Outside Paris, the city lights dimmed behind us so that the stars were even brighter overhead. Ania and Charlie began singing Cole Porter love songs to each other, Charlie in his deep but tuneless baritone, Ania’s voice wandering in and out of the English lyrics like a child lost in a toy store. “You’re the top!” Charlie boomed at her, and she came back with “You’re my hat on Gandhi,” instead of “Mahatma Gandhi.”
When we laughed, there was an edge to it. Tonight, Ania decided Charlie’s future. And hers. I almost wished she would send him home alone. It would, in the long run, be so much easier. But then I remembered Allen, and what the word alone meant after you had been in love with someone, and I hoped with all my heart she would leave her husband for Charlie. But what if the husband wouldn’t let her take the child with her?
When the car pulled over in the long gravel drive, we put on our masks before getting out. Mine was white, to match the dress, with crystals circling the eyeholes and feathers at the corners. As soon as I put on that mask, I stopped thinking and entered the dream.
André Durst had created a perfect replica of an enchanted chateau in the forest of Mortefontaine, with rooms of mirrors and greenery, gauzy screens instead of walls . . . the inside was the outside. We couldn’t tell which was chateau, which was surrounding forest. People costumed as birds, druids, satyrs roamed the rooms and the gardens. A woman costumed as a leopard glided through the fields with a man costumed as a lion. A group of people arrived together as a flock of doves; a rabbit danced with a flower.
And it was all illuminated by thousands of candles on branching candelabras.
Ania and Charlie danced away together almost as soon as we arrived, leaving me alone in rooms glittering with so many candles, so much crystal, the rooms looked like they were on fire. In the midst of darkness, there was light everywhere, prisms of it casting rainbows on walls, mirrors throwing out reflections, windows with their darker light, still shimmering. It was like walking through flames without being burned.
In a costume, I discovered, you don’t mind being unpartnered. Perhaps that is the nature of solitude: it requires a sense of self and separateness. When you are not yourself, when you are costumed, you are no one and everyone; there are no borders, no separateness, perhaps not even between life and death. A breeze tickled my neck, and it felt like a memory come back to life, Allen’s breath tickling my neck.
I started to feel like a creature of the forest, solitary, wary, visible only to those who have the patience and the eyes to see the truth of you, to catch the movement of a life in camouflage, in disguise. If someone took my hand, a red-caped Richelieu or Harlequin, I danced, coupled in a waltz that made my dress flare at the hem, or in a line of dancers, each one with a hand on the shoulder in front of her, snaking in and out of the crystal rooms.
When a waiter passed with a tray of champagne, I took a glass. Many glasses. A couple of hours later someone put his hand on my waist for a fox-trot.
It was von Dincklage’s aide, that solemn German boy.
“You should at least be wearing a mask,” I told him. “It is a costume party, after all.”
“I think we won’t be here very long,” he said. So von Dincklage was here. Of course. I hoped that Charlie and Ania were keeping to the shadows.
He pressed slightly on the small of my back, bringing us closer together. I could feel his warm breath on my cheek and closed my eyes for a second, enjoying his scent of cloves and aftershave. For a moment, his face brushed against my hair. Then we both took a half step back and we were again two almost strangers.
“You dance well,” he said stiffly, trying, and failing, to make small talk.
“Where is the baron?”
“Somewhere nearby, I’ve no doubt. He won’t object if I dance, I think. It is a costume party, after all.”
So we danced.
That night there were people whose faces I recognized, a blur of memory from my first night in Paris, at the Ritz, and many more people whom I didn’t recognize at all, men with military posture, women covered with jewels, men in dresses, women in tuxedos, ingénues in pastel gowns. And Charlie and Ania, beautiful Charlie and Ania, so immersed in each other’s gaze they could have been alone rather than dancing through crowded rooms.
Ania saw me over Charlie’s shoulder, saw my dancing partner, and her eyes opened wider. They were on the other side of the room, near a doorway draped in a garland of flowers, and Ania steered Charlie through it, out of the room. Von Dincklage’s aide had seen them before they disappeared, though. He said nothing.
Coco arrived around eleven, in a diaphanous green gown that looked like fern fronds moving in a breeze when she moved. It was Coco, blending into nature, but still Coco.
Schiap arrived soon after, dressed, as she had promised, as a tree, covered in a rough brown cloth that looked like tree bark, with branches extending from her arms and the crown of her head. Several cloth and feather birds perched on her shoulders. Whimsical, humorous, always-make-it-look-easy Schiap. Schiap got the louder applause when she made her entrance, and I saw Coco’s smile fade.
Schiap came to me and gave me a tight hug, and I felt the rough-edged sackcloth of her tree bark bite into my bare arms. “Look,” she said, “there’s Elsie in the spangled orange tulle. I designed her gown. And that one, and that one . . .” She surreptitiously pointed at all the women in the room wearing costumes by Schiaparelli, her brown-bark little hands covered with green felt leaves dancing right and left.
