Crowned Heads Read Online Free PDF Page B

I have spent much time there, and I know. They just didn’t have it. Not then, not now.’
    “‘You don’t like Greece?’
    “‘A land of goats and ruins. Nothing but veal and Ionic columns. And I dislike the wine. Give me a good Vouvray pétillant every time. Do you have one or two moments for me?’
    “Did I have one or two moments for her? I was aware that her look amounted to a survey, long and calculating. My insides were churning. I felt drawn to her, physically moved, hypnotized even. Almost dumbstruck. She was ineffable, she had this winning impudence, a kind of daring—not toward me, who was nobody to her, but a daring of her position, her stardom. As if she were pitting both her power and her vulnerability against a stranger. I felt that I was her instrument. I would have done anything for her, been anything, gone anywhere. As it happened, she only wanted to go to another part of the museum. ‘Come along,’ she said. ‘There’s something I want to look at.’ I went with her, carrying my sketching things, and remembered only as we started climbing the staircase under the ‘Winged Victory’ that Denyse was already late and would be looking for me.
    “‘I’m supposed to meet someone,’ I blurted out, and she made a noise, something halfway between a sniff and a snort.
    “‘I, too,’ she said. ‘Never mind, they will find us. People can always manage to find me. Somehow.’ She said it so ruefully that I laughed, but she found it no laughing matter. ‘Ver-ry funny, you think. You would find it otherwise if you were I.’
    “We got to the top of the next flight of stairs and she headed for the lobby, saying she wanted a cigarette. She didn’t have any, so I offered her one of my Camels. She said she liked the taste, and pocketed the whole pack.”
    “Just like that?”
    “Just like that. No thank you, nothing. She smoked and puffed and watched me—a real examination—then she grabbed my sleeve again and felt the material.
    “‘Where do you get a shirt like that?’ she demanded. It was a wool lumberjack shirt with the tails out. I told her my mother had sent it to me from Abercrombie’s in New York.
    “‘It’s very red,’ she said.
    “‘Hunter red, they call it’
    “‘You are a hunter? You shoot little animals?’
    “I laughed. ‘No. It’s just what they call it, hunter red, like in hunting coats.’
    “‘Ahhh. I see.’ She nodded, but she was still looking me over. Then she reached out and turned my head from side to side. ‘Who do you have chop your hair off like that?’ I explained that I went to an Army barber, and she said, ‘If you let the Army cut your hair you deserve such a butchering. I know a good barber; you should go to him.’ When I asked who the barber was, she couldn’t remember. ‘Write your number,’ she ordered, and I gave it to her. ‘I will call you,’ she said.”
    “I bet she didn’t,” Marion interrupted.
    “I bet she did. I had the hunter-red shirt dry-cleaned, and brought it in a bag to the Sobryanskis’ house around the corner in Rue Monsieur. I handed it to the butler and said to take it to Madame Fedora.”
    “You gave it to her?” Marion asked. Barry nodded. “Did she thank you?”
    “Two days later the phone rang and a voice said, ‘Is that you? His name is Jérôme; he’s at the Crillon. Get your hair cut.’ Then she hung up.”
    “Without mentioning the shirt?”
    “Not a word. I figured the butler probably kept it…. Anyway, we finished our cigarettes, then passed through a number of galleries, mostly the Italian masters, but nothing interested her much until we got to the Dutch and Flemish school, where one caught her eye. It was a Hals, a portrait of an old woman, and she stopped, staring at the wrinkled face with a disdainful expression. ‘She looks like a washerwoman, I think. Can you believe I was once a washerwoman? Yes, it’s how I began my life, washing other people’s clothes. And my mother before me.’ I