The Pirate (16 page)

Youssef got to his feet and looked down at Jacques. “I will see to it that the San Marco will have engine trouble. The rest is up to you.” He glanced over his shoulder at the sea. The San Marco was trolling slowly into the shallow waters near the beach. “Go down to the water, lover boy,” he said sarcastically, “and help the lady ashore.”

Silently, Jacques got out of his chair and started toward the beach. Youssef watched him for a moment, then turned and made his way back through the restaurant to the road where he had parked his car.

He got into the car and sat there for a moment before turning the key in the ignition. If only Jordana didn’t hate him. Then none of this would be necessary. But he knew how many times she had tried to turn Baydr against him because she resented their relationship. And after all, he was only an employee while she was the boss’s wife. If it came to a showdown there was no doubt in his mind who would be the victor. She would win hands down. But if Jacques came through tonight that would never happen. The threat of presenting Baydr with proof of her indiscretion would be enough to keep her in line. Youssef knew that the best ally was a conquered enemy.

***

Jordana opened her eyes the moment the heavy roar of the engines died down to idling speed. She glanced at her watch. It was forty minutes since she had left Cannes. By road, with all the traffic, it could have taken an hour and a half. This was not only faster but the sea had been smooth and she had slept all the way.

She sat up, reaching for her bikini top and shirt. She looked down at herself as she fastened the brassiere. Her breasts were as tan as the rest of her body, a golden nut brown, and her nipples were a purple plum color instead of their normal red rose. She was pleased with herself. Her breasts were still firm. She hadn’t yet begun to sag like so many women her age.

Instinctively she glanced over her shoulder to see if the two sailors at the helm of the speedboat had been looking at her. Their eyes were studiously turned away but she knew that they had been watching in the rear-view mirror mounted on the windscreen in front of them. She smiled to herself. To tease them, she cupped her breasts with her hands suggestively so that her nipples hardened. Then she fastened the bra.

A paddleboat came by with two topless girls. They looked at the seventy-thousand-dollar San Marco with undisguised hope and curiosity. Again she smiled to herself as the look of disappointment crossed their faces when they saw that she was the only passenger. They were so obvious. The pedalo turned away slowly.

“’Allo!” The call came from the other side of the boat.

She turned. Jacques had come out in a small dinghy with an outboard motor. His blond hair had completely whitened in the summer sun, making his tan even darker by contrast. She waved without speaking.

“I’ve come to take you ashore,” he shouted. “I know how you hate to get your feet wet.”

“I’ll be right with you,” she called. She turned to the sailors. “Wait out here,” she told them in French. “I’ll call you when I’m ready to leave.”

“Oui, madame,” the sailor at the helm replied. The other sailor started back to help her over the side. She gave him the large beach bag she always took with her. Inside were her shoes, a change of wardrobe for the evening, the walkie-talkie for communication with the speedboat, as well as cosmetics, cigarettes, money and credit cards.

The sailor reached over the side and pulled the dinghy closer to the speedboat. He dropped the bag into Jacques’ hands, then held Jordana’s arm as she stepped over. He cast the dinghy free as soon as she sat down.

She sat facing the rear of the dinghy. Jacques sat at the tiller of the outboard motor. “Sorry to be late,” she said.

“That’s all right,” he smiled. “You sleep well?”

“Very well. And you?”

He made a moue. “Not too well. I was too—how you say?—frustrated.”

She looked at him. She couldn’t quite figure him out. Mara had said he was a gigolo but the several times she had given him money he had returned it with a hurt look. This was not business, he had said. He was in love with her. But it still didn’t make sense. He had an expensive apartment in the Miramar, right on the Croisette in Cannes, and a brand-new Citroën SM and never seemed to be short of money. He never let her pick up a check as so many of the others did, gigolos or no. Several times she had seen him eying some boys but he had never made any overt moves while she was around. At one point, she was fairly sure that he was bi and that perhaps his real lover was a man who had sent him down to the Côte d’Azur for the summer, but that didn’t disturb her. She had lone ago come to the conclusion that bisexual men made the best lovers.

