Don't I Know You? Page 10

  I thumped the edge of the sofa. “Sit here.”

  Shivering, Dylan tried to keep his blanket from slipping off while he lit a cigarette.

  “Mind?”

  “Be my guest.”

  He sat down on the sofa.

  “Can’t sleep?” he asked.

  “It’s cooler on the porch.”

  “Yeah, the air is sweet.”

  I tucked my feet under Dylan’s bony ass. The smell of his cigarette was rough and pleasant—sometimes tobacco smelled so good. I brought my knees up, uncovering my feet. He took them in his cool hands and absentmindedly stroked them, as if they were a cat that had found its way into his lap.

  “I can only really sleep on the bus,” he said. “It doesn’t feel right if I’m not moving.”

  His hands felt so alive on my skin. A kind of swarming intelligence came off them. He put out his cigarette in a saucer on the windowsill. A loon breathed its shaky note. Dylan’s hands stroked further up my leg, like a masseur, following the line of the calf muscle.

  “Swimmer’s legs,” he said.

  “Not anymore.”

  “I like to watch you move around this place.”

  I let that pass. He shivered.

  “Here,” I said, lifting up the duvet. “Get warm.” He slipped like quicksilver out of his blanket and under mine. He was smooth as the handle of a knife, slim as a boy, cool as china. His mustache didn’t scratch when we kissed. I froze for a moment, listening for Eric’s near-snore, which rasped on, and Ryan’s rustling.

  “You are a jewel,” Dylan breathed into my ear. “A precious shining jewel.”

  * * *

  The skies were turning a harder, more brilliant blue, and the water was almost too cold for swimming. The mist that rose from the surface of the lake took longer each morning to lift.

  Our porch encounter was never repeated, or mentioned. Eric suspected nothing and he even began to warm to Dylan as they worked through his Johnny Cash collection. One day they found a Valdy record, Country Man, at a garage sale in town, which thrilled them. As for me, on the rainy afternoons when Ryan lay on the couch reading old copies of National Geographic and the two men were listening to “Girl from the North Country,” I couldn’t have been happier. All my men at peace, under one roof.

  Then one Sunday morning when we were still in bed, I heard the engine of the Citroën turn over, stealthily, and catch. Followed by the whine of the car in reverse as it backed down our gravel road, swishing past the tall poplars.

  “He’s gone,” I whispered to Eric.

  “I doubt it. Probably just went to town for smokes.”

  “It’s Sunday. Nothing’s open this early.”

  We got up, expecting a note, or possibly a check, but there was no sign of anything. I went into his room where the bed was neatly made, and Ryan’s sock monkey with the X’s for eyes leaned up against the pillow. In the kitchen the box with the last Chelsea bun was gone.

  “He fucking took my bun,” said Eric. Then he checked the shelf of albums. “And Valdy too.”

  When Ryan woke up, we told him Bob had to leave early, to catch a plane and go back on tour. He was disappointed; they were in the middle of learning “Never Can Tell” by Chuck Berry.

  “He’s on the road most of the year,” I said to Ryan. “Next time he comes through town, I’m sure he’ll look us up.”

  “A hundred bucks we never hear from him again,” said Eric.

  But I am a romantic. I didn’t need to see him again.

  A few days later, as we were packing up to go back to the city, the marina lady came by in her boat. “A letter came for you,” she said, handing Ryan an envelope addressed to him care of Warners’ Marina, Sturgeon Lake. He finally got that right, at least. It was written on stationery from a Best Western in Boise, Idaho.

  “What’s it say?” I asked. He read it out loud.

  Ryan, Didn’t want to wake you up but thanks for all the rides. The Chuck Berry chords are E, B flat, D, only bar chords sound way better. Tube on, Yr grateful Bobby. It was folded around a hundred-dollar American bill. Just what Eric now owed me.

  “I already figured out the chords,” Ryan grumbled. Then he began deflating the inner tube, sitting on it as the air whooshed out.

  Somehow, when we got home, in the muddle of unpacking we lost track of Dylan’s letter. I looked everywhere for it, and nothing turned up, except for the little candlestick marker from Monopoly. It wasn’t a good idea, we decided, to share the Dylan episode with friends. Whenever we tried to broach it, they would look concerned.

