Hotelles (26 page)

I continued rubbing myself under his submissive gaze, his subservient fascination. For the first time, it did not feel wrong to give him such a show.

A foreboding shiver ran up my spine, as a question shot through me: Among the penises pointed at me in the Païva room . . . had one belonged to Louie? Had I touched it without knowing? If I hadn't been so drunk with desire, maybe I would have noticed. Maybe I would have felt a telling tremor, a special vein. Would I have squeezed it more ardently?

David's penis suddenly penetrated me. Decisively and without warning. I hadn't seen it coming, and the irruption petrified me. I didn't want this. Not yet, at least, not now.

“Touch yourself again,” he ordered.

I didn't have a problem with him dominating me. But, true to his male instincts, he was in a hurry to finish. He was about to blow everything into a million pieces, right when I was just getting started.

“No, you . . . Get out!” I said now.

I had to use a decisive tone so he would obey me without question. Thank God, it wasn't all lost. David, hungry to satisfy me, glued his avid lips to my sex, sucking on the sweet juice of my deliverance:

“Put it in me!” I ordered.

The poor man was seized with panic: Why did I forbid him something only to demand it again a moment later? I clarified the misunderstanding, in an unrecognizable voice that swelled from the depths of my belly:

“Your tongue . . . I want you to put it in me . . . Go ahead!”

He prostrated himself. His pink, fleshy tip darted in me, stretching its full length, diving deep inside. I felt penetrated but not dominated. Attended to but not conquered. His mouth stuck to me like a leech as he firmly rotated his tongue at my vagina's point of entry.

His lips disappeared into mine, which were now bathed in a thick fluid. A white froth lined the contours of his mouth, like a sticky mustache of love.

 

I read in one of my women's magazines that a French gynecologist had solved the mystery of the G-spot. Apparently, it is not an autonomous erogenous zone that some women are lucky enough to have and others not. In truth, according to this gynecologist and her supporting medical imagery, it is an internal extension of the clitoris. Contrary to what is commonly thought, the clitoris is made up of far more than the few millimeters we can see.

Inside each woman, the clitoris extends over a territory of ten or so centimeters. And, in function of one's anatomy and size, it innervates the surrounding organs. Apparently, the sensations that some women feel in their rectum during sodomy come from that hidden and mysterious presence.

 

Handwritten note by me, 6/10/2009

 

“FASTER . . . YES!”

With each rotation, his tongue pressed my sensitive bulge, that tiny mound of pleasure that had all but given up on such forms of attention.

“That's it, don't move! There!”

He got the message, focusing his efforts on that one essential point. But suddenly and without warning, he withdrew. It was, to say the least, disagreeable. Then, he rapidly replaced his tongue with his member. He, too, had grown impatient—I could tell by the size of his erection and its pearling tip. He couldn't take it anymore. He could only be at my service for a few more seconds. In the end, he needed to dominate, to conquer, to invade me. As luck had it, his preliminaries had prepared my sex so well that his mechanical thrusting ended up prolonging the sensations. I opened myself wider, inviting him to my innermost depths, not far from the uterus. That is where, I knew, a tiny tongue of mucus, which is softer and more sensitive than the rest, is capable of making me come instantly. It is almost impossible to reach it with my fingers. But he was there. His manhood rhythmically rammed into it, there where my body suddenly seemed to concentrate, drawn by an improbable force, like a black hole, which fragmented me, limb by limb, right down to my cells, and then threw them all around me, into every corner of the room, flying on shafts of light from the outdoors, straddling an abyss in which I at last fell, heavily.

For the very first time, he had made me come. He alone, with no help from me. He and his mouth and his cock, all of which were now covered in my humors.

But was he really the only one behind this miracle? In his sigh, I thought I heard the voice of another.

22

June 11, 2009

M
y notebook! My notebook, my notebook, my notebook  . . .

