Hotelles (39 page)

“She died before her father,” Sophia noted.

“And even her grandmother.”

Not one member of the family seemed to be with the living. There was no one to question. Unless  . . .

“Her mother . . . She's not with them,” Sophia observed.

“Maybe she's still alive,” I speculated.

“Yeah . . . We didn't ask for her parents' names at the records department. It's closed by now.”

The setting sun meant evening was upon us, and public offices abandoned for the night.

Using my smartphone's 3G connection—in passing, I noticed that David had stopped calling, and that he hadn't made any effort to reach me since late morning—I searched for the following information:
“Rebecca Sibony” + “Belles de Nuit.”
Though the connection was weak, it gave me the following result since Belles de Nuit had been registered to Rebecca at her home:
Belles de Nuit SARL, 118 Avenue Georges Mandel, 75116 Paris CEDEX.

“Do you want to go surprise that bitch?” Sophia's natural disposition had resurfaced.

“Yes.”

“Do you really think she'll help us?”

“I don't know. It's possible.”

I hoped she would.

After all, if you took David and Louie out of the equation, Rebecca was the only living witness. Not the most impartial person, sure, but still. Our trip to the sea, like the sheets at Brown Rocks, had only unveiled a tiny portion of the Barlet brothers' secret. I was counting on her to shed some light on those old memories. She had to know more than she had told me the last time I'd seen her, on Rue du Roi-de-Sicile.

Her puckish eyes looked at me from the photo, from her past self, inviting me to join her. She could prepare her answers, clean them of their lies, and fill in the gaps: I was coming.

34

June 16, 2009

P
ee break. Dinner break. Gas stop. We made our way back to Paris in increments, delaying the inevitable. We were in no hurry to get answers to the questions we had been considering since Brown Rocks. If Aurora was from Saint-Malo, how had she and David met? What had really happened the night of December 25, 1989, that made the young woman throw herself into the stormy sea? Why had David taken off on Christmas day—“on business,” Louie had said—leaving his brother, his parents, and, above all, his depressive young wife behind? What was their relationship to Belles de Nuit? Could it be that Aurora . . . had also been a Hotelle?

We ended up stopping at a hotel on the side of the road, somewhere between Angers and Le Mans. Neither of us had the energy to keep driving. We hadn't slept much the night before, Sophia even less than I. We'd need rest if we didn't want to get in an accident.

 

I am writing in almost complete darkness. I think Sophia is already asleep, in the bed next to mine. Her breathing is loud and regular. As for me, I can't sleep. Because of our recent discoveries? Because of everything that awaits us in Paris?

No, it's because every time I hear my friend's breath, I imagine that she's masturbating,
her index finger
pressing into her button, a middle finger plunged into her
sex.
This thought is not new: ever since the age of sixteen, whenever I sleep over at a girlfriend's house, I ask myself the same question: Is she touching herself? Or rather: Could she be touching herself without my noticing? The thought harasses me, and finally I slide a hand into my panties and press my clitoris, in as controlled a manner as possible, until I can't take it anymore. Did Sophia hear me tonight? Did she also wonder about my nocturnal activities? Sleeping in the same room with another person, be they of the same or opposite sex, tends to provoke this kind of question: Is the person horny? For me? For him- or herself?

 

Handwritten note by me, 6/16/2009

 

WE LEFT BEFORE DAWN THE
next morning. The tunnels leading into Paris at the Porte d'Orléans, whose orange neon lights I've always liked so much, swallowed us before the day had even broken.

We took the road due west and exited at Porte de la Muette after having driven a good fifteen minutes around the city, following directions provided by Cox navigation systems.

It was still very early. That Tuesday morning in Paris, traffic was fluid and there were few cars on the road. Just bread makers, a few café workers, and garbage collectors. Five fifty, said the digital clock on the dashboard in large green numbers.

“We're not going to stop by at this hour, are we?” Sophia inquired.

“No, you're right. Coffee?”

“Coffee,” she confirmed.

 

118 AVENUE GEORGES MANDEL WAS
a large building from the seventies or eighties. It was an immaculate white, with rounded cement cavities jutting out of the facade at every window or bay window.

The entrance was just as kitsch, and finding Rebecca's name among those of all the residents took a few minutes—I noted the presence of a Barlet on the nineteenth floor. A sleepy voice answered the intercom, after what seemed to me like a long time. We were clearly waking her up.

