R Is for Rebel (21 page)

“Very well. Thank you again for your assistance.”

Eliot twisted off the pale blue plastic cap and poured the contents of the bottle of water down his throat as if he had never tasted anything better in his life. He ate the apple, barely tasting it, but grateful for the sustenance, then stripped and showered. He changed back into his jeans and button-down shirt, slipped on his loafers, gathered up his phone and keys again, and said his thanks and farewell to the young man on his way out.

He rode up in the elevator in a half-conscious state, as if he were emerging from a long dream. The ping of the elevator sounded too loud, the voices of the couple next to him sounded too low, vibrating around him in a strange foreign fog. He found his way back to his room, shut the door, and then wandered across to the French windows that opened out onto the Place Vendôme.

What was it with Parisian hotels?

And balconies?

And Abigail?

He sat in a desk chair that he turned to face out the window, taking in the beautiful view as the late afternoon sun began to set over the rooftops and the cobblestones and the pediments and oriels and pilasters. Every surface exuded artistry and planning, forethought, design, beauty. The stone facade of the building across the way was capturing the last rays of the February sun, turning it to gold and bronze. The entire edifice seemed to throb with life, or the end of the life of that particular day.

Eliot felt Abigail all around him. He wasn't prone to what his father would dub spiritual mumbo jumbo, but he could tangibly sense her nearness. He still wasn't sure if he had the strength (he purposely avoided the word
courage
) to meander over to La Coupole and casually drop by their table later that night, but he knew some sort of interaction was going to happen. His eye moved to the large column in the center of the Place Vendôme, Bonaparte's likeness standing atop in eternal self-assurance.

Napoleon never worried overmuch about Josephine, he suspected, certainly not to the point of having a panic attack in the corner of a basement. The hotel phone was nearby on the elegant parquet desk. Eliot picked it up and ordered a light meal of smoked trout and mâche, and decided to treat himself to a split of the 2003 Pomerol that caught his eye as he was shutting the room service binder.

Napoleon's statue, proclaiming Bonaparte's inherent arrogance, galvanized Eliot into action. He had to take control, if not of Abigail, then at least of himself and his reactions to her. He forced himself, applied himself really, to the much-avoided process of analyzing once and for all what had transpired on that miserable night, or very early morning, really, at the Plaza Athénée last year.

His food and wine arrived, and he began to feel fortified. He took out a pen and paper and started assessing his dealings with Abigail just as he would a potential buyout. Pros. Cons. Irritants. Potential pitfalls. Intellectually, he knew the entire exercise was immature and futile. Pointless. What did spreadsheets and brainstorming have to do with messy emotions, as his mother called them? On the other hand, it was the method he was most comfortable with when assessing problems, and since he had failed miserably at dealing with Abigail in the abstract—his logic devolving into endless, circular philosophical cul-de-sacs—he thought it worth a try to deconstruct her just as he would any other business proposition.

After he felt the mellow effects of the half bottle of wine and the healthy satisfaction of a decent meal, Eliot thought he might actually have the requisite strength to meet up with Sarah and Abigail. He was grateful for the fact he was able to think her name without succumbing to his usual worry. Resolution, one way or another, was near.

Eliot's cell phone rang and he checked the caller ID and answered. The photographer Benjamin Willard and the delectable Russian model Dina Vorobyova were in town for the week and, amidst a background of clinking glasses, loud music, and the generic hum of hundreds of chattering voices, Dina was yelling into Eliot's ear about the need for him to stop being such a corporate lackey and to get “eez ass out of eez 'otel room.”

“And a fine hello to you too, Dina!” Eliot laughed into the phone.

“We're meeting up at La Coupole, darling, and you must come! We pick you up at your hotel in thirty minutes. Wear something handsome!” Then the line went dead.

Eliot stared down at his meticulous list of Abigail-related idiocy, with phrases like
reality
vs. fantasy
and
passion
vs. pragmatism
clouding his vision, then felt a wave of near-freedom and crumpled it up and threw it in the garbage. Whether it was the denouement of the panic attack, or the final, certain imposition of reality on his imaginary, escalating preoccupation with Abigail, a gratifying peace washed over him at the thought of actually seeing her in person.

