Monsieur (20 page)

On rue Gracieuse, I walk along slowly, hoping Monsieur might have the grace to call me in the next couple of minutes. Even with my iPod plugged into my ears, it's all I can think about. I've been holding my mobile in my sweaty hand ever since I set out.

I swear silently in front of Andrea's building – Come on, you've got another thirty seconds . . . I'm already half an hour late, which would have made anyone else suspicious, but I know he won't have a clue, won't see anything beneath the mask I'm wearing. At moments like this I hate myself for not having the guts to leave him: he's not bothered about me, and I don't give a damn about him, but still we remain together. Maybe it's in the eye of the beholder: it's rather pleasing, isn't it, a cute young Ashkenazy Jew wearing glasses alongside a pink and blonde
shiksa
? All very
Portnoy's Complaint
. It's probably convenient, been that way for more than five months now, so why should I rock the boat? Andrea and I are running a lazy race: it's too tiring even to think of falling in love. Too easy, as far as I'm concerned. With Monsieur, it's all about pain, which makes the game all the more addictive. I can feel him infiltrate every pore of my skin as my body vainly tries to resist. I think I've always enjoyed pain, long before I came to love the men who inflicted it.

20.30

No one would believe me, but I hate to see Andrea like this because of my lies. I'm no longer worried that I'm always play-acting. I'm accustomed to fucking a lot and with a whole gallery of men, and I don't mind admitting it. I've reached the depths of corruption, seeking in their arms sensations and intellectual stimulation that would once have disgusted me. But what I hate most is the ease with which I can lie. I lie all the time, about everything.

‘You OK?' Andrea asks, opening the door to his small, well-lit apartment.

‘I'm fine,' I answer, and my warm, cheeky smile is yet another lie.

I've become totally apathetic. Although it might seem that I'm keen to go to the restaurant, I'd be happier to stay here, sitting in an armchair, staring at my mobile. I flash Andrea to show him I'm not wearing pants and, well brought-up as he is, he pretends to be interested. The telephone rings just as he's pinching my bum. While he's on the line to a workmate, I look out of the window. His street is like a theatre set, a scene straight out of
commedia dell'arte
. Twitching, I watch the people on their way to meet friends for the evening. Everywhere there is laughter, the click-click of high heels on the uneven pavement, and I'd give so much to be elsewhere, far from this wide-open window. Fuck, I can't breathe. All I can hear of Andrea is his exuberant voice, and it's getting on my nerves. His laugh annoys me intensely. His once endearing habit of walking up and down the room and scratching his scalp while he talks on the phone is infuriating. I miss Monsieur physically. He's like a drug; from the moment he reappears in my life, however briefly, all my days in rehab are swept away and I'm quivering again. There are times when my heart is beating so fast that I feel almost faint, my head spinning and a voice inside it whispering, I need Monsieur.
I need him.

‘I'll only be a couple of minutes,' Andrea tells me quietly. ‘Keep your coat on.'

Then I feel a dull vibration in my handbag – it sounds like the trumpets of Judgement Day. I freeze like a rabbit in headlights, seizing my mobile, noting the divine ‘unknown caller' as it flashes on and off. Monsieur's sensuality forcefully invades the formal chill of modern technology. The words dance in front of my eyes, teasing me.
Pick up, Ellie. Take me. I know you're dying to find out who's calling you. Who usually calls you at a quarter to nine in the evening, if not the man who stops you sleeping at night simply because he happens to exist?

I pick up. Damn everything else. At the other end of the line, that voice drills through me to my ovaries, tearing me apart. The impact is so powerful that my legs turn to jelly. ‘There's hardly any signal. I'll have to go downstairs.'

‘Wait for me outside,' he replies, readily accepting my lie. ‘I'll finish my own call and be along soon.'

The mobile phone I'm holding is all that matters.

‘Who were you talking to?' Monsieur asks.

‘Andrea.'

‘You're at his place?'

‘I've gone outside for some privacy.' Which means I'm pacing up and down the street like a prostitute, wobbling on my uncomfortable heels, unaware of the pain they're causing. I feel nothing. I feel only Monsieur.

