And when he went upstairs, he glanced around the empty room, and felt suddenly anxious. The temptation to call Suchard was great again, but this time he resisted. He called Katie instead, but when he dialed, all he got was the answering machine again. It was noon in Connecticut, and he figured she was out to lunch, and God only knew where the boys were.
Mike and Paul should have been home from school by then, Patrick had never left, and in another week or so, Katie would be moving everyone to the Vineyard. Peter would stay in town and work, and join them on weekends, as he always did, and then he'd spend his four-week vacation with them in August. Frank was taking July and August off that year, and Katie was planning a big Fourth of July barbecue to open the season.
“Sorry I missed you,” he said to the machine, feeling foolish. He hated talking to electronics. “The time difference makes it difficult. Ill call you later…bye …oh …it's Peter.” He grinned, and hung up, wishing he hadn't sounded so stupid. The answering machine always made him feel awkward. “Captain of industry unable to speak to answering machine,” he said, making fun of himself, as he sprawled across the settee in the peach satin room and looked around him, trying to decide what to do for dinner. He had the option to go to a bistro nearby, or to stay at the hotel and eat in the dining room, or stay in his room, order room service, watch CNN, and work on his computer. In the end, he opted for the last choice. It was the simplest.
He took off his jacket and his tie, and rolled his immaculate shirtsleeves up. He was one of those people who still looked impeccable at the end of the day, not just at the beginning. His sons teased him about it, and claimed he had been born wearing a tie, which made him laugh, remembering his youth in Wisconsin. He would have liked some of that for them, and a little less Greenwich, Connecticut, and Martha's Vineyard. But Wisconsin was far, far behind him. With both his parents and his sister long gone, he had no reason to go there. He still thought of Muriel's children in Montana at times, but somehow, by now it seemed too late to try to make contact. They were almost grown up, and they wouldn't even know him. Katie was right. It was too late now.
There was nothing interesting on the news that night, and he got engrossed in his work as the night wore on. He was surprised by how good the dinner was, but much to the waiter's chagrin, he didn't pay much attention. They set it up beautifully, but he set the laptop on the table next to him, and went right on working.
'Yous devriez sortir, monsieur” the waiter said. “You should go out.” It was a beautiful night, and the city looked exquisite beneath a full moon, but Peter forced himself not to pay attention.
He promised himself another late night swim, as a reward, when he was through, and he was just thinking about it at eleven o'clock when he heard a persistent beeping sound, and wondered if it was the radio, or the television, or perhaps something had gone wrong in the computer next to his bedside. There was a nagging bell and a high-pitched whine, and finally, confused about what it was, he opened the door into the hall, and discovered instantly that with the door open, it grew louder. Other guests were looking into the hall as well, and some of them looked worried and frightened.
“Feu?' “Fire?” he asked a bellboy hurrying by, and he looked back at Peter with uncertainty, and barely stopped to answer.
“C'est peut-être une incendie, monsieur,” which told Peter that it could be. No one seemed to be sure, but it was definitely an alarm of some kind, and more and more people began emptying into the hallways. And then suddenly it seemed as though the entire staff of the hotel sprang into action. Bellmen, captains, waiters, maids, the gouvernante for their floor, housekeepers of all kinds walked sedately but quickly through the floors, knocking on doors, ringing bells, and urging everyone to come outside as quickly as possible, and non, non, madame, please do not change your gown, that will be fine. The gouvernante was handing out robes, and bellboys were carrying small bags, and helping women with their dogs. No explanation had been offered yet, but they were all told that everyone had to evacuate at once, without delaying for an instant.
Peter hesitated, wondering if he should take his laptop with him, but then just as quickly decided to leave it. He had no company secrets on it, just a lot of notes and information and correspondence that he needed to take care of. In a way, it was almost a relief to leave it. He didn't even bother to put his jacket back on, he just put his wallet and his passport into his pants pocket, and took his room key, and then hurried downstairs between Japanese ladies in hastily donned Gucci and Dior, a huge American family “escaping” from the second floor, several Arab women in extraordinary jewels, a handful of handsome Germans pushing ahead of everyone down the stairs, and a flock of miniature Yorkshire terriers and French poodles.