“I see so far only three gowns by Coco. Yes,” she said. “It is a night for victory. Even so, I have a bad feeling. No, keep smiling. Maybe it is nothing, maybe it is just the stars lining up strangely. My horoscope indicates this is a complicated time for Virgos.”
I knew by then that Schiap was superstitious, but that evening her words brought gooseflesh on my arms. There was so much at stake, and Charlie, born in September, was also a Virgo.
Coco, in her diaphanous green gown, came over to us to greet Schiap: the runner-up admitting the prize goes elsewhere. Her face was frozen into a smile, her red lips stretched so taut her teeth flashed.
The partygoers danced around us, a dangerous tableau of Schiap and Coco, and me, with the music, a boisterous rendition of “Pennies from Heaven,” sounding too loud, too fast.
Ania danced by with someone I didn’t know, and he gave her a twirl under his arm as she waved to me. The twirl made Ania’s Snow White skirt flare into flower-shaped fullness, and there, bright and unmissable, was the embroidery in the outline of Ursa Major, Schiap’s insignia.
Something dangerous flickered in Coco’s flinty eyes.
“She’s not wearing the costume I made her,” Coco said, to everyone and no one.
Von Dincklage was at her side, then, carrying two martinis. He offered one to her, and when Coco took it her hand was shaking so much it spilled.
“Easy!” Von Dincklage laughed.
“She’s not wearing the costume I made,” Coco said again, this time specifically to von Dincklage.
“So! It is just a dress. Don’t be so mercenary.”
The word mercenary made her visibly cringe. Well, of course she was. She was a businesswoman. She was the kind of woman who would have been shown the servant’s entrance at his baronial estate.
He would have been kinder if he had thrown his drink at her. Of course a baron like von Dincklage, old family, old money, centuries of wealth, would think that her motives were merely mercenary, not realizing that nothing less than honor and reputation were at stake.
Coco turned white. Her face froze into a mask of hatred.
Schiap was dancing across the room by herself, surrounded by a clapping group of drunken admirers. She waved her branch-arms, leaned her head side to side so that the treetop looked like it was swaying in a strong wind. People laughed and applauded even more loudly.
The music changed to a soft, sweet “The Way You Look Tonight,” with the band singer giving a credible imitation of Fred Astaire’s quavering voice.
Coco began to sway, her head and shoulders moving in subtle willowy circles. Von Dincklage took her in his arms for the dance, but she broke away from him. Instead, she danced toward Schiap, her billowing green skirt making the forest floor for Schiap’s brown tree. They danced together, two women no longer young but still deeply needing admiration, two businesswomen locked in fierce competition, two women who couldn’t be more different in their aesthetics, their way of being in the world.
Time slowed like it does when you see a car slide out of control, heading for a tree. Time slows, but all you can do is watch because you, too, have slowed, you are in the same altered time as the approaching disaster.
Who knew what else was going through Coco’s mind that evening? Perhaps she had dreamed the night before of those cold white walls and black doors in the orphanage, the father who had abandoned her and the mother who had died, the many wounds of childhood that still haunt the adult. Perhaps, all those wounds of childhood, the fear and rejection, had reawakened when she saw Ania in the Schiaparelli costume.
Perhaps she wasn’t thinking at all but only reacting, the way dry wood reacts when a match is put to it.
Coco danced forward, her hips and arms swaying, and Schiap, laughing, kept dancing back, until Coco finally caught her and pulled her into her arms the way a man would have. Their faces were just inches away from each other, both women grinning, laughing, dancing. Coco, leading, danced Schiap back, back, back until she was against one of Durst’s floor-standing candelabras. Coco released her and stepped away.
For a moment, Schiap stood there, not realizing what had happened, what was about to happen. Then her halter of branches, her costume of tree bark, caught fire. An azure shimmer appeared over her shoulders, rising up from her back, where she’d danced into the candelabra.
We watched, frozen in horror like moviegoers waiting for the train to fall over the tracks into the gorge.
Blue phosphorus flames danced down the branches extending from Schiap’s arms and her head, the flames dangerously close to her face, her fingers. Schiap, no longer laughing, turned in confused, panicked circles, the way wounded beasts do when danger is near but they are too terrified even to run. She turned in circles of blue flame tinted red at their tips, as the partygoers moved into concentric circles around her, pointing and laughing.
I’m dreaming, I thought. This is a nightmare. The flames shimmered, opalescent, blue. The glittering wood of Schiap’s costume welcomed the flames so that soon, in seconds that felt like hours, the flames were licking her hands, singeing her hair, and I stood there, still frozen, staring in horror and guilt.
Leopards, tigers, clowns, several Cleopatras removed their masks the better to laugh, believing this was an illusion, part of the festivities. Hadn’t Elsie de Wolfe, at her Circus Ball, hired acrobats and dancing elephants? They thought Coco and Schiap had planned this, though how they could have believed that, knowing as they did—we all knew—how Coco and Schiap felt about each other, was beyond comprehension.
Finally the horror that had frozen me in place—how long? Three seconds? Four?—turned to panic and I ran to Schiap.
