Judith Krantz (26 page)

The summer of 1981 found Gabe uncharacteristically lazy, content to let the world go to hell in its normal, predictable way, unchronicled by him, as he and Jazz spent their vacation in a farmhouse that friends lent them in the hills behind St. Tropez. In the autumn, Gabe promised himself as he relaxed in the lavender-blessed air of Provence, he’d get back in stride, but for the first time in his life he found himself reluctant to contemplate the complete disruption of their Parisian life that each new assignment meant.

Suddenly the thought of throwing his stuff into a shoulder bag and taking indefinite leave of the little, white-walled, plant-filled apartment on the old island in the center of Paris was utterly untempting. He found himself looking forward three days in advance to the weekly roast chicken at the roaring, busy Brasserie Alsacienne on the tip of Ile St-Louis, he who had never bothered what he ate or when he ate it. He established a favorite among the cafes that opened early on the Rue St-Louis-en-Ile, and he went there each morning for breakfast while he read the
Tribune
. Afterwards, he bought two croissants for Jazz, whom he had left asleep in bed, and brought them back to
the apartment for her, waking her with a cup of tea and minutes of kisses.

Now that they had their own place and spent so much time in Paris, Jazz turned one small inside room of the apartment into a darkroom. She started getting jobs taking portraits of children of the large diplomatic colony in Paris, through a friend who was a secretary to the popular and delightful Canadian-born Jean Bakker, the wife of the Dutch ambassador to France. Jazz’s prices were reasonable, and her pictures were marvels because they showed the children in moments of action, instead of the traditional forced repose.

Children in movement, unaware of the camera, are hard to capture on film, but it is the best way to show them as their parents know them best. Jazz’s experience following Gabe in crowds stood her in good stead, for she could shoot faster and more accurately than any living specialist in pure portrait photography. Even more important, by watching Gabe closely, she had learned how to work without the subject being aware of her, for all great photojournalists have that unique trick of disappearing even as they shoot, so that they can catch people at their most human and natural, in those all-important unguarded moments in which they think they are unobserved.

Jazz took her young subjects to the parks swarming with children playing games, or to the zoo or to open-air markets where birds and rabbits were sold, and let them loose to enjoy themselves. She shot them in repose only if they stopped moving without her asking them to, and those unposed portraits were often the most interesting of all.

She shot in black and white only and developed her own film, carefully cropping and enlarging the best pictures, no matter how many there were. Then she turned them all over to the parents at one price for the lot, instead of demanding that they pick their one or two favorites, as so many photographers did. If they wanted duplicates, she charged only for the cost of the film and her time in the darkroom. Her business
quickly grew by word of mouth, and it fit in well with Gabe’s schedule, since it didn’t demand that she stay in one place for a specific period of time.

Now the waiters at the many restaurants of the He St-Louis knew them by name, as did the jovial bandit who owned the one hardware store on the island, and the women who ran the gourmet delicatessen where Gabe and Jazz went to buy provisions for the weekends. The island was a village, and most of its inhabitants rarely crossed its many bridges into the city of Paris, but they knew each other as villagers do all over the world. The newsstand owner knew which magazines to save for them, and they found a dry cleaner, a laundry, and a drugstore. Gabe began to make occasional plans for dinners with friends on the vague assumption that he and Jazz would still be in Paris; when he opened his closet he wasn’t surprised to find clean clothes; from time to time he remembered to get his hair cut, and once in a while he bought fresh flowers at the stalls on the streets. Sometimes he even remembered to stick them in water when he got home. On Sunday afternoons, he and Jazz often would go to an American movie in its original, unsubtitled version on the Boulevard St-Germain, and afterwards wander the streets in the direction of the Rue des Canettes, where there was a choice of six pizza places, each one better than the last, and one old-time French bistro, their favorite, Chez Alexandre.

As photo editors began to realize that they could often manage to contact Tony Gabriel in Paris, more and more assignments came in to do local stories such as the inauguration of the TGV, the first high-speed train service in France.

