Mistral's Daughter (75 page)

"Don't
count hours.
 
Don't count minutes
—
you'll spoil
now
.
 
Don't make me
sad
—
don't make me sadder than I am," Fauve pleaded.
 
"The girls have to be up bright and
early Friday morning, you know it as well as I do.
 
The fittings will be going on all weekend
long
—
Versace, Armani
—
I thought you understood."

"Unfortunately
it's as plain and logical as a blueprint.
 
The thing I don't understand is why you've eluded me every time I've
tried to talk at all seriously to you since we met.
 
I haven't pressed it because I figured that
maybe the time wasn't right, but now..."

"Oh
—
let me elude you some more.
 
I
elude so delightfully," Fauve whispered, covering his chest with kisses.

"I
will if you'll answer one single very simple question
—
do you love me,
Fauve?"

"Oh,
yes
."

"Then
we
must
make plans, we have to talk about the future..."

"You
said that if I answered, you'd let me elude you," Fauve protested,
breaking into his immoderate rush of words.
 
"'Plans... the future'
—
that's not the stuff that illusions
are made of."

"If
you'd said that you didn't love me I would just shut up and make love to
you.
 
But, you do
—
don't you see
how that changes everything?"
 
Relief transfigured his voice.

Fauve
pulled away from his arms, left the bed and stood by the window, naked and
white in the darkness that fell outside of the lamplight.
 
She clasped her hands behind her bowed head
and shook it from side to side in a barely perceptible gesture of confusion and
negation.
 
"Please, oh, please,
Eric, not tonight."

"But
when
?
 
You can't be planning to
leave without...
 
that can't be!
 
Fauve, how many more second chances do you
think we're going to have?"

"Eric,
I just haven't wanted to think," she said slowly with her face turned away
from him. "I've been living without reckoning or wondering about
possibilities...
 
I've been living
—
just drifting in the wind.
 
I've been so
happy just bobbing along like a soap bubble, but if we keep talking my lovely
bubble will burst.
 
Please
?"

"Eric
came to stand behind her at the window, and put his arms around her, holding
the soft weight of her breasts cupped in his hands.
 
He rested his chin on the top of her head and
protected her with his big warm body.

"You're
shivering.
 
Don't stay here, it's too
cold.
 
Come to bed, my little love.
 
And bring your bubble with you
—
it's
such a bright bubble and you wear it so beautifully."

"Tomorrow,
Eric, I promise."

"Tomorrow:"

On
Thursday, after lunch, Eric sat waiting for Fauve at Rosati's.
 
He looked at his watch impatiently.
 
The Valentino collection must have started by
now.
 
He and Fauve would have almost two
hours in which to make their plans before she had to leave to pick up the girls
and the luggage and drive out to Fumicito in time for the plane.

He
saw her approaching and jumped up. She came toward him, wearing a sweeping
travel coat.
 
The spring wind was brisk
in the piazza.

"Let's
go and sit inside," he said, tipping her head up for his kiss.
 
"Thank God you didn't get held up."

"Once
that show started nothing but a bomb in the dressing room could stop my girls
from performing
—
and probably they'd just walk around the rubble.
 
I sneaked out.
 
I have to be back in time to congratulate
Valentino, but it's a long collection."

"Espresso?"
he offered.
 

"What
I'd really like is a Italy?"

"There's
a long tradition

big
pot of tea. Do you have that in

of
eccentric Englishmen and women who came to Rome and never left it ... I'm sure
they make tea. Fauve ... when will you marry me?"

"I
was afraid you were going to say that," she said in a strange muted
voice.
 
Eric looked at her and it didn't
seem possible that this pale girl, dressed again in black and white, with only
her hair to give color to her face, could be the spirit of fire and abandon
with whom he'd spent the night until she had left him just before dawn.

"Why
afraid?"

"Because
I can't."

"Why
not, my darling?
 
What reason is there
why two people who love each other the way we do can't get married?"
 
He spoke calmly and quietly.
 