“Yes?”

“Rebecca. It's Annabelle.”

“And Sophia!” my friend hollered over my shoulder.

“I'm buzzing you in,” she said. “Eleventh floor, first door on your right.”

She was barefoot when she greeted us, in a silk fuchsia robe thrown over a nightie in a softer pink. Without makeup, her hair a mess, she definitely looked her fifty-odd years. I noticed wrinkles I had never seen before since they were usually so well hidden under layers of powder and foundation. But her eyes, despite their sagging lids, were exactly the same as in the stolen photograph. I wondered who could have taken it.

“Would you like something? Tea? Coffee? Water?”

She ushered us into a little sitting room with a view of the street. It was modern, clean, and stylish, and yet also filled with souvenirs and trinkets, for the most part portraits of Rebecca with an impressive number of celebrities, arm in arm, of course. Sophia's eyes widened at the sight of such and such television personality, and this or that pop star.

“No, thanks. We just had coffee,” I answered for both of us.

“Okay . . . I'm going to make myself some tea, if you don't mind.”

While she prepared her beverage, I had time to inspect her flat's interior. Large gray metal blocks disappeared in part under her desk, which was scattered with papers in unstable piles. I figured they must be the Belles de Nuit archives, undoubtedly carted over from the now empty offices over at Rue du Roi-de-Sicile  . . .

Then, on the opposite wall, I noticed something else: underneath the pale-yellow wallpaper, I made out a door frame, a fairly noticeable thin black line just beneath the surface.
The door to Louie's apartment!
I thought, my heart thumping. I tried to calm down before the mistress of the house came back with her mug. A blanket of Shalimar followed her in and soon mixed with the scent of her steaming jasmine tea.

As I watched her mechanically stir a spoon into her sugarless tea, I thought of our last meeting and, more generally, her life. She, too, had lived a life without real flavor since she had been denied the sweetness of Louie's affections. She had been rejected by her one true love, and from what I could tell, she had never gotten over it. Nothing in love or business had been able to fill the hole in her heart.

I quickly repressed a passing thought: one room, three women . . . all possessed (or almost) by the same lover. Was it deplorable? Laughable? Revolting? . . . Or, on the contrary, exciting? Which one of us, in the end, could give him the most pleasure? The prettiest, the one who loved him most . . . or, against all odds, the most recalcitrant?

 

Handwritten note by me, 6/16/2009

 

THOUGH IT SEEMED SHE HAD
been expecting the worst from me, she clearly had not anticipated my question:

“Rebecca, when did you found Belles de Nuit?”

I already knew the answer. It was on the same document where I had seen her address. I just wanted to hear it from her.

“In February 1992.”

Exactly. Or two years after Aurora's death. Logically, then, she could not have been one of us.

“And before Belles de Nuit?”

Sophia introduced herself into the conversation, for once in a relevant way.

“Have you managed other agencies of the same kind?”

“No, it was the first. Before that, I was in public relations.”

“For which company?”

“For different venues and also for a film distributor. But that was a long time ago.”

The celebrity friendships she showed off on her walls were probably from that time, I speculated. Those same people had no doubt become clients, once she'd launched the agency.

“But you didn't come here to talk about my career, did you?” She laughed, her tone soft and nostalgic. “If you could even call it that . . .”

Now that she had given Louie to me, now that she saw me as the official depositary of a man she did not know how to please, all she had left were her memories. And this apartment—though he would soon be moving out. For good. She who had once seemed so self-assured now looked like the remnant of an old ship battered by storms, the kind you find tucked away someplace where no one goes to see it anymore. Flaking. Crushed in parts. The rigging frayed.

“Last time we met . . . ,” I continued my interrogation. “Why didn't you tell me that David owned Belles de Nuit?”

Obviously, his name did not appear on the company's registration documents. He was smarter than that. It was probably hiding behind an obscure title, one of the business's many shareholders. I hadn't had time to uncover it.

The way she batted her eyes told me that this question also came as a surprise. Then, she took a long sip of hot tea and looked at the ceiling:

“I won't even bother asking who told you that . . .”

“In any case, I wouldn't tell you,” I replied with composure. “You know the rules: a journalist never reveals her sources.”

I had no reason to cover for François Marchadeau. And David would undoubtedly figure out that he had been the leak. But that was between his old friend, him, and me.

