Chapter Fourteen
“You bought a Grace Kelly gown!” Olivia coos, reverentially lifting one of the tissue-thin layers comprising the skirt of my new dress. “It’s so elegant, so ethereal! It looks like one of the costumes Edith Head created for Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief. I am chartreuse with envy.”
I was walking back from the beach this afternoon, glowing all over from sunshine and Xavier’s kisses, when I suddenly realized I hadn’t packed a suitable dress to wear to dinner with a gorgeous Frenchman. Not a Gasp! Who is that beautiful creature? dress. So, I splurged on a little designer gown.
“You went into the Dior boutique dressed in a beach cover-up and purchased this spectacular gown right off the rack?”
“Yes.” Okay, so I splurged on a little Dior gown.
“Ooo!” Olivia claps her hands excitedly. “I like Cannes Manderley! So bold. So confident.”
I twirl in a circle and the soft, silver-gray chiffon layers float around my legs. The bodice of my dress is body conscious, tight in all the right places, with slender straps that leave my shoulders exposed.
“You really like it?”
“Are you kidding me? The dress is gorgeous. Your makeup is gorgeous. Your hair is gorgeous. Turn away. I am beginning to hate you.”
I laugh because we both know she has no reason to be jealous of me. She is standing in my bedroom wearing a La Perla embroidered tulle bodysuit and high heels, a confident Glamazon in expensive lingerie.
“Are you sure you don’t want to ask your Monsieur X to make it a double? Gaspard is taking me to a historic absinthe bar in Antibes, where you are expected to wear a silly hat and sing along to piano tunes. Then, we are going to a jazz club he said is the cat’s meow. Gaspard said they serve pricey giggle water.”
“Giggle water?”
“It’s Jazz Age slang for champagne.”
“I know what it means. I just didn’t realize you had developed such an interest in jazz music.”
“Cannes has inspired me, darling!” She walks back into her room, but her voice carries through the open connecting door. “I am thinking of writing a screenplay set in Cannes in the ’20s. You know, when it was a haven for artists and writers . . .”
I look in the mirror to inspect my appearance one more time before Xavier arrives. I usually wear my hair up in a messy bun or sleek ponytail because it is more practical, but I styled it down, curled in soft waves, with my long bangs swept to the side, à la Lauren Bacall. Since I usually only bother with tinted moisturizer, a sweep of bronzer, mascara, and a dab of Burt’s Bees lip balm, my smoky eyes make me feel as if I am a little girl playing dress-up with her mother’s fancy clothes and cosmetics. My tortoiseshell glasses are tucked neatly into their case beside my bed in favor of contacts.
“So, what do you say?” Olivia walks back into my room, plucked, spritzed, and lacquered to perfection. She is now wearing a silky rose gold–colored jumpsuit and several layered necklaces. She looks like she walked out of the pages of a modern retelling of Gatsby.
“What do I say about what?”
She narrows her gaze and her arched brows knit together in irritation. “You weren’t listening to me, were you?”
“Guilty.”
“When did I lose you?”
“Right after you said 1920s Cannes was a haven for artists and writers.”
“I said I want us to write a screenplay set in Cannes during the Jazz Age.”
“Us?”
“Yes. Us.” She sticks her hand inside the bodice of her jumpsuit and pulls a tube of lipstick from between her breasts. She takes the lid off and dabs the lipstick on the plumpest parts of my lips. “You’re a brilliant writer, Manderley. Besides, you’re an expert on the 1920s.” She stops dabbing my lips and steps back to survey her handiwork. “Spec. Now, rub your lips together.”
I obey. “I am not an expert on the 1920s.”
“Your college thesis was on literary influences on the shifting cultural perspectives of the 1920s. You wrote about how Zelda Fitzgerald became the unwitting role model for a generation of young women eager to rebel in more ways than bobbing their hair, wearing flapper dresses, and dancing the Charleston.”
“How do you even remember that?”
“It’s my job to mentally record all of your brilliant, dazzling moments and then remind you of them when you are forgetting you can shine.”
“Am I not shining tonight? Should I brush a little more highlighter on my cheekbones?”
I glance in the mirror and wince when I notice the bold crimson slash of lipstick across my lips. I am about to wipe it away when Olivia grabs my hand.
“I am fatally serious, Manderley. Please don’t joke.”
Olivia can be like a bullmastiff with a knotted-rope toy when she is fatally serious.
“Of course you are,” I say, squeezing her hand. “We are in Cannes because your screenplay was nominated for a Palme d’Or. You don’t need me to write a screenplay.”
“I don’t need you to write a screenplay. I want you to write a screenplay with me. Will you think about it?”
She is trying to pick me up, dangling a writing job like a carrot before my downtrodden, dragging nose, and I appreciate it.
“Yes.”
“Think about it,” she says, linking her arm through mine. “We could be like Joel and Ethan.”
“Who are Joel and Ethan?”
