“I love you, Spartacus,” I said softly. It was one of Tony Curtis’s lines spoken to Kirk Douglas in an old movie. I’d say it to Alex times we were out somewhere together in public. I’d put my foot against his ankle under tables. My eyes would look all over his face…. Our secret games together.
Alex said, “I thought you said she didn’t like movies with guns going off.”
“Guns going off and people bleeding. She picked it.”
“You knew Al Pacino was in it. That should have told you it wouldn’t be a day at the beach.”
She was back.
“Guns going off and people bleeding! Merde! What a movie!”
She sat beside Alex, facing me. “That is the thing I hate about America. You never can feel safe. You can be mugged, stabbed—anything.”
Alex said, “Do you know the difference between stabbing a man and killing a hog?”
“No,” she said.
“One is assaulting with intent to kill, and the other is killing with intent to salt.”
“You!” Huguette said.
Actors need lines written for them. Alex needed a comedy routine, or he’d resort to riddles and puns. He wasn’t a world-class wit, wasn’t comfortable with small talk. Alex was the serious type. It was what I liked about him.
“What about me?” Alex said.
“You and your one-worders.”
“One-liners,” I corrected her.
As we’d walked to the movies, Huguette had told us that Nevada’s French was so bad, she’d asked him to please speak English. Although French was her first language, she spoke English fluently, only occasionally stymied by certain expressions and slang, like one-liner, and like the one the day we’d gone shopping: burrowed a hole instead of burned a hole in her pocket.
We ordered pizza and Caesar salad, and as we ate it, Alex trotted out all his props for socializing. He analyzed her handwriting, a skill he’d picked up from an actor who posed as Dr. Scribe at parties, between jobs. And he did his astrology bit. He was a believer like a lot of actors: superstitious, fascinated by the occult. For my birthday he’d promised to have my horoscope done by this woman who the lead in Hamlet swore was prophetic.
Huguette was born under the sign of Scorpio, which Alex said was the sexiest sign of the Zodiac.
“A lot of good that does me here,” she said. “You know the sign I’d like to be under?”
“What sign?” Alex said.
“The sign that says Aniane.”!
“Uh-oh. Homesick?”
“You both know why I’m here, don’t you?”
I said, “Yes.”
“So now we have the ice crusher.”
“The icebreaker,” I said.
“I can talk about him,” she said.
I said, “Feel free.”
SIXTEEN
BEFORE WE LEFT SAM’S, she showed us a black-and-white photograph of Martin Le Vec, who could have been Leonardo DiCaprio’s double.
As we walked toward Roundelay, she told us that he had hair the color of the terra-cotta canal-tile roofs you saw all over la Moyenne Vallée de l’Hérault, and that his eyes were the color of dried lavender.
Alex would catch my eyes and roll his, wink and grin at the fun of hearing her go on (and on) about Martin. She pronounced it Marten.
He worked at a mas, a farm on the road between Aniane and Gignac.
“Picking grapes?” I said.
Her eyes flashed angrily. “He does everything. He is boss of the crew!”
He was seventeen, six foot three, “and talk about sexy!” she said.
“Talk about it,” Alex teased.
“No! That I do not tell you!”
The rottweilers barked for emphasis.
The gates at Roundelay swung open. The lamps lighting the driveway turned on.
“How did that happen?” I said.
“Franklin sees us,” she said. “And now that we’re here, he can go. I told Uncle Ben we don’t need a chaperone.”
“I would say not,” Alex said, “from all you’ve told us about your feelings for Martin.”
“So now,” she said as we went up the road toward Roundelay, “you tell me your feelings!”
Even though it was dark out, the soft yellow and pale-green colors in the huge living room seemed to wash it with this sunny glow.
While she put on some CDs with Alex’s help, I counted three sofas, two settees, ten chairs, six benches, and four potted trees—all in that one room. It didn’t look the least bit crowded.
On the far wall, near the marble fireplace, there was a portrait of Nevada, a shoulders-up view of him when he was younger, wearing a blue shirt the same color as his eyes. He looked like he’d stepped out of that old movie Wuthering Heights—Heathcliff fresh from the moors, dark and resentful.
Glass doors opened onto the terrace where I’d had lunch six days ago. I could hear the ocean in the distance.
The room was divided by a big round table covered with a yellow linen cloth and piled with books.
While an old Smashing Pumpkins album played, we began pawing through the books, mostly expensive, coffee-table art types.
One book had a photograph of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Alex made some dim-witted crack about what made it lean was that it never got anything to eat.
“No more one-worders!” Huguette said. “I want to hear about you!”
“I believe in pheromones,” said Alex.
“What are they?”
“They’re why you love your Martin. We all give off these secretions that are irresistible to the one who responds to them.”
I knew the play. It was called You Made Me Love You. Before Alex had landed the roles in Hamlet, he had tried out for the Scientist—a minor speaking part. This young genius discovers a way to produce the pheromone that will attract a beautiful girl to a rich sheik who wants to marry her.
“Love”—Alex never forgot anything he’d once memorized—“is what we name it, but it’s pheromones that create this compelling chemistry between two people. It is what pulls you toward another like a nail sliding down to a magnet.”
“Pheromones?” Huguette said. “I never heard of them!”
“One day,” Alex said, “I was in a Barnes & Noble bookstore. The one on Twenty-second and Sixth.”
I felt my stomach turn over.
Alex said, “I
