals. Take children’s games, for instance. While we were satisfied with a sandbox on the terrace above the staff beach, our Russian neighbors provided their offspring with a miniature golf course, a go-cart racetrack, and inflatable castles featuring hiding places and slides worthy of an amusement park, all installed on a lot purchased for that purpose. It was the same situation with our antimosquito strategy, because our Saudi neighbor deployed extermination on an industrial scale with machines diffusing a blue light that vaporized the insects with ghastly zapping sounds, while we persisted halfheartedly in setting out yellow bug lights and saucers of citronella.

  It was in the security department, however, that we failed the most ignominiously, since our alarm system, which we found perfectly satisfactory, looked ridiculous next to the armed guards of our neighbors and the motion detector lights that broadcast a booming electronic voice to explain, in a menacing tone and several languages, what dangers awaited any feckless fool who persisted in violating the perimeter of the property or its offshore stretch of bay.

  And if you also considered the yachts at anchor, the Riva speedboats, plus the floating docks and rafts that formed ramparts around our neighbors’ beaches against intruders of all kinds, we had by some strange paradox become the only wealthy residents on the bay on whom it was physically possible to spy.

  Which was precisely the mission of the yellow boat out of Juan-les-Pins that crisscrossed the bay every hour under the clearly feeble pretext of studying the underwater scenery, thus allowing its passengers to examine us as if we were exotic fauna for the sum of 12 euros per adult and 6 euros per child (between the ages of two and eleven). Hugging the shore wherever possible, this boat actually came right up to our beach ladder, meeting with a reception that depended on our mood. Although we usually sheltered behind our books or newspapers to avoid the gaze of these vacationers who, camera in hand, hoped to grab a photo of some famous face or silhouette while snatching a glimpse of how the beautiful people live, we might also decide to wave cheerily at them, or hide in the grotto and launch a squirt gun attack.

  My silly joke about the neighbors did nothing to cheer up my mother, of course, but she was not the only person whose patience and good humor were in short supply that day. I’d had a hard week in Paris. Too many patients, but above all I was missing Félix more and more as his month with his father dragged on. And I was worried about my ex’s mood swings and irresponsibility. To crown everything, Marie had gone off to who knows where to some conference or other, with a time change that meant we’d hardly spoken to each other since the previous weekend.

  Frankly, I was in a tight spot, because my guests weren’t the kind to outshine Charles Ramsbotham. In fact, Mathias Cavoye was a walking cliché: a private dealer in the secondary art market, he was fifty, handsome, but getting on, with a nuclear tan and all the accoutrements of a seducer going gray at the temples but trying to look young in jeans and a blazer, with turtlenecks in the winter and colorful polo shirts in the summer.

  I was fond of Mathias because he wasn’t pretentious, had never tried to hide the fact that his mother had a little grocery store in the Parisian suburb of Bourg-la-Reine, and he always invited me to the parties he gave at his home to fend off ennui. Until now, however, despite the many hints he’d made, I’d been very careful not to invite him to L’Agapanthe because I just didn’t trust him.

  Was it because he was depressed? Hung out with celebrities? Or was constantly angling to swindle extra money out of every deal he made? I could just see him slipping coke to a pretty young thing to rev her up or keep her under his thumb. Bluntly put, with him and his pal Lou Léva, a starlet desperate to make it to the top, we were definitely in the demimonde, and it wouldn’t take my parents more than thirty seconds to figure that out. They would then conclude that I must have fallen on my head and lost all my bearings. Beyond the distinction they made between chic and cheap, my parents divided society into decent, respectable people and those who were not, a criterion based on moral judgments as antiquated as they were denigrated in our café society. This was one of the things I most liked about them, and I valued their good opinion enough that their parental disapproval would upset me. Especially since I had no intention o
f explaining to them that the whole point about Mathias was that he was bringing us Béno Grunwald.

  To my surprise, my mother quickly composed herself after my father left for the beach, where Charles was already putting together the infamous Jet Ski. Then she asked me not about Mathias, but about his girlfriend.

  “So, she’s an actress, is that it? Then why haven’t I heard of her?”

