Chapter XV. Ladies Who Lunch, a Study.
XV.
LADIES WHO LUNCH, A STUDY.
LOS ANGELES.
Lunch was in Venice.
Anouk had chosen Gjelina, a fashionable foodie spot on Abbot Kinney, where the walls were dark, the chatter was loud, and the plates were small. We sat toward the back of the main room, tucked into the last table along the banquette. A location she selected for its privacy.
“I love this space because it feels like you could have an affair here in the middle of the day and no one would notice.” She smiles at me, sly. We’ve been seated for ten minutes, and our drinks have yet to arrive.
“Not that I would do that,” she continues, “but if I did … this would be the place.”
I laugh at that. I’m not certain if she’s just being funny or it’s an actual test. But I decide to split the difference.
“If you did…”
“If I did,” she repeats, holding my gaze for what feels like a beat too long.
She is wearing a white knit top that reveals her flesh-colored camisole beneath.
A straight black skirt with a leather waistband and a center slit that rides distractingly high.
Both by Louis Vuitton. I look boyish in comparison in a charcoal Saint Laurent blazer, striped silk button-down, and gray wool pants.
The choice to pair the above with sneakers was an attempt to appear nonchalant, but in that moment I feel anything but.
I am hyperaware of her mouth, her hands, the flesh on the inside of her knee each time she crosses and uncrosses her legs.
“So,” she says, contemplating the menu. “Everything here is amazing. I’m going to order a bunch of stuff and you are going to love it all. I promise. Just trust me. Okay? Good.” She raises her gaze, and this time I am sure. Whatever this is, she is leading, and I am along for the ride.
Our waitress appears then with our drinks: rosé for me, something called a Seasonal Shrub for her. I watch her nod agreeingly as Anouk rattles off a list of sundry menu items. Smoked-trout salad, wood-roasted cauliflower, grilled broccolini, mushroom toast, braised pork meatballs.
“Are we expecting someone else? The Lakers, perhaps?”
“Just the starting lineup. Not the entire team.” She laughs, tossing her head, running her fingers through her hair.
It’s wavy today, free. The French would call it coquette.
How she can be impossibly chic and at the same time exude casual insouciance fascinates me.
And I can’t decide if I want to be her or consume her in some illicit way.
“I hope you brought your appetite,” she says.
“I always bring my appetite.”
“Good. Too many women restrict themselves. Life is short. Find joy in the places you can. Men, if they want it all, they take it. Women are consistently checking in, holding back, denying themselves of the things that make them happy. Especially in this country.
“So…” She shakes her napkin out onto her lap. “élodie Cloutier.”
It’s like a kick to the shin, no warning.
“Did you think I’d forgotten?”
“I’d hoped,” I say, reaching for my wine.
I can feel my face flushing, my ears hot.
For all élodie’s press in France, her name is basically unknown here, and yet I illogically worry that those at the next table might recognize all the players in my personal tragedy.
That they might look up from their anchovy, dandelion, and mozzarella pizza, curiosity piqued.
Anouk gives me a second to recover, but she does not relent. “What happened with you two?”
“She slept with my husband.”
I don’t know what makes me tell her.
I don’t know what it is to say those words out loud. In a public place. And to anyone other than my therapist. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t know Francois. Maybe because she hasn’t been privy to the intricacies of our marriage. But for some reason, it feels safe.
For a moment, she says nothing. Then she reaches beneath the table, finds my hand, and squeezes. The gesture brings tears to my eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she says softly. “I had no idea. I thought you were going to say she was crazy, or difficult to work with, or completely self-centered like so many other actresses. Je ne le savais pas du tout.”
For a while neither of us speaks and I do my best to collect myself, my face turned toward the near wall. A server appears, refills our water, and just as quickly slips away.
“You’re going to be okay,” she says to me. It’s not a question. “Awful things happen, and we heal.
“Is it still going on?”
“No. I don’t think so. It was a while ago. He assures me it’s over. But…”
“But you don’t know that you’ll ever be able to fully trust him again,” she says, completing my thought.
