Heloise was a beautiful girl. She wore her red hair tied up in a bun when she worked at the desk, and Clayton loved to tease her when she was at work and he breezed through the lobby on his way out. The other desk clerks kidded her about him, but she didn’t care. Everyone always asked her if she had a boyfriend, but she didn’t.
Hugues had turned fifty that year and worked all the time, even harder. A little salt had appeared at his temples, woven into his dark hair. He was prouder of Heloise than ever. He loved that she had gotten the first part of her baccalaureate and would complete it at the end of senior year. And he wanted her to think about careers and what she wanted to do. His dream of having her work at the hotel had faded. He wanted more than that for her and was encouraging her to think about law school, which didn’t appeal to her. He thought a career in law would open many doors to her, while the hotel would eat up her life. The one thing he didn’t want was for her to go away to school, he would have missed her too much, and he said it to her often. And she didn’t want to anyway. She had no desire whatsoever to leave the cocoon of the hotel and had never rebelled against it. Her life was still centered there.
She was particularly happy when a summer intern showed up at the front desk. He was a well-bred, intelligent boy from Milan who was attending hotel school in Europe and was going to intern at the Vendome for three months. The chemistry was instant between them, and they often worked together at the front desk. His name was Roberto, he was twenty-one years old, and Hugues was very nervous when he saw them whispering one night behind the desk. He talked to Jennifer about it the next day. She was always his best resource for parental advice and female intuition.
“I don’t want her to get involved with that boy,” he said to Jennifer unhappily, and she laughed at him.
“I don’t think you’re going to have much to say about it, or not for very long. One of these days she’s going to fall head over heels for some guy, and there won’t be a damn thing you can do about it, except pray he’s a good guy.” Her own children had both married, and she was a grandmother now. What she worried about most for Hugues was that one day Heloise would find the man of her dreams and leave, and he would be heartbroken without her. She was an integral part of his daily life, even more so because she hardly ever saw or spoke to her mother. It created an unusually close bond between them. And Jennifer knew they were both going to suffer one day when the cord was cut.
Hugues was beginning to worry about the men who would pursue her. “Roberto worries me. He’ll break her heart.” He was four years older than Heloise, more sophisticated than she was, and flirted with all the women at the desk. Heloise was enthralled with him and told Jennifer she thought he was sexy and handsome, which was hard to deny.
“She’s going away in a few weeks,” Jennifer reminded Hugues to reassure him about Roberto. “But sooner or later there’s going to be some guy. You’d better get used to it soon,” she warned him.
“I know, I know,” he said, looking worried. Jennifer was always a reality check for him. “Just keep an eye on them, and let me know what you hear. He’s too old for her right now, and a little too smooth for my taste.”
What they both heard in the ensuing weeks was that Heloise was smitten with Roberto, and he seemed to like her. But he was no fool. He wanted a good recommendation from Hugues and had no desire to anger him by toying with his daughter. So he was careful and respectful. He took her out to dinner a few times, she showed him the sights in New York on their days off, and they went for walks in the park on their breaks. But from what Hugues could tell, she hadn’t slept with Roberto, and as far as he was concerned, she left for her internship in Bordeaux just in time. He wouldn’t have trusted them together all summer. Roberto was just too handsome and appealing. Jennifer told Hugues that Heloise had told her she was still a virgin when she left. There had been a lot of kissing and fondling in the back room behind the front desk, but nothing dangerous. And when she came back from St. Tropez the end of August, Roberto would be gone. Hugues was relieved.
Heloise left for Paris on the first of July, and from there she was taking a train to Bordeaux. Hugues’s friend at the chateau where she would be interning had promised that he would take good care of her. He and his wife had a daughter the same age. Heloise was going to work at the concierge desk and wherever they needed help in the hotel. It was a small, well-run family hotel, and people rarely stayed for more than a few nights as they toured the region. Heloise was excited about the trip, and the job, although she was a little disappointed when she got there. It was a sleepy hotel, and there was less for her to do than at her father’s hotel in New York. The Chateau de Bastagne was tiny and quiet, but she liked their daughter, who drove her around the area and introduced her to her friends. Everyone they knew was in the wine business, and Heloise was learning about wine and how the grapes were grown. Everything was natural here, they didn’t use irrigation, unlike California; one of the vineyard owners told her that the vines had to “suffer” to make a great wine. She had a lot to report to her father when he called, and he was pleased.
