Chapter XXV. Before the Fall. #3
“I’ve stepped back a lot. I stopped for a while after I had my son.
I needed some time to settle into my new identity.
I tried some other things. Drawing, painting, collage.
But then I had the divorce and my mother got sick.
… In the end, I got sucked back in. And then after I married Frederick, it wasn’t that I needed the money, but that I longed for the feeling of independence.
Of being something besides ‘the glamorous wife.’ Being a part of creating something that would be out in the world.
That would last. And there was something about the glamour and attention I missed.
” She smiles at that. “But I wanted to do it on my terms. I was older and more in control, and it was easier for me to say no.”
“Could you not say no when you were young?”
She takes her time. Reaches for her cup of coffee, realizes it’s empty. And then, “Not as much as I would have liked. But much of that time is a blur.”
Not for the first time, I wonder if she is referencing our week in Cabo. The pieces I’d been grasping for since fate brought us back together. The minutiae I could not have known. I was not there for everything. But more and more, I am starting to suspect that I was there for some of it.
She pulls back from the microphone then and removes her headphones. “Can I trouble you for another espresso?”
“I didn’t want to say this when you were recording, but this town is full of women who’ve used their beauty as a commodity,” Anouk says when we are settled in the kitchenette, sipping our coffees.
“Not just models and actresses, but all the pretty girls who move here hoping for something big. Sometimes that something big is just ending up with someone who can provide a certain lifestyle. Multiple homes, luxury vacations, designer wardrobes, private schools. You can find that everywhere, to some extent. But here it’s much more…
” She trails off, fanning her left hand in the air.
“Condensed? Prevalent? Ostentatious?”
“Yes.” She smiles. “All of that.”
“I’ve noticed.” I don’t want to mention that she is one of those women.
That I did not think her occasional jobs for Louis Vuitton and Guerlain were paying the mortgage on a one-and-a-half-acre parcel north of Sunset in Brentwood.
And a five-bedroom in Aspen. That I realized that marrying the considerably older, often absent Ironman billionaire could be seen as a transaction.
But so, too, is staying with an adulterous filmmaker. Isn’t it?
“I love that you don’t fall into that,” she says, her gaze direct.
“Even though you could. But you actually do something you’re passionate about and that means something.
I love that you’re an artist. That you find a subject that interests you and you dissect it and probe it and analyze it and reassemble it and present it in a way that compels people to look.
I wish I had a talent like that. Many of my friends here have hobbies or pursuits, but their lifestyles don’t depend on them.
They can give them up when they become tiresome or too much of a hassle. But you, you persevere.”
I’m quiet for a moment, sipping my espresso. I don’t tell her that not persevering has never really been a choice. Not coming from my parents and my island, and my family that expected, no, demanded greatness. Not when they’d sacrificed so much. Quitting was not an option.
And I’m amused that, one generation removed, Anouk seems to have escaped that.
Maybe her mother, who migrated from Martinique to Paris in the ’60s to study nursing, had felt differently.
But perhaps not. Maybe the French had a different relationship with the descendants of their former property. Maybe she had less to prove.
“What are you thinking?” she asks, her fingers meeting mine on the counter, interlacing. Her intention suddenly shifting. And I am reminded again of this thing between us, this pull.
“What is this, Anouk? What are we doing?”
“We’re making art, no?”
“That’s not what I’m referring to.”
She pauses, sips from her cup. “I like you. I like being with you. Why do we have to put labels on it?”
There is no good answer to that. Not if I intend to spare her my current state of anxiety and desire for affirmation.
For all my wanting to view this relationship as a muse for my art, as an adventure, I am realizing I’m built differently.
Maybe it was the thing with Minnie, or Sacha’s mention of Delphine.
Maybe I have gotten too close to Anouk. But I’m starting to grasp that perhaps I’m unable to have a casual dalliance.
Perhaps I need my relationships to be labeled and categorized. Like rolls of shot film.
“We’re having fun, are we not?” Her fingertip traces the back of my hand. When I don’t respond, she leans in, kisses me fully on the mouth. The soft of her lips and the bitter of coffee an odd juxtaposition.
“Are we not?” she repeats, trapping my lower lip in her teeth. Her body edging up off the counter, closing the space between us. Curves and planes pressed against mine. I am reminded of something. The taste of metal. The sharp pain of glass. Her mouth.
My body responds immediately. Everything, all at once.
“We need to finish.”
“Okay,” she says, eventually. “Let’s.”