31

At the beginning of April, a new American Apparel store opened around the corner from Rue Béranger. Parisians lined up for the ribbon-cutting. No matter that there was another American Apparel branch ten minutes away, and several already in Paris. Such was the rapture that season for American cotton.

Same week, at a birthday party for one of Pierre and Chloe’s sons, Rachel asked Pierre’s teenage niece about her T-shirt, “C’est American Apparel, non?”

“Ah oui!” the girl gushed. “Moi, j’adore American Apparel. Mais pour moi, c’est trop cher.”

Rachel explained to her that, in the States, their clothes were cheap. The niece went wide-eyed. Vraiment? The niece touched Rachel’s arm. She said, Do you know anyone, oh please, who could ship me some jeans?

The next celebrities for Louis Vuitton were Sofia and Francis Ford Coppola. To make Francis more comfortable during his interview, we’d hired Harold Pinter’s stepdaughter, a magazine editor, supposedly an old friend of the Coppolas, to visit Francis on the set of his latest film. One night, strategizing together, Harold Pinter’s stepdaughter reached out and pinched the sleeve of my T-shirt. She said, “Oh, I love this, this is gorgeous, is it American Apparel?”

“J. Crew,” I said.

“Oh, is it really,” she said, making a note.

On the whole, Pierre was the man of the hour at the agency. And healthier, too: smoking less, working until three a.m. less frequently. His Louis Vuitton work had won several big awards. The client was so pleased, Pierre was being fêted. The client had even begun recommending him and his team to other companies, which led to us winning a big campaign for one of France’s premier brandy makers, because, they said, Pierre knew how to market French luxury better than anyone; he’d mastered telling “the story of French luxury’s DNA.”

The brandy marketing boss visited our office to introduce his project. He was a young guy in an old man’s sport coat. He was maybe twenty-five—but an old twenty-five. Very grave. His chief dilemma, he explained, was to reconvince the world to love France.

For centuries, the brandy boss said, the country’s essence—its way of living, language, and la vie de bohème—was the best. France’s perspective, fashion and flesh, books and cuisine, had all been coveted, with earth trusting Paris “to export the true meaning of luxury.”

But times had changed.

Sure, the boss said, in some sectors—for example, bespoke clothes and fashion-label perfumes, high-end wine and some liquors—France still ruled. For the most part, however, what the market deemed luxurious was being determined elsewhere. “Frequently in Chinese knock-off shops,” he added.

His present dilemma, the boss said, mostly had to do with consumers. And it wasn’t so bad. The world thought differently about Paris, fine. At the same time new markets were emerging. Traditionally, he said, brandy was considered “something old Frenchmen drink by the fire in their slippers.” The room nodded. Of course, he said, old Frenchmen in slippers still drank brandy—the room laughed—but there was a newer, bigger customer base. Specifically, “the blacks of America,” both those economically rising and economically struggling, as well as “China’s nouveau riche.”

The room looked surprised.

Both groups were challenges, the boss said. Regarding the former, surely, he said, we’d heard this from other clients? Seen other luxury businesses struggle with unsought fans? “The rappers and their champagne?” The room recognized the reference: the previous year, Louis Roederer’s managing director had caused a scandal by saying in The Economist, about some rappers’ fondness for his wine, “What can we do? We can’t forbid people from buying it.”

“My point of view is that customers are customers,” the brandy boss said. His team was, at that moment, devising new products “preferred by American blacks,” that is, fruity cocktails. Meanwhile, Chinese businessmen drank brandy straight like wine.

A collective gasp.

“That’s a joke,” someone said.

“But that’s not normal,” someone said.

“No, trust me, it’s true!” the brandy man said. “You’ve never seen anything like it.” For example, he described how a businessman in Guangzhou might plonk down ten bottles of expensive brandy if he was hosting a big dinner, to demonstrate his wealth, and everyone would hit it hard while they ate.

Around the table, there were many little puffs of incredulity.

