Whenever I had a personal issue or, worse, a dilemma, I always handled it in the same way, which is to say, by following the least journalistic and professional method possible: rather than ask my friends for edifying examples or points of comparison, I watched movies that dealt with more or less the same problem. In many ways, when it came to personal questions, I trusted filmmakers more than other newspeople or experts, psychologists, or sociologists. For instance, when I first learned Mom had cancer, I rewatched Nanni Moretti’s Dear Diary several times. Of all the movies on the subject, his is the most apt to cheer you up.
On sibling love, you can’t do better than Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters or this other Italian film, The Best of Youth, with the sublime Jasmine Trinca, whose pout and wide eyes I was always trying to imitate as a teenager.
Unlike Hannah’s Elliot, who has a passionate affair with the fiery Lee only to return to conjugal life, I rejected bourgeois fatality, its morality and conformism. Not making a choice is already a kind of choice. I tried to convince myself of this maxim the following night as I tossed and turned beside an inert David.
After all, couldn’t I live somewhere between the two, divided among brothers? Wasn’t I myself split between desire and reason, body and heart; between the one who had conquered me through ruses and force, and the other side of myself, where the days went by without passion or pain, lulled by the soothing music of comfort, tenderness, and ease?
“Hello, Elle. I have finished the final version of the contract. It’s on the console, as promised. If you could please give it one last glance and sign . . .”
Armand had appeared in the kitchen at breakfast as discreetly as a ghost. The closer we got to the wedding date, the worse he looked. Was it stress? Too much drink?
“Yes, thank you, Armand. I am sure it will be perfect.”
Where Louie’s commandments were deviant, searing, exciting, the imperatives laid out in David’s prenup were a list of rules meant to make our common life a drive on cruise control. No conflict, no accidents. A calm stupor in which the good days would not vary much from the bad ones. Life cushioned by the air bag of his money and my concessions. I could even close my eyes. Everything would remain under control.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” he exclaimed before returning to the day’s urgent tasks. “I picked up the ring from the jeweler. It’s on your bedside table.”
Next to the contract, I found another, slimmer pile, which was surer to have an effect on me: tucked inside a plastic folder, a stack of blank perforated papers, identical to the one I had received before. Apparently, my purveyor of stationery did not doubt for a second that I would need more space in my Ten-Times-a-Day. Better still, he’d made a comeback. On the very last page, I found his unmistakable handwriting and the following words:
When I lay at your feet an eternal homage,
Shall you ever wish me to change my visage?
I am a man with captured heart,
Make sure to read the first word of each verse from the start.
Love is the thing for which you were created,
With you, my dear, my pen is never sated.
You inspire me, love, to write these words I dare not speak,
Darling, only you are the remedy that I seek.
I was stunned by the chosen form—since when did he write in verse?—and even more so by his meaning. To declare himself so openly and, despite the rhymes, without varnish, did not seem like him at all.
I grabbed the tablet that never leaves the living room coffee table and typed the first words of his poem into a search engine. The reference was at once clear: “Alfred de Musset’s reply to George Sand.” But though I was familiar with Sand’s coded poem, this was the first I’d heard of her lover’s response. The key turned out to be simpler, especially since it was explicitly stated in the middle of the poem, in the fourth verse: “Make sure to read the first word of each verse from the start.” Following his instructions, I pieced together the following question: “When shall I make love with you, darling?”
I clicked on a link to learn George Sand’s answer in the literary game that she herself had initiated: “This favor that your heart so desires I fight / For it may plunge my reputation into the darkness of Night.” The message was clear: “This Night.”
A smile blossomed inside me: Was that his plan? For us to write each other letters like the ones exchanged between those great writers?
I dug my Ten-Times-a-Day out of my bag and penned George Sand’s two last verses. Even if Louie never read them, at least our dialogue would not be broken.