Marisa, of all people, had been correct. The real Abigail would eradicate all of his imaginings and conjurings. The real Abigail was only human. The real Abigail was just a regular person. Surely she would be, if not small and insignificant, at least manageable in real life.

Surely.

Sarah swept into the hotel room, her hair concealed in an ivory-toweled turban. Abigail was sitting on one of the comfortable armchairs, reading an intense novel about a despotic village patriarch in preapartheid South Africa. The protagonist had just finished beating his daughter for her refusal to marry the man he had chosen.

“Another light read?”

“It's a beautifully written book.”

“I think while we're here, you're going to have to be completely in my thrall.” Sarah grabbed the offending Booker Prize winner out of her sister-in-law's hands. “Books, music, clothes. Everything. I decide. I'm pulling rank. You're here as my guest. Go get changed for dinner.”

“I am changed.” Abigail looked down at her black pants and long-sleeved white T-shirt. It wasn't just any T-shirt, it was one of the ludicrously expensive, clinging, slightly-off-white T-shirts that Sarah had convinced her to buy. “You told me to buy this shirt, remember?”

“Of course I did. For when you go to Portobello Road on a Saturday morning, so you don't go in sweatpants and one of your dear father's old gardening shirts. Not for dinner in Paris with glittering, glamorous famous people!”

Abigail laughed at Sarah's vehemence.

“Go ahead and laugh. You're going to need your sense of humor,” Sarah said, not looking back as she went toward her bedroom to change.

“And why is that?”

Sarah had her hand on the doorknob, deciding whether or not to say anything, then spoke with considered nonchalance. “Because Eliot will be there.” Her bedroom door shut in response to Abigail's frozen expression.

***

Twenty minutes later, Sarah emerged from her room to find Abigail in exactly the same spot.

“Have you moved?”

“No.”

“Well, let's get you dressed at least. Come on.”

Sarah practically lifted Abigail out of the chair and kept her arm around her waist as she guided her toward the other bedroom, chattering on about meaningless things, the fabric on the desk chair, the pattern in the carpet. Then, like a big sister, she gently forced Abigail to sit at the end of the bed, then crossed the room to Abigail's closet.

“Okay, what did you bring?” Sarah said as she opened the closet door, then gasped as if she had just discovered a dead body. “What is this? You have about four tops in here? Are you crazy? Where is that Miu Miu skirt I gave you? The Carolina Herrera sweater?” Sarah shook her head in unfeigned pity. “You are a sad case, Abigail. Come with me.” She guided her back through the living room and into her room, then settled Abigail back down on the end of the bed like a little girl.

It took Abigail a few moments to adjust to her surroundings. There were piles and piles of clothes, and trunks and shoes and belts and bras and scarves and every accessory imaginable. “Holy crap.”

“I assure you, there is no crap in here whatsoever. This is the best of the best. The good stuff. Now let me think. The boobs are going to be a problem.”

Abigail looked up in silent inquiry.

“Mine, not yours, of course.” Sarah grabbed her generous rack as evidence, then put her hands on her hips. “Let me think of what I have that isn't going to fall off that maddeningly thin frame of yours.”

She opened her closet and Abigail saw more clothes in that temporary space than she had owned in her entire life. “Jesus, Sarah. That's just what you brought for ten days? Or is that your whole wardrobe?”

“I know you're joking, so I won't come up for it.” Sarah flicked efficiently through the hanging clothes, pausing occasionally then shaking her head in internal answer. “Here we go. Come over and let me see how this color looks against your complexion.”

Abigail walked across the room and Sarah held up a Catherine Malandrino satin aubergine blouse.

Sarah tilted her head in a moment of aesthetic appraisal. “I will let you wear the jeans if you wear something really spectacular on top… and shoes of course. Otherwise, you're wearing a skirt.”

“I'll wear the blouse. But isn't it too dressy? It's satin. Isn't that for black tie? Seriously.”

Sarah looked at her and shook her head like an old medicine woman. “Have you learned so little, my child?”

They both burst out laughing and spent the next hour transforming Abigail from the wan, white-T-shirt-wearing third wheel to the fabulous, mysterious dark angel. Sarah did her makeup and congratulated herself on a job well done.

