by Victoria Fox
How have they inspired you? I choose my own inspiration.
He was steered into an interview with a rampant TV crew. Tonight’s gala was in aid of troops fighting abroad, a fund-and-awareness-raiser.
‘What is Frontline Fashion hoping to achieve, Mr Moreau?’
The reporter was new on the job. JB had a way of separating the green from the ripe like sorting buttons. Inexperience was something he could sense.
‘This evening is about demonstrating our support,’ he replied, ‘to the men and women risking everything, miles away from home. Fashion might seem an unorthodox approach, but it’s what we do and we do it well. Every industry should be looking to offer assistance to the forces.’
‘Are you planning a stay in Vegas?’
‘No.’ He smiled on one side of his scar. ‘Vegas and I don’t get along.’
‘Are you a gambling man, Mr Moreau?’
‘Only when I know I can win.’
The reporter couldn’t help himself. ‘Reuben van der Meyde was a close friend of your father’s. Is that why he’s with you tonight?’
One of JB’s assistants moved him along. ‘That’s all,’ she sharply told the crew.
As they slipped into another interview, JB glimpsed Lori Garcia across the room. Careful not to look too long, he focused on the dialogue at hand. For the moment, at least, she was safe in conversation with Desideria Gomez. Right now she was too scared and confused to dare confront him—and he was counting on it. He knew he could not guarantee her silence for ever.
JB had not wanted her here. Yet what choice did he have? He should never have become involved. He should have walked away, turned his back and left her alone to her fate. It was beyond unprofessional to target a possibility so brazenly, and if JB could hold one thing aloft and claim it was entire, it was his professionalism. But to see her so helpless, so desperate—and he could not imagine what might have happened had he not intervened—for only the second time in JB Moreau’s life, impulse had reigned over logic. Against every principle on which Cacatra thrived, Lori Garcia had seen his face, he had spoken to her, and the path he had taken to reach her had become one he could never retrace.
Perhaps then, afterwards, he could have let it lie. He should have let it lie.
Only it wasn’t that easy. He had to make sure she was safe, just as he’d promised. It was a question of protection …
An acclaimed designer had pinioned him in conversation. Among JB’s abilities was sustaining a conversation while considering another matter entirely, and he managed to conduct himself with characteristic ease. In any case, he found that people were most content when they were talking about themselves.
Soon as the man drifted off, his wife wasted no time in making her move.
‘You and me,’ Arabella Kline murmured huskily, leaning in so he could detect the cloying fragrance behind her ears, ‘after the show.’
They had shared nights together before. She was a brittle lover, but capable.
Taking her hand, JB slipped a fold of paper into her palm.
‘You know where I’ll be.’
Lori was seated five rows back from, but directly behind, JB Moreau.
With his entrance, the theatre had fallen quiet. Despite the hundreds of guests, the excited babble of conversation and the anticipation of the night ahead, a reverential hush had descended. JB was that breed of man that demands veneration without even trying. It was a grace, an impression: an abstract thing. Lori understood for the first time what it meant to have it.
JB had it. He had it in spades.
Centre-front by the catwalk, he was flanked on one side by a middle-aged woman with a deep red chignon, gazing straight ahead with an expression still and sad. On his other was an unshaven, slightly scruffy but gamely suited Reuben van der Meyde, the world-famous entrepreneur. Lori recognised him from the magazine piece on Cacatra Island.
‘I didn’t know Reuben van der Meyde had an interest in fashion,’ she whispered.
‘Van der Meyde has an interest in anything that makes money,’ Desideria replied. ‘He’s in with all the major Hollywood players.’
‘Really? Who?’
‘Dirk Michaels, Linus Posen. They were a four-man gang back in the eighties. All the powerhouses, drinking, partying … no doubt womanising.’
‘And the fourth?’
‘Paul Moreau. JB’s father. Van der Meyde and the Moreau family go way back.’
‘How did they meet?’
‘Who?’
‘JB and Reuben.’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Desideria, bemused by her questioning. ‘I know he was around when JB was growing up. The Moreaus would vacation on his island.’
