He read on. A little village in the south of France, on the Mediterranean. A fishing village, where a few Parisians come every August to stay at the Hotel Dorado. Autumn, the season over, the hotel deserted. The owners, an old couple, about to retire. The hotel has been sold to a large combine, they’re going to tear it down and build a new one, modern and expensive. The couple decides to write to their oldest, most faithful clients. “The hotel is going out of business, but come and stay with us the last weekend in October, we’ll have a glass of wine, a few memories.”
Casson looked up. “All in one weekend?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good.”
“A night when they arrive. A day when we meet them, a long night when everything happens, then a little scene where they get on the train to go back to Paris—except for the ones who are going to run off together and start a new life.”
Casson went back to reading. The characters you’d want—the Corps Humaine, the human repertory company—were all there. The banker, the confidence man, the actress, the postal clerk and his wife who scrimp and save all year so they can pretend to be upper class for two weeks, the lovers—their spouses left in Paris—the widow, the couple about to separate, giving it one last chance.
“Who’s the star, Louis?”
“I thought—one of those ideas that’s either a love letter from the gods or a little patch of quicksand meant just for you—it should be a young woman. Lonely, mysterious. Who misses her train and comes there by accident. Not a member of the sentimental company but, finally, its heart. Or, I don’t know, maybe that’s overdoing it.”
Casson waved him off. “No, that’s what I like about this kind of movie, you can’t really overdo it.”
“Who would you want to star?”
Casson watched the falling snow for a time. “Last May, a hundred years ago if you know what I mean, I had lunch with old Perlemère, who used to represent Citrine, and her name came up in the conversation.”
Fischfang’s eyes sparkled. “That’s good. More than one way, if you think about it.”
“Beautiful—not pretty. Mysterious. No virgin. She’s been to the wars, she’s battle-scarred, but maybe she can try one last time, maybe she can love again, but we don’t know until the final scene. It should be—will life let her?”
“A character trying to come back,” Fischfang said. “Played by an actress trying to come back.”
Casson nodded. “Something like that.”
They both smiled. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn’t, like everything else. But they were trying, at least. They could see their breath when they talked in the cold kitchen, outside the snow drifted past. “I’ll get it typed up,” Casson said.
Hugo Altmann tilted his chair back and blew a long, slow, meditative plume of smoke at the ceiling of his office. “Citrine, Citrine,” he said. “Do you know, Casson, that she always seemed to me the most elementally French actress. The sort of woman, in bed she gives everything. Yet there is something inside her, a bitterness, a knowledge of the world, that spoils it all—you get everything, but it isn’t what you wanted.” He paused a moment. “You’ve worked with her before?”
“Night Run.”
“Ach, of course. And to direct?”
“Don’t really know yet.”
“Well, let’s find you some development money, and get a screenplay on paper. Who do you have in mind there? Cocteau’s working, lots of others.”
“Louis Moreau, perhaps.”
“Who?”
“Moreau.”
“Never heard of him.”
“He’s new.”
“Hm. Well, all right, give him a try.” He leaned over toward Casson, his expression shrewd and confidential. “So, between us, who saves the hotel at the end, eh? I’m betting on the confidence man,” he said with a wink.
It took two weeks to find Citrine. He trudged across the city, office to office, the world of small-time talent agents, booking agents, press agents—everybody knew somebody. Perlemère helped, offering the names of a few friends. In the end, it turned out that she was performing at a cabaret amid the working-class dance halls on the rue de Lappe, out by Bastille. Le Perroquet, the parrot, it was called. Casson pulled his coat tight around him and kept his eyes down—this was not his district, he didn’t belong here, and he didn’t want a punch in the nose to remind him of it.
Closed, the first time he went. No reason, just closed. The blue neon parrot on a red branch was dark. The next time he tried was on Christmas Eve, and it was open. There was a poster by the door, the name Loulou across the bottom. Citrine—though it took him a moment to recognize her—Citrine on a high stool. Top hat, net fabric with rhinestones on top, bare legs crossed down below, spike heels with satin bows, a cabaret smile. Well, what about you, big boy?
A Christmas Eve blizzard. The white flakes swirled and hissed and made drifts in the doorways. Now and then a car came sliding down the street, tires spinning, engine whining as it worked its way around a corner. The blue-painted glass on the street lamps cast Hollywood moonlight on the snow.
Hot inside, steamy, and packed. He tried the stage door, but a doorman dressed like an apache—black sweater and beret and cigarette dangling from the corner of the mouth—ran him off. “You’ll pay. Like the rest of the world, conard.”
He paid. To join a hundred German officers jammed together in a small room, reeking of shaving lotion and stale sweat and spilled wine and all the rest of it. There was a master of ceremonies in a tuxedo, sweating and telling jokes, then zebras, naked girls in zebra masks, bucking and prancing, hoisting their knees up to their foreheads and singing “Paris smells so sweet.” Saluting British style—whistles from the crowd—then turning around and grabbing their ankles—roars of approval. A fat major next to Casson almost died of pleasure, laughed as tears ran down his cheeks, gave Casson a best-pal whack between the shoulder blades that sent him flying into the crowd.
Then the room went dark, the curtain creaked open, a violet spotlight popped on, and there was Loulou. By then he’d worked his way to a position near the stage where he knew she would be able to see him, and, after the second number, she did. He could tell. At first, Jesus it’s Casson, what’s he doing here? Then the corner of her mouth lifted, not much, but a little: he was there to see her, it was no accident.
But he wasn’t going to see her anytime soon. A table of colonels, prominent in the front of the room, demanded the presence of the beautiful Loulou and she was produced, guided to the table by the owner of the Perroquet, an eel in a checked suit. They were merry colonels, they touched her shoulder and told her jokes and tried to speak French and gave her champagne and had quite a time for themselves. Question was, would Hansi be the one to fuck her, or was she going to favor Willi? The battle raged, the competing armies surged back and forth as Casson looked at his watch and realized that the last Métro of the night had left Bastille station.
Finally the owner came around, bowed and scraped and tried to get his chanteuse back. Hansi and Willi were in no mood for that, but the owner had a trick up his checked sleeve and sent a phalanx of zebras into action. They arrived neighing and whinnying, sat on the colonels’ laps and wiggled about, tickled their chins, stole their eyeglasses and fogged them with their breath.
The colonels roared and turned red. Champagne was poured into glasses and everywhere else—to the colonels it seemed that champagne had found its way to places where champagne had never been before. One ingenious soul filled his mouth until his eyes bulged, then punched his cheeks with his index fingers—pfoo!—showering Hansi and Willi, assorted zebras, and Loulou, who wiped her face with her hand as she made her escape and climbed up on the tiny stage.