From: iamaseagull@aol.com
subj: post-Salzburg, post-London, post-Adventure
Hi lovey,
We seem to have switched places; I am back in New York, at last. I hope Prague is as beautiful as you remembered. Where are you living? And when will you be coming back home?
(BTW…Thanks for the language tips for Austria. I’m sorry to say that they did not come in handy, having had no occasion to yell “scheisse” out loud, and I just don’t believe that “dickmilk” is how they say “yogurt.” Sorry. ;-) But thanks anyway…)
So you asked how it all finished up, so here it all is. The best I can say is, not with a bang... but with my dignity restored. And I am out of debt as soon as Eloise signs the checks (that’s right, she hasn’t done it yet. And I don’t know when she will. So the story isn’t over, even though I’m back home).
Anyway, this is what happened last week.
We took off from Barbados in the evening. (If you’re curious, yes, I had on a skirt and a full face of makeup.) Omega Jackson had helped me hoist the folding reformer into the car and kissed my hand, and the car with the luggage whisked Gerry and me off to the Bajan airport; Madame Eloise followed in a separate vehicle.
Gerry the now-shiny-toothed ass-kisser carried Eloise’s “hand luggage.” We boarded the plane late; Eloise was nowhere to be seen. Gerry was in the middle of telling me the story of how his flat in London was burgled (I’ve heard it four times) when the flight attendant rescued me from death by boredom by introducing herself. “I’m Lori,” she started. “Um, I’m so sorry to interrupt, but – ah, could I talk to you for a minute?” She looked terrified and pulled me aside. “Have you been working for her for a long time?” she asked me.
“About nine months. What’s the problem?”
And Lori handed me printout that truly took the cake, maybe all the cake from the whole summer. It was written by Virginie.
List of Protocols for Eloise Gewurztraminer Bourgeois Alcock:
for staff of Private Aviation
Mme. Alcock is an extremely high-profile client. Please keep in mind that she values her time and privacy and keep communication to a minimum. She will probably rest in the back of the plane for the duration of the flight. If it is nighttime, she is not to be disturbed except in cases of extreme emergency. If a meal is to be served, there should be wine and several options to choose from; she generally prefers classic French cuisine but butter should not be used in the preparation.
Please stock the following:
Cashmere blankets
A salmon option
Espresso
Dark chocolates
An assortment of dried fruits and nuts (NO CASHEWS)
Tisanes (fresh leaves only please NO TEA BAGS)
Lavender aromatherapy oil
Please keep in mind that discretion is paramount. Mrs. Alcock is very busy with her work and prefers to be addressed by her personal staff, so messages should be relayed through them. She doesn’t like to be looked at so please avoid eye contact.”
Thank you very much
Virginie Graziani, P.A.
There was really nothing to say. If this were a memo for someone truly important with who had real work to do, like the President of the United States, I could *maybe* understand the tone, if not the content. One could argue that Eloise owns art magazines and speaks at events about world peace and creativity, all of which (in theory) I think are important; but the fact is that the real work -- running her companies, or writing the speeches she reads out loud in front of a tele-prompter -- is farmed out to people she pays. She has no attention span, no ability to memorize, no knowledge about art or ability to absorb and contextualize the information she takes in from her own publications. There was nothing, nothing important that was going to be done on that plane, with or without poor Lori daring to inquire if Mrs. Alcock would prefer steak or chicken.
I rolled my eyes at Lori and told her to just do her best. I said that it was the most retarded thing I had ever heard. That I make eye-contact with Eloise all the time.
She was about to give me a hug when Eloise’s voice was heard at the bottom of the rolling staircase to the plane, “I don’t care, it’s not my problem, these bags should have been loaded long ago, we are very very late.” And she swooshed on.
I have no idea if it was because Barney Cloverfield had ended up leaving Barbados a day earlier than planned, but Eloise was cranky. She had Lori serve her dinner right away. Lori was nervous and asked (as per her asinine instruction manual) if Eloise would like salmon or beef, to which Eloise snapped, “Don’t you have grilled chicken salad? Didn’t you receive instructions to have options on board?” And Lori just yes ma’amed and somehow produced a grilled chicken salad.
It was a night flight and I was exhausted from running back and forth from the Sandy Lane to Treasure Beach, and all I wanted was to go to sleep. As covertly as possible, I asked Lori if there was any way to make my seat recline. Understandably, she looked down the plane at where Eloise sat picking at her salad. “I promise I’ll help you as soon as Mrs. Alcock is asleep behind that curtain,” she whispered, perhaps unaware that Eloise could potentially be up for hours. But there was nothing to be done, and Lori tiptoed down the aisle to ask Eloise if she wanted a glass of wine.
“This food is inedible,” I heard Eloise snap. “Really, there is no excuse for this.”
Lori took it back to the front of the plane. I thought I saw her lip wobble.
