Chapter XXI. Après. #3
We were both married. There’d been no talk of exclusivity.
No set parameters. For me to be jealous of her interaction with a friend who predated me was absurd.
Assuming anything was happening between the two of them in the first place.
Women were often affectionate with their girlfriends.
It was par for the course. If Minnie had touched any other woman at the table, I would not have thought twice of it.
And so ultimately, I decide that it is nothing.
I spend another moment or so taking in the powder room’s minimalist décor. The ceramic-brick tiles and wrought-iron fixtures. The twin bottles of Aēsop hand cream and soap. A rough-hewn vase with a lone olive branch. Minnie’s closest friends.
When I return, the group has moved in from the terrace and is being led on a tour of the new renovation. I file in as we head down the corridor.
“I love this. Is it Matisse?” Kennedy asks, as we pass an abstract tableau in the main foyer.
“No. Ellsworth Kelly.”
“Wow. Gorgeous. I wish I could sell Jason on a piece like this.”
“You should really call our advisor, Patricia. She’s got exquisite taste.
She’s a wizard at getting your husband to concede.
I mean, Scott is a neophyte when it comes to art.
Don’t tell him I said that. But, you know, my parents are big collectors.
And Patricia’s wonderful if you’re just looking for investment pieces. ”
“Coucou.” Anouk sidles up beside me, squeezing my hand. As if everything is normal. Perhaps it is. “T’es okay?”
“Ouais.” My response is equally casual.
“Tu es s?re?”
“Oui,” I repeat, and then force a smile.
We descend the open staircase to the lower level, and Minnie leads us into the newly completed home theater. It’s casually luxurious, intimate.
“Oh, my,” Jane says. “Is this real life?” Her enthusiasm is refreshing.
“It’s beautiful, right? I mean, it’s small compared to the theater in the Brentwood house, but it serves a purpose. Scott needs it for work.”
While Minnie explains to Jane how each weekend her husband and a select group of other power players in Hollywood receive hand-delivered hard drives of first-run movies, I take in the décor: the reclining love seats (there are six), the state-of-the-art surround sound, the insulated walls.
Anouk is positioned catty-corner to me. She’s wearing an aubergine-colored dress with a plunging neckline.
Her breasts are small enough that she can get away with plunging necklines in the daytime without it looking risqué.
I envy her. I watch as she makes her way through the space, her elegant arm extending to touch the taupe walls.
The flick of her wrist, the length of her fingers.
Her wedding band glimmering green. Her Cartier Tank Francaise.
Her vintage Van Cleef bracelet. The transition from French schoolgirl to billionaire’s wife seemingly flawless.
She folds her arm back in eventually, and strokes her neck, and my eyes linger there.
The hollow at the base of her throat, the smoothness of her skin.
I can taste her. Her perfume metallic, bold.
The memory washes over me. My tongue running the length of her, between her breasts, along her torso, dipping into her navel, and south, over her pubic bone, between her legs, warm, wet, all of her.
I flinch. She catches my eye, somehow knowing where my thoughts have been, and smiles. Forgiven. I blush and turn away, into Jane. Who is looking at me. At Anouk.
Jane has just witnessed everything.
Later, on the car ride home, as we navigate stop-and-go traffic southbound on the Pacific Coast Highway, Jane breaks the silence.
“Well, that was interesting.”
“That’s a good word for it.”
“I know you tried to warn me, but oh my God. How far we’ve come from Annotto Bay,” she says, referencing the tiny port town in Saint Mary Parish, where my father and his siblings were born.
Where they walked barefoot to school and had an outhouse in their backyard that occasionally flooded in the rain (or so they claimed), before moving to the big city of Kingston.
“Can you imagine Uncle Donovan and Mummy seeing that home theater?”
“‘Well, excuuuse me!’”
“‘Kiss mi’ neck!’”
“‘Blouse an’ skirt!’”
We laugh, mimicking our parents’ favorite expressions of surprise.
“Can you imagine them flying private? To Coachella?!”
“I can barely imagine them flying premium economy.”
“No, but seriously, cuz. That was crazy. This is really your life now? You live in a bubble. You’re a bubble person.”
“Not exactly.”
“But it will be, you will be if you stay here.… It’s just a matter of time. A second house in Malibu, a staff, a home theater, a chef, Botox … Also, did they hire the token sister to make an appearance?”
I laugh, but for a moment my mind is elsewhere.