‘Cacatra seems like a beautiful place.’
‘Hopefully you’ll never need to go.’ At Lori’s expression, she went on, ‘Cacatra is the finest rehab facility money can buy. Celebrities use it for recovery—pure isolation, no vice, no distraction, nada. Van der Meyde’s got his own stake of nirvana. Who says you can’t buy paradise? Clever guy.’
Up front, Reuben was fidgeting, digging about in his ears and shifting in his seat. He made a marked contrast to the woman on JB’s other side, who sat so immovable and solemn it was as if she were made of wax.
‘He doesn’t look that clever,’ she suggested. ‘He looks like a boy.’
Desideria rested a hand on Lori’s knee. ‘That’s what makes it clever, I suppose.’
Lori watched the back of JB’s head: the dirty-blond hair cut precisely above the collar of his shirt, the angle where the skin below his ear caught the hollow of his jaw.
Who are you? What are you hiding?
Before the lights dimmed, JB took the podium. Lori was aware of Desideria’s hand still on her dress and withdrew under the pretence of crossing her legs. As she did so she exchanged glances with Stevie Speller in the bank opposite. The women smiled at each other.
Silence enveloped the space without needing to be summoned.
JB glowed beneath a single spotbulb. When he dipped his head it emphasised the carve of his features. Lori felt herself opening up to him, a flower to sunlight.
‘When I was a boy,’ he began, his accent hypnotic, ‘my uncle asked me what courage was.’ A beat. ‘I told him what I believed. That it was being brave.’ The quiet was absolute. ‘Yes, he said, but what is being brave? I told him it was when the helpless need our help.’
His words came back to her. I’m not going to hurt you.
‘Like an animal, my uncle prompted, when it’s sick? Yes, I agreed, like that. Even when you are afraid? Even when you don’t know if your help will be enough? Yes, I said. Even then.’
You’re safe with me.
The hush was profound. JB allowed it to stand before continuing.
‘As I grew up, so did the analogy. Animals evolved into people. Sickness became more than disease. It became corruption and sorrow. It became poverty …’
Lori was unable to tear herself from the way his mouth moved as he talked, the scar and the starlit eyes, which in dim surroundings seemed to glow brighter, like something nocturnal. If she could memorise every line, every contour, she could fold it away till later, when she could unravel the image and lay it flat, examine it, savour it, in the only way she knew.
You’ll be all right …
‘And so, too, did courage take on new meaning. Bravery was not as easy as it had been once upon a time, no longer a simple question of rescue or relief. For how can we be sure of the right time to move? How can we be certain our help will be welcomed? Help is only what it means to the person receiving it—in all other ways, a martyr’s illusion.’
I’ll make sure of it …
‘Tonight, while we celebrate, far away in a distant country, ordinary people are forfeiting their lives.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t know it when I was a boy, but that is what courage means truly. It means sacrifice.’
I always will …
‘Help is not an easy thing to give. Courage is not an
easy thing to have. But that does not detract from my certainty that they are the two most important assets we as humans possess. Through the works you are about to see, the feats in invention and creativity, the House of Moreau and its affiliates pledge their allegiance to both. I hope you will join me.’
The audience erupted in applause. JB stepped away. Aside from a short nod of acknowledgement, he remained impassive. He reminded Lori of a stone in a river, water rushing between and around, smooth and solid against the flux.
The show began. Lights drenched the runway. Music thumped, heralding the arrival of the models. Clad in the latest trends, six-foot-tall beauties, men, women and something in between swaggered down the walk. A pose at the end, photographers snapping, those sharp angles of elbows and shoulders and swan-like necks. All the while Lori sought JB’s response—what he was looking at, what interested him; the outfits and models that made him react. She wanted to be up there, having him see her. She wanted him to remember what they had shared, to say to van der Meyde, That’s the girl I met. The one I told you about.
She had to find a way.
Lori didn’t stay long at the after party. She was tired and any hopes she had of talking to JB evaporated when Desideria told her he was dining with sponsors and wouldn’t be around till later. She decided to go back to the hotel—it had been a long day.