“It will look good on your college applications,” he pointed out to her. And she liked the French kids her own age she was meeting in Bordeaux. She was sorry to leave when she had to go to St. Tropez on the first of August, particularly since she never knew what she’d encounter when she saw her mother. When she left Bordeaux, she felt she had made real friends there and promised to come back one day.
Her mother and Greg had bought a house in St. Tropez, and Heloise hadn’t seen her mother in over a year. She wasn’t sure what visiting them there would be like, but it was a fun place to visit, and she was looking forward to it.
She flew from Bordeaux to Nice, and her mother had her picked up by helicopter and flown to St. Tropez. And she arrived at the house at ten o’clock at night. Miriam acted as though she was thrilled to see her and exclaimed over how pretty she was, as though she were someone else’s child. Heloise’s half-brother and -sister were running around. Arielle was ten and Joey nine, and they were as unruly as they had always been, as an English nanny tried to keep track of them to no avail.
Miriam was wearing a see-through lace dress with nothing under it when she came to the door, and she was as beautiful as ever, at forty-two. Several major rock stars were there with assorted women. Greg waved hello to her from a set of drums he was playing, and Miriam showed her to her room with a glass in her hand. And when she opened the door, there was a couple making passionate love on the bed.
“Oops, wrong room!” she said, tittering. “Silly of me. We have so many houseguests here, I don’t know who’s where. I think this is your room,” she said, moving on to the next one. It was a small, pretty room decorated in white lace and blue ribbons with a four-poster bed. No one was in it, and Heloise was rattled by the time she was alone and shut the door, while Miriam went back to their guests. It looked like a wild night. It was a beautiful house with an ocean view, and a pool where everyone swam naked. And when Heloise went to join the others, they were drinking heavily and doing drugs. A lot of coke seemed to be in evidence, and they were all passing joints around and doing lines. Heloise looked uncomfortable and turned all of it down and finally slipped away to her room, wishing she were back in Bordeaux with her friends there. This was a heavy scene with her mother and Greg’s friends and more than she wanted to deal with. Her mother’s world in St. Tropez scared her, but she wanted to try and stick it out. She saw so little of her, she wanted to give it a chance, and hoped things would settle down.
Heloise called her father in New York the next day. He hadn’t had a vacation in two years and said he envied her a month in St. Tropez, although it wasn’t his kind of place either. Most of Miriam and Greg’s guests were English and from the music world, and sex and drugs seemed to be their main activities, which she didn’t tell her father. She didn’t want to upset him. By lunchtime everyone was drinking heavily again.
When her father asked her about it on the phone, he tried to sound casual and not concerned, and Heloise sounded equally so, to reassure him. He didn’t want to keep her away from her mother; she saw little enough of her. But he also knew that Miriam’s lifestyle was not entirely wholesome.
“It’s a little weird,” Heloise admitted, but she didn’t want to tell him that just about everyone except the kids was doing drugs. She had seen her mother snort a line of coke the night before. “It’s pretty loosey-goosey here.” It was who Miriam had become over the years, and maybe who she always had been.
“Are you okay? No one’s bothering you?” He didn’t want one of Greg’s rock star friends coming on to her, although he trusted Heloise to handle it. But he was concerned that no one would protect her there. She led a very sheltered life at home. She had a hotel full of hotel employees to keep an eye on her.
“I’m fine. It’s just the whole music rock star scene.” She had tried to talk to Arielle and Joey that morning, but she couldn’t seem to connect with them either, although she made an effort. But they were so disjointed and used to such a different life than hers. She was very square compared to all of them.
“Are they doing drugs?” Hugues sounded worried. He didn’t trust his ex-wife or her husband.
