CHAPTER SIXTEEN

AS SHELBY’S PERSONAL DISAPPEARANCES GREW INTO A HABIT, HIS Jaguar seemed to be absent, too, from the Star’s underground parking lot. Suddenly, on the occasions when we did manage to meet for coffee and aperitifs, he was full of stories about the Métro told with the peculiar ardor of an explorer who does not realize that his new frontiers are in fact quite familiar to most of the people around him. One time, he recounted how he fled one car because a woman wore a bulky overcoat on a hot day and it reminded him of a suicide bomber. But when he reboarded at the next car, he found himself trapped between two accordion players busking in stereo.

I had not traveled on the Paris Métro in years. I remembered it without nostalgia or any great desire to return to those packed cars, those bug-eyed trumpeters playing Fellini music, the passengers’ fixed gaze locked onto some indeterminate piece of the coachwork as a crazed zealot demanded that they repent their sins. I enjoyed Springsteen on the car radio and, at home, the operatic selections chosen by Marie-Claire as part of her mission to educate me in the finer things of life. But the buskers on the Métro—the guitarists, the accordionists, the songsters, and the off-key flutists—left me cold. Once I had caught myself thinking that if there were a sudden, loud single shot and then silence, the shooter would have done humanity a service.

“What’s better: blown up or deafened?” Shelby wanted to know after his near miss with imagined jihad.

“Did the train explode?”

“Nope.”

“So your point was?”

“My point was just this: you see all these people with their tiny white plugs in their ears and you think they are listening to their own music. But that’s not the point—what they’re really doing is drowning out the appalling musicians.”

Another time he asked me—in the hope of raising a smile—if people who flirted on the subway qualified as Métro-sexuals, or would they have to achieve some kind of advanced physical contact to reach that status?

“‘The apparition of these faces in the crowd,’” I murmured. “‘Petals on a wet, black bough.’”

He looked at me blankly for a long second.

“Pound!” He finally exclaimed. “The goddamned haiku about getting off the Métro. At Concorde! Ezra Pound! Shelby, you old dog, hiding your light under a bushel.”

“Not quite a haiku,” I said. “Just haiku-like.”

There was no point in explaining to him that we didn’t all validate ourselves through flashy cars and serial bylines. We didn’t all need to wear our Eng. Lit. 101 on our linen sleeves. We didn’t all need to boast of our familiarity with the 1 to La Défense or the 6 to Trocadéro and the 10 to trendy Mabillon.

Every Métro station had its story, its destination, its history, and its chronicler—from Clichy and Henry Miller’s quiet days there, to Bastille and the rolling heads of the revolution, to Pigalle and the ghost of Toulouse-Lautrec. The tunnels chronicled grand battles—Solférino and Austerlitz (no mention of Waterloo, a station name beloved of the victorious British, or the Somme or Dien Bien Phu)—and honored the literary lions prowling the city’s dark belly—Avenue Émile Zola and Anatole France, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas (no Gérard de Nerval, thankfully).

Somehow I did not see Shelby as a Métro man. He always said that he took public transport only if it offered a setting for a story: a bus on the same route as a bus bomb in Tel Aviv, a London tube ride on the same explosive principal. More usually, he said, he had taken cabs in far-flung places where public transport was a minibus that might wait hours or days until sufficient passengers filled its cracked and splintered seats to persuade the driver to embark on his designated mad dash to the next halt in Kenya or Kazakhstan. Third World cab rides were not like brief, First World rides from the East Village to Central Park or from the Groucho Club to Hampstead. Once launched on the subject, Shelby liked to explain that Third World cab rides were bone-breakers, ball-busters, in worn-out, clapped-out Peugeots and Renaults, from vintages forgotten in the rest of the world, held together with gum and prayer, hope and copper wire. Their fuel lines clogged like old arteries. Rust perforated floors. Watered-down gas froze en route to the carburetors. Suspension clanged. Steering strayed. Gearshifts groaned. Throttles jammed—closed or open—or hovered in some uncertain zone between motion and immobility. You took rides that lasted hours. You negotiated the price up front for the day. You prayed you’d still be alive at the end of it. One time, Shelby said, they—he and Faria and a translator—had taken a cab across eastern Turkey, from Van to Hakkâri, from Hakkâri to Çukurca, from Çukurca to Cizre, from Cizre to Diyarbakir. The road was so bad that it almost disappeared, and they tumbled out to push the cab up the sides of ravines. The driver got so tired he fell asleep and Shelby took over. The track led through the no-man’s-land along the border between Turkey and Iraq, between Ottoman and Arab, a line sketched presumably by some diplomat in some remote conference hall in Lausanne or Geneva, and they bumped into a bunch of members of the Iraqi Republican Guard, notorious for “shoot first, ask questions later” peremptoriness and brutality. But at this time, in unfamiliar retreat, with the destiny of their dictatorial leader in doubt and the source of future protection unknown, all they wanted were Marlboros. At the roadblocks, Joe and Faria got so used to their translator saying where they were going that they could recite it themselves: “Gazeteciyiz. Çukurca’dan geliyoruz. Cizre’ye gideceiz.” We are journalists, going from Çukurca to Cizre.

