Chapter Ten
“Xavier!”
Xavier steps out from behind my chair and it is my turn to gasp. He’s wearing abdomen-hugging black-and-white swim trunks in a houndstooth pattern and a black cotton tee. Dark sunglasses hide his gaze.
“Bonjour, Manderley.” He nods at me. “How did you sleep? I trust you had sweet dreams?”
Guilty heat flushes my cheeks. No, I did not have sweet dreams. I had a nightmare about you that left me as disturbed and disquieted as your kisses. There is an awkward silence as I try to mentally sort through the jumbled images from last night. Xavier kissing me in the hallway. Stars dropping from the heavens and bouncing like pearls on the deck of a beautiful sailboat. Xavier yanking me off the boat and into the sea. Xavier wishing me sweet dreams.
“Hello there,” Olivia says, thrusting her hand out. “I am Olivia. Olivia Tate. Manderley’s best friend. You must be . . .”
“Xavier.” His smile is tight as he shakes her hand. “But, please, call me Xavier the Malaria.”
Olivia chuckles, either oblivious or intentionally ignoring the tension crackling in the air between her and Xavier like tiny bolts of static electricity.
“Funny.” Olivia laughs. “You don’t look like a killer.”
Xavier stops smiling. “I beg your pardon?”
“Malaria.” Olivia laughs again, inelegantly. “A life-threatening blood disease caused by parasites.”
He smiles politely but does not laugh. Amazingly, he appears immune to Olivia’s dazzling wit and trademark charm.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mademoiselle Tate. Manderley has told me much about you.”
“She has told me a lot about you, too.”
“Evidently, not enough.”
Olivia laughs. “Oh, well, you know. A woman can never be too cautious when her best friend is flitting off to Monte with a tall, dark, handsome stranger. Information is like champagne, one can never have too much. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I have always held to the adage that too much information can be as troublesome as too little.”
I wonder what he is thinking. If only he would remove his dark sunglasses and let me look into his eyes. Would those deep blue pools reflect irony or annoyance?
“I see you are to play tennis. Don’t let me keep you. The weather can be so unpredictable here in the South of France. One moment, you are basking in the sunshine”—he turns his head to look at me and I feel sick with regret—“and the next moment your joy is obliterated by meddlesome clouds.”
He nods at me and strides away.
“What a rude man!”
“You were shouting his name into your phone, wanting Siri to search the internet for juicy gossip about him, and then you called him a parasitic disease. How was he supposed to behave?”
“It’s the twenty-first century, Manderley! Googling a guy is what you do before you . . . you know . . . google him! It’s one of the steps in modern-day courtship.”
“I hate the twenty-first century,” I say, tossing my napkin on the table in frustration. “There’s no mystery, no romance. Frankly, I don’t want to google a man before our first date. I would rather learn things about him organically, over time. I wish we could go back to the—”
“Stone ages?”
“The 1940s.”
Olivia rolls her eyes. “Same thing! The men living in the 1940s were patronizing sexists who thought women were only good for making meatloaf and mixing martinis. You’ve watched the movies from that decade. They said things like, Be a good girl and bring my slippers.”
“They treated women as creatures who were delicate and worthy of their respect and protection.”
“They treated women as inferiors.”
“Well,” I say, pushing my glasses up my nose, “technically, women are inferior to men.”
“Good God and Gloria Steinem!” she cries. “Please tell me you are joking.”
“No, I am not. Biologically speaking, men produce more testosterone. For centuries, societies have prized behavior associated with testosterone production: strength, dominance, competitiveness, sexuality, protectiveness. So, from a male perspective, they are the stronger, more dominant, sexual, protective, and competitive gender. Ergo, they are superior.”
Olivia groans and slaps her forehead. “Next you will quote Darwin by saying feminism is just unchecked female militancy that will eventually lead to a disturbance in the races and divert the orderly process of evolution.”
“From a statistical standpoint, that is a possible eventuality. After all, there is a direct correlation to lower fertility rates in countries with greater gender equality.”