I wonder if I have ever taken the initiative, even fleetingly, since I’ve been sexually active. I don’t think so, and I’m not particularly proud of it. I’m not ashamed, but I regret it, since today I think that the person to express his or her desires first in a couple gets a kind of bonus. Would I have known more pleasure or been a better mistress of their fantasies if I had thrown myself occasionally on my previous lovers? I’ll never know. My sex, my entire body, will forever be the orphan of such missed opportunities.
Handwritten note by me, 6/12/2009
GOADED BY THIS NEW GAME, I dressed in haste, cheerful and light. The time was passing like lightning, and after two consecutive absences, I could not be late. I did not want to be the object of more gossip. I figured people were already talking about me and that the whole of Barlet Tower was abuzz with how ridiculous I was.
“PHEW! I WAS SCARED YOU wouldn’t be coming back!”
As usual, Chloe threw herself on me as soon as I stepped through the sliding doors. She seemed more stressed now than two days before. Had my absence caused that much trouble with the personnel? I remembered what David had said about the unions.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I defended myself.
She looked at me like I was a crazy person or a hermit who had just come out of hiding after ten years of isolation.
“David didn’t mention anything to you?”
Mention what? Had he buckled under all the various pressures and sacrificed me on the altar of social peace?
“Should he have mentioned something in particular?” I asked, unsettled.
“Alice!”
I recalled an image of David consoling the tall blonde.
“Alice and Chris!”
Alice-and-Chris . . . It sounded like the beginning of a playground song. But I didn’t think now was the time for childhood jokes.
“I’m sorry, Chloe, but I have no clue what—”
“Chris Haynes, the artistic director, and Alice Simoncini . . . Somebody walked in on them in a special meeting, if you know what I mean. In her office!”
Had the ravishing director of marketing given herself to that pretentious oaf out of spite?
“I’m sorry,” I said, pretending to be above office gossip, “but I don’t see what that has to do with me.”
“Well, they were both fired! On your first day. No severance package, no unemployment, not even a farewell party . . . Nothing.”
I could not believe my ears.
“It’s all anyone is talking about. I guess Yves, in IT, used the network to activate her laptop and film the whole thing. But there’s no way I’ll watch it. It’s disgusting!”
The lascivious way in which she adjusted the bun on her head said otherwise.
I kept playing the scene I’d witnessed between my man and the woman who had been fired. So it hadn’t been the end of a liaison, as I had initially imagined. She had been sacked. Though his gestures had been empathetic and almost tender, his decision had been one of an unwavering boss. One evening, he had invited her to dine at his home. The next day, or almost, he threw her out like a pariah.
This thought made me freeze with doubt and fear. And what if he found out about his brother and my strange relationship with him? Would I face the same fate? Thrown out, repudiated . . . cast off!
Our arrival on the nineteenth floor proved that the turmoil had not died down. People scrutinized me from behind the bay windows as I made my way down the hall. But it was not because I was marching to the scaffold. They simply wanted to read how I was reacting to the news. Whether I liked it or not, I was now one of the people at the station whose opinion ricocheted from ear to ear. It mattered.
“Don’t pay attention to them,” David’s assistant whispered. “They’re wondering who will be next. They’re worried . . .”
Me, too!
“ . . . but deep down they’re not mean.”
When we arrived in front of my office—at first glance, I did not notice any silver envelopes—Chloe ran off to attend to her regimented schedule:
“Eight forty-eight . . . I’m already six minutes late in my day. I’ll leave you. But don’t hesitate to call if you need something. Anything at all.”
That, I supposed, like her meeting me in the lobby, was part of her duties, as prescribed by the boss. One of the little privileges that my peculiar status afforded me. I found a note from Albane on my otherwise empty desk. I was expected downstairs at nine for my first camera test. That meant I only had time for a foul cup of coffee from the asthmatic machine. Then it was time to get back in the arena.
THE JOURNALIST WAS WEARING HER combat clothes: a shapeless sweatshirt and khakis. She welcomed me with a smile and two loud kisses on my cheeks before I even had time to extend my hand.
“Hey! Feeling better?”
