“Not Ness, no way,” I reassure poor Quinn. “She respects you—and herself—way too much. Trust me. And when Lou dumped you,” this is for Chetwynd-Pitt, “you were a train wreck for months.”
“Lou and I were serious. Olly ’n’ Ness lasted what, all of five weeks? And Lou didn’t dump me. It was mutual.”
“Six weeks, four days.” Quinn looks tortured. “But it’s not time that matters. It felt … like a secret place just us two knew about.” He drinks his obscure Maltese beer. “She fittedme. I don’t know what love is, whether it’s mystical or chemical or what. But when you have it, and it goes, it’s like a … it’s like … it’s …”
“Cold turkey,” says Rufus Chetwynd-Pitt. “Roxy Music were right about love being thedrug, and when your supply’s used up, no dealer on earth can help you. Well: There isone—the girl. But she’s gone and won’t see you. See? I doknow what poor Olly’s suffering. What I’d prescribe is”—he waggles his empty cocktail glass—“an Angel’s Tit. Crиme de cacao,” he tells me, “and maraschino. Pile au bon moment, Mo nique, tu as des pouvoirs tйlйpathiques.” The plumper waitress arrives with my hot wine, and Chetwynd-Pitt deploys his smart-arse French: “Je prendrai une Alien Urine, et ce sera mon ami ici prйsent”—he nods at me—“qui rйglera l’ardoise.”
“Bien,” says Monique, acting bubbly. “J’aimerais bien moi aussi avoir des amis comme lui. Et pour ces messieurs? Ils m’ont l’air d’avoir encore soif.” Fitzsimmons orders a cassis, and Olly says, “Just another beer.” Monique gathers the used dishes and glasses and off she’s gone.
“Well, I’d fire my unsawn-off shotgun up that,” says Chetwynd-Pitt. “A cuddly six and a half. Yummier than that Wednesday Adams lookalike Gьnter’s also taken on. Frightmare or what?” I follow his gaze down to the skinnier bargirl. She’s filling a schooner of cognac. I ask if she’s French, but Chetwynd-Pitt’s asking Fitzsimmons, “You’re the answer man tonight, Fitz. What’s this love malarkey all about?”
Fitzsimmons lights a cigarette and passes us the box. “Love is the anesthetic applied by Nature to extract babies.”
I’ve heard that line elsewhere. Chetwynd-Pitt flicks ash into the tray. “Can you do better than that, Lamb?”
I’m watching the skinny barmaid making what must be Chetwynd-Pitt’s Alien Urine. “Don’t ask me. I’ve never been in love.”
“Oh, listen to the poor lamb,” mocks Chetwynd-Pitt.
“That’s crap,” says Quinn. “You’ve had lots of girls.”
Memory hands me a photo of Fitzsimmons’s yummy mummy. “Anatomically, I have some knowledge, sure—but emotionally they’re the Bermuda Triangle. Love, that drug Rufus referred to, that state of grace Olly pines for, that great theme … I’m immune to it. I have not once felt love for any girl. Or boy, for that matter.”
“That’s a pile of steaming bollocks,” says Chetwynd-Pitt.
“It’s the truth. I’ve never been in love. And that’s okay. The colorblind get by just fine not knowing blue from purple.”
“You can’t have met the right girl,” decides Quinn the idiot.
“Or met too many right girls,” suggests Fitzsimmons.
“Human beings,” I inhale my wine’s nutmeggy steam, “are walking bundles of cravings. Cravings for food, water, shelter, warmth; sex and companionship; status, a tribe to belong to; kicks, control, purpose; and so on, all the way down to chocolate-brown bathroom suites. Love is one way to satisfy some of these cravings. But love’s not just the drug; it’s also the dealer. Love wants love in return, am I right, Olly? Like drugs, the highs look divine, and I envy the users. But when the side effects kick in—jealousy, the rages, grief, I think, Count me out. Elizabethans equated romantic love with insanity. Buddhists view it as a brat throwing a tantrum at the picnic of the calm mind. I—”
“I spy an Alien Urine.” Chetwynd-Pitt smirks at the skinny barmaid and the tall glass of melon-green gloop on her tray. “J’espиre que ce sera aussi bon que vos Angel’s Tits.”
