“When you see Jeremy, do be sure to ask after his mother—you know, your Aunt Sheila.”
“Okay,” I said.“I’d better get going on this.” Now that I’d adjusted to the idea of returning to the hotel to tell everybody that I must take time off for my personal affairs, this, oddly enough, cheered me immensely. I’ve never really had an important, grown-up, financial reason for time off, since as a freelance consultant I’m usually too busy trying to drum up more work so I can make sure that I’m not “off ” for the rest of my life.
“Sweet dreams,” my father said tenderly.
“Break a leg,” my mother added in her own tart version of affection. She thinks that if you work in film you use the same lingo as in theatre. And with that, the pair of them rang off.
Chapter Two
T
HE SUN WAS SHINING BRIGHTLY AS I CLAMBERED DOWN THE STEPS of the castle. Several of the production vans had already left, but I flagged down the sound truck and hitched a ride back to the hotel. It took all my concentration just to stay in my seat and not get bounced out of it each time the driver shifted gears, with a bone-jolting lurch of the clutch, as he struggled up hills or careened around a corner on the narrow back-roads. His radio was blaring sports scores and loud commercials in French the whole way, so conversation was not only unnecessary but impossible. That was fine with me. I needed to mull things over.
Every time I get off the phone with my folks, my own life seems a tad more unreal to me. Perhaps it’s because my parents are so sure of everything they do, so utterly convinced of the authenticity of their existence. I don’t see how I can ever match that. In photos they grin confidently, always arm-in-arm. In their youth they were tall, slim and trim, Mom with the same copper-colored hair I have, and Dad with his delicate light skin and brown hair, and the brown eyes that I inherited. Nowadays my parents are a little bit heavier, but not much, and more gray-haired, with crinkly lines around the eyes and mouth, but with that radiant look of people who’ve done what they wanted with their lives.
As for girls like me, we just toddle off into modest careers that we choose because we like the work, not because we want to make money. So I went to art school, and after graduation I freelanced as a historical researcher for authors and academics, but that wasn’t enough to live on. Mercifully my friend Erik, who’d become a theatre production designer, hired me to help him authenticate the sets, props, backgrounds and costumes of the historical time periods in the plays, and then movies, that he worked on.
This may sound faintly glamorous, but in reality it simply requires me to research, paint and generally help create fake versions of the decor, doodads and bibelots of dead rich people. I spend most of my days in silent solitude, working from my tiny apartment in New York City, where the sun makes a brief morning appearance, then vanishes; where the kitchen has just enough room for a mouse to cook in, and actually is now beset with strange rustlings in the walls at night which indicate that mice have returned after a mysterious interlude when even they had gone off in search of a better life.
I myself rarely abandon the Manhattan rat race when I go out to do my research, shuffling around dusty old libraries full of books and photographs, and museum archives and used-furniture shops, scurrying through the dark underground hallways, vaults and lairs where most historical artifacts are kept. No matter the time period, I’m looking to find out what they wore, how they did their hair, and what chairs they sat in.
When I’ve completed my research I present it to Erik, at the occasional lunch-or-cup-of-coffee meeting that keeps my social skills relatively intact.
My friends ask me how I can bear to work alone, with nobody to talk to for days on end. But somewhere along the way the modern world lost its charm for me, and fortunately my job provides me with a legitimate way to spend whole weeks, even months, dreaming of living in someone else’s more elegant past, where I would ponder life’s verities whilst wearing exquisite ball gowns to fabulous parties and drinking champagne on a balcony with a man who loves me.
I don’t really think of it as the past, but more as a sort of secret future.With remarkably thickheaded perseverance I harbor a steadfast hope that I might one day defy the odds and the gods, and use the past as a key to open the door of a more intelligent parallel universe. The only trouble with this sort of thinking is that whole years of your life can go by unnoticed. I’d always assumed that my personal life would automatically blossom alongside my professional development, never dreaming that one could feel slightly mummified by one’s own career.