“With all the talent available in that discotheque?” she laughed. “I wouldn’t have thought you would have any problems.”

“I didn’t,” he said to himself, thinking of his night with Gerard. He felt himself growing hard as he thought of the black towering over him, and peeling the foreskin back on his giant black shaft to expose the reddish purple swollen head. He remembered going down on his back like a woman and raising his legs, and the exquisite agony of the big penis forcing its way roughly into his anus. He had whimpered like a woman and then yelled as his orgasm overtook him and his semen squirted up on their bellies that were pressed tightly together.

“Look,” he said aloud, releasing his erect penis from his bikini. “See what you do to me? The moment I see you. Three times last night I had to relieve myself.”

She laughed. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that was bad for you? You could stunt your growth doing it so much.”

He didn’t laugh. “When are you going to spend a whole night with me? Just one time so that we could make love without my feeling that you always have one eye on the clock, so that we can fully take our pleasures of each other.”

She laughed again. “You’re too greedy. You forget that I am a married woman with responsibilities. I must be home every night so that I see my children when I wake up in the morning.”

“What would be so terrible if you did not?” he pouted.

“Then I would be remiss in the one duty that my husband demands of me,” she said. “And that I would not do.”

“Your husband does not care. Otherwise he would have come to see you and the children at least once during these past three months,” he said.

Her voice went cold. “What my husband does or does not do is none of your business.”

He sensed instantly he had gone too far. “But I love you. I am going crazy for wanting you.”

She nodded slowly, relaxing. “Then keep things in their proper perspective,” she said. “And if you’re going to keep playing with your cock, you’d better take the boat back out to sea before we crash on the beach.”

“If I do, will you suck me?”

“No,” she said sharply. “I’m more in the mood for a cold glass of white wine.”

***

She was high. Papagayo was packed. The strobe lights were like a stop-motion camera on her eyes, the heavy pounding of the rock group tortured the ears. She took another sip of the white wine and looked down the table. There were fourteen people, all shouting at one another to be heard over the din in the discotheque.

Jacques was talking to the English woman on his right. She was an actress who had just finished a picture with Peter Sellers, and had been with a group of people who had come down from Paris for the weekend. Jordana had begun collecting them on the beach that afternoon. She’d completed the group at L’Escale, where they’d had cocktails and dinner. About midnight they had gone to the discotheque.

The reason for gathering the people was that she had been annoyed with Jacques. He seemed to take too much for granted. In some ways he was like a woman, only in his case he seemed to think that the world revolved around his cock. She was beginning to be bored with him, but apart from an occasional visiting male there was nothing really dependable around. It was the boredom that had led her to smoke a joint. Usually she never smoked in public. But when the Englishwoman had offered her a toke in the ladies’ room, she had stayed until they finished the cigarette between them.

After that, she didn’t mind the evening at all. It seemed that she had never laughed so much in her life. Everyone was excruciatingly bright and witty. Now she wanted to dance but everyone was too busy talking.

She got out of her chair and went to the dance floor alone. Pushing her way into the crowd she began to dance. She gave herself to the music, happy that she was in the south of France where no one thought it strange that a woman or a man wanted to dance alone. She closed her eyes.

When she opened them, the gall good-looking black man was dancing in front of her. He caught her eye but they didn’t speak. She had noticed him earlier that day on the beach; later at cocktail time he had been at the bar in L’Escale; now he was here. She had seen him sitting at a table not far from her own.

He moved fantastically well, his body fluid under the shirt, which was open to his waist and tied in a tight knot just over the seemingly glued-on black jeans. She began to move with him.

After a moment, she spoke. “You’re American, aren’t you?”

His voice was Southern. “How did you know?”

“You don’t dance like a Frenchman—they jerk up and down—the English hop and dip.”

He laughed. “I never thought of that.”

“Where are you from?”