“The Coen brothers!”
You can’t live or work within a two-hundred-mile radius of Hollywood without knowing the names Joel and Ethan Coen, but it’s fun to wind Olivia up a bit. I look at her and frown.
“The Coen brothers. Of course. The figure skaters who took gold at the last winter Olympics. I loved their costumes.”
“Are you kidding me? Tell me you are kidding. They wrote The Big Lebowski. O Brother, Where Art Thou? True Grit—”
She stops reciting the Coen brothers’ filmography when she feels my side shaking with repressed laughter.
“You are such a—”
There is a knock on my door. I press my hand to my stomach and look at Olivia through wide eyes. “Should I feel this much angst? Should my stomach feel as if someone used it to practice origami? Shouldn’t things be easier, more relaxed? Maybe it’s a physical sign I shouldn’t be going on a date with a stranger in a foreign country. Maybe—”
She unhooks her arm from mine and turns to face me. “Maybe, schmaybe. Listen. You are young and beautiful and you have had a helluva bad year. This is the time in your life when you should be grabbing on to any good opportunity that comes your way, especially if that opportunity is tall, dark, and lethally handsome.”
She reaches inside the bodice of her jumpsuit again and pulls out a small pack of breath strips.
“How many things are you carrying in there? Your La Perla bodysuit is like Mary Poppins’s magical carpet bag.”
“Never mind about my bodysuit. Here.” She slides one of the blue strips out of the package and holds it to my mouth. “Put this on your tongue, pull on your big-girl thong, and let’s do these Frenchmen.”
“Olivia!”
She takes the opportunity to push the strip into my mouth, before walking over to the door and peeking through the peephole.
“It’s Monsieur X,” she whispers. “He has brought you flowers and his designer stubble is looking particularly spec this evening.”
The contents of my stomach—one citronnade, an apple, and a breath strip—begin burbling up my throat. I duck around the partition separating my bedroom from the foyer and pray I won’t be violently ill. I listen as Olivia opens the door and greets Xavier with a purring, “Bonsoir, Monsieur X.”
“Bonsoir, Mademoiselle Tate.”
“Don’t be so formal,” Olivia teases. “Why not call me Madame O?”
Time to pull on my big-girl thong, as Olivia said. I swallow the acidic bubble rising up my throat and step out from behind the partition.
Olivia was right. Xavier does look particularly spectacular tonight. He is wearing his tuxedo without the tie and he’s left the top two buttons of his shirt undone. He looks like a male model in a diamond jewelry advert.
“Good evening, Xavier,” I say, smiling.
He looks at me and his eyes widen. He nearly drops the bouquet of jasmine and pale pink peonies he is holding.
“Manderley?”
Behind him, Olivia nods her head, urging me to say something, do something. What would Lauren Bacall do if Humphrey Bogart showed up at her door with flowers? She wouldn’t hide behind a partition like a timid schoolgirl. I walk over to Xavier with my head held high and kiss both his cheeks.
“Are those for me?” I ask, nodding at the flowers.
“Of course.” He hands the flowers to me. “You look beautiful tonight, ma bichette. Truly, breathtaking.”
“Thank you. You look rather breathtaking yourself.”
He gazes deep into my eyes and his lips curve in a smile. For a moment everything else fades away—my nerves, Olivia, the room—and all I can do is stand motionless, transfixed.
“I will just pop into the bathroom and put these in some water,” Olivia says, taking the flowers from me. “Be right back.”
“Thank you for the flowers, Xavier. They are lovely.”
“You’re welcome.”
He reaches out and lifts a lock of hair from my shoulder, gently twisting it around his long finger, and his expression changes, his smile fades, his eyes appear somehow dimmer, filled with melancholy.
“You are a different Manderley tonight.”
“What do you mean? I am the same Manderley.”
“Are you? I hope so.”
He releases my lock of hair and smiles again.
Olivia returns. “Well, you kids better get going,” she says. “And remember what Zelda Fitzgerald said, ‘Be cautious in life and reckless in love.’ ”
“I don’t think that is a Zelda Fitzgerald quote.”
“Isn’t it?”
“ No.”
“Oh well.” Olivia shrugs. “Then learn from Hemingway. He said, ‘My only regret in life is that I didn’t have more sex.’ ”
My cheeks flush with heat.
“Wine,” Xavier says. “I believe he said he regretted not drinking more wine.”
Olivia laughs boisterously. “You are right, Monsieur X. So, be sure to drink a lot of wine and have a lot of sex tonight. Just in case you are to die a horrible, unexpected death tomorrow.”
“Good night, Olivia.”
“Good night, Manderley.” She grabs my shoulders and gives me a quick hug. “Mmm, you smell good. What is that perfume you are wearing?”
“Essence of Jasmine.”
“Yummy. Where did you buy it?”
I look at Xavier and smile. “It was a gift.”
“Lucky you.”
“Yes,” I murmur. “I am lucky.”