Paris, Adrift Read online

  “When did Scott leave?”

  “A couple hours ago. I hope he didn’t wander off into the slums.”

  “Paris has slums?”

  “Every big city has slums. Since the war, ours happen to be in the suburbs, but not far from the center of Paris.” She took off the scarf she had wrapped around her head and shook out her hair.

  “I told you not to cut your hair. You’re supposed to listen to me. That’s our deal.”

  “Our ‘deal’ only extends to my career. Not my whole life. And certainly not to my hair.”

  “Your hair is your career and you’re lucky it looks good or I’d be walking out of here right now. Gosh, I hope Scott’s okay. I’d hate anything to happen to him because of me.”

  “Yes, well, maybe you’ll be a little less cavalier about standing people up in the future.” She took a cloth and began wiping the white stuff off her face.

  “Cavalier? Do you think that’s what I was?” I leaned on her vanity. “Well, I did show up at the church.”

  “You did?” She stopped wiping and looked at me. “Why didn’t you let me know?”

  “You seemed to be too busy.”

  “I was with my friends, and we were singing, but—” She stopped suddenly, remembering. “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Oh.”

  She removed the last of the cream and tossed the soiled cloth in the trash bin beside her. “That was nothing.” She patted some clear liquid on her face. “Margarite is emotional. The French are, you know.”

  “Now, you’re lying to me. I don’t think you’ve ever lied to me. You’ve done lots of other crappy stuff to me, but—”

  “I have?”

  “But you’ve never lied to me, so why now? You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you? You’ve been sleeping with her for a long time. All the time that you and I have known each other. I’ve been a jerk, haven’t I?”

  She dabbed a powder puff over her forehead. “You’re being melodramatic.”

  “It makes everything so much clearer. Especially the separate rooms. You’d rather be with her.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I couldn’t stand being with Margarite for more than a few hours.”

  “Only enough time to frig her.”

  “Don’t be crass. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “But it suits Margarite, doesn’t it? You like her whispering curse words in your ear?”

  “Margarite is incapable of whispering anything. She has the voice of a fog horn on an extremely cloudy day.”

  “Is that meant to be funny?”

  “No. I don’t think any of this is funny.” She furiously dabbed powder on her nose. “You’re the one who told me I needed to rest. How can I rest when you’re wandering around the streets of Paris in the dark, mispronouncing the few French words you know? Parisians hate that. And they hate Americans, so I’m pacing in my room thinking they’re going to find you in some ditch bloody and who knows what else?”

  I pushed myself away from her vanity and headed toward my room.

  “Like you care.”

  “I do.” She was standing when I turned back around to face her.

  “You do what?”

  “Nothing.” She busied herself with putting away the bottles and cloths that were spread across her vanity.

  I crept back toward her. “You said you care.”

  “Of course, I do,” she said stiffly. “Now let’s stop talking about it.” She tried to tighten the top of one of the jars, but her grip slipped, and the top flew off. “Dammit.”

  I picked it up from the floor and handed it to her. “Why does it make you so nervous when we get close to calling the thing between us love?” She kept recapping her jars and wiping white gunk from the vanity glass. I leaned onto the glass, my face looking up into hers. “I love you,” I said. She flinched. “I love you, Jule. I love you. I love you.”

  “Well, you don’t have to keep repeating it.” She moved away from the vanity toward the sofa in the center of the room.

  “Yes, I do.” I leaned back against the wall, feeling some return of power. “I get to say it as much as I want. And you have to listen to it without giving me that nonsense speech about how two women can’t love each other in the same way that a husband and wife, blah, blah, blah. It seems to me I delivered pretty damn good on my end of the deal. You wanted me to help Richard make you a success. Well, look around. You’re the toast of Paris. And today I got a wire from Jules Podell.” She turned to face me. “Yes, he and I will be negotiating a good contract for you long distance. You’re on your way back up in New York, too.” I pushed out of my mind the intruding Dan Schuyler and his blackmail. “And in exchange, I get to say I love you as much as I want and you have to listen to it. That’s not such bad deal, huh? I love you. I love you. I love you. I can even do it in French. Je t’aime. Je t’aime. Je t’aime.”

  “All right. All right,” she said as if I were throwing knives at her.

  “Everyone in France is in love with l’amour, except you.”

  “The French don’t approve of our kind of—of . . . any more than Americans do.”

  “That’s the reason you keep this long-term arrangement with Margarite, isn’t it? Because with Margarite there is no love.”

  “Stop trying to ‘figure me out’; there’s nothing to figure out. I’m not complicated like you. I’m just me. I don’t understand why you’re even bothered by Margarite. She doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  “She sure the hell does.”

  “It’s just that with Margarite . . .” She walked back toward the vanity. “You know, I never speak about private things that happen between other people and me, but, uh, maybe I’ll bend a little so you’ll see that this isn’t something you need to be concerned with.” She sat back down at her vanity, placing her jars into the drawers. “I can do things, sexual things with Margarite that—”

  “That you can’t do with me? Why? Anything you want to do I’ll—”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t twist yourself into something you’re not. I don’t want that.”