As soon as Alcock had disappeared behind the curtain, I grabbed a blanket and my earphones (in case Gerry was tempted to try to talk to me again) and fell asleep. I woke up a few hours later. My seat was still upright, so I crept up to the front of the plane again to find Lori, my new best friend, to ask for help. She tried to find the release to make the thing recline, but neither one of us could figure it out.
“WHAT IS GOING ON UP THERE??” Eloise hissed from behind her curtain. “This is ridiculous, Kyra, I need quiet if I’m to get any rest.”
Lori didn’t even look at me but scurried back to the front of the plane where she remained for the rest of the flight.
Gerry was asleep, having figured out how to recline his chair. Nevertheless, I knew I couldn’t sleep sitting up any more, so I climbed onto one of the couches in the middle of the plane. Eloise had spread out her stacks of papers on both couches. As stealthily as possible, I picked up a stack and moved it to the other couch so I could lie down. But somehow, even though I was as silent as I know how to be, Eloise heard that too and said “WHO IS MAKING ALL THAT NOISE??” I froze. Then I thought, well, she can send me home from London, and I moved the papers and laid myself down to sleep on a couch, completely ignoring her.
“This is unacceptable, Kyra, I have had to ask you twice to be quiet.” Let the record show that I had not uttered a word since Eloise had gotten on the plane. The amount of noise she was objecting to would not have awakened a napping baby. But her amazing radar had picked up some movement – some human being moving about, alive, while she was resting! Someone daring to attend to a need that wasn’t one of Eloise's! – and there I was, awake and vulnerable. I decided to give notice as soon as we landed in London, but by morning, when the plane had touched down in Salzburg, Eloise appeared to have forgotten the whole thing.
*
Salzburg was beautiful. Eloise was staying with a friend, Chad Roland*, the French gallery owner who represents Bad Spritzer* (the Israeli abstract sculptor whose work Eloise had flown here to see). M. Roland lives in the Villa E_____, near the H_______ Palace, on the outskirts of the city. Gerry and I were driven to a charming hotel that was some count’s former country house.
Disconcertingly, as soon as we got to the hotel, I realized that Eloise had neglected to give Gerry or me any Euros; and without money there would be no dinner, and without dinner I was sure to pass out. Of course I had what was left of the petty cash Pierre had given me, but I had converted everything into Bajan money in Barbados, and had had no time to convert it into Euros at the Sandy Lane because I had been too busy organizing Eloise’s things for departure. With some difficulty -- and sign language (because I speak no German) -- the hotel’s hausfrau directed me to a bank, a short walk down the road. It was about to close. They had an ATM, but when I put in my own card, I discovered that Eloise had not paid me (she was four weeks late); and since I have been diligently paying off my bills as money comes in, there was $19 in my account. So much for direct deposit.
I dug around in my pocket for the rest of my Bajan money. The bank clerk – who I’m sure just wanted to go home to have dinner -- had no idea what it was, and I had to wait an hour for him to find a supervisor who converted it first into pounds, then euros. I was grateful to them for staying open on my behalf, but I was also hungry and cranky enough to be annoyed at them: they were a bank, for god’s sake, couldn’t they just change my fucking money? (And then I realized that that was an Eloise-y thought and made myself stop.)
Upon returning to the hotel, who should I see but Gerry, happily eating dinner, on the hotel-restaurant’s porch. The sun was getting ready to go down, and the light was beautiful. There was a stream nearby and huge trees swaying in the breeze; and freshly-caught trout was on the menu. I looked sideways at Gerry. “Um, I’m sorry, Gerry, but did Eloise give you some money for us?” I asked, incredulous at how he had managed to find cash.
He didn’t look up at me. He has finally registered that I find him odious. “No, dear, I had Euros of my own.” I nodded and walked away despondently. From my window, I could see when he had finished, and when the coast was clear I went to the porch myself and ordered trout. It was the most delicious thing I had eaten since the truck lady in Barbados.
Eloise called my cell phone while I was still eating. She wanted a session before heading to Bad Spritzer’s art exhibit. To get to her villa near the palace I had to walk through a little forest next to the babbling brook. I arrived at a castle with a gate. A maid in a uniform led me into a flagstone-paved hallway. The floor was warped; this villa had been built in 1619. And the walls of the entryway were covered in unfortunate modern art, including a couple of huge photographs of naked young girls, with pre-Raphaelite hair and enormous boobs, playing flutes.
I found Eloise in a little room off the front hall. She appeared to have forgiven me for annoying her on the flight, even if I hadn’t forgiven her for snapping at me. We started the session and she was super-chatty, wanted me to go to Bad Spritzer’s art opening (“I can’t remember the name of the gallery, we’ll have to get it from Anna,” which meant a long-distance call on my cell...). Ten minutes into it, a beautiful European woman, pregnant, wandered into the room. “Ah! Jessamine,” cried Eloise.