At the end of the meeting, the brandy boss invited us down to an ancient village where his brandies were still distilled—“so you can understand our DNA even better.” Well, why not, Pierre said. A week later, Pierre, an art director named Louise, and I traveled by high-speed train to appreciate brandy better. We tried our best. On a gorgeous day, as the sun shone down especially for us (it felt that way), we drank two brandy cocktails in the morning in a rustic bar, three or four glasses of wine at lunch in a fancy dining room, and about ten varieties of brandy during a long tour of a scientific-looking tasting room, two musty wine cellars, and an appointed château in a landscaped vale, with a ride in the afternoon on a river boat.

By nightfall, I understood the genetics of brandy a little better. But really what I knew was that I liked to pass out on high-speed trains.

*   *   *

Vincent and Lucas telephoned Pierre to let us know they were ready to show their London films. Titles finished, music composed, and the knife of value applied to their editing. We rode over on Pierre’s scooter, with me borrowing a spare helmet from André, a pink mushroom cap he kept beside his desk for whenever a cute girl needed a lift.

“Très mignon,” André said when I put it on.

Vincent and Lucas’s office was above a park in the eleventh arrondissement, in a family neighborhood of old white buildings and iron fences. Pierre and I climbed some battered stairs and rang the bell. Angry shouting from inside: Vincent yelling for Lucas to get the door, Lucas screaming he wasn’t ready.

After a minute, Vincent appeared.

“Listen,” Vincent said, “Lucas…” He shook his head. “Don’t test him.” Pierre laughed, but Vincent put his hand on his chest and said, “No joke, be careful.”

Their studio was clogged with movie and photography equipment. Paint flaked off the walls. There was a room of computer monitors and gear, with windows overlooking the park, and posters from Vincent’s movies. At the end of a hallway was the room where Lucas composed. He was just coming out, frowning and smoking. Lucas waggled a finger at us. His room was not for public viewing. Pierre chided him and tried to push past, but Lucas shoved him back, saying, No, fuck off.

While Vincent loaded the films we joked around, talking about deadlines. But I couldn’t help my curiosity. I ambled back and pushed open Lucas’s door.

“Guy,” Lucas shouted behind me, “what are you doing?”

“Don’t do that!” Vincent shouted from the other room.

“Oh, come on,” Pierre said behind me, and pushed past. We got a glimpse of some keyboards in the dark, then Lucas came running and slammed the door.

His face was red. He stammered, “I told you no, and what do you do?”

Pierre and I backed up, hands in the air.

Lucas shouted, “What did I ask? What one thing? Do I come into your office and touch your shit? I asked you not to. This is how you treat me?”

Vincent hushed him, but Lucas didn’t hear. He kicked a wooden chair so hard it smashed against the wall.

“Lucas!” Vincent shouted.

Lucas left and slammed the door behind him.

“Hey, he told you not to go in,” Vincent said. “Where is the respect?”

“I’m really sorry,” I said.

We spent half an hour watching their films. They were beautiful, especially the music. Lucas didn’t return. I sent him an e-mail that afternoon to apologize. He wrote back late that evening to say there were no hard feelings. After we presented the movies to Louis Vuitton, who loved them, Lucas and Pierre visited for a debriefing and to begin planning our Coppola work. Everyone embraced with bises, and Lucas called me a Fucking Guy, then he told me I looked fatter.

*   *   *

That weekend, a friend of ours from New York visited Paris. Danny was in town for a wedding, and we took him shopping because he’d forgotten to pack his suit jacket. In one boutique, when he came out of the dressing room, Rachel told Danny he was looking great, very slim. He said thanks, that he’d been trying to lose weight, and had recently begun tracking his body mass index in a spreadsheet on his laptop.

I asked if that meant he was exercising more. Danny said no, he didn’t associate exercise with weight loss. Good for health, sure, but exercise didn’t necessarily help the pounds fall off.

“You realize how Parisian that sounds,” Rachel said.

“Well, you don’t have to live in Paris to be Parisian,” Danny said.

Rachel said a minute later, “You know, I locked a woman in a machine yesterday.”

I said, “What the hell?”

“I was trying to help her,” Rachel said. “An old woman at the gym. I’d seen her there before. She didn’t know how to use a leg-lift machine. So I helped clamp down her thighs. Ten minutes later, I’m going to change and she’s still there, locked in place, humming to herself. She didn’t know how to get out. She was just sitting there, watching the world go by.”

“Now, that’s very Parisian,” Danny said.