I must be strong. I should sound detached. He must never learn how I've felt while he's been out of touch. I mustn't forget that the only reason he's speaking to me is because of my call to the clinic, which gave him the willies. It's a long time since I kept him waiting and, having called me four times without an answer, he had to send me texts, like a soft hand grazing my neck: ‘Ellie . . .'

But that's no longer who I am. All that remains inside this small, carefully made-up and dressed body is consumed by the need to know why I appear to have done wrong, what I said or did to distance Monsieur from me and our anonymous hotel rooms.

‘How are you?' he asks.

‘Fine. You?'

‘So-so. I'm depressed,' he says. The line is terrible, full of crackling. ‘I'm feeling old.'

‘Come on, you're not old!' I say, with surprising energy.

I know what he's planning to tell me. Just a week ago it was in one of his texts: ‘Your twenty-year-old eyes and body are making me feel old.' That was when I understood how terrible the effects of youth can be, and the fact that there was so little I could do about it. How could I avoid childishly expressing my joy when Monsieur joined me on Tuesday mornings, even knowing that for him it was somehow a defect? I could have been slimmer, blonder, prettier, whatever, but I couldn't be older.

‘You
must
believe me. You're not old.'

‘Nothing I can do about it. You know how it is – I have days like this.'

‘What about me in all of this? What happens to me?'

‘I know, sweetie.'

‘Sweetie': the word he used instead of ‘darling' when he thought I was playing cute.

‘I have no appetite for anything, right now.'

‘Not even me?'

Monsieur deploys the indulgent smile I knew so well. ‘The moment I see you, I feel like making love. And, by the way, those photos of your arse make me so horny.'

I smile. Like some cheap tart I'd tried to seize his attention with them. ‘Do you want us to stop seeing each other?'

‘I never said that.'

‘So what do we do?'

‘I don't know.'

‘So what
do
you know?'

A couple walking by hand in hand glance at me, hearing me cry softly. I feel so alone in the world that I'm speaking too loudly, not noticing that, a few metres away, behind the corner of the building, Andrea is waiting by his car. He waves at me and his signal is like fingers circling my neck. For a moment, it's as if he's finally realized something is wrong, after missing a thousand clues.

‘You're not the only one in this relationship. I exist too. If you don't wish to see me again, I'd rather know than live like a drug addict always hoping for her fix,' I say, lowering my voice.

I walk towards Andrea, unable to hang up. I'm so nervous I go on talking as I sit next to him in the confined space of the Fiat 500. All I hope is that he can't hear Monsieur's seductive voice as he defends himself: ‘That's not a nice thing to say. Likening yourself to a drug addict.'

‘Not nice for whom?'

‘For me. My life isn't a bed of roses right now.'

(What about me? Do you think I'm enjoying this? Sitting like an oyster when you're not around, always wide open, awaiting your messages and calls, hoping to seize them from the air? Do you believe I enjoy having to force myself not to think of you for days on end, foolishly hoping that my silence will overcome yours? I'm drowning within your shadow: I Google you and learn things about you I already knew, then realize what a fool I am and, fuck, why am I doing this? Lately, apart from eating and sleeping, I've accomplished nothing I can be proud of, nothing that brings me closer to you, and, right now, my boyfriend is taking me out for the evening. I'd happily exchange that for five minutes with you. I'm twenty and I'm ready to devour the world, but I can't because you're eating me up inside. Who do you think is having a hard time? The wealthy and esteemed surgeon surrounded by his loving family and his admiring friends, or me? Who the fuck is suffering most?)

‘It ain't easy for me either.'

‘I know, sweetie. But why do you say you feel like a drug addict?'

‘You know why. You just want me to say it.'

Andrea watches me calmly, waiting like a proper boyfriend for his girlfriend to end her call. The serenity in his pretty black-brown eyes hurts and annoys me.

‘It's easy for you,' I say. ‘You have the best of both worlds.'

‘Not at all. You're the one for whom everything is easy. Tell me, how many men would give everything they own to be in my place?'

‘I don't give a toss about them.'

