Crush (6 page)

David burst in as she bent over the desk to toss the wrappings into the waste-paper basket. “I’ve forgotten to—” he muttered, stopping in mid-sentence at the sight of Amélie’s fanny and the strips of her pale, naked skin swathed in black silk. He took a few steps forward.

Amélie held her breath, arching her loins. She had no desire to look behind her, to watch David’s approach, to recognize him. His heavy tread, laden with lust, could be that of any stranger, whose sexual vigor and kinky demands she was
about to discover. He grabbed her hips, pushing aside the flaps of his bathrobe to glue his stomach to her rump, nestling between her black-girdled buttocks.

—Your ass is quite something . . . You’re giving me horny ideas standing like that.

Amélie did not move. Goaded by her passivity, David slipped off her panties, sliding them down her thighs. Prick grasped in his fist like a painter’s brush, he swept her wet, shimmering slit with the tip of his cock, whitewashing her vulva from clitoris to asshole.

—If you don’t tell me to stop, he hissed, I’m going to fuck you in the ass. But first I want to hear you come.

Amélie did not say a word. Relishing David’s breathless, menacing intentions, she bent over the desk, propped up by her elbows. He thrust the entire length of his rod into her snatch, again and again, one long stroke after the other, before rubbing the head of his penis against the moist opening of her cunt. Like the surge of high tide, his rhythm grew thick and fast. Amélie’s ears were ringing, her vision blurred. She gasped, suffocating with pleasure, tilting her hips to meet each powerful assault, amplifying the impact of his cock delving deep into her pussy.

When he ordered her with a murmur:

—Come now!

She uttered a long, modulated shriek, wrenched from the pit of her gut. She emerged from orgasm, cunt racked by spasms, while David’s saliva-drenched forefinger coerced the threshold to her ass. A blinding pain radiated from anus to spine as David rammed himself in. The diameter of his cock split her bowels open, shoving home through the stranglehold of her loins. Agony invaded her with the quick burn of fire.

—Wait, she begged him, please, wait . . . Slower!

He paused.

—Do you want me to stop?

—No, go on. It hurts, but I like it. I don’t quite know. Go on, but gently.

When he judged himself sufficiently lodged within her, David induced a to-and-fro motion to his prick trapped in the tightness of her shaft. At his first move, Amélie clenched her teeth, anticipating the same pain. But nothing prepared her for the violence of the sensation she now discovered. She howled, whitened knuckles gripping the sides of the desk.

Soon her pain subsided, diluted by the force of the tidal-wave hurling over her, flooding each and every nerve ending of her skin. David was invading her entrails. The giddiness inflicted upon her by his thrusts felt at once excruciating and delicious.

Through his cock, David perceived the onset of her pleasure, heralded by the surrender of her loins:

—But you like it, don’t you? Say you love me fucking your ass!

—Yes! she cried out, I love it!

—I’m going to come! he bellowed.

He shoved himself in further, ejaculated, and Amélie felt her belly torn asunder by a climax that left her limp. They remained recumbent on the table, limbs askew like a pair of dislocated puppets. When he attempted to stand, she said:

—Don’t leave me like this! I can hardly move, and I don’t even know if I’ll be able to sit down!

He laughed, gathered her into his arms, and carried her to the bed. Shivering, she slipped under the covers as David disappeared into the bathroom.

—My goodness! she exclaimed when he came back. You’re all ready, spruced up and gorgeous! You’re amazing. Look at me, I’m a wreck!

—I may seem fresh and relaxed, but I can hardly stand on my own two feet . . . Come on, darling, get ready, or we’ll never get out of here in time for dinner. It’s our last evening.

A limping Berber escorted them through the dark alleys of the medina, where the muffled sounds of the city, reduced to whisperings, seemed to stagnate. His lantern, burning with a night-light glow, softened the narrow streets teeming with shadows and, depending on his meandering path, projected haphazardly rays or bursts of light revealing doors, windows, vaguely, mouthlike humid orifices, carved in walls glossed by the penumbra.

Emerging from the labyrinth of primitive streets, Amélie felt she had traveled in time and space. They found themselves among the ordinary clients of a restaurant who stared at the newcomers as people do in pubs all over the world.