A long conversation in French ensued. Jessamine*, it seemed, was the pregnant recently-ex girlfriend to Henri Bledel-Bentley*, a famous artist who had just a few days before committed suicide by throwing himself into the Seine. Jessamine was understandably inconsolable. It seems that the art world had been completely shocked by his death (even though the man had been severely depressed and also had a long history of doing heroin) and Eloise had asked Jessamine to meet her in Salzburg because she felt that Jessamine shouldn’t be alone in Paris, where she was subject to a feeding frenzy by the rapacious press. And Eloise’s buddy Bad Spritzer shared a gallery with the late Henri Bledel-Bentley, so Eloise had commandeered his bereft girlfriend.
It seemed like a political move on Eloise’s part, because these two women were not close, and Eloise needs as much art-world cred as she can find; but she was the kindest to this woman I’ve ever seen her be with anyone. I tried to find a graceful way to leave the room so they could talk by themselves, but Eloise said, “No, Kyra, it’s fine, don’t go anywhere.” As I listened, it became apparent that Eloise had sent Jessamine to a voyante, or psychic, for advice and solace following the suicide. The psychic had told pauvre Jessamine that her boyfriend was watching her from beyond the grave, and that he hadn’t meant to kill himself. Eloise said, isn’t that comforting, and Jessamine sighed a big French sigh.
And then it was time for her to dress and leave for the gallery. I flew me all that way for ten minutes of Pilates and an hour-long discussion about the Other Side. (We left Salzburg the following day; less than 24 hours, all told.)
I had the evening free, and couldn’t bear another night alone in a hotel, so I called a cab and went to the gallery in the middle of the city, by myself. Now, you and I have had this argument many times, I know conceptual art is legitimate and important, but I find it impossibly upsetting. The first piece I saw upon entering was an “installation” of three silver cubes, each about ten square inches. They were filled (according to the little card on the wall, handily printed in German, French and English) with cow-dung from a desert in Arizona. I wondered if it was legal to carry the dung of a mojave bovine through international customs. And I also wondered if it was really true that the boxes were full of shit; and if not, what Bad Spritzer was trying to give his audience by making them think that those boxes were full of shit; and whether it was true or not, I wondered what possible concept Bad Spritzer could be exploring that would warrant all of these fancy people buying fancy clothes and flying in on fancy planes to see something that looked like decorator touches from IKEA. Filled with the purported fecal matter of a desert cow.
(And if you tell me that since I wondered about all that stuff that means the art must be working, I will never, ever speak to you again. This does not count as a stimulated imagination. This is me in a kerfuffle over the injustice of misapplied attention on the part of art-buyers. Seriously, *this* guy has an audience?)
….and I also thought that if I were a bad-boy Israeli with lots of money, I too could buy a studio, hang out my shingle, call myself an “artist,” buy my way into lots of society parties with other rich people and make myself famous by schmoozing idiots like Eloise. It’s not art, it’s a PR campaign with manure.
I mean, let's say for argument's sake that the boxes really are full of shit and the shit really did come from Arizona. What poor minion did Bad Spritzer pay to fly out to the desert to smuggle dung back to Tel Aviv, so that Mr. Spritzer could put it in a silver box? Because there's no way that playboy with the loafers and the studied stubble and the shiny sunglasses did it himself. And I thought the whole point of "sculpting" was that you made the thing yourself. Otherwise isn’t it…architecture? And don't architects *need* other people to execute their design because buildings are huge and complicated, whereas three silver 10" boxes...are not?
I also thought of Alexander Calder drawing a picture of a sculpture and having someone else build it. I thought of Matthew Barney. In theory, I don't disrespect either one.
I thought most of all of my parents slaving away in their studios, completely unknown. Both of them employ meticulous, labor-intensive, time-consuming methods, and they do it by themselves.
It’s true my anger might be irrational; it's certainly illogical. I mean, let's say a playwright does "design" what happens onstage when he (or she) writes a play. Other people execute that design, and I seem not to have a problem with that. I sing songs other people have written. But it is a little different. In performance, the executors (the director and actors) get credit. I have no idea who actually painted the Sistine chapel.
If Eloise's life is her work of art, aren't I "helping" to create it in some small way? Isn't that where her butlers are taking their pride? They work for someone who backs world peace and culture. Does that make her any easier to take? (They could make the same money working for someone who deals guns...)
Anyway. I didn't see Eloise at the gallery, thank god. I spent fifteen minutes looking at more of the work, but everything pissed me off in equal measure, its lack of imagination making me depressed. The Mozart festival was going on, so I found my way back to the old center of town, ate a sausage and bought a ticket on my credit card (no comments) for the symphony, which was playing Ives, Schoenberg and (indeedy) Mozart. And then I fell asleep as soon as the lights went down, the most expensive nap in the history of mankind. Cabbed it back to the hotel. The next day we flew to London.