“I know I’m going to die in a Third World taxi,” Faria had said laughingly as the Murat, an old locally made version of a Fiat, staggered into Cizre, its driver once more at the wheel, its tires bald and its brake shoes shot. But, of course, that particular prophecy of hers—so often made—was not borne out by events.

The riddle of the disappearing Jaguar resolved itself one morning when I saw Shelby’s assigned parking bay reoccupied, recolonized by an almost identical XKR, with the same Lebanese export license plates, but painted jet-black. On inspection, I could see it was indeed the original car with a remarkable professional paint job that obliterated its previous incarnation in silver. Picked out in gold lettering on the driver’s side of the long, sleek front wing of the car was the new name: “Le Soleil Noir.” The Black Sun. Straight out of Nerval: “Ma seule Étoile est morte, – et mon luth constellé / Porte le Soleil noir de la Mélancolie.” My only star is dead, and my spangled lute bears the black sun of melancholy.

Or some such.

It was part of the same poem, “El Desdichado,” that Shelby had recited at the Duclos funeral.

Since then, Shelby had spoken very little about what he was doing outside the office, but I could see from the state of him—the weight loss, the red eyes, the appearance of someone with a chronic sinus problem—that he was burning up, or even burning out. If he had come to Paris looking for release from his ghosts, it looked to me as though the ghosts had won and he had been dragged into their netherworld.

Then I had something of an insight, an inspiration. It was the first time that I had realized that the name of the newspaper where we both worked—the Star—bore such immense significance for the Nervalistas. Stars bore mythic significance. They exerted deep, irresistible pulls on the soul. They drew you to your destiny. In the poem, the star was dead, replaced by a black sun. (In life, the Star was broke, not replaced at all.)

As I went over the words in my mind, translating back and forth, jumbling them up, another connection emerged: black sun, lone star, black star—Black Star! The name of Duclos’s picture agency that sold her work around the world and kept track of her assignments. Black Star, Black Sun. I was beginning to get psyched by the same riddles as Shelby. The car, maybe, had become his memorial to her, a rolling V8 sarcophagus of memory.

It did not augur well.

I had to admit, though, that when he pitched up for our weekend party at the stud farm—“just a select few,” Marie-Claire had promised—the Black Sun fit right in with the array of dark-windowed Citroëns and Mercedes, even a single Bentley Continental, belonging to some of the other guests.

Marie-Claire had chosen a summer weekend and could not have known beforehand that the Graphic’s top team would move up its visit to begin soon afterward—a rescheduling interpreted by the staff of the Star with much fearful speculation as to their purpose: Were they coming with axes to lop off the head count, or was their intention much more sinister? Would there be pep talks or eulogies, commitments or commiserations? In a way I was very grateful to Marie-Claire for offering a diversion from the febrile gossip and rumormongering so prevalent within the community of scribes, hacks, impostors, and poets who had provided my lifelong habitat.

