As she remembered, she found her hand resting on the same spot on her thigh where it lay fifty years ago. The skin no longer held the smoothness. It had loosened, leaving more sinew and bone for the touch. Her poor thigh. Too many uncaring hands that could never pause long enough to feel the comfort and solace had touched it. It had merely become part of the route where fumbling fingers carelessly floundered in search of greater pleasures. Perhaps she had started to believe that as well. She never stopped those hands. Never insisted on a pause to luxuriate in the comfort. Instead she had bought into the myth of male pleasure, that there were only three parts of a woman’s body that brought satisfaction, and the inner thigh was not one of them. She stopped questioning. And though she couldn’t really recall any specific moment—maybe it was all as part of a gradual fade—she had nearly forgotten the calming and connectedness brought to her by that part of her body. A place where no man’s calloused hand should have ever touched anyhow.
There was a knock on the door. “One moment, Molly,” she answered, recognizing the waltzing percussion of his announcement. She didn’t want to move, at least not for another moment. She didn’t want to think about acting. About business. About renegade Catholic causes. She just wanted to be Henriette-Rosine back in the convent again, surrounded by silence and wholeness. Her hand on her thigh, feeling the stillness of her breath, the minuscule sounds of knees shifting and noses sniffling, where solace was the only success. Washing herself of all those who had touched her and tried to make her peace their peace. Just being still again. And feeling her own feelings.
Max’s knock turned impatient.
She forced herself up from the bed. Her head felt light. She could feel the weight of blood pushing to her feet. She stepped over the newspaper, one more time looking at that useless page-eight picture. She put her heel right over the smudged image of her back and scattered the newspaper under the bed with a series of short kicks, like a dog trying to cover up his shit. She patted the side of her hair into place. Ran her fingers like a comb through the back, snagging on a small tangle that she impatiently crooked with her index finger and broke. She looked tired. She knew it. Max would assume it was the aftermath of the opium. It was impossible for him to just see her as tired. She knew that, too. In fact, how he saw her was probably her fault. She had cultivated and appropriated all the details of the actress Sarah.
He was smiling when she opened the door. The light caught his hazel irises just enough to bring out the green. He looked at her in her gown. Then back to the mussed bed with the edges of newspaper peering out from underneath. “Good gracious,” he said. “I figured you would be ready by now.”
“Did we set a time?”
“About ten years ago.”
She laughed. “We manage everything, don’t we?”
“To the last detail.”
Max walked into the room, slipping between her and the door. He sat down at the blond desk placed directly across from the matching headboard, the dented pillows reflecting in its mirror.
She closed the door, stood still for a moment, and then sat down at the edge of the bed. She ran her hands over her cheeks, feeling the tenderness of her skin. “We are not going to the King George, are we?”
“There is a driver downstairs waiting to take us to a restaurant downtown that the concierge recommended.”
“I need quiet.”
“Supposedly it is.”
“That is my one request.”
“Only one?”
“And no Abbot Kinney.”
“You think that I would do that to either of us?” He looked at her in the mirror with a slight smile. “Besides, that is two requests, and we need to go. The car is waiting.”
“If you want me to change clothes, then stop looking at me. You think this is the Moulin Rouge? No free show here, Molly.”
“Frankly, I would rather have pitchforks in my eye than be caught unawares by a female breast.”
“Then look the other way, or go ask your friend Abbot Kinney for a pitchfork.”
“I would certainly take a pitchfork in the eyes before having to set sight on that pretense.”
She rose from the bed and stepped behind Max, looking away from her reflection in the mirror. She placed her hands on his shoulders and squeezed tenderly. “I love my Molly. I truly do. But I need you to help me through how I see Marguerite.”
“We will get through this,” he said. “We get through it all.”
She squeezed his shoulders again. “You know that I love you, don’t you?”
He reached back and took her hands. His grip was confident. His hands warm and manicured. “You know Marguerite better than you know yourself.” He laughed. “Again, you find yourself distracted by loudmouth fanatics that are angry at their God for putting them in a world they detest. The only way they can maintain their faith is to find someone else to blame. There is no justice here. Only ignorance. And we are professionals at dealing with ignorance, we have managed it with every American tour…And, yes, I do know how much you love me. I tell myself every day.”
She didn’t move her hands. She wished he could hold them forever. She swallowed and fought back a tear. Her eyes could have exploded. “All right then,” she said, wanting to tell him that yes they may have been through this time after time on their American tours, but now she was wearied by it, and it suddenly felt like anything but routine, and even at that this chaos had nothing to do with not being able to see Marguerite anymore. She loosened her grip and gave Max a pat on the shoulders that seemed suddenly chummy. “You sit tight, dear. I’ll change in the bathroom. Don’t want pitchforks in your eyes.”
“You don’t have to—”
“The beige blouse, or the puritanical white?” She pointed to the open closet.
“Sarah, I can wait outside.”
“Beige or white?”
“White. But don’t wear puritanical white. Wear angelic white.”
“Better for the Catholics, I suppose.”
“They’ll see your shoulder blades as wings.”
“And you’ll be my guardian angel.”
“Can an angel have a penis?”
“If they can have wings, I don’t see why not.”
“Well.” Max smiled. “We’ll just have to ask Bishop What’s-His-Name when we see him. Penises and wings…What’s the answer, Mr. Bishop?…Penises and wings. Penises and wings. How Greek of us.”
“My Molly.” Sarah walked into the bathroom despite Max’s final protests. The lavatory had a sterile sheen. The floor laid out in glossy black and white tiles positioned as connecting diamonds. The freestanding porcelain sink blended into the floor, and behind a milky bath curtain the tile pattern repeated itself in an ivy climb up the wall before stopping abruptly at the plaster. She draped her clothes over the curtain rod and sat down on the toilet. The seat, crisp from the partially open window, almost stung her bare bottom. The trickling of pee into the water was almost silent. And through the window shone only a slip of natural light, the rest clouded and blurred through the leafy pattern of the beveled glass. Almost as artificial and contrived as sunrise appearing through the glass panes on the set of Marguerite’s traveling 9, rue d’Antin flat. Swear to god, if it weren’t for the crack of natural light Sarah wouldn’t know the difference between the stage and reality.
AL LEVY’S ON THIRD AND MAIN was a trendy type of restaurant that had made oyster cocktails highbrow, just the type where a concierge would undoubtedly send a guest. It reeked of kickbacks and questionable funding, but where an assumed pact was made with the patrons to become coconspirators in the illusion of East Coast sophistication. The lighting was sparkly silver, set by a row of Italian imported chandeliers that hung in two straight lines along the almost impossible length of the vaulted ceilings. Each tinsel of glass was no doubt cleaned daily by an underpaid Mexican duped into believing that he had been immaculately chosen to apprentice for a dignified trade critical to keeping the American dream moving—making sure the diamonds sparkled. A grand elegant staircase rose from the center of the dining floor, with mahogany steps at least eight feet in length, made royal by a red woolen runner that draped the middle, balanced by a matching banister with carved lions’ heads at both top and bottom. The ascent up the stairs led to the balcony, and in the balcony was the bar, where a pianist in tails intermingled Mozart and Joplin.