**
London was a comfort and I did in fact go to the theater every night. There’s not much to tell; I was really, really tired of being alone all the time. I had to buy a cell phone because my trusty brick, which had worked fine in Austria and Barbados, couldn’t get a signal in the U.K., and Madame had to be able to get in touch with me at a moment's notice. More credit card purchases, though I’m told I will be reimbursed. They put me up in a Hilton (terribly corporate after all that euro-rustic charm) a few blocks from Eloise.
Ivan (the mean second head butler), not Roger, was my point person. The night I arrived in London, he drew me a map of where Eloise’s house was, but I got lost anyway. Her appointment was for seven in the morning – vacation’s over. However, I was staying on Holland Park Avenue, which is parallel to but not the same as Holland Park Road or Holland Park Mews, and there are TWO Holland Park Roads, because Holland Park Road is basically a rectangle, with the house numbers going up on one side of the street, and down on the other, and I of course ended up going up and down the various Holland Parks looking for which house might be the one I was meant to find. I arrived 15 minutes late, and Ivan answered the door with a curt, “She’s not pleased.”
Eloise kept me waiting anyway, for twenty minutes. When she did emerge, it was to berate me for being late (“Really, Kyra, you and time…you don’t have that many responsibilities.” The sickening truth.). We did twenty minutes of Pilates. Her own machines are built by a Canadian company that seems more concerned with slick design than Mr. Pilates’ original intents, and they have many flaws. At the end of the session, she looked dissatisfied. “Have you found Didier’s stick?” I didn’t want to tell her I knew it was back in _____Hampton. I said nothing. She tsked again. “See if you can make one,” she said as she swept out of the room.
I don’t have to tell you that I did not spend my next two days in London locating a hardware store so I could buy a broom and have the broom portion sawn off. I blew off the assignment entirely. I didn’t even tell Ivan. In fact I went shopping in the Portobello Road flea market and bought a skirt for myself. I went to TopShop and bought shoes and a winter coat. I bought an expensive dinner and another theater ticket. I did not feel guilty. I was broke, and my credit card was seeming like my only means of self-expression, all alone as I was in London.
Eloise had forgotten about the stick the next day. (I knew she would.) She was in a snit about Clinton. She was instead ranting about how it was his terrible policies that had gotten us into trouble in Afghanistan. And how Israeli aggression had been allowed to go on for too long, that they should be helping the Palestinians build infrastructure. And how that was really Clinton’s fault too. And how Richard Gere was going to save Tibet and she was going to help him…
All of which sounded like standard Euro-leftist stuff. I might even agree with some of it. I just...hate it coming out of her mouth.
The next day she brought up China again. I have no idea why she's going, but as you know I long to travel, especially in Asia, and would so love to go to China. And of course the lack of funds is what has stopped me from going in the past... and here would be a free trip to China….
So after her session, which consisted largely of me waiting and then getting berated again for not knowing how to work the digital remote control in her personal gym (I mean….really, you’d think I’d have learned that this was part of my job, but isn’t that what the twenty other people who actually work in her house are for?) she said, “I am going to China for two weeks. Can you come with us?” And I found myself saying no. Not maybe, not I’ll think about it, just no.
No, I don’t want to go to China with Eloise. No, I don’t want to go to China without anyone on staff thinking to give me the correct money to live on. With no language or preparation. No, I don’t want to go to China and not be able to see any of it because I have to wait around in a hotel room for Eloise to call me. So I can teach her bad Pilates. No.
I would rather go back to New York and go on auditions and teach people who might want to learn. I would rather be in a play. I would rather play with my friends. I would rather be at home alone and enjoy my solitude without thinking about what thing I had done wrong by attending to my own needs. I would like to go to China when I can take myself there and enjoy it instead of hating myself. I would rather create my own life (or fuck it up, as the case may be) rather than be a detail in anyone else's, least of all the fabulous life of Eloise Gewurtztraminer Bourgeois Alcock.
But she clearly needed an explanation, so I said, “I have an audition on September 8th,” which I had made up. Eloise raised an eyebrow. “So you don’t have a job, but you think you want to go back to try and get one? That doesn’t sound very bright, Kyra,” she said with a raised eyebrow. And I said, “Well, I'm sorry, and I appreciate the invitation, it's just -- you know, I'm -- but -- I’m an actress. That’s what I really do.”
And she said, “Oh! I didn’t know that.”
Now…I cannot tell you how many conversations I have had with Eloise about theater. About acting. About me going to drama school. About her daughter wanting to be a director. About Lou Roeberson. I genuinely think she forgot. I really, really think she has early-onset Alzheimers’. This experience is sort of like dating a severe alcoholic: you have these important foundational conversations and the next day they remember nothing…thank god I’m not dating her…oh, never mind, you know what I mean.
