Chapter 42- Swishing and Drinking Around Paris
They didn’t make it out of the lobby. Jorgee got slowed down by the overnight case he had filled with ice and four bottles of Taittinger, rolling it behind him, dripping water across the floor, when he should have been out front, breaking the way through the lobby crowd like a Coast Guard icebreaker ship across the Great Lakes in February. The Deneuve got out in front of him, she wasn’t supposed to do that he kept telling her, but it was in her nature. Jorgee never had figured out how people found out or knew when and where she was going to be, but they always seemed to, so he had resigned himself to the phenomenon. The hotel staff tried to help clear a path to the door. Gwen noticed there were no autograph seekers, no one waving pieces of paper or scarves or hats towards her to sign. The French never are gauche, and the crowd was a fifty-fifty mix of men and women. They weren’t asking for anything other than to share space with The Deneuve for a few minutes, which is why she perpetually was tolerant. She loved them, and they loved her. Jorgee dealt with the paparazzi punks when they got pushy. Catherine had to kiss fourteen men and eighteen women before the crowd dispersed. In the milieu, a teenage boy put his hand on Gwen’s hip and tried to kiss her. Gwen grabbed his hand, bent his wrist back in that Oriental torture hold that produces excruciating pain with almost no force exerted, and sent the kid to his knees. Jorgee saw this, and knew he would have to coach Gwen a bit on how to be a gracious world celebrity, Deneuvian style.
The car finally rolled, and Catherine asked their destination.
“We have four paintings to see, very famous, that tell us about Champagne in French art. We have Manet’s Un bar aus Folies-Bergere, painted 1882, at the Musée d’Orsay. Then we have Cezanne’s Chez le Pere Lathuile and Chaise, bouteille et pommes, 1906, at the Louvre. And then Theodule Ribot’s Nature morte, at Christies.”
Catherine looked at Jorgee in a funny way, said, “You remember what happened the last time I was in the Louvre, and you’re taking me back again?”
Gwen and Anna looked at Jorgee.
“Catherine was in one of the impressionist galleries, the one with all the Renoirs. She was doing a charity show, $5,000 per ticket. She would walk around, stand in front of a painting with a beautiful woman in it, and the staff would dress her right there in the same clothes and hat and gloves, whatever, as the woman in the painting. The people who bought tickets could stand next to her, get their picture taken if they wanted. They sold 100 tickets, including two to an American and his wife. The guy was a little drunk, and said in a loud voice, ‘The woman in the painting is better looking than the Deneuve broad.’ Five French guys looked at him, grabbed him, and beat the shit out of him, right there in the gallery. These guys were, like, dentists and accountants. Left him lying on the floor, his wife standing there, not saying anything. Couple of women wearing three inch pumps with sharp toes kicked the guy in the gut. The whole crowd moved on to the next painting in the next gallery. Got filmed, of course, security camera. Shown on TV the next day. No charges were filed.”
Catherine sat, looking demure.
The car pulled up to the Musée d’Orsay, where Jorgee unloaded the overnight case full of ice and Champagne, and the three women got out. Jorgee said to Gwen and Anna, “Chins up ladies, it’s show time.”
The guards love it when celebrities come to the museum because it breaks the boredom. The chief of security hates it. Jorgee blew past the ticket window without paying, the three women walking side by side, arms linked, Deneuve in the center. Some kind of silent alarm went out, because within minutes, three museum managers were escorting the group, including the curator of paintings. They stopped at some benches where two long perpendicular hallways intersected, under a giant Delacroix. Jorgee opened the case, took a bottle of Champagne out of the ice, popped the cork, and poured three glasses. The curator gave a spiel about the Delacroix while the ladies sipped. Jorgee was surprised only twenty people collected around them. Gwen was eating it up; Anna was trying to figure it out.
Then onto the Manet. For obvious reasons, Jorgee hoped neither Gwen nor Anna would ask to see Manet’s giant WaterLilies. He also hoped none of the museum managers would ask them not to drink in the galleries. They should be smarter than that. So the three women drank in front of Un bar aus Folies-Bergere. The curator said, “Champagne was invented around 1700, and was used then mostly by the aristocracy. Later it was embraced by the middle class as a symbol of upward mobility, which is what Manet painted here.”
