Page 3 of Palazzo
Olivier had never dated girls from his own background and preferred girls who were pretty and looser with their favors than the ones he had grown up with. He was briefly infatuated with the girl he’d been dating, but not enough to want to marry her. Her mother worked in a florist shop. Her father was a dispatcher at a trucking company and had been a trucker himself before he injured his shoulder. They were both decent people and Monique was the first person in her family to go to university, determined to better herself. She wanted to be an actress but had been wise enough to go to university first. It ruined everything for both her and Olivier when she got pregnant. Her father had landed a punch squarely on Olivier’s jaw, which even he felt he deserved for being careless. They were both eighteen and had been equally cavalier about the risk of pregnancy. Her family was staunchly Catholic, and an abortion was out of the question. She didn’t want one anyway. Olivier had done the honorable thing, much to his family’s dismay, and married her. Their brief marriage gave them both ample opportunity to discover how little they had in common. She hated being married and being held to Olivier’s standards for what he expected in a wife. She cheated on him several times soon after the baby was born. They separated when their son, Maxime, Max, was six months old.
Olivier’s parents paid for childcare for their grandson but didn’t want him living in their home. Monique’s parents grudgingly allowed the child to live with them, with the nanny the Bayards provided. Monique never went back to university, and soon left Paris to pursue her acting career around Europe with stars in her eyes. Shegot into drugs and died of an overdose when Max was two. He continued living with his maternal grandparents, and Olivier supported him as soon as he had a job and had done so ever since. Olivier saw Max regularly when he was a child, though not as frequently as he would have liked. Eventually he paid for a series of boarding schools for Max, most of which expelled him for cheating and stealing from other students and even teachers. Max was jealous of the other boys, and well aware that his father had money and he had been an early mistake. His maternal grandparents had explained that to him bluntly. He turned his relationship with his father to his advantage and played on his father’s guilt, but he had never been a loving, appealing child. He had his mother’s worst traits, and as he got older, he always hung out with the bad boys at school. Olivier had done his best to turn him in the right direction with no success. Hoping to guide him, Olivier had given Max a job at twenty-five, working for him.
Now Max was thirty and Olivier was forty-nine. Their relationship had never been easy. Max always felt cheated, and Olivier still felt a responsibility to him, even though his son had not turned out as he hoped. He did his best for him. Max was clever in business, but always looking for a shortcut, a fast deal, an easy way to get what he wanted. Olivier paid him a handsome salary to work in the marketing department of Bayard Bags. Max was abrasive and unappealing, but he was good-looking and used charm and lies to get what he wanted. To him, the end always justified the means. He spent all his money on women and flashy cars, and he loved to gamble. Olivier wasn’t proud of him, but took full responsibility for him, and Max made full use of it in any way he could.
Two years after he and Monique had divorced, when Max was two and a half, Olivier fell madly in love with a young artist. He was twenty-one and Héloïse was two years older. She lived in a garret with no heat and worked as a nude model in her art classes when she needed money. He fell in love with her, and they were inseparable from then on. He was still a student, and much to his family’s despair, he married her, and she got pregnant immediately. They had a son named Basile, and he was everything Max never had been, an easy, happy, sunny child who was easy to adore, and they both did. Olivier’s younger son was the sweet spot in his life.
His second marriage barely lasted longer than the first. Héloïse ran off with her drawing professor a year after Basile was born and took the infant with her to live in Italy. Olivier traveled frequently to Puglia, the small town where they were living, and did his best to stay present in Basile’s life. But eventually, once he started his business, the trips became less frequent, and eventually stopped entirely. As he grew up, Basile became a talented artist himself, and when he was eighteen he returned to Paris to continue his studies at the Beaux-Arts. He was curious about his father and looked him up, and Olivier really got to know him then. And with time and evenings spent together, they became good friends. Basile made it rewarding and enjoyable for Olivier to be a father. Olivier got him a small studio apartment near where he lived, and they saw each other often.
Olivier’s two sons were three years apart. Basile had eventually left the Beaux-Arts to become a street artist, starting with graffiti, and now, at twenty-seven, his work had matured and evolved, and he was becoming successful. He had the rare combination of his mother’s artistic talent and his father’s head for business. Olivierwent to his shows whenever he had them and was impressed at how strong and whimsical and appealing Basile’s art was. The two half brothers had met several times and didn’t like each other, part jealousy and part just too different. Olivier got along brilliantly with Basile, and they never lacked for things to talk about on subjects that fascinated them. They were surprisingly alike and admired each other, whereas Max was jealous of both of them. He had an envious, greedy nature. And even though Olivier and his older son worked together, they still had little in common. Their perception of the world and philosophies of life were total opposites. Max was always on the lookout for situations that would benefit him, no matter how shady they appeared, and Olivier’s efforts to lead him to the straight and narrow were fruitless most of the time. In contrast, Basile was full of humor and charm, and had the same generous, honorable, honest, warm heart as his father. Basile was easy to love, and Max an eternal challenge.
