At the start of summer 2018, when I traveled to the Hôtel de Verbier, a well-known luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps, I was far from imagining that I would spend my vacation unraveling a crime that had been committed there many years earlier.
My stay was supposed to provide a welcome break after two small personal traumas in my life. But before I reveal what happened that summer, I need to go back to the beginning of this story: the death of my publisher, Bernard de Fallois.
Bernard is the man to whom I owe everything. My success, my fame, I owe it all to him. It was because of him that people called me a writer. And people read my books because of him.
When we met, I was an unpublished author; he made me a writer whose books were read the world over. Bernard, who resembled an elegant
patriarch, had been one of the leading personalities in French publishing. For me, he had been a teacher and most of all, in spite of the sixty-year difference in our ages, a great friend.
In January 2018, Bernard, then ninety-one years old, died, and I reacted to his death the way any writer would: I began writing a book about him. I put my heart and soul into the project, locked in the office of my apartment at 13 Avenue Alfred-Bertrand, in the Champel quarter of Geneva.
As always when writing, the only human presence I could tolerate was that of Denise, my assistant. Denise was the good fairy who watched over me. Always in good spirits, she managed my schedule, sorted and filed the mail from my readers, read and corrected what I had written. She also filled my fridge and supplied me with coffee. And, from time to time, she served as ship’s doctor, landing in my office as if she were stepping on board after an interminable crossing, showering me with advice about my health.
“Go outside!” she ordered, gently. “Take a walk around the park and clear your head. You’ve been locked in here for hours!”
“I already went for my run this morning,” I reminded her.
“You need to get some oxygen to your brain from time to time,” she insisted.
This had become our daily ritual: I complied and stepped out onto the office balcony. I filled my lungs with the cold air of February, then, defying her with an amused look on my face, lit a cigarette. She protested and, sounding annoyed, said, “You know, Joël, I’m not emptying your ashtray. It’s the only way you’ll learn just how much you smoke.”
Each day I stuck to the monastic routine I adopted when I was writing, which could be broken down into three indispensable steps: rise at dawn, go jogging, write until evening. It was indirectly, through this book, that I met Sloane. Sloane was my new next-door neighbor. Ever since she had moved in, quite recently, everyone in the building had been talking about her. Our own meeting proved elusive—that is, until the morning when, returning from my daily workout routine, I passed her for the first time. She, too, had been out jogging, and we entered the building together. I understood at once why the neighbors were unanimous in their opinion of her: she was a young woman of irresistible charm. We limited ourselves to a polite hello before we disappeared into our respective apartments. Behind my door, I remained stunned. That brief encounter had been enough to make me fall in love a little.
Soon, I had but one idea in mind: getting to know Sloane.
My first attempt involved running. Sloane ran nearly every day, but her hours were irregular. I would wander around Parc Bertrand, desperate for some chance encounter. Then, one day, I saw her running down a path. Since I was incapable of catching up with her, I decided to wait by the entrance to our building. I lingered in front of the mailboxes, pretending to examine the mail whenever one of the neighbors appeared, until she finally arrived. She walked past and smiled, which made me lose my composure entirely; by the time I had found something intelligent to say, she had already gone inside.
It was the building’s concierge, Madame Armanda, who told me about Sloane. She was a pediatrician. Her mother was English; her father was a lawyer. She’d been married for two years, but the marriage wasn’t going well. She worked at the University Hospital of Geneva and alternated between day and night shifts, which explained my difficulty in trying to make sense of her routine.
After my failed attempt to meet her jogging, I decided to change my approach. I asked Denise to monitor the hallway through the peephole and notify me whenever Sloane appeared. Whenever I heard Denise shout “She’s leaving!,” I charged out of my office, dressed and abundantly perfumed, and made my way to the landing, as if my presence were the merest coincidence. Our exchanges were limited to a greeting. Most of the
time, she walked down the stairs, which cut short any conversation. I followed, but for what? When she reached the street, she disappeared. The few times she took the elevator, I stood there mute, and an uncomfortable silence filled the space. In either case, I returned to my apartment, muttering to myself.
“So?” Denise asked.
“So, nothing,” I grumbled.
“Really, Joël, you’re useless! Make an effort at least.”
“I’m a bit shy, that’s all.”