“Yeah . . . I’m okay.” I faked the voice of someone who had been suffering.
“Okay. Great. Because the fun and games are over. Today, we have serious work to do. Today, you’re going to step into the light!”
“I saw that . . .”
“Follow me. I’m going to introduce you to the technical crew.”
This is how you have the spotlight thrown on you in the darkness of a soundstage, in front of a dozen pairs of scrutinizing eyes, a judgmental bubble of condescension that no amount of smiling can pop.
“Hello . . .”
But it was not their number nor the fact that they looked like old, tattooed truckers that left me speechless after my timid greeting. I was stunned to see . . .
“Fred!”
He detached himself from the group and took a few steps in my direction, as cool as though we were meeting for brunch.
“Hello, my Elle.”
“My Elle,” he had stressed, so that everyone could hear the possessive pronoun.
I caught his sleeve and led him away from the group, toward the dark and empty stage.
“What are you doing here? Wasn’t it enough to create a scandal in front of my house?”
“First, you should say hello, then calm down. I’m on a six-month contract. And, FYI, everyone is looking at us.”
Sometimes I think it’s stupid and even a bit unfair that the things we learn about our own sexuality, or what our former lovers were able to discover about us, cannot be transmitted to our current partner. We have medical files—why can’t we have sexuality files, to be filled out not by our doctors but by anyone with whom we’ve ever shared our bed? That way, whenever we find ourselves between the sheets for the first time with a new conquest, that new person can review it and immediately proceed with the things that please us, as opposed to spending days, months, the entirety of a relationship, trying to figure it out.
What would Fred have written on the Elle he used to know? Maybe that he hadn’t been able to find a way to make me come with his tongue? Or maybe that I gave a mediocre and timid blow job? That I was incapable of swallowing him as deeply as he would have liked? That the idea of having his semen in my mouth disgusted me and I continually refused to do it?
Handwritten note by me, 6/12/2009
A SIDELONG GLANCE THROUGH THE thick, windowed partition confirmed that the gang of technicians was enjoying our heated reunion. The boss’s girl comes face-to-face with her ex. Now that broke the routine.
“You were hired on my show?”
“Yeah. They were looking for a competent and available sound guy. And here I am!”
“Surprise, surprise!” I railed quietly. “Are you fucking with me?”
“Does it look like it?”
HE TOLD ME ABOUT HOW, after he’d left Duchesnois House, Louie had found his number and contacted him. The two men went out for beers one night, after which a slightly tipsy Louie offered him a job at his brother’s broadcasting company “to make up for things.”
“He said what?” I shrieked, furious. “ ‘To make up for things’?”
“Yeah, that’s what he said. It seemed like a fair deal to both of us: his bro steals my girl, he finds me a job.”
The worst part of this story was not that Louie had taken advantage of Fred’s distress and desperate need for a job. No, what was even more humiliating than everything else he had put me through so far was how he had relegated me to the debased status of an object to be traded on the job market.
“I’m guessing that David knows nothing of your little arrangement.”
“Oh, no . . . I don’t see why. It’s between Louie and me.”
The longer our discussion went on, the more the crew laughed at us. Some of them must have worked with Fred before. I noticed two or three scowling at him or making inappropriate gestures.
In the end, what could I say? And what could I tell David without sounding like I still had feelings for my ex-boyfriend or suspicious friction with his brother?
I decided on another option, seizing an opportunity to gain control:
“Okay. Fred, there’s something you should know about Louie.”
“He has a thing for you, right?”
It was amazing how, in the space of a few days and through the magic of his miraculous new job, Fred seemed at last to have cut affective ties with me. Louie had made a good calculation: by giving him back his pride, Louie had quelled my ex’s anger as well as his feelings for me.
“Not exactly. Let’s just say that he acts strangely.”
I was careful to omit the parts about invitations, commandments, and our rendezvous at the Hôtel des Charmes, and insisted on the way he tried to get at me through extravagant gestures, like with my mom.
“Oh, yeah, you’re right . . . That’s shady.”
