with you. What the fuck are you talking about? Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.” “Easy,” I said. “I didn’t mean anything. It was a bad joke is all.” But who was I, and who was Vicky, and if I could go back to that moment and do it all again, knowing what I do now, would I? Would I really? Léo didn’t come to dinner that night. He had locked himself in his workshop, Michel reported. Antoine grinned at me. Marion and Vicky drank wine and pushed the dinner around on their plates. No one besides me seemed to have much appetite. I wish I could say that I gave in to Vicky and agreed to leave early the next morning, but I badgered her into staying another day, as we’d planned. Vicky wouldn’t turn toward me in bed that night, and when I woke up we were both outside on the tennis court, under the burning metal halide lights, rallying back and forth. There was no ball between us, but I was keeping up with Vicky, which was how I knew it wasn’t real, and at one point I called out to her, “You look so happy!” and she said, “ You look so happy!” and we laughed at ourselves and played on ecstatically to the flash of cameras, which caught the spindrifts of clay our feet sent up, the beads of sweat we let go in the air. Everything was a little better in the morning. Marion was up before us and seemed fine, although Léo had yet to emerge from the workshop. The three of us, Vicky, Marion, and I, went on a drive by ourselves. Marion took us to a small restaurant in the hills, where we sat on a terrace shaded by apple trees that looked out on the rolling country. We ate lunch and drank too much wine, and Vicky and Marion told stories from the tour. I listened, vaguely. The stories all had a similar cast. A wild point in some ancient match. Drunk evenings lost to a glittering world. How dim and dickish world-class athletes could be. Mostly the last, how complacent, how spiritually lazy, you became under the habitual glare of the world’s attention. I said as much and Marion said, “Ah, but sometimes
“This is an expression in English, no?” “Daniel, can you come in and talk to me a minute?” Vicky said. I looked at Léo and we shrugged at each other. He handed me a white towel and I wiped my face and arms and handed it back to him. I gave him the racket and went in with Vicky. “What is it?” I said when we were in our room. I peeled off my shirt and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, strong and lean, glistening. I had the urge to throw Vicky down on the bed and fuck her. “We have to leave,” she said. “Marion broke down on the drive back. She pulled off the road and almost crashed us. She said she’s going crazy. She couldn’t tell if she was crazy, or Léo, or both of them.” Vicky jittered and I held her with reluctant tenderness. “And then I saw you doing”—she fluttered her hands in incomprehension—“whatever the fuck you were doing when we got home.” “We were just horsing around,” I said. She didn’t seem to hear me. “Marion was so normal before. It’s Léo that made her like this. This place. It’s haunted or something. Please, we need to go.” “Léo?” I said. “He’s eccentric, sure, but he’s harmless, he’s sweet. Isn’t Marion maybe exaggerating a little?” I didn’t know what I believed. The truth was I didn’t care. I hoped Léo and I might continue our filming the next day and I wanted to stay on, no matter the cost. “I think Léo feels like Marion never really tried to know him.” Vicky looked at me strangely. “What do you know about it?” I was on the verge of saying I thought I understood Léo on a pretty deep level when Vicky added, “You know what Marion told me? She said she doesn’t even know if she exists anymore. She’s losing her mind.” I couldn’t help smiling. A whisper of excitement tickled my throat, and without quite meaning to I said, “How do you know you exist?” I said it softly. Vicky lurched in my arms, looking up at me with revulsion. “What do you mean? I exist because I exist. Because I’m here, having this conversation
Andrew Pope ’s Recent shows include “Summer Reading” at Fortnight Institute and “But You’ve Never Even Been to Berlin” at Half Gallery. In 2014, he collaborated with Raymond Pettibon on the zine “Inside Outside Baseball.”
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