Men (2 page)

THE BEGINNING

The beginning is like an incision. She is forever revisiting the beginning; it stands out distinctly in the course of her life, whereas what follows seems back to front, or cut off, or in disarray.

She saw him, only him. At one of George's parties. Most of the guests were there, but she entered a magnetic field. A denser sphere of air that excluded everyone else. She was silent. In his presence she was reduced to silence and solitude. She could not speak: she had nothing to say. A palpable, dazzling force field radiated from him, a blast from a contained explosion. A wave coursed through her and she disintegrated. Her atoms were pulverised. She was in suspension and, already, that's what she wanted: disintegration.

He was wearing a strange coat, long, made of delicate,
flowing material. He wasn't looking at her. He was looking at the base of the canyon, at the lights of Los Angeles. His demeanour, his dark head, was unfathomable, as if the effort required by his own bearing completely preoccupied him. As if he were the only human being present who was aware of the burden that is a head. Backlit by the lanterns, his long hair was outlined in a deep cowl and his slender silhouette gave him a monastic air. The intensity of the force field became such that one of them—she—pronounced a few words, about the balmy evening, or George, or whatever they were drinking, and it was like taking a breath. The night turned pale in the fog; a watery haze formed over them. He rolled her a cigarette. Their hands did not touch, but there was such a brutal strengthening of the force field that the cigarette floated, passed between them without their knowing how, in the vibrating, humming space. In the dark, he mimed looking for a lighter in the bottomless pockets of his coat. He didn't have one—no, he did—the flame erupted. She burned her hair leaning in too close and she laughed, mistakenly, as he was already silently demanding the utmost seriousness from her. She took a drag and surfaced for air, one last time.

Then she plunged into the core of the world, with him, into the force field, into the fog that was choking Laurel Canyon, into total happiness, impenetrable and white—disintegration.

He was a phenomenal actor. He had the ability to call up different lives, right before him, around him, metamorphosed, one on top of the other, and never bogus. It was him, multiplied. He had reached the level of self-confidence to be himself in role after role, like George or Nicole or Isabelle. But he had never reached star status. And yet, as she witnessed later, he inspired adoration, fear and neediness.

At first she thought he was American. His intonation, the way he moved. An eccentric American, for sure, but in the Hollywood Hills you dress however you like. As for her, everyone knew she was French. She could work on her accent and play an American, but most of the time they wanted her to play a French woman: the shrill bitch, the elegant ice queen, the romantic victim. Wearing Chanel and Louboutin outfits, which she got to keep after the shoot.

He would play a drug dealer or a boxer, sometimes a cop or a priest or the best friend of the broad-minded hero. He had been a low-profile Jedi in an episode of
Star Wars
. In real life he played an American like everyone else, like he had played Hamlet when he first started out. With the same quiet intensity. The same focused indifference. At the Bouffes du Nord theatre, when she was at the Paris Conservatory, it could only have been him. His voice was muted and deep, his torso enormous, broad shoulders on a long body, which she could only guess at because he was wearing a kind of cloak. His voice seemed to emanate from deep in his throat, beneath that soft hollow spot where the
neck begins and where she would so love to kiss him, later, asking him if he was annoyed by her feelings for him, and he would reply: ‘Why would I be annoyed?'

His
t
s had a soft, mellow fullness, scarcely different from his
d
s, which at first she took to be the affectation of a handsome man and an actor—the way certain aristocrats speak in France—whereas for him it indicated his background. In her case, people often joked that, even from a satellite, you could tell she was French. Was it her figure? The angle of her jawline? Or the tic of starting sentences with a little sceptical pout? Apparently, languages shape faces. Her speech therapist in Los Angeles, with whom she practised accents, thought it was an issue of muscular tension.

Yes, she was French. He had been to Paris. He liked Paris, the historical buildings. Yes, it's a beautiful city. How long had she been in Los Angeles? Four years (she pretended to think about it), one-two-three-four, since 2003. Ever since her son had chosen to live with his father—she felt the urge to tell him that, although nothing in his tall figure, in his unfathomable demeanour, in the absence of a smile, invited the sharing of confidences. He had asked about Los Angeles for other reasons. To chat about their careers, in fact. He was silent; she remained silent. Already, she was following his lead. She had just grasped that he was not American. Once she had confirmed that she was French, he had revealed another accent, perhaps another way of behaving. He was Canadian. Which did not completely satisfy her. But she
didn't press for more. Not immediately. She would rather have been consumed in a flash, like vampires startled by daylight, than claim to reduce him to the matter of his origins. They were two strangers, two adopted Americans. Two strangers also oddly familiar to each other. As if they knew each other already through intervening countries. As if the intensity of that day was also the logical, electrical consequence of history's detonation system.

The coyotes were yapping in the hills, close by. They came to drink from the swimming pools. Their call was more like a wailing, not at all like a wolf, more like some kind of freakish baby. George eventually came over, a bottle of Cristal in his hand. He had just been in a science-fiction film and bits of the set, like the cosmically white armchairs, had been reused for the party. He seemed, as ever, to have fallen from heaven, in an immaculate suit, with his tanned complexion, and his smile like the Milky Way. He introduced them to each other, first names only, as if it was obvious, as if they were as famous as he was. That's how classy George was. With him everything became normal again: the gigantic turquoise swimming pool, the hundred-odd guests, the steamy night in the hills, and that looming man's impossible first name, like bones grating. And two days later she would realise that he hadn't heard her name at all.