There was a loud roar from the engine of our sound van as the driver heroically steered us onto the main seaside road in Cannes.The Boulevard de la Croisette was mercifully flat and, though full of traffic, less hair-raising. Having been jostled out of my reverie, I resolved to focus on living in the present instead of brooding about the past. Our schedule had been inhumanly tight, with no breaks for sightseeing, devised by a line producer with the personality of a student crossing-guard. But now I squinted in the sunlight and shaded my eyes for a better look.
On one side of the boulevard were the grand, glamorous old-fashioned hotels with their beautiful French windows, built by kings and tycoons for their vacations and mistresses in centuries long gone. On the other side were the beach, the sea, and the famed “Croisette” walkway itself. Despite the town’s present-day hurdy-gurdy atmosphere, there was still something elegant here, left over from another era.You could even see it in the way the dapper French traffic cops waved you on, vigorous and proud, intent on keeping the flow of life moving at a snappy pace, and the yachts chugging by in the deep blue sea.
We’d arrived here a few days after the famed Cannes Film Festival had ended. But I noticed that even though the actresses and movie moguls had flown away, largely replaced by elderly French ladies out walking their dogs, still, the stylish Croisette was sprinkled with glamorous young women languidly sunbathing in cushioned lounge chairs with old-fashioned blue-and-white-striped umbrellas, or strolling along the promenade in their gilded high-heeled sandals, skimpy chiffon dresses and sparkling jewelry.
Clutching my bulging, battered leather portfolio of scripts and notes, craning my neck to peer out the dusty window, I reflected that surely, if there was any place on earth where elegance could still be found, it was here on the Côte d’Azur—where those beautiful French doors are still flung open by begowned women and their lovers, gazing out at the sensuous Mediterranean on a warm summer’s night.
Naturally, being an incurably hopeful romantic fool, I had imagined that I, too, would be staying at one of these glamorous
belle epoque
hotels with balconies and balustrades and potted-palm dining rooms, but instead, our “affordable” hotel, located way down a side street off the main boulevard, is one in a boring chain that prides itself on identical rooms so that no matter where in the world you stay, if you wake in the middle of the night you can always stagger in the same direction for the toilet.We might just as well be in Akron, in our dimly lit rooms of uninspired gray-and-brown, which feel—and smell—like the inside of a refrigerator.
When our sputtering van pulled up to the front door of the hotel and the sound guys began to noisily unload their equipment, I jumped out and went inside, passing through the lobby, where the newest wave of conventioneers, selling everything from dental supplies to beauty-parlor accessories to computer software, were all lined up with their suitcases waiting to check in.There must have been at least fifty of them arriving this afternoon.
I spotted Erik on his way into the conference room that had become our film crew’s private cafeteria. I had my portfolio under my arm to show him some of my initial sketches, notes and samples for
Lucrezia,A Woman of Intrigue
. Pentathlon Productions is producing two bio-pics back-to-back. Since we don’t usually shoot at authentic locations, Bruce depends on Erik’s beautiful sets to conjure up mood and time period; and because Erik relies on my research, I’m known as the History Lady, whom directors tolerate having around mostly because I keep Erik calm. Erik is supremely motivated and well-connected, able to get a lot of good people and materials for less money than someone else might, which makes directors clamor for him.
He was surveying the chow line and crowded tables when I asked him if we could squeeze in a meeting over lunch about the Lucrezia Borgia set, so I could leave the shoot ahead of schedule and go to London for the reading of Great-Aunt Penelope’s will.
Erik furrowed his bushy blond eyebrows as he stood there listening to me. He looks like a big shaggy wolfhound, six feet two and large-bellied, with a full head of floppy white-blond hair and a scruffy beard that’s inexplicably darker brown, shot with only a few silver strands.
“What!” he shouted. He waved to the prop-master, who’d just arrived. “Timmy, come
here
. You’ve got to hear this with your own ears.” Timothy, Erik’s longtime companion, is thin, trim, wiry and dark-haired. Now he trotted over to us, looking intrigued.
“An heiress!” Erik told him in a stage whisper. “Our little Penny Nichols has turned out to be a bona fide heiress.”
Sheri, the line producer, sidled over to eavesdrop, which she considers part of her job. I could tell that she heard what we just said, because she wore a studied look of feigned nonchalance. If she had her way, I wouldn’t be on the set at all. I’d overheard her complaining to Bruce about having “extraneous people” around.
