No More Lonely Nights (9 page)

Dominique and Stephen stood in the dark of the stairwell whispering their good-byes. It had become a nightly ritual, the secret caresses in the obscurity of the hall. A ritual of almost unbearably delicious tension for both of them. Tonight, though, Stephen’s proposal and their impending separation lent a special poignancy to their lovemaking. Dominique leaned against the wall, abandoned to the sensuality of his touch, knowing in her heart that he would stop before he went too far. Never had she allowed a man to touch her as Stephen did, but she trusted him. Softly, he traced the curve of her neck, the graceful line of her shoulder with his tongue. He folded down the bodice of her dress, freeing her heavy, firm breasts.

Dominique moaned with desire as Stephen brushed her nipples with his fingers until they were erect against his palms. She arched her back, straining against him, hot with unfulfilled lust. He bent and ran his tongue over her breasts, over her nipples, sending chills through her. His hand lifted her skirt, then his warm fingers brushed against her thighs. Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, he moved upward until his hand covered the piece of silk between her legs. He moved his finger back and forth in a hypnotizing rhythm until the sheer cloth was moist. Dominique pushed against him, burning with the desire to feel him inside of her. She said thickly, “I want to go with you tonight.”

Stephen, panting, pulled away from her. His face was covered in a thin sheen of perspiration despite the coolness of the evening. He studied her face. Her expression was wanton, her pupils dilated. “Are you sure?” he asked in a voice unsteady with desire.

She nodded. She saw the struggle on his face. She knew his conscience was telling him to say no, but he took her arm and opened the door to the stairwell. They hurried to his car. In silence, they drove to the base.

Dominique had been to his villa no more than a half-dozen times. Usually they only stopped there briefly to fetch something Stephen had forgotten. It was as though they knew that to be alone together was too much of a risk.

As Stephen pulled the car into the courtyard, Dominique felt her heart pound with fear.
What am I doing?
she asked herself.
Becoming the mistress of a married man?
It was suddenly all so sordid. She turned to look at Stephen. He looked like a stranger to her. A stranger who wanted to use her in a way that was wrong. Oh, and she wanted it, too! But now it seemed like a terrible mistake. Stephen turned off the engine and faced her.

“Stephen, I—” She stopped. How could she say no at this point?

Stephen looked at her knowingly. “You’ve had second thoughts, haven’t you?”

Dominique looked down at her hands, ashamed. She didn’t reply.

“It’s all right,” Stephen sighed, and started the car. “I have, too.”

“I’M TIRED of you moping around,” Solange declared. “You’ll come to the Renards’ luncheon with me tomorrow or go back to Ismailia. But this moping must stop.”

Dominique looked up from the book she was reading. She lay on a chaise lounge in her mother’s game room. The room in which Solange spent most of her time was occupied by four elegant gaming tables, each inlaid with different, complementary patterns of Italian marquetry. At the end farthest from the sitting area was a carved billiard table. Solange didn’t play billiards, but her men friends did. Solange was a card player, canasta being her game of choice. At this she was an expert. In the absence of a partner, however, she enjoyed solitaire in all its forms. Now she sat at a table near Dominique and rearranged her cards according to the rules of her current round of solitaire.

“I don’t mind going back to Ismailia,” Dominique said indifferently.

Solange lifted her head and glared at her daughter. “That’s out of the question!” she said, in direct contradiction of her previous statement. “You’ll be here for the New Year at least. We have the deputy minister coming as well as three more of that awful Nasser fellow’s people.”

“If you find the president so awful, why invite his ministers to our house?” Dominique said, her voice scornful. “And why are you friends with the deputy minister.”

Solange’s lips tightened in annoyance. “You know as well as I that he’s been in the government for years. It’s only because he has an unimpeachable reputation that he managed to survive Nasser’s coup. Why
shouldn’t
I like a kind, honest man like him? They’re rare enough.” With an impatient stroke of her arm, Solange gathered the cards on the table into a pile. She looked up and met Dominique’s inquiring gaze. “As for my being polite to the rest of Nasser’s henchmen, how do you suppose we’ve managed to keep everything we own?” Her tone was sharp.

Dominique swung her legs to the floor. “What do you mean?”

