An young woman court to lose breath on the fine sand of a beach bordered of coconuts. It precipitates with the meeting of a beautiful rider which, hastened to also find it, gives furious blows of heels on the sides of a superb black standard. With some steps of the woman, it stops the impetuous dash of its horse, highly puts foot at ground to accommodate it in its open arms. It is thrown to it passionately with a laughter of happiness. The couple is embraced with passion, tenderly intertwined, whirling at the edge of water. They only, are isolated and happiest from the world in a paradisiac decoration which reinforces the romantic and oneiric aspect of this scene. A soft melody accompanies the pressures by the couple.
The word Fin appears abruptly on the screen of the computer.
It is Ines who has just finished the last lines of her new mawkish novel. The streaming face of tears, it bites the lips while raising the eyes with the ceiling, upset by what it has just typed. It cannot contain other sobs whereas it is read again. She clicks on recording then, with regret, extinct her computer, leaves her office and moves towards her library where all the books are aligned which she wrote, and which made its glory. While essuyant the eyes of the reverse of the hand, it contemplates rêveusement all its lips, the effleure of the end of the fingers with a very particular affection. It goes then in the kitchen, makes use glass of water, then passes by picture window to go in its garden.
Air sight of its house, isolated in a forest from medium mountains. She lives in an immense country cottage. The entry is in old stone, but all the remainder of the frontage is equipped with boarding and wood, with large picture windows and a roof with double slope. An architectural originality which mixes the Savoyard rustic spirit and modernity.
Ines passes under an arbor to gain a splendid garden strewn with flowers an haven of peace, multicoloured and scented, perfectly maintained. She inspects her sanctuary peacefully, with rapture. The moment is not with maintenance, but with secret thoughts which make him prolong its solitary walk in all quietude. She cherishes her pinks with delicacy, renifle her flowers most odorous with an unutterable happiness. All in its behavior reveals a great softness, a superficial sensitivity, a fragile and independent character. This romantic spirit, this attachment at one completed and out of date time, will be confirmed in all that she will undertake thereafter. Its appropriate dress also proves it, a long very simple out of cotton, printed dress of red flowers and obsolete reasons. But even thus vêtue, Ines is divinement sexy, a delicious bouquet of seduction and pleasure. It is a woman terribly attracting, haloed of a youthful grace and a touching innocence, with harmonious and sensual forms. As its first name indicates it, it is of Spanish origin. Its hair is black and thick, its brown skin and luisante in the burning glares of the sun, its immense and dark eyes to drown there, with thick lashes. Its face is that of a child almost, with fine and delicate features, a narrow nose, lips full and nicely engraved in the shape with heart.
Its wandering thoughts are stopped by a ringing. Flexible and light, it runs to open. A middle-class woman and eccentric between decided step.
- Ines, when will you decide to leave this godforsaken hole? I distress only with the idea to break down in full medium from this wild forest. It is necessary really that I hold with you to come up to now.
- Hello, Julie.
- Yes, yes, hello. Excuse me, I am still under the shock.
- You do not have anything to fear, you know. There are no wolves here, nor no other famished animals… Just some foxes undoubtedly more frightened than you.
- Foxes, what a horror! And if they had the rage?
Ines bursts of laughing. The invaluable paces of his/her friend amuses it. Exasperated, this one does not cease making him reproaches on its stubbornness be wanted to bury itself in full mountain.
- My darling, you have the means of living in a sumptuous apartment in full heart of Paris, then give me pleasure, insane the camp from here. For what is used all this money which you gain? It is to be wondered it!
- What do you want that I make in Paris? I hate the society life, I leave glory and the spangles for people in easy search of celebrity, who want to show themselves and pavaner. You know well that all that puts to me badly at ease, and there is only here where I can write. I need calm, of loneliness, to be close to my roots, the family, the friends of childhood, to remain in permanent contact with my origins. It is the source even of the inspiration, it is the key of my success. Remove to me these simple pleasures and I will not be able any more to write a line. Unless you do not prefer that I become a missed writer?