Desideria insisted on coming with her. They took a car to the Mirage. Desideria tried to persuade her to indulge in a nightcap, a game of blackjack, but Lori was dead on her feet.
At the door to her suite, the older woman leaned in for an embrace. She smelled of cigarettes and aniseed. Several uncomfortable moments passed before Lori tried to ease her off, but Desideria renewed her hold, pulling their bodies closer till Lori could feel the squash of her breasts against a pair of much flatter, harder ones. Desideria must have felt it too, because she released an involuntary, guttural sound and buried her face in Lori’s neck, swaying slightly.
‘Do you want me to stay?’ she whispered, her breath hot and ragged.
Lori pushed gently. ‘That’s not a good idea.’
‘I know you’re a virgin.’ Without warning Desideria’s hands flew to Lori’s ass and clasped. ‘I know a lot about you, sweetheart. More than I should.’
Lori attempted to wriggle free. ‘I don’t want to offend you. Please …’
‘Then don’t. I can show you things, Loriana. Things a man never could. The moment I met you, I wanted you. Couldn’t you sense it? Forgive me. I can’t help the way I feel. Whenever I see you I want to touch your lips, your beautiful breasts. I want to love you with my mouth and taste you and teach you the things I long for you to know …’
‘No.’ Lori shoved her this time. ‘I don’t have those feelings for you … I’m sorry, I don’t.’ It didn’t matter if it was Rico or Desideria or whoever it was, why couldn’t people take no for an answer? She wasn’t ready. She was a virgin. At least, she hoped she still was. The things she did to herself … they didn’t count, did they? No. She was saving herself.
For who?
For him.
Desideria was hurt. ‘I see.’
‘I like you,’ explained Lori, wondering why she was the one making amends. ‘But not in that way.’
‘I’m not sure what I was thinking,’ responded Desideria tightly.
‘Let’s forget it.’ Lori hoped they could. ‘See you tomorrow?’
‘Sure. Tomorrow.’
Lori closed the door and rested against it. She was aware of the other woman waiting outside, for a minute at least, before her footsteps padded quietly away.
Three a.m. The dead hour.
JB Moreau stood from the bed, looking down at the sleek contours of Arabella Kline’s naked back. Her golden hair was swept across one bronzed shoulder, a white sheet gathered round her waist. Soundly, she dreamed.
They’d had sex for hours, hard and urgent, the release that both of them craved. Only, JB had never been one for sleeping after he fucked. Fucking left him empty, the pointlessness of it once the fact was done. Little existed between him and Arabella, just a concise encounter every now and again that, for all the heat and skin and fervour of the moment, meant, in the lonely hours, nothing at all.
His suite at the Orient Hotel overlooked the Strip. Pulling on a pair of jogging pants and silently sliding the balcony doors, JB stepped outside. He inhaled. At the apex of Vegas’s grandest enterprise, it was possible to see the entire sprawl of Sin City, her vast array of sparkling lights and golden spires and summits. And yet not a soul could see him.
It was the way of his life. Always the observer, never the observed.
The blinking red light of an aeroplane passed across the night sky. JB rested his elbows on the terrace rail and gazed up at a star-pricked dome.
They’d said it about him since he was a child. He was a closed book, a distant ship. Something missing. At first, shy. Later, disconnected. A conversation he’d overheard one summer, when he was back in France on school vacation, hovering unseen by the drawing-room door, his mother and father discussing him in hushed tones while they drank gin cocktails and planned their next party and hadn’t a clue who their only son was.
The boy has no heart.
And people said it again, and again, after the accident. What’s wrong with him? Any other child would be in pieces …
Some time ago, he had started to believe it himself. It was easier to be fixed against the memories of the past. Easier to freeze over. He was missing something, of course, had always missed it, because it had never been given to him.