The ancient palace enclosed a square courtyard, sheltered by a makeshift velum. It was full of local color: Air drafts blew through the awnings, evoking the precariousness of desert tents, while a tinkling fountain seemed to orchestrate the smell of cinnamon and orange blossoms floating over the tables. They were placed face-to-face on deep sofas. David took Amélie’s hand extended over a tablecloth covered with rose petals.

—I love you.

That’s when she saw him: Jacques G., seated alone two tables away from theirs. His profile was too still to be natural. He had seen her, that was for sure! And he was still wondering
whether he ought to recognize her. She lowered her head, pretending to rearrange the locks of hair falling over her forehead:

—Merde! she whistled between clenched teeth.

—What’s the matter? David asked.

—Second table on the left; Jacques G., a friend of Paul’s. He was on my right at our tenth anniversary party. What a disaster!

David said nothing; he felt responsible. It was he after all who had suggested Marrakech, keeping secret the fact that social collisions were far from uncommon in this exotic city. How stupid of him to have taken her to the city’s best restaurant! But he was tired of racking his brain for obscure pubs in Paris where she wouldn’t run into anyone she knew: African restaurants whose local color offset disastrous cuisine, charming bistros of the nineteenth arrondissement; touristy hash-houses of the Place du Tertre. Besides, there was something disturbing about watching her tremble with apprehension, overwhelmed by a physical malaise. It was more than inelegant, it was downright insulting! “It’s her problem, after all!” he said to himself.

Amélie was clenching her fists, searching for the commonsense thing to do. She couldn’t think straight, and this doubled her anxiety. She begged David to help her:

—David what am I going to do? What the hell can I do now?

—There are two possibilities: Either you pretend you haven’t seen him, and he’ll understand; or you greet him nicely, and he’ll understand also.

Realizing the curtness of his suggestions, he added:

—Listen, your friend doesn’t strike me as a fool. He’s old enough to have found himself in such a situation before; he won’t tell.

—You may be right, Amélie nodded dolefully. In fact, you’re quite right. It’s about time I regained some dignity. That’s what you’re hinting at, isn’t it? So I’m going to say hello.

She lighted a cigarette and, taking advantage of the lack of an ashtray on the table, swept the room with her eyes in search of a busboy. Such an ostentatious move could only require social effusiveness:

—Oh, Jacques! Hello, how are you?

Jacques G. feigned surprise.

—Amélie, how wonderful to run into you!

Amélie noted that Jacques avoided looking at David. He proved himself circumspect, delicate, tactful; perhaps a bit tense. Their chat ended with a smile. She turned to David:

—Tell me, am I beet red?

—No, you handled it perfectly. I’m proud of you.

—All right! Shall we order our food now? He interrupted, forcing cheerfulness as he called the maître d’ to their table.

She approved his suggestions without listening to them: salad, pigeon
pastilla,
couscous. The waiter took their order. Suddenly Amélie froze, as if some tiresome individual had covered her eyes with his hands, trumpeting: Guess who’s here?

Martine L., her cousin, was coming out of the ladies’ room heading straight for their table. Passing before them without seeing them, she was smiling across the room at someone on the left. She had just passed their table when her step grew hesitant.

Amélie saw her own image reflected in Martine’s growing awareness. Resigned to a family scandal, she readied herself to put up a good front. Martine looked back all of a sudden, her face death-pale. Just as married as Amélie, she was having dinner with Jacques G. Amélie smiled at her with all the compassion she would have enjoyed finding a few moments ago in Jacques G. Martine returned her smile, relieved by this reaction in which she had failed just yet to detect the obligation of reciprocity.

Both couples isolated themselves in their respective bubbles of illegitimacy, circumscribed by the perimeter of their table. David questioned Amélie. She livened up, explained who Martine was, what Jacques G. did for a living. Together they appreciated the piquancy of the situation, commented on the toppling down of the probabilities of Jacques’s indiscretions since their original analysis of the situation.

By dint of speaking of Paul, her husband, conjuring up memories, Amélie no longer felt at home at this table, with David. She was far from Paris, her center of gravity, and the disasters she was unleashing at this moment. She couldn’t wait to get back home, avoid, circumvent, and snub these dire circumstances.

Amélie’s terror was palpable, as was her desire to flee. Frustrated, hurt, deprived by the fugitive nature of her love, David attempted to hold her back, captivate her attention. But he did not possess a gift for conversation. He was a man of action, unskilled in playful repartee. “Might as well ask a skeptic to lead the séance table,” he said to himself, disheartened. Drained by these one-way efforts, he was growing weary.

