Crush (2 page)

Suddenly her scruples seemed petty. It was senseless to cut the evening short. She followed David to his apartment, in one of those neighborhoods for rich foreigners, near the great hotels of the Place Vendôme, a reassuring polyglot island within a hostile Paris. The pieces of furniture were like dancers on the parquet floor due to the absence of carpets that would anchor them. Nothing untidy, no knickknacks, no travel mementos or full ashtrays. The place seemed almost uninhabited. It made her wonder whether he rented this precarious-looking space for occasional stays.

—Have you lived here long? she asked.

—About two years . . . , David answered. Since my divorce . . . I left my son with his mother in my Saint-Germain-en-Laye house so he could complete his studies before returning to Morocco . . .

Bending over her opened handbag in search of cigarettes, Amélie lent an indifferent ear to these explanations. All in all, she preferred a bohemian, marginal lover, not set in his ways, to a complacent resident of an exclusive neighborhood. David raised her face gently with his hands:

—But I didn’t bring you here to bore you with my divorce case . . . , he said, eager to touch her.

Though they had met only the day before, David felt he’d been waiting for this moment for a long time. Had he heeded only his desires, he’d have taken her right there, roughly, standing
up. But he mastered his impatience, tasting her, sucking her lips, licking her face. His erection became insistent. He almost forgot his intentions to remain civil. She was still too serene, just slightly off-balance. He wanted to see her quiver.

—Come, he said, taking her hand.

Amélie surveyed David’s bedroom with a kind of detachment that, given the circumstances, seemed almost incongruous. The satin finish of the walls was anachronistic and in bad taste, like a miniskirt worn by an aging woman. They were white, painted in a slapdash manner disregardful of the delicately sculpted moldings. Yet despite the recent affronts to it, the room managed to retain the opulent and comforting atmosphere of a Haussmann-era building.

David began to undress her. Halfway stripped of all her clothing, Amélie felt her desire and self-assurance abate. She was in a tight spot.

By dint of his gradual, solemn plucking of her petals, David would soon reach her old-fashioned bra, and her panties’ loose elastic waist. She cringed, insecure in her body. He was bound to be disappointed.

Distrustful and skeptical, she nevertheless noted David’s eye growing misty with wonder as he uncovered her shoulders, breasts, hips. He persisted in this miraculous absence of any critical sense, repeating: How beautiful you are! at each glimpse of flesh. Relieved, she stopped thinking. She was naked, he still fully clothed. She felt she had a considerable advantage. Heedless as a schoolgirl, she leaped upon the bed and, as at the movies, waited under the sheet’s tent for the performance to begin.

Now it was David’s turn to strip. He did it abruptly, as if eager to get it over with. Big and impressive, he had kept
on his briefs. The combination of these two elements tickled Amélie’s funny bone. She was convulsed with laughter, but repressed it by tightening her jaws. She needed a whiff of derision so as to mentally step away from her raw female nature, unable to produce a sentimental alibi, stirred by this body, virile to the point of caricature, and bursting with the kind of powerful sexuality that impeded sublimation, or the tempering of the crudeness of flesh.

The alchemy was undeniable. She put up the rampart of irony, keeping herself from observing David’s prick for fear of growing too fascinated. But she was curious to discover the modulation of his caresses, the shape assumed by his desires, the compatibility of their senses.

He lay down next to her, taking her in his arms. Surprised by a tenderness that did not seem to go with his athletic build, Amélie felt his penis hard against her thigh.

—Do you want me to switch off the light? he inquired thoughtfully, hoping she would not insist on it.

—No, she answered.

She wanted to gauge his desire, to check it in his eyes. In the darkness he could have cheated, remained lucid while propelling her into a perilous whirlpool of emotion. Worse still, he might make violent, spiteful love that she’d mistake for passion.

—Any music? she inquired hesitatingly, inhibited by the aural precision of the sheet’s rustle, the rubbing of their bodies, and the squelching noise of saliva in her mouth. David switched on his night-table radio.

She smiled, her equanimity restored. Lying on his side, David stroked her with stubby yet agile fingers. He was telling her how soft her skin was, how much he wanted to touch
her buttocks, spread her thighs; crude words entangled with those of affection. Amélie moaned under the touch of these unfamiliar hands, while the swirling of her belly followed the inflections of his deep gravelly voice. He continued. He wished her warm, open, receptive of his intentions:

—Touch yourself, my love. Spread your little pussy for me. Show me how you make yourself come.