They were whisked away by a group of people, George's gravitational field. There was Kate, and Mary, and Jen, and Colin, and Lloyd, and Ted, and two or three of Steven's
friends and also that girl who was in
Collateral Damage.
A beautiful ethnic girl, as they say in France, Puerto Rican perhaps. Heads bobbing, shadows fluttering. She was looking around for him in the dark. She did not dare scrutinise his face, his impassive Jedi countenance. Earlier she had made an effort to look away, like him, at the hills, at the flame of the lighter up close, or at the Great Bear far away. And that actress, the Puerto Rican, there was something odd about her gaze, a sort of squint—yes, she was ogling him; she did not take her eyes off him, whereas everyone else was staring at George, at his white silhouette in the light.

The Puerto Rican goes up to him. He bursts out laughing, their heads bobbing; she can't see them for the shadows. Now Steven is coming over to Solange. She mimes a phone, two fingers against her ear: she'll call him later. She doesn't want to talk to Steven; she wants to talk to
him
. His laughter is the only sound in the hubbub. His face split in two by dazzling teeth—everyone has dazzling teeth; it would be inconceivable for them not to have dazzling teeth here. But that laughter unleashes the night, divides the fog; the galactic prince's mouth is split in two by the laughter intended for the Puerto Rican girl. Solange sees only the dazzling whiteness of their sixty-four teeth.

‘Are you from Puerto Rico?'

The alleged Puerto Rican girl turns to Solange. Examines her. ‘I am from Los Angeles,' she replies, dazzling. ‘Aren't we all from LA?'
LA
—she drags out the long vowel,
Ellaaay
…and Solange realises who she is, Lola something, a rising starlet, born in Suriname. She was in
Lost
—God knows what the scriptwriters lined up for her, devoured by a bear or crushed in a rift in the cosmos—but in any case she is at that stage of notoriety where
everyone
is supposed to know that she hacked her way out, with a machete, from her native jungle to the Hollywood Hills.

Bottles of Cristal are brought around on silver platters. The prince in the long coat is contemplating Los Angeles, or the night, or whatever is on his mind—this man with the unfathomable demeanour—and she wants to know what that is.

A tidal motion swings them back towards the swimming pool suspended above the canyon. The sea is a long, opaque line. He turns his head towards her. Slowly. It's almost imperceptible at first. At the end of the movement he holds her eyes in his gaze. Then—keeping his eye line perfectly horizontal—he looks back at the sea. It was so brief, so precise, that she is not sure if it happened.

Floria and Lilian arrive and greet Ted and kiss Solange. She mumbles a brief introduction. Ted looks at the man of the brief introduction, then looks at her. Another bottle of Cristal materialises. The party ebbs and flows, like a wave, the circles open and close, she battles the currents. A little island has formed once more and she is alone with him, against the guardrail above the canyon.

A TIGER DEFYING THE LAWS OF GRAVITY

They do not say anything. The silence is marvellous. If you have ever found yourself in a substantial residence, high up, protected from the sea but with a full panorama; if you have had the chance to experience that silence and that sense of security, you will know what deep calm…you will know how Los Angeles…and them, both minuscule and gigantic up above the canyon, and the city, lying low, spread out, turbulent and glowing.

He stayed there with her, on the pretext of sharing the bottle. Instead of following the group around George and Lola. Instead of following Steven or Ted or some other purveyor of roles and fortune and fame. Or, at the very least, of a stimulating conversation. Or of some decent cocaine. He stays with her. She has known him forever and is getting
to know him second by second: it is
here and now
, just the right moment in life, taking a risk on adventure, good times, the union of the present and the ever-after. She is drunk. They discover similar interests.

He likes to read. She plucks up her courage and laughs for real. ‘There's nothing more sexy than a man who reads.' She would like to elaborate. She would like to explain to him—as he leans in, alone, needing no one, caught up in a crowd but with his unfathomable head held high, a smile to light up his entrance, his welcome interruption: hello, hello, my love. She would have so many things to tell him. So many things to explain to him. He is reading for a project he's working on. He reads a lot on set. ‘All those actors who want to stay focused between takes, all that fuss about the Actors Studio, what a joke.' He gives a short laugh. The two of them are not American. He reads at night. She pictures him wrapped in a white sheet, naked to the waist and hunched forwards, his long hair slipping over the book. He recites the names of writers she has never heard of; she catches the two syllables of Conrad and whips out some French names. He doesn't pick up on it. But he stays there.

The silence unfolds, changes direction. He smells good. She wants to touch him. He smells like a church, like an Indian temple. The moon has risen. The sea has expanded, black and starless, a second sky. She racks her brains for something to say. She would like to say that she came to Los Angeles for the sea. In Paris the sea was too far away; even
when she was small she missed the sea. But he won't believe her. Especially coming from an actress. He is standing in profile against the charcoal-grey sky. Between her and the sea there is only him. She can look at him just by raising her eyes. A high, rounded forehead. Some kind of grooves in his skin: she can't tell in this light. Scars? Invisible eyes, slits. A long, thin nose, aquiline. Large lips, firmly closed, well defined. How does it happen, why do these particular elements form such consummate beauty?

She thinks back to early school drawings: 2, and 4, and 6…by lining up the numbers in a column you produced a strange, bumpy shape. She can hear him breathing in the silence. He doesn't like chatterboxes, it must be that. Or explanations. He likes to go at his own pace. Or else it is all in her own head, and the city is nothing but a projection; she thinks she has been living there for four years but all she does is float on the surface. She tries to cling to the illusion that her feet are grounded, that the vibrations she feels are part of the city of Los Angeles itself. She would like to tell him about the week when a huge image of her face was displayed on a billboard, at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and La Cienega Boulevard, for the launch of
Musette
. There were so many things she could say about it, say to him, that would be unexpected, witty. Not at all what he imagines, not at all like other actresses. She asks him for another glass of champagne.