“I don’t know,” Heloise lied to him. “It’s okay. I just haven’t seen them in a while, and it’s kind of a shock after Bordeaux.” It had been so easy and so much fun for her there, even more than she’d hoped.
“Well, if it gets too strange, just leave. You can tell your mother we had an emergency here and you had to come home. You can fly out from Nice.”
“Don’t worry, Papa. I’m a big girl,” she reassured him. “I’ll see how it goes. I can always stay in Paris for a couple of days on the way home.” Two of her friends from school were there that summer, staying with relatives.
“I don’t want you going to Paris alone. Maybe it’ll be okay in St. Tropez. Give it a chance,” he said fairly, with no idea what was going on around her, and Heloise didn’t tell him since she didn’t want him to worry, and he would have.
By that night Heloise was more uncomfortable than ever. Everyone was drunk, doing coke, and having sex in every room available, including Greg and her mother with another couple, which they announced to everyone before the foursome went upstairs. It was more than she wanted to deal with, or know about her mother, and she was embarrassed to be there. She felt like she was in way over her head, although no one was trying to seduce her. Some of Greg’s friends had come on to her, but they had realized she was too square. And she felt no connection with her half-brother and -sister, who were bratty and badly behaved, and sadly, she felt even less connection with her mother, who was a creature from another world. She was even less mature than Heloise, and the only person she seemed to care about was Greg. She appeared to have lost interest in her other children too and paid no attention to them.
Heloise stayed for two more days and then quietly decided to pull the plug on her stay in St. Tropez. It was just too awkward, and she was spending no time with her mother. And it was unnerving to be there, with everyone doing drugs. She felt sorry for her half-brother and -sister growing up in an atmosphere like that. Heloise didn’t call to tell her father she was leaving, because she didn’t want to worry him and didn’t want him to make her come home. She wanted to go to Paris first. She told her mother that she had to get back earlier than planned, and Miriam didn’t object or even ask her why. She could see how unhappy Heloise was, and as far as Miriam was concerned, she wasn’t much fun to have around.
Heloise left the next morning, when everyone was still in bed, and left them a note thanking them. She took a taxi to Nice, which cost her two hundred dollars, and flew to Paris. She was in the city by four o’clock and looked up a youth hostel in an old convent in the Marais, in the fourth arrondissement. She took a taxi to get there. It wasn’t fancy, but it was clean and seemed appropriate, with wholesome-looking young people hanging around outside with backpacks on. Some of them were American and said hello to her when she walked in. There were several British kids and Australians, a few Italians, and two boys from Japan. Heloise was able to get a bed in a double room for very little money.
It was the size of a closet, but she was immensely relieved to be there. She would have done just about anything at that point to get away from St. Tropez. Once again her mother had disappointed her, but Heloise was used to it by now, and she was thrilled to be in Paris and discover the city on her own. She had been there as a child with her father, but this time she wanted to explore it herself, go to museums, sit in the cafes, eat in little bistros, and she wanted to visit the hotels that had inspired her father when he put together his hotel.
The first stop on her list was the Hotel Ritz in the Place Vendome. She had been warned not to wear blue jeans or they wouldn’t let her in since she wasn’t staying there, so she wore a pair of simple black slacks and a white blouse and put her long red hair in a bun, just as she did at the hotel, which made her look older than she was. And she was in awe of the elegant surroundings the moment she walked through the door: the long mirrored halls, the wood paneling. The
chasseurs
were her own age and wore almost the identical uniform to the bellmen at their hotel. She walked all through the lobby and looked into the elegant bar. Every inch of the hotel was beautiful, from the flowers to the chandeliers, and she could see why it had inspired her father to set up his own hotel in a similar style.
Using a map of the city, she went to the Crillon after that, which was another of the old elegant hotels, this one on the Place de la Concorde. She read in a guidebook she had bought that the guillotine had been located outside the hotel years before. The Crillon was beautiful as well. And from there she went to the Meurice on the rue Royale. It had been German headquarters during the Second World War and was another of the city’s grand hotels.