  “What makes you think I’m such a ‘scaredy cat’ that I couldn’t do anything she does, only better?”

  “Because you use expressions like ’scaredy cat.’ Which is charming,” she hastened to add.

  “I’m charming? Like a kitten?”

  “No, like a country girl. I enjoy your homespun, down-home ways. You’re gentle. That’s a lovely quality. I don’t want you to change. There’s nothing about you I’d change. We’ve had some beautiful times together, haven’t we?”

  “Of course, but I never thought I was sharing you with the world.”

  “Margarite is not the world.”

  “Richard?”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Oh. Tell me how Margarite is different from me? Beyond the obvious.”

  “I’ve already said more than I should. Do you really want me to break my rule, a rule I value greatly, knowing if I do I’ll feel terrible afterwards? Do you want that?”

  “Yes.” I crossed my arms over my chest.

  She sighed. “All right. I don’t feel at all good about this, but if it will help you. With Margarite I can . . . Well, she likes things a little rough. There’s nothing more you need to know.”

  “You think I’m not sophisticated. You think I can’t know about these kinds of things. You’re treating me like a child.”

  “In business you are extremely sophisticated, but in sex . . .”

  “You talk like you think you’re the only woman I’ve ever been with.”

  “Well?”

  I gave her a wink and a nod and sauntered over toward her bed like a swashbuckling Errol Flynn.

  “Have you been with someone else?”

 
I sat on the end of her bed, leaning my head against one of the canopy posts. “Maybe.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t kiss and tell.”

  “Who?” she repeated more firmly.

  There was a knock at the door. “Service de chambre,” the voice on the other side said. Juliana hurried to open the door, signed the check, and retrieved my warm milk. “I guess you don’t want this.”

  “Oh, but I do.” I snatched it from her and sucked on the glass like it was an elixir from the gods without drinking it. “This is going to make me sleepy, you know.” I yawned with vigor. “I better go to my room.”

  “You’re not going anywhere until you tell me who.” She blocked the doorway.

  “Oh? You’re hurt.”

  “I am not. Only surprised. It doesn’t matter who . . . Who was it? Was it someone I know?”

  “You might.”

  “You’re making it up. You’ve never been with anyone else, any other woman. You’re making up a story to impress me.”

  “Are you impressed?”

  “No.”

  “And I’m not making it up.”

  “Tell me. I told you.”

  “No, you didn’t. I figured it out.”

  “You’re making it up in retaliation.” She walked away from the doorway and sat at the vanity. She looked in the mirror, poking and fluffing her hair. “You’re jealous so you’ve concocted this story about some make believe, mysterious—”

  “Virginia Sales.”

  “You’re kidding. But she’s straight.”

  “Not with me she’s not.” I was really reaching if I thought that one time on the ladies’ room floor with Virginia could compare to what I imagined Juliana was doing with Margarite, but it was all I had.

  “I didn’t think Virginia even had the necessary equipment down there to get the job done.”

  “Don’t be mean ‘cause you’re hurt.”

  “I’m not hurt.”

  “Yes, you are.” I bounced around the room. “You are. You are. Juliana’s hurt. Juliana’s hurt.”

  “Now you are acting like a child.”

  I leaned on the vanity. “What do you do specifically with Margarite that you haven’t done with me? Maybe I did it with Virginia.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “All right. All right.” She slapped the vanity glass with her two hands, marched over to her walk-in closet, and disappeared for a few moments.

  She returned with one hand held high, and hanging from it was a leather belt, a rubber penis dangling from the center of it. “Well?” she said, her voice and eyes challenging me.

  She was trying to intimidate me, and I couldn’t let her know it was working. “I know what that is,” I said. “It’s a, a . . .” My throat clogged, and I couldn’t get the word out.

  “A dildo, yes. And you and Virginia used one of these?”

  “Sure,” I puffed out my chest as far as it would go. “Sure we did. Lots of times. All the time. Shirl and Mercy gave one to you and me. What happened to that?”

  “I have it.”

  “Well? Give it to me. I’ll show you I know how to use it.”

  “Al, you don’t have to prove anything.”

  “Oh yeah, I do.” I barged into her closet. “Where is it?” I pushed her clothes out of the way looking for it. “Come on, Jule, they gave it to both of us. You have no right—”

  “All right. Don’t wrinkle my clothes. It’s here.” She stood on tiptoe and pulled down a box from the top shelf and handed it to me.

  I opened the box and grabbed out the phony penis. It felt strange, kind of a mushy rubbery feel, not at all like Henry, my ex-fiancé. “I’ll show you I know how to use this thing. I’ll be right back. I marched out of her room into mine, holding the pretend penis in my hand like a spear.

  “Uh, Al.” She stood at my door. “Unless you’re planning on gluing that on you’ll need this.” She held up the leather belt with the rubber penis still hanging from it.

  I watched as she wiggled it out of its holder. “You have to use the harness. Come here. I’ll help you.”

