Now that he had a clear head, he tried to think calmly. What could have happened to her? Jet lag? She went to the hotel during the operation to take a nap? That didn’t seem likely. Not for so long. Another hypothesis: she was holing herself up because she was afraid of the result. Wasn’t it normal that she would be afraid? After all, it was she and only she who had made him submit to this operation…That wasn’t likely either. She had seen Miller, who had told her that the operation had been a success.
So?
Claudio was worried about Laura. What if she had had an accident in this city that she didn’t know? If she had been attacked in Central Park? He should have warned her. He could have kicked himself.
As soon as breakfast was over, he would ask someone to call her cell phone. Why hadn’t he brought his own?
Meanwhile she was spoiling his joy. When Miller had raised his eyelid, when he had left his prison, it was she whom he had wanted first to see.
To thank her, that coward.
A noise at the door startled him. He raised his eyes.
David was there.
David May would never forget this moment: Claudio sitting up in bed, a piece of bread and butter in his hand. Claudio, who recognized him, yes, who recognized him, and winked at him.
The most beautiful wink in the world.
David would always remember the light that returned to this face that he had too quickly accepted as dimmed. A light that was accompanied by an incredible smile.
“What are you doing here?”
David put down his bag, went to his singer, and hugged him, unable to speak, choked with emotion. Then he took his glasses off and put them back on to be sure he was not dreaming: the eye was shining, mischievous, barely red.
“You see, Claudio, you see.”
“So it seems,” Claudio joked. “And you? What miracle brings you to New York?”
“The Laura miracle,” David said. “She called me yesterday after the operation to tell me the good news and to ask me to come over right away.”
“Laura?” Claudio started. His face closed. “She asked you to come?”
“Actually, she ordered me.”
David remembered her voice, her cry: He’s going to see, David. He’s going to see! You must come right away!
And she had hung up.
Since when did David take orders from a little girl?
He had taken the first Concorde and had come directly to the clinic.
“I don’t know where she went,” Claudio said to him anxiously. “I haven’t seen her since I entered the operating room yesterday. Disappeared; taken off. I was too out of it to call her. Please call her. Now.”
His voice was pleading. Worry suddenly flooded David’s chest. Hadn’t he tried to contact Laura several times after her ultimatum? In vain. And the messages he’d left remained unanswered.
He took his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed her number again. Then he hung up.
“She doesn’t answer.”
“Call the Pierre,” Claudio ordered.
“I’m going to do better; I’m going over there,” David decided, gripped by a sudden foreboding.
“Good idea. And bring her to me by the scruff of her neck. What is she thinking? I need her.”
Claudio’s voice broke up.
He won’t need you anymore…
The words that David had spoken to Laura not even a week ago. Even so, she wouldn’t…
He forced a laugh.
“Do I have authorization to stay three more minutes to admire the miracle? Have you forgotten that I’ve come a few miles to do that?”
Claudio laughed. He hailed a clinic employee and asked for another cup. “For my best friend.” His voice had also changed: more clear, more colorful. As you will sing, David said to himself.
When the cup arrived, Claudio pointed to the Thermos on the tray. “Coffee?” Then the basketful of rolls and pastries. “Roll, raisin Danish, brioche?”
Once David was served, Claudio made a ring of his fingers and put his hand up to the eye that was operated on, as though he were looking through a telescope.
“Now I will tell you about the moon.”
25.
David May always returned to the Pierre with pleasure: its kitsch décor, an atmosphere more intimate than that found in the big, anonymous hotels where he usually stayed, and a personalized welcome. Wasn’t he the agent of the celebrated tenor?
At ten o’clock in the morning, the reception area was buzzing with departures and arrivals. As he was in his own life: in perpetual motion. With, however, one home port: Claudio.
Claudio hadn’t been yet twenty when they met. Very quickly he had attached himself to this lost little boy in whom he discovered, at an audition at a Paris music school, a serious talent. A voice full of promise that hadn’t yet found its true register, a mix of fire and hesitation, roughness and gentleness. Song was part of Claudio. It was Claudio, but Claudio still didn’t want to admit it: music demanded an undivided commitment. Never wanting to be tough with him, David had helped him to accept his gift. The two, as it were, had never been apart.
Not father, not husband, not son, was how he had described himself to Laura.
There was no doubt that he looked for a son to adopt. At least Claudio didn’t represent the man he would have liked to be.
He went straight to the reception desk and shook the clerk’s hand.
“We were waiting for you, Mr. May,” he said warmly. “Miss Vincent alerted us about your arrival.”
He was taken aback for several seconds.
“She alerted you? Where is she?”
This time the clerk seemed to be the one taken aback.
“She left for Paris late yesterday.”
“Of course…” murmured David.
Disappeared, taken off. Since Claudio had spoken those words, he had imagined something like that; still, it hit him hard.
“Do you know which flight she took?”
The employee pointed to a desk.
“You can find out over there, sir. Would you like someone to take your bags up? We’ve put you in Mr. Roman’s suite.”
