Lovers and Liars Trilogy (136 page)

The room had a careful feel. On the far side of it was a door that presumably led into a bedroom. It was shut. There was a tension beneath the surface here. She looked at Rowland in puzzlement: his demeanor seemed much as it always was. She glanced across at Gini, who was twisting the telephone cord as she spoke. She had been about to ask which floor Gini was on, whether Pixie had found her a room in this hotel, or somewhere else—and then she realized: this was a question better not asked, a topic it would be unwise to discuss.

Gini had come to the end of her conversation. She put the telephone down. She glanced at Rowland, then away, and began to explain. There
had
been a sighting of Mina Landis. It was still unconfirmed, but a girl answering her description, and a man resembling Star, had been seen by a plainclothes policeman in the sixth arrondissement. She reached for a map of Paris and laid it out on the desk.

“Here,” she said. “They were seen in this street here, in the Faubourg St. Germain area…” She frowned. “I know that neighborhood. It’s only a few streets away from the place where Maria Cazarès died. How odd.”

Rowland was already moving toward the desk.

“Do they now know where she died?” Lindsay said.

“What?” Rowland glanced back at her in a distracted way. “Oh—yes, apparently so. It was on the late TV news bulletins. She’d been visiting some elderly maid of hers—now retired. They were having tea together and she suddenly collapsed. According to the first reports, she was dying by the time the ambulance got there.”

“Oh, then they’ve released that much…” Lindsay said.

“I imagine they had no choice. Some French journalist will have been handing out hundred-franc bills to the ambulance crew within half an hour of her death’s being rumored, let alone announced. There were paparazzi crawling all over that hospital—that was on the news too.”

Rowland bent over the desk. He angled the light. Gini, who had not looked up once during this exchange, still kept her eyes on the map. Rowland began to trace streets with his right hand; he rested his left on the back of Gini’s chair, then removed it.

“You’re right,” he said. “It is very close…”

Their hands were now, Lindsay saw, lying side by side on the map, about four inches apart. Gini remarked in a low voice that it was an expensive area of Paris, not an area where you would expect retired maids to live. Rowland agreed that this was so. He glanced at his watch and drew back. A series of utterly unremarkable movements: Lindsay rose, intent only on disguising her shock and distress.

Had her evening with Markov been less strange, she thought, had she not had that conversation with him about love and sex, she might even have been deceived by those unremarkable movements and accepted them as such. As it was, she could sense the electricity and tension they were designed to disguise; she could sense that it was Rowland and Gini’s united wish that she leave—and that she do so at once.

Meanwhile, she had to pretend that Rowland’s urgent desire to take Gini in his arms was not as nakedly visible to her as if the act had been performed. Luckily, neither was paying her much attention, and she could dissemble, when required, well enough. She rose, stretched, and said she must get some sleep, that there were two shows tomorrow—Chanel and Gaultier as well as the Cazarès press conference.

Gini nodded and gave her a dazed look.

Rowland, who also looked half blind, escorted her to the door. He said he would certainly try to be at that press conference; Gini said she would too, if she had time, though it was unlikely to be useful.

“Party-line stuff,” she said. “Still, if Lazare himself is going to speak… I’ll try and come with you, Rowland.”

“Good night, Lindsay,” Rowland said, opening the door, and closing it behind her at once. Lindsay stood for a second in the corridor; she was shaking; she pressed her hands against her face. This couldn’t be true, she thought. Rowland, perhaps—but not Gini, surely not Gini?

She heard Rowland engage the lock and chain before she was two feet away. She returned to her room, paced, found herself unable to sleep. She tried very hard not to imagine what might have been said behind that locked door after she left.

Very little, in fact, was said. As the door closed, Gini bent again to the map; she did not dare to look up. She heard the lock engage; she heard Rowland approach, then stop.

For Rowland, distance was a last resort. If he remained here, two feet away, he thought, and if she did not look up, or meet his eyes, then he might be able to disguise what he felt.
Once,
she had said at a point when he had already made love to her twice. Throughout this evening, in the cab, in the rue St. Séverin, here in this room, while she telephoned and he used the fax, she had moved through his thoughts. In his mind he had continued to touch her, kiss her, make love.

