by A. R. Taylor
On the drive to his studio, Matthieu swore and muttered to himself, shaking his pipe out over the side of the open window, glowering at the landscape. “Bâtard.” He seemed very unhappy about something, enraged almost, but Jenna asked him nothing.
FOUR
Because of her sort-of job, Jenna had given up on the endless breakfast ritual at her hotel and had taken to having café au lait and a pain au chocolat at the tiny coffee bar in Fère-en-Tardenois. This was her major pleasure in life, along with surfing her way through France on a wave of butter, cheese, and wine. She found the early morning swishing and squirting sounds of the coffee machines comforting—the smell transported her, and since she had become a regular, the thirty or so odd men and women who frequented the place barely looked up now whenever she appeared. They were mostly shopkeepers, a few local farmers, a lawyer or two, and many of them liked to smoke, so the misty, pungent ambience fit her cloudy state of mind. As she nibbled on her pastry, contemplating the milky coffee in her cup, she noticed the back of a youngish man standing at the bar, looking almost nattily, if casually, dressed. That back looked familiar. Could she possibly know anyone here? She turned her chair slightly away toward the window, not wanting to show her face to anyone from the outside world. It was cold, really cold this morning, and the grass across from the road had frozen solid. It would probably be cold in Legard’s studio, so she had worn a thick sweater under her coat, just in case.
As she began to pull on all her layers, a hand tapped her on the shoulder. She started. In this current life not that many people touched her at all. She turned her head, and there stood Inti Weill. She couldn’t breathe and didn’t know what to do, and after a moment, rose to leave, knocking against the table. Inti gently pushed her back down into her chair.
“Stop that!” Jenna cried out, and now those who watched were concerned and whispered. Rather than make a scene by racing out, Jenna faced him, motioning him to sit down.
Awkwardly he saluted her with his own cup of coffee and the collective onlookers seemed to relax, no drama after all, and they returned to their newspapers. “What the hell?” he finally managed to get out, apparently as astonished as she was. “I didn’t recognize you at first, but no one else has that perfect skin.”
“What the hell indeed? How did you find me?” She burned her tongue on a big gulp of coffee.
“I didn’t find you. You found me by walking into this café.” He rubbed his forehead with his napkin, flustered.
For a moment Jenna registered anew the wonderful looks of this man, his dark shining eyes, his Roman nose, and the soft, almost fleshy cheeks. He looked like an Arab or someone from the Middle East, with his black hair curling at his ears. He seemed to her larger physically than when she had encountered him in New York, slightly heavier but also muscled up, at least from what she could see of his body. “You mean you just happened to be wandering around the French countryside in the nasty month of March and chanced upon me?”
“After what you were up to in New York, it may appear that this great big world is all about you, but in fact I was interviewing a French count and trying to get a look at his paintings.”
“That was you?”
“What was me?”
“The guy walking up the count’s steps.”
“I’m following a story, and I work for the New York Times now, just the regional section, but still.” He felt proud but also a bit stupid and boastful in front of her.
“Oh my god, the Times. And what story would that be?”
“I can’t tell you. It’s an undercover sort of thing.”
Jenna looked around the smoke-filled café, suddenly wondering who or what else was about to come upon her. She had no words for this man, certainly no explanation. At last she muttered, “It’s hard for me to think about what happened in New York.”
“I’ll bet it is.” Inti sounded sardonic and angry. Around them the men and women began to head off to work. “Want to tell me what you were doing at the count’s house?”
“I’m learning how to be an art restorer.”
“Out in Bumblefuck with that old man?” “That old man” came out too loudly.
“He’s not an old man,” but then she blushed at the other older man who had once occupied her life. “Anyway, now you just magically show up here.”
“The whole world doesn’t follow you around, you know. It’s all forgotten, disappeared, your own private drama, or maybe I should say very, very public. They must have put a lid on it, somehow, one of the few families in the world who can actually do that. And what’s with the hair? I would barely have recognized you.”
“Just, I don’t know, a bit of a change. I don’t like to think about it.”
“I’ll bet you don’t.”
At this Jenna stood, grabbing her scarf and wrapping it around her neck. Outside, she ran to her car and drove way too fast over the hills and across the empty, winding road. The lawyer had discussed with her how to handle any potential meeting with someone who might recognize her and had counseled her the way one would an alcoholic: “Never get too tired or too lonely or too hungry. Then you’ll be unable to resist the urge to talk.” She hadn’t talked. But how had she agreed to this fantastic subterfuge? She, who couldn’t tell a lie to save herself. And this young man had been a prospective lover, maybe was even a lover still.
In fact, she still couldn’t accept what she had actually done, and she could feel herself pick and pry at this wound until she bled out. Was it purely for money? She had never even been that interested in money. Her grandmother, a school cafeteria worker, had considered rich people exactly like poor people except they had a wider field for bad behavior, and whether rich or poor, they all came to the same end. Jenna had tried hard to block out the face of the heavy, very dead Vincent Hull on top of her, but now, thinking of her grandmother in her own beautiful deathly repose, the whole awful scene came back to her. Whatever his motives, though, she presumed Inti would just leave the area once his story was finished, but she checked carefully every time she went to Monsieur Legard’s studio. She didn’t want to be ambushed again.
