Pearl (The Pearl Series) (5 page)

“I’m only looking out for you.”

“I can look out for myself, thanks.”

“Well, when I have a moment, I’m going to get her checked out,” she warned.

“Don’t you dare! I hate all this Googling shit and cyber-spying. I know
we
can’t talk, with
HookedUp
and stuff, but I miss the old days when you found out about someone little by little, face to face, not from the Internet. It’s so bloody unromantic.”

“You see
romance
on the cards with that woman?”

That woman.
She sounded like Bill Clinton. I closed my eyes. “Shame you turned gay, Sophie. Because you know what? You sound frustrated. You obviously need a good seeing to.”

“Oh, you think a man’s penis is the answer to everything, do you, you sexist jerk.”

I smirked. “You’d be surprised.”
Touché
.

Sophie had a girlfriend. Fine. But Sophie was also married. Married, and with a stepdaughter, Elodie, who was eighteen. Sophie’s predilection for women was a deep secret. Didn’t want her husband or Elodie finding out. I had no idea whom Sophie was seeing, though. Asking my sister about her sex life didn’t interest me.

“She is pretty, though—” Sophie continued, “—the American in the coffee shop. Must be in her early thirties, I’d say—a tad younger than me.”

I could see that my sister was bordering on obsession.

“Very sexy. Very fuckable,” she said.

“Drop it, Sophie.”

“Am I right? Is she good, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ah, so she’s playing hard to get, is she? Clever girl.”

I put on my headphones and turned on my iPod, glad to let Al Green’s
Let’s Stay Together
drown out Sophie’s drivel.

I always stay in the Presidential Suite at the George V when I go to Paris, and this time was no exception. My mother was disappointed, but I preferred to come and go when I pleased, not worry about offending anyone by turning up late to dinner and so forth. The hotel let me bring Rex, too—a bonus for clocking up a large bill and being such a good, repeat customer.

I was ensconced in my suite. My loyal Labrador-mix lay patiently by my side while I had various meetings with people who were keen to take a slice of the HookedUp pie. A couple of government officials dropped by; embarrassed by the fact that it had been America, not France that propelled HookedUp forward. Too late, now—they’d missed the boat for real investment.

Then, just as I was winding things up, Claudine called. I’d forgotten about her.
Christ
.

“Mon amour,” she began in a sweetie voice.

“Claudine. Everything okay?” I asked, dreading what was to come.

“Look, I want to clear the air first,” she said ominously.
Fuck, what did that mean?
I had a vision of her with a razorblade poised at her doll-like wrist. “I can’t involve myself with you sexually anymore,” she explained.

“Wow,” was all I could muster. I took a deep breath. Was there a catch?
This was too good to be true!

“I have a boyfriend now
.
”

Poor bastard,
I nearly said, but answered, “That’s wonderful, Claudine.”

“You’re not jealous?”

“No, not at all.”

“Why not?” she asked suspiciously. “Have you turned gay?”

I laughed. “I’ve met someone.” I told her about Pearl, immediately wondering if that was a mistake. I wouldn’t have put it past Claudine to stalk her, Glenn Close style.

To my surprise, she said. “I’m happy for you, I really am. Truce then? No sex, is that a deal?”

This was getting better by the second.
“No sex,” I agreed.

“Then I can trust you to accompany me to Delphine Aimée’s
vide grenier
at her house? You won’t try to seduce me or anything?”

The ego of some models,
I thought, but ignored her little quip
.
“You’re joking?
A vide
grenier?
” I said. Delphine Aimée resided in one of the oldest and most beautiful mansions of Paris. She had recently died; the papers were full of her obituaries, celebrating her colorful life as one of the great Parisian beauties and fashion setters of her time.

“Her children are selling some of her furniture and belongings and I have a private invitation. A friend of a friend,” Claudine went on. “You have no idea how much string-pulling I had to do to wangle this. Only a few select people are being invited to see her treasures.”

“Is the house itself for sale, too?” I’d always had my eye on that mansion. A real gem. Or as the French expression goes: a rare pearl.

“If it were, it would be fifty million euros, at least.”

I didn’t flinch at the price. It was an old Parisian mansion and I was damned if some Russian oligarch was going to get his hands on it.

“But no,” Claudine said, “the house isn’t for sale, as far as I know. Just some of its contents—the family needs the money. Meet me there in an hour.”

I met Claudine outside the gates of the house. She looked less pale than usual, as if she had finally had a good, hot meal. She was dressed in a pair of shorts, her long legs going on forever, her auburn hair hanging down to her waist. She looked happy, for once, less Gothic. Her dark eyes, usually coal-lined, were free of make-up.

Delphine Aimée’s mansion was even more beautiful than I had remembered. It sat like a giant doll’s house, not attached (a rarity in Paris), with a large garden in front, flanked by a perfectly trimmed hedge and ornate, wrought-iron railings.