She had closed down the stud’s business for the event, freeing up the guest cottages she had built for the visiting owners of our more prized charges. She had hired live bands and legions of caterers whose trucks arrived laden with silver platters and ice sculptures of swans, which I found unsettling. Throughout the day, vehicles of varying dimensions pulled in, bearing the aluminum skeletons and billowing white fabric of a marquee big enough for a three-ring circus. Like roadies preparing a rock band gig, laborers unloaded and assembled wooden decks, erecting enormous industrial-strength air conditioners at strategic points within the tent, while, outside, our lawns offered accommodation to portable lavatory facilities and gigantic barbecues with rotating spits. As the setting took shape, the interior of the tent became an enormous, upscale restaurant with trestle tables for bars, circular tables for guests, flowers from Africa, napkins, knives, forks, spoons, coasters, flutes, beakers, saltshakers, pepper mills, cups, saucers. Forget the parties of youth with their paper cups and boxes of wine. The tableware was all bone china or crystal. Delivery trucks disgorged case upon case of liquors, beers, wines, and champagnes. Armies of waiters, chefs, and sundry attendants arrived under the command of their own generals and lieutenants, who fussed and barked orders and paid profound homage to my wife as the undisputed field marshal and pay-mistress of the whole shebang.

When I quizzed Marie-Claire about the outlays, she smiled and assured me that the party actually saved us money as a tax write-off. And additionally, she reminded me with the tones of a schoolmarm addressing a student caught napping at his desk, one of our fabled stabled animals, Sunset Strip, had just won the Prix du Jockey Club at Chantilly and the party was a way of rewarding the owner for keeping his steeds with us, recycling the side-bet profits through the official books, and encouraging les autres to entrust their fillies and stallions to us for safekeeping, training, and procreation.

Shelby arrived in style, the roof down in the XKR and a Vuitton suitcase (so scuffed it had to be genuine) lodged casually in the jump seat. He nudged the Black Sun cautiously over the speed bumps, between the whitewashed fences that kept the verdant gallops and paddocks safe from contamination by anything other than the best-shod hooves. The plane trees lining the driveway were hung with lanterns the color of emeralds and rubies, and I watched as Shelby drew briefly to a halt, consulted one of his volumes, and looked back at the lanterns as if to confirm something. Then, frowning, he drove on.

He wore a ruffled dress shirt and hand-knotted black bow tie with a tuxedo jacket at the ready. Marie-Claire had not mentioned a dress code, but Shelby seemed to have assumed that, if you were invited to an overnight party at a fancy stud farm outside Paris, you should dress the part, even if, for him, that seemed to include a leather helmet and goggles on the drive in. I would not have been surprised to find that he had brought a set of matched Purdey shotguns in the trunk for a spot of rough shooting.

Instead, he had brought the AK-47.

“What the hell is that thing for?” I said when I saw its barrel with the distinctive front sight poking from a black tote bag.

“You never know.”

“Never know what?”

“You told me I should dump it.”

“But not in my backyard.”

“Ah, le fameux Joseph,” Marie-Claire exclaimed.

As on the evening in Saint-Germain when I introduced them, he took her hand in that formal way beloved of European nobility, raising it to his lips without making contact. For a moment, I thought she might offer a mocking curtsy.

I looked at the two of them—my best buddy in his tailored (but by no means new) tux and my wife in her couture (and definitely new) dark satin gown from her favorite designer in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. She had modeled it for me earlier, showing me, tantalizingly, how its various layers hid the most outrageous lingerie. (“For your eyes only,” she said.) The dress was cut with an artful, and relatively modest, décolleté neckline. It hugged her waist and swelled modestly over her sculpted, equestrian hips. A double string of pearls that had almost broken the piggy-bank glowed on the smooth expanse between neck and breast. The deep jungly tones of her dress accentuated the green of her eyes.

If she was out to make an impression, she had succeeded.

Personally, I thought she looked spectacular however she dressed—in her riding boots and Barbour coats, her white toweling gown over the first coffee, or her jeans-and-baggy-T-shirt “welcome home” mode. But that evening, she looked utterly magnificent. I could not believe she had chosen me as her spouse. Neither, I suspect, could Shelby. In the spirit of things, I had decided on my most recent dark suit, a pressed white shirt from Sulka, and a birthday gift Ferragamo tie with a horsey motif. In the bedroom mirror, I thought I looked pretty nifty. But seeing Shelby and Marie-Claire, I had the feeling that, if an outsider had to guess the most likely couple among the three of us, the choice would fall on the two of them—with their looks and manners that made my understated James Cagney mien seem distinctly second feature.