“Because the women in those countries are educated!”
“So, education equals independence which results in lower fertility. Right?”
“Yes, smart women know that fewer children means higher status.” Olivia crosses her arms and repeatedly taps her foot against the leg of the table. “What does that have to do with you thinking women are inferior creatures?”
“I don’t think women are inferior! I was merely sharing the popular theory that women are inferior because they produce less testosterone, and, therefore, typically demonstrate fewer testosterone-associated and culturally revered behaviors.”
She growls. “What does that even mean, Manderley? To you. You say you wished you could live in the ’40s. Does that mean you are looking for a man who will call you Dollface as he orders you about? Do you want to be treated as an inferior and . . .” She stops talking and holds her breath, her lips forming a slash across her face.
“Of course not. I believe women deserve to be treated as equals, but I think we have lost something in our pursuit for equality.”
She exhales. “Thank God!”
“I say I want to go back to the 1940s because it seemed to be a more genteel decade, when men treated women with courtesy and care. That’s what we have lost: men treating us with courtesy and care. The last date I went on was—”
“—in the ’40s?”
“Funny! It wasn’t that long ago.”
“Are you sure? Have you been on another date since I set you up with”—she grimaces, snapping her fingers as if the gesture is somehow linked to her memory—“what’s his name? The cute ginger literary agent who works for Nathan Allenberg?”
“Samuel Sampson.”
“Sam! That’s his name.” She crosses her arms and looks at me from beneath an accusatory, raised brow. “You haven’t been on a date since Sam, have you? And don’t say Xavier the Malaria, he doesn’t count.”
“Don’t call him that!”
“Sorry. Primacy effect.”
“And he does count.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. Of course he counts.”
I pick my iPhone up, flip it over, and press the home button. “Gee! Look at the time. We better hurry or we will be late for our court reservation.”
“Nope,” she says, leaning back in her chair, closing her eyes, and raising her face to the sun. “I am going to stay right here until the Restylane evaporates from my lips and they look like two wrinkled up, withered balloons on my chin.”
I sigh. Olivia had lip augmentation shortly after we arrived in Los Angeles, because, she said, I look like the Joker when I wear lipstick. I argued that plenty of beautiful women have thinner lips, like Heidi Klum, Kate Hudson, and Kirsten Dunst, but she said getting lip fillers was her little “prezzie” to herself for selling her screenplay. The first thing she said after Dr. Yaseef finished the injections was, When the Restylane wears off, are my lips going to look like an old woman’s breasts, all deflated and crinkly? Even though Dr. Yaseef assured Olivia her lips would look as they did before the injections, my slightly neurotic friend continues to believe she is going to end up on Botched—that television show where plastic surgeons attempt to fix botched cosmetic procedures.
“You know Doctor Yaseef told you that your lips would not look wrinkled or withered.”
“Really?” She lifts her head and opens one eye. “Do you want to test that theory?”
I laugh. Olivia always makes me laugh, even when she’s being annoying. Her audacity and humor are two of the things I truly love about her.
“No.” I laugh again. “I do not want your withered lips on my conscience. What do you want me to know?”
She licks her lips and then lifts her water glass to her mouth. Pretending to take a sip, she lets the remaining slivers of ice floating in her glass rest against her lips. When she is satisfied she has sufficiently cooled her heated Restylane enough to avoid a cosmetic surgery emergency, she stops “drinking” and puts the glass back on the table.
“Have you gone on any other dates in Los Angeles?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Three months ago.”
“With who?”
“A professor.”
“Which professor?” She looks skeptical. “How did you meet him?”
“He taught the advanced digital photography and Photoshop class I took this winter. The one offered through the UCLA adult extension program.”
“Ooo!” Olivia rubs her hands together. “Now you’re talking! Hot for teacher. You dirty, dirty girl. How Children of a Lesser God. How Wonder Boys! Was he a sexy prof like Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark? Did you write love messages on your eyelids so he could see them when you blinked? Why didn’t you tell me? Are you going to see him again?”