“Cracker country,” he said. “Georgia.”

“I’ve never been there,” she said.

“You’re not missing anything,” he replied. “I like it better here. We could never do this back there.”

“Still?” she asked.

“Still,” he said. “They never change.”

She was silent.

“Je m’appelle Gerard,” he said.

She was surprised. His French was Parisian without a trace of accent. “Your French is good.”

“It should be,” he said. “My folks sent me over here to school when I was eight. I went back when my father was killed—I was sixteen then but I couldn’t take it. I headed right back to Paris the minute I got enough bread together.”

She knew what French schools cost and they weren’t cheap. His family had to have money. “What did your father do?”

His voice was even. “He was a pimp. But he had a finger in every pie. But he was black and the honkies didn’t like that, so they cut him up in an alley an’ blamed it on a passing nigger. Then they hung the nigger an’ everything was cool.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “My father said that was the way they would do it someday. He had no complaints. He had a good life.”

The music crashed to a stop and the group came down from the stage as the record player came on with a slow number. “Nice talking with you,” she said, starting back to the table.

His hand on her arm stopped her. “You don’t have to go back there.”

She didn’t speak.

“You look like a fast-track lady and there’s nothin’ but mudders back there,” he said.

“What’ve you got in mind?” she asked.

“Action. That’s something I got from my father. I’m a fast-track man. Why don’t you meet me outside?”

Again she didn’t speak.

“I saw the way you looked,” he said. “You gotta be turned off on that crowd over there.” He smiled suddenly. “You ever make it with a black man before?”

“No,” she answered. She never had.

“I’m better than they say we are,” he said.

She glanced at the table. Jacques was still talking to the Englishwoman. He probably had not even noticed that she had left the table. She turned back to Gerard. “Okay.” she said. “But we’ll only have about an hour. I have to leave then.”

“An hour’s enough,” he laughed. “In one hour I’ll have you on a trip to the moon and back.”

CHAPTER 2

When she came out he was on the quai opposite the discotheque, watching the last of the sidewalk artists pack up their wares for the night. He turned when he heard the sound of her high-stacked shoes on the sidewalk. “Any trouble getting out?” he asked.

“No,” she answered. “I told them I was going to the ladies.”

He grinned. “Mind walking? My place is just up the street past Le Gorille.”

“It’s the only way to fly,” she said, falling into step beside him.

Despite the hour there were still crowds walking back and forth. They were engaged in their principal form of amusement, looking at each other and the beautiful yachts tied up right alongside the street. For many, it was the only thing they could afford to do, after paying the exorbitant seasonal prices for their rooms and food. The French had no mercy for tourists of any nationality, even their own.

They turned up the street past Le Gorille with its smell of fried eggs and pommes frites and began to climb the narrow sidewalk. Halfway up the block he stopped in front of the door of one of the old houses which had a boutique on the ground floor. He opened it with a heavy old-fashioned iron key and pressed the button must inside to turn on the hall lights. “We’re two flights up.”

She nodded and followed him up the old wooden staircase. His apartment was at the head of the second flight. This door had a more modern lock. He opened and held it for her.

She stepped inside. The room was dark. The door closed behind her and at the same time she heard the click of the light switch. The room filled with soft red light from two lamps, one on either side of the bed against the far wall. She looked at the room curiously.

The furniture was cheap and worn, the kind with which the French supply the summer vacationer. In the corner of the room was a sink and under it was a bidet on a swivel. The WC was behind a narrow door that looked like a closet. There was no tub, shower or kitchen, only a hotplate on the top of a bureau next to an armoire.

He caught her look. “It’s not much,” he said, “but it’s home.”

She laughed. “I’ve seen worse. You’re lucky the toilet’s not in the hall.”

He went over to the bureau and opened a drawer. He took out a joint and lit it. The sweet acrid smell of the marijuana reached her nostrils as he held it toward her. “I don’t have anything to drink.”

“That’s okay,” she said, taking a toke from the reefer. “This is good grass.”