“Oh, please, stop. You’re not very shy when you’re on television.”
“Because you’re seeing the writer on television. Joël is very different.”
“Look, Joël, it’s really not that complicated. You ring her doorbell, offer her some flowers, and invite her to dinner. Are you too lazy to go to the florist? Is that it? You want me to do it?”
Then there was that April evening. I was at the Geneva Opera House, alone, for a presentation of Swan Lake. During the intermission, as I stepped out for a cigarette, I ran into her. We exchanged a few words; then, as the bell announced the resumption of the performance, she suggested that we meet for a drink after the ballet. We met at the Remor, a nearby café. And that’s how Sloane entered my life.
Sloane was beautiful, funny, and intelligent—one of the most fascinating women I’d ever met. After our evening at the Remor, I invited her out several times. We went to concerts, movies. I dragged her to an art opening, a strange exhibition that made us laugh out loud; we fled to have dinner at one of her favorite Vietnamese restaurants. We spent several evenings at her apartment, or at mine, listening to opera, talking, and planning the world’s future. I couldn’t keep myself from staring at her; I was helpless in her presence. The way she blinked, or pushed her hair aside, the way she smiled gently when she was annoyed, or played with her painted nails before asking a question—I liked everything about her.
Soon, I thought only of her. I even began to forget about my book.
“You look lost, Joël,” Denise would say to me when she saw that I hadn’t written a single line.
“It’s Sloane,” I explained behind my silent computer.
I couldn’t wait to see her again and continue our interminable conversations. I never tired of listening to her talk about her life, her passions, her wants and ambitions. She loved Elia Kazan movies and opera.
One night, after dinner at a brasserie near Pâquis, where we had both drunk a good deal, we ended up back in my living room. Looking amused, Sloane surveyed the knickknacks and
books along the walls. She stopped for a long time in front of a painting of Saint Petersburg that had belonged to my great uncle. Then she stopped in front of my bar. She liked the sturgeon in relief on the bottle of Beluga vodka. I poured us two glasses, over ice, and turned the radio to a classical music station, one I often listened to in the evening. She challenged me to identify the composer who was being broadcast. That was easy; it was Wagner. And it was during the ride of the Valkyrie that she kissed me and pulled me against her, whispering in my ear how she wanted me.
Our affair lasted two months—two wonderful months. But by then, my book on Bernard had gotten the upper hand. At first, I simply took advantage of the nights when Sloane was at the hospital to continue writing. But the more I wrote, the more I was carried forward by my novel. One evening, she asked me to go out and, for the first time, I declined. “I have to write,” I explained. At first, Sloane was very understanding. She, too, had a job that sometimes kept her away more than she had anticipated.
Then, I turned her down a second time. Once again, she was sympathetic. Please don’t misunderstand me; I adored every minute of the time I spent with Sloane. But I felt that with Sloane it was for the long haul—that our moments
of complicity would be repeated indefinitely. The inspiration for a novel, though, could vanish just as easily as it arrived; it was an opportunity I had to take advantage of.
Our first fight took place one evening in mid-June when, after having made love, I got up from her bed to get dressed.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Home,” I replied, as if it were perfectly natural.
“You’re not going to sleep here with me?”
“No, I’d like to write.”
“So, what, you come over to get laid and then you leave?”
“I have to put some work into the book,” I replied sheepishly.
“But you can’t spend all your time writing!” she shouted. “You spend all your days, all your evenings, even your weekends! It’s insane. You never want to do anything anymore.”
I felt that our relationship was at risk of withering away as quickly as it had burst into flame. I had to act. A few days later, the day before leaving on a ten-day trip to Spain, I took Sloane to dinner at her favorite restaurant, the Japanese place in the Hôtel des Bergues, located on the roof of the building and offering a breathtaking view over the entire city of Geneva. The evening was wonderful. I promised Sloane I would write less and leave more time for “us,”
telling her again how much she meant to me. We even made tentative vacation plans for August, in Italy, a country we were both in love with. Would it be Tuscany or Puglia? We would do some research when I returned from Spain.
We remained at our table until the restaurant closed, at one in the morning. The night, at the start of summer, was warm. Throughout the meal I had the strange sensation that Sloane was expecting something from me. And as we were about to leave, when I got up from my chair and the staff began to mop down the terrace around us, Sloane said, “So, you’ve forgotten?”