  So our time with him became a family secret—something that might or might not have taken place, like the mirage of summer itself.

  * * *

  In January, Dylan put out a new album called Madawaska. When I heard the title, my heart raced. Eric brought home the CD and I scanned the list of titles on the back. Maybe I was afraid of, or hoping for, something called “Precious Jewel,” or “Swimmer’s Legs.” The music was traditional bluegrass, with fiddles and two women singing harmony with Dylan on the title tune. “And all along the Madawaska/I’ve been thinking of the night/When the moon rose up in splendor/and your step was young and light.” A simple song, like “Red River Valley.” Eric played it twice, and neither of us spoke. The next song, fast and driving, was an intricate narrative about a stable of famous racehorses that burns to the ground.

  “No sign of Country Man at least,” said Eric.

  I got up in the middle of the night, and played Madawaska again, with the headphones on. The moon wasn’t full that night on the porch, but the rest of the lyrics felt true. I took it as evidence, at least. Everyone craves evidence that a time was real, even for five minutes.

  My Star

  Everywhere I went in Cannes, she was there, wearing something black and minimal, exuding mystery, her famous falcon eyes hidden by dark glasses. One night she deliberately sat in front of me at a screening; I could tell by the self-conscious way she moved her head. On my way to the bathroom the morning before the first film of the day, there she was again in the lobby of the Lumière with the same faint, complicit smile. I couldn’t get rid of Charlotte Rampling.

  Eric says it’s happening more often now—stars stalking ordinary people. Especially in Cannes, where celebrities still wield an unironic glamour. Here they remain facts, like the stars in the sky.

  My first time at the festival I came on my own as a journalist, freelancing for the Star. I did what you do when you are one of the four thousand media who descend on Cannes every spring—I raced from screening to screening, wept over my faulty Internet connections, underslept, and binged on films until my eyes felt like melting wheels of full-fat cheese.

  But this time I was there with Eric, whose first feature, ᐱᒃᑲ (Inuktitut for “that place above”), had been accepted in the festival’s sidebar program, Un Certain Regard. It’s a drama set in the high Arctic about an oil-seeking American geologist (played by Rob Lowe) and the Inuit who try to thwart him. Very little dialogue. One of the Inuit actors, Aipalovik, has come with us to Cannes for the premiere. His name means both “evil god of the sea” and “entertainer,” he explained with his lopsided smile.

  Aipalovik has been to Sundance (where he was cast as an indigenous zombie in the horror movie Inukshuk) but never to the south of France. He is thirty-four, placid and handsome, with a sparse black chin-beard that seems to be especially attractive to the women here. He wears only cargo shorts with Teva sandals and finds everything interesting, which makes him an excellent traveling companion. Aipo used to work as a driver on one of those polar-bear-viewing buses for tourists, and before that he hunted caribou. So the empty white spaces of travel are familiar to him.

  This time I wasn’t in Cannes on assignment, which means I could take advantage of a quaint French tradition—the Spousal Pass, or as it is diplomatically known (to cover mistresses too), an “Accompaniatrice” pass. Technically it’s only for the media who want to bring their partners, but w
e managed to wangle one. And I didn’t mind playing the wife card this time around; I was secretly pleased, in fact.

  My laminated white Spousal Pass, worn around the neck, allowed me to file past the lineups of sweating critics with lowlier accreditation. Aipalovik had a limited-access blue pass, for instance, which was embarrassing. Eric tried to get him upgraded, but the French officials wouldn’t budge. (They still call the Inuit Eskimos here.) Aipalovik just shrugged and took it in good humor. He spent his time in lineups flirting with the women around him anyway.

  In the first week, Charlotte Rampling’s taste in films uncannily mirrored mine. She sat two rows away from me in Godard’s Maudite Langue, and we both stood to applaud, while some booed. We were in aisle seats opposite each other in Sheep Stealer, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s four-hour pastoral epic. Also, we both made a point of staying for all of the closing credits. The theater is often deserted by the time they stop rolling. Then I let her leave first. Her small smile on the way out acknowledges our ritual.

