For most of his youth, until his inherited talent and devoted work slowly led to greater ambition, he dreamed of living in a small, quiet place in a poor neighborhood, with a pretty wife, a cheap car, and perhaps a city job: clerk, sweeper, motorman, guard. He would be unheralded, undistinguished, and unambitious, but alive to every little thing, appreciative and observant of all the frictions of life, happy to live in the shadows, free to cultivate memory and devotion as busy people who grasp at the future seldom can. And now when he passed through the gray concrete cliffs of the banlieue, although he would never choose to leave his magnificent lodgings, he wondered what it would have been like, and was almost envious.
There would be nothing in that day’s papers of what had happened on the ?le aux Cygnes, so he threw them away. No matter what was occurring in Africa, space, or the Middle East, not to mention all of France, there was only one story he would have the patience to read. Although in regard to Luc and his own health time was against him, in regard to the ?le aux Cygnes it was salvation. No matter how devoted and programmatical were the police, time would dissolve evidence, passion, and motivation. Even in the relatively short term, after a month or two, he could not possibly be expected to come up with an account of his whereabouts or actions thirty or sixty days before. That clock had just begun to run.
On his terrace, far from the center of Paris, shielded by distance, riches, the trees, and the top of a fortress-like palisade, every slow breath marked the increasing seconds in which there was no knock at the door. But then the telephone rang. He started, and was frozen as it rang eight more times. Of course, the police would not have his telephone number, and wouldn’t have called him if they did. When finally he answered, the line was as clear as it would have been had someone been calling from next door, but the call was from New York. A woman’s voice asked in English if he was Jewels Lacour. “Please hold for Jack.”
“Hey Jewels! Hey!”
“Jack?”
“Jewels! We love it! Rich loves it! You didn’t get my email?”
“I haven’t looked. I don’t really like the email.”
“It’s all in there. We’re taking it. Isn’t that great?”
Jules hesitated. “Yes, yes, it’s great.” For some reason, he was fearful. He felt it in his stomach, but then he overruled it.
“Look, we want to use it for the Super Bowl, so we’ve got to get going. There’s gonna have to be a big change-over throughout the world. It’s a rush. We need you now in L.A. to orchestrate and record. Can you come right away?”
“Yes.”
“That’s perfect. It’s all in the email, a deal memo, which is a sort of contract. You know, emails, they never go away unless you’re Hillary Clinton. Get back to us, and we’ll see you soon. Any problems, call me.”
“Okay.”
“Great, Jewels. I won’t be in L.A. but I’ll see you in New York.”
“Okay, but ….” The line went dead as Jack had something else to attend to.
Jules didn’t bother with a few other emails but opened Jack’s directly. It read: “Acorn International Ltd., A subsidiary of Acorn Holding Company, London and The Hague, accepts the composition forwarded by M. Jules Lacour as of this date, and will pay Euro 500,000 upon completion of orchestration and recording in units of varying length to be used in different venues and media throughout the world for the purpose of promoting Acorn’s products, corporate image, and good name, without further payment or restriction.”
Already living far more dangerously than even a bank robber, Jules wrote back, “I cannot agree for less than one million Euros,” and hit send. He remained staring at the screen, not expecting anything. But then, in less than a minute, the answer appeared.
He opened it. “Agreed. One million Euros.” The phone rang. It was the secretary again.
“Hold for Jack.”
Jack came on the line, and without even making sure Jules was there, he said, “No problem, Jewels. We accept. When will you be in L.A.?”
“As soon as I can get a flight. Where in L.A.? Is there a person to contact?”
“Just go to the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills and get a room on a high floor, not on the entrance side. At night the bar gets really noisy, believe me, I know. Look east and over the back garden if you can. Better yet, south and over the pool. We’ll get in touch with you when we’ve got the personnel lined up. We’re working on it, but it may take a while to get an orchestra together, because the studios take precedence. Still, you should be there so that when they’re ready you’ll be available. Save your receipts and we’ll take care of everything at the end. Fly business class. We’re no longer allowed to deduct First, but don’t stint on anything else. In L.A. you’ll need to rent a nice car, so you’d better reserve it as soon as possible. They don’t always have them.”
“What kind of car?”
“I don’t know, something nice. A Mercedes or a BMW. Try a convertible. It’s L.A.”
“But that would be so expensive,” Jules said.
“A business expense, Jewels. Go for it.” Jack hung up abruptly, as usual, as if Jules didn’t exist.
“Okay,” Jules said to the empty ether before he put down the phone.
The Policeman Is Your Friend
CATHéRINE, DAVID, AND Luc lived half an hour to the northwest, if there was no traffic. If there were, that would be something else. Jules usually visited in late morning when the roads were clearest. He didn’t like to drive at night, so in winter when he went for dinner he would take the RER. Jules thought that Cergy looked like Germany. Despite that, his daughter’s house, with a roof of bright-orange terra-cotta tiles, was the typical little French villa advertised in the back of magazines. These houses were always very neat on the outside and rectangular in shape. They were somehow French and yet not French at all, too Mediterranean for the North, but not Mediterranean enough for the South. The orange roofs and white stucco exteriors had the effect both in photographs and in reality of bringing up the greenery around them and making the leaves in the bushes and on the trees seem waxy even if they were not. Jules thought that probably inside every such house was a washer-dryer combination that loaded from the front through a Nemo-like glass door, and that because of this, generations of children would be calmed by sloshing water and tumbling clothes.