Olivier had seen recent photographs of Héloïse, Basile’s mother, his great love, and had been shocked to see that she had aged badly, and looked nothing like the beautiful girl he had fallen in love with in his youth. She was still with her former art teacher, who was now in his seventies and looked like an old man, and she was unattractive and looked ten years older than her age at fifty-one. She always told their son that she still had warm memories of Olivier and that he had been a lovely man, but the art instructor she had left him for, and never married but still lived with, was the love of her life. Her union with Olivier had served to produce Basile and nothing more. Basile wasn’t resentful of any of them. He had enjoyed a happy childhood in Italy, and loved living in Paris now and seeing his father for dinnerat a neighborhood bistro from time to time. Basile wanted nothing from Olivier and was doing well on his own. Olivier marveled at times at how different the two boys were. He got along with Basile and truly enjoyed him, but seeing Max at work every day was never a pleasure. Their relationship had been tense and awkward for all of Max’s life.
Max wanted to start his own company but was waiting for his father to pay for it, which Olivier wasn’t inclined to do. In his opinion, Max was always looking for an easy ride and wasn’t a hard worker. He took too many risks, and his gambling habit worried Olivier. Olivier had no desire to set him up in business and considered him a poor risk. He had terrible judgment. So Max was riding his father’s coattails until he got a better deal. He had no desire to do the heavy work himself. Unlike Basile, who worked hard and was starting to sell his street art for high prices, which impressed Olivier. Just talking to him, one could sense that Basile was destined for success.
After Olivier’s second unsuccessful marriage, he came to the conclusion that long-term commitment wasn’t for him. He was twenty-three when Héloïse ran off with her art professor, and although he’d had relationships later which had lasted for a few years, particularly one that had lasted for seven years with a married woman when he was in his thirties, he had no desire to marry or have more children. He had been single now for more than twenty-five years and was content.
He had an apartment he loved in the 7th Arrondissement, along the quais overlooking the Seine. He went to Italy frequently to visit their factories there, he went to Asia twice a year, and enjoyed a small amount of exotic travel. He did extensive business in the Statesand had friends there. His life seemed perfectly balanced to him, and he could think of nothing he was lacking, or he would have changed if he had the chance. He still shuddered at the early memories of how unhappy both of his marriages had made him, and with the vantage point of age, he could easily see how he would have been even more miserable if those unions had lasted. Monique had turned out to be a nightmare. Her parents had died, so he didn’t have to deal with them, and Héloïse had no family to speak of and Olivier had never met them. She had turned into a blowzy, unattractive housewife who had lost her looks at a young age. She had been a good mother to their son, so he was grateful for that. His own parents had died when he was relatively young, and he was an only child, so he had no family now except his two sons, and as far as he was concerned, they were enough. He saw enough of each of them, so he was satisfied and not hungering for more contact. Basile had never wanted anything from him, he wasn’t greedy or grasping, his art sold well, and he was self-supporting. But Max was a frequent headache even now, when they clashed over the business, which happened often. Olivier had long since accepted that he and Max were never going to see life the same way. And neither of his sons seemed to have any inclination to get married. He felt an obligation to give Max a role in his business, but he kept a close eye on him to make sure he didn’t do any serious damage.
Max chased anything in a skirt indiscriminately, if she was good-looking. He had a weakness for Russian models. They used him and were even greedier than he was. Basile always seemed to have a girlfriend of the moment, and appeared to be serially monogamous, but the faces changed every few months. At twenty-seven, he wasenjoying being young and single and had no urge to settle down. He said he had no desire to even think about it until he was at least thirty-five, which was eight years away. The timing sounded about right to his father too, much better than fatherhood at nineteen and twenty-two, and responsibilities he couldn’t handle at the time. Olivier thought that if he had been smart enough to wait too, and had chosen more carefully, he might have ended up with a partner who would have lasted and not cheated on him almost immediately. They had all been too young for marriage and children. His parents had said it at the time, but he hadn’t listened. Monique’s father probably would have killed him, or done him some serious bodily harm, if he hadn’t married her when she got pregnant, so Olivier had complied, much to his parents’ chagrin.
