Exhausted, Brulard abruptly veered toward a bench on the edge of a vast lawn that sloped gently off to the lake. She sat down, despite the presence of Eve Brulard on the other end, the newly hostile and oppressive presence of a young Eve grown remarkably thin and bony. How this Eve Brulard looks like Lulu, Brulard said to herself, with a pang of displeasure and guilt. She pretended not to notice. She closed her eyes, fretfully wondering why the young Eve should now be appearing to her in the form of an enemy. When she half-opened her eyes, she noted that the splendid, high-spirited young people strolling past the bench were the very ones who’d jostled her in the streets of the old town.
“That’s odd,” she said cautiously.
Then Jimmy bent over and whispered in her ear:
“You see who’s sitting over there?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Lulu,” said Jimmy with a stunned little scowl. “Can that be?”
Brulard buried her face in her hands, shivering in fear and bewilderment. She thought she could hear Jimmy whispering, then nothing more, and when she peeked up again Jimmy had replaced the emaciated girl beside her. At her feet, the dog was looking up at her with what she could only interpret as avid affection. And those eternal young people from before strode by over and over, their long legs grazing Brulard’s and Jimmy’s knees. Did Jimmy realize that these abnormally healthy, good-looking young men and women seemed determined never to leave them again? Brulard wondered.
“What would Lulu be doing here?”she asked in an infuriated voice.
“I left her with the Alphonses. The plan was that the Alphonses would take her skiing,” said Jimmy, casual and patient. “What, may I ask, is the problem with that? What is the problem?”
“Everywhere I hear people saying there’s no more snow. So, you know, it’s strange.”
“There’ll always be more than enough snow for fatsos like the Alphonses and a kid like Lulu who can’t stand snow,” said Jimmy sententiously.
“But why should Lulu be so skinny all of a sudden?” Jimmy kept quiet, in that heavy, mired way of his.
“So supposedly she got skinny, just like that, in the space of a week?” said Brulard. “Because her mama chose to. . ”
She sniffed dubiously.
“I didn’t notice what Lulu was wearing,” she then said. Jimmy’s spirits revived, and he answered:
“She was wearing what I bought her for this Easter holiday with the Alphonses: a silver down coat with matching ski suit and fluorescent green ankle boots. I wanted her to make a good impression. The Alphonse girls have all that and much more.”
“The girl I saw on the bench wasn’t dressed in silver,” said Brulard, calmly triumphant.
“No one who looks at you would ever say you’re wearing loafers, because they couldn’t imagine you wearing such shoes, and yet that’s how it is, and you’re wearing loafers,” said Jimmy.
“Oh, why won’t these young people leave us alone?” Brulard sighed, on the brink of tears.
They kept coming and going, three girls and two boys with similar builds, towering and long-limbed, their stiff, light blond hair down to the girls’ shoulders, the boys’ napes, and Brulard found in them a glacial, unearthly beauty that, far from delighting, pained the heart.
How worn, how faded seemed their two little selves, hers and Jimmy’s, on their bench — how poor and ugly they were, crumpled under the wreckage of the life they’d led together, exasperated by each other exactly when they knew they’d be exasperated, knowing each other so well, so well, without tenderness or sympathy.
“Everything would be different if I had money, or even just an inheritance to look forward to,” said Jimmy with spiteful but placid assurance.
The memory of recent evenings when another man had spent freely for her pleasure, elegant dinners, outings to the opera and sophisticated bars, not with a view to seducing her, for she’d been long since seduced and in love, but simply to place that fine gem of love and seduction in a setting of conventional delights and established practices — those memories surfaced in Brulard’s mind like episodes from a very ancient, irretrievable past, and while all that was desirable, delicious, it was also attached, now that Jimmy was here (poor, eternal Jimmy), to something vaguely and stupidly disloyal, even if she’d been drawn to the other man long before she knew how much he had.
But what could she do for Jimmy? What was she supposed to do for Jimmy, assuming she even could? And hadn’t he in fact come here to do something for her, to come to her rescue, as much as to help himself? What gave him the idea (she’d seen his misgivings, his concern) that she needed to be rescued?
A violent migraine was battering the back of her skull. She couldn’t speak a word. The young people began to laugh, howling in a way that struck Brulard as parodic and malevolent. Why were they so bent on following her, spying on her? Were they there beside her as friends? At the same time, if the idea was to keep watch over her, was such beauty uniformly distributed on five arrogant faces strictly necessary?
Could she see them as friends?
* * *
Brulard and Jimmy walked uphill toward the residential neighborhoods, toward the well-heeled heights overlooking the lake and the city, where Jimmy thought they would find the house he’d been told of. It was a chalet, brand new, made of blond wood, with deep eaves, multiple balconies laden with long chairs and poufs, cushions and dog toys: yellow hedgehogs, rubber bones, balls of all sorts.
Breathless from the climb, her skull painful and pounding, Brulard staggered and half-fell, one knee on the ground. Her shoe slipped off her foot. Jimmy was just bending down to pick up the loafer when a Great Dane burst out from behind the chalet, knocked Jimmy head over heels, and snatched up the shoe in its maw. It stood looking at them defiantly, with no intention of playing. Metallic glints gleamed in its short, gray fur. Jimmy’s dog whined as it edged away, terrified, submissive. Not a sound from the chalet or anywhere around them, only the faint rustling of the larch trees, Jimmy’s dog panting in fright.
Brulard stood up. She watched as Jimmy slowly crawled away, knees dragging over the gravel, and then, eyes fixed on the Great Dane, rose to his feet with calm, unhurried movements. She heard him whisper:
“Come on! Let’s get out of here.”
“What about my shoe?”said Brulard with a nervous little laugh.
She groaned and raised her hands to her head. The pain filled her eyes with stinging tears. Suddenly a man and woman appeared, and Brulard wasn’t sure if they’d come from the house or the forest.
“The Rotors!” Jimmy murmured, with a delight that made it clear to Brulard just how afraid he had been.
Would the other man have felt such fear? Or were deluxe guard dogs his allies right from the start, by virtue of his upbringing? Brulard then wondered if Great Danes could smell the odor of money, of class, of chateaux, if they recognized the authority of elegant manners.
She closed her eyes for a brief moment. She heard Jimmy’s insistent, beguiling voice, and from its slight desperate edge she realized he was playing his final card. Then Brulard heard the woman cordially exclaim:
“Why yes, of course, it’s Jimmy Loire. Hello, Jimmy.”