The idea of staying in the States. In California.
On the Westside of LA, a bastion of conspicuous consumption.
Our lives changing irreparably. That I, we, could lose perspective.
Already so much had happened. Anouk. And now this thing with Minnie, whatever it was.
Perhaps insignificant, and yet it had affected me.
Jane is quiet for a second, staring out at the water, the traffic on the PCH. And then, “I went to see your pieces at the armory.”
“You did?”
“They’re really beautiful, CeCe. Emotional. Dark. You say so much with so little.”
“Thank you.”
“What happened? Those photos. Francois. What happened with you two?”
I shake my head. I don’t want to lie to her. But I’m still not ready to talk about it.
“Okay,” she says after a beat. “Well, when you’re ready to share, I’m here. I’m always here.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Which brings me to … what exactly is going on with you and Anouk Ferrand?” Her hazel eyes dance.
“What?”
“Are you, like … Is there something there?”
“Something like what?” I fight to keep my poker face. Fuck. We’d been so careful.
I can feel her staring at me as I navigate the intersection at Topanga Canyon. My hands tense on the wheel. “Something like what?” I repeat.
“Something like maybe you two are more than just friends.”
I laugh at that. It’s fake, forced. I’m not prepared to have this conversation. With Jane. Or anyone. I don’t know that I’m prepared to have it with myself.
“I can assure you. We’re just friends.”
Much later that evening, after dinner and The Lego Movie with the girls, I slip into the guest room to find Jane. She is propped up in bed, writing in a notebook.
“Hey. You journaling?”
“Trying to.”
“Dear Diary, Los Angeles is full of crazy, rich women and I fear my cousin has become one of them,” I dictate.
She laughs, closing the leather binder. “I didn’t call you crazy. Exactly.”
“‘Exactly’?” I smile.
“Although I am wondering if there are no Black people on the Westside.”
“Population: one. Well, one point five, if you include Anouk.”
“Damn.”
“I encounter far more Black people on a daily basis in Europe than I do in LA.”
She’s quiet for a second, contemplating. Her pert nose screwed up, just so. She looks like she did when we were young. I can see Imogen in her face. Inès.
“You should write a book about that,” she says.
“I’m not a writer.”
“Photojournal it, then. Do a collaboration with Seth. I bet he’d be up for that. A coffee-table book about the modern diaspora.”
I consider the idea. An exploration of race in these drastically different communities. Framed in art. I file it away for a future project. Something that captures this curious in-between time. This living within the microcosm of wealth and whiteness. This intersection, of sorts.
“So about those photos,” I say, pivoting. The real reason I’d sought her out for conversation. “The ones showcased at the armory … We had a rough spot. Fran and I. But we’ve fixed it. We’re … trying to fix it.”
“Which is why you’re here, in LA?”
“Which is why I’m here.”
“I’m sorry, Cee.”
“Well, French men are going to French men, I suppose.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeats.
“It’s a stereotype, I know. But like all stereotypes—”
“There’s a soupcon of truth.”
“Stop finishing my sentences.”
She smiles at that, and then, “Please don’t feel like you can’t tell me stuff.
Sylvie keeps things from me. She’s stifled by this expectation of greatness in our family, and so she hides things.
Things in her life that make her less than perfect.
Like she has to uphold this image of flawlessness or something, which is just ridiculous. ”
I sigh then, leaning against the doorframe, taking in the mid-century–styled space. The redwood-paneled walls, the vintage Berber rug, the mustard-colored upholstered desk chair. The effect is cozy, nostalgic.
“Sylvie is impossible,” I say eventually.
“Sylvie’s just … complicated. I’m not going to pry about the Anouk thing,” she says.
“But God, she’s beautiful. I wonder what it’s like, going through life like that.
Not just possessing that kind of beauty but being famous for it.
I wonder what it’s like to constantly have random people making comments about your face and how it’s changing.
Or not. Like it’s a public commodity, and perfectly fine for strangers to weigh in on. So bizarre.”
I nod, allowing the seed to germinate. Perhaps this was what Anouk meant when she alluded to being consumed. Not just that the world is feasting on her image, but that her beauty itself is consuming her.
“CeCe,” she calls after me, as I’m heading out the door. “I know I said it teasingly, but this LA life, it’s not really bad, you know. As lives go…”
“I know,” I say.
“Just don’t let it kill your art. Or your soul.”
I smile at her. “Noted.”