“There you go,” she said as she turned Abigail around to face the large wall mirror behind the marble vanity in her bathroom. Sarah let her hands rest loosely on Abigail's shoulders, staring at both of their reflections.

Abigail did not recognize the beautiful woman in the mirror. Her lips were pronounced and full. Her eyes had a smudgy kohl effect that was mesmerizing. Her skin was perfectly even and glowed with the slightest glimmer of powder. “How did you do that?”

“Oh, my darling, I do that every day. I didn't want to risk giving you the full treatment for fear you'd be overwhelmed. Just a little foundation, a bit of something around the eyes, and that fabulous lipstick with the plumping whatever-it-is. I didn't want you to be too tarted up.” Sarah had started putting the different eye pencils and lip pencils and magic potions back into her kit, when she felt Abigail's light touch on her upper arm.

Abigail was perilously close to weeping. Sarah scolded her, “No crying! You'll ruin the whole effect. You are gorgeous. Let's go get him.” Sarah zipped up the last of her small makeup cases, and looked at Abigail with one final assessment. “Maybe just one more thing.” Sarah pulled the black string around Abigail's neck.

“I don't want to take it off,” Abigail pleaded.

“I don't either. I want to have it out in the open, not hiding inside your blouse. You are done hiding, Abs. Let me adjust it so it's a choker.”

Abigail let her hand drop from her chest, where she had been holding the charms in place beneath the fabric. “Okay.”

Sarah silently untied the knot at the base of Abigail's neck, then circled the long, well-worn, pliable piece of leather three times around Abigail's slim throat. The effect was miraculous. “Holy shit. You just went from hippie to rock star. Now let's get you some fuck-me boots.”

Abigail had just taken a sip of water and almost spit it across the bathroom. “What did you just say?”

Sarah talked as she walked back into her crowded room. “You know what I mean. There you are in your demure, long-sleeved, satiny, feminine blouse, and that mischievous head of black hair. Let's have at least one thing on you that screams pure, unadulterated
sex
.” Sarah was down on the floor, pulling out different boxes of shoes and dismissing them all.

“You don't think the black harem eyeliner or the dog-collar version of my necklace might hint, just a bit, that I'm not opposed to a tumble?”

Sarah scrambled out of the closet and sat cross-legged on the floor with a largish box on her lap. “Of course those things hint at plenty, but I want you to wear a pair of shoes that don't hint. I want them to holler. Like this.” Sarah had opened the box and was holding a single black suede knee-high boot between her thumb and index finger. “Now that's what I'm talking about.”

“You're crazy! You are a hater of women. Those heels are a form of patriarchal torture.”

Sarah smiled like Satan himself. “Just try them on, Abs. You might like them. Then what?”

“I'll try them on. You know I won't judge without evidence, but it is beyond impossible that three inches—”

“Four actually—”

“Very well, four inches, then, could possibly scream anything but misogynistic—or in your case, sadistic—pain. Give me the damn boots already.” Abigail grabbed the dangling boot and sat on the floor across from Sarah.

“Here,” Sarah said, “put these nylon peds on to protect your dainty little toes.”

Abigail rolled her eyes, but did as she was told. “Does the boot go inside or outside the jeans?”

“Well, that depends.” Sarah was back in aesthetic appraisal mode. “I'm going to need to see it both ways.”

Ultimately, Abigail refused to wear the boots on the outside—with her jeans tucked in, she felt like some horse-crop-wielding dominatrix, much to Sarah's delight… then dismay when Abigail refused to oblige her.

“Okay, be that way. I never took you for such a prude!”

“I am not a prude!” Abigail protested.

“I refuse to argue, but take it from me. You are a card-carrying prude. If repression is what Eliot's into, I guess, you know, whatever rocks your boat.”

“You are so evil, Sarah. Does my brother know how evil you are?”

Sarah's mouth twisted in mock innocence, and when she was about to speak, Abigail held up her hand. “Do not answer that! Ew!”

They both looked toward the window as the refracted lights of camera flashes played across the ceiling, then crossed to the French doors to see the latest commotion on the street below. They had been watching the paparazzi dogging the rich and famous for the past few hours—magazine editors, actresses, models—as they entered or exited the hotel. This time, it was a mile-high Russian supermodel and a rather old and charming looking white-haired man getting out of a stretch limousine.