‘You have no ties, you're free. I have to pretend nothing's going on.'

Monsieur has always underestimated the way young hearts can react.

‘You're wrong. It's hard for me too. I go mad not knowing what's happening, whether I can help you.'

‘You can't. It's just me. It'll pass.'

‘So, you're not about to forget me?'

‘I'll never forget you.'

‘Swear.'

‘How could I ever forget you?'

Ecstatic, I close my eyes. A few minutes later, this unhealthy joy will disgust me, bring me to the brink of tears, but for now it feels great.

‘What do you want to eat?' Andrea whispers.

I break free of my opium dream and shrug. ‘
Whatever you want.
'

‘Is the book making progress?' Monsieur asks, but now that Andrea is bothering me about the choice of restaurant, I can't talk to him any longer.

‘It's complicated right now,' I say, fervently hoping he'll understand what I'm on about.

‘You can't talk?'

‘Not really, no.'

Monsieur has a strangulated laugh, reminding me of a rather indecent conversation we had, with my parents a short distance away. It seems the rules haven't changed.

‘Shall I call you back tomorrow, when you're alone?'

‘Yeah, that'd be good,' I lie, having resolved to leave Andrea's place, like a thief, in the middle of the night.

‘Kisses,' he says, and it's over.

This car has never been so suffocating. I'm sweating like a pig under my trenchcoat. Behind the curtain of my fringe, I glance at Andrea, attentive to his expression.
So, what are we doing, darling?

‘Want to go Japanese?'

‘Let's,' I say.

Then, as a strange silence settles over us, the sort of silence that usually triggers an argument, I fall headlong into yet another lie: ‘I told you, didn't I, that we're having a party for my sister's birthday?'

‘No.'

‘We were thinking of hiring a free jazz band. I was speaking to a mate who thinks he knows a really good one. He's going to call me back.'

‘Now? That's who you were talking to?'

‘Yeah. I hope it works out.'

‘It's a good idea, free jazz,' he remarks, parking the car on rue Monsieur-le-Prince.

‘I love it,' I say, and hand in hand we walk into the narrow restaurant where, for the next couple of hours, thirty or so people will be able to watch me go through the motions of tenderness and lie through my teeth.

Thinking of Monsieur makes me witty and sparkling, and Andrea is a perfect audience, laughing at everything I say, stroking my knees under the table. I am the perfect criminal.

* * *

The following morning, on the stroke of eight, I open my eyes as Andrea is making love to me, gently and clumsily like a boy who has just woken up. His hands excite me. The way he caresses my breasts excites me.

‘That's so nice.' I sigh. ‘I just wish they were bigger.'

‘They're perfect,' he whispers into my hair, his warm breath smelling of coffee and toast, as his fingers graze my nipples. ‘They look erect,' he adds, and I start fucking him, my arse in frantic motion.

‘You drive me wild,' I pant, sitting on him and caressing myself with my hands as I've never quite dared before.

Inside me, Andrea is hard and unyielding. In the pale early-morning light I watch, with fascination, his cock move in and out of my still sleepy cunt. Before I began going out with him, the mere thought of seeing him naked kept me awake. And after I did, all I could dream of was Andrea Levinger's cock. Now I am torn between the waves of pleasure and the shadow of my mobile phone sitting under my discarded pants on the floor.

Does Monsieur have any idea I'm being fucked right now? Does he have any idea how different I am, outside and in? He should be here so I could stare at him while I mechanically thrust myself against Andrea, my eyes dead as my body catches fire. I am a monstrous contradiction. No one could guess how much of my perverse sensuality is all pretence.

‘Now?' Andrea sighs, as his taut back straightens like a buttress, his nails digging hard enough into my arse cheeks to make me scream, and I hate myself.

I hate myself because the only thing I can think of right now, as his cum streams down my legs, is speaking to Monsieur.

‘We'll call each other, OK?' I whisper into his neck.

‘You're leaving now? So early?'

‘I forgot my keys. I have to get home before my mother leaves for work.'

If Babette knew that, she'd call me a slut.

A few minutes later, I'm running down the Métro corridors, mobile in hand.