There was something wonderfully comical about all of it, and Peter couldn't help smiling to himself as he made his way quietly downstairs, trying not to think of the comparison with the Titanic. The Ritz was hardly sinking.
And all along their path they were met by personnel of the hotel, helping, reassuring, giving a hand where necessary, greeting everyone, and apologizing for the inconvenience. But still no one had mentioned exactly why all of it had occurred, if it was due to a fire, a false alarm, or some other grave threat to the guests of the hotel. But once they made their way past the well-filled vitrines, through the lobby, and out into the street, Peter saw that the CRS troops were there, fully dressed and armed and shielded. They were roughly the equivalent of an American SWAT team, and seeing King Khaled and his group quickly spirited away in government cars suggested to Peter that it was perhaps a bomb scare. There were two well-known French actresses there as well, with “friends,” an amazing assortment of older men with young girls, and Clint Eastwood was there in jeans and a T-shirt, having just come in from shooting. By the time the entire hotel had vacated all its rooms, it was nearly midnight. But it was impressive to see how quickly it had been done, how sanely, and how safely. The hotel staff had done a masterful job of shepherding its guests into the Place Vendome and now, at a safe distance, they were setting up rolling tables with little pastries and coffee, and for those who felt in need of it, there was stronger drink too. It would have been almost fun, if it hadn't been so late and wasn't so inconvenient, and there wasn't the faint aura of danger around them.
“There goes my late night swim,” Peter said to Clint Eastwood as they stood side by side, looking up at the hotel, checking for smoke, but there was none. The CRS had gone inside ten minutes before to look for bombs. Apparently, the management had gotten a call that there was a live one.
“There goes my sleep,” the actor said mournfully. “I have a four A.M. call tomorrow. This could take a long time, if they're looking for a bomb.” He was thinking of sleeping on the set, but the other guests did not have that option. They just stood on the street, still somewhat amazed, as they clutched their pets, their friends, and their little leather cases filled with jewelry.
And as Peter watched another wave of CRS troops go in, and followed the order himself to move farther back from the hotel, he turned and suddenly saw her. He spotted Andy Thatcher, surrounded, as usual, by hangers-on and bodyguards, and looking completely unconcerned by the commotion. He was continuing an animated conversation with the people around him, all, save one, were men, and the lone woman in the group looked like a political bulldog. She was smoking furiously, and Thatcher looked engrossed in what she was saying. But Peter noticed that Olivia was standing just beyond the group, and no one was speaking to her. They paid no attention to her at all, as he watched her with his customary fascination. She stood off to one side, ignored even by the bodyguards, as she sipped a cup of the hotel's coffee. She was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, and he thought that she looked like a kid in a pair of penny loafers, and the eyes that had so mesmerized him seemed to be taking in the whole scene, as her husband and his group moved slowly forward. Thatcher and one of his men talked to several of the CRS troops, but they only shook their heads. They had not yet found w
hat they had come for. Someone brought out folding chairs, and waiters offered them to the guests, as wine was brought out too, and people stayed in surprisingly good temper about the inconvenience. It was slowly becoming a late night street party in the Place Vendome. And in spite of himself, Peter continued to watch Olivia Thatcher with interest.
She seemed to have drifted even farther from her group after a while, and even the bodyguards seemed to have lost track of her and paid no attention whatsoever to her. And the senator had had his back to her ever since they'd come out of the hotel, he never spoke to her once, as he and his entourage settled into chairs, and Olivia moved even farther to the rear of the several hundred guests in the Place Vendome to get another cup of coffee. She looked quite peaceful standing there, and didn't seem in the least bothered that her husband's entire party ignored her. And as he looked at her, standing there, Peter was more and more fascinated, and couldn't help staring.