Perhaps she did not feel this, he thought. He stood at that safe distance, just those two feet from the desk. His body had begun to stir the instant he locked the door. He looked at Gini’s bent head, at the pale curve of her neck, at the ordinary white shirt she was wearing, the ordinary black skirt. She was extraordinarily slender; he could span her waist with his hands, yet she had full and very beautiful breasts, their areolae wide and dark. He closed his eyes, fighting the memory of his own hands, and his mouth, pressed against those breasts. He felt her hands on his skin, the soft openness of her mouth. He swore in a low voice, looked blindly around the room, half turned, then moved back to the desk.

He stood immediately behind her, then, when he could resist the impulse no longer, rested his hands against her shoulders and her throat. He felt her body become rigid with tension at once. Even then, he thought later, even then he might have been able to retain control, but she tilted her head back and met his eyes. He bent forward and kissed her mouth, and in that instant he was lost. She caught hold of his hands and drew them forward inside her blouse. She gave a moan that might have been desire or despair, then twisted up out of the chair and into his embrace.

He could read the need and the desperation he felt in her eyes, and in that moment was certain that she had been as desperate to continue something unfinished as he had been.

He began to undo her blouse as she fumbled first with the buttons of his shirt, then his belt. As he caught her to him, and her bared breasts touched his bared skin, she gave a low cry and shuddered against him.

She rested one of her hands against his thigh, then his groin. She gave a moan, clinging to him and seeking his mouth. Rowland could think of nothing but entering her again. He pulled her down beside him, murmuring her name; she lay back among scattered papers and scattered clothes, drawing his hand down between her thighs. She was very wet; his fingers could slip inside her easily; she arched back in a quick ecstasy of pleasure.

She parted her legs, frantic for him to enter her. Rowland thrust up into her deep, knowing she would come almost immediately. If he moved a very little, he thought, just once, just twice. Lifting himself on his arms, looking down at her face, he watched her astonishing eyes, watched the waves of abandonment move like light across her face. He waited, withdrew, thrust again, and began to move carefully, because they were still not familiar to each other, and he wanted her to adjust her rhythms to his. It took her a little while; at first, as he fucked, he thought she was resisting him, deliberately mistiming her response to his strokes. He thought he knew the reason for that, as he waited, moved, waited again, although this was hard for him, because he was very aroused, and his own climax was close. He used all his skills, every pleasure device, and at last he felt that odd female resistance begin to give. Her eyes opened and met his. He bent his head and kissed her breasts, moving deep inside her.

“Darling, I can’t—don’t fight me,” he said in a low voice, and at that all her resistance melted away. She began to move with him, perfectly in time, and it was inutterably sweet. He watched her face, for that tiny second of stillness which he was beginning to know, and which meant she was just on the edge. Then he could no longer watch because the pleasure was too sharp, the desire too intense. He caught her to him as they came, and said her name. There were other things he wanted to say, and in the next moments was very close to saying, but he forced himself to leave them unspoken. He clasped her hand, trusting that the language of the body would have spoken to her instead.

Later, when they lay beside each other in bed with faint predawn light edging the curtains, she turned to him, her mouth lax with pleasure and her eyes languorous with sexual fatigue. She rested her hand on his stomach, laced her fingers in his pubic hair, and watched him stir, become erect.

An instant tremor of response ran through her body. She leaned across so her breasts brushed against his penis; she bent, and took him in her mouth, and Rowland shuddered at the touch of her tongue and lips.

“We taste of each other,” she said, lifting her head, then kissing his mouth. “Of each other, and of too much sex. We said once—I said once…”

“It was already too late when you said that.” He clasped her hand, and their fingers interlaced. “Once. Five times. Six. A hundred. Does it make a difference?”

“Maybe not. I still want you so much. I can see you, feel you wanting me. In the rue St. Séverin?”

“Yes.” Rowland smiled. “And outside the church too.”

“In the taxi?”