Catherine tuned out the curator and whispered to Anna, “I like what Helen Gurley Brown said, ‘Two warm bodies and one cold bottle of Champagne will produce something more wonderful than would happen without the Champagne.’ What do you think?”
Anna said, "I haven’t tried that combination yet.”
Catherine poked her and looked over at Jorgee.
Anna said, “Walking through galleries hung with great paintings is like sitting and watching a good movie. A pure and condensed version of life passes before your eyes, that’s so much easier and nicer than the real thing.”
Gwen and Catherine looked at each other, then at Anna.
Gwen, turning to watch Jorgee wield the wine bottle while keeping the crowd at a respectful distance, said to Catherine, “I have to agree with the hung part.”
“Leave it off, Gwenny, him’s for her.”
“Here I am, three thousand miles from my boring husband, and you’re not going to let me have any fun.” Gwen pretended to pout.
“I’ll take a slice of your boring husband any day, and I just meant Anna gets first go. I really want to know what happens when THE SHIMMERER and OPIUM meet. It should be like this stuff,” holding up her glass, “and caviar.”
Jorgee knew he had to keep the entourage moving. They had two more stops today, then more Champagne education (drinking) tomorrow and the next day. The Deneuve was on the move. He packed the bottle and glasses into the overnight bag, still dripping melting ice on the museum floor, and led the way back down the long corridors and out to the car. Anna asked if they could stop somewhere, she wanted to buy a scarf. Catherine said, “Sorry dear, but you’re in school today, learning, learning. No time for shopping.”
Gwen said, “You’re working on your Ph.D. in being one of the bold and beautiful.”
Jorgee bombed the car down into the parking garage under the Louvre, ignoring signs meant for normal people. He parked in front of the staff elevator, punched in an electronic code, and herded them in. The elevator opened into the museum offices, where they were met by the Director. On a cart was a silver platter, made by Philippe Grucourt, 1721. On the platter were five Champagne flutes, blown by Stephane Derentier, 1877. Earlier that morning the Director had removed these items from exhibit cases. His staff hated when he breached protocols like this. Of course, if they had been invited to meet The Deneuve and drink Champagne with her, it probably would have been all right. The Director kissed The Deneuve, bowed to Gwen and Anna, and popped the cork on a bottle of 1996 Roederer Crystal.
Anna asked, “Do we have to go look at great art now? Can’t we just sit here and drink more of this stuff? This is the greatest drink that’s ever entered my mouth. Who is this Roederer person? If he’s a man, is he too old for me to marry? I’ll only look at paintings from now on that have Champagne bottles in them. How many of those do you have here?” She looked at Catherine and said, “How much of this stuff have you drunk over your life?”
Catherine thought for a moment, said, “I started with Krug when I was sixteen. Now I’m sixty-seven. Let’s say a bottle a week average. No, better make that two a week, average. There was that period in my thirties when I was a bit of a lush. You can do the math. Just remember, dear, it’s always better when mixed with a man’s cologne. My motto is ‘One man, two bottles’. If the man turns out to be a bore, you’ve still got the wine.”
The Director picked up the phone and
called all the curators of paintings. “How many paintings do we have with Champagne bottles in them? And where are they?”
The curators appeared out of nowhere, scribbling notes, handing them to the Director, looking at the three women and the empty bottle. Then the Director’s assistant appeared with a second cold bottle, popped, poured. The Director handed a glass to Anna who said, “Thank you. And a man with a nice cologne? Can you supply him that fast?”
Gwen said, “Anna, you’ll hurt Jorgee’s feelings, asking for someone else like that, right in front of him.”
Jorgee said, “That’s ok, Ms Gwen, I’m on duty, I understand.”
“Jorgee, if Anna wants a glass of bubbly in her left hand, and you in her right, be there for her, dear, all the way,” said Catherine.
“I’ll slog through, Ms Catherine, I’ll slog through.”