“Which question would you like me to answer? In the interest of brevity, I will answer one.”
“Was he scholarly hot?”
I open my mouth to answer.
“Wait!” she cries, holding up her hand to stop me from answering. “Are you going to see him again?”
“Is that your final question?”
“Yes. No!” She props her chin on her fist and I can almost see the dozens of questions popping up in her brain, like thought bubbles over a comic-book character. “If you wanted to see him again, you wouldn’t have gone out with Xavier the—”
I clear my throat.
“—you wouldn’t have gone out with the Frenchman, even if he is très, très hot.” She taps her lips and thinks for a few more seconds. “Why aren’t you dating the professor?”
“He was twenty-five minutes late for our date.”
She crinkles her nose. “Seriously?”
“Punctuality matters. It’s a way of showing someone you respect them.”
She rolls her eyes.
“That’s not all,” I say. “He asked me to go to dinner and a movie.”
“Ick,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Basic. No wonder you dropped him.”
I laugh. “It was an uninspired choice for a first date, but I wouldn’t have minded if he had put some effort into it, a little planning. Instead, he waited until we were in his car and then he said, Where do you want to eat?”
“Maybe he was being considerate. Maybe he didn’t want to pick a seafood place only to discover you were allergic to shellfish.”
“Couldn’t he have just googled it? I am sure my allergies are listed somewhere on the internet, maybe gathered after I took some BuzzFeed quiz.”
“How Obsessed with Food Are You?”
I laugh. “Which Ryan Gosling Character Is Your Soul Mate?”
We look at each other and we both say, “Noah!”
Olivia and I might not agree on which decade produced the finest gentlemen, but we have always agreed that Noah, Ryan Gosling’s character from The Notebook, is the superlative romantic lead.
Olivia signs the check. We grab our racquets and make our way across the terrace, in the direction of the pool and tennis courts.
“You realize The Notebook was set in the 1940s, right?” I say. “Noah was a ’40s man.”
“He was a fictionalized man. Honestly, Manderley, I think you are idealizing that time. Men might have appeared more chivalrous, but they were still men. Take Spencer Tracy, for instance. He was an actor known for playing honest, righteous men, but off screen he carried on a not-so-secret affair with Katherine Hepburn. Can you imagine how humiliating and frustrating it must have been to be his wife? Did you know she was an actress before they met and she gave up her career to support him? Pig!”
“Olivia! Spencer Tracy wasn’t a pig.”
“If the snout fits. That’s all I am saying.”
We follow a path covered by a red canvas awning.
“So the professor was more of a dud than a stud. All I am saying”—she twirls her racquet in her hand—“is you better get your groove back, Stella, or it’s gonna be lost forever.”
“What does that mean, lose my groove?”
“It means I don’t want you to become a spinster.” She opens an iron gate and waits for me to go through. “Edith Wharton. Jane Austen. Edna St. Vincent Millay. Emily Dickinson. Louisa May Alcott. Do you know what they have in common?
“They were brilliant authors?”
“They were spinsters! Unmarried, often unhappy, spinsters. Do you want to be like them?”
“Hmm, do I want to support myself by writing literature that stands the test of time? Was that a rhetorical question?”
“Stop pretending to be obtuse. You know what I—” She stops walking and grabs my arm. “Good God!”
I follow her gaze and gasp. Xavier is reclining on a nearby lounge chair, one arm behind his head. He isn’t wearing a shirt and his tanned, muscular chest is glistening with sunscreen.
He lifts his head and opens his eyes, piercing us with that unnerving blue-eyed stare. He notices my expression and his lips curve in an enigmatic smile.
“See ya,” Olivia says, releasing her grip on my arm.
“Wait! Where are you going?”
“Go talk to him! Do it for Edith and Jane.”
“I thought we were going to play tennis.”
“We are,” she says, pushing my shoulder. “Right after you practice getting your groove back a little. Go talk to him. I will meet you at the court.”
She hurries off, leaving me standing by myself in the crowded pool area, withering beneath Xavier’s scorching gaze.