- You laugh or what! I am your friend, but before all your director of edition. The more your novels have success and the more I earn money. They are sold all to million specimens, except the last which did not go too well, but that sometimes happens at everyone to cross a bad master key… You will go up the slope, I have confidence, especially with that which you write in this moment, it will break the hut, I hope well to make you pass the bar of the twenty million with this one. With is the fact, where in? You finished it soon I hope?
- Yes, I have just finished it at the moment. Two or three small corrections and I give it at once to you.
- Perfect. Oh! You, you cried, you have the very red eyes?
Ines outlines a smile contrit.
- It is nothing, that will pass…
In front of the interrogative and insistent glance of Julie, she is explained:
- Good, I acknowledge, it is the outcome of my novel which moved me a little. I am eternal sentimental, one does not remake myself!
- My poor darling, you were born one century too late! All these values in which you believe passionately do not exist any more, return a little on ground. And, about the times, you really worry me with living in a so intense way all that you write, you are locked up in an oneiric world, you have evil with living all these stories of love per procuration. You are young person, beautiful, desirable, learn how to really leave and taste with the pleasures of the life. But for that, above all, leaves this godforsaken hole, they are not the bumpkins of the corner who will make beat your small so romantic heart, no prince charming will not come to strike with your door! You risks to wait a long time, you will finish old maid, believe me…
- Better food is worth only than badly accompanied. It is not you, after your second divorce, which will tell me the opposite?
- Touched, run!
They laugh at the same time. Julie dissimulates her irritation behind an excessive frontage of exubérance. Ines is a single case that nothing nor nobody will be able to change. Author of mawkish novel, it has been for two years broken down of inspiration, following a traumatism caused by an aggression. Since, it was isolated in a country cottage from mountain, cut world, indifferent to the injunctions of its banker and his editor who impatientent themselves. Rêveuse, erased, it seldom takes share with the effervescence of its medium, being satisfied with its loneliness, being disconnected from reality while always wanting to accept in the great love and the prince charming, with this same romanticism as heroins of its novels.
Ines proposes to him to drink, Julie accepts with joy Martini. By noting that his/her friend does not accompany it, she teases it nicely.
- My darling, take alcohol glass, that will unwedge you a little. You cowards thus never?
- I do not hold alcohol. An orange juice will be very well.
Julie raises the shoulders with resignation. They settle in the living room, sitting down one opposite the other. Ines crosses the legs, and in its movement the dress goes up well above the knee, revealing long racées legs, with the gilded skin. Julie is very thing, with sudden puffs of heat. Carrying out a life of all excesses, it had tasted with all the pleasures, wearying rather quickly men to be interested rather in the women who, they, had never disappointed it. A choice which did not cease continuing, and it is certainly not the disconcerting presence of Ines who was going to make it change opinion. It would have given a good part of its fortune to have an adventure with this one, a secret phantasm which it already maintained since step badly time. And a phantasm which would undoubtedly remain it until the end of its life… Discouraged in front of such an amount of injustice, Julie gives up her conclusive and exuberant manners to post an air a little more serious.
- As I said it to you on the telephone, I have an excellent bargain to propose to you. A scoop without precedent, which could have amazing repercussions. I was to speak to you about it about sharp voice, it is an occasion like it is presented any only once in its life, and it should be seized without the least hesitation, you hear me? I am there to convince you, you cannot imagine what that costs me to leave night Paris and its madnesses. I hope that you appreciate with his right value the width of my sacrifice, then do not disappoint me.
- I am flattered that you grant such an amount of importance to me, answers him Ines with a point of irony.
- Good, let us come to the facts. You know obviously the producer Jean Vernier?
- Of course, which does not know it. The richissime and mysterious Jean Verdier always made run much ink, it is adulated than disputed as much, and than it is liked or hated does not prevent it from being an alive myth of the French cinema, a charismatic and attractive character. Producer, distributer, dreaded business man, it built a true empire around the popular cinema, one owes him our more great classics and greatest business successes of these twenty last years. A day ago without one seeing it in magazines or on TV, but in spite of this notoriety, it is a very enigmatic man, it always preserved its private life jealously, and all kinds of noises run on him. Some say that it is the most cynical being and most pretentious which exists, the different ones show it to be true discharged, and some remain persuaded that he is indeed this assassin which one showed it a few years ago. It was cleared for the murder of his second wife, but certain suspicions always weigh on him, it is extremely probable that he was the investigator. But I am not entitled to carry the least judgment, I sufficiently do not know it for that.