The Director shuffled the notes, and said, “We have eighteen paintings with Champagne bottles in them. Fragonard, three, Cezanne, one, Toulouse-Lautrec, five, Daumier, two, de Chavannes, one, Bouguereau, three, Bonat, two, Degas, one. Who would you like to see?”
Gwen piped up, “Toulouse-Lautrec. He’s the best. Every one of his paintings is a world of its own. Please, can we see his Champagne bottles?”
When the group left the offices, it consisted of the three women, Jorgee, the Director, his assistant, six curators, and two security guards. By the time it had swished down the miles of corridors and entered the Lautrec gallery, it had grown to fifty people, including two incognito museum janitors, three members of the French parliament who should have been in session voting on a bill that would shorten the French work week from its current thirty-four hours to an even thirty, four Corsican Mafioso who loved Deneuve from her movie Island Without Law, the couture designer Fleur de Mal and his wife, seven school boys who made a series of covert propositions to Anna, and two Middle Eastern gentlemen who appeared to have rather odd looking torsos. The Director took the two security men by the arms, and whispered that if any American men tried to join the group in the galleries, they were to grab them, escort them to the cold storage vault, and lock them in there till The Deneuve left.
The fifty people piled into the Lautrec gallery with the Director and three women in the lead. The museum staff and the guests of honor looked at the paintings. The other forty people looked at the three women. Which were the greater works of art? The paintings, or the women?
Toulouse-Lautrec radiated from the walls like Deneuve did from the screen in Indochine. Mauve yellow swirls against emerald green fields accented with burgundy twirls. Sculptural hats and bending tables and long dresses, meshed together into scenes of café life, cottage life, theater life. Of the twelve paintings in the gallery, two had Champagne prominently displayed. In one, a beautiful woman held a bottle behind her back, while in front she held a man away from executing an amorous embrace. Lautrec conveyed that both of them would get everything they wanted. The other bottle was set in the patio garden of a vineyard estate, with pea gravel on the ground and cream colored limestone block walls around the perimeter. At a table in the center was an extended family of twenty, all ages, many kids, several grands. The focus of the painting was a boy and a girl, both about fifteen, being handed glasses of Champagne by the patriarch, their initiation into a joy of French culture.
Catherine stood in front of the painting with her arms around Anna’s shoulders. She made Anna stare at the painting, whispering in her ear an interpretation of the story. The family outdoors, surrounded by vineyards, the sun warming arms and faces. The sounds of talking and laughing, people touching, the table loaded with August tomatoes, sliced with cucumbers, drowning in olive oil, vinegar, and lemon juice. Tasting the wine, feeling the carbonation on the tongue, the smell of the bready yeast sitting on a layer of stony minerals. Sensing the alcohol in the veins and the brain, making life simmer for a few hours on a hotter flame. Anna understood.
By now Catherine had had four glasses of Champagne, and was feeling lovely. She turned from Anna, motioned Jorgee over to her, and had him help her stand on a bench in the middle of the gallery. She raised both arms, holding them in a widespread V until everyone was looking at her. Her voice boomed off the gallery walls, “Today we can hold each other like the family in the picture. We want what they have, we want those feelings. We want to touch, we want to kiss, and we’re going to do that.” Everyone in the room listened. “Everyone here is invited to drink Champagne with us at the hotel. The Intercontinental Grand. In thirty minutes, in the lobby. Everyone here must come. We are the family tonight. We kiss. We kiss. I see you there, soon. Everyone. Everyone!”
She jumped down next to Jorgee, who said, “Oh, shit. What have you done now?”
She looked at him, “Make it happen, love. Make it happen.”
He handed her over to Gwen, and went out into the hallway. In a minute he had the hotel manager on the line, telling him to go to Jorgee’s room, get three cases of Champagne, and blast chill them. He told the guy The Deneuve was having a party in his lobby in half an hour. Be ready. He heard choking on the other end. No matter. The guy would do as he was told. Fifty people in the lobby, served Champagne in quality flutes, waiters, security, media…. in thirty minutes. Well, for the woman, of course.