He'd been sure that she'd put up some sort of
resistance, it had been evident in her evasiveness, in her insistence on never
looking beyond the present.
 
"You're
not sixteen anymore...
 
I know that was just
a crazy idea
—
but now everything's different
—
there's nothing
to stop us."

"I'm
not ready to get married.
 
How can you
expect me to spend two days with you
—
only two days
—
and make a
decision like that?
 
It's been perfect
and nothing is that perfect in real life, nothing!
 
It couldn't `keep on being like this
—
this was an interlude, Eric.
 
But that's
not the only reason."
 
Fauve's voice
was strong, sure of what she had to say.
 
"I have a responsibility to Magali that I can't ignore.
 
If I left the agency she'd have to come back
and work five days a week or else give it up
—
sell it probably.
 
She spent her whole life building that
business and I've spent five years learning it and she counts on me
—
she has every right to.
 
Oh, she'd never
stand in my way, but I know that if I had to leave New York it would change the
whole pattern of her life
—
just wouldn't be fair!
 
She'd be miserable giving up the agency, and
she'd be just as miserable working full-time again at her age.
 
And anyway what would I do with myself living
in Avignon?"

"Wait
a minute!
 
That's three reasons
—
could you just stop for a second and catch your breath?
 
Drink your tea.
 
Milk?
 
Lemon?
 
Okay, marriage wouldn't be
like two days in Rome. Nothing is like two days in Rome.
  
Nothing is like a week in Florence. Nothing
is like a month in the country.
 
Marriage
is marriage and each one is different
—
and ours would be wonderful;
from time to time it probably wouldn't be perfect, but only children expect
marriage to be perfect
—
and you're not a child.
 
That's one.
 
Two.
 
From everything you've told
me about Magali, she can take care of herself.
 
She'd be outraged if she thought you were sacrificing yourself for
her...
 
I can't imagine that she couldn't
work it out one way or another...
 
she's
managed to do just splendidly on her own for most of her life, hasn't she?
 
Three
—
now there's a real problem,
but not one that we can't find an answer to.
 
I could move to Paris, for instance, join a firm there and you could
find a job, or you could open a model agency if that's what you want...
 
living in Avignon isn't essential to
me..."

"Stop
it, Eric!
 
You're being so goddamned
rational about this, you sound like a train schedule."

"But
you're giving me reasons and I'm giving you the reasons why your reasons are
wrong. If you want to give me irrational, I'll be quiet and listen."

"Oh
—
oh..." Fauve flung up her hands, speechless.
 

"Come
on
—
give me irrational," he insisted.

"I'm
frightened, I'm terrified, I'm scared shitless," she blurted.
 
"I'm paralyzed at the idea of making
such a big decision.
 
It's too much for
me
—
it makes my blood run cold just thinking about it
—
oh,
Eric, I'm a natural-born late bloomer.
 
I
give up each stage of my life as slowly as I can, looking backward the whole
time
—
I need old habits, security, familiarity
—
I'm petrified
at the notion of spending the rest of my life with you
—
or with
anybody, for that matter.
 
I don't really
know you, not the grown-up you.
 
I don't
even know me.
 
I haven't had enough time
to myself, I'm not ready to be a wife, I don't want to plan my future...
 
it's easy for you, you're twenty-six, you've
had time to discover yourself, to experiment.
 
I feel rushed, pressured...
 
how
can you expect me to be ready?"

"That's
not irrational, that's natural."
 
He
took her hands in both of his.
 
"I
understand that it's too soon to make a decision.
 
Just come and live with me
—
just see
how it is for us together. That's not too big a step to take, is it?
 
No strings
—
only an interlude if
that's all you want.
 
Don't go back to
New York after Paris...
 
come and spend
the spring in Avignon with me."

Fauve
looked into her teacup, as addled as she'd been in her life.
 
I can't make him understand...
 
how can I say, after all, that I don't trust
him, no, not in spite of thinking I did?
 
I trusted my father, and look what he did...
 
how can I trust any man, ever, ever?
 