Charlie was beside me, urging me forward, thrusting a seltzer bottle into my hands. “The hands,” he instructed, as he himself threw water over Schiap’s head, dousing the flames moving closer, closer to her eyes, her ears. With a hiss and sparks, the branches on her head accepted the water, and with resignation, the flames died.
People began throwing their drinks at Schiap. “More water!” they shouted. “Where’s the fire brigade?”
They kept throwing their drinks at her long after the flames had been extinguished.
Schiap, safe but looking like a drowned rat tumbled in debris, began to laugh, but the sound was high and strained. I had never before seen such pleading in someone’s eyes. I knew what she wanted, needed.
I laughed, too, put my arm around her wet, trembling shoulders, laughed ha ha, wasn’t that funny! Because if Schiap didn’t laugh, if I didn’t laugh with her, then all those others would be laughing at Schiap, not with her. And once Parisian society laughs at you, your career is over. No one likes a victim.
Coco had disappeared by then, and no one went looking for her. Von Dincklage had disappeared as well, and I hoped he had taken Coco home. I didn’t want her to be alone.
That may sound strange, considering what she had just done to Schiap, but the look on Coco’s face when Schiap burst into flames had frightened me as much as the flames on Schiap’s bark costume. Her face had been cold with satisfaction, certainly, and also with horror at what she had done, and a certain resignation. As if it had to be done, there was no other way to win, to conquer her rival once and for all. But every victory has a price, and Coco was already wondering what the price of this would be for her.
“Hello, again,” Schiap said to Charlie, when he took off his jacket and put it around Schiap’s trembling, sodden shoulders. She smiled brightly at him, but I saw the lingering terror in her eyes.
“Hi,” Charlie said. “Good to see you again.” That was what a good doctor did. Reassure. Pretend all is well, normal. “Are you feeling dizzy? Let’s get you dried off and warm.”
Charlie was alone. Where was Ania? Gone, I realized.
Schiap refused to admit that she was in a state of mild shock, that her fingertips and nose were pink from too-close flames. When Charlie tried to dry her face she pushed his hands away.
“I’ll see to it,” I said.
“Right,” Charlie agreed.
I helped Schiap upstairs, into a powder room and out of the still-smoldering costume.
“Look at me,” she said, sitting on a pink boudoir chair and staring into the mirror. “A disaster.”
“Shall I find your driver?”
“No. Of course. I’m staying. Leaving now would be the worst thing I could do. My horoscope was right,” she said. “A bad evening.”
“For Charlie, too, I’m afraid.”
“No one set him on fire,” she protested.
“Just the opposite.”
“No, don’t hug me. You’ll get stains on your dress. My makeup is a mess.”
“We’ll just clean up a bit and you’ll be more beautiful than ever.”
“Beautiful. Hah!” Schiap’s voice was gravelly. “Not even my own mother thought I was pretty. I had an Aunt Zia who was so beautiful her town declared a festival when she married and went to live elsewhere. Me? The priests are safe, aren’t they?”
“No one looks their best after they’ve been set on fire,” I pointed out.
She laughed once, a sound like something breaking. “I’ll show her,” Schiap said. “I’ll get even for this.”
“Maybe it was an accident.”
Schiap snorted in fury. “And maybe two plus two makes four is an accident. God, I miss Gogo. Why is she staying away so long? I want my daughter.”
She dabbed at her nose, her little saint’s face raw and pink from flame, then crumpled up the handkerchief and threw it to the ground.
Schiap had been wearing a sequined sheath under the tree costume, and the smoke and water stains were somewhat masked by the glint of the metallic embroidery. She stood, checked her stocking seams to see if they were straight, then went back down to the ball.
I found Charlie again. We shouldered our way through the laughing crowd and went outside to find a quiet bench to sit on, far from the noise.
“Hard to believe that’s the same moon I was happy under a few hours ago,” he said.
“Ania isn’t going back with you, is she?”
“No. She is staying here, with the child. Her husband won’t let her have custody if they divorce.”
“I’m sorry.” I took his hand and held it. His face was stony, the way boys’ faces get when they are trying hard not to cry.
We sat for a long while staring up at the traitor moon, a big round moon fit for a fairy tale, but now it looked like painted cardboard. The costume ball swirled and clattered, butterflies with gauze wings, kings in gilt crowns, but there was no more illusion; it was just people in strange clothes trying too hard to have a good time, a ragtag group of disheveled, dispirited strangers who seemed to barely know one another. It was a place where tragedy had occurred.
The ball ended sometime after dawn, when people look their worst: makeup smeared, shadows under the eyes and in the hollows of the cheeks, costumes rumpled, some even torn. Chauffeurs lined up in their Bentleys and Mercedes to pick up their patrons, and the chauffeurs, neat in black-and-white uniforms, better rested, mindful, looked better than the partygoers.
All the glitter had been extinguished. Diamonds need light to give back light, and the morning sky was leaden. The women’s jewels looked like cheap paste imitations; the candles and torches in the ballroom had burned themselves into nonexistence hours before.
Charlie and I found a cab at the end of the long queue of chauffeured and gleaming automobiles and returned to Paris, alone.