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They met at seven that evening at Polidor on Rue de Monsieur le Prince in the Sixth. John picked the spot because he’d heard the food was good, not too expensive, and that it was so traditionally French, it still had a cabinet in the dining room in which regular diners of the past had kept their personal cutlery and napkin in their own drawer.
Carol arrived exactly on time, John noted. She was flushed with the sun, still bright in Paris at seven o’clock on a summer’s eve. She was pretty, he mused. She took off a beige and cream scarf hanging loosely around her neck.
“What was I thinking? It’s way too hot for this,” she said as she threw it into her huge bag. “They have air conditioning in here, don’t they?” She waved her hands around to test the air.
“What you feel is what you get for a/c,” John said.
The pavement was too narrow to sit outdoors so there were no outdoor tables, Carol had noted on her way in. “Well, something cold to drink will help. Though it isn’t likely I’ll get an icy drink, even when I say, ‘Beaucoup de glaçon, s’il vous plaît.’”
“The French don’t care about ice cold beer. Or a chilled gin and tonic on lots of rocks,” John agreed. He sat back and watched Carol and her feminine movements as she combed the bangs out of her eyes with a finger. She tugged at one loopy earring. Oh, John thought. Interesting. He sat forward and smiled. He missed the presence of a woman in his life: light footsteps, cosmetics lying around the sink, perfume in the air. He wasn’t having trouble imagining Carol in a romantic role. But then again, her critiques...
Carol was noticing John’s broad shoulders, not rounded at all with care, concern, and inactivity. He was lean, tall, and very successful—she had looked him up on the Internet before meeting him at the first writers’ circle. But to her, steeped in the world of storytelling and film making, he was a pagan. He was one of those business types that annoyed her daily at Trapèze with their nickel and dime priorities. But he might be able to advise her now. At least he’d be a safe listening ear.
She checked his ring finger. How tacky! He was meeting her with an obvious white line where his ring had been. Married and cruising! No way was she getting involved in that mess. So he was married—too bad. But good, because now she could relax and just be herself.
The waiter delivered their drinks. True to French form, only three ice cubes floated in Carol’s G&T, and they were already half melted.
“Santé,” Carol said, and they tapped glasses. Carol sipped. “Bloody hell, this G&T is warm! On a hot, humid night, too.”
They asked each other about their children for a while, then switched to careers. John said nothing about his problems. She glossed over her career—investment banking in New York City, then throwing that over to return to her true love, becoming the founding member of a theater company, writing scripts for BBC Radio, then some plays produced Off Broadway, then some screenwriting in Los Angeles, then hired by Trapèze. Carol began to talk about her current dry period. Admitting to John that she’d been put on probation, after all the success she’d had, took every ounce of courage she had. She told him about Gregoire’s leak to Amandine.
“Sue him,” John said, “so he knows he’s not dealing with a pushover.”
Those words hovered between them a moment.
“I’d be afraid of being completely fired,” Carol said. This wasn’t going well.
“Well, that’s what I would do,” John said.
And then—incredibly, to Carol’s ears—he asked, “How do you feel about what’s happened?”
A huge sob came to her throat. She tried to quell it, to diffuse it within her, but it burst out with a will of its own.
“Oh my God, the rotten bastard!” she said. She struggled for control. No outbursts allowed among the subdued French at dinner. The couple next to them was looking at her, frowning. “He has to know Amandine doesn’t keep things to herself. Just vile of him, wasn’t it!”
“Yes, that is low. I’d never do that.” Had he ever? He’d have to think back.
“I can’t stand that my reputation has been ruined,” Carol said, wiping her eyes. “I always had good ideas. I just had a small lapse.” Jeffrey. His criticisms. Her lowered self-confidence. Maybe three months. Or six?
“Quit. Go solo. I’ve heard bits of your screenplay, you’ve got the talent.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, but there’s lots at stake, isn’t there? I have to provide a roof for Louise.”
“Yes, I know,” said John, who had always felt he needed to provide not just a roof but a better roof than anyone else had, hand-cut slates rather than mass-produced shingles.
“I always dreamed of sending her to private school, too, though that drops on the priority list when one’s job is at stake, doesn’t it,” Carol said.
John desperately wanted to keep Emily among her friends in private school. Those friends could provide contact with the right people for Emily later, and maybe for him, too, if he survived that long. Much at stake here, too.
“You had some good ideas for me at the writers’ circle,” said Carol, who was rallying as a result of John’s calm. She put her cheerful face on again and smiled valiantly.
“Never thought of myself as a literary man,” John said with satisfaction.
He was insufferable, always sucking things into his ego, Carol thought. Men!
“What are you going to do with your protagonist next?” Carol asked. Reminding him of how undeveloped his main character was might nudge John back down to earth. “Chuck is his name?” John’s naming choice was a bit too similar to Chuck Norris, but oh well. It probably helped him imagine his protagonist’s antics better. She’d advise him to change it later.
“Oh, I’ll get him into bed with a lovely lady, of course. Gotta have lots of sex scenes. Sell, sell, sell.”
“I meant, how are you going to develop him, make him more multi-dimensional?” She really didn’t want to talk about sex with John, because his tall frame and robust shoulders were drawing her eyes. She could hop on his lap right now. Though that didn’t seem sufficient reason to have sex with a person. Used to.
“Oh, I’ll give him a hobby—sailing, like me. I have a boat in Cherbourg.”
“How nice! But Chuck is in Nevada.”
