What She Saw Read online

  One by one, Lana introduces herself to Hopper’s solitary women, drawn from each one only by remembrance of another. The flowering sensual redhead in Summertime, who stands outside some forbidding old civic building, its gray stone and columns burnt almost white in the heat, seems even more aching with desire and yet more virginal. Alone among his women, Hopper had not painted her with downcast eyes. This girl lifts her face to the sun and allows a warm breeze to flutter her diaphanous dress between her legs. But, like all the others, she is alone. Even the ones Hopper pairs with men still seem somehow separate, in a lonely place. A woman on the edge of a tiny bed stares dejectedly at the floor, oblivious of the joyous morning sun pouring in the window and the man behind her sprawling naked on his stomach, his face buried in a pillow.

  It occurs to Lana that she has no idea how long she’s been drifting about the room and that her elation seems to have relaxed into a melancholic communion with these women. Now a work she has never seen before jolts her: the raw loneliness of Hotel Room. Once again a woman alone, sitting half-dressed on a bed, staring at a piece of paper. Lana admires how the bareness and cheapness of her room is created with rigid vertical and horizontal lines. What a contrast to the curvaceous ostentation, the billowy opulence of her Le Chevalier junior suite. But she and the sad lady share something: the woman has as little luggage as Lana does and what she has is strewn just as carelessly—shoes kicked away, a hat askew on a cheap bureau. What is this woman escaping, for surely she’s hiding from something or someone? What has she lost or left behind?

  The cell phone that appears right in Lana’s eye line is a shock and her concentration is shattered by its camera’s click, click, click. It’s no surprise that the snapper is a student type, aglow with peachy-skinned youthful deliciousness, carrying all the requisite accessories including the cutest little scarlet heart-shaped purse. She could not be less like the woman in Hotel Room. This is a child raised on positive reinforcement, comfortable with her beauty, no doubt creative, and generally all-around amazing. Lana feels an impulse to slap that cell phone from her hand, kick in and gush forth like James Dean’s oil strike in Giant. Instead, somehow, she manages to speak calmly.

  “You know you shouldn’t do that.”

  “Oh really, yeah?”

  It’s oddly relieving to hear an English tone rather than American. The contemptuous “yeah?” at the end is little princess-speak for “who are you?” Even as she hears herself snapping back, Lana regrets that she hasn’t kept a dignified silence and hates how her own accent now grates with upward-inflected aggression.

  “The signs? No photography? Just for other people, huh?”

  The little princess wheels away, with a forced sigh, a twist of the nose, a dismissive swing of her purse and Lana tells herself, let it go, the moment is over. Except it isn’t.

  “Excuse me.”

  Lana turns and click. The little princess flips the screen to show her the photograph, just to be that much more of a mean girl. She has framed Lana’s face side by side with that of the desperate woman in Hotel Room. In the background, incongruously, is a man turning his face away, obviously smirking. It can only be at Lana’s humiliation. She spins round to lash out at him, but he is no longer there.

  “Just like sisters, aren’t you? Two pathetic women, yeah?”

  There it was again: “yeah?” How could one harmless little word make this teenager sound so insufferably superior? She pops the phone into her little scarlet heart and skips away. What fun she’ll have with that shot on her Facebook wall. Too late Lana thinks of an answer, not a zinger exactly, but what she should have said, wanted to say. “When I was your age I didn’t need to snap or tweet or Facebook my life. I was in it, living it. In ways kids like you can’t ever understand. Yeah?”

  And that was true, wasn’t it? Her memories are too powerful and detailed and clear for it not to be. But what if at thirty-five all that’s left is a memory of living?

  9 PM

  Lana deliberately does not check her own cell after she leaves the Grand Palais. Floating rather than pushing through the crowds, for once not bothering to turn and gaze with pleasure at the shimmering bending lines of car lights up the Champs-Élysées, red one way, yellow the other, she works hard to still her brain and focus on what she saw in each of those women before the student princess intruded. Why is she utterly convinced about one thing: that none of them are mothers. What had put such an idea in her head? It had probably never been in Hopper’s, but that was of little significance. She considers if any of them had ever experienced pregnancy and decides that the woman in Hotel Room was the most likely. Yet she might not be a mother. She might, like Lana, have had a miscarriage.