David had fantasized watching her finger-fuck herself as soon as he caught sight of her in the gas station. He had summoned in his mind the freedom of her gestures, her reserves of boldness. He envisioned becoming the prying spectator of her initiatives, the studious pupil of her amorous nature, and the consenting victim of the raptures she’d inflict on him.

Motionless and fascinated, he watched Amélie suck her middle finger with delectation, as though it had been dipped in a pot of honey, then slip it into her slit, only to offer it to him like some exotic sweet. He pulled it into his mouth, licked it, savored it, and returned it to her glistening with his saliva. He was breathing hard, his eyes dilated, his cock like the arrow of a sundial.

Amélie moistened the furrows surrounding her scarlet vulva, seeking electric sensations, her finger flat upon her clitoris. She was beginning to enjoy this exchange of voyeurism. Her legs wide open, with slow motion gestures, she turned toward David to allow him a better angle of observation.

She plunged her finger in the pearly, iridescent emulsion rising from the folds of her pussy, and breathed faster, massaging the hood on her cunt’s crest.

With a greedy hand, she assaulted the delta of her cunt, moaning and moving her head in every direction, disoriented by sexual bliss like a compass in contact with a magnet. Suddenly
she raised her hips, to bring her wet, dilated slit close to David’s flushed face:

—Look how hot I am. Fuck me!

David made a necklace of Amélie’s legs and rammed himself into her, supporting himself on his hands. He didn’t want to lie down on her. He needed to see her face contract with pleasure, the blush of excitement spread upon her tits. Determined to rip open and reveal the warmth of her feelings with the tip of his rod, he plunged deep into her silky, wet, blazing depths.

—You’re so juicy, my angel! I want to see you come. I’m sure you’re magnificent when you come.

Amélie moaned as his dick rubbed the walls of her cunt, stifling a gasp at each of his assaults, her breathing cut short by the fireworks churning in her belly, with the violence of birth contractions.

—Say that you like it, he ordered.

Her only answer was to disgorge a cry of brutal rage as she encircled David’s cock within her pulsating cunt. He smiled. It was a promising start. But if he wished to convince her of the inevitability of their union, he had to bring her to slower, more masterful orgasms. He wasn’t close to being sated.

Early in the morning, a bowled-over Amélie picked up her clothes strewn on the floor. David was still asleep. She drew a hot bath in which she attempted to regain her spirits: no orte had ever made love to her like this.

She had no intention to stock up her impressions without sharing them with him. But how could she express this? She’d never be able to voice her emotions accurately and yet with modesty. She reviewed the sentences running through
her mind. They oscillated between stupidity, platitude, and trivial expertise in the field of performance.

She got dressed, deciding that it was better not to overstay her welcome, particularly since her overwhelming desire was to leave within the sheets of this bed the terrifying realization that something irreparable had taken place during the night, making her queasy.

Awake now, David invited her to keep him company in the bathroom. While he was shaving, Amélie, eager to test her heart’s independence, delivered an awkwardly pompous lecture to the effect that their relationship could not go anywhere, there was no possibility of love between them, and that was that.

David promptly reassured her. He softened the import of the night, praising the merits of complicity. He proved conciliatory to the point of indifference, so that Amélie began to think she had dreamt his intense words of love, attributing to them a significance they never had.

CHAPTER TWO

I
n the mass of helter-skelter sensations arising from this new adventure, Amélie noted a few striking facts: First, she was no longer hungry. From the moment of her meeting with David she experienced a curious kind of repletion, of indifference to food. Eating had become extra work, the way her appetite would vanish at the thought of seeing the dentist.

This sensation grew every time she was close to David. At the prospect of calling him, her throat dried, her voice sounded hoarse, her belly ached, she experienced nausea attacks. She cleared her throat before dialing his number, like a singer waiting in the wings to step out on the stage. She’d take in a large draft of air before meeting him, as though readying herself for a scuba diving plunge.