- Me nevertheless your personal opinion Gives. What do you think of him?
- It is certain that I will never belong to his fan club. I find it presumptuous and arrogant, and it cultivates this vanity with an inimitable art. Perhaps but I am mistaken, appearances can be misleading, as I said it to you, I do not know it personally.
- And well precisely, here is a gap which can be repaired. Appear yourself that it is ready to grant exclusiveness to you on all its life, of his tumultuous youth in its meeting with Catherine. He wants especially to raise the veil on this dark business, their true story of love and the circumstances dreadful in which she lost the life, and why it was suspected wrongly. It is ready to be revealed, at is exposed, to deliver his major faults and its weaknesses to you to enable you to write what will be the most enthralling biography of this century. All, what! Isn't this formidable?
Ines cannot dissimulate her astonishment.
- Why me?
- I do not know, and I of insane literally. It chose you, it is that most important.
In front of the air being wary of Ines, it refrene her aggravation and continues on its impetus.
- It must like your style, or it saw you at the time of one of your rare interviews and you typed to him in the eye. I do not know anything of it… It is its private secretary who telephoned to me, believe me, I remained about it on the bottom when he asked me your coordinates. I refused, putting forward my role of person in charge and editor, and at this point in time he spoke to me about this project, with such an insistence that I understood that they was really serious. You know me, I am hard in business, I negotiated as it had, and the fish is shoed. You and me sums invited to a reception, in five days. You will meet Mr Vernier there in person, and to conclude this association it seems all laid out to open to you during several weeks the doors of his castle cathare. Then, what does one say to his preferred editor?
Ines does not appear not packed. Worry, it asks:
- And is this reception, it where?
Julie seems to apprehend her reaction while answering slightly:
- Paris has.
And she adds highly:
- But I promise to you to occupy me of all, of A to Z. Plane in first class, driver deprived fully at your disposal, not only one second you will be all alone and…
- It is out of the question!
- If you want, I will come myself to accommodate you with the airport, I will dorloterai you like a princess… Please, do not do that to me… It is a one night question, the next morning you will be of return to you at such a speed that you will have had the impression to have dreamed all that.
- Not, not and not! Do not speak to me about dream, it is a true nightmare which you want to make me undergo! I hate Paris, I exècre Paris! The capital oppresses me, chokes me, it is an apprehension which I have since this aggression, you know the causes perfectly of them and you cannot oblige me to face such a test… It is above my forces, Paris points out too many bad memories to me.
It is really panicked, tetanized by terrible anguishes. A traumatism of which it is not ready to be released, but Julie tries to reduce the gravity of the situation.
- Darling, gets rid of the past, draws a feature on this event which prevents you from going from the front one. That made two years that occurred, turns the page, and to help you to forget say yourself that could have been worse, your attackers did not succeed in going until the end, you were saved in-extremis by the police force which, for once, intervened in time. Go, please, make an effort…
- Julie, the subject is closed. Nothing will make me change opinion, known as Ines with determination.
It is found vêtue of a long evening dress, splendid black, with imaginations of laces and wheels which give to its behavior romantic airs. It is lost and disorientated in an immense living room of luxury where and many distinguished guests all challenge themselves hustle themselves, very at ease in this kind of fashionable festivities. It is saved trouble by Julie who, by far, beckons to him to come to join it. It introduces the Vernier producer to him. It is a beautiful man, large and hurled, with imposing presence. The haughty and proud mine, it monopolizes several women of its pompeuses words and large theatrical epic. It stops despite everything when Julie advances by holding Ines by the arm firmly. The latter gives the impression to want to take the legs with its neck and to flee possible further from here.
- Lastly, the large one and secret Ines! I have the great privilege to approach you closely, one says to you so wild and so inaccessible! I hope that this reputation is erroneous?
- Not, it is authentic. I tame down only with the people who are worth of it really the sorrow, and God knows that they are rare.
- Devil, for this reason you live recluse at the fine bottom of your forest, a transitory refuge for an untameable startled hind. Which waste, a so pretty woman, if intelligent and full with talent. In any case, your novels are with the image even of your personality, if naive, if pure, full with good intentions which suit you to charm.