After Eloise’s last session, I had to go down to the kitchen to hand over the English cell phone (which I had paid for) to the butler Ivan – surely he would find a use for it before I would – and to say goodbye to Pierre. Pierre seemed a little sad without Roger; it turns out that Roger was, in fact, fired. But not for bitching about Madame behind her back or for getting into a fight with Didier; he apparently had been fudging on his “bits:” all the butlers get petty cash like I did, for tipping waiters and drivers and for picking up items Madame asks for en passante, and there’s a lot of that to track, they call it “tallying their bits” and it gets done whenever they return to London from wherever they’ve been. The problem is that one doesn’t always write down everything on the spot — like when one slips a twenty to a maitre d’ or tips a bellhop in a hurry — and as someone who finds itemizing for her tax returns odious, I understand that that is a huge chore. And like with tax returns, there’s a large margin for error, and although they strive for accuracy, it’s all on the honor system. Anyway, Plascina in the accounting office discovered that Roger had fudged some $30,000 worth of petty cash. And was totally unrepentant. I have no idea where he is now. Back on the QE2, I suppose.
I didn’t expect to see Jonas, but Pierre and Ivan and I were mid-gossip when he suddenly popped his head in and started to say something about Madame — and stopped when he saw me in the kitchen. “I almost didn’t recognize you,” he said. He seemed totally subdued, all trace of the flirt was gone. Gravely, he looked me up and down, like a doctor making a diagnosis. I was wearing makeup and new fancy jeans and felt so happy to be going home; Jonas has only seen me miserable and sleepy in sweats and zits.
**
London was a comfort and I did in fact go to the theater every night. There’s not much to tell; I was really, really tired of being alone all the time. I had to buy a cell phone because my trusty brick, which had worked fine in Austria and Barbados, couldn’t get a signal in the U.K., and Madame had to be able to get in touch with me at a moment's notice. More credit card purchases, though I’m told I will be reimbursed. They put me up in a Hilton (terribly corporate after all that euro-rustic charm) a few blocks from Eloise.
Ivan (the mean second head butler), not Roger, was my point person. The night I arrived in London, he drew me a map of where Eloise’s house was, but I got lost anyway. Her appointment was for seven in the morning – vacation’s over. However, I was staying on Holland Park Avenue, which is parallel to but not the same as Holland Park Road or Holland Park Mews, and there are TWO Holland Park Roads, because Holland Park Road is basically a rectangle, with the house numbers going up on one side of the street, and down on the other, and I of course ended up going up and down the various Holland Parks looking for which house might be the one I was meant to find. I arrived 15 minutes late, and Ivan answered the door with a curt, “She’s not pleased.”
Eloise kept me waiting anyway, for twenty minutes. When she did emerge, it was to berate me for being late (“Really, Kyra, you and time…you don’t have that many responsibilities.” The sickening truth.). We did twenty minutes of Pilates. Her own machines are built by a Canadian company that seems more concerned with slick design than Mr. Pilates’ original intents, and they have many flaws. At the end of the session, she looked dissatisfied. “Have you found Didier’s stick?” I didn’t want to tell her I knew it was back in _____Hampton. I said nothing. She tsked again. “See if you can make one,” she said as she swept out of the room.
I don’t have to tell you that I did not spend my next two days in London locating a hardware store so I could buy a broom and have the broom portion sawn off. I blew off the assignment entirely. I didn’t even tell Ivan. In fact I went shopping in the Portobello Road flea market and bought a skirt for myself. I went to TopShop and bought shoes and a winter coat. I bought an expensive dinner and another theater ticket. I did not feel guilty. I was broke, and my credit card was seeming like my only means of self-expression, all alone as I was in London.
Eloise had forgotten about the stick the next day. (I knew she would.) She was in a snit about Clinton. She was instead ranting about how it was his terrible policies that had gotten us into trouble in Afghanistan. And how Israeli aggression had been allowed to go on for too long, that they should be helping the Palestinians build infrastructure. And how that was really Clinton’s fault too. And how Richard Gere was going to save Tibet and she was going to help him…
All of which sounded like standard Euro-leftist stuff. I might even agree with some of it. I just...hate it coming out of her mouth.
The next day she brought up China again. I have no idea why she's going, but as you know I long to travel, especially in Asia, and would so love to go to China. And of course the lack of funds is what has stopped me from going in the past... and here would be a free trip to China….
So after her session, which consisted largely of me waiting and then getting berated again for not knowing how to work the digital remote control in her personal gym (I mean….really, you’d think I’d have learned that this was part of my job, but isn’t that what the twenty other people who actually work in her house are for?) she said, “I am going to China for two weeks. Can you come with us?” And I found myself saying no. Not maybe, not I’ll think about it, just no.
No, I don’t want to go to China with Eloise. No, I don’t want to go to China without anyone on staff thinking to give me the correct money to live on. With no language or preparation. No, I don’t want to go to China and not be able to see any of it because I have to wait around in a hotel room for Eloise to call me. So I can teach her bad Pilates. No.