He alternated stories and silences. She listened vacantly to the first, unable to overcome the second. Both found themselves
unable to compress the duration of the dinner, much like unmatched objects of different weights, ill-suited to prop up books upon a bookshelf. The wine was good; the dishes followed one another. They sampled the food on their plates and drank till their bill came.

Back at the hotel, they undressed in silence. Their room, cleared of the evidence of their passionate struggle, welcomed their unease without dispelling it. An angry David pondered Amélie’s lovelessness, her frenzied respect for proprieties, while she mused sadly on the pertinence of the evening’s events. It was their last night. And their future rendezvous, left to the whims of fate and desire, drew a swarm of question marks under their bed’s canopy.

CHAPTER FOUR

A
mélie was supposed to meet a friend at the Flore at half past twelve. Chantal was always late, but she did not mind waiting. She liked this café, the waiters’ long aprons, the bewigged, sad-looking manager standing near the cashier’s desk, and the regular customers, like the two old gentlemen seated on the imitation red leather banquette at the back, reading and making discreet comments on the press from behind newspapers spread out in front of their espressos.

They were always there. One wore a Swiss voile shirt with a dark, faded business suit: a handsome man betrayed by aging, whose cumbersome burly build contrasted with a bilious complexion; his austere, old-fashioned elegance breathed the bygone era of Central Europe. While his companion, a bald civil-servant type, his eyes magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses, had the rosy cheeks of a chitterlings sausage fancier,
and wide suspenders on his round belly. Both of them sneaked away at the same time, just before the lunch crowd turned the pub’s peaceful landscape topsy-turvy.

Twelve thirty-five: they got up. Amélie greeted them by a slight toss of her head. Were they brothers in arms, or retired office colleagues? At any rate they were dignified in their observance of a discipline known to them alone. It was also wise on their part to flee the crowd of press attachés in miniskirt business suits and the day’s divas jostling one another at the narrow stands.

Her eyes swept the room, in search of a new center of interest. A muddy-complexioned young woman kept on scraping her spoon in her cup of coffee. Her pointy, fleshy breasts stood out, unbeknownst to her, like intriguing, bold stowaways. Amélie thought she recognized her bulging eyes, her energetic yet vulnerable features. An actress no doubt, whose careless attire, tentative demeanor, preserved her incognito. Shaped by the cool transience of the place, a mystery lingered above the tables of the café.

Chantal was running really late. Like a crossword-puzzle buff intent on solving a particularly thorny definition, Amélie concentrated on identifying this discreetly famous woman. Though history, or the workings of institutions, seemed unintelligible to her, Amélie was thoroughly adept at everything that dealt with the love affairs, disappointments, and irrational opinions of both large-and small-screen stars. She possessed a fund of information as vast and delicately shaded as the civil code, one systematically updated by magazine gossip columns, which furnished her with a subtle jurisprudence geared to uphold a point of tittle-tattle law.

Amélie would never admit to these little weaknesses. Recognizing celebrities became for her a special point of honor. She was peeved when she failed to do so. Over and above the fact that the bits of futile information cluttering her memory held no glamor in her estimation, she felt that behaving like a rubbernecker would only open a void between her and people of renown. She preferred to keep silent about her satisfaction in identifying a famous musical composition, or a painter’s trademark brush stroke, as these did nothing more than produce proof of her limited culture.

She made do with the gaping holes in her education, as with her working-girl inquisitiveness, and Peeping Tom voyeurism. She kept them secret, beyond detection. Nothing made her more uneasy than the same vulgar traits in others. She squirmed when an acquaintance would exclaim: “Get a load of so-and-so!” or longed to disappear in a hole in the ground when someone declared with shameless self-satisfaction: “That’s a Picasso!” These mediocrities compromised her reputation, tarnished it by association. Her carefully retouched image was bound to be destroyed.

Hidden behind a screen of impassibility, she was no longer concerned with the impression she was making; her silence in front of a painting could pass for the reserved qualification of a scholar; her placid demeanor in the presence of a person of mark might mean she did not know him, or failed to be impressed. This was her no-fail system. It did not hold anyone’s attention, but Amélie accepted herself as she was, and in so doing safeguarded her pride.