Solange made a noise of exasperation. She picked up her cards and began to shuffle with the skill of a croupier. The gems on her long, tapered fingers flashed with her movements. “You don’t appreciate what you have, Dominique. You don’t even understand it.” Her hands stopped for a moment and Solange focused her gaze on Dominique. “Don’t look down on things you don’t understand,” was all she said.

After a few moments, Solange spoke again. “The Renards have a cousin from America visiting. He’s very pleasant. He’d like to meet you.” She dealt the cards into yet another version of solitaire.

“Mother, you’re always trying to play matchmaker. I’m not looking for a husband! And I wish you’d stop doing it for me,” Dominique said, irritated. She pulled her feet back onto the lounge chair and leaned into the down-filled cushions.

Solange frowned. “This… this working for the British has made you even more impertinent! You won’t listen to anyone!” She glared at her daughter. “You have to face reality. Most Europeans have left Egypt. If you could find a husband in America, you could become a citizen. You could leave here and you’d be safe.”

Dominique looked at her mother sharply. “Have you had trouble?” she asked in an urgent voice.

Solange leaned forward, her face creased with exasperation. “Do you have your head buried in the sand? You’ve seen the anti-European riots! You’ve seen them take the property of our friends!”

“But no one’s ever bothered us!” Dominique argued. “You just said you were friends with—”

Solange threw her pile of cards on the table, effectively cutting off Dominique. “You idiot! You want to be grown up, but you’re too much of a child to see the truth. The word ‘friend’ means nothing. It’s a matter of political expediency.”

A sliver of fear, no more than a suspicion, snaked its way into Dominique’s conscience. She approached the table where her mother was sitting and stood in front of the older woman. “Are you worried?” Worried, not frightened. Her understatement was deliberate. She didn’t want to use the word “frightened.” It was much too strong.

Solange stared at her, silent.

Dominique was shaken by her expression. “Why didn’t you ever say anything!” she gasped.

Solange sprang to her feet. “Because you’re my child!”

Dominique stared at her, uncomprehending. She had never in her life seen Solange express fear. It didn’t seem real. And what exactly was the threat? “Tell me!” she insisted, her voice rising.

The strength seemed to drain from Solange and she sat back down, her posture weary. “Nothing’s happened… not to me.” She sighed. “And our friendship with the deputy minister makes me feel somewhat more secure. But… things are changing. You know that as well as I.” Solange raised her eyes to her daughter and returned to the central point. “I want to see you safely married in America. I can offer your husband a good dowry. You could go quickly and I’d have one less worry.”

“Mother.” Dominique sat down opposite the older woman. “Why don’t you go to France for a few months until the trouble blows over?”

Solange gave a rueful half-smile. “Because, my dear, they won’t let us take our money out of the country. I’ve been putting aside some cash just in case, but—” Solange cut herself short. A veil fell over her features.

She was silent a moment, then she fixed Dominique with a severe gaze. “Anyhow, you have to think about settling somewhere permanently. This isn’t a place to raise a family anymore.” She sighed. “It won’t be as easy for you as it was for your sister.” She gave Dominique an appraising look. “You haven’t Danielle’s beauty. It’s a shame your nose is so long. And your hair is quite impossible.”

Dominique felt as if she’d been struck. It seemed as though every time her mother revealed a side of herself that was halfway human, she immediately countered it by saying something awful.

Solange saw her expression and gave a little sniff. “Oh, don’t be so sensitive, Dominique. You’re quite presentable enough to find someone. But”—she paused—“you’d be lucky to get this Anton Renard. He’s in the import-export business in America, just as his people are here. It would be a good match.”

Dominique thought of Stephen. Of course, it was out of the question that she confide in her mother. The very hint of such an affair would drive Solange into a fury. Dominique knew she could offer no excuse to avoid meeting Anton Renard. “All right, Mother.” Dominique’s voice was resigned. “I’ll come with you to the Renards’.”

“I told you to wear your blue silk,” Solange said as Dominique descended the stairs the next morning. Dominique was wearing a chic black two-piece ensemble with a white crepe de chine shirt. The look was sophisticated, but severe, and it made Dominique appear even more mature than usual.

“I didn’t
want
to wear the blue silk,” said Dominique as she drew on her white kid gloves. “I detest those puffed sleeves. They’re too childish.” Dominique turned to the Venetian mirror that occupied almost an entire wall in the entrance foyer. She carefully arranged her curls around a small black hat tilted at a piquant angle.

