Male: Wide-eyed! Ha!
Female: The girl didn’t know what she was getting herself into, being sweet and innocent as a lamb.
Male: Now I think I’m getting sick.
Female: Within days, the writer began weaving a web of lies and wickedness around her.
Male: Sounds wretched! Don’t tell me this man is permitted to freely roam the streets?
Female: He’s free as a bird. This known confidence trickster duped the poor girl into a friendship and then …
Male: Yes, Miss Innamorati?
Female: Oh, it’s too horrible to go on!
Male: But you have to! I insist upon it!
Female: Well, this con man bamboozled me into falling, GULP, in love with him.
Male: No! You’re the conned girl!
Female: I am.
Male: Please, I must know more details. How did it all start?
Female: In this very room, less than a fortnight ago, I told him the truth.
Male: Which was?
Female: That I loved him.
Male: Sounds like a very bad decision.
Female: The worst. But it was and is true and so I had to say it. Even though he is an unclean, unshaven, uncouth cad of a man, I love him. I told him this and then he committed a grievous crime against humanity.
Male: Which was? I’m almost afraid to hear it.
Female: He did not return the sentiment.
Male: What? But you’re so beautiful! Utterly enchanting!
Female: I know! And, what’s more, he committed this crime in broad daylight, in front of witnesses.
Male: Dear God. Witnesses? And no one did anything?
Female: Not a soul.
Male: The man must’ve lost the plot. Tell me, what happened next?
Female: Well, we went to Paris.
Male: You and he? Together?
Female: Yes. And a third person too.
Male: You traveled abroad, voluntarily, with a hardened criminal?
Female: There were extenuating circumstances. We had to help a friend. It was an emergency.
Male: Oh dear, I hope your friend is okay.
Female: Yes, she’s fine. She will be anyhow.
Male: What happened after you got to Paris?
Female: Well, this man, he continued his crime even as we cavorted— Male: Cavorted!
Female: As we cavorted throughout the city.
Male: Did you cavort any other places besides?
Female: I’m not going to dignify that with an answer. What I mean is we dined in cafés, strolled through the quiet, cold gardens, spent hours gazing at da Vincis and Rodins.
Male: Sounds splendid. “Where we are would be Paradise to me, if you would only make it so.”
Female: Wharton?
Male: Hardy. Well, surely after all this so-called cavorting the man finally rectified his crime and declared his love in return.
Female: He did not!
Male: I’m gobsmacked! How can that be?
Female: Truth be told, he’s a bit of a cheese weasel.
Male: What now?
Female: A cheese weasel. An idiot. I also believe the man is slow. Socially and mentally. He doesn’t recognize what love is, even when it’s knocked him upside the head.
Male: And you yourself are an arbiter of the feeling?
Female: Well, if I’m wrong then the only other explanation is that he didn’t say it because he doesn’t feel it.
[Long pause]
Male: Ah hell, Pru, you know—
Female: Laurel! No aliases.
Male: Fuck. [Pause] Well, in regard to the writer’s feelings, you are well aware that the two of you are of the same mind. I don’t need to tell you.
Female: Yes. You do. That’s how this works.
Male: But you already KNOW it, being a wise woman with vast experience in love.
Female: Not vast. Very limited, honestly. I thought I knew love—before—but this is something else.
[Long pause]
Female: You know, this is an awfully elaborate apology, Mr. Seton. Or are you not planning to apologize at all?
Male: I have, I believe?
Female: You’re a shit, you know that? You put me through all of this back-and-forth, saying you wanted it recorded. And for what? You’re not even going to say it?
Male: Pru …
Female: No. Screw this. Turn off the tape. You act playful but it’s only because you can’t … you can’t … you can’t have real feelings!
Male: I have many feelings. Every day even. But I’m a Brit. We’d rather not express them.
Female: You have big-time problems, Seton. Big. Time.
Male: I agree. My problems are many and they are big. The greatest of them is that I do love you, Laurel Innamorati, my Valentine. I love you more than I can satisfactorily say, which is why I haven’t been able to say it. Love. It feels so … insipid, wishy-washy. I want a better way to tell you.
Female: Just tell me the real way. Like a normal person.
Male: I love you, Laurel.
Female: I love you too. Now turn off the damned tape.
Sixty-seven
?LE SAINT-LOUIS
PARIS
NOVEMBER 2001
Dead air ran for several minutes.
When Annie was sure she’d heard everything, she turned off the tape, then swapped it with one of Gus’s recordings. Her eyes were wet but she had a smile on her face. That was her mom, on the tape, professing her love to a man.