Max appeared to have the same short fuse as his maternal grandfather and wasn’t shy about landing a good punch now and then too. Olivier still remembered vividly Monique’s father punching him squarely in the face when she told him she was pregnant. Her father had grown up in a rough neighborhood and what he’d learned there had stayed with him for a lifetime. At the time, Olivier had never met anyone like him, or like her. In his more genteel family, punching someone wasn’t an option. Monique had hit him a few times too, and he had let her because she was a woman. He was sorry when she died, but he never missed her once they parted, and Max was a great deal like Monique and her family despite the education and advantages Olivier had given him. He had never become a nicer person, or a gentleman. And he was drawn to the lowest element of society among his friends.
—
Max marched into his father’s office late that afternoon, looking as he always did, like he was spoiling for a fight. He was always ready to attack and on the defensive. Olivier was gracious and polite, and seemed relaxed, even when he was stressed. He tried not to let it show. Max waved his emotions like a burning flag.
“Did you see the new fluorescents?” he asked Olivier, sure his father would hate them. They had been his idea.
“I did.”
“What did you think?” Max asked, frowning, his body language tense.
“I liked them. Much better than I thought I would. You were right.” Max’s face broke into an unexpected smile, like sunshine between storm clouds. He had been braced for thunder and lightning, and sometimes enjoyed it. He wasn’t afraid of a good fight. “I think they’re going to be a huge hit. Particularly in the States, California, Florida, and Texas, where they love bright colors.”
“We should have had them made in China,” Max said, scowling again. “Why waste money on production?” He had his father’s dark hair, and smoldering dark brown eyes to go with it. Olivier’s eyes were a warmer brown. Max was taller than his father and powerfully built. He went to a gym often and had broad shoulders. Olivier was tall, strong, and thin, and looked younger than his forty-nine years. They could almost have been brothers, since Olivier was so young when Max was born.
“The fabric would have been as durable in China, but the colors wouldn’t have been as vibrant.” They’d had the bags made in theirfactory outside Florence, which was Olivier’s decision, to upgrade their look.
“But the profit margin would have been better,” Max said.
“We can afford the margin we’ve got. You can’t always sacrifice quality for price, Max.”
“If we produced more in China, we could sell to H&M, Zara, Mango, and all the low-end outlets. We’d make millions.”
“That’s not what we do, or who we are,” Olivier reminded him, as he did often. Max wanted to turn Bayard Bags into a high-volume business and give up the price point and standard of quality Olivier had established years before and stuck to.
“We’re not Hermès,” Max said tartly.
“No.” His father smiled at him. “I wish we were.”
“This isn’t haute couture, Dad. And think of where that went. Down the tubes. If you were still in haute couture, you’d be broke by now.” Instead Olivier was a rich man with a booming business, but Max wanted more, no matter what he had to sacrifice to get there, including his reputation and his father’s, which meant nothing to him.
Olivier didn’t argue the point. It was a conversation they’d had many times before. “What are you doing this weekend?” he asked his son, always trying to bond with him, improve the relationship they had, and find common ground. Max was his son after all, which meant a lot to Olivier. Fatherhood was a commitment he had honored for all of Max’s life, and Basile’s. Max’s sentiments for his father weren’t as strong. He worked for him because he paid him well, not because he admired him or even loved him, or liked his job. He didn’t. Whatever Olivier had done for him, Max felt was his due.He felt entitled to whatever he had, and not grateful for it, unlike Basile, who was always touched by anything his father did, even the smallest gesture. But Héloïse had been a cut above Monique and had brought Basile up well, and genes played a part in it too. Olivier was a kind, generous man, and Basile resembled him more than Max did.
“Why?” Max answered him about the weekend, as though he was afraid his father wanted something from him, instead of the reverse, which was more usual. There was always something Max wanted from Olivier, money mostly, or any perks he could get.
“I have to go to Florence to see the factory tomorrow. I’ve got a meeting about next year’s spring line.” They were already working on it, and were always several seasons ahead, like ready-to-wear. “The Johnsons from Dallas are having a party to celebrate the palazzo they rented and redecorated in Venice. They begged me to come. I’m not dying to, but I think I should.” They were Bayard’s biggest buyers in the U.S. and bought a huge number of their bags every season. “Do you want to come?” Olivier was always anxious to introduce his son to better people than the sleazy crowd he hung out with and preferred.