  “I know how to do it.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’d like to help you.”

  Slowly, in the middle of her bedroom, Juliana began to undress me.

  “Uh, Juliana, I’m mad at you.”

  “I know,” she said, lifting my dress off over my head.

  “If you undress me, I’ll get excited.”

  “I know,” she said, throwing off my slip and kneeling to unsnap my nylons.

  “But if I get excited . . .” My excitement mounted as she slid down my garter belt . . . “I won’t be able to stay mad at you.”

  “I know.” She removed my bra and put her mouth around one of my nipples while her fingers stroked the other one.

  “Oh gosh, oh gosh, Jule, you’re, you’re manipulating me. Again.”

  “I know.” She slid my underpants down to my ankles.

  She fitted our dildo into the center metal hole of the harness and pulled two of the straps up my legs. Then she wrapped the leather belt around me and cinched it. When she stepped back to take a look, the thing slid down to my feet. She covered her mouth, trying not to laugh, but the laugh exploded out of her anyway. She laughed so hard her legs got weak and she fell back on the bed.

  “It’s not that funny.”

  “Oh, yes, it is.”

  “I guess I’m a lot skinnier than Margarite.”

  “You are.” She pulled the harness back up around me and cinched it into the last hole. “But I’m usually the one who wears it.”

  “You? I don’t think I’d like seeing you in a penis.”

  She smiled and stepped back again. “Let’s see how you look.”

  I put my hand over the protruding thing, trying to hide it. “Jule, I feel silly.”

  She covered her mouth, so she wouldn’t laugh out loud again. “That’s how you look. But it’s not the look. It’s what you do that matters.”

  “Uh, Jule . . . I—I don’t really know what to do with it.”

  “I know. I’ll teach you. It’s the same idea as when you put a couple of fingers in me or I do that to you, only this is more so.”

  I put my arms around her and held her close. “What am I going to do with you, Jule? You’re killing me.”

  She let her bathrobe fall to the floor and lifted her nightgown over her head. We stood together naked with the dildo pointing at her pussy. “Well, tonight I think you’re going to make love to me. After that? Who knows?” She kissed me deeply. The rain beat against the windows as I melted into her.

  A knock at the door. “Juliana!” Scott yelled. “I can’t find Al anywhere. We gotta call the police.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  I woke up the next morning in Juliana’s bed. Juliana’s head lay on my pillow, she was that close. I loved looking over and seeing her there, even if her black hair didn’t quite fan out over my white pillow case anymore. I loved watching the barely perceptible rising and lowering of her breasts to the rhythm of her gentle breathing.

  It’d been kind of awkward when Scott was knocking at our door with Jule and me both being in our naked condition and with me wearing the dildo. We ran and grabbed robes and let him in, but the whole time Scott was there saying how glad he was I was okay and drying his hair with Juliana’s towel, I kept worrying the dang dildo would poke out of my robe and scare him half to death. I don’t think we were as receptive to him as we should’ve been.

  I carefully slipped from the bed, not wanting to wake her, and dashed into the bathroom. I wanted to get clean before I went back to her. Especially my teeth. As I leaned over one of the basins, reaching for the tooth powder,
I watched the dildo jiggle up and down. I stared at myself in the mirror from all angles. I was getting to like how it looked on me. I brushed my teeth, soaped up, and rinsed in the two basins, but I didn’t ungirdle the thing. I liked having sex with this thing. One time when I was on top. That was fun for me, but not so much for her. Juliana turned me over onto my back and she got on top of me and pushed herself down onto it. Was that how she and Margarite did it? That way worked out best for her. And when I moved my hips to meet her movements while she touched her clit and I played with her nipples, she damn near exploded. I thought they might send the hotel detectives in to arrest us. Wearing that thing made me feel strong and in charge. I liked being that for Juliana.

  I watched myself in the mirror as I dried my body with one of the big fluffy hotel towels. I wrapped the towel around my waist and made fists of my hands. I curled my arms and flexed my muscles. Only there weren’t any muscles. My arms were skinny sticks. As I studied my arms, the towel slowly unfurled from my waist and slid into a heap around my feet. There was the dildo, bobbing up and down on my boyish frame. I remembered overhearing conversations from musicians talking about their penis being big or hard or whatever. They always seemed to be talking about their penises if you listened close enough. Even if it sounded like they were talking about buildings or business or musical instruments, they were really about their penises, only in code. Wouldn’t they have loved this one? Always big. Always hard. You could take it off when you didn’t need it and keep it in a drawer.

  I ran into my room, threw open one of my dresser drawers, and grabbed a T-shirt I wore when I had my men’s suit on. I pulled it over my head and flexed my muscles in the mirror over my dresser. I thought, I looked stronger with the T-shirt on, so I left it on with no underpants to surprise Juliana with my great prowess.

  I tiptoed back toward her bed, but I quickly saw that it was empty. My heart sunk. I’d wanted to spend at least a few hours with her in bed before I had to go back to being serious and thinking about things like Dan Schuyler.