Даниэла Стил - The Affair

Nicolas asked if they’d eaten and offered them lunch as soon as they arrived. They said they’d eaten at the Gorilla Bar in Saint-Tropez, and weren’t hungry. But they both accepted wine, and the photographer set up his cameras while Barbara Jaffe, the writer they’d flown out from New York, sat down and chatted informally with them. Pascale was playing the star, which Nicolas didn’t mind. It suited her, and kept the attention off him. He didn’t want to be the focus of the interview and wasn’t planning to stay long.

The photographer suggested a few casual photographs before they started, and Nicolas sat on the arm of her chair, feeling awkward at first, and then slowly relaxed as Pascale leaned toward him. They stood up near the pool then, and the photographer positioned her so they got a good view of her profile to show off the baby. Then in a more relaxed moment between shots, she sat on Nicolas’s lap while they were laughing, and kissed him. It was a perfect moment of tenderness and humor, and the photographer snapped it instantly, knowing the shot was pure gold. Then the interview began.

Barbara had a full list of questions in her notebook, about how and where they had met, what they had thought when they first laid eyes on each other, was it love at first sight? What had it been like working on the film together? How had their relationship developed? How did they like to spend their time? Where were they living? How did they envision their life together now as parents? She asked about their views of the future and how their relationship would affect their work. She wanted to know if they planned to work together again and how they thought the baby would impact their careers, and their life together. It was the full-court press about everything people wanted to know, both their fans and their detractors. And the answers the writer culled from them were everything Nicolas hadn’t wanted to tell them and promised himself he wouldn’t, but she was artful and adept and got what she wanted, although most of it wasn’t true. Pascale was much more relaxed than he was, and willing to tell Barbara anything. Nicolas was less accustomed to giving interviews, which he seldom did. Barbara never asked him directly about Nadia and their marriage, but her existence was implied in several of the questions.

Nicolas successfully deflected some of it, and whenever he did, Pascale leapt into the breach and supplied everything they wanted to know. Nicolas cringed a few times as he listened, and tried to temper what she said, but Pascale would not be curbed. She wasn’t afraid to voice her opinion that she thought marriage was a ridiculous, antiquated tradition, which no longer served any purpose in today’s fast-moving, ever-changing world. She said that people needed to be free in order to grow, and no relationship was meant to last forever. That was a fairy tale, not reality. She said she thought that having babies was a natural part of life, and you didn’t have to be married or even be with the same partner to give a child a happy life. She used the example of native tribes in different cultures where the tribe raised the child, and not the mother or father. She said she’d been raised by her grandmother when her mother was working, and she had benefited from it. And their child was going to spend time with her mother when she was busy. Her answer inspired Barbara to ask her if she intended to bring up her baby and care for it herself at all.

“I hope not,” she said, laughing, and explained that she was going to leave him with her mother most of the time, while she pursued her career. She said she was too young to be tied down changing diapers, and Barbara asked Nicolas how he felt about that. He said, in his charming French accent, that Pascale’s point of view was very different from his. He said he had grown up with a traditional mother and father and a stable family life. He mentioned too that he had two daughters who were also being brought up in his more traditional style.

“And how do they feel about the baby?” Barbara asked him. She was inching up on his marriage, but he saw her coming and sidestepped her. But he had walked right into her trap about his daughters.

“I’m sure they will be delighted,” he said smoothly, without saying that they knew nothing about it.

“And your wife?” Barbara lobbed a potential bomb at him, and he sent it right back to her with a smile.

“She’s not part of this interview, Miss Jaffe. She’s not here to speak for herself.”

“Thank God,” Pascale said, and laughed, and Nicolas shot her a warning look, then realized he had stayed far too long, and waited for an opportune moment to leave.

“Has the transition from one woman to the next been difficult for you?” the interviewer asked him. He smiled and didn’t answer. She had been warned not to go there, but couldn’t help trying, and she got nothing from him. Instead, he thanked her for her time, kissed Pascale on her forehead, and quietly disappeared. But despite his elusive exit, which took the writer by surprise, he knew that he had said more than he should have and was worried about how his answers would look in print, especially to Nadia if she read it, and he feared she would.

They took more photographs of Pascale then, nearly naked in her bikini bottom, without the lace dress, getting into the pool. She had a body that every woman would have died for, pregnant or not. They wanted some of her in the pool with Nicolas, but he said he was busy and did not reappear.

When Pascale told him the interview was over, Nicolas returned to thank them and say goodbye. The two emissaries from Mode left a few minutes later, and Pascale lay dripping wet on a deck chair and smiled at him.

“I thought that went great, didn’t you?” He wasn’t so sure.

“They asked quite a lot of questions they weren’t supposed to.” He was worried about some of Pascale’s answers, and his own, which gave them too much information they could use that he hadn’t wanted to reveal. Pascale was naïve and assumed they’d be kind, and said she didn’t care what they said about her. But he did. He didn’t want them making his situation with Nadia even worse than it was, or wounding her even more than she already had been. The fact that Pascale was in his life was enough. Her words were dangerous. She had supplied all the ammunition they wanted, gift-wrapped, and handed it to them. And even worse, he feared he might have too.

—

When Rose saw the first draft of the interview, she sat at her desk and groaned out loud. Barbara Jaffe had quoted Pascale on every subject, and her answers made her sound stupid, narcissistic, amoral, irresponsible, and hard, all of which was probably true. Nicolas seemed like a besotted fool who had thrown his life out the window for a girl with a sensational body, little brain, and no heart.

“I’d like to trim this down,” Rose said through pursed lips when Barbara came to her office a few days later. “I think you have more than you need. We don’t have to drive the point home.”

“She said all of it, and so did he,” the writer said innocently, disappointed that Rose wanted to cut it down. “It doesn’t run too long. I counted the words.” But Rose had final say.

“True, but she repeats herself quite a lot. It’s obvious that she’s a young woman with loose morals, who isn’t looking to a future with him, and has very little interest in her child. We always have to keep our eye on the periphery. Who is standing just out of sight who is going to be hurt by this? His wife, his two daughters. I’d like to keep the piece as clean as possible. It slides too easily into the tawdry with what she says. It’s obviously a story about lust and not love, and the baby was an unfortunate accident. I want to keep it simple. She’s a movie star, people will forgive her some of it. But let’s not go too far.” She had used a red pencil to indicate where she wanted it cut. The writer looked disappointed but knew better than to argue with her. That wouldn’t have been a smart move, and Barbara Jaffe was ambitious. This was a big break for her. And her enthusiasm had caused her to cross some boundaries that she normally wouldn’t have. She also knew from the grapevine that Nicolas was Rose’s son-in-law, so it didn’t totally surprise her that she was protecting both of them and wanted to trim the piece.