Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sabine and Aubin shopped for second-hand clothing.
They went to stores in the fourth and fifth arrondissements, including the Croix Rouge “vestiboutique,” and another store where they played music so loud Sabine could barely hear herself think, and there were giant bins of clothing labelled “vente au kilo,” from which they bought armfuls of clothes for ten euros.
Sabine scoured the “high fashion” section and picked clothes she would never have worn in Toronto.
She found a changing room, and put on a faded Princess Leia T-shirt a couple of sizes too small so it exposed her midriff.
Would she dare to wear it? Then she tried on zippered high-heel suede boots that fit perfectly.
She opened the curtain and struck a pose. He surveyed her outfit, from her boots to her T-shirt, and said nothing.
“You don’t like it?”
“I do. I really do. I think I like it too much.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’d like to go back to the apartment and hope your father’s not home.”
She squealed and jumped up and down. He danced to the blaring music and tried to entice her to do the same.
“No, no, I hate dancing in public!”
“Come, dance with me.”
“No, I don’t like people seeing me do something badly.”
So he stepped into the changing room with her, closed the curtain, and they danced in there, their own private tiny place in this bustling city on this crowded earth.
“You’re so much taller in those boots,” he said.
“I’m keeping them. Get used to it.”
“Oh, I could get used to it.”
“I need to change out of these things. You have to leave.”
“Do I?”
She opened the curtain and pushed him out, fighting the temptation to kiss him a million times instead.
On what seemed like her fiftieth trip down to the Nenier bins, Marlow finally saw Rémy’s Audi in the lot. Surprising—it was 7 PM. Normally there’d be no sight of Rémy at this hour. Filthy, hot, and sweaty, Marlow headed into the h?tel de ville.
In her perfect outfit, hair, and makeup, Rémy sifted through mail and eyed Marlow from behind the counter. “You have been cleaning up after the storm. How nice for Mirabelle.”
“It’s looking better than ever, if you ask me,” said Marlow. “You’d think a government worker would have shown up, but we never saw any. So we did it ourselves.” OK, fine. She was feeling a little passive aggressive. Stop it. Be quiet. Smile.
Rémy shrugged. “We don’t all have the budgets of North America.” How was that for passive aggressive? “I am here but for a moment—can I help you?”
“Yes, thank you. I have managed to find a buyer for the house, and Guillaume said I might need transfer papers.”
The look on Rémy’s face was one of deep displeasure, like how Marlow’s parents had looked when she’d told them she was going to film school, or that she was going to be a single parent.
“You are, how do you say, committing sabotage on the program. I have never had this happen. You are the first.”
Marlow stiffened. “It’s fairly new, isn’t it? The program?”
“It may be, but nobody has turned over their house in such a short time. What has it been, almost six weeks? Mon Dieu, c’est affreux.”
But it wasn’t awful. How could it be awful? “I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Marlow.
“This is not about feelings. This is about protocol.”
“And yet you are making it about feelings,” said Marlow. “I don’t think you like me very much. Whatever I do, you make difficult. I did everything you said—and I found a buyer. So what’s the problem?”
Rémy pursed her lips. “Are you making a profit on this sale?”
“Are you kidding? Is the buyer going to pay more than a single euro? I think so. I hope so. We haven’t discussed price yet. But it would only be to cover the money I’ve already put in.”
Rémy put the mail in her bag, stepped outside, and headed for her car. Marlow followed.
“Guillaume is correct. You require transfer papers. But first, I must confer with my colleagues.”
Marlow’s blood boiled. “And when will you let me know?”
“When I have heard from the others. Some are on holiday. I cannot control when they get back to me.”
“The buyer is due in a week! I need to get legal documents written up for her!”
“This, I also cannot control,” said Rémy.
“You’re making sport of messing with my life!”
“Bah non—c’est ridicule, ca. I am not making sport with your life.
I do not have the time for such a thing, nor do I have the interest. But I will tell you one thing,” she said, staring down at Marlow.
“I will not have people like you using my one-euro program to flip houses. That is not the spirit of it. That would make a mockery of this area, and me.”
“I’m not flipping anything. I’m just trying to survive.”
“I will try to let you know tomorrow,” said Rémy, “I cannot promise more.” Then she got into her car and drove away.
Marlow set her jaw with the steely determination of someone who was going to stop this game—or win it—before she got back on a plane home.