“It was particularly bad in the taxi. Here too. While I was trying to listen to Lindsay, and you were on the phone—I couldn’t really hear what she was saying….”

“I couldn’t hear that policeman. All I could hear was you. Your hands. This.”

She moved so that the lips of her sex brushed the tip of his penis. Then, slowly, her eyes holding his, she lowered herself onto him, as if she were impaling herself on his flesh. There were tears in her eyes.

Drawing her down to him, Rowland kissed her tears. He felt desire for her, and also a profound tenderness.

“Are you sad? Darling, are you?” he said against her mouth. “Don’t be. I understand. It can still be once—in a sense. Just this one night…”

“Yes, that. One night. A time out of time, and…”

She could not continue. She began to tremble. Rowland came with a sense of painful release and an immediate sadness. After that she curled into the curve of his arm and fell asleep, and Rowland lay there, holding her close, listening to her breathing, counting the hours left to them and waiting for the late winter dawn.

Several times during the night the telephone had rung, and the front desk had picked up. At six-thirty, as the first thin city light stole into the room, Rowland rose and went through into the sitting room beyond. As was the hotel’s practice, the messages had been placed in an envelope and slipped beneath the door. The calls had all been for Gini and there must have been several, more than he had realized, for the envelope was bulky. He placed it on Gini’s desk, picked up some of the scattered papers, and looked down at the map of this city he and Gini had scanned the night before.

Where next? he thought, and tried to focus on the demands of this story, this piece of work. He looked at the objects spread out on the desk: the map, Anneke’s address book, his notebooks, Gini’s notebooks, a tape recorder and tapes. The objects would not connect; their links were unimportant to him. He passed his hands across his face; he felt sexually spent, jagged with exhaustion, with the speed of events. Could change, decisive change, occur overnight?

He stopped. He was lying to himself. It was not simply a matter of hours. These events did not begin when he led Gini into this room for the first time the previous night and suddenly felt a surge of acute desire for a woman he scarcely knew.
When
did it begin? How long had he been being prepared,
shaped,
for an event he did not expect?

He stared down angrily at the map on the desk, trying to fight these uncertainties. The telephone rang. Rowland picked it up.

There was a buzzing; he listened to silence, then more interference, then a humming of wires.

“Yes?” Rowland said impatiently. “Who is this?”

“It’s Pascal Lamartine,” said a voice, coolly enough but with edge. “Could I speak to Genevieve Hunter, please?”

Rowland took a fraction of a second too long to reply, he thought, but when he did so, he felt his tone was well judged.

“Sorry—I’m afraid you’ve been put through to the wrong room,” he said.

“Is this Room 810?”

“Yes, it is. And Genevieve Hunter was using it yesterday, but they moved her out when I arrived. I’m her editor. I think they put her on the sixth floor, near Lindsay Drummond. You know Lindsay?”

“Yes. But the desk said—”

“Oh, the front desk’s useless,” Rowland said in easy tones. “They don’t seem to know where anyone is. The hotel’s full, the
Correspondent
has umpteen rooms. Get them to check again. It might be the sixth floor. I think some people are up on the twelfth. Unless they moved her to another hotel, of course.”

“Very well. I’ll try the desk again.”

“The thing is…” Rowland said quickly. “I’m not sure if you’ll catch her. She said she’d be making an early start. Some interview, I think…”

“This early?” The man’s tone sharpened. “It’s not seven o’clock yet.”

“You might catch her. I could be wrong. I can give her a message later if you like. I’m supposed to be meeting her at a press conference around eleven. Does she have your number? You want her to call you back?”

“No. No message. Damn—” Lamartine broke off; the line crackled. “She can’t call me back. I have to go. Look—if you do see her, will you tell her I’ll call again this afternoon? Around three or four?”

“Fine. I’ll try to get that message to her…” Rowland began, then realized he was listening to the dial tone.

The effort of these lies had not left him unmoved. He felt a moment’s self-disgust, then anxiety. Was Lamartine in Sarajevo, or elsewhere in Bosnia? Could this call mean he was planning on coming back?

In the bedroom Gini was sitting up in bed, her face white, her eyes wide and dark.