- lls remains pure and intact parce what, like me, they can keep away from the human forfeiture and all this hypocrisy which corrupts our company. A company which lost all its values, which I deplore. It is this authenticity and this search of absolute which make the force of my novels, and I am proud to keep hope on the destiny of the men and the women, even cheappest.
Definitely, the power is not on. Ines seems aggravated by the condescending insurance and mocker of her host. This one has fun to prick it, delighted by have opposite him a woman who is not let impress and him damne seriously the pawn. Charmed, he exclaims:
- But I adore, quite to the contrary! Romantic epopee, breath epic, here what I need, it will have there never to tell enough all my history, the true one, only, the single one… Emotion and the romantic one will be able only to attenuate certain dark sides of this past which I would like so much to exorcize by telling and strong the truth high, a truth that your feather and your talent will be able to sublimate so well and transcend. If you accept my offer, of course…
Julie, which was then contracted while attending with impotence verbal tournaments which did not consider anything good, seems to slacken little by little. The conversation takes a friendlier turning. Smiling, she hastens to intervene:
- Of course that it accepts, all the details are regulated. Isn't this, my darling?
- Is necessary to see… Is the invitation for when?
- This weekend, for one week. Please, accept and you will not regret it.
An enigmatic smile stretches the lips of Ines.
- Julie has the coordinates of your secretary, I will thus not be long in transmitting my answer to you. Thank you to have granted a little your invaluable time to me.
Mischievous, it turns the back to him and moves towards the bar. Sliding gauge follows it eyes with the glance of the sure predator of its victory, but an at the same time admiring and intrigued expression illuminates its face of a new feeling. Ines disappears in the crowd, followed closely by Julie who turns around it while caquetant like a hysterical:
- You are insane or what, what took to you?
- Does not worry you, my answer is yes. But let us leave this pretentious in uncertainty, it is so much accustomed to all obtaining that will not make him evil of mijoter a little in its juice.
Reassured, Julie seizes a goblet of champagne which she drinks of a feature. Ines informs herself near a waiter if there are soft drinks, and according to the councils of this last soaks the lips in a cocktail containing fruit juice.
- Hmm, excel.
Julie shakes the head with disapproval.
- Ines, you could make an effort for once. Upset your practices and celebrate the event as it should be, in
saoulant us and while having fun like the insane ones!
In front of the serious air of her friend, she is in despair.
- Ines, you are sad to die! How can one be so serious and so conventional?
- Afflicted, but even if I want of it I cannot transgress this gold rule: never not to drink alcohol. If I do it, I become a true travelling catastrophe, I lose control and I make the most delirious acts which exist, without me to give an account of it. The worst, it is that after I remember any more nothing, which is undoubtedly worth better when I am informed then of the damage which I caused. Believe me, not a drop of alcohol and everyone will go from there better!
- This point?
- Oh, that yes! At sixteen years, for my first cooked with the sangria, I found myself naked like Eve to jump like a CABRI in all the house of my boyfriend. He was the angels, but to its parents much less… Scandal and rupture per first hour of the morning. And to celebrate my license, I have escaped accuracy with a collective rape so much I showed myself teaser and impudic, causing all the males of the bar after having ingurgity imprudently some beers. And of all that, I do not have any memory, but the friends who accompanied me still remember it, especially those which interposed and taken blows to calm the overheated spirits. I do not want any to give that.
- Damage, I will like to see the too wise Ines releasing itself completely, I will give expensive to attend such a spectacle.
- In another life, certainly…
- Damage… There is in you a secret fire which burns, but you refuse to let you ignite.
- Oh, not, pity, does not start again with your psychology with three pennies: “Coward of the ballast, benefits from the life, lets himself go… ”. You radotes my poor Julie, the disc are striped!
- So only you took my advice, I will be able to finally attend your metamorphosis, with a rebirth, for your greater happiness…
And, this metamorphosis, it would like well that occurs with it. In its bed. One night, just a night… Julie was not any more very young person and very beautiful, but its experiment is unbounded. It would make him things which would make it insane, would make it be delirious, howl and beg…
Ines does not listen to it any more, intrigued by a dynamic small woman with the catches with two men who vociferate bruyamment. Without being dismounted, it holds head to them. Calm, posed, it stops them to affirm firmly.
