Cleopatra and Frankenstein(41)

“Un verre de malbec, s’il vous plait,” Cleo said, pleased to have pronounced the words smoothly for once.

“We don’t have malbec,” he said.

He had a nose like a fishhook and tiny pink ears the size of clamshells.

“Oh, I see.” Cleo was flustered out of her French. “Anything red is fine.” Her face tightened into an ingratiating smile.

The waiter nodded and stalked back inside. Why did she feel the need to make everyone, even this waiter, like her? What a thing it must be to be indifferent to indifference.

A group of teenagers had gathered by the locked gates of the church, leaning against their mopeds and smoking aimlessly. Cleo recognized some of them from the hotel. They were the brown-armed girls who carried towels to the pool, the young waiters who served her and Frank at dinner. Cleo felt uncomfortable in their presence, aware that she was not much older than them. Frank joked and bantered with all the staff unselfconsciously, distributing compliments and palmfuls of euros liberally. Meanwhile, Cleo kept her eyes downcast when the eager waiters reached across her to clear the plates, pretending not to see their admiring glances. Free now of their starched white shirts and ties, they appeared to Cleo to be even more robustly youthful and male. She watched as they bent toward the girls, teasing and pulling away, that familiar dance of shyness and desire.

The waiter returned carrying a small carafe, a glass, and an ashtray.

“It’s okay, I brought my own.” Cleo held up the white-and-gold ashtray she had inexplicably brought from the hotel. Out came her inexhaustible smile. The waiter said nothing, returning to the football game with, Cleo was sure, even more disdain for the tourists he must serve all summer with their strange customs and sunburns and complete ignorance of wine. Bringing one’s own ashtray was the kind of nonsensical joke Frank would have liked, though he was more in the habit of taking things from the places they went. Often they’d leave a restaurant and Frank would slip open his pocket to reveal a salt shaker, teaspoon, or candleholder with a grin.

“Memento,” he’d say.

“Loot,” Cleo replied, but she always laughed. It was freeing to be with someone who wasn’t afraid of breaking the rules.

Cleo took a deep sip of her wine, then another. She had not yet managed the art of being alone in public unselfconsciously, of feeling that she could watch rather than be watched. She’d tried to explain this to Frank, that life in public for her happened from the outside in.

“You should enjoy the fact that people admire you,” he’d said. “You’ll miss it when you’re my age, trust me.”

The American man at dinner had noticed her. Frank and Cleo were sitting at one of the courtyard tables by the wall where the ivy and bougainvillea grew thickest, when he had insinuated himself into their conversation through some shared acquaintance with Frank in New York. Frank didn’t mind, he liked a drinking partner, but Cleo had felt from the moment he leaned down and shook her hand that he was there for her.

He’d turned to talk to Frank, but he watched her with the side of his head like a seagull. He was handsome and southern, with a mahogany tan and a cream Panama hat, white teeth clinking against his glass. Frank was from Manhattan, but this man was what Cleo thought of as a real American, the kind who grew up going to the big game and having sex with girls in the back of cars. Neither Frank nor Cleo could drive.

“Cleo’s the Francophile,” Frank had said over dinner. “Did her thesis on Soutine. His meat paintings. Genius stuff.”

“So, you’re smart,” said the American. “Lots of pretty girls out there, but you’re smart too. That your thing?”

He stubbed out his cigarette and looked her square in the face for the first time.

“I don’t think I have a thing,” said Cleo.

“Sure you do,” said the American. “Everyone does.”

“Cleo’s like a cat,” said Frank. “She can touch you, but you can’t touch her. That’s her thing.”

“I think that’s a British thing.” The American laughed, pouring them another round from the bottle Frank had ordered. Cleo stuck her hand over her glass. “No more? Okay. What’s the saying? Only show affection to dogs and horses? Stiff upper lip and all that crap.”

“Actually, we’re the most sexually active country in Europe,” said Cleo. She nodded toward a middle-aged French couple fondling each other over their soufflé at the next table. “Even more than here. If you can believe.”

“I sure can,” the American said. “It’s the polite ones you gotta watch out for.”

Frank’s glasses flashed in the candlelight.

“So, what’s my thing?” Frank asked.

“Yours is easy,” said the American. “You have to win.”

“Everyone likes to win,” said Frank. “That can’t be my thing.”

“Not like to,” said the American. “Have to. Need to. I know your agency. How many Lions did you win at Cannes this year?”

“One gold, two bronze,” Frank said with evident pride.

“See?” said the American.

Frank was smiling down at his hands in blissful recollection of this triumph. The American lit another cigarette and barely perceptibly winked at Cleo.

“What’s your thing?” asked Frank.