“Aren’t you having lunch?” she asked us now, looking for an excuse to listen in.
Erik sighed and said to Tim and me, “The cold-buffet line is shorter. Let’s grab some sandwiches from the trough, tuck them under our arms, and run like gazelles to my room.”
Bruce, the director, saw us rushing for the elevators and became instantly paranoid.
“What are you three up to?” he demanded warily. “Why aren’t you in the conference room, eating with the rest of us?”
“Penny has to leave early today. She must go to claim her inheritance,” Erik announced pleasantly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “But don’t worry. She was up working all last night, making sure we could carry on without her this afternoon. We are having tomorrow’s meeting today, on our precious lunch hour, which you so rudely interrupted.”
Bruce stared at me, impressed.“Are you serious?” he asked. I nodded. “Fine. Fucking fine; leave early,” Bruce said, lapsing back into perfunctory and mostly feigned hopelessness. But he won’t miss me on the set. Even now I think he isn’t quite sure what I do for Erik, except fuss over details that can only delay shooting.
As Bruce walked away, Tim tugged on my sleeve. “A word to the wise,” he warned.“Paul’s here in Cannes. He’s come to make deals and harass us all. But he’s been looking for you especially.”
I tried to ignore the instant jolt of dread in the pit of my stomach. Paul is the executive producer of this project, a hotshot VP from the cable network brass—and he’s also my ex-boyfriend. I want you to know that I had this career
before
I got involved with him. When we met, he was just an ambitious young producer who’d hired Erik’s crew for one of those documentaries where they dramatize scenes from history. It was about Julius Caesar, and there were lots of clanging swords and shadowy orgies.
I was on board to do costume research, so Paul was therefore a boss, which is a disastrous way to begin a relationship, because the power balance is already tipped against you. Before him, I never thought of power. It was the first time that I engaged in that game-playing I so despise, and for which I am ill-suited. It was unnatural for me to play “pretend” with a man seriously—to pretend that you don’t care, to pretend that you’re not jealous, to pretend that you’re interested in other men because that makes him respect you more, to pretend that you aren’t fed up and bored when, finally, you are.
After much on-again off-again, we truly went our separate ways. Paul zoomed up the corporate ladder . . . and I’m still alive, which, for a freelancer, is an achievement, of sorts.
“There he is now, over in the lounge. Just wave at him and be cool,” Erik advised.
Paul was easy to spot, sitting across the lobby at a table in the bar. Blond, athletic, sickeningly healthy-looking, there’s something magnetic about him that makes strangers instantly assume he’s important. It’s in the arrogant tilt of his head, the mesmerizing effect of the handsome face, the expansive gestures, the carefully toned and weight-lifted muscles framed by his self-consciously selected bespoke suit, and the general cocksure attitude, no matter whom he’s talking to—heads of corporations, finance men, politicians.
As he looked up from his table and waved at me, my stomach, just out of habit, felt as if I were in an elevator that suddenly plummeted twenty floors down. I waved back with what I hoped was nonchalant gaiety, and he was momentarily distracted by the cocktail waitress, who was already fawning over him, serving him his favorite scotch, no doubt. Then he turned his attention back to a couple of other important-looking hotshot businessmen seated at his table.
Erik patted my shoulder sympathetically. “You see, it’s an omen,” he announced. “You are being summoned to London just in time to dodge Mr. Bad News. Come, let’s scuttle upstairs to my suite and have our meeting so you can run off before Paul knows you’re gone.”
We dashed across the lobby and into the elevator. Although Erik had “upgraded” to a junior suite instead of the allotted crackerbox the company gave each of us, the dull decor was the same.
“Dig in, kiddies,” Erik said, popping open his plastic-encased sandwich, then peering at it dubiously.“Lord, who on earth hired this caterer? Everything’s faux French.”
Timothy plunked himself down beside me on the sofa, set his coffee cup on the table, and said, “Well, Penny Nichols, you’re among only your friends now, so do tell. Are you about to hit the jackpot?”