No, the “Here I am out of the blue” journalist didn’t turn up at the café again either, but to her horror he appeared at her own hotel three days later. She was eating yet another scrumptious breakfast in that intimidating dining room, when she saw Inti’s face as he passed by the giant urn of flowers in the lobby. No time to flee. He sauntered up to the table, and the ever-present waiter simply pulled out a chair. “How did you get in here?”
“I just walked right in. Apparently if you can find the place, you must be a guest because nobody in reception even looked up. Un café, s’il vous plaît,” he said to the waiter.
Jenna broke off a piece of her chocolaty croissant, dipping it into the warm coffee. “I’ve gotten used to deliciousness every single morning.” She watched his face carefully. His brown eyes, animated, curious, too curious, no doubt, surveyed her. “You know,” she said, “you have some inner core of happiness, a quietness you hold onto. Not self-involved the way all those other manic writers were in New York.”
“Thank you,” he smiled and lit up like a youngster.
“Everything French is delicious, I’m convinced of it. I have to get out of here before I get too fat. So why are you visiting me today?”
“To find out why you’re here.”
“I live here.”
“On what?” Inti tried not to strike a prosecutorial note with her, though he felt bitter that she’d been sleeping with the older man, and very very angry. He couldn’t even count the number of lies she must have told him. “You live in this incredibly expensive hotel, out in the middle of nowhere. It doesn’t compute. Oh wait, I guess it does. The mistress gets a pay-off. Am I close? And now you’re in hiding. That explains the whole hair change and general new look, less Fairyland, more French.”
“Fairyland was what I looked like then? What the hell? Anyway, ‘a change is as good as a rest.’ Just
ask my granny, she’ll tell you that, well, she would tell you that if she were alive.” Jenna sighed. “I’ve taken up art restoration, and I study with Monsieur Legard. He feels I have an eye, as you said.”
“Not exactly a world famous art restorer.”
“How do you know?” She sipped her coffee.
Inti Weill shrugged his shoulders and swiveled his head around, surveying the grandiose room they inhabited. Only two other guests sat at the far corner. “I know things. It’s a gift. But you’re right, you do have an eye. I brought along more of your coyote shots.” He reached for his backpack. “The whole story was, and in some ways still is, important. Coyotes are the secret watchers of all of us.” He tried to hand her the newspaper clippings.
“I’ve seen them already.” Jenna stood up. “I have to get to the studio.”
“Don’t leave me.” Inti jumped up to follow her out into the lobby. “Please, I’m sorry. I’m a snooper. I can dial this giant brain down any time I want.”
“Maybe you should just turn it off altogether.”
“Have dinner with me tonight. There’s a cool little restaurant in Fère-en-Tardenois. I’ve gotten to know the owners.”
She turned to appraise him now and was startled at the sudden, visceral reaction she had to his smile, his person, his deep attractiveness. “Yes, let’s do that.”
Later that day, working on a sliver of canvas, she tried to rationalize why she’d agreed to the date. She had lived alone now at a hotel for almost five months, as if on perpetual vacation. The guests changed every three or four days, small families, big families, and the current residents included two silent Czechs who often sat stolidly lapping up Champagne, also a single elderly male who spoke Spanish but turned out to be from Argentina. He had been gracious to her. Most of the other guests ignored her existence. A quantity of Germans, several Austrians, one of whom suggested she move to Vienna, visited as well. She had become a fixture of the place, along with the employees. It was so odd that she thought of moving, but then there was only one small pension nearby, and it would have been horrible living as the lone long-term resident in such a tiny place.
Months had gone by, and here she stayed, a friend to maids and bellmen, very friendly with the man at the front desk, who seemed to pity her. Whenever new guests showed up, he watched Jenna as she peered out of the immense windows to get a look, as if she were waiting for someone in particular. She was not, instead just making up stories in her head about who they were and why they had come to this particular hotel. Soon enough she would have to shrug off this paralysis and decide where and how to live. The first step would be to recognize herself as a lively, healthy young woman wanting everything young women need. She wasn’t some old dowager with piles of dough. Yes, that’s why she’d said yes to Inti, despite the danger.
FIVE
Inti and Jenna were to meet at La Courte Échelle, a tiny restaurant up a narrow street in Fère-en-Tardenois, everything about it absurdly small, at least by New York standards, but the life therein was personal and known to all, not unlike where Jenna had grown up in northeast Ohio. On this frigid evening, she had trouble parking her Renault, so finally she just pulled it up on the sidewalk the way every other resident did when pressed. She had to steady herself as she got out, to pull down her skirt and straighten her sweater, which was now one of an astonishing number. When she actually had the energy to shop, there was no place to do so unless she travelled to Reims, and so with map in hand, careening about on the small roads, she bought the best because she could. Happily, the price no longer filtered through her brain like an accusation of her own worthlessness, as money meant nothing to her now, and there was nobody to stop her.