“David simply loaned me some money to start the company,” she said, a halfhearted exoneration. “That was more than fifteen years ago . . . That's it.”

“Are you saying he doesn't have a stake in it anymore?” Sophia intervened; I could feel her growing impatient.

“He does. But he hasn't been a majority shareholder in a long time.”

That would be easy to verify with a little impromptu research. But I was interested in more than administrative explanations.

“You didn't answer me: Why did you hide David's role in Belles de Nuit from me? Why not tell me that he's known all along about my activities?”

“Is it really important?” she asked, blinking.

“Yes,” I answered firmly.

All I had were a handful of dates, spotty information, and a sprinkling of intuition. Nothing proved that her agency was directly linked to Aurora Delbard's tragic fate. Nothing explained the sensitive role I played between the Barlet brothers, much less the relationship between the two mysteries.

Rebecca shivered and hugged her bathrobe more tightly. She was protecting herself, drawing her frail body into a soft armor of satin.

“Lord knows David was not the best husband to Aurora . . . but he had a terrible time getting over her death.”

The armband. The scars on his left forearm. I had already seen all that. No use bringing it up again. A brief smile, my way of encouraging her to go on.

“Since it had been years and he still had not come to terms with it . . . he had this idea. Unless it was Louie who had it first. I never really knew.”

“What kind of idea?”

Problem: Why do we ask questions when we already know the answer?

“Belles de Nuit, of course!”

Solution: Because it hurts more when it comes from someone else's mouth. The words of others are razors; our naive quest for truth, the vein we hold out to them. It's up to them to act, to do irreparable damage.

“I don't get it,” my friend cut in. “What's the connection with his ex?”

“Let's just say that David couldn't handle living alone. But he couldn't imagine entering into a relationship that might be as destructive as what he'd had with Aurora. He was afraid of the madness, the hysteria . . .”

“The agency would be a giant casting call,” I breathed.

Sophia couldn't believe it either. While I sunk into the sofa, crushed, she straightened, perching her backside on the cushions' edge, on the verge of jumping.

“He never considered that maybe he had played a role in her tragedy?”

“David is not really the kind of person to doubt himself.”

I had to give her that. Everything from the past couple of weeks was taking on new meaning. Since he had found me, since he had thought me worthy of succeeding Aurora, there was no reason to keep up the agency. After all, it had only been a front for his desperate quest.

I took a few deep breaths, settling myself.

“And why did he trust
you
with this mission?”

“At the time, I was out of a job. And I think Louie felt badly for leaving me again . . .”

She was speaking as though she had failed him.

“That doesn't exactly make you a competent candidate.” Sophia didn't mince words.

“That's true . . . but I learned quickly. Besides, my previous work experience gave me something really important: a client list.”

She confirmed my earlier hypothesis with a sweeping look over her collection of celebrity photographs.

“I thought it was a cover! Why care about your earnings?”

“David always cares.” Rebecca sighed.

In other words, fake or not, the agency was not exempt from what was expected of every other Barlet Group subsidiary: it had to earn its keep.

But there was something that didn't cohere in this neat little story.

“Don't tell me it took you seventeen years to find a girl like me?”

As ordinary as me, I implied with consternation. Didn't Annabelle Lorands show up at station casting calls all year, fresh and ripe for the plucking?

“Yes,” she affirmed, this time without raising her brow. “But I've told you already: David is really very demanding. About everything. And especially when it comes to the kind of women he frequents. So you can imagine for his
wife
!”

“If he wanted the perfect girl,” Sophia came to my aid, “there are plenty of dating sites where you can enter your exact criteria. And believe me, candidates for marriage are a dime a dozen.”

“You're right. David attracts more beautiful young women than he can possibly take to bed with him. But the sites you mention didn't exist at the time.”

I ignored her barb. She was only saying the obvious, something I had no doubt been too quick to forget: the man I was supposed to marry was one of France's—if not Europe's—most eligible bachelors. Though I had trouble assessing his notoriety outside our borders.

She set her mug on the coffee table and fixed a gray strand of hair that had fallen in front of her face, a kind of call to order.

“In any case, that's not the issue . . .”

“No, but it's so ridiculous!” I finally exploded. “What do I have that's so exceptional?”

I recognized her tender and compassionate look from our last meeting.

“Well . . . It's a number of things,” she equivocated. “It's hard to sum it up in three words.”