Chasing Cezanne Read Free

secretary trotting alongside with her coat and a fistful of messages. Andre shook his head and went over to perch on the edge of Noel’s desk.
    â€œWell,” Andre said, “it’s icons, sweetie. On the Riviera. That’s all I know.”
    â€œAren’t you the lucky one.” Noel referred to his notepad. “Let’s see, now. The house is about twenty miles from Nice, just below Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Ospaloff is the old dear’s name, and she says she’s a princess.” Noel looked up and winked. “But don’t we all these days? Anyway, you’re booked in for three nights at the Colombe d’Or. Camilla’s coming through to do the interview on her way to Paris. She’ll be staying the night, so the two of you will be able to have a cozy little dinner. Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
    â€œDon’t worry about it, Noel. I’ll say I have a headache.”
    â€œYou do that. Here.” Noel pushed a folder across the desk. “Tickets, car and hotel confirmations, and MotherRussia’s address and phone number. Don’t miss the plane. She’s expecting you the day after tomorrow.”
    Andre slipped the folder in his bag and stood up. “Anything I can bring back for you? Espadrilles? Cellulite cream?”
    Noel raised his eyes to the ceiling and shuddered. “Since you ask, a little lavender essence would be very nice.” The phone rang. Noel picked it up, waggling his fingers in farewell as Andre turned to leave.
    The Riviera
. Andre wrapped the thought around himself like a blanket before going out to face the frozen grime of Madison Avenue. A bitter wind, cold enough to split skin, made pedestrians flinch and lower their heads. The nicotine fraternity—those huddled masses yearning to inhale who gather in small, guilty groups outside the entrance doors of Manhattan’s office buildings—looked more furtive and uncomfortable than ever, their faces pinched in a vise of frigid air, sucking on their cigarettes and shivering. Andre always thought it was ironic that smokers were denied equal-opportunity privileges and banished to the street, while their colleagues with a weakness for cocaine could indulge themselves in the warmth and relative comfort of the office rest rooms.
    He stood on the corner of Fifty-first and Fifth, hoping for a cab to take him downtown.
The Riviera
. By now the mimosa should be in bloom, and the more hardy inhabitants would be having lunch out of doors. The operators who ran the beaches would be adjusting their prices upward and wondering how little they could manage to paythis summer’s batch of
plagistes
. Boats would be having their bottoms scraped, their paintwork touched up, their charter brochures printed. The owners of restaurants, boutiques, and nightclubs would be flexing their wallets at the prospect of the annual payout, the May-to-September grind that allowed them to spend the rest of the year in prosperous indolence.
    Andre had always liked the Riviera, the effortless, usually charming way in which it plucked money from his pocket while somehow making him feel that he had been rendered a favor. He was quite happy to endure the over-populated beaches, the occasional rudeness, the frequently grotesque prices, the infamous summer traffic—all these and worse he could forgive in return for an injection of south of France magic. Ever since Lord Brougham reinvented Cannes in the 1830s, the coastal strip had been attracting aristocrats and artists, writers and billionaires, fortune hunters, merry widows, pretty girls on the make, and young men on the take. Decadent it might be, expensive and crowded it certainly was, but never dull. And, thought Andre, as the arrival of a cab saved him from frostbite, it would be warm.
    He was still closing the door when the cab took off, cut across the nose of a bus, and ran a red light. Andre recognized that he was in the hands of a