- False Forgery, and archi! You known as anything, Sirs!
The ambient noise prevents it from following the conversation, but it does not matter. From the start, which she appreciates at this woman, it is its way of facing them, only against all, without vulgarity or exubérance, but with a firmness and an insurance which seem to destabilize them. Julie follows her glance before enquérir herself:
- You recognize it?
- Of course. It is the actress Claire Broustal. I like much what it does.
- That does not astonish me, you resemble itself a little both. Radical, atypical, discrete, she refuses to let herself crush by the cinematographic system and carries out her boat independently, with complete freedom. However, it could have taken the famous person after the phenomenal success of its film “Assassin July”, but it chose its camp while turning rather in small films intimists which had good criticisms. Unfortunately, the cinema was sulky it a little lately, and its role in the next production of Jean Verdier will undoubtedly enable him to join again with success.
- I was unaware of all that, but it is only more sympathetic nerve. It has just married, not?
Julie answers on a gloomy tone.
- Yes, with a photographer sadly unknown. They had a girl I believe… In short, here is a woman well in her head and well in its tennis shoes. Mom filled, in love serene, a healthy and quiet life, that to ask moreover?
- I feel a point of scorn in your voice.
- Obviously, it could all have had! Villa of dream, glory and fortune, to turn with largest and to marry with a billionaire, but it turned the back on all that to choose a simple and banal life, not to say poor… This kind of stupid behavior will always exceed me!
- Julie, happiness does not limit herself to all these surface considerations, but to render comprehensible you this hard reality is a combat lost in advance, then to remain about it as much there…
Julie looks it without including/understanding. She raises the shoulders, then is agitated on the spot by throwing feverish glances all around her, addressing smiles and great friendly gestures to many people. Ines smiles with solicitude.
- Julie, will find your friends, you die about it of desire. I will be able to manage very well all alone.
- Really?
- If I say it to you.
Julie is not made request, precipitating on a couple aristocrat which accommodates it with an exaggerated overflowing. Amused, it observes them one moment then defers its attention on Claire. This one feels its glance, turns the head and addresses a cordial smile to him. That encourages Ines to come to her meeting.
- You finally succeeded in removing you from your applicants?
- What a band of pretentious stupid jerks! They are beautiful, young people, rich, and of the blow believe themselves irresistible. They cannot be prevented from impressing you by spreading out their fortune, the mark of their car, the livable surface of their house, all the voyages which they accomplish, that while being persuaded that the women will fall to them pâmées and amazed in the arms. With me, it is all the opposite. The more they are praised and the more they lose any hope to interest me.
- Then there, I give you reason with hundred percent. It is the kind of evenings which I hate, a sad caricature of the capacity and money which becomes frankly pitiful about it.
- At least, that has the merit to make us laugh and especially not to want to resemble to them. Some share, it is reassuring.
They burst of laughing at the same time. Ines is conquered, excited as a child who has been just made a new friend and at which that often does not arrive. From the start, Claire inspires confidence by her frankness and her love of life. Pretty, very large but délicieusement not proportioned, it sparkles with mischievousness and imagination. Blonde, the hair in detonator, eyes hazel nut and small cavities mischievous around a childish mouth, it is natural and spontaneous. She presents herself then.
- Claire Broustal.
- I know. Ines Genest.
- The writer? Then there, cheer, your novels are a true bath of youth, softness in a world the rough ones.
- Thank you, that given pleasure to hear.
- I am sincere. To make your knowledge will remain the only good memory which I will keep of this evening. It is my agent which trailed me here, and it is not very because I am now obliged to accept an invitation of his Vernier seigniory in his castle, only that… What one should not make for its career!
- But it is brilliant, me also I must go there, the next week.
- Like me! Here are which returns this drudgery much less painful to me. And I do not exaggerate while speaking about drudgery, it is for me a test terrible and unimaginable to separate me from my husband and my daughter, nobody can imagine what that costs me.
- Why then to have accepted?