I would rather go back to New York and go on auditions and teach people who might want to learn. I would rather be in a play. I would rather play with my friends. I would rather be at home alone and enjoy my solitude without thinking about what thing I had done wrong by attending to my own needs. I would like to go to China when I can take myself there and enjoy it instead of hating myself. I would rather create my own life (or fuck it up, as the case may be) rather than be a detail in anyone else's, least of all the fabulous life of Eloise Gewurtztraminer Bourgeois Alcock.
But she clearly needed an explanation, so I said, “I have an audition on September 8th,” which I had made up. Eloise raised an eyebrow. “So you don’t have a job, but you think you want to go back to try and get one? That doesn’t sound very bright, Kyra,” she said with a raised eyebrow. And I said, “Well, I'm sorry, and I appreciate the invitation, it's just -- you know, I'm -- but -- I’m an actress. That’s what I really do.”
And she said, “Oh! I didn’t know that.”
Now…I cannot tell you how many conversations I have had with Eloise about theater. About acting. About me going to drama school. About her daughter wanting to be a director. About Lou Roeberson. I genuinely think she forgot. I really, really think she has early-onset Alzheimers’. This experience is sort of like dating a severe alcoholic: you have these important foundational conversations and the next day they remember nothing…thank god I’m not dating her…oh, never mind, you know what I mean.
After Eloise’s last session, I had to go down to the kitchen to hand over the English cell phone (which I had paid for) to the butler Ivan – surely he would find a use for it before I would – and to say goodbye to Pierre. Pierre seemed a little sad without Roger; it turns out that Roger was, in fact, fired. But not for bitching about Madame behind her back or for getting into a fight with Didier; he apparently had been fudging on his “bits:” all the butlers get petty cash like I did, for tipping waiters and drivers and for picking up items Madame asks for en passante, and there’s a lot of that to track, they call it “tallying their bits” and it gets done whenever they return to London from wherever they’ve been. The problem is that one doesn’t always write down everything on the spot — like when one slips a twenty to a maitre d’ or tips a bellhop in a hurry — and as someone who finds itemizing for her tax returns odious, I understand that that is a huge chore. And like with tax returns, there’s a large margin for error, and although they strive for accuracy, it’s all on the honor system. Anyway, Plascina in the accounting office discovered that Roger had fudged some $30,000 worth of petty cash. And was totally unrepentant. I have no idea where he is now. Back on the QE2, I suppose.
I didn’t expect to see Jonas, but Pierre and Ivan and I were mid-gossip when he suddenly popped his head in and started to say something about Madame — and stopped when he saw me in the kitchen. “I almost didn’t recognize you,” he said. He seemed totally subdued, all trace of the flirt was gone. Gravely, he looked me up and down, like a doctor making a diagnosis. I was wearing makeup and new fancy jeans and felt so happy to be going home; Jonas has only seen me miserable and sleepy in sweats and zits.
“You clean up nicely, luv,” he said.
I smiled at him like a person. “Please don’t be so surprised. How was China?”
He shrugged. “Edwin’s bollocks. How was Barbados?”
“Madame’s bollocks. The apple didn’t fall far.”
“Ah, Madame’s all right. Her intentions are good.”
I sighed. “Yes, yes, they are. You really can’t fault her on content, it’s annoying, but it’s true. And she did go to Harvard, after all, so she must be smart. Somewhere underneath all that dyslexia…”
“What are you talking about, luv?”
“Madame. Harvard. It says in her press kit that she’s ‘Harvard trained.’ And her ex-husband is a Rhodes scholar. He wouldn’t have put up with her if she’d been as dumb as she seems.”
And Ivan started smirking and Jonas looked at me with those dimples starting to show -- and those sparkly, sparkly eyes -- and he said the most beautiful thing I had heard all summer: “Her ex-husband the fucking Rhodes scholar wouldn’t have cared if she couldn’t spell cat. She had a lot of money and access and in case you hadn’t noticed she is a very, very pretty blond with big tits, not that I should be talking that way about her. But I promise you Madame didn’t go to Harvard. She did some crap nine-week summer course for business executives sponsored by the Harvard Business School that’s nothing but a two-month cocktail party for other people like her. So they can all get pissed together and lick each other’s arses.” His walkie-talkie crackled. “Balls. Must go.” He kissed me on the cheek. “Wish I didn’t have to run. Here’s my card, stay in touch, have a safe flight back.” And he was gone, almost flustered, for once not making porny jokes about my bottom.
“He’s not the same since his woman left him,” muttered Ivan.
“He’s not the same since his woman left him,” muttered Ivan.
“Really?” I said. “What happened?”
“She got tired of being his mum.”
*
And… when I got back to my hotel and checked my email, I discovered that my agents had in fact emailed me, and I do have an audition, on September 10th. Which I am looking forward to. It’s a four-character play, a great part, I get to age twenty years and use a Russian dialect, the music is difficult and it’s at a small-but-classy theater in New England with an illustrious background. Wish me luck.
