Cleopatra and Frankenstein(40)

“Two if she dives with you!”

Cleo shifted in the wicker armchair. Behind her she could hear the low hum of the last diners on the restaurant’s terrace below, and beyond that the cicadas in the lavender banks sloping down to Cannes, and beyond that the vineyard dogs barking in their nighttime cages, and beyond that the sea, where every animal was free.

“She wouldn’t,” said Frank.

But when he turned to face her, she knew his expression even in the shadows, the look that was half question, half dare. Cleo looked at the ashtray she’d been turning in her hands. Gold and scalloped, it was at odds with the spartan look of the room. Frank liked to joke that this hotel charged a king’s ransom to live like a monk, but it was he who’d suggested they stay here. Cleo loved the simplicity of the room, as he knew she would, the stone floors that stayed cold underfoot all day, the low wooden bed and sun-bleached mosquito net knotted above the bed like a beehive.

Europe’s most celebrated artists had stayed in this hotel, paying for their pleasures with their work. A large Calder mobile swung in the breeze at the head of the swimming pool. There was a Fernand Léger mural on one side of the restaurant courtyard, and a César Baldaccini sculpture standing guard at its entrance. In Cleo and Frank’s bedroom, a pencil sketch of the Virgin Mary by Matisse hung unassumingly above the bed.

“One and a half grand!” called the voice downstairs. “But you’ve got to bull’s-eye through the swan. Last offer.”

“The swan?” Frank shouted. “You’re kidding! It’s child-sized!”

The swan was Cleo’s ride of choice. Frank had returned from the tabac that morning with a shopping bag of pool toys that included a grinning dolphin, a crocodile bed, a flotation ring with a swan’s head and wings, and a surrealistic giant lobster claw. Cleo and Frank had made a game of racing them while the other guests lay sunning themselves like lizards around the pool.

“Frank, please,” said Cleo quietly to his back.

“Cleo has an objection!” Frank said, laughing, to the voice below.

“Don’t wimp out now, brother!” The voice was taunting. “It’s only one floor. Well, two … You can make it.”

“Please don’t,” said Cleo. “For me.”

Frank looked back at Cleo. She held his gaze. He smiled.

“Fuck it!” he yelled and turned back to the voice below. He clambered over the railings and held himself steady with two hands behind him. “One and a half grand! A down payment on my head surgery!”

“We’re in Europe!” the voice yelled. “It’s free!”

It took Cleo less than ten seconds to walk to the door and slam it behind her. It took her another thirty to realize he was not coming after her. She stood in the hallway, still holding the ashtray, and listened for the splash, but she heard nothing. She would not turn back now. Carefully, she carried herself down the stairs and through the courtyard below. She paused again in front of the wooden door that led outside. Suddenly it opened, revealing one of the pair of retired headmistresses who had introduced themselves to Cleo and Frank a few days earlier by the pool.

“Hello, dear. Heading out?”

It was the beginning of the off-season, and the handful of remaining guests at the hotel had formed a temporary community, chatting to each other over their cantaloupe and coffee in the mornings, taking up the same positions around the pool each day. Cleo and Frank suspected that the headmistresses were covertly a couple and enjoyed watching them sit under the shade of the Cyprus trees, playing cards. They both adored Frank, who flirted with them shamelessly and always offered them a glass from the bottles of chilled white wine he ordered a steady supply of by the pool.

“Here, let me help you.” Cleo rushed to hold open the heavy door.

“Hard to get fruit at this time of night,” the headmistress said. She lifted up a mesh bag of oranges. “At my age, you need a lot of it. Keeps you regular.”

She walked past, then turned and held Cleo’s arm with a firmness that surprised her.

“You’re very lovely, you know,” she said. “You must enjoy it while you can. You think it will last forever, but it won’t.”

The older woman patted her elbow matter-of-factly and walked on. Cleo took a breath and passed through the wooden door into the square outside, where men were playing boules on a patch of red earth. The café across the square glowed like a paper lantern. Clusters of people sat round little wooden tables outside, releasing bubbles of conversation and laughter that popped against Cleo’s skin. She turned away and walked up the quiet cobbled street that led to the top of the town.

She told herself she’d turn around after every step, but she did not slow her pace as she clambered past the dark shops full of garish tourist art, the closed tabacs and patisseries. At the top, she could see the high medieval stone wall that encircled the town, originally built to keep out intruders, but now a viewing platform for visitors to overlook the bright lights of Cannes and the Cap d’Antibes below.

Cleo tucked the ashtray under her arm and checked the pockets of her skirt. One held her cigarettes and a lighter; the other, two large bills Frank had given her that morning for souvenirs. Everything she needed. She took a seat outside a half-empty café across from the dark church and shuttered ice cream shop. Peering through the window of the café, where a handful of men sat huddled in the green glow of a soccer game on the television, she caught the waiter’s eye. He peeled himself away from the others with the disgruntled look of someone who believed his work was finished for the night.