Sarah murmured admiringly, “Damn. That's Dina Vorobyova and Benjamin Willard. Prepare thyself, Abigail.”

“What do you mean?” All of a sudden, Abigail could feel the cool night air through the glass pane inches from her cheek. She felt the prickle of every hair on her body stand on end as Eliot emerged from the hotel lobby to stride casually across the sidewalk. The cameras flashed as he shook hands with the famous photographer, then turned to be enveloped by that damned Russian seductress. She was wearing something short and silver that seemed to be made of liquid rather than fabric.

“I can't believe Eliot is letting her wear that dress before the show.” Sarah's voice was all business, calculating. “At least she's wearing the right shoes.”

“Sarah, it's Eliot! Why are you analyzing that… that…”

“That supermodel? Is that the word you're searching for, Abigail?”

“I suppose.”

Eliot lifted Dina up in a light embrace, her feet coming away from the sidewalk momentarily as he swung her around. The supposedly sultry vixen had thrown her arms around his neck like a happy child might do, and he was smiling at something she was whispering in his ear when he lifted his eyes and caught sight of Abigail in the window.

He continued listening to Dina's heavily accented English, probably hot in his ear, continued smiling as he lowered her gently back to the ground, continued ignoring the flashes all around them, and continued staring at Abigail. Then his smile altered, barely, his eyes sparkled with mischief, and he lifted his chin in a tiny gesture of acknowledgment and approval, just for her. That barely perceptible look made Abigail feel more beautiful, more desirable than any woman on earth.

She wasn't afraid anymore. Whether he was meant to be with the Accomplished Maritime Platypus or not, Abigail was ready to see him. “Let's go already.”

“Really? Just like that? All right then.” Sarah grabbed her snakeskin clutch and laced her arm through Abigail's. “Let the games begin.”

***

La Coupole at ten o'clock on a Saturday night during Fashion Week was a natural phenomenon on par with the annual Pacific salmon run or the wildebeest migration in Kenya. The preening, the volume, the color, the lights. Abigail had eaten there before with her mother, usually for lunch or a light dinner after the theater, but this was something else altogether. It had never occurred to Abigail that the bright lights and tiled floors that her mother cursed for their utter absence of flattery were the ideal stage for people who welcomed inspection. It was a room full of people who had no need to actually say, “Look at me!” because it was simply impossible to look away.

“Try not to gawk, Abby.” But Sarah knew it was empty advice. Gawking was the order of the night.

The maitre d' fawned admirably over Sarah, gave Abigail a brief, nearly dismissive once-over, then showed them to a table already packed with friends and business associates of Sarah's from New York and Chicago. Her business partner, Julie, stood up and shooed away a couple of excruciatingly handsome male models to make way for Sarah and Abigail to sit down.

The barely contained frenzy of waiters, busboys, and sommeliers; the adept speed with which they transported enormous steel platters of oysters, crayfish, clams, and lobster; the precise pouring of endless glasses of perfectly chilled champagne: Abigail looked around, astonished, and decided her sister-in-law was quite simply a genius. It was blissfully impossible to fumble through one's mind worrying about missed romantic chances or lost opportunities when life was blurring right there in front of you at such glorious speed.

Bright, efficient, alive.

Especially so when he was actually standing there, flanked by a supermodel and a world-renowned photographer, one beautiful strong hand holding a glass of champagne and the other reaching across the table to shake Sarah's hand, and then Sarah invited the three of them to join their table and Sarah's business partner Caroline said, “Perfect timing, we were just leaving,” and more jostling and shuffling, and then Eliot was sitting two people away from her on the curved, intimate banquette. It was all breathtakingly simple. And infuriating.

How was she ever going to touch him with those infernal
people
in the way?

***

Eliot put his glass down on the table, staring at it for a few seconds longer than necessary to make sure it was stable amidst the glittering sea of plates, glasses, and silverware. He took a deep, steady breath and slowly turned to look at her full in the face.

“Hello, Abigail.” He had to raise his voice slightly to be heard over the din.