I nod and reach for my wineglass with my free hand. I am not ready to let go of hers.
“With my first husband it was a real problem,” she continues.
“I was young, and for a long time I didn’t understand that I didn’t have to put up with this.
That I deserved better. Marriage is a compromise, yes, but if you’re both playing by different sets of rules someone is going to get hurt. Someone always gets hurt.”
I am trying to recall the details of her first marriage, of her divorce.
He was an actor, son of the legendary Emmanuel Laurent, an iconic star of French New Wave film.
In the same breath as Belmondo and Delon.
The son, Pascal, was a club kid–cum-model who’d followed in his father’s footsteps onto the big screen and achieved success in France quickly.
He was not the actor his father was, but he had an indisputable magnetism, and a face the camera adored.
In the late ’90s he became known as quite the lady-killer.
He dated mostly models, a British pinup, an American socialite, and the heiress to an Italian car company.
And then he crossed paths with Anouk. Their relationship was electric and served as constant tabloid fodder.
There were stories of wild nights and yachts and drugs and threesomes and foursomes.
And to me, the daughter of somewhat conservative Jamaicans, it sounded reckless and louche.
They eloped, she got pregnant, he continued his partying ways, and ultimately the flame fizzled. Or at least that’s what I’d garnered from the covers of Voici, Oops!, and France Dimanche. So to hear her own version of it was revelatory.
“Pascal was in love with the idea of being in love. Or what he thought was love, which was definitely not. With Pascal, everything was a limerence.”
“A what?”
“Limerence. Like a romantic obsession or intense infatuation. But not real love. With Frederick, it’s different. It’s not perfect—no marriage is—but we make it work. We have an understanding.”
I want to ask her what exactly their understanding entails, but our waitress appears then with a bottle of champagne and two glasses.
“We didn’t order this,” Anouk says, letting loose my hand.
“It’s a gift from the two gentlemen near the window. They’re fans of your work.”
“Ah.” Anouk makes an expression that I am unable to read. And then she nods and smiles in the direction of the gifting table. “Please tell them that’s very kind. Thank you.”
“I thought you didn’t day drink,” I say, once our glasses are poured and the waitress departs.
“There are times when I feel like I don’t have a choice. Feelings get hurt. Especially with men. It’s not worth it.
“Alors…” She raises her glass then, first to the men across the room, then to me. “Santé!”
“So much for having an affair here in the middle of the day.” I smile at her.
“Yes.” She returns the favor. “So much for that.”
“What are you doing Thursday night?” she asks, once our first plates arrive and we are feasting on smoked-trout salad and mushroom toasts. “I have an extra ticket to Alvin Ailey at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and you strike me as someone who would appreciate it.”
I’d last seen Alvin Ailey perform at the Théatre du Chatelet in Paris three years before, treating Lucie for her ninth birthday.
For two and a half hours I had the unparalleled joy of witnessing her complete and utter glee.
The fact that she shared my love for something I found so intensely beautiful was a gift.
“I am definitely someone who would appreciate it.
“Frederick doesn’t want to go?”
“Frederick would go to amuse me. You would go and fall in love. I’d rather watch the latter.”
For a moment, I pause. Fork suspended en route to mouth.
I am not certain how to play this game. And if ever I was, I am surely now out of practice.
It strikes me then that perhaps it had all been leading to this.
The wining and dining and saving the elephants.
Perhaps she’d been wooing me all along. And perhaps I had been too awed by her to notice.
“I mean,” she says then, in French, “assuming you’re okay with that.”
I smile, step out on a limb. “Assume I’m okay with that.”
After, outside, at the valet stand, as Anouk is about to get into her Tesla, she leans into me, kisses both cheeks.
“You know, regarding élodie, I would not have pegged you as the kind of woman who would have stuck around after such a thing. French women, yes, because maybe we are more used to it. If not in reality, then at least in our popular culture. But you? I’d like to think you would take a few lovers of your own. And then burn it all down.”
And with that, she gets in her electric car and drives away.