“You look like you’re going to a funeral,” Solange remarked with disgust. Solange wore bright red, a color that contrasted magnificently with her ash-blond hair. Her nails and lipstick were painted a matching scarlet. Solange was not slender, but she always clad her generous curves in elegant couture originals. She was a handsome woman, and she had the proud bearing of one who knew it.

“l
feel
like I’m going to a funeral,” Dominique remarked dryly. She turned from the mirror and walked toward her mother. “Like a lamb being prepared for slaughter.”

Solange marched impatiently to the front door. “Don’t be ridiculous! You really are the most trying person. Danielle never spoke to me as rudely as you do.”

The butler held open the door as the two women exited. Dominique paused before the door of the waiting car, held open by the driver. She answered Solange, “That’s because you never spoke to Danielle as you speak to me.”

Solange made a sound of annoyance with her tongue. She put her hand on her daughter’s back and nudged her. “Get in! We’re late.”

The women sat together in cold silence as the car crawled through the dusty, traffic-choked street. Dominique had almost forgotten the overwhelming barrage of Cairo’s noise and humanity. It was a startling contrast to the pristine little town of Ismailia.

She looked out the rear window as they passed one of the city’s ubiquitous coffee houses filled with dark, chattering men—never women. Several men lounged around a handful of rickety tables carelessly plunked down on the sidewalk in front of the establishment. At each table was a water pipe, a tall, bubbling contraption with a long, flexible stem used mostly for smoking hashish. The cloying smell of the drug filled the air.

Solange held her handkerchief over her nose and made a sound of disgust.

Suddenly Dominique and Solange uttered startled cries, as from beneath the car came a high-pitched squawk and the panicked flapping of wings. A second later, a chicken, clucking with outrage, catapulted itself away from Solange’s Rolls-Royce. The women looked at each other and laughed with relief. Then they settled back in their seats.

Through the car’s open windows, new smells drifted in and settled upon Dominique, thick as the dust from the desert. She wrinkled her nose as, from a dark little doorway, came the acrid odor of urine. As the car turned the corner and emerged onto a broader avenue, a line of flower vendors filled the car with a more pleasant aroma.

But they had no sooner started to merge with faster traffic than the Rolls came to a screeching halt, just in time to avoid running over the donkey and rider that immediately preceded it. It was noon and loudspeakers throughout Cairo announced to Muslims that it was time for prayer. Buses stopped and their passengers got out. Men climbed down from their farm carts. Cars stopped. Everything came to a halt while the pious unrolled their prayer rugs and knelt in the direction of Mecca. The streets were a mass of prostrate humanity, though many less-religious men continued to step around the devout. A chant filled the air, the roar of tens of thousands praying in unison.

Solange looked impatiently at her watch. Her driver, too, knelt near the car. She sighed, resigned to the delay.

After a few minutes, the relative quiet that had settled over the city exploded into an eruption of car horns, shouted conversation, and diesel engines. Coppersmiths working in the shops that bordered the street resumed their banging. The buses rumbled to life. Solange’s driver got back into the car and tried to ease through the congestion.

“It takes an hour to go a few blocks,” Dominique commented. “Not like Ismailia.”

“We would have avoided this if you hadn’t lingered so much this morning,” Solange remarked peevishly.

Dominique turned away from her mother and looked out the window. They were entering one of Cairo’s main boulevards, the Shari’ Qasr el Nil. The street contained many of the city’s most exclusive boutiques, but was also sprinkled with luxurious apartment buildings and hotels. Dominique winced as they passed Groppi’s and she saw the burned rotunda where Nanny used to take her for tea before the revolution. Groppi’s had been one of the city’s most popular gathering spots, serving picture-book pastries in the afternoon. At night there had been dining, dancing, and concerts underneath a stained-glass ceiling. But with the burning of the rotunda during the revolution, and the subsequent emigration from Egypt of many Europeans, Groppi’s chic clientele had disappeared. Part of the restaurant had reopened, but a rough element frequented it. Dominique reflected that too many such changes had taken place in Cairo. It was true that the monarchy of King Farouk had been corrupt and that Nasser had a vision of improving the lot of Arabs, but so much that was lovely had been destroyed. And now tensions were high once more. There were more gun-toting soldiers on the streets than at any time since the revolution. More seizures of private businesses in the name of the government. More xenophobic propaganda.