  Definitely time for my meds, she jokes with herself, but still, the conviction has lodged. And isn’t she entitled to it? Isn’t that what art is all about?

  Exhausted from standing in line and hustling through crowds and visual overload, Lana doesn’t feel remotely guilty at the thought of succumbing to the delicious indulgence of high-thread-count cotton and embroidered silk. Arriving back at the hotel, she feels like a nap is priority number one, but before reaching her elevator, abruptly changes her mind. Even if she does succeed in calming her jabbering brain sufficiently, the end result of going to sleep now would be to find herself awake at three in the morning, on full battery, buzzing for action. Far better for her to check out the hotel bar, have a Badoit, and see what’s what, before escaping the hotel, maybe crossing Pont Neuf to Buci for dinner and—no, no, not the Left Bank. That would be asking for trouble. No point in walking herself into exactly the scenario she’d sworn to avoid on this trip. The nightlife at Les Halles and Montorgueil has its own special atmosphere and anyway, it isn’t as if her brain, fevered though it may be, is demanding excitement or even adventure. All she wants to do is stroll about, enjoy the pleasure of listening and looking at how easily Parisians make it seem worthwhile to be alive, and expend enough energy to give her at least a fighting chance of a few hours’ sleep later.

  Waiting for the bartender to notice her, Lana tries to work out what the jazz trio is playing. Judging by the satisfied nodding to the beat and the knowing little smiles on their faces, none of the bar clientele is having any such difficulty. They are surprisingly young, their clothes striking a pitch-perfect balance between Le Chevalier chic and jazz casual. Even though the dark-wood walls and high stools and rows of spirit bottles jostling in front of a long beveled mirror behind the bar speak of an earlier age when more drink-hardened “Yanks” spewed out dollars and brawled in bars like this one, the pampered young French who fill the place tonight are clearly getting off on reliving that era and its music at a more luxurious remove. Only one young woman, sitting on one of the high stools at the bar, offers a whiff of what seems recognizably authentic cool. The unctuous maple of her skin gives her bare arms and long neck an almost viscous sheen. But it’s the eyes that really fix the attention, even though Lana can only see them reflected in the beveled mirror: two amber pearls on plinths of sculpted cheekbones. Standing at the bar waiting for service, Lana feels like a tense small-town librarian finding herself backstage accidentally during Paris Fashion Week, standing awkwardly next to a supermodel. Lana can’t be bothered with pointless and frankly dishonest self-deprecation. She knows that men have always found her attractive and are still genuinely surprised to discover that her thirtieth birthday was a very distant memory, but in her present mood, she can’t help feeling that, next to this stunning creature, she simply withers on the vine.

  Wanting to get a better look at this remarkable young woman, Lana decides to speak to her. But in English or French? Lana’s warm and fuzzy liberal arts education had left her with the belief that an effort should always be made to say something in the language of the host, as a sign of respect, and this was quadruply true in the case of the French. The problem is, that tends to create the impression she can manage an adult conversation of reasonable complexity, which she cannot. A newer school o
f thought argues that rather than forcing the proud French to endure hearing their beautiful language mangled, the better option is to wave the white flag from the start, with: “You know what, I’m just not very good at this. Do you by any chance speak English?” Those who argue for this approach claim that present-day Parisian youth have abandoned the linguistic fascism of their elders and are all only too delighted to show off their English, or, more accurately, given that mostly they learn it from the movies, their American. This flawless young woman is certainly no more than twenty-five, and Lana guesses that she must be part Moroccan. She seems like the kind of girl who’d make hearts pump faster in any happening bar from Manhattan to Buenos Aires to Moscow. All things considered, the second approach seems the correct one, yet Lana still hears herself blurting out some embarrassing-sounding French.

  “Quelle scène de foules. Très intéressant.”