“I hate to have to tell you this . . .” I pouted.
“What?”
“ . . . And of course it doesn’t mean anything about your abilities. But I think that if he chose you it wasn’t a coincidence. He’s been using you and Mom to get under my skin.”
He considered me for a moment, circumspect. Suddenly, he sobered and I saw a familiar violence growing inside him.
“Okay . . . So according to you, if somebody offers me a job, it’s not because of me but because of something to do with mademoiselle!”
I reached for his arm, but he withdrew it brusquely.
“Don’t be like that, Fred, shit . . .”
He was already halfway back to join his peers, when my question stopped him in his tracks:
“He didn’t tell you, did he? Did he?”
“Tell me what?”
“That you would be working for me? I’ll bet he was careful not to fill you in.”
“Hmm . . . That’s true. He didn’t tell me. Human Resources did. But what does that prove?”
“Just that he’s manipulating you. The list of technicians was decided over a week ago,” I bluffed. “If you landed here, and David doesn’t know about it, it has to be because Louie intervened.”
“It’s possible,” he admitted, guarded.
“You can’t see that he’s playing with you, with all of us? We’re nothing to someone like him. Insects under his shoe!”
The image must have hit home, considering the look of intensity in his eyes.
“What are you suggesting?”
“If David learns how you were hired, he’ll void your contract. I guarantee it.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“When did you start work?”
“The day before yesterday.”
“Well, then you saw how he fired those other two, the tall blonde and that cretin fucker . . . In less time than it takes to blow his nose.”
I snapped my fingers for effect.
“Okay. I’m guessing your silence doesn’t come free,” he suggested, a sharp look in his eyes.
“Let’s call it quid pro quo: you keep your job . . .” I paused, evaluating what exactly Fred had the power to give me. The only way of evening out the playing field with Louie, a new page in the silent dialogue we had begun.
“And me?”
“And you . . . you will record as many conversations as you possibly can between Louie and his entourage.”
“Are you crazy? Who do you think I am, James Bond?”
“I don’t want to know how you manage it, Fred. But get me tape of his landline, whenever he’s near a set . . . Anything, I’ll take it.”
Albane interrupted our negotiation, but I saw him nod in resignation. Poor Fred: even good news turned on him.
“Elle? Will you get in makeup? If we want to tie this up before lunch, we can’t dawdle.”
THE MORNING PASSED IN A flash. Albane, whom everyone respected—regardless of title or seniority—stayed by my side. That, together with Luc and Philippe’s brief visits on set to ensure that the first stage was going smoothly, helped to create a calmer environment between the crew and me. Even Fred laid low, keeping his wounded male ego in check and even, at times, making special efforts, like telling a joke to lighten the mood.
The girl on screen looked as much like me as an actress looks like her understudy, which is to say, very little. Still, after a few hours, I got used to my strange double, and my expressions and movements became more natural, despite the camera’s intractable eye.
“Are you coming to lunch with us?” Stan, the show’s director, asked.
I would have infinitely preferred a salad and a Monaco with Sophia, but I wanted to fit in, so I accepted the invitation and nibbled my shepherd’s pie, trying to be as agreeable as possible.
Albane, whose nonexistent curves testified to a certain nutritional imbalance, left us when we got to the cafeteria. However, she was also the one who nabbed me as soon as I put my food tray on the dishwashing counter.
“Elle! Can I speak with you for a second?”
“What’s up?” I asked, noting her irritable attitude.
“I hope you ate well—you’re going to need the extra fuel.”
“Why?”
Without a word, in her authoritative and slightly snippy way, she led me to the ladies’ room next to the self-service food court. Then, amid the brouhaha of powder room conversations, she stated simply:
“We start tomorrow night.”
To keep myself from fainting, I played dumb and asked:
“Start what?”
“The show.”
“Is that a joke? Did the others put you in charge of hazing me?”
“I wish, believe me . . .”
“But why? Who decided?”
“Who do you think?”
She suppressed a bitter smile.