I flew back to New York in coach.
☺
The day after I landed back in NY, I called Virginie to arrange the retrieval of the rest of my belongings. My parents drove me to _________Hampton in their car, curious to see this crazy house where I’d spent my summer; Domingo was expecting me. I gave my folks a quick peek at Eloise’s side of the house – everything draped in white canvas, eerie – and my garret; and, underwhelmed by boring architecture, they went to sit on the beach while I gathered my stuff.
*
And… when I got back to my hotel and checked my email, I discovered that my agents had in fact emailed me, and I do have an audition, on September 10th. Which I am looking forward to. It’s a four-character play, a great part, I get to age twenty years and use a Russian dialect, the music is difficult and it’s at a small-but-classy theater in New England with an illustrious background. Wish me luck.
I flew back to New York in coach.
☺
The day after I landed back in NY, I called Virginie to arrange the retrieval of the rest of my belongings. My parents drove me to _________Hampton in their car, curious to see this crazy house where I’d spent my summer; Domingo was expecting me. I gave my folks a quick peek at Eloise’s side of the house – everything draped in white canvas, eerie – and my garret; and, underwhelmed by boring architecture, they went to sit on the beach while I gathered my stuff.
Curiously, though, none of my things were in the garret where I'd left it all. I checked all the nursery rooms, and, finding nothing, decided to head to the guest house, to my temporary second room in the back hall, the one I’d lived in prior to the arrival of the Principessa del’ [Major European Country].
On my way there, I wandered through the remnants of the vegetable garden and discovered that no one had picked the peaches off the peach tree in a while (oh, did I neglect to mention the single peach tree that bore the most delicious fruit and that I was forbidden to pick…?). I denuded the branches of as many as I could carry and bit into a juicy one, and went into the silent, empty guest house. I entered through the kitchen, where only a few weeks ago Pierre had scrambled to serve lunch for eighteen. I wandered through the living room, full of the overstuffed Pottery Barn couches, now covered in sheets, into through the front hall with the ming vases and the plaques with the Chinese mug-lids glued to them, through the library with the revolving bookshelf, into the secret back hallway, into my old chintz-covered domain.
I don’t know what I was expecting — I mean, I certainly didn’t think Luisa and Rosaura would have neatly packed my things into a suitcase and left it there for me — but I certainly didn’t expect to find that everything had been haphazardly stuffed into a corner on the floor of a linen closet. The books were mixed in with the shoes and the clothes, everything heaped in a messy, dusty tangle. For some reason, this practically made me cry, which may have been a disproportionate response, but I knelt down anyway and folded everything up with as much care as I thought Eloise would want her things to be treated. I was about to put everything I had left in the bathroom into plastic baggies, when I remembered something… and a mean little knot in my chest dissolved…
Down the stairs I skittered, into the guest house basement, past the screening room and the bar and the billiard room, into the exercise room. None of the Pilates equipment had been put away properly, so for form’s sake I fixed it. And I found Didier’s stupid stick, sitting in a corner. I was going to take it with me to mail to Eloise back in London, but then thought better of it. I would call Virginie and let her dispatch the order to Domingo.
And then I padded into the sauna room next door and peeked on the towel-shelf. There were the stacks of big fluffy robes…and way, way back into the back of the shelf, I stretched my hot little hand...
…and found the red makeup bag. And pulled it to me.
I was, frankly, amazed that no one had thought to pack it for Madame in Barbados. I unzipped it and there was the same treasure-trove of unopened, unused makeup. And the jar of La Prairie Crème de la Mer, which I knew would just spoil if left there all year until Madame’s return next summer. Edwin’s skin cream had long since been rubbed into my face, and my skin had been thirsty and acting up since leaving the Caribbean, so without one tiny bit of maybe I shouldn’t-ness, I broke the seal and spread a layer of the cool, smooth, buttery stuff into my cheekbones.
Also in the bag were some very good-quality makeup brushes that I thought would come in handy. And some concealer. A powder blush from a company I couldn’t afford. The eyeshadows and lip-glosses were all the wrong colors for me, and my goal was only to help myself to what I might need, not to rob her blind; but I knew I had in front of me at least $300 worth of cosmetics. While there really is no excuse for stealing, at this point in time she owed me four weeks of pay (even as I write this, she hasn’t paid it all) and so I decided to think of it as a sort of… collateral. It wasn’t jewelry, after all. And the little red bag was still plenty full. I re-zipped it and slid it to the back of the shelf where I’d found it.
Then I wrapped my loot in a hand towel (just in case), and went back upstairs, and packed everything into my bag; found Domingo and said goodbye, and joined my parents in the car.
We ate late summer peaches all the way back to Brooklyn.