  It takes the young woman a few seconds before she realizes that the crude noises have been addressed to her. She looks at Lana, puzzled, and then says something that Lana figures is broadly in the area of, “Did you speak to me?” Clearly, it’s time to abandon the effort at conversational French.

  “I’m sorry. Excuse my terrible accent. I was just saying what an interesting-looking crowd it is here. In the bar.”

  The young woman answers so rapidly that Lana doesn’t catch much or any of it, but from the soft-voiced, yet icy dismissiveness of tone and the way, drink in hand, she swings her body away when she finishes speaking, Lana guesses that either the girl doesn’t speak English, or has zero interest in speaking with her. All Lana’s friendly curiosity, all her honest, disinterested admiration of the young woman’s beauty, evaporates into a simple enraged under-the-breath mutter. “Well bite me!”

  The poor bartender chooses that unfortunate moment to smile in her direction and gets burned by the back draft. “Badoit!” she blazes at him, but deciding mineral water won’t satisfy her mood, barks an equally inflamed “Non. Champagne!” without even the most perfunctory “s’il vous plait.” Lana figures that one champagne will be fine. One glass does no one any harm. A hearty meal will soak that up—she really is hungry now—and the meds can wait another few hours. No harm at all.

  She has almost finished her glass and has finally recognized one of the jazz trio’s numbers—a tricksy fun take on “You’re Nobody ’Til Somebody Loves You”—when, at the furthest corner of her vision, she senses a man approaching the unfriendly young woman. Lana allows herself no more than the merest turn of the head and a sideways look toward the mirror. The guy isn’t so tall: barely eye to eye with the girl, who’s still sitting. He’s late twenties, in a suit way too cheap for Le Chevalier. Most unattractive of all, as far as Lana is concerned, is his receding chin, which in profile gives him the look of a nervy but potentially vicious bird. Bottom line, the guy isn’t within several leagues of the young woman. Yet after only a few whispered words she’s standing—now several inches taller than him—and together they head for the exit. Lana is stunned. Tasered. Is that her date? Is he very, very rich? Not in that suit.

  Looking at how they move together, something doesn’t feel right. Lana can’t detect any intimacy or chemistry. Apart from his lips close to her ear when he spoke quietly at the bar, there had been no hint of physical connection. Lana keeps watching them as they cross the lobby and, when they shift direction, she can’t help sliding from the barstool and trotting forward to keep them in sight. Now, from behind, she recognizes the guy. Earlier today she had seen that frame, that cheap suit, stepping into the elevator to the Suite Imperial, and that’s where they seem to be heading. Well now. Lana follows as casually as she can and, through the giant picture window, sees Weak Chin produce the keycard, open the elevator doors, and usher the beautiful girl in. Still no touch, not even a hand on an elbow. It all begins to make sense to Lana. Weak Chin is not her date and certainly not the real occupant of the suite. He’s a little helper, some kind of staffer for the seventh-floor celebrity. So, what’s the deal with the young woman? Business or pleasure? Perhaps a family member? Lana doesn’t even pretend to give that idea traction. Of course it may possibly be work-related: an actress meeting some movie producer? Unlikely, at this hour. His yoga instructor? Speech therapist? Singing teacher? Same. The only serious question is whether she’s an actual girlfriend or a working girl and maybe Lana’s inclination toward the less flattering option is because of the way she’d been iced by her at the bar. Also, a scenario of high-grade call girl and fabulously wealthy client getting it on with the Eiffel Tower in the background would make for a much more entertaining tale to tell. Arriving back to her barstool she notices that the beautiful young question mark had left a pack of Gauloises behind. She picks it up. Three left. Smoking one wouldn’t be any kind of revenge for the way Lana felt she’d been insulted, but it could serve as a neat coda to the story, when she retells it.