  My mother affecting a shopgirl’s interest in show business, that was a new one for me, and I had to smile, given that she and my father knew nothing about any stars, not even the ones so famous their public appearances cause riots.

  “Actually,” I replied, “I’d have been astonished if you did know her, because aside from her roles in two minor films …”

  “Lou Léva? That’s her real name?”

  “Of course not, what an idea! She must have chosen it carefully in the hope that the alliteration would help casting directors remember her name. But you can ask her yourself, she’s arriving with Mathias Cavoye just before dinnertime.”

  “And young Grunwald?”

  My mother invariably attached that adjective to all her close friends’ children. Irritated to think that I might have felt I was about to introduce her to someone “elegant” of whom she hadn’t heard, my mother probably meant to show me how familiar she was with the Grunwald family, and she twisted the knife with an innocent air while gossiping knowingly about them.

  “How has he been doing? Because they haven’t a penny left, poor things, since they lost that manufacturing license, what was it for again?”

  “A monopoly on photographic gelatin.”

  “Oh, yes, that was it.”

  “Actually, young Grunwald happens to be in his forties and he’s a lot more wealthy than his family!”

  “Really! And how did he manage that?”

  “Because he made a fortune!”

  “Ah, he’s the one who married a model, or something like that?”

  “Yes. Although I’m afraid he might turn out to be a bit of a show-off,” I confessed prudently to my mother, hoping that with her love of argument, she would immediately defend him if I went on the attack.

  “Oh! That’s only natural if he’s earned a lot of money …”

  “You’re right, of course, but I mean, is that any reason to arrive by helicopter—”

  “What, he’s coming by helicopter? But that’s grotesque! Where will it land?”

  “On a copter pad in Cannes, I believe.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Besides, he’ll get caught in traffic. And it will be his own fault, too.”

  “Whose own fault?” asked Marie, joining us in the bathroom.

  “Darling!” exclaimed our mother delightedly. “When did you get here?”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked Marie as soon as we were alone.

  “Nothing, why?”

  “Come off it, I know you. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, at least, not much, really … It’s stupid …”

  “What is?”

  “It’s a dog … in Rio … that I can’t get out of my mind. I found him on the lawn outside my room the evening I arrived. A little black dog with a white spot around his right eye. He sat down in front of the bay window. And he kept looking at me, without moving. Imagine! I tried to ignore him, then I closed the curtains, hoping to forget about him. That was impossible, obviously. I couldn’t stand it, I let him into my room. He was full of fleas, thin, and famished. So I ordered him a steak and I gave him a bath. He didn’t struggle, was so relaxed, trusting.… No, but I mean, are you getting what I’m saying? I’ve lost my mind! I’m worried about a stray dog, in Rio, the city of favelas! Isn’t that pathetic?”

  “Yes, particularly since you seem to be ignoring world hunger and global warming …”

  “Meaning?”

  “That you have every right to get emotional without having to fix all the problems of the world.”

  “You don’t think I’m being silly?”

  “No, I really don’t. Go on.”

  “Afterward he fell asleep. I left him on the floor although I wanted to bring him up on the bed. In the morning I gave him the slip in the hotel garden before going off to work. I thought about him, though, all day long, and I came back early to the hotel that evening, hoping to find him outside my bay window.”

  “And was he there?”

  “Yes. He was wild with joy, and I ordered him another filet mignon.”

  Her voice suddenly broke. “He was there every evening. And I gave him the slip as usual, the morning I left, except that … And now I can’t stop thinking about him.”

  “Poor dear, I’m so sorry. But I’d have been worried if you hadn’t reacted just like that.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, it simply means that you’re human, that you’re very sensitive. Which doesn’t keep you from being strong, doing everything well, and seeming absolutely perfect. You know, we always use something outside ourselves to open the door to our emotions. And since wars, famines, and earthquakes are tragedies too vast for us to feel directly concerned about them, we find something closer to us to cry over, or something more specific, like a doll with a shattered eye, an episode of Little House on the Prairie, or a dog.”

  “But in this case, he was the one who chose me, and … I abandoned him.”

  “Yes, and in fact that’s what’s at stake here.”

  “What is?”

  “Abandonment.”