  Charlotte was in Cannes for a special retrospective of films by the Italian director Liliana Cavani. Most notorious among these is The Night Porter, in which the actress plays a Holocaust survivor who, years later, runs into her captor (played by the epicene Dirk Bogarde) in a Viennese hotel. They embark on a sadomasochistic affair complete with full frontal nudity and Nazi trimmings. Roger Ebert called it “as nasty as it is lubricious,” but the film acquired a cult status, and it was a typically brave choice by Rampling. Odd pairings seem to appeal to her. The last movie I saw her in was Max, Mon Amour by the esteemed Japanese director Nagisa Oshimi. She plays the wife of an English diplomat and embarks on a very credible affair with a chimpanzee. Rampling’s performance was note-perfect, as usual. Subversive seduction is her forte.

  As the press conference for Liliana Cavani wrapped up, Aipalovik and I joined the crowd out in the hall waiting for Charlotte and her costars to emerge from the salon. I threaded my way to the front, worried that she might be scanning the crowds for my face.

  The doors swung open and Charlotte appeared with her little retinue. Although she looks tall and regal on-screen, in real life she is rather small with delicate facial features. No puffy duck lips for her. She wore a modest black dress with no jewelry, and seemed as composed amid the frenzy of Cannes as she is on-screen.

  “Charlotte! Over here!” the photographers called out, as their devices clicked and whirred. Some carry stools so they can shoot over the heads of the crowd. “Charlotte—Presse Internationale!” yelled one man as the actress walked away. She turned and paused, offering a wry smile as if to say, yes, all right, if it’s international.

  I must admit I got quite caught up in the moment. I felt like crying out, “Charlotte! Over here—Spousal Pass!” I think that might have amused her.

  In the evening, after Aipalovik left us to join a bevy of publicists having drinks on the lawn of the Grand, Eric and I strolled back to our hotel. The owners were a charming young couple with impeccable manners, who sang out “Bonjour!” or “Bonsoir!” at our every encounter, in that formal French soprano. Back in our tiny room we drew the drapes against the noise of the Petit Majestic, a café where festival-goers spill out into the streets, drinking and talking until dawn. All night long the noise of the crowd sounded like heavy surf, almost soothing. The sea was only a few blocks away, but it is an orderly body of water. Like the teacup-sized dogs carried in their handbags by the Cannoise women, it is not really “nature” anymore.

  Eric and I developed a nightly ritual in Cannes. First I would call Ryan and Ceri; my mother was staying with them and they needed to complain about her cooking. Then I would set out our earplugs on either side of the bed, tenderly place our two mobile phones in their charging cradles, and drape a T-shirt over Eric’s new laptop, whose green lights pulsed like something small, alive, and breathing. The TV and the air conditioner also had little red eyes. This constellation shone over us as we slept.

  One morning I skipped the 8:30 a.m. screening to go to the market and buy some food. You cannot snack in Cannes; you must sit down at a table in a restaurant and spend a proper hour or two, so I try to keep our mini-fridge in the hotel stocked, mostly with fruit. The strawberries here are small but potent as a drug.

  In fact, my favorite Cannes moments were when Eric and I sat on our balcony at dusk, poured two glasses of rosé, and ate fresh strawberries with Brie. Sometimes oysters too. The air is especially soft at that time of day, and the palm trees in the garden throw their jagged shadows on the ochre of the hotel façade. We toasted each other, our hard-earned life together (his first wife was a handful), and felt lucky to be there.

  The Cannes market sells everything, not just food. I was standing at the stall that sells only bikinis—there is no cut-off age for bikini-wearing in the south of France—when I saw Charlotte across from me, sniffing a melon. Her sunglasses were enormous. She wore a trench coat with the collar turned up and the same black ballet flats as the day before.

  Casually, I drifted down the aisle to the strawberry stall and paid for two boxes. She just as casually left the melons behind and began to inspect some dried lavender opposite me. I crossed the street and ducked into the doorway of a patisserie. Bonjour, madame! cried the woman behind the counter, snaring me, so I bought two Opera cakes. Through the window I could still see Charlotte looking around for me, perplexed. The lavender seller was waiting for her to pay when she abruptly abandoned the bouquet and walked away. There was a sad slump to her shoulders, or so I imagined. She carried an umbrella.