She even managed to attribute to herself a role of some importance by modulating the nuances of her indifference.
Should a pretentious, arrogant leading lady enter the Flore, Amélie would punish her by not paying her the slightest attention. She derived satisfaction from sapping the woman’s certainty of being admired. But should the diva be likable, Amélie’s attitude altered imperceptibly: kindly disposed, she refrained from spying on her in order to preserve the star’s precious incognito.

Whew! She’d figured out who that woman was. Didn’t she play Anaïs Nin in that Henry Miller film? That’s the one.

A deeply moving and comic actress with a rock crystal voice. Amélie was delighted to have detected a famous actress under such drab attire.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, Amélie felt like extending her wishes of success, and communicating her admiration for the actress’s choice of roles and her interpretation. It was like a fever, leaving her aflutter. In her excitement she felt awkward, wondering whether the vanishing of all her principles might not be due to the actress’s lack of notoriety. Could she have ever imagined that this outpouring of praise would not be met by weariness?

Her impulsive gesture was doubtlessly ridiculous. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. She could still draw back. Reviewing the various stages of the woman’s career in order to bolster her speech, she selected words that expressed her thoughts: sincere, unaffected, flattering yet not fawning, reconciling warmth and concision by the judicious use of the right pitch.

When she thought she was ready, she analyzed the situation once more. The young woman was still alone; she wouldn’t disturb her long. And were she forced to retreat before the actress’s cold response, were her intervention to sink into ridicule, she was free to stammer and falter in her speech,
since none of her acquaintances were there to witness her embarrassment. The time had come for her to react, or rather to take action. The woman seemed discouraged. Perhaps she had just been jilted, and would be only too happy to know she was appreciated. It was delightful after all to receive a compliment as delicately phrased as the one she had just prepared.

Like a schoolgirl ordered to the blackboard, Amélie gathered up her courage to walk over to the woman. The actress raised her eyes, putting on the ghost of a smile, as she listened to Amélie hastily delivering her compliment.

—Thank you very much, was all she said, pursing her lips to form a polite pout that clearly indicated she was concluding their conversation.

Back at her table, Amélie thought over the episode. Her blood had rushed to her head, throbbing in her temples. She felt the flush of her cheeks. But it was done! She savored for a few moments this victory over her natural reluctance, calmed down, yet realized she was disappointed. In spite of her well-meaning reserve, the actress did not seem to have been touched by her kindness, and her pertinent comments.

Perhaps it was the wrong moment? Perhaps there was no right moment to approach a person in public life?

She avoided letting her gaze drift in the direction of the actress’s table, tried to think of something else. All of a sudden she was pierced by a shooting doubt: Didn’t the actress she admired have an aquiline nose, finer features? A vague face, different from the one she approached, was emerging from her memory. Her head was swimming as she tried to separate in her mind one face from the other. Casting furtive glances at the woman, she urged herself to keep calm. Feverish and nauseous, she felt she must have made a mistake.

Then a vague recollection wormed its way through her discomfort: the woman facing her was also an actress. She had played in Louis Malle’s latest film, belonged to the same age group as the other, and was equally talented. But what was the good of knowing this now? By complimenting the wrong person she had reached the zenith of greenhorn naïveté.

Overcome by embarrassment, Amélie clutched the edge of the table as patients grasp the arm rests of the dentist’s chair. Only a bad moment to live through, she reasoned, trying to get out of this state of mind. The actress was paying her bill. She wouldn’t see her again. Soon, this whole incident would be as forgotten as properly treated tooth decay.

Amélie waited for the young woman’s departure to allow her muscles to relax. Relieved of the actress’s gaze, she had to face her own. Theorizing about notoriety had always seemed to her innocuous, imaginative, reassuring; all she could see in it now was the manifestation of affectation and vanity. She felt as though she were inhaling the musty odor of a full ashtray after having smoked a cigarette and enjoyed the twirling smoke and the warmth of the paper cylinder between her fingers. She had to admit to herself that she had never left the flock of the faceless admirers of celebrities.

Chantal came bolting through the door fifteen minutes late, having double-parked. From her seat at their usual table she could keep an eye on the meter girls.

—Before anything else, I must tell you about my blunder, Amélie declared.

She turned her mishap into a side-splitting tale. Chantal roared with laughter. And Amélie, glib and mirthful, transcended her humiliation in the act of telling it.