  “But what are you talking about?”

  “I’m saying that this dog embodied all the moments when you felt abandoned, as lonely as he was, with no one to give you a bath or order you a steak. But don’t worry, you’ll get over it.”

  “You think so?”

  “Sure, but I also think you have love to give and nowhere to give it. Me, I’m lucky, I have Félix. Perhaps it’s time for you to deal with this. Maybe that’s what your dog is telling you.”

  I was uneasy about imposing Mathias Cavoye on my parents, but my success in managing to bring Béno Grunwald to the house made up for that, because before suggesting Béno to my sister as a “blind date,” I’d done all the requisite research into his background. And he was so divine, according to Who’s Who, Google, and Fortune, that he seemed almost like a jackpot just waiting to be won.

  Béno Grunwald was a self-made man from a family of means. Perfect, I’d thought, catching myself starting to hope that he would have both the good manners and sex appeal of a self-made man. No one had helped him in any way, neither his father, who had never wanted to see him, nor his mother, a worldly and uncaring woman.

  Dyslexia had made studying difficult, so Béno started out by enjoying himself, but since he was charismatic, trusted his instincts, and had good business sense, he opted to make his fortune instead of self-destructing in trendy night clubs. He began by selling bonds and soon did fabulously well. Sniffing out good deals, he never stopped speculating, investing, even when on vacation. Quick off the mark, he would visit a house for sale in the Bahamas, then buy it and snap up all the surrounding properties as well, selling them off later, one by one, for huge profits. He knew how to plan far ahead, too, and in anticipation of the death of Castro, he had gone to Cuba to buy up all the photos of the Cuban revolution he could find, just as he had explored Panama in the expectation of an imminent economic boom, acquiring a forest there as big as a French département.

  He lived large in London, with pieds-à-terre in Paris and New York, yet he also understood the real value of money, because he had already found out what it was like to go bankrupt. Down practically to the change in his pockets, he’d bought a Basquiat just before the graffiti artist took off, which allowed him to bounce back so high that he now managed a hedge fund worth more than twenty billion dollars.

  At forty-five, twice divorced (first from an Anglo-Iranian beauty, then from one of the five highest-paid models in the world), he was single again. He was filthy rich, generous, ran an enormous charity he’d put togeth
er from scratch to support girls’ education in Africa, and he knew how to have fun. Plus he knew everyone, from Mick Jagger to Bill Clinton to Nelson Mandela. The New York Post’s Page Six even claimed that the letter B in his address book listed, among others, Brad (Pitt), Richard Branson (the fifth-richest person in the United Kingdom), Bono, Bongo (Omar), Lord Balfour, Warren Buffett, while the letter K included Kaddafi, Kravis (Henry), Kravitz (Lenny) …

  In fact, that might actually prove to be the sticking point—the fact that he frequented only the rich and famous, with a weakness for people whose family names are those of countries, like the Greeces, the Yugoslavias, Rania of Jordan, or Felipe of Spain.

  He never stayed long in one place, and went only where it was in his interest to go, so why then was he coming to L’Agapanthe when the world was full of luminaries who were only too eager to welcome him?

  Had he heard about the view, the cuisine, his hosts, or their guests? Was he expecting to find old friends or make new ones here? In that case, he risked being let down, because we were too low-key for him, and he wasn’t going to find anyone of transcendent interest among my parents’ Old Faithfuls. Unless he was coming to check out Marie and me … which might also prove a disappointment, because lovely and rich though we might be (as Frédéric never tired of telling us), we surely weren’t lovely and rich enough for Béno Grunwald, who deigned to look only at spectacular women.

  So upon reflection, I’d decided that I should give up any idea of seduction where he was concerned. One, simply because I was no raving beauty, and two, such a competition depressed me from the get-go, leaving me without any desire to enter the lists. So I was counting on Marie—more gorgeous, feisty, and attracted to the glamour of her conquests—to meet the challenge and try her chances with him.

  Instead of being insufferable, as I had feared, Béno turned out to be truly charming. Indeed, he became our hero as soon as he arrived, thanks to the grace and good humor with which he reacted to the incredible cock-up that greeted him at L’Agapanthe.