She offered an elderly American woman a chair, and patted a little dog, and eventually set her empty cup back on a table. A waiter offered Olivia another cup, but she smiled and shook her head graciously as she declined it. There was something wonderfully gentle and luminous about her, as though she had just drifted to earth and were really an angel. It was hard for Peter to accept the fact now that she was just a woman. She looked too peaceful, too gentle, too perfect, too mysterious, and when people came too close to her, too frightened. She was obviously ill at ease under close scrutiny, and she seemed happiest when no one was paying attention to her, which no one was that night. She was so unpretentiously dressed, and so unassuming standing there, that even the Americans in the crowd didn't recognize her, although they had seen her hundreds of times in every newspaper and magazine in the country. She had been every paparazzi's dream for years, as they leapt out at her, and caught her unprepared, particularly in the years when she had been with her sick and dying child. But even now, she intrigued them, as something of a legend, and a kind of martyr.
And as Peter watched her continually, he couldn't help noticing that she was drifting farther and farther back, behind the other guests, and he actually had to strain now to see her. He wondered if there was a reason for it, or if she had just moved back there without thinking. She was far from her husband and his entourage by then, and they couldn't have seen her at all, unless they moved back themselves and tried to find her. More guests had returned to the hotel, from late night restaurants or nightclubs like Chez Castel, or simply from dinners with friends, or the theater. And gawkers had come to see what was happening. The whispers in the crowd blamed it all on King Khaled. There was an important British minister in the hotel too, and there had been a rumor that it could have been the IRA, but someone had supposedly planted a bomb, or said they had, and by order of the police, no one was going back into the hotel until the CRS found it.
It was well after midnight, and Eastwood had long since left to sleep in his trailer on the set. He wasn't going to waste the next few hours standing in the Place Vendome, waiting around until morning. And as Peter glanced around he noticed Olivia Thatcher slowly move away entirely from the guests of the hotel, and drift nonchalantly to the other side of the square. She had turned her back on the people standing there, and then suddenly she seemed to be walking smoothly and swiftly toward the corner. And he couldn't help wondering where she was going. He looked to see if she had a bodyguard in tow, he was sure that if anyone knew what she was doing, they would have sent one. But she was clearly on her own, as she began to hurry, and she never once glanced over her shoulder. He couldn't take his eyes off her, and without thinking, he moved away from the crowd himself and began to follow her to the corner of the Place Vendome. There was so much activity outside the hotel, and spilling everywhere, that it appeared that no one had seen either of them leaving. What Peter didn't realize was that for a few steps at least, a man was following him, but at the sound of a flurry in the square, he lost interest and hurried back to the heart of the action, where two well-known fashion models had put a CD player on and had started dancing with each other, in front of a nervous-looking CRS. CNN had arrived by then, and they were in the process of interviewing Senator Thatcher about his views on terrorists abroad and at home, and he told them in no uncertain terms how he felt about it. In view of what had happened to his brother nearly six years previously, he was particularly unsympathetic to this land of nonsense. He gave a rousing little speech, and the people around him who heard applauded him when it was over, and then the CNN crew went on to interview some of the others. Interestingly, they never asked to speak to his wife, they felt that the senator had obviously spoken for both Thatchers, and then the crew hurried over to the dancing models and interviewed them right after Andy. They said they thought the evening was great fun, and it should happen at the Ritz more often. They were staying in the hotel for a three-day shoot for Harpers Bazaar, and they both said they loved Paris. Then they sang a little song, and did a mock soft-shoe in the Place Vendome. It was a lively group, and despite the possible danger presented by the missing bomb, it was a festive night.