Chantal was wearing one of those white silk blouses with a stock collar, signaling at a distance the sexlessness that was the ideological imperative of her American law office, which ensured her colleagues’ vigilance in regard to the least show of femininity. Animated, as usual, she detailed for her friend the various aspects of the race she had to run in order to leave her office at the time their New York associates were waking up.

The two women ordered salads and coffee without a glance at the menu. They always took the same thing, as much for the comfort of a predictable routine as for any concern about diet.

Looking at her insipid salad, Amélie was amused by her absurd respect for conventions, which made her peck like a bird in Chantal’s company, whereas with David, to avoid being dull as dishwater, she’d enthuse over the waiter’s description of warm foie gras washed down by sauternes.

Should she tell Chantal about her adventure with David? Perhaps it was a good idea. Usually she confided in her husband when in need of advice or venting her spleen. Now that it was essential to hide from him all this baseness, she needed an accomplice. Chantal was no doubt gifted for keeping secrets and furnishing alibis . . . .

However, it seemed immodest to speak of the two men in her life to a friend who didn’t even have one. Then again, did she really wish to allow Chantal, who thought a secret as painful as a splinter, into her confidence? She knew in advance that to conclude this transition in all fairness, she’d have to follow up with additional secrets accompanied by a reasonable portion of licentious details . . . . Better keep silent.

Chantal began with a description of last night’s dinner party, all the time chewing disconsolately her lettuce leaves. A confirmed bachelor, she had left her car in the parking lot so as to reconcile the insecurity she felt in going out alone in the evening with the hope of meeting the man who, by driving her home, would transform her life.

She had gotten into the habit of calling the hostess to find out which of her guests would pick her up, and leave to fate her end-of-evening escort. Amélie had many doubts about the efficacy of this device, but, having met David in a gas station, she could not comment on statistical likelihoods.

The avowed aim of the dinner party was to introduce her to a loafer whose main attribute was his recent divorce. A single glance sufficed to reveal the incompatibility of their reciprocal futures. She had had to endure the obligingness of the hostess who, under the mask of good intentions, had orchestrated this introduction to rejuvenate the staleness of their social get-togethers.

—You know, Chantal said, voicing her indignation, these ladies all wear revealing, low-cut dresses aimed to arouse their dinner partners. I can’t tell whether they mean business, or want to prove they’re still fuckable and that their hubbies are off-limits.

—And, let me guess, after dinner, they park their husbands in a corner of the living room, with your intended, and whisk you off to the opposite side?

—Exactly! Chantal giggled. You should hear how they speak of their husbands! Listing in every detail their failings and weird habits.

—All the better to put you off, right?

Chantal ordered a pitcher of hot water to thin her espresso. Amélie had to have her sugar substitute. After which, making their way through the crowd to get their bill, they parted on the sidewalk.

Amélie ran to her car. She was as short of time as people are of money. So, a windfall set her off on greedy, totally unreal splurges. She was supposed to meet David at half past two, and get back to her office at four: just enough time to drop by the new art show at the Grand Palais.

All access to the Alexandre III bridge was closed to traffic by the presidential motorcade that smoothed the arrivals and departures of distinguished visitors invited to the Palais de l’Elysée. No turning back. She was stuck! There was nothing to do except grumble under her breath at the government’s kowtowing to banana republics, and swear out of a spirit of solidarity with her confrères at the wheel. At this moment she felt more French than when casting her ballot in the polling booth. This sudden realization of her patriotic fervor filled her with stoic indifference to the postponement of her cultural escapade. As she watched the convoy’s departure in the direction of the Ecole Militaire, she knew she’d be late for her tryst.

At David’s she rang the intercom’s buzzer. No answer, nothing. A scribbled message was fastened with Scotch tape to the entrance glass door: “For Amélie. One o’clock. My love, your secretary can’t locate you. I’m stuck all afternoon. Call me in the office. I love you. David.”

—Merde! she heard herself shout.

She went back to her car, slammed the door shut, lit a cigarette, brooding over her disappointment: She hadn’t seen
David for ten days, ten days spent numbing her body, fossilizing it, so as not to feel his absence! Returned today from shooting a film in Alsace, he had arranged this rendezvous. Her belly craved him. What kind of game was he playing?