I thought back to the Alfa Romeo brochure I had found in the apartment in the Sixteenth. She had not mentioned it to me. There was no sign, indeed, of an Alfa Romeo in our garage. So was she leading some kind of double life—a sports car, open-top, two-seater clandestine existence?

But then, I told myself, the marriage certificate binding Marie-Claire to earth named me, not Shelby, as the spouse. And that counted for everything.

The marquee was lined in a navy blue fabric picked out with golden stars—those damned stars again—and the menu was full of Middle Eastern delicacies: spit-roast lamb with radishes for eyes, kebabs, roast pigeon, tabbouleh, hummus, falafel, Turkish burek and baklava, baba ghanoush from Egypt. Some of the serving staff wore purple sashes over white shirts, dark vests, and pantaloons with a faintly Ottoman look to them. Who needed Nerval’s Voyage en Orient when its culinary equivalent was set out on your own lawns? But, then, who would want to, considering its fables of fire and betrayal and assassination?

The guest list included quite a lot of the intermingled equestrian-political set, people I knew only faintly—some from passing acquaintance, others from the society pages. But others were well known to me—The Duke, Marie-Claire’s aristocrat from our first meeting, and a sprinkling of journos from the big papers and networks, bureau chiefs clinging forlornly to the life rafts of their expense accounts.

We all called ourselves buddies, old-school. But I detected a hint of bitter reproach directed toward me and Shelby: we, after all, were working our shifts on the footplate of the digital express, holding on to our hats as it hurtled onward at unconscionable speeds; we were the chain saws in the primordial forest, stripping away the camouflage of the pterodactyls and brontosauruses. We sucked the news out of the day like a thirsty kid draining an orange slice, leaving only the peel in the gutter for “old media” to chew on. But in the process—and this worried all of us—our judgments had to be quick, sometimes too quick. We made calls on stories simply because something somewhere went bang; we stretched thin the sanctity of citing multiple sources for every nugget of information, resorting to bits of unconfirmed chitchat attributed to “people said” or “a local official said on the condition of anonymity” or, worst of all, “analysts said”—we had started to quote ourselves. We were not only building the new tribune of the Internet era; we were hollowing out the ground beneath it.

The other thing that colored my relationship with the old crew was the thinly disguised envy among some of them of my marital status. In the pre-Marie-Claire era we had all been on pretty much the same level. If anything, I was the poor relative, ponying up for rounds I could ill afford on a Star salary. But now my drinking buddies figured that I had landed with my feet under the table, bum in the butter, laughing all the way to the bank. Why did I even bother to work, they asked, when I could retire to the stud farm and sip mimosas for breakfast for the rest of my life? And presumably invite them for a free noggin, too.

But I couldn’t.

My place at the Star, my slot on the masthead, had become more important than ever when I met Marie-Claire. The Star was my badge of office, my shield, my sole claim to equality. If I lost that, what would I be? The kept man? The houseboy? The poodle? So, sure, it was cool being a rich woman’s husband—but not some kind of lackey. If I lost my job to some buyout deal, some cost-cutting sidewinder of a head count maneuver, I would not be able to look myself in the eye.

More important, I would not be able to look her in the eye, either.

So, yes, I was married to a rich woman. And, yes, under French law, I would not starve whatever happened: even if she left, the alimony would keep me immune from hardship. But, no, that did not mean I could ever abandon my one claim to a kind of success in a world outside her orbit, to independence of action and means.

Marrying rich tied me forever to the Sisyphean rock on the slippery slope of Nonstop News.

“Who’d like a drink?”

Shelby strolled into the main marquee with a band of kindred spirits. He was on his relatively best behavior. I had been watching him as he worked the crowd, stopping to nod to some cabinet minister (“knew him in Chad when he was just a spook”) or some ambassador (“remember him as first secretary in KL—loved the bar girls!”). Surprisingly, he had that party lizard’s way of interposing himself into other people’s conversations, then extricating himself—having jogged some memory, renewed some bond, recalled some unpaid debt—to move on, like a sleek bee in a garden of honeysuckle. Reassuringly, he did not seem to be drinking heavily. Occasionally, I would lose sight of him, as if he had slipped below the radar in some social Bermuda Triangle, but then he reappeared, smiling, energetic, almost—it occurred to me—acting as if he were the host of this magnificent party.