And there were times, like now, when he was looking over the city and feeling as if this ought to be right, a destination of some kind, that the hollow in JB threatened to consume him entirely. He thought of Lori, so different from the women in his life, those tough, grasping women against whom her innocence shone like dawn. She drew him, had drawn him ever since the first time he’d laid eyes on her at the San Pedro harbour with her boyfriend. It was her goodness, her kindness, for he had watched her for weeks and come to know the hardships she faced, and in a lifetime of building walls he had begun, piece by piece, to dismantle.
Little wonder he had given in to temptation. It was impossible to forget the way she had kissed him that day, her eyes like the ocean, a blink and he was beneath the surface, treading water, leagues of silence underfoot. Peace.
Despite the inconceivability of their situation, how he could never have her, not in this lifetime or the next, JB knew he could not have abandoned her that day. Vulnerable, a girl.
Look what had happened the last time he had done that.
25
Aurora
Aurora and Pascale arrived at Gare du Nord in Paris early Friday evening. Aurora was tipsy after the champagne Pascale had insisted on getting on the Eurostar (a little inappropriately, she thought), nevertheless it was probably better that way. Whenever she remembered the reason she was here, the A-word, she felt even sicker than normal. She was unable to address her fears with Pascale: Pascale had undergone two of these things in the past—what was the big deal?
Arnaud and Gisele Devereux had sent their chauffeur, a hot young Parisian called Alex, to pick them up. Pascale clearly knew Alex well and nattered away in French as they sped to the couple’s apartment in Montmartre.
Aurora was accustomed to luxury, but only of a certain type. She had grown up around money, lots of it, and all the shiny wonderful things it could buy. But she hadn’t grown up around sophistication, or taste, or, dare she say it, class, and when those things were combined with cash, the results were potent. Pascale’s parents lived in a converted penthouse at the very top of one of Montmartre’s oldest buildings. The apartment was enormous. It was filled with art. You could see the whole of Paris from an oval window: the glittering spike of the Eiffel Tower, the twin columns of Notre Dame and the silky twist of the Seine.
Alex noticed Aurora’s expression. ‘C ‘est jolie, n’est-ce-pas?’
Aurora
didn’t know what he was on about, though she did know that Angelina Jolie’s surname meant ‘pretty’.
‘Yeah … très.’
‘A bientôt!’ Pascale called to Alex when he left. She turned to Aurora and snorted unkindly. ‘“Très”? You’re going to have to do better than that. There’s nothing worse than an American who can’t be bothered to speak the language.’ She padded into the kitchen and pulled open the fridge. It was less of a fridge and more of a chilled room, wall-to-wall filled with supplies, from bottles upon bottles of Veuve Clicquot to little jars of cornichons and caviar. ‘My parents will fully expect you to know the basics.’
Aurora was horrified. She tried to play it cool, though secretly she was shitting it about meeting the fearsome Devereux couple. No doubt they were out right now with the president or something. (Did France have a president? Or was that a prime minister? She wasn’t sure.)
‘What, like oui and non?’ Her accent was dreadful. ‘And sieve-oo-play?’
‘I wasn’t going to turn up in England not speaking a word, was I?’ Pascale grabbed a couple of glasses and popped open yet another bottle of champagne. ‘It’s a courtesy.’
‘I suppose.’
‘Anyway.’ Pascale lit a cigarette. ‘You’ll get the hang of it. Want one?’
Aurora was shown to one of the guest bedrooms, a pearly-pink princess of a room complete with golden candelabra and a four-poster bed. She had visited Paris with her parents before, ages ago when they’d been on tour in Europe, but she’d been holed up in a hotel for most of it eating novelty French chips out of a bucket and watching MTV. Tom and Sherilyn had spent the whole trip sniping, as if actually having to spend that much time in each other’s company was too much for either of them, and the only mitigation had been Tom taking her to EuroDisney on their last weekend. Needless to say, her mom hadn’t come.
Now, as Aurora explored the costly antique furnishings and claw-footed tub in the bathroom, she wondered how people knew where to get this stuff. It was, like, easy enough to spend money on cars and shoes and what everyone said you ought to have, but these things came from someone’s personality. And that personality was elegant, refined … all the things she, and her own family, weren’t.