Chapter XXII. Avoidance. Mixed Media.
XXII.
AVOIDANCE. MIXED MEDIA.
LOS ANGELES.
I don’t bring up the Minnie thing with Anouk.
She leaves for Europe a week later, and the one time I see her, I am otherwise distracted. Two days before her departure, when I am poring over test prints in our dining room, she calls me midmorning, bubbly. “I have a funny story to tell you.”
“Do you? I am staring at some photos from our shoot and they’re stunning.”
“Really? Can you bring them by the house? I have a lunch in Beverly Hills at one, but come over now and I’ll share my story then.”
An hour later we are in her dressing room, the black and whites strewn across the table. I watch as she scrutinizes the light, the lines, the composition. Approval evident on her face.
“You are incredibly talented, you know this,” she says.
“I’ve been doing it for a while.”
“It shows. There’s so much feeling here. So much depth. I really like these, Cecilia.” Her gaze shifts from the photos to our reflections in the mirror. “I like you.”
I smile at our contrasting images. Me, in a crisp white button-down, white jeans, ponytail. California slowly rubbing off on me. She, in one of her kimonos. Emerald-green silk, with hand-painted cranes. She collects them on her various trips to Asia.
And much like my first time in this space, I am bewitched by the exquisite garment against her skin. And the fact that she smells of rose and cloves and temptation. In this arrangement, she holds all the power.
She does not speak when I turn her to face me, pushing her up against the edge of the table.
Nor when my fingertips graze her knee, my hand sliding into the slit of her robe.
I am aware that Ames and the rest of the staff are puttering about downstairs, that Frederick is elsewhere.
I’m willing to take that risk. And maybe that is part of the thrill.
She holds my gaze as my hand makes its way up her thigh, slips between her legs. My palm pressing against her underwear, relishing the heat of her. And I am not certain who wants this more, when I pull the material to the side and feel her, soft and slick and inviting.
But somewhere in that moment, in the flurry of scattering photographs and Japanese makeup brushes, and positioning her on the table, and the hasty removal of an Eres thong.
Somewhere lost in the taste of her, and her hands in my hair, and her breath coming in quick gasps …
it crosses my mind that perhaps, on occasion, I hold the power.
And there is something delicious about that.
After, when I am collecting my images and she is tucking a black-silk camisole into a coordinating midi skirt with an eyelet hem, I make the mistake of asking her to recount her story.
“I took a class with Laurence this morning at the Sol Centre.” She smiles.
The French pronunciation of his name throws me and it takes a second to register. “You what?”
“Your old boyfriend. I woke up this morning feeling un peu mal à l’aise, so I checked their schedule and they had an open meditation class at eight thirty. Laurence was the instructor. He was amazing.”
The air leaves my lungs. I am standing there still wearing her on my face, and she brings him up like an afterthought.
“The class was wonderful,” she continues. “He was gentle, thorough, a calming spirit. He has this beautiful aura, Cecilia. Like light. He’s very tall and he has these gorgeous, soulful eyes and a deep voice. To think this was your love…”
My mind is racing, my worlds colliding, the floor unsteady. Any power I thought I held, now gone.
“I’m going back. You have to come with me,” she says, securing her Cartier watch, her gold Irene Neuwirth drop earrings.
“No. I don’t. I can’t.”
I don’t have the energy to tell her how it ended.
How devastated I was. Each time. How long after the second breakup he came to visit me in Paris, months after I had fled, and lured me in again.
How I resisted. How we’d made small talk with two American coeds on the line to enter the Louvre.
How they’d spent the morning with us, drinking in da Vinci and Delacroix.
How we’d had lunch together at Le Café Marly, the chichi restaurant just opposite I.
M. Pei’s pyramid. And how when one of the Americans hit on him, I’d changed my tune and let him know in no uncertain terms that I wanted him.
How we’d left the lunch and hurried back to the tiny apartment I was subletting on the Rue de Verneuil.
How the sex was profound, earth-shattering.
How we made promises to each other. How he left four blissful days later to spend three weeks in Provence with his family, with the intention of passing through on his way back.
“I’ll leave three days early and fly back through Paris, Ceece.
They won’t mind. And then we can figure out how to make this long-distance thing work. …”
How he never did.
“Alors,” Anouk says now. “You don’t have to commit to anything just yet. Just think about it.…”
But like with Minnie, her interaction with Lorry is the last thing I want to think about.