In the glittering light of white candles and the pungent scent of beef simmering and potatoes roasting, Inti waited for her, sipping a glass of red wine. He wore dark pants and a well-cut sport jacket and looked to her so much older than when she had known him in New York. This dangerous activity of hers had ratcheted up the naughty effect, and she felt a slight glow begin to warm her. He too seemed genuinely affected and wanted to please her that evening, but their secrets floated about like unwieldy phantoms. In simpler times Jenna had been a stranger to self-hatred, but now it plagued her, especially at night when, unable to fall asleep, all she could remember was that startled picture of herself on the front of the New York Post. Now she had changed her appearance, drastically she thought, but Inti had recognized her right away. She worried over this and drank more red wine than she should. For a long time neither of them spoke.
At last Inti tipped his glass to her. “Thank you again for the photographs. They were very good. Because of the story I got a job at The New York Times.”
Uh-oh, her nemesis, the nation’s paper of record, with her ridiculous face on page four, messy hair, the look of idiot-girl at the scene of a crime. “I don’t like them.”
“At the moment I’m not sure I like them either. They’ve got me running all over the state, ‘Regional section,’ that’s me. But the coyote stuff, it made a sensation. Did you know the Navajos called them God’s dog?”
“Alas, no.” She decided to take a breath.
“They exist everywhere in the United States, but they’re like ghosts. If you see one, you’ll know that maybe two thousand are there, even in New York City.”
“Like me. I’m a ghost, but God had nothing to do with it.”
Inti stared down into his wine. “I gave you a credit for the photos. Just J. McCann for the Rye Register.” Jenna made a face and looked around as if someone from the press, other than the man she sat across from, could be stalking her right now. “Don’t worry, no one reads the photo credits.”
“I’ve never even noticed them.”
“What are your plans?” he said. “You look so different.”
“I’m giving myself the opportunity to figure this all out.”
“Obviously you’re not starving to death.”
Here was a subject she knew would come up, but she could reveal very little. “It wasn’t what you thought.”
“Really?”
“I can’t talk about it.”
“Or you won’t?”
“Either way.”
“Frankly, Hull was famous for his general rutting in the bins of NewsLink. One girl, in advertising I think, a real bombshell, curvy, not too bright, he paid her a year’s salary after the affair was over. Told her to go save the rain forest or something. Everybody knew about it.” But at once Inti flushed at his own meanness, wanting to take it all back, especially when he saw Jenna tear up. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what—”
“You think he picked me out of a bin?” She stood up and grabbed her coat off the back of her chair. “Now I know why I’m in France.”
Outside, stars shown through the heavy, lowering clouds, and ice tipped the trees, bending them toward the ground. Though they’d had a fight of sorts, Inti followed her out of the restaurant, and the two kept walking together, wandering nowhere at all, just around, until at last he put his arm through hers. “Really, please forgive me. I felt dumped, an unusual occurrence,” he said, looking embarrassed. “It was good for me, in a way.”
They passed by a small pharmacy with gold lettering on the front window, J. Fournier. “That man gave me a bottle of his special, homemade perfume.” She had dabbed a bit on her wrists this evening and held one up for him to smell.
“Very nice.” Just as she told Inti about this gift he bent down and reached for her, kissing her softly on her beautiful mouth. Afterwards, with no urgency but also no hesitation, they walked to his little hotel, the lopsided stucco pension. The night clerk didn’t even look up as the two Americans climbed the stairs.
His room was small but cozy, and a fire had been lit in the grate. “This is actually a suite, as you can see, a hot plate, a table big enough for two mice, big enough if those mice have a close relationship. And Champagne. We have all we’ll ever need.” Jenna laughed but stopped the minute she saw
the bottle he pulled from the fridge. “Veuve Clicquot, the best, I think. I’ve been making a study of Champagne around here. It’s purely personal, of course, but I bring to it a certain journalistic fervor.”
Immediately she was on her guard. Was this some sort of signal? Had he sent her the bottle of that very same Champagne that stood on the desk in her own, much more sumptuous suite? “How do you know about this Champagne?”
“Everyone knows about it. It’s not a secret.”
“Were you really at the count’s just to do an article on the French aristocracy? Why would anyone care about him in the greater New York region?”
Inti popped the cork expertly, with little more than a snap of his hand. “Can you keep a secret?”
She stared at him a moment, and then they both broke into laughter. “I’m trying to, but I’m not really cut out for secrecy.”
“I was there to check out his art. There was a robbery of two important paintings in Tarrytown, and it involved the collection of a big deal hedge fund guy, so I coaxed, well, exaggerated, or maybe just lied to my editor, even paid my own airfare, just to get here. After all, keeping our captains of industry happy can be a full-time job, even for a guy as low as me on the totem pole.” Inti blushed at the implications of his speech. “Damn, every time I say something, it comes out wrong. Maybe I just wanted to get out of town, since everything reminded me of you and what had happened. I couldn’t figure it all out.”
“What would the count have to do with it?”
“Certain associations. I have my sources, you know.” He leaned in and put his warm hand on hers. “If somehow they made their way here, it’s a story.”
“And are they here?”
“I don’t want to commit myself right away, not being an expert, and I only saw one of them, but it certainly looked like the picture in a photo the owner sent me.”