An "interlude"... only an interlude
he says...
 
it's always an interlude when
it starts
—
before it does something terrible to you.
 
It was just an interlude for Magali in Paris
so long ago, just an interlude for my mother...
 
interludes turn into preludes and then?
 
What then, oh, God?
 
Springtime
in Avignon
? No!
 
It's dangerous, too
dangerous.
 
I'm right to feel the
danger.
 
There's always danger when you
trust, when you depend on somebody else, when you put your life into his
hands.
 
Oh, I want the life I
know
,
I want the life where I have a place, where I have an office, where people need
me, a life where I grew up, where I'm safe.
 
Safe
.

"No,"
she said, looking into her teacup.
 
"No, I can't.
 
I have to go
back to New York. Maybe when I have my vacation," she faltered, "the
next vacation I have...
 
maybe
then..."

"Don't
bother."
 
Eric stood up.
 
"I didn't realize that you really hated
the idea," he said tightly.
 
"I
wouldn't have kept bothering you about it for so long if I'd known.
 
You said you loved me but you don't
—
not enough.
 
Not nearly enough.
 
Sorry
—
my mistake."

He
put some money on the table and walked away.

"I
knew he wouldn't understand," Fauve whispered to herself.
 
"Is something wrong,
Signorina
?"
asked the waiter.

"No,"
said Fauve, "nothing's wrong.
 
It's
just the end..."

"The
end..."

"Of
an interlude."

31

Falk
was accustomed to the flattery of beautiful women and discounted it.
 
He was so steeped in flattery that he
believed he no longer knew what it was like to have the feeling of being
flattered, but when Fauve Lunel invited him to have dinner with her alone in
her apartment, the first dinner she'd actually ever cooked by herself, he
felt...
 
flattered.

"I'm
probably not a good cook," she had warned him.

"Who
said so?"

"Nobody,
I've never cooked for anybody else before, so how could I be a good cook?"

"I'll
take that chance."

As
Falk waited for Fauve to come out of the kitchen where she was mixing drinks,
he glanced around her living room.
 
It
was like looking into the attic of a family homestead, he thought, or through a
pile of old scrapbooks.
 
Hadn't Fauve
ever thrown anything out?
 
He could see
only two examples of restraint; she had painted the floor emerald green and
left it bare and the fabric she had used on her keenly overstuffed, exuberantly
Victorian furniture actually matched; a pattern of giant cabbage roses on
glazed chintz that, now that he looked at it closely, had surely been used as
curtains in Maggy's Fifth Avenue apartment before she redecorated.

He
could remember the genesis of so many of the objects he saw; there was the huge
wire birdcage he had bought Fauve on Third Avenue one Saturday afternoon.
 
It seemed to have spawned seven other
birdcages that were artfully piled around it, making a complex structure
through which no bird sang.
 
And there
was the giant straw hat he'd bought her back from a location trip to Yucatan
now joined by dozens of others in every shape and size, all hung on hooks on
the walls.
 
The graceful old lyre he'd
given her for Christmas when she was twelve was suspended from another wall,
surrounded by a number of antique musical instruments; flutes, violins, oboes
and even a battered clarinet that had been restored to a high polish.
 
Fauve had baskets everywhere, baskets on top
of baskets, some of them filled with growing plants, some of them with pencils,
others crammed with notebooks and bolts of fabric and balls of yarn.

Pillows!
 
Fauve seemed to have cornered the pillow
market, he thought with the connoisseur's salute of a man who considers himself
an expert on the cluttered look.
 
This
went beyond clutter
—
this was historical.
 
The books in her jammed bookcases included a
complete set of the
Oz
books, the many adventures of
Mary Poppins
,
and the works of E. Nesbitt, as well as all the books she had read since she
was a child, none of which she ever seemed to have considered allowing to
escape her possession.
 
A pair of draped
stone sphinxes, life-sized, it seemed to him, although he'd never seen a sphinx
while it was still in good health, guarded the fireplace, inside of which stood
a polished brass grate.