But there was one episode that gave him pause.

Elvire Récamier arrived in her own car—one of those retro Fiat 500s—bouncing over the speed bumps with crashing disdain. As she pulled up, the passenger door of her car flew open and out stepped Gibson Dullar in slender blue jeans and a supple brown leather jacket, sweeping back long locks and looking around like a leopard set down in unfamiliar bushlands, eyeing the cover, sniffing the breeze.

“Look who I found lurking along the boulevards,” Elvire said in a voice that could not disguise its mischief. “Is this okay, Ed,” she said—it sounded like “Ez zeez hokay?” I had no quick answer. Across the parking area, in a knot of dignitaries, I spotted Shelby. An expression I could not fathom crossed his face like a cloud across the sun. Then just as quickly dissipated.

“I don’t believe we’ve met?” Marie-Claire said.

“Dullar. Gibson Dullar. Friend of Ed’s. And Joe’s,” he said. “Elvire insisted. Gate-crasher, I’m afraid.”

I thought the description evoked more of a state of being than an explanation for his specific presence among us. But I said nothing.

“Of course. You are most welcome. Ed has told me all about you.”

“Not all, I hope, Ed?” His winning smile rivaled Shelby’s.

“How very mysterious,” Marie-Claire said. Her voice seemed to have shifted into a slightly lower register. During one of the Iraq wars, Dullar had acquired something of a reputation for refusing to take to the bunkers when Saddam Hussein’s missiles rained on Tel Aviv. But that was not the only reason they called him the Scud-muffin.

“Jesus. Gib Dullar!”

“Hey, Joe. Old buddy.”

“What brings you to town?”

“I guess I’m on this junket with the masthead? Visiting the Star? Boosting morale. Inspecting the troops. So I figured I’d get in early to stake out gay Paree.”

The handshake reminded me of the touch of gloves before the opening bell of a prizefight. Marie-Claire glanced between the two of them speculatively, as if the hostile, one-bull-in-the-kraal spark that crackled between them ignited something that had been dormant, buried in our tranquility.

One aging Lothario was enough for the party. Two was downright dangerous.

Elvire’s operatic lady had begun to trill. And we all had prime seats in the orchestra stalls, if not parts in the chorus.

“Maybe I should take your car keys, Joe,” I said, thinking of the assault rifle in the trunk.

“No worries, old sport,” he said. “Best behavior. Promise.”

Elvire Récamier spent part of the evening in a frenzy of understated networking, nailing down editors and publishers for promises of work and contracts, extracting pledges of access and photo shoots from wealthy racehorse owners and government ministers who held the keys to other doors. She fussed around Gibson Dullar until, like some latter-day pirate, he seemed to have brought himself up to boarding speed alongside a renowned chanteuse whose bedding would represent a significant trophy, made all the more thrilling by the reputedly ferocious jealousy of an absent, Mafia-linked husband. I watched him operate—the smile, the chat, the practiced flick and gentle light of a Cartier gold lighter engraved with some kind of conversation piece inscription. (“To Gib: Who Dares Wins.”)

I had been half expecting Marie-Claire to offer a repeat of that first-sighting dance with The Duke, so I contrived to take it in my stride when the familiar strains of an old Stones number, played by an enthusiastic and halfway competent band, drew them together onto the dance floor. But what surprised me was the spectacle of Elvire Récamier and Gibson Dullar joining them in a kind of writhing foursome. Other partygoers formed a circle around them, half bemused, half encouraging, like at some kind of ’60s-type happening. Someone clapped his hands in time to the music. Others joined in the dancing. Then the medley shifted into a different register—the quarter tones of the Middle East flowed across the dance area, as if transplanted from a Lebanese wedding or a Turkish belly dance or the radio in any of Shelby’s cabs on the night run from Aleppo to Amman. The sound seemed to lift the dancers higher, to ever more improbable displays of serpentine agility. The four of them shimmied and glittered, spinning and whirling in pagan abandon. The Duke proved to still be surprisingly lithe. Marie-Claire shivered and wriggled so that the disco globe overhead drew deep, sensuous tones from the pearls around her neck. When the couples switched partners so that Dullar was making snake-hipped gyrations with Marie-Claire, I caught sight of Shelby watching me across the crowd, narrowing his eyes as if in solidarity, as if to say, This will not stand.