The interior was no less impressive. A grand marble staircase swept up the center of the house. Above was a sort of rotunda: a dome of glass letting in streams of light, with rooms leading off a circular, balconied walkway. The floors were oak herringbone, polished to a high shine. Each room was decorated with antique furniture and great drapes that pooled on the floor in swathes of red, gold or pink damask. There were Persian rugs, and original paintings by Corot, Cézanne, and even Picasso. Delphine Aimée’s daughter, a wobbly woman of eighty with a large hook nose, showed us around. She said little, just smiled and nodded, until we arrived at the great woman’s bedroom. Being a man, I felt it was intrusive to enter this legend’s private quarters. I stood at the doorway, but the old daughter insisted I come in. I gingerly followed her into the spacious bedroom, with high ceilings and Italian mirrors gracing the walls.

“My mother loved going to balls,” she revealed in an almost inaudible whisper. “Even the most famous jewelers of her day fought to be chosen as her designers. She had the best collection of jewelry in the whole of Paris. My father was hopelessly in love with her, you know. It’s always best if the man is that teensy-weensy bit more in love with his wife than the other way around, don’t you agree?”

I mulled over what this woman had just said. Had I ever been
that
in love? No, I hadn’t. So in love that my heart missed a beat, so in love that I thought about the other person while I breathed? It almost brought a tear to my eye just contemplating that kind of passion. Here I was, embroiled with all these different women: Claudine, Laura, Indira (and there were others, too), all wanting a piece of me, yet all I wished for was just one woman, one stable relationship, just one person who would make sense to me.

The old lady led us to her mother’s dressing-table, topped with old-fashioned perfume bottles, silver hairbrush sets and miniature paintings. On top of the table, sat a black, leather jewelry box.

“Would you mind, young man, helping me with that box? It’s extremely heavy. You can lay it on the bed for me.”

I took the box carefully in my grip and laid it on a vast, four-poster bed. The box sank into a silk eiderdown as I laid it down.

“Some of the best pieces are in the bank vault,” she told us. “The diamonds, emeralds and such. These were some of my mother’s daytime choices, the ones we’re willing to let go. It’s somebody else’s turn to give life to them. Your wife, perhaps, Monsieur Chevalier?”

She remembered my name. I was about to tell her that I wasn’t married, but stopped myself. Why, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps I didn’t want to spoil her image of me as a happily married, family man. Because I, too, had secret longings to be a happily married family man. With children running about. Walks in the park with my beautiful wife, my little ones, and my dog. So I didn’t correct the lady.

“Be my guests. Take a peek,” she urged, her hooded green eyes sparkling with excitement.

“May I?” Claudine asked, taking out an elaborately carved, jade necklace.

“Of course, my dear.”

Claudine looked as if she was about to pass out. “My heart’s palpitating. Have you ever seen anything so exquisite in your life? And look at these earrings to match. What a gorgeous set.”

“Buy it if you like it so much,” I said.

“Don’t be silly.” And she whispered hoarsely, “Have you any idea how much this would
cost?
I’m just
window-shopping,
silly
.
”

I suddenly felt ashamed. This kind old lady was opening up her museum of a house to us, her
heart
to us, and Claudine was admitting to just
window-shopping?
I knew I had to do something. Fast.

“I’d love to buy something,” I said, glaring at Claudine. I turned to the lady. “What else do you have?”

“What’s your wife’s name?” the eighty-year-old asked.

I hesitated. I’ve never been fond of lying, but not putting the facts straight wasn’t a
lie
exactly… just a little…
white
lie. “Her name is Pearl,” I blurted out without even thinking, and in that second, crazy as it sounds, I had another premonition—one day, Pearl, would indeed, be my wife.

The lady grinned, her wrinkly mouth revealing a naughty yellow fang, and she said, “I have just the piece for you, Monsieur.” She shuffled back to the dressing table and opened a drawer. She brought out a pale blue leather box which was scuffed and had seen better days, but still, was obviously once from one of the best jewelry houses in Paris. “This is from one of the jeweler’s in La Place Vendôme,” the lady said. “Open it.”

I carefully opened the box. Inside, was an unusual-looking, double-strand of pearls. The pearls graduated subtly in size. It was more a choker than a necklace, with a diamond and platinum, Art Deco-style clasp. It was beautiful. I had a flash of it around Pearl’s elegant neck, her blonde hair setting off the golden-pink, honey-colored pearls. I had just planned on getting Pearl some little thing, just a token gift from Paris—I didn’t want to come on too strong—but the second I saw the choker, I knew that it had Pearl’s name written all over it.
Pearls for Pearl.
Perfect. “I’ll take it,” I said without hesitating.

“It will be expensive, Monsieur,” she warned.

“I don’t care about the price, I’d like to buy it, please. If that’s alright with you, of course, madame.”

“My father had them especially designed for my mother. It was her wedding present. There are eighty-eight pearls. They brought her good luck whenever she wore them.”

“Eighty-eight is a lucky number,” I said. “The number of infinity, the double directions of the infinity of the Universe, the period of revolution—the days it takes for Mercury to travel around the sun.”
Only a nerd can know these things.
I smiled to myself
,
wryly, thinking back to my schoolboy years when I spent hours reading the encyclopedia, memorizing whole chunks by heart of facts that interested me.

“It’s the number of keys on a piano, too,” the woman replied. “My mother played so, so beautifully.”

“It’s an untouchable number,” Claudine added. “Whoever this Pearl chick is, I’m envious of her. She’s gonna flip out when she sees that choker.”

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