There
was no fire
—
it was a mild September day in 1975
—
but Fauve had
lit a galaxy of white votive candles in little clear tumblers and distributed
them on the grate so that the fireplace didn't look empty and dark.
 
There was a round table that was set next to
tall windows that looked out on a flourishing acanthus tree.
 
It was covered with three different
tablecloths.
 
The first one, flounced
widely to the ground, was crisp, bright red taffeta, the second was a small
silky old flowered carpet in every shade of pink, and the top cloth was made of
delicate white linen with a wide border of embroidered organdy.

On
Fauve's desk, in, ornate old frames, stood the only three photographs in the
room; a snapshot of Maggy and Darcy sitting on the lawn in front of their
house, a picture from a 1951 issue of
Life
showing Maggy surrounded by
her ten most famous models, and an enlargement of one of the test shots Falk
had made of Teddy in 1947.
 
Teddy Lunel
when she was twenty.

He
turned away, unable to look at it for more than a moment, and his eye was
caught by an extraordinary object, a gigantic stuffed panda that had seen
better days, sitting in a place of honor on a rocking chair in a corner.
 
Startled, he looked around for other animals.
 
A fleet of ship's figureheads, an army of
small statues, a collection of music boxes, a forest of unmatched
candlesticks, and, on each table, clusters of bud vases of every height, each
holding a single flower or a spray of tiny leaves or a few wild grasses
—
yes, all of that, but, he was relieved to see, no other stuffed animals.
 

"Very
cozy," he said to Fauve as she handed him a glass.

"I
haven't really done much to it," she said, "but little by little it's
taking shape."

"What
shape did you have in mind?"

"I
don't know exactly.
 
I'll know when I get
there
—
probably when I can't walk across the room without tripping over
something.
 
That's why I don't have a
rug.
 
It cuts down on the confusion.
 
If I had a rug I'd want to put another little
carpet on top of it, and I'd need a hearth rug of course
—
something in
pattern
—
I seem to keep finding things."

"I
love things," Falk said.
 
"There is nothing like a thing."

"I
knew you'd understand."
 
They smiled
at each other in the most mutual possible pleasure. "You'd never ask me if
it doesn't collect a lot of dust or what sort of neurosis it all represents, or
comment meaningfully on my nest-building instinct."

"Never.
 
But I do wonder...?"

"What
about?"

"No
pictures?"

"Nope,
I don't have any room for pictures.
 
There's too much stuff on the walls and anyway, to do pictures justice
you have to subordinate the room to them."

"This
room is definitely insubordinate."

"Exactly.
 
Oh, the chicken!
 
Excuse me for a minute."

She
came back, a plain white chef's apron wrapped over her bare-armed, barebacked
dress of bright saffron cotton.
 
"It's cooking, that's all I can say in its favor at the
moment."

"What
sort of chicken is it?" he asked hungrily.

"Hungarian.
 
Chicken Paprika.
 
I'm counting on the fact that there isn't
anything in the world that can't be improved by a great deal of sour cream.
 
I know it's cheating but I need all the help
I can get.

"When
did you start cooking?
 
Did it just come
over you all of a sudden?"

"I
think it must be a maturation thing or maybe an unnatural craving like in
Rosemary's Baby.
 
Ever since I moved here
if I'm not invited out to dinner I've picked up something at the Dover
Deli.
 
A few weeks ago, I was passing the
butcher shop and I found myself just marching in and buying two lamb
chops.
 
I thought that I'd put them in a
pan and cook them.
 
Well, I'm still not
sure what I did wrong but the kitchen filled with smoke, and lots of hot fat
started to pop out at me.
 
I got so
frightened that I grabbed the pan off the fire and threw the whole thing out
the back window.
 
But that started me
thinking that if Maggy could learn to garden from books, I could probably learn
to cook.
 
So I bought
The Joy of
Cooking.
 
History will be made
tonight." She began to set the table.