At the travel desk, a young woman told him that Miss Vincent had reserved a flight on a low-cost airline. She had left at about eight o’clock at night. They had probably crossed paths in the sky.
The room hadn’t yet been cleaned. On the table in the living room, he found the credit card and the cell phone that Laura had used for work. She hadn’t left a word.
“What a girl!” he said out loud. “Goddamn it, what a girl!”
He took off his coat and threw it onto a chair, then went into the rooms. In Laura’s he found the travel case he had given her. Claudio’s papers were carefully arranged.
He went back into the living room. He heard again the cry of happiness and suffering when she had called him to tell him the news.
The happiness: He’ll see, David, he’ll see!
The suffering: You must come right away.
Laura had called David to ask him to take over for her. He had so completely understood the urgency, that he had immediately reserved his seat on a Concorde.
But why did she leave?
He won’t need you anymore.
Had David’s words, intended to prevent Laura from speaking to Claudio about the transplant, and dictated by the fear of failure, prompted her decision?
“What an imbecile I am,” he said aloud.
On the table, near a basket of fruit, he noticed a piece of pineapple on a plate and remembered his last meal with her, in a restaurant on the Champs-Élysées that he liked for its calm and the quality of its seafood. He saw Laura eating her langoustines with the greedy look of a kitten. It was two days before they had left for New York. As they were leaving, she had stopped and taken a long look at the room.
“Are you coming?” he had asked impatiently.
“Sorry, but this might be the last time…” she had said, almost in a whisper.
And he hadn’t been capable of understanding that she had already planned her departure if Claudio regained his sight.
He got up and walked around the room. OK. But why so fast, and without an explanation, leaving Claudio in this anxious state? Claudio, who, according to Dr. Miller, whom David had seen before leaving the clinic, hadn’t stopped calling for her: a prayer, a complaint, a cry. The doctor himself was moved by it.
“But who is she to him?” the doctor had asked David.
And who, exactly, was Claudio to Laura?
OK for the little sister, she had agreed when, at the beginning of their relationship, in the same restaurant, he had explained, after Corinne Massé’s exit, that Claudio didn’t need another affair. And hadn’t she said, with defiance, Tell him that I’m ugly; that’ll solve the problem.
David had his explanation.
Laura had left so Claudio wouldn’t see her. Claudio the seducer, surrounded, courted by the most beautiful women. She was afraid to disappoint him.
She loved him.
He had frequently asked himself; now he had no doubts. Only love could explain such a sacrifice: make Claudio regain his sight while knowing that that would mean that she would lose him.
Give him the moon and disappear.
David had affection for Laura; he also respected her.
He went to the telephone and dialed the number of the young woman’s studio in Paris. No one answered. Eleven o’clock here, five o’clock there. He called The Agency, Monique. Of course, Monique hadn’t been kept informed about the trip or the operation. Laura had pretended to take a few days off.
No, Monique hadn’t heard any news. Laura should be returning on Monday. Did he want to leave a message? David promised to call back.
He was just about to leave the room when his cell phone rang. A burst of hope: finally her?
It was Claudio’s mother.
Mrs. Roman evidently didn’t know where David was. When he had reached her, the night before, to tell her about the successful operation, he hadn’t wanted to reveal to her that he intended to go to New York. She would have demanded incessantly that she accompany him.
She wanted to know if he had any fresh news.
“Excellent news,” he said. “They took off his bandage. Claudio can see. It’s a success.”
“Success?” she asked doubtfully.
She seemed to refuse to believe it. She had been one of those who had supported Claudio in his refusal to undergo the operation, one of those whose gloominess, always expecting the worst, ended by attracting the worst.
“Is the little girl still with him?” she asked. “She must feel triumphant.”
He didn’t like the contemptuous tone with which she asked the question and kept himself from saying that the “little one” was worth ten times more than she was. He hung up quickly.
No, Laura was not celebrating. She had taken her leave, and if she loved Claudio, David could imagine her distress.
At the reception desk, he asked them to hold the suite for one or two nights and then he went back to the Bel Air clinic.
New York was frozen. Just like, all of a sudden, his heart.
26.
“Mr. Roman is in the examining room; he won’t be long,” a nurse told him on the threshold of the empty room.
David was relieved; a last moment of peace before confronting Claudio’s thunderbolts.
He couldn’t hide Laura’s departure from Claudio and was sure of his reaction. The operation had only been performed the day before, and Claudio was still fragile.
To ease the shock, David decided not to tell him about the cell phone and credit cards abandoned at the hotel. It sounded too much like a good-bye. As soon as he returned to Paris, he would try to convince Laura to come back, at least for a little while, to tend to Claudio.
But did he have the right? Knowing Claudio, he had hardly any illusions about the chain of events. Claudio would soon console himself about Laura’s absence. As soon as he was able, he would reaffirm his total independence: he wasn’t the type to encumber himself with anybody when he traveled. Sooner or later, Laura would reintegrate herself into The Agency.
