Chapter 49 1965
Hydra, Greece. Water in a different shade of blue. More bikinis and sunshine. Then Saint-Tropez. The same. Another place where I learn enough words of a new language that I can ask people what they want to eat and can order my own coffee too.
She’ll know enough to order a coffee and write not-half-bad poetry in a cafe she can find her own way to.
Words I said to Theo a year ago about Adele. Words that apply to me now. I finally know how to live. But that isn’t enough for the Aria Jones I’ve become.
I spend my time alternating between lying on a beach, serving platters of fruits de mer, and puzzling over the question—what can I do to make sure that starlets no longer need to be saved?
My aunt has written back more than once and she says that what’s needed is someone who can get to the girls before they get to Bob.
Which is true, but I can’t block all roads leading to Hollywood and stand at each barricade delivering tutorials.
My aunt keeps saying, You’ll think of something. You always do. She believes in me. I never knew what a lovely gift that was—to be given someone’s faith. But my own faith in myself keeps getting snagged on the same thought: only people with power can stop things from happening.
I might no longer be invisible, but I still have no power.
Oh yes, Flitter really had been the only one of us to make the right wish.
As the year gives way to December, the tourists vanish from the South of France and so do opportunities for waitresses.
It’s time to move on. I could just stay here now that I have money.
But what if I need that money for whatever answers I come up with?
And while Saint-Tropez is lovely, it isn’t my place.
I still haven’t found that. Will I ever?
I fold up my apron and stare out at the abandoned sea, waiting for Joaquin, the Spanish bartender, to finish. As soon as he bounds down the steps and sees my face, he knows. He shrugs. “Our time is up?”
We haven’t exactly been dating; dating is something you leave your apartment to do.
Most of our interactions have taken place in my bed or his.
I had to find out if I was just the kind of person who mistook sex for love.
But while Joaquin is kind and considerate and I enjoy his company, he doesn’t make me burn the way Theo did.
“Yes.” I kiss his cheek. “Bon chance, Joaquin.”
He smiles and wishes me good luck too, untroubled by my leaving because I didn’t make him burn either.
I take the train to Paris, where there are restaurants on every corner.
Art too—it’s like Venice in that way; every building is ancient and gargoyled and roofed with gold.
Here it’s the Eiffel Tower rather than the Grand Canal that makes me stop and stare.
Just look at it, black lace overlaid on a wintry sky.
And suddenly snow starts falling in huge sparkling flakes, like the stars have decided to come down and say hello.
I haven’t seen snow since I lived in New York with my parents.
What a long, long way I’ve come.
I close my eyes and make a wish upon a snowflake that my parents can see me now from heaven, and that they’re smiling.
Soon, the snow turns from delightful flurry to freezing rain.
I escape into the English-language bookstore where I meander up and down the aisles, see a beautiful early edition of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, wish I could send it to Adele.
But I don’t know how Theo would feel about that, don’t know if he’d prefer me to leave Adele alone.
Don’t know if he hates me, has gotten married again, or if he even thinks about me at all.
I leave the “Special Editions” section, progress to “New Fiction,” run my eyes over the covers and then I make a noise so loud that everyone turns to see. I reach out my hand. Pick up Helen Burns: A Novel.
I knew it was being published in the winter. But I didn’t realize it would be available across the Atlantic. My own copies from my publisher have been lost twice by the French postal service, packages proving to be far more problematic to deliver via the poste restante service than letters.
Look at how beautiful it is! The cover is bright red with a stylized strip of film running diagonally across it, almost like gift wrap, until you look closer and see that trapped in the film is a woman. My name, Aria Jones, is just below the title.
Me, Aria Jones, the orphan who was meant to have a small and unremarkable life, has written a book that’s being sold in a Paris bookshop.
This is another moment I’d never have lived if I’d married Theo.
It’s both the saddest thing I’ve ever thought and also the most necessary.
Two girls walk past and one of them reaches out to take one of my books from the stack. “Jolie told me this was good,” she says to her friend. She presents it to the cashier. Hands over her money. Leaves with my book in a paper bag.
My book!
Pride, joy, shock, I don’t know what—everything magnificent and incredible—is swirling inside me. Once again I want to dance, not on the sand this time, but around the entire store. But once again I’m alone.