  Except that, out on the cold terrace, it doesn’t feel like any kind of coda at all, more of an unsatisfactory trail of dots, a dying fall. Lana can’t stop thinking about what might be happening on the seventh floor and it suddenly occurs to her that the encounter might involve genuine escorting, as in maybe the couple is planning to go out. In which case they’ll pass through the lobby, in which case Lana would miss them if she stayed outside. So, after just a few savage drags at the Gauloise, she stubs it out in a plant pot and leaves the pack behind. Lana recognizes that a needle indicating her elation levels right now would be right up there in the red zone, but of course being elated means she couldn’t care less about it. What’s there to worry about? Nothing is going to happen. Which is actually a matter of slight regret to Lana Turner as she sidles past the picture window, eyeing the elevator and thinking, is there really no other way up to the seventh floor? Surely there has to be a fire exit. Imagine if she could locate it and . . . Lana Gibson knows this is just the crazy stuff ding-donging in her head and doesn’t take any of it too seriously. A more relaxed and sensible way to find out more is to get herself a comfortable chair in full view of the elevator and wait for the doors to open and the answers to spill out. On the other hand, a better idea might be to forget all about it and take off into the magical Parisian night. Lana makes a deal with Lana. She’ll give her fevered curiosity five minutes, no more.

  She is about to sit down when the elevator doors open.

  Disappointingly, they reveal nothing other than that she had been right about the little helper. Weak Chin steps out alone having delivered his presumably valuable package. He passes so close to her, their shoulders brush, but it doesn’t seem deliberate or even conscious. His mind is elsewhere. She watches him cross the lobby. He doesn’t look back. Lana cannot help edging closer to the elevator, though she has no plan or purpose other than to peek inside and confirm absolutely that it’s not possible to use it without the privileged keycard. A quick scan like this seems perfectly safe: Weak Chin has now vanished into the crowd, and if anyone else suddenly appears she can just act foreign and confused. Where are the restrooms, please?

  She steps inside the private elevator and immediately the doors close. It doesn’t seem to be such a problem until she realizes there is no obvious DOOR OPEN button and it occurs to her that none of the buttons will work without the correct keycard. Feeling something a little more like panic, she presses one anyway. Nothing. Then another. Nothing again.

  The elevator lurches and begins to ascend.

  As if to say, “I’ll teach you, missy, to mess with private stuff that doesn’t belong to you,” the elevator suddenly picks up speed. Lana tries to stay cool, telling herself there’s nothing to do but wait helplessly for the journey to the seventh floor to end. While sincerely regretting the brash folly of her mania, she forces herself to surrender to it. What the hell, might as well enjoy it now. What’s the worst that can happen? Some angry rich guy will rant at her, although, given that she’ll be dealing with someone obscenely rich, it’s more likely that the words will drip with politesse in a to
ne so icy that the elevator back down will feel like a freezer truck. On the plus side, she might get some confirmation on her call-girl theory and maybe even a quick peek at the glories of the Suite Imperial. Who had summoned the elevator? If it was another visitor, now departing, Lana might bluff her way past whoever it was, smiling and saying, “Sorry to intrude, but the gorgeous young woman who’s just come up here with the ugly little guy left her cigarettes at the bar and I wanted to give them back to her.”

  Her cell phone rings, sudden and loud. Lana is shocked and for a moment irrationally assumes the call is coming from the Suite Imperial. She wrestles the cell from her pocket with giddy hands. The caller ID flashes: Brian. Of course, he’s home by now, without the slightest idea where she is. The elevator stops with the politest of jolts. Nothing to do but send him to voicemail. The doors slide and what is revealed had not, nor could ever have, flitted through even her most manic imagination.

  10 PM

  Lana hears music before anything else registers. Hip-hop. Now that’s a surprise. The elevator doors open to a little windowless lobby. On the facing wall, impressive white wood entrance doors are also open, revealing the suite itself beyond. Despite the dim lighting, she registers that the people she can see, at least a dozen or so, are all naked and in erotic attitudes, flickering silhouettes, bending, thrusting, writhing. But in seconds that shocking sight dissolves as she registers what is happening a couple of feet in front of her. The beautiful young woman from the hotel bar is struggling with a man. He grips her lower arms and speaks urgently, his eyes locked on her with hypnotic determination. The man is entirely naked, fully exposed.