“Oh, yeah, well, I can fix that. Yes, I’ll have the whole group out on my boat. We could have our critique on board. It’s a forty-five-footer.” He looked at Carol steadily.
A little braggadocio, Carol thought. But impressive! She eyed his ring finger again, to remind herself of the facts.
“We could read our work while we were on a mooring or at anchor. But even then, I’m paying attention to wind and tide and how close the other boats are. Not sure I can concentrate on reading my stuff.”
Too bad not to read about more fistfights, Carol thought.
“Lovely!” she said. “That sounds great! I wonder—could I bring my daughter? I’d love for her to have that experience.”
John wasn’t sure at first, it felt like the whole thing was getting out of hand. But then the idea seemed okay. “I’ll bring Emily. They can play. Bring lots of books. Emily loves to read.” Yeah, her own books, John thought: Rimbaud and Victor Hugo in French, Jane Austen. Not See Sally Run, or the Brit equivalent of it. She might be bugged at me.
“Grand idea! So tell me, you must love sailing: how will you work your sailboat into your story?”
“I’m not sure yet,” John said.
This group is behind me in literary development, Carol thought. Here he had a singular experience that he could capture for his audience and give them the joy of it, too. But even if he didn’t see his own opportunities, he might still have ideas for her that saved her job.
“No worries, it will come to you,” Carol said. “I’m writing an animated screenplay at work about storks raising human babies that they can’t deliver to their parents because an ogre is jealous.” It sounded just a bit dumb, kind of like John’s fisticuffs, but Carol knew that, by the time she was done with it, it would explore a few questions about life. It might very well illustrate the question, “Does loving your enemies change people’s lives?” She thought of Gregoire and Amandine. No, she did not love her enemies. Which didn’t mean she wouldn’t write about the issue as if she did.
“Why is the ogre an ogre?” John asked.
“Because of an evil fairy who was envious of his mother’s beauty. He’s a prince really, but condemned to be irritable.” Kind of like Jeffrey. And every other bloke she’d been with.
“Make the fairy jealous of the mother’s wealth, instead of her beauty,” John suggested. “Being jealous of beauty is so Snow-White-stepmother-ish.”
Wow, this guy could bust up a cliché! Carol was impressed.
“Why does he bother the storks?” John asked.
“Because he’s envious of their role in the cycle of life.” Carol was glad to be asked these questions. They helped her to cement the logic of the story in her mind.
“Your storks will have quite a few challenges raising human babies.”
“We’ll have storks tossing the babies, catching them in mid-air. It’s a fabulous chance for the audience to fly. First rules of Hollywood: when you have a big screen, use all of it. And when it’s animated, do things humans can’t do.”
“You could have the storks trying to discipline the toddlers from going too near the stream. Or walking from their woodland hideaway onto a busy road.”
“Let me write this down,” Carol said. She fished for a notebook and a pen. She kept them in a special pocket in her portfolio so they were easy to grab. She always had at least seven pens with her: at the very least one each in red, green, blue, black, and a fountain pen with turquoise ink. And a highlighter.
“Lots of opportunities for tender stork/baby interaction,” John continued. “And the ogre could be envious because he never had that as a child. He was raised in cold, dark castles, and his parents were aloof, royal types. You could have—what’s that called—a flashback?”
“That’s very good,” Carol said. “I could use that.” Might as well signal her intentions just a bit. He may be seeing it on the screen in two years.
“Feel free.” Am I giving too much away for nothing here? John wondered. Strange. That’s not like me.
“So the ogre tries to break up the happy family,” he said. “The storks try to outsmart him. Everything they try fails. Then they realize he’s envious. Maybe, if they love him too, he’ll stop tormenting them. And you’ve just illustrated ‘Love your enemies,’ though that’s not something I’m very good at. And when they love him, the spell is broken and he becomes a handsome prince again.”
She had had some of these ideas, but not bad, Carol thought. Needs refinement, some fleshing out, but not bad.
“No, not a handsome prince, a balding prince,” he said.
Great, Carol thought, he just busted another cliché.
“And when he’s no longer an ogre, he can no longer fly,” John said. “It costs him to become human.”
“Those are fine ideas, John,” she said. He just needed to use the same part of his brain to generate ideas for his own work. She couldn’t say it that way. “You might want to consider putting a few ideas like that into your story.” Was that gently said enough? She hoped so.
“Yes, I’m thinking about Chuck,” John mused. “The sailboat could lend a bit of the mystical to the story.”
“All you need is a whale.”
“Huh?”
“You need a logic to your story, a hunt, a pursuit of something that Chuck wants desperately.”
“Logic?”
“Yes, a progression. Like a geometric proof. My goodness, I struggled with plane geometry in school, didn’t I? My mind didn’t work in logical paths, with a ‘Q.E.D.’ at the bottom. I felt awful. Then I realized years later, that there are all kinds of logic. One company’s devices have one logic and another company’s devices have another.”
“Did you know there’s a logic,” said John, “called spherical geometry? It says that the lines of longitude that circle the globe and converge at the poles are actually parallel. Simply because they are perfectly parallel at the equator.”
“That’s so strange, isn’t it?” Carol said. “But I’m not that interested in logical thinking. What I love is associative thinking.”
“Is that anything like thinking in pictures?”
“Can be. One leads to another. It’s fun.”
“I’ve learned from you tonight,” John said.
“Thanks so much, actually.” Carol smiled.
“Yes, well, let’s do it again.”
Carol thought, I need your ideas. Too bad you’re married. I have ideas for a man like you...