David had decided to throw me into the lion’s den before I was ready. I didn’t understand the meaning behind the sacrifice. What was he hoping to achieve by sending me into a battle I could not win?
“I can’t imagine the idea just came to him this morning when he got to work?”
“No, obviously not. We’ve just learned that our direct competitor pushed up its launch for a new variety show by a week.”
“And it starts tomorrow night,” I guessed.
“That’s right.”
“But that’s absurd! I thought we were slotted for Thursday because it was an underexploited time.”
“I thought so, too.”
“You don’t send a cockleshell led by a ship’s boy to face your biggest enemy!”
She must have liked my naval metaphor because she gave me a friendly pat, a rare thing for her.
“Well, we’re going to have to learn to swim. We don’t have a choice!”
We exchanged a few pained looks, both haloed in clouds of powder and perfume.
“What does Luc think?”
“Same as you: that we’re going to get massacred. But tell that to an admiral who only has eyes for the seaman in question . . .”
I lowered my eyes, then my head. She was right. David’s feelings for me were deeply impacting his judgment. He was not acting like a boss but a man in love: impulsive, overly confident, incapable of heeding the alarmed cries or sound advice of his entourage.
WHEN I PEEKED INTO HER office, Chloe’s eyes widened, sensing the urgency of the situation.
“Can I see David?”
“Yes . . .” She panicked for a moment before consulting her computer, then her watch. “Ten minutes. Then he’s leaving for a meeting. Shall I announce you?”
“Yes, please do.”
My future husband received me with open arms, as though I were just dropping by for a visit.
“Elle! Darling! Have they told you the news?”
I had trouble reconciling David’s stark office with the fact that he was such an important man. Outside of his desk, three chairs, and a small sofa, the only decoration in the room was a bronze bust of his father, Andre Barlet. It was the first time I had laid eyes on him.
David hugged me for a moment, then pointed to a chair facing his, as he would have done with any other colleague.
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
“Wonderful, yes,” I agreed unenthusiastically. “But also completely impossible.”
“Why? Because of that lowlife Chris Haynes?”
“No, I—”
“I really don’t give a damn about him. We have at least twenty sets on hand. They simply have to be installed, the lights adjusted . . . and onward!”
It sounded easy—possible, even—when he said it with that kind of enthusiasm.
“David . . . You’re forgetting something.”
“What?”
“I’ve never been on television!”
“Don’t be silly!” He laughed.
It was like trying to tell Dr. Strangelove not to press the button.
“No, really!”
“You’re stressing over nothing. You have the best team in French television at your side.”
Including Fred, my ex . . . the guy who wanted to whack you a few days ago.
“Super! And what are we going to be talking about?”
“Relax! Albane told me she had enough stuff to cover three shows.”
Including a report on Hotelles! I silently cried. I could not hold back my exasperation any longer. If anyone could open his eyes in this madhouse, it was me.
“David . . . are you trying to be obtuse?”
“What do you mean?” A cloud crossed his brow.
“I’m terrible! Terrible, you hear? I failed all my auditions, David. And not just because your competitors are blind idiots.”
“No, they really are idiots.”
I stood at once.
“You cannot launch a show at the most important time slot of the week with a beginner like me at its helm, especially without any preparation! It’s insane! I am not ready, David, period!”
I saw the effects of my verbal explosion on his impassible expression.
“I won’t do the show,” I concluded calmly.
“You will do it,” he replied, tit for tat.
“No.”
“You will . . . because it’s what I want . . . because you are my wife . . .”
Not yet, I couldn’t help but think.
“And because if you leave this office without having changed your mind, don’t bother coming back tomorrow. Or ever, for that matter.”
He was ready to fire me, his fiancée, the one he’d been praising to heaven only a moment before, as he’d fired Alice and Chris, cutting off their heads on an irrevocable whim.
“Think hard, Elle. If you don’t do the show tomorrow, you’ll still be my wife, the woman I love . . . But you will never again be employed by this company. That part of your life will be over.”