  I dashed out of the store with my cakes and decided to follow her for a few blocks. I felt a little bad for having eluded her like that. And what was the harm, really, if she had some compelling interest in me? She was an actor, and actors study other people. The streets were thronged and the crowds swam around Charlotte without a second glance; her singularity, her charisma, only flared on-screen. I had to jog to keep up with her. Then, when I turned down rue Mace I spotted Aipalovik admiring the ball gowns in the windows of a couturier’s shop.

  “Ten thousand dollars for a dress,” he said when I joined him. “But it’s finely crafted, isn’t it? The little crystal drops on the bodice.” He looked a bit worse for wear. Eric said that when he had left the bar at the Grand the night before, a big-boned American girl was touching Aipalovik on the arm and laughing whenever he spoke. His years as a hunter had made him attentive and highly observant, which the women here are not accustomed to.

  I explained to Aipo that the French actress Charlotte Rampling had been following me for several days.

  “Why would she follow you?”

  “I don’t know, but I was just at the market and there she was again.”

  “Perhaps she was buying food.”

  “No, no. She was looking at lavender. No Frenchwoman would buy lavender, it’s for the tourists. She’s obsessed with me for some reason.”

  Aipalovik pondered this. “You know, when I’m hunting, I keeping thinking I see caribou in the distance. But it’s usually not the case.”

  “This is different. Come with me.”

  I led him to the Majestic, where the minor celebrities stayed (the A-listers stayed out of town, at the absurdly deluxe Hotel du Cap). A white Rolls with tinted windows had pulled up and was disgorging new guests. It was always a kick just to walk through the lobby to view the haggard and wealthy in their finery. The orange-skinned men with the $15,000 chronometers on their wrists, and the women of full artifice, looking embalmed.

  “The rich often seem unhappy,” Aipalovik observed as we threaded through the lobby. And there she was, standing near the bar, checking her watch with the tiniest of frowns. I plucked at Aipalovik’s arm.

  “Over by the floral arrangement, three o’clock.”

  Charlotte had several small shopping bags at her feet. I was irritated for her sake by the late arrival of her Accompaniatrice.

  “Her beauty is subtle,” said Aipalovik, “but powerful.” We watched as s
he drew one bare foot out of her shoe, like a deer.

  “And she has a wound,” he said, his brow clouding a bit. “Look at her right foot.” He has a big nurturing side, Aipo.

  It was true; I could see a blister on her heel that had been rubbed raw. It was bleeding a little. Cannes is very hard on the feet, with all the walking and the cobbled streets. That’s why I always carry Band-Aids in my purse. I put a flesh-colored Band-Aid in Aipo’s palm and he glided across the room. Charlotte turned a wary eye to this new, unusual person, dressed like a river guide. But after listening to him for a minute or two her face softened. She smiled. That guy, he had the touch. Swiftly he peeled the wrapper off, picked up Charlotte’s foot as one would a horse’s hoof for shoeing, and smoothed the adhesive strip over the curve of her blistered heel. The deed was done almost before she could register what was happening.

  But Charlotte wasn’t fazed. She slipped her foot back into its black flat and opened her handbag, ready to pay him, whereupon he looked horrified and backed away. Just then a flustered young man in jeans and a silvery shirt came to her side, scowling at Aipalovik. She kissed the man and put a calming hand on his arm. She shook Aipo’s hand. The couple went and sat at the bar as he made his way back to me.

  “She smells like heaven. And those eyes. I understand now.”

  “Let’s slip out while she’s distracted.”

  “Being in the same vicinity as you does not amount to predation,” Aipo pointed out, but I let it go.

  The next night was Eric’s screening. He was trying to be offhand about it, but he was terribly nervous, fidgeting so much in the morning films that I had to leave and slip into another one. But his anxiety was understandable. The day after the premiere, reviews would appear in all the industry papers and Cannes can make or break a film. Not to mention the fact that movies set in frigid landscapes have a bad track record at the box office. So we split up for the day. I was coming out of David Lynch’s Wild at Heart when I all but collided with Charlotte.