“I'm looking for Mr. Lucas Giraut.” The woman rummages in her leather purse that has a gaudy Roy Lichtenstein print on it, and pulls out one of Lucas Giraut's business cards. Giraut takes the card and stares at it as if it contained some clue to the woman's identity or the reasons behind her late-afternoon appearance. “It's very important. His neighbor downstairs let me in.” The woman zips up her purse. “May I come in?”
Lucas Giraut and the woman with the aesthetic predisposition to ingest barbiturates both remain seated for a moment on leather sofas in the living room of Giraut's apartment. In silence. With facial expressions that dance around the concept of the smile. Now that it's closer, Giraut can see that the Lichtenstein image on his strange visitor's purse depicts a sensual woman saying, “TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER.” Giraut clears his throat with a fist in front of his mouth. The tall, haughty woman has her legs crossed at her knees and is smoking a British brand of cigarette with her fingers extended. Her leg is slender and very white and has a braided crown of thorns tattooed on the ankle.
“This doesn't look like a mansion to me,” the woman says finally. Her voice is deep, the way tall women's voices usually are. “It's a nice house with good furniture, but that's it. Are you rich?”
Giraut considers the question. His hands are casually intertwined and holding up his chin.
“I am the primary shareholder and president of a multinational company.” He shrugs his shoulders. “My family is rich, so I guess I am, too. And you are…?”
The woman seems to be thinking for a second. As if she wasn't entirely sure who she was. She takes a drag on the British cigarette.
“My name is Penny DeMink,” she says.
“Miss DeMink.” Giraut frowns. “Can you remind me of when we've met? Is it somehow related to my business, perhaps? Did I sell you something? Or are you looking to buy?”
The woman seated on the sofa is definitely the most attractive woman that Lucas Giraut has ever had any dealings with in his entire life. The crux of her sexual appeal isn't in her almost perfect adherence to the prevailing canons of physical beauty in the fashion, film or television worlds. Nor in her long, slender legs crossed at knee height, which now occupy the absolute center of Giraut's visual field. Nor is it related to external signs of self-assurance or absolute sexual confidence. But rather, her appeal could be chalked up to a certain general inscrutability. To the fact that the color of her eyes and her hair is a complete mystery, or how it's impossible to know what she's looking at behind her dark glasses. Her expression, her clothes, her general attitude — none of it seems to correspond to anything known or familiar or real. The resulting visual sensation is like television static. Like something fleeting, or like the profound ontological instability of things that are too perfect.
“Haven't you ever had the feeling that you've been robbed of something vital?” The woman releases a little cloud of smoke from between two rows of apparently perfect teeth. “I mean something really important. Something that they took from you when you were a child. Something that makes the difference between a good life and a shitty life. They stole something from me.” She nods. “I can't say exactly when. Maybe when I was too little to realize. And since then everything has been shitty. I mean everything has gone really badly. I'm sure you've noticed that I'm an exceptionally attractive woman.”
Even though her eyes are invisible behind her dark glasses, Lucas Giraut has a certain inexplicable feeling that the woman's pupils have moved vertically toward her own body. “I've always wanted to be an actress. And I'm not only good-looking. I'm talented, too. I'm intelligent. I can play dramatic parts and that kind of thing. I dance, too. So I ask myself: Why do I have this shitty life when I've got everything anyone could want in life? Well, it's because I'm missing something essential. Something that was taken from me. Maybe before I was born. I think you can be born missing something they've taken from you. You know what I mean. And in my case, what they took from me has something to do with a guy named Eric Yanel. I think you know him. It's not that he's the one who robbed me, or that he has what they took from me. But I'm convinced that he has something to do with all this. That's why I ended my personal relationship with Mr. Yanel. And my professional relationship with him.” She makes a pause during which she stubs out the butt of her cigarette emphatically in the ashtray shaped like the Roman Colosseum on the coffee table. “I don't know if Mr. Yanel has spoken to you about me. Maybe he has. Maybe using another name, I don't know. He told me that you produce films. And that perhaps you had a part for me.” She pauses. “Do you think you could bring me a drink?”
Giraut considers the possibility of going down to the first-floor apartment, for a wider selection of drinks than he has in his. After a moment he comes back from his office with an unopened bottle of Macallan and two highball glasses with tinkling ice cubes. He makes some remark about the fact that he doesn't usually receive guests in his apartment, as an explanation of his lack of alcoholic options, and serves the whiskey with his gaze fixed on the woman's crossed knees. As hard as he tries to focus on one part of the woman's anatomy or clothing, he keeps having the same sensation of ontological fleetingness. The same sensation of having something in front of him that's too good to be real.
“Miss DeMink.” Giraut forces himself to move his gaze from her knee to a neutral spot in the living room. “I assure you that I do not produce films of any kind. The person you mentioned is not on my client list, nor among my professional associates,” he says very slowly, as if gauging the scope and implications of his words. “It's possible that I could have some idea of who the person you mentioned is. But perhaps I should warn you that it is not in your best interests to continue on that course. The person you mention could be associated with dangerous people. People involved in shady dealings.”
Iris Gonzalvo, alias Penny DeMink, alias Penny Longlegs in her early films, takes a sip on her glass of whiskey. The way she sips her whiskey is extremely skillful, harkening back to outdated ideas of femininity. It gives the impression that she's only just wet her lips but causes the liquor level to descend considerably. Barely leaning her head back at all. Without gathering her features together or wrinkling her mouth. Without any visible changes to her facial musculature.
“Mr. Giraut.” The woman puts her glass on the table without any unpleasant noise of glass hitting against glass. “Consider this a gift. The fact that I came to your house. Something very lucky. I think you want to sleep with me. You don't have to apologize. What I want to make clear is that there's nothing you can find in Eric that you can't find in me. In a better version, I mean.” The woman's face, while still inscrutable behind her dark glasses and scarf, is now facing Giraut. He is trying to avoid staring at his visitor. “I won't disappoint you. That is the message I want to convey to you above all. In regard to any agreement you might have with him. It's in your best interests to stick with me. I can do everything he can, and much more. So I'm what you need.”
The woman lights a cigarette with the gold lighter that Giraut holds out to her face, protecting the flame with the palm of his hand. For the second it takes to light the cigarette Giraut thinks he can make out a slight wrinkle on her brow. Their bodies are now much closer than they have been since the woman arrived. The tattoo of a crown of interlaced thorns that the woman has around her ankle is actually a classic ornamental motif that Giraut is very familiar with. Found on many moldings, and in decorative stenciling on furniture and interiors from several periods. The woman exhales smoke and looks at Giraut with her eyebrows raised questioningly. That's when the doorbell rings again.