**
SO. This job isn’t over until I get paid and pay off my debt, and while I know Eloise will be back from China pretty soon, I have no idea when she'll get around to signing checks. I’ll be teaching her in the mornings again when she’s in NYC. But I won’t be on-call, which will be a huge relief. She’ll be moving out of the Hotel des Beaux-Arts in midtown; she paid $30 million for a triplex in that brand new R______ M____ building, those glass towers going up in the West Village along the West Side Highway. Which is a shorter early-morning commute for yours truly. I’ll let you know how that goes…
In the meantime, I’m delighted to be home. My audition is in a few days. Wish me luck.
I hope the American ex-pat community is keeping you employed at the bookstore, and that your upcoming sojourn in India doesn’t tax your tummy too terribly. I miss you - please write as often as you can.
Much, much love.
KLC, Thief in the Night
On my way there, I wandered through the remnants of the vegetable garden and discovered that no one had picked the peaches off the peach tree in a while (oh, did I neglect to mention the single peach tree that bore the most delicious fruit and that I was forbidden to pick…?). I denuded the branches of as many as I could carry and bit into a juicy one, and went into the silent, empty guest house. I entered through the kitchen, where only a few weeks ago Pierre had scrambled to serve lunch for eighteen. I wandered through the living room, full of the overstuffed Pottery Barn couches, now covered in sheets, into through the front hall with the ming vases and the plaques with the Chinese mug-lids glued to them, through the library with the revolving bookshelf, into the secret back hallway, into my old chintz-covered domain.
I don’t know what I was expecting — I mean, I certainly didn’t think Luisa and Rosaura would have neatly packed my things into a suitcase and left it there for me — but I certainly didn’t expect to find that everything had been haphazardly stuffed into a corner on the floor of a linen closet. The books were mixed in with the shoes and the clothes, everything heaped in a messy, dusty tangle. For some reason, this practically made me cry, which may have been a disproportionate response, but I knelt down anyway and folded everything up with as much care as I thought Eloise would want her things to be treated. I was about to put everything I had left in the bathroom into plastic baggies, when I remembered something… and a mean little knot in my chest dissolved…
Down the stairs I skittered, into the guest house basement, past the screening room and the bar and the billiard room, into the exercise room. None of the Pilates equipment had been put away properly, so for form’s sake I fixed it. And I found Didier’s stupid stick, sitting in a corner. I was going to take it with me to mail to Eloise back in London, but then thought better of it. I would call Virginie and let her dispatch the order to Domingo.
And then I padded into the sauna room next door and peeked on the towel-shelf. There were the stacks of big fluffy robes…and way, way back into the back of the shelf, I stretched my hot little hand...
…and found the red makeup bag. And pulled it to me.
I was, frankly, amazed that no one had thought to pack it for Madame in Barbados. I unzipped it and there was the same treasure-trove of unopened, unused makeup. And the jar of La Prairie Crème de la Mer, which I knew would just spoil if left there all year until Madame’s return next summer. Edwin’s skin cream had long since been rubbed into my face, and my skin had been thirsty and acting up since leaving the Caribbean, so without one tiny bit of maybe I shouldn’t-ness, I broke the seal and spread a layer of the cool, smooth, buttery stuff into my cheekbones.
Also in the bag were some very good-quality makeup brushes that I thought would come in handy. And some concealer. A powder blush from a company I couldn’t afford. The eyeshadows and lip-glosses were all the wrong colors for me, and my goal was only to help myself to what I might need, not to rob her blind; but I knew I had in front of me at least $300 worth of cosmetics. While there really is no excuse for stealing, at this point in time she owed me four weeks of pay (even as I write this, she hasn’t paid it all) and so I decided to think of it as a sort of… collateral. It wasn’t jewelry, after all. And the little red bag was still plenty full. I re-zipped it and slid it to the back of the shelf where I’d found it.
Then I wrapped my loot in a hand towel (just in case), and went back upstairs, and packed everything into my bag; found Domingo and said goodbye, and joined my parents in the car.
We ate late summer peaches all the way back to Brooklyn.
**
SO. This job isn’t over until I get paid and pay off my debt, and while I know Eloise will be back from China pretty soon, I have no idea when she'll get around to signing checks. I’ll be teaching her in the mornings again when she’s in NYC. But I won’t be on-call, which will be a huge relief. She’ll be moving out of the Hotel des Beaux-Arts in midtown; she paid $30 million for a triplex in that brand new R______ M____ building, those glass towers going up in the West Village along the West Side Highway. Which is a shorter early-morning commute for yours truly. I’ll let you know how that goes…
In the meantime, I’m delighted to be home. My audition is in a few days. Wish me luck.
I hope the American ex-pat community is keeping you employed at the bookstore, and that your upcoming sojourn in India doesn’t tax your tummy too terribly. I miss you - please write as often as you can.
Much, much love.
KLC, Thief in the Night