Her phone buzzed. It was a message from Oscar asking if she’d be ready for their mid-summer review in a half-hour. Shit.
Yves took Sabine and Aubin up to Montmartre for dinner.
They climbed the stairs, Sabine distracted by the thought of the texts she’d received from her mother but had ignored.
She literally had no idea what to say, and she felt swept away with Aubin.
He held Sabine’s hand as they walked, and she felt all funny and butterflyish with him.
Partway up the stairs, Yves stopped. “Sabine! I am a filmmaker, not an athlete. Un moment, s’il te pla?t!”
“Why was I called Sabine?” she asked as he caught his breath. “It’s French. Was it your idea?”
“Sadly, no,” said Yves. “Even though I adore this name, it was your mother’s choice. She loved the book Griffin and Sabine. But secretly I loved the name because it was French, and so I hoped a little of me rested with you.”
Sabine gazed off at the tall trees, apartment buildings, and gas lamps lining the stairs.
“The Sabines,” said Aubin, squeezing her hand. “Cool band name.”
Yves showed them the sights on the way to dinner. The Place du Tertre was a square not far from Sacré Coeur, bordered by classically French restaurants and filled with artists. Sabine, Aubin, and Yves were approached by several wanting to draw them. Yves waved them off.
“After the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame,” he said, “the Place du Tertre is the most clichéd tourist trap in Paris, on every postcard and fridge magnet. And yet you cannot deny its history. Toulouse-Lautrec, Modigliani, and Picasso lived here. Made great art here. And even some of these painters tonight—they have great skill and artistry. So I look at it through that glass. A place of art and history. And if I can even draw one ounce of inspiration from it, I should use it to inspire others. Let’s sit here a moment and drink it in. As flaneurs.”
Sabine wanted to sit there all night and make a tiny book.
Next, Yves took them to Jehan Rictus Square, Place des Abbesses: a small park of paths amidst beds of bushes and yellow flowers, where there was an installation called Le Mur des Je T’Aime: a wall of royal blue tiles covered in scrawled white words.
“The artists printed the words ‘I love you’ in over three hundred languages on tiles made of enameled lava, so they would never fade,” said Yves. “It’s very romantic, no?”
“It is. And what are the red bits?” asked Sabine. Scattered across the wall of blue tiles were small red irregular shapes.
“Pieces of a broken heart, because we commit so many wrongs. They are waiting for us to repair them.” He paused. “I would like to repair any hearts I have broken in my lifetime.”
It did feel as if Yves was repairing her heart, little by little. And yet, she avoided eye contact with him and Aubin, watching couples all around them taking selfies in front of the wall.
Above the tiles was an image of a woman in a satin gown. Sabine took in the woman’s thought bubble: “aimer c’est du désordre … alors aimons!” To love is messy, so let’s love.
Marlow washed her face and underarms fast in Guillaume’s guest bathroom—the confrontation with Rémy had made her lose track of time, and now, with seven minutes before the performance review, she had to get on screen with Oscar looking like she’d been playing at the dump.
Why did she never seem to have her shit together?
Maybe, she thought, rifling through the drawers for antiperspirant, because she never did have her shit together.
She stared at herself in the mirror and pulled a twig from her hair. Great. That had been there the entire time she’d been speaking with Rémy.
If the performance review with Oscar went poorly, she could say goodbye to the new job.
The biggest thing she could foresee being a problem was not inviting Yves to the September Summit.
So now, if it came up, she’d have to decide whether to say that she’d rather not reach out to Yves, given their personal history, or lie that she’d asked and he’d been unavailable—a risk, since Yves and Victor, the head of Renegade, were friends.
Four minutes until her review. Her shirt was covered in dirt and paint.
Guillaume was nowhere to be found, so she barged into his bedroom, rifled through his drawers and found a T-shirt in a drawer of identical, perfectly rolled-up T-shirts.
Madame Klein strikes again. Marlow yanked off her top and put on Guillaume’s. She’d apologize later.
She raced back to her office, fired up her laptop, and signed into the video conference with one minute to spare. Oscar was already there. So was Helen from Renegade’s HR department. Of course he’d invited her.
“Hello, Marlow,” said Oscar. “Nice to see you. I haven’t seen you all week.”