- I did not have too the choice, one made pressure on my agent, me then, by making me understand that to refuse was to put a final term at my career, that all the doors would close in an irremediable way. And then, after reflection, I said myself that one week cut off in a sumptuous castle was not the sea with drinking, there is quite worse… Lastly, it is what I endeavor to believe to give me courage. Your presence over there changes many things, a friendly face will be welcome, perhaps after all I will not be bored as I feared it.
- I want, yes! You will see, to us two we will hustle the invaluable manners of this pretty small world, and will amuse we like the insane ones with their costs!
They clink glasses by exchanging an accessory glance.
Ines finds herself in a sumptuous limousine driven by a driver in impeccable behavior. The car crosses a broad dirt track which overhangs an immense vineyard, skirting a low wall and channels of dry stone. The path moves away from the vines to curve in the middle of the oaks, from the brooms, and garrigues burned by the sun. Inside the car, Ines is shaken a little. With it, with the back, is an elegant woman of about thirty years, beautiful and princely, very sophisticated. Brown with the long hair, the dye chechmate, it releases an electric pleasure and an incomparable refinement. The conversation which follows makes understand that they made already knowledge and sympathized.
- Ines, allow me just a small criticism about your books. What you write, it is beautiful, it is moving, but not very near to reality. Nowadays, to be more modern and more in the wind, one needs less feelings and more sex. Here, it is what misses in your books, of the sex! There put erotism and the sales will triple!
Ines accommodates the council with recreation. Its interlocutress, in spite of her class, has a frank speech and a spontaneousness which enchants it. The small Spanish accent singing adds exotic charm to this woman who usually does not have anything. With ardor, this one argues:
- Nothing is worth a little bottom, it is exciting, it is pure energy which consumes the bodies and overheats the spirits! Romanticism and sex can make good household, although a long time ago that I do not believe any more in all these balivernes. Me, the sex, I practice it without feelings, and fortunately because I will be still virgin if I were to await the love to sleep. Even if you are right to sell hope and dream, because it is necessary some nowadays, a little more sex would have even more impact, believe me… It is a woman of experiment which speaks you, I know an end of it on this subject.
Ines laughs at good heart.
- Thank you for these infos which does not miss interest. Maria, I promise to you to think of it…
- I count there well… If the sales explode, thinks of Maria, your new sexual adviser!
- Of agreement!
Throwing a glance by the opened pane, Ines sees the ruins of a church, whose bell-tower emerges from a small island of oaks. Behind, on a hillock, draws up a splendid castle, with turns of guet. A beautiful superbly restored medieval building which tears off in Ines a filled with wonder exclamation.
- My God, as it is beautiful!
Maria, who is leaning in her turn, outlines just a light amused smile.
- On behalf of Jean, plus nothing can surprise me. He always does all into large, it is all him that!
They arrive finally at destination. Jean Vernier accommodates them with heat, more familiarly with Maria who is an old friend. A pretty maidservant deals with Ines, leaving her bag the trunk. Ines wants to carry it.
- Leave, it is my work tells him the maidservant gently.
It is Florence. There is almost prayer in its voice, also Ines does not insist. She is made guide to her room. During all the way, it remains without voice, dumb-founded and impressed by the luxurious and Gothic interior. Lost in its contemplation, she hustles of it almost an young woman who walks of an air hagard.
- Forgiveness, excuse me…
- I… it is me, forgiveness… stammers the other of it while reddening.
It is a reserved and timid, fair person with the contracted smile, which badly dissimulates under a youthful and nervous awkwardness a touching seduction. A face poupin, ingenuous eyes, a silhouette gracile, all gives him a fragile air, with a delicious physique of lolita which it cannot propose. Ines is tenderized. She makes him think of a young lost and feverish pup which only requires to be tamed. She wants to speak to him but, already, she flees promptly. She forgets the incident quickly of it, finding a glance filled with wonder by discovering her room, and hardly listening to what the maidservant says to him:
- Mr Vernier awaits you in the living room for 7 p.m.
The noise of the door which is closed tears off Ines of its contemplation.
Soon the continuation. Ines will have to resist in advance lustful of Gabrielle unchained which, to arrive to its ends, will be combined with Florence. Or how to join the useful one for pleasant…