The Suitors - By Cecile David-Weill Page 0,55
sight, as if he’d had a handicap or something to make up for. He began with my mother, whom he captivated in record time. To begin with, he had the good taste not to mention his helicopter trip, plus he brought her the ideal gift: a hundred matchbooks engraved with the name of L’Agapanthe. He then deployed in her direction a panoply of attentions between flirting and deference, by rising to his feet the moment she seemed about to move elsewhere in the room, by praising her voice (“You’ve never thought about a career in radio?”), and by flashing her a radiant smile whenever she spoke to him. Next he tackled my father, to whom he pledged allegiance with a few words over an apéritif: a modest and convincing spiel about his hedge fund, followed by a request for a five minute tête-à-tête sometime that weekend for a few words of advice—and that was that.
For his finale, Béno sent us all into stitches by making fun of his family’s embarrassment over the original recipe for that photographic gelatin, which turned out to be made with bones from India. “Okay, fine, sometimes there were a few femurs,” admitted his mother. And he didn’t spare himself, allowing that his expensive habits were such that he’d really had no choice but to make a fortune. He’d studied up on his Cap d’Antibes history, too, and was abreast of all the latest juicy inside scoops.
Béno commanded so much attention that Mathias attracted very little in spite of his glaring blunders, which were legion. With striking linguistic ineptitude, he proudly claimed to have been the “investigator” of my encounter with Béno, and he introduced Lou to my parents as an actress “destinated” for a great future. With a flourish, he then produced his gift, a particularly garish scarf, which he presented to my mother who, although she had an absolute horror of designer logos, nevertheless went into ecstasies with professional aplomb over the entwined pink and blue initials that formed the sole decorative pattern of her gift.
Nothing, as it happened, was more vulgar in my parents’ eyes than luxury brands, two words they considered a perfect oxymoron. The offspring of marketing and manufacturing, brands—Walmart, H&M, Monoprix, Zara—were used to put objects within the reach of everyone, whereas luxury implied the made-to-measure expertise of craftsmen skilled at rendering material goods worthy of interest. Which ruled out any desire to possess the latest accessory de chez Dior, Vuitton, or Prada, an ambition my parents found as pointlessly petit bourgeois as going into raptures over the purchase of an ice-cream maker or a fondue set.
When Lou Léva made her appearance at cocktail time, I felt a ripple of disappointment pass through every man present. The gentlemen had doubtless envisioned some sexy creature, bold as brass, and had hoped to find the actress dripping with sensuality à la Marilyn Monroe, a girl whose heart would belong to daddy. Instead of which, in walked a thin, pale young woman who rather disappointingly resembled an orchid: exotic, true, but somewhat off-putting. With short black hair, a hank of which fell across one side of her face (when it wasn’t held back by a girlish barrette), she was pretty, but in an ethereal way. She might even have been touching, if she hadn’t affected a fragile and sorrowful air she hoped might lend her some gravitas, for she thought that sadness was chic.
Lou seemed to have stopped short of achieving the desired level of soigné manners, however, for she approached my mother with an utterly unchic, “Come on, let’s kiss-kiss-kiss.”
A greeting devoid of elegance, from the appallingly informal “Come on” to the grotesque “kiss-kiss-kiss,” not to mention the excessive familiarity toward my mother, whose customary welcome was a genteel nod or, at most, a handshake. As for triple cheek kisses, nothing was more provincial.
For everyone in France should know by now that Parisians give only two pecks on the cheeks, unlike the rest of the country, where regional differences gave rise to all sorts of variations with three or even four kisses, to which the average Parisian good-naturedly adapts by attempting to imitate an embrace of unknown rhythm and duration, like a beginning dancer following the lead of an experienced partner.
Then, when the butler announced that dinner was served, Lou exclaimed with a shriek, “I’m starving! I haven’t had a bite since noon!”
This was another botch, since she should not have used the slangy “a bite” so baldly.
In short, Lou was not