“Forgotten what?”
“It was my birthday today.”
Seeing the look on my face, she understood that she was right. She left, furious. I tried to stop her, muttering my excuses, but she jumped into the only available taxi in front of the hotel, leaving me alone on the street, like the imbecile that I was, before the astonished eyes of the hotel valets. By the time I had got into my car and returned to my building, Sloane was already in her apartment; she had turned off her phone and
I got back to Geneva the morning of Friday, June 22, to discover that Sloane had broken up with me.
It was Madame Armanda, the concierge, who was the messenger. She intercepted me as I arrived at the building.
“Here’s a letter for you,” she said.
“For me?”
“It’s from your neighbor. She didn’t want to put it in the mailbox because your assistant opens your mail.”
I opened the envelope at once and found the following message:
Joël,
It will never work.
See you,
Sloane
The words were a stab in the heart. Head down, I walked up to my apartment. At least Denise was around to lift my spirits, I thought. Denise, a kind woman whose husband had left her for someone else, an icon of modern solitude. Nothing can help you feel less alone than to find someone more forlorn than yourself. But, entering the apartment, I ran into Denise on her way out. It wasn’t even noon.
“Denise? Where are you going?” I asked.
“Hello, Joël, I told you I was leaving early today. My flight is at three.”
“Your flight?”
“Don’t tell me you forgot! We talked about it before you left for Spain. I’m going to Corfu with Rick for two weeks.”
Rick was a guy Denise had met online. In fact, we had talked about the vacation, but I had completely forgotten about it.
“Sloane left me,” I blurted out.
“I know, I’m very sorry.”
“What do you mean, you know?”
“The concierge opened the letter Sloane left for you and told me everything. I didn’t want to tell you while you were in Madrid.”
“And you’re leaving all the same?” I asked.
“Joël, I’m not going to cancel my vacation because your girlfriend dumped you. You’ll find somebody else just like that!” she said, snapping her fingers. “Women are always making eyes at you. It’s okay. I’ll see you in two weeks. It’s going to pass quickly, you’ll see. Besides, I’ve taken care of everything, I even went shopping. Look.”
She led me into the kitchen. Alerted to my breakup with Sloane, Denise had anticipated my reaction: I was going to stay locked in my apartment. Evidently worried that I wouldn’t feed myself in her absence, she had stocked up on provisions. From the cupboards to the freezer, there was food everywhere.
And then, she left. And I was alone in my kitchen. I made myself a coffee and sat at the black marble counter behind which some tall chairs were aligned, all desperately empty. The kitchen could accommodate ten, but there was only me. I dragged myself to my office, where I looked for a long while at the pictures of Sloane and me. I grabbed a cardboard box and wrote “Sloane,” followed by the date she had left me: “6/22, a day to forget.” But it was impossible to get Sloane out of my head. Everything reminded me of her. Even the couch in my living room, where I had sprawled out, reminded me how, a few months earlier, on this same spot, on this same fabric, I had begun the most extraordinary relationship of my life, which I had managed to completely sabotage.
It took all my strength not to knock on her door or call her. Early in the evening, no longer able to contain myself, I went out onto the balcony, smoking cigarette after cigarette in the hope that Sloane would step outside and we would fall into each other’s arms. But Madame Armanda, who had seen me from the sidewalk when she went to walk her dog and found me still there on her return an hour later, cried out from the entrance to the building, “There’s no point in waiting, Joël. She’s not there. She went on vacation.”
I returned to my office. I had to get out of there. I wanted to get away from Geneva for a while, to
erase my memories of Sloane. I needed calm; I needed peace and quiet. Then I saw, on my table, among my notes on Bernard, the note about Verbier. He loved the place. The idea of going to Verbier for a while, to take advantage of the quiet of the Alps and find myself, appealed to me at once. I turned on my computer and quickly found the home page for the Hôtel de Verbier, a legendary hotel, and the photos that scrolled before my eyes convinced me—the sun-drenched terrace, the Jacuzzi overlooking the magnificent landscape, the half-lit bar and comfortable salons, the suites with fireplaces. It was exactly what I needed. I clicked the reservations tab and keyed in the information.
That’s how it all began.
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