The Poles of Solidarity were waging a dangerous campaign against the Soviets, the Russian troops were massing near the Polish border, while Mitterrand made the first TGV trip from Paris to Lyons, with Gabe and Jazz among the photojournalists on board.

In October of 1981, when the Egyptian leader Anwar el-Sadat was assassinated in Cairo while watching an air show, ten other people were killed and
forty wounded. Gabe’s first thought on hearing the news was relief that he hadn’t been there, because Jazz might have been among those killed or wounded. His second thought was regret for the photos he’d missed.

In November, as the Parisian days grew shorter and the apartment became more agreeable than ever, in contrast to the cold, damp weather outside, Gabe realized that it was almost two and a half years that he and Jazz had been together. In January of 1982 she’d turn twenty-one, and her father had long ago written her about making plans to celebrate her birthday at the ranch with a big party.

“When do we have to fly back to L.A.?” Gabe asked Jazz, thinking about the unwelcome trip. His tone was a resigned grumble.

“I have to go,” Jazz said mildly, “but you don’t have to come, not if there’s a good story somewhere else.”

“You’d celebrate your twenty-first birthday without me?”

“I’d rather not—but a story’s a story. I don’t want to cramp your style,” Jazz said understandingly.

“What if I don’t mind if you cramp my style? What if I don’t want you to have a birthday party without me?” He felt violently jealous at the idea.

“Then be there …” Jazz, who wasn’t really listening to the conversation he was trying to have, didn’t look up from sorting through a set of contacts of her latest job.

“So let’s get married.”

“What?”
He’d finally captured her attention.

“Let’s get married,” Gabe repeated.

“But … we were talking about my birthday. Married?” Jazz paused and let the slippery contact sheets drop to the floor. She had trained herself not even to think about marriage to Gabe. She’d wanted to marry him, it seemed to her, ever since the first night they’d spent together, but that first knowledge had been linked to an immediate understanding that it would never happen. No sane woman would think of
clipping Tony Gabriel’s famous wings. He wasn’t remotely a candidate for the wedded state. Photo-journalists as a group lived in a state of delayed adolescence. When they were with you they were totally there, and when they were gone they were totally gone. She had accepted that idea long ago, absorbed it and remained with him in spite of it. Now her fingers were beginning to tremble, but she answered carefully.

“Gabe, you don’t really want to get married, even if you think you do. You’re not the type.”

“Forget my type. Don’t tell me how I feel. Don’t
you
want to get married?”

“I don’t … I’m not … I’m O.K. with the way things are.”

The cautious, gradual and decidedly minor-league domestication of Tony Gabriel had been a series of small changes, not one of which Jazz had initiated. She had consciously forced herself to live in the present for so long that the racing of her pulse and the intimations of splendid possibilities that suddenly beat in the air of the room scared her. She had a strong instinct not to commit herself to wanting anything from him but a continuation of what they had.

“Well, I’m not,” Gabe insisted.

“Hmmm.” Jazz shook her head, so perplexed and astonished that she couldn’t find words to fit the situation. This amazing leap, Gabe’s readiness to talk about marriage, seemed too much. Yet his expression was as fixed and serious as she’d ever seen it.

“What the fuck is that noise supposed to mean?” Gabe demanded.

“I’m thinking, that’s all. What do you want me to say?” she asked plaintively. “That this is so sudden? Actually, that’s exactly what it is.”

“So?
Think!
”

“I wouldn’t marry anyone else,” Jazz said slowly, picking over a minefield of possible responses to find one that seemed safe, that wouldn’t leave her out on a limb, admitting to an inadmissible longing.
She wanted it too much. She couldn’t let him know how much.

“Swell.” Gabe scowled ferociously.

“But—what kind of husband would you be?” she blurted out.

“My God! We’ve been living together for over two years. If you don’t know now …” He was outraged.

“Living together isn’t the same as being married. Married gets … sticky. Married means making all sorts of promises and compromises and one person getting the short end of the whole deal … married ain’t all that … grand …” Jazz’s voice trailed off as she thought of her parents.

“Look, forget about your mother. It wouldn’t be the same at all. You’d be with me wherever I went. I would never, ever go off and leave you behind, waiting till I was finished working.”