But Peter was far from all of it by then, as he followed the senator's wife around the corner and out of the Place Vendome. She seemed to know where she was going, and she didn't hesitate for a moment. She just kept walking. She walked at a good clip, and Peter took long strides to keep up with her, but he let her keep ahead, and he had no idea what he would say to her, if she stopped and turned around, and asked him what he was doing. He had no idea what he was doing, or why. He just knew that he had to be there. He had been compelled to follow her from the Place Vendome, and he told himself he wanted to be sure she was safe at that hour of the night, but he had no idea at all why he seemed to feel he should be the one to do that.
He was amazed when she walked all the way to the Place de la Concorde, and then stood there, smiling to herself, as she looked at the fountains, with the Eiffel Tower lit up in the distance. There was an old bum sitting there, and a young man strolling by, and two couples kissing, but no one paid any attention to her, and she looked so happy as she stood there. It made him want to go over and put an arm around her, and look at the fountains with her. But instead, he just stood at a polite distance from her, smiling at her. And then much to his astonishment, she glanced over at him, and there were questions in her eyes. It was as though she knew suddenly that he was there, and why, but she still felt he owed her an explanation. Clearly, he had followed her, and she looked neither angry nor panicked, and much to his embarrassment, she turned and walked slowly toward him. She knew who he was, she had recognized him as the man from the pool the night before, but he blushed in the darkness as she came toward him.
“Are you a photographer?” She looked up at him and asked very quietly. She looked very vulnerable and suddenly very sad. It had happened to her before, a thousand times, a million, ad nauseam and infinitum. Photographers followed her everywhere, and felt victorious each time they robbed her of a private moment. She was accustomed to it now, she didn't like it but she accepted it as part of her life.
But he shook his head, having glimpsed how she felt, and he was sorry to have intruded. “No, I'm not…. I'm sorry … I … I just wanted to be sure you …It's very late.” And then suddenly, looking down at her, he felt less embarrassed and more protective. She was so incredible and so delicate. He had never met anyone like her. “You shouldn't walk around alone so late at night, it's dangerous.” She glanced at the young man and the old clochard, and she shrugged, looking up at him with interest.
“Why were you following me?” She asked it very directly, and the brown velvet eyes were so soft as she looked at him that he wished he could reach out and touch her face.
“I … I don't know,” he said honestly. “Curiosity …chivalry …fascination …foolishness …stupidity …” He wanted to tell her that he was overwhelmed by her beauty, but he couldn't. “I wanted to be sure you were all right,“ And then he decided to be direct with her. The circumst
ances were unusual, and she looked like the kind of person you could be straight with. “You just walked away, didn't you? They don't know you're gone, do they?” Or perhaps they did by now, and were scurrying everywhere, but she didn't really care and she looked it. She looked like a mischievous child as she looked up at him. He had seen what she did, and she knew it.
“They'll probably never know the difference,” she said honestly, looking unremorseful, but surprisingly full of mischief. Even from what he had seen, she was truly the forgotten woman. No one in her group ever paid any attention to her, or spoke to her, not even her husband. “I had to get away. Sometimes it's very oppressive to be … in my shoes.” She looked up at him, not sure if he had recognized her, and if not, she didn't want to spoil it.
“All shoes are oppressive sometimes,” he said philosophically. His were too at times, but he knew that hers were far more so. And then he looked down at her sympathetically again. Since he had come this far after her, there was no harm in going a little further. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” It was an old line, and they both smiled, and she hesitated for a long moment while she tried to decide if he meant it, or was just being funny, and he saw her hesitation, and smiled warmly. “It was a sincere offer. I'm relatively well behaved, and can at least be trusted for a cup of coffee. I'd suggest my hotel, but they seem to be having a problem.”
She laughed at that, and seemed to relax as she watched him. She knew him from the hotel, in the elevator and at the pool. He was wearing an expensive shirt and it looked clean, and he was wearing suit trousers and good shoes. And something in his eyes told her that he was both respectable and kind, and she nodded. “I'd like a cup of coffee, but not at your hotel,” she said primly, “it's a little too busy for me tonight. How about Montmartre?” she said cautiously, and he grinned. He liked the suggestion.
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