And Fate isn’t done with me today.
A song starts to play on the radio. When the singer’s voice kicks in, I know it’s Theo.
It’s a song about love. A love that came at the wrong time for two people.
A love that had to happen, a love that had to hurt.
A love they had to leave behind because it would have hurt them all the more if they’d stayed together, stuck in the life they’d given into, instead of walking outside and finding the life that let each of them become who they really were.
A love that still makes the singer wake at night, crying out his lover’s name.
And I know—it’s the song Theo once said he’d write for me.
The loneliness that settles inside me afterward is so acute that I can’t do anything except return to the ?le Saint-Louis, an island in the middle of the Seine where I’ve rented an apartment, buy an ice cream from Berthillon, eat it with my eyes closed, pretend Theo is watching me, then fall asleep, exhausted.
The next day, I haul myself up. Despite the song, why would Theo Winchester—Win, rock star, heartthrob, the one true orgasm—ever wait around for me? And if I really think that song is about me, then why aren’t I jumping on a plane back to LA?
Because I can’t go back until I know how I’m going to save those girls from drowning. If I go back now—and by some miracle Theo still wants me—then I’d lose myself in him all over again. I can’t lose Aria until she’s a whole, complete, and entire person.
I pull on my white cropped trousers and a black short-sleeved shirt that I tie at the front just beneath my breasts—my Italian island habits are hard to shake.
I make the concession of pulling on a coat in deference to the weather.
Then I walk over to the ?le de la Cité, stroll across the Pont Neuf, see in the facade of the Louvre a little of the inspiration for the Chateau Marmont, pretend I’m just being a flaneuse, but my dreams are tugging me toward the post office.
I can’t shake the feeling that there’s a message waiting for me.
But what if I go in and there’s nothing and then I have to face the fact that my loneliness has made me believe that songs are portents, when all they really mean is that I miss Theo. A year of roaming has taught me there’s no cure for that.
It’s five minutes before closing time when I finally slip inside, braced for disappointment. But there are several letters waiting for me, including a much-redirected package.
Only when I’m back in my apartment standing in front of the flower-boxed windows that overlook the domes of the Left Bank do I let myself examine the envelopes. The package is from my publisher. There’s a letter from them too. The next has been addressed in Calliope’s wildly scrawling script.
And the third.
The third has been written by a hand that has touched me, everywhere.
I shove it inside the drawer, lock it in, like I’m scared it will vaporize in the air.
Then I sit down at my desk and open the package. Finally I have my very own copy of my book! I hug it to my chest like it’s the most precious thing I’ve ever owned. Can’t stop smiling. Can’t stop turning the pages and looking at all those words that I wrote in a house beside a Venetian canal.
Eventually, I open the envelope from my publisher.
Congratulations, Aria, the letter says. You’re a bestseller.
Enclosed is another check, pages from magazines, and a newspaper clipping.
I open the check first. Another twenty-five thousand. What can I possibly do with fifty thousand dollars, when I once would have been happy with so much less?
I shove the check into a drawer too.
Then I unfold the magazine pages. And with those in my hand and my book in my lap, I start to sob. I still don’t own a handkerchief. Of course I forgot to buy Kleenex. I use my sleeve to wipe my face. The whole, complete, and entire Aria is made up of pieces of the old, broken one too.
The first is a clipping from Cosmopolitan, headlined, “Aria Jones: The Star Who Never Wanted to Shine.” Underneath, there’s a photo of Judith Crown, Nathalie Green, Augusta Hepworth, and Miss Devine. They’re sitting by the pool at the Marmont, holding my book.
“She used to babysit my children,” reads a quote from Judith. “They loved her. Perhaps more than me.”
“Of course we know Aria,” says Nathalie, whose latest movie from Bob’s studio has been a huge hit. “Every woman in Hollywood knows Aria.”
I remember Calliope telling me that every woman who walked into the Chateau Marmont left with a bit of Aria inside them. I hadn’t believed her. Now, maybe, I do.
An entire page is taken up with a photograph of Calliope from a couple of years ago. She looks like a super-giant star, the biggest and brightest in any universe, the kind that burns so brightly it dies young, its life blown apart in one earth-shaking supernova.