Then he moved into the circle himself, seizing the chanteuse wooed earlier by Dullar, breaking the spell of the magic four, throwing down a challenge. He danced relatively well—like an arthritic Jagger unrestrained by any suspicion that he might not look to others as he imagined himself to look. Another couple joined in. Then another. Dullar was swept away by his potential conquest. Shelby danced briefly with Marie-Claire and said something that made her look shocked, then smile. Then he gestured to me and I danced with my wife—“how it should be,” Shelby said.

There were toasts and mini speeches—nothing too serious to distract from excellent food and drink, served by waiters and waitresses at tables arranged around centerpieces of chrysanthemums and dahlias in tricolor shades of red, white, and blue that honored our host country as much as my own. A small handwritten card at every setting of cutlery and crystal marked every guest’s allocated position in Marie-Claire’s placement, ensuring that no one felt snubbed or bored or dissed. At her table she positioned herself between a cabinet minister and the well-heeled owner of the champion Sunset Strip, leaning over to exchange light, humorous chitchat with her aristocrat buddy, an old-fashioned crooner, and a movie star who had made a second career out of saving the descendants of the same exotic animals whose pelts had once adorned her now-reconstructed frame. I was interposed between a ministerial spouse encrusted in equal parts jewelry and malice and an ambassadorial trophy wife, a gold digger who had a knack for pricing everyone she met and allotting them a place in her firmament of future consorts. Without hesitation, and to my relief, she assigned me to an outer galaxy.

At his table, Shelby was telling his old hack tales to a receptive audience, among whom I recognized the stud’s personal banker and a top editor of Le Monde who had once had a reputation as something of a Don Juan among the Middle East press pack—the Camel Corps, as they liked to call themselves. A waft of conversation carried the words “Argentine soy vote,” and I thought Shelby was being much too loose-lipped while so close to Gibson Dullar.

Where had I come from? I found myself asking. What was I doing here, for fuck’s sake—a kid from Queens with a career that started on the sports desk and police beat and for a time looked like it wouldn’t go anyplace else, a chance vacation job way down the copydesk of the old Star, a few maneuvers as the generations changed, a liking for horses. If you had asked me a few years back where it all would have ended, I’d have said the die was cast for good: I had my job and my few trusty steeds, and that was it. Then Marie-Claire Risen had hijacked my life and I had ended up like Cinderella at the ball, never knowing when midnight would toll. I looked across and caught her eye. She smiled and offered an almost imperceptible, gamine flutter of an eye that sealed our tryst and said, Midnight is a long way off, buddy boy; enjoy the golden carriage; we are in this together. For the long haul.

As the set piece speeches came and went, I noticed Shelby rattling a silver spoon against a crystal wineglass until the imperious tinkle silenced the other guests.

The idea that he might offer this assembly a repeat of his Nervalian outburst at the Duclos funeral was nerve-racking.

Elvire Récamier looked across at me from a table of bankers and diplomats all hanging on her anecdotes of understated but immense valor in Lebanon and Cambodia.

Now she rolled her eyes toward me in self-mocking Gallic trepidation.

But Shelby surprised us both.

“Most of you here know and work with Marie-Claire, which makes you the envy of Paris. I work with this man here, Ed Clancy. That does not make Ed the envy of Paris, I can assure you. Or me either, in fact.” Even I laughed at that one. “But looking at them here tonight, among friends and well-wishers, it occurred to me that maybe we should raise a toast to the pair of them to wish them long life and happiness together. To Marie-Claire and Ed.” As he raised his glass, he was looking directly at Gibson Dullar.

And in front of all of them, Marie-Claire stood up, maneuvered her way between the guests to my table, and pressed her lips firmly against mine.