“Les boissons de ces messieurs.” Lips thin and unlipsticked, with a “messieurs” that came sheathed in irony. She’s gone already.
Chetwynd-Pitt sniffs. “There goes Miss Charisma 1991.”
The others clink their glasses while I hide one of my gloves behind a pot-plant. “Maybe she just doesn’t think you’re as witty as you think you are,” I tell Chetwynd-Pitt. “How does your Alien Urine taste?”
He sips the pale green gloop. “Exactly like its name.”
THE TOURIST SHOPS in Sainte-Agnиs’s town square—ski gear, art galleries, jewelers, chocolatiers—are still open at eleven, the giant Christmas tree’s still bright, and a cr к pier, dressed as a gorilla, is doing a brisk trade. Despite the bag of coke Chetwynd-Pitt just scored off Gьnter, we decide to put off Club Walpurgis until tomorrow night. It’s beginning to snow. “Damn,” I say, turning back. “I left a glove at Le Croc. You guys get Quinn home, I’ll catch you up …”
I hurry back down the alley and get to the bar as a large party of He-Norses and She-Norses leaves. Le Croc has a round window; through it I can see the skinny barmaid preparing a jug of Sangria without being seen. She’s very watchable, like the motionless bass player in a hyperactive rock band. She combines a fuck-you punkishness with a precision about even her smallest actions. Her will would be absolutely unswayable, I sense. As Gьnter takes the jug away into Le Croc’s interior she turns to look at me so I enter the smoky clamor and make my way between clusters of drinkers to the bar. After she’s wiped the frothy head off a glass of beer with the flat of a knife and handed it to a customer, I’m there with my forgotten glove gambit. “Dйsolй de vous embкter, mais j’йtais installй lа-haut”—I point to the Eagle’s Nest, but she doesn’t yet give away whether or not she remembers me—“il y a dix minutes et j’ai oubliй mon gant. Est-ce que vous l’auriez trouvй?”
Cool as Ivan Lendl slotting in a lob above an irate hobbit, she reaches down and produces it. “Bizarre, cette manie que les gens comme vous ont d’oublier leurs gants dans les bars.”
Fine, so she’s seen through me. “C’est surtout ce gant; зa lui arrive souvent.” I hold up my glove like a naughty puppet and ask it scoldingly, “Qu’est-ce qu’on dit а la dame?” Her stare kills my joke. “En tout cas, merci. Je m’appelle Hugo. Hugo Lamb. Et si pour vous, зa fait”—shit, what’s “posh” in French?—“chic, eh bien le type qui ne prend que des cocktails s’appelle Rufus Chetwynd-Pitt. Je ne plaisante pas.” Nope, not a flicker. Gьnter reappears with a tray of empty glasses. “Why do you speak French with Holly, Hugo?”
I look puzzled. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“He seemed keen to practice his French,” says the girl, in London English. “And the customer isalways right, Gьnter.”
“Hey, Gьnter!” An Australian calls over from the bar football. “This bastard machine’s playing funny buggers! I fed it my francs but it’s not giving me the goods.” Gьnter heads over, Holly loads up the dishwasher, and I work out what’s happened. When she returned my ski on the black run earlier, she used French, but she said nothing when my accent gave me away because if you’re female and working in a ski resort you must get hit on five times a day, and speaking French with Anglophones strengthens the force field. “I just wanted to say thanks for returning my ski earlier.”
“You already did.” Working-class background; unintimidated by rich kids; very good French.
“This is true, but I’d be dying of hypothermia in a lonely Swiss forest if you hadn’t rescued me. Could I buy you dinner?”
“I’m working in a bar while tourists are eating their dinner.”
“Then could I buy you breakfast?”
“By the time you’re having breakfast, I’ll have been mucking out this place for two hours, with two more hours to go.” Holly slams shut the glass-washer. “Then Igo skiing. Every minute spoken for. Sorry.”