“Oh, I’ve been here, toiling away,” Marlow said, trying to be cheery. “I’ve just been working odd hours. Hi, Helen, how are you?”
She hoped that didn’t sound too defensive. It probably did.
Press restart. You can do this.
“Fine, thanks,” said Helen. Helen was about as official as the festival got: warm but professional, never a hair out of place, with a veneer impossible to penetrate. “How’s France?”
“Wonderful,” said Marlow. “We had a big storm in the small town where I am, and there was clean-up to do, but croissants make everything better.”
Helen laughed. Oscar shuffled paperwork.
“The good news is,” said Marlow, “I’ve sold the house I bought over here, so we’re all sorted. I’m looking forward to being back in Toronto, at Renegade, come September first.”
“So,” said Oscar, “thank you for coming to your review. This, as you know, is part of our deal to allow you to spend the summer in France. And I want this to be a friendly two-way conversation.”
As if.
“Let’s follow the ‘HOF’ model,” said Oscar. “Highlights, obstacles, future. Highlights—you’ve done good work on the Incubator and Studio series, and I think the mentorship program’s been a success, don’t you?”
“Absolutely,” said Marlow, gnashing her teeth. The mentorship program had been her idea and all her doing, but Oscar made it seem like it was his.
“Anything I’ve missed?”
Only a hundred things, thought Marlow. Helen needed to clock them all.
“The alumnae connection app I launched worked out,” said Marlow. “I’ve counted four features this year alone made by past Renegade residents using that resource. We got amazing participant surveys back on the Screenwriters’ Winter Retreat. The festival speed-dating event went well—”
“Thanks,” Oscar said, cutting her off. What a dick. “We don’t have long, so let’s get to the obstacles. I admit, I was a bit blindsided by the same-day request for a holiday to France.”
“Understood, but—”
“Let me finish. If you remember, I was trying to turn around a revised proposal about the summit at Victor’s request. And when the CEO of the festival asks for something, by golly, I want to get it to him in a timely fashion.”
By golly? Oscar was known for his frequent F-bombs. By golly, my ass.
“You asked me to complete it after hours and turn it around that night,” said Marlow, trying to stand her ground. “I unfortunately had plans that evening for my daughter’s graduation.”
“If you’re unable to fulfill your duties in a timely fashion, even if it involves overtime, I’m not sure you’ll be able to be promoted to manager of the industry office.
Further, I’ve asked repeatedly since you’ve been in France to put best efforts into getting us Yves Barrat to anchor the September Summit, but to my knowledge you haven’t even reached out to him. ”
The point of no return. Lie? Be honest? She wanted to be anywhere but here. She wanted to be hauling storm detritus to the Nenier bins. Drinking Guillaume’s wine from his vineyard. Posing for Luc. Getting Sabine home to eat a simple dinner at Maison Perdue.
“Marlow?” asked Helen, “did you have thoughts?”
Oh she had plenty. Tread carefully.
“It feels unfair to penalize me for one missed deadline, as if it were the sum total of all my years at Renegade. You asked me for an overhaul of a PowerPoint and a budget minutes before five o’clock, the day my daughter graduated from high school.”
Marlow decided not to answer the Yves question. Her stomach was doing flips. Gurgles, even. Dangerous.
“I did ask a lot of you in that moment,” said Oscar, “but it’s not just one moment.
The next day, you asked for a week off, starting immediately.
Then you asked to work remotely for the summer, which put the summit in jeopardy.
I had to reduce it to one day. Your trip has forced me to change how the department works, not to mention the time difference. ”
“It was Victor who reduced the summit to one day. That had nothing to do with me.” She knew she sounded defensive but—
Silence. Gurgle. Was she losing this fight?
“I’m sorry,” said Marlow. “I complete all my tasks in a timely manner. I put in overtime, even if you don’t see me. I’ll be back in three weeks, and we’ll be in the same place and time zone.”
“Shall we move on to the ‘future’ section of the review?” asked Helen. Marlow suspected Helen was on her side, and she was feeling very thankful for the support at this moment.
“I did have a few more obstacles,” said Oscar, “but I can specify those in my report if that’s helpful.”
“It is,” said Helen. “I have another review in fifteen. So, thoughts?”
Marlow smiled awkwardly at the laptop camera, and, momentarily distracted by the vineyards under a blue sky with puffy white clouds, was unable to answer Helen’s question.