David promised himself to be sure that she was fairly paid.
He was thinking about all this when a nurse brought Claudio to the door: dressed, shaved, handsome, new.
He looked around the room.
“She isn’t here? You didn’t find her?”
“Sit down,” David ordered with false gaiety. “I have some interesting news for you.”
With some hesitation, Claudio sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Go ahead. I’m listening.”
“The young lady parted company with us. She returned to Paris.”
Claudio bounded to his feet. “But that’s not possible!”
“Yes it is. She took a plane last night. They just told me at the Pierre.”
“That little bitch,” Claudio shouted. “How could she do that to me?”
“I don’t yet know, but ‘bitch’ seems a little too strong,” David said dryly.
Claudio turned his back on David and went to the window. He was filled with disappointment and bitterness. He couldn’t believe that Laura would let him go like that. Why had she done it? Hadn’t he yielded to her in everything? And he hadn’t dreamed that she was attached to him.
He went back to his agent.
“She had promised that she would stay until the end,” he said in a hollow voice.
“She didn’t leave until she was reassured about your condition,” David reminded him. “And the end, for her, was, maybe, the success of the operation.”
Claudio took his seat on the edge of the bed.
“I’m disappointed.”
Hadn’t Miller just told him that he had already recovered a little more than twenty points of his visual acuity? Decidedly, you do nothing like anyone else, the doctor had said with good humor.
During the interminable dawn, when he waited for “tomorrow,” Claudio had made some plans. If all went well, he would stay a few days in New York. He would show Laura the city. Wasn’t it his turn to be the guide? Didn’t she deserve that? They would return to the lake.
A harsh laugh shook him: good thing he hadn’t yet reserved the skates.
“Did she at least leave something? A note?”
“Nothing,” David said sadly. “I didn’t find anything.”
Claudio leaned forward to study his agent’s face. He hadn’t seen it for three years: the unattractive face of a chubby brawler. The face of a surrogate father. He would never forget all that David had done for him. Despite his still fuzzy sight, he found David older, tired.
Again he was filled with anger: this day should have been a day of total joy. Laura had spoiled everything.
“Why did she leave?” he asked.
“Maybe she thought that you wouldn’t need her anymore?” David suggested.
“But I need her.”
The memory of a slender body in his arms, of him inside her, came back to him, and he wanted her.
“She didn’t leave, she ran away,” he said. “Call her in Paris, right away. If she left yesterday, she should be there by now. Did you try her cell phone?”
“I tried everything. No one answers. I also called The Agency. She’s not expected there until Monday.”
Claudio lowered his shoulders. He felt crushed, a mountain on his heart.
“I can’t understand,” he said. “It’s like a bad joke. I told myself that, just like that, she’ll be here, laughing about her little game.”
David cleared his throat.
“And if she left so that you can’t see her?”
“So that I can’t see her? Is she as ugly as that?”
“She’s not ugly; she has some charm, a lot of charm…a pretty look…”
“But not pretty?”
“On the contrary: rather good-looking, a small model.”
A gentle laugh rose in Claudio: that, he knew. Her hands had told
him so. Her pleasure too.
“Do you know what Hélène thinks about her? Hélène thinks that she’s insignificant.”
“It’s true that she’s not the kind of girl who would turn heads on the street.”
“But what the fuck do I care?” Claudio shouted. “I’ve had enough of turning people’s heads. It feels like, when they do, they’re destroying my eyes.”
He got up again.
“OK, we’ll go find her. I get out of here tomorrow. You get two seats on the first airplane, Concorde or no, I couldn’t care less. And you can believe me: she’s going to see what she’s going to see.”
And David feared that none of them were seeing anything.
27.
Dr. Leblond held out a fistful of tissues for Claudio so that he could wipe the drops that were running from his eye.
“A perfect success,” he said. “Thanks to my friend Miller. I have high hopes that you will regain an excellent visual acuity.”
“Meaning?”
“Why not twenty/seventy or twenty/eighty? Not immediately, of course. You need a bit of patience.”
They left the examination room to go into the doctor’s office and took their places in two armchairs, side by side. One of Leblond’s specialties was treating his patients like friends.
“When can I start working again?” Claudio asked.
“Give yourself two or three weeks’ break. That won’t prevent you from doing your exercises,” the doctor advised. “Afterward…take off!”
“And the risks?”
“Don’t think about that. Just follow my instructions. And if you can’t keep yourself from thinking about them, tell yourself…that we can always do it over again, now that you know what it’s like,” he added with humor. “But that would surprise me. The donor gave you a gift fit for a king.”
“I would still like to be able to thank him,” sighed Claudio. “At least his parents. If they wish, of course. And to send them a CD of the first opera I’ll sing thanks to their son. Or their daughter; I’ll never know.”
“Thanks to an angel,” Leblond said with joy. “As for me, I hope to be invited to the opera.”
Love Story Page 11