"Maggy
thinks you're working too hard," Falk said.
 
"She told me that you're letting the
business dominate your life."

"She's
got her nerve!
 
Do you know what she did
last weekend?
 
She ordered five thousand
daffodil bulbs.
 
Five thousand!
 
She's going to plant them herself on those
low hills behind the house and next spring they'll come up as if they had been
growing wild for years, in drifts.
Drifts
—
she's constantly
raving on about drifts.
 
And once she's
got the daffodils established she intends to make a shade garden in the woods,
the way it would be in nature if nature had her sense of style.
 
Can you imagine anyone who plans to dig five
thousand holes telling me I work too hard?"

"You
don't dig individual holes, you dig up a whole lot of dirt and sort of dribble
the bulbs around, or so she said.
 
Like
sowing grain or something."

"Well,
however you do it, it's work.
 
You know,
I feel that maybe Maggy's more interested in her garden than in the agency
now," Fauve said, putting plates down on the linen cloth.

"What
makes you say that?"

"It's
something really weird about Thursdays.
 
Every Thursday as the afternoon goes by, she gets more and more
irritable, as if she just can't wait to get away, but refuses to admit it.
 
She finds nonexistent mistakes everywhere,
she walks around the booking rooms and double checks everybody's cards to make
sure that nobody screwed up Friday and Monday, she starts worrying about models
who are doing just fine, she goes into the bookkeeping department to talk about
whether they're prepared for payday as if, after all these years, they didn't
know that every model will be in for her check on Friday, rain or shine.
 
She's driving everybody a little crazy.
 
The new bookers are terrified of her.
 
Then she keeps finding little things 'she
has' to do as the afternoon goes on, so that we can't close on time...
 
unnecessary things that Casey or Loulou or I
could take care of on Friday perfectly well.
 
It's as if she's forcing herself to work late because she feels guilty
about taking so much time off, which is totally insane."

"Have
you talked to her about it?" Falk asked.

"No,
I guess I just don't want to say anything that might sound critical.
 
I figure that the day will come when she'll
figure out for herself that she just doesn't want to work three days a week and
then she'll let me know," Fauve said, appraising her table and judging it
complete.

"How
would you feel about running the agency if she weren't around?"

"It's
what I'm trained for, it's what I know.
 
We have really reliable people working for us in every department.
 
Casey can do anything I can do, Loulou has
the booking side of things as much in control as booking can ever be
—
I
know it's a big business for anybody my age to run, but I've been in it for
five years and I think I could manage.
 
Still...
 
Maggy is Lunel.
 
Every aspiring model in the world wants to
get in to see Maggy Lunel, not Fauve Lunel.
 
The magazine editors trust her judgment as they won't trust mine for
years and years, the agency would
never
be the same again...
 
but...
 
if she really is fed up, I understand.
 
I'd have to...
 
oh, my chicken!"

When
Fauve came back from the kitchen she looked relieved.
 
"I tasted it and I do believe it's going
to be vaguely Hungarian."

"Haven't
you ever cooked anything for Ben Litchfield?" Falk asked.

"Ben
Litchfield doesn't have any damn taste buds."

"I
thought..."

"I
know what you thought.
 
That's all
anybody thinks.
 
Honestly, Melvin, all of
Manhattan could be two blocks square the way everybody is involved in
everybody else's private business." Fauve sat down next to Falk and drank
half of her glass of wine.
 
"I don't
mean you, obviously."

"I
know you didn't.
 
So tell me all your
private business."

"He
wants to get married."

"What
else is new?"

"No,
I mean he
really
wants to get married.
 
He used to mention it every fifth or sixth time I saw him, now it's
every time.
 
Pressure, pressure,"
Fauve brooded.

"Most
girls," Falk said.

"Exactly.
 
Most girls.
 
All girls probably.
 
He's a
wonderful guy, he's brilliant, he's good, he's successful, he's serious, he's
very, very attractive, he's somebody I can talk to, we have a lot in common,
he's sweet, he's everything you could ask for."