William Boyd - The Destiny of Nathalie X

The next morning, on my way down the rue de France to the Centre, I see Preston standing outside a pharmacy reading the Herald Tribune . I call his name and cross the road to tell him the excellent news about Annique.

“You won’t believe this,” I say, “but I finally got a real French girl.”

Preston’s face looks odd: half a smile, half a morose grimace of disappointment.

“That’s great,” he says dully, “wonderful.”

A tall, slim girl steps out of the pharmacy and hands him a plastic bag.

“This is Lois,” he says. We shake hands.

I know who Lois is, Preston has often spoken of her: my damn-near fiancée, he calls her. It transpires that Lois has flown over spontaneously and unannounced to visit him.

“And, boy, are my mom and dad mad as hell,” she says, laughing.

Lois is a pretty girl, with a round, innocent face quite free of makeup. She is tall — even in her sneakers she is as tall as me — with a head of incredibly thick, dense brown hair which, for some reason, I associate particularly with American girls. I feel sure also, though as yet I have no evidence, that she is a very clean person — physically clean, I mean to say — someone who showers and washes regularly, smelling of soap and the lingering farinaceous odor of talcum powder.

I stroll back with them to the Résidence. Lois’s arrival has temporarily solved Preston’s money problems: they have cashed in her return ticket and paid off the bar bill and the next quarter’s rent that had come due. Preston feels rich enough to buy back his watch from me.

Annique looks less mature and daunting in her swimsuit, I’m pleased to say, though I was disappointed that she favored a demure apple-green one-piece. The pool’s heater has been “fixed” and for the first time we all swim in the small azure rectangle — Preston and Lois, Annique and me. It is both strange and exciting for me to see Annique so comparatively unclothed and even stranger to lie side by side, thigh by thigh, inches apart, sunbathing.

Lois obviously assumes Annique and I are a couple — a quite natural assumption under the circumstances, I suppose — she would never imagine I had brought her for Preston. I keep catching him gazing at Annique, and a mood of frustration and intense sadness seems to emanate from him — a mood of which only I am aware. And in turn a peculiar exhilaration builds inside me, not just because of Lois’s innocent assumption about my relation to Annique, but also because I know now that I have succeeded. I have brought Preston the perfect French girl: Annique, by his standards, represents the paradigm, the Platonic ideal for this American male. Here she is, unclothed, lying by his pool, in his club, drinking his drinks, but he can do nothing — and what makes my own excitement grow is the realization that for the first time in our friendship — perhaps for the first time in his life — Preston envies another person. Me.

As this knowledge dawns, so too does my impossible love for Annique. Impossible, because nothing will ever happen. I know that — but Preston doesn’t, and somehow that ghostly love affair, our love affair, Annique and me, that will carry on in Preston’s head, in his hot and tormented imagination, embellished and elaborated by his disappointment and sense of lost opportunity, will be more than enough, more than I could ever have hoped for.

Now that Lois has arrived I stay away from the Résidence Les Anges. It won’t be the same again and, despite my secret delight, I don’t want to taunt Preston with the spectre of Annique. But I find that without the spur of his envy the tender fantasy inevitably dims; in order for my dream life, my dream love, to flourish, I need to share it with Preston. I decide to pay a visit. Preston opens the door of his studio.

“Hi, stranger,” he says with some enthusiasm. “Am I glad to see you.” He seems sincere. I follow him into the apartment. The small room is untidy, the bed unmade, the floor strewn with female clothes. I hear the noise of the shower from the bathroom: Lois may be a clean person but it is clear she is also something of a slut.

“How are things with Annique?” he asks, almost at once, as casually as he can manage. He has to ask, I know it.

I look at him. “Good.” I let the pause develop, pregnant with innuendo. “No, they’re good.”

His nostrils flare and he shakes his head.

“God, you’re one lucky—”

Lois comes in from the bathroom in a dressing gown, toweling her thick hair dry.

“Hi, Edward,” she says, “what’s new?” Then she sits down on the bed and begins to weep.

We stand and look at her as she sobs quietly.

“It’s nothing,” Preston says. “She just wants to go home.” He tells me that neither of them has left the building for eight days. They are completely, literally, penniless. Lois’s parents have canceled her credit cards, and collect calls home have failed to produce any response. Preston has been unable to locate his father and now his stepfather refuses to speak to him (a worrying sign), and although his mother would like to help she is powerless for the moment, given Preston’s fall from grace. Preston and Lois have been living on a diet of olives, peanuts and cheese biscuits served up in the bar and, of course, copious alcohol.

“Yeah, but now we’re even banned from there,” Lois says, with an unfamiliar edge to her voice.

“Last night I beat up on that fuckwit, Serge,” Preston explains with a shrug. “Something I had to do.”

He goes on to enumerate their other problems: their bar bill stands at over three hundred dollars; Serge is threatening to go to the police unless he is compensated; the management has grown hostile and suspicious.

“We got to get out of here,” Lois says miserably. “I hate it here, I hate it.”

Preston turns to me. “Can you help us out?” he says. I feel laughter erupt within me.

I stand in Nice station and hand Preston two train tickets to Luxembourg and two one-way Iceland Air tickets to New York. Lois reaches out to touch them as if they were sacred relics.

“You’ve got a six-hour wait in Reykjavik for your connection,” I tell him, “but, believe me, there is no cheaper way to fly.”

I bask in their voluble gratitude for a while. They have no luggage with them, as they could not be seen to be quitting the Résidence. Preston says his father is now in New York and assures me I will be reimbursed the day they arrive. I have spent almost everything I possess on these tickets, but I don’t care — I am intoxicated with my own generosity and the strange power it has conferred on me. Lois leaves us to go in search of a toilet and Preston embraces me in a clumsy hug. “I won’t forget this, man,” he says many times. We celebrate our short but intense friendship and affirm its continuance, but all the while I am waiting for him to ask me — I can feel the question growing in his head like a tumor. Through the crowds of passengers we see Lois making her way back. He doesn’t have much time left.

“Listen,” he begins, his voice low, “did you and Annique …? I mean, are you—”

“We’ve been looking for an apartment. That’s why you haven’t seen much of me.”

“Jesus …”

Lois calls out something about the train timetable, but we are not listening. Preston seems to be trembling, he turns away, and when he turns back I see the pale fires of impotent resentment light his eyes.

I look at him in that way men look at each other. And then I say, “Are you fucking her?”

“Why else would we be looking for an apartment?” Lois arrives and immediately notices Preston’s taut face, oddly pinched. “What’s going on?” Lois asks. “Are you OK?”