What she lost in appetite flourished as curiosity. She wanted to know everything about David: his past, his tastes,
his habits, his political beliefs. She had always been curious about everything, particularly in relation to men. Their truth, nestled under the cover of propriety, or of an elegant suit, constituted an exciting enigma, a rebus. But desire had slipped in through the stitches of her curiosity, and her interest in David suddenly became an absolute necessity. Why? Were these the raptures of love? Or was it rather that, oppressed by the unseemliness of her desires, and her aroused voluptuousness, she made it her duty to find out all she could about the man who brought her to this pitch of erotic bliss? Damned if she knew!

David became the object of her assiduous study. His simplest sentences seemed to burst with allusions, shades of meaning. She spent every waking moment analyzing his silences, examining the nature of every intonation, every word, bringing to this scientific inquiry the dazzling ardor of a dilettante, finally aware, late in life, of her true vocation.

This passionate absorption was such fun that she mistook it at first for a wanton whim. Soon, however, she was forced to admit she had no choice in the matter: the investigation had to be completed. What was his opinion of makeup? Did he perchance dislike the expressions she was in the habit of using?

“Watch out! Be careful!” she told herself as she questioned her lover with the slyness of a racetrack gambler worming out a tip. She had to stay on her toes, doing her best to avoid any blunders and faux pas. She espoused his opinions to the point of servility: A drafty spot in a restaurant? No problem, she happened to feel hot. A steak for two? The very thing she was dying to share.

She felt deep within a childish, humiliating, annoying desire to do things right. Yet, despite all her efforts, a kind of uncertainty persisted, hooked to the dark, enigmatic panels of David’s personality, like a whelk fastened to a rock. Did he love her? Did he think of her? What did he think of her?

An ambiguous word would fill Amélie with anxiety. She felt like a swivel-pin around which whirled unanswerable questions. No sooner did David calm her qualms, allowing her to think of something else, than she felt guilty of infidelity. And she went on worrying, or pretending to do so, as she expressed her amorous fears, as though this agitation proved her devotion.

Alerted by a scrap of common sense, Amélie tried hard to think: What did she feel for David? What did she expect of him? Physical pleasure? A bit of irresponsible happiness? The love of twin spirits? Because she wanted to appeal to him, without knowing what she thought, or what she expected from him, Amélie gave herself license to carry on with her affair until she might see things clearly. She made of doubt her ally, deciding to brief a case without knowing its nature, or its importance.

D
avid did not indulge in this kind of narcissism. He pulled out all the stops to seduce Amélie. That’s the way he was. She fit his plans perfectly, the reserves of dash and vigor he could devote to her. He sent flowers, wrote poems, and made up all kinds of rituals in order to avoid thinking too much: he brushed his hair nervously, kept on changing his bedsheets, had his car washed before calling on her. An
exceptional situation calls for unexpected behavior. He was in love, a changed man.

From ordinary strategist he became a tactician. He would launch one operation on top of the other, reflecting upon them after the event. He could turn his coat without batting an eyelid, in order to straighten out a false impression. He might challenge a restaurant bill, and then, haunted by the dread of being taken for a miser, he’d shower her with lavish gifts. Had he been too eager, he’d stand her up the next day.

Not given to gab, he would suddenly discourse with eloquence. He’d move on request from one register to the next, as a copyist goes from Cézanne to Rembrandt. He’d talk a blue streak saying nothing, finding the right intonations and formulaic expressions for each circumstance. It was for the sake of alleviating Amélie’s anxieties, to fill in blanks when the conversation lagged, and gaps in an affair that he feared might be cut short.

In sum, he was bending over backward simply to please her. But his plan of action was set, and that’s what counted. He would pleasure her in bed, entertain her over the telephone, make her laugh over dinner. He’d make life beautiful and easy so that their liaison would seem innocuous. He wanted her open, dilated, creamy, as she was, with her thighs spread wide apart. Gradually, he’d prevail.

T
hey shared fits of uncontrollable laugher, and tender feelings. Amélie took David to her favorite candy store in Montmartre, A la Mère de Familie; she introduced him to marshmallows, praline caramels, apple rock
candy, aniseed cookies. David made faces, sickened by this surfeit of sweets. He got back at her, taking her to a poolroom where she scoffed at the green wool covering the tables, the ivory balls. In short, they put themselves out for each other. And their meetings acquired the joyous hue of a musical comedy.