“It’s a risky business, highly risky,” Jazz murmured, almost to herself, and lowered her eyelids to hide the flaming speculation she knew was in them, to hide her wonderment at his making her so specific a promise. Photojournalists were like sharks that remained in constant motion even while they slept. Life for them was so spontaneous that this week’s cover of
Time
would be only a dim memory in a few days. She concentrated hard on trying to make her fingers stop trembling, linking them together so that he wouldn’t see and know.

Gabe, trying to look into her mind, was doubly frustrated. He studied the perfect shape of her dark golden head bent thoughtfully downward, and never had he felt such a stubborn, absolute need to conquer her, to make sure of her. Jazz seemed so far away, so inaccessible, so caught up in memories he could never share that she had become a stranger again. He stood up suddenly, lean, rumpled, dark, tough, more intent on having his way than he’d ever been in his life, and crushed Jazz in his arms, forcing her to look up at him.

“You can’t possibly not marry me, and you know it!”

“I … probably do,” Jazz admitted, feeling an unanticipated miracle of certainty begin to invade her prudent, eager, disciplined, ardent heart. “I just never thought …”

“No more thinking. It’s bad for you,” Gabe muttered, leaning down to her lips. “Let’s just do it, not talk about it.”

“Just do it?” she gasped between kisses, trying, in this moment of victory, to hold him off so that she could test the glorious reality with a flurry of last-minute objections. “You can’t just do a wedding—you have to
plan
it—I have to call my father. I have to get a dress we have to find someone to marry us someplace to get married invite people to the wedding—oh, it’s so complicated,” she complained in delicious deviousness. She wanted him to persuade her one more time. He owed her that.

“We’ll make it simple. We’ll get married, and have a big party right afterwards—we’ll take over Chez Alexandre—and announce it to everyone when we get there.” His voice rang with triumph.

“A surprise wedding?”

“Right. Just us and whoever marries us. Just you and me. Jazz, Jazz, we don’t need anyone else.”

“But my father—”

“And your father.”

“Yes,” Jazz said. “Yes, yes!”

In spite of Gabe’s simplifications, it was several weeks before the surprise wedding could take place. The French have never made it possible for anyone to get married on impulse in their officious, permit-obsessed country, and for Americans in Paris, it is more complicated rather than less. Jazz was a half-Lutheran, non-practicing Catholic. Gabe was nothing in particular, so no priest would marry them. Finally they found a minister affiliated with the American Church in Paris who agreed to perform the ceremony in his study after
he got permission from his parish. He also agreed to provide his wife as a witness, along with Mike Kilkullen, who was planning to fly to Paris several days before the wedding. The date was set for the second week in December, before any of their friends left for Christmas vacations.

The day before the surprise wedding, while Jazz was busy making sure that all was in order at Chez Alexandre, Gabe went for a drink at the Press Club to calm what he diagnosed as an unusually severe case of bridegroom’s nerves. Either that or a very bad clam, he thought to himself, trapped in a toilet stall from which he’d already attempted to emerge twice, only to be forced to return in haste.

“I thought I saw Gabe at the bar,” he heard a familiar voice say.

“I did too, Herb, but when I turned around, he’d gone,” said another voice. Both of them were longtime photojournalist pals of his, but Gabe was in no condition to greet them. “Probably rushed home to Jazz. I know I would.”

“You going to their Christmas party tomorrow, Herb?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

“I wouldn’t either. Imagine Gabe and Jazz giving a Christmas party—that’s a first for him. I’d never have believed it, not in a million years.”

“Domestic bliss, Herb, old man.”

“What the hell’s happened to him anyway, Jim? In your professional opinion.”

“Early burnout, very, very early burnout, I might add, or else it’s the slavery of true love, take your choice. The end result’s the same.”

“Jim, I understand all about love, I’ve been in love myself, more often than not, but love doesn’t mean that you lose your edge, lose the thing that makes you different from everyone else. Gabe had two Pulitzers, and now? It’s been almost a year since I even stopped to admire somebody’s great shot and noticed his photo credit on it.”