I was still naked and panting in the dining room. My crotch and thighs were sticky with pleasure. But I couldn't get those two words out of my head. Over and over I repeated them to myself, like the miser who has lost his coffer. My silver notebook was still sitting on our bed. My Ten-Times-a-Day, which now included my own notes. I would never be able to live with the shame if David saw those pages. As for the entries that were not written by me, I didn't want to think of all the untruths I would need to invent to justify them to him. And I would have to lie if I wanted to preserve even a shred of his trust and esteem.

I climbed the stairs on all fours, my rump in the air, my clothes hastily drawn to my chest and middle. I prayed I would not run into Armand on one of his hurried rounds through the house. Upstairs, I could hear my man walking through our room. Then he stopped short. When at last I made it to the room, his back was turned to the door and he was contemplating the garden. I could not see the contents of his hands, which were clasped in front of him. My heart stopped when I noticed that the notebook had disappeared from the bedspread.

At last he put me out of my misery and turned around:

“Tell me . . .”

His hands were empty. I breathed deeply. The end of a nightmare? Or had there been enough time for him to hide the object among his things?

My heart seized, pounding into my naked chest.

“Yes?”

Against the light, his face looked dark and expressionless. Even his voice seemed less warm and welcoming than usual.

“You're going to have to go back . . .”

Where? To my mom's house? In Nanterre? Near Fred? To my old mediocre life from before?

“Don't get me wrong, my choice has nothing to do with my feelings for you.”

What was he talking about exactly . . . ? If I was there, wasn't it because he loved me?

“But I did have to fight to get everyone on board about you.”

I shivered apprehensively, finally seeing what he meant. Still, to be sure, I asked:

“On board?”

“At BTV. What did you think I meant? The unions really don't like favoritism, you know. For them, so long as you haven't paid your dues, you're no better than girls who sleep their way up the ladder.”

Did he know a lot of girls like that? I pushed the thought aside and commiserated:

“Yes, of course . . . I understand.”

“They keep harassing me about it,” he added, his expression darkening.

A rush of air into my lungs. So that was what was bothering him. I wouldn't lose everything. Not right away. Not yet.

But . . . where on earth had my notebook gone?

“If you want them to take you seriously,” he stressed, “you're going to have to work at their level. You're going to have to be better than them. With these people, it's make or break. They don't do things halfway.”

Christopher and Louie had already given me a taste of how intransigent business culture could be. I was going to have to earn my stripes with them, on their turf, that was clear. There was no way I was going to gain their respect and support if I stayed locked up here or in the glass prison that was my office. I still had everything to prove.

“You are one hundred percent right . . . ,” I admitted.

The silence following this statement came with a big “but.”
But I can't stand your brother
?
But Louie is working on a report for my program that could reveal all my secrets
?

“So . . . chin up!”

He took me in his arms. He was a comforting bubble, generously sharing his inner calm every time we touched.

“Do you think it would be okay if I stayed home again tomorrow? After that, I promise, I'll be a good little soldier.”

I rarely used the kinds of vapid girls' tricks that tend to be so effective with the male sex: wide eyes, puckered lips, batting lashes, cocked head . . . but now seemed like a good time. And even though my position in his arms made it so he couldn't see me, he must have felt it because he caved.

“Okay, but just tomorrow. After that . . . work, young lady! No discussion!”

He breathed a conciliatory smile into my neck, giving me the opening I'd been looking for:

“I was wondering, you didn't see a notebook on the bed earlier, did you?”

“A notebook?”

He detached himself and looked me in the eye. I didn't detect any sign of duplicity in his face.

“Yes, a silver notebook . . .”

“No. Have you looked under the bed?”

It was in fact lying under the bed. We spent the rest of the evening on the bed, with one interruption from Armand, who left us something to eat outside the door—perk of the privileged few, who get to live at home as though in a hotel—and a few urgent calls that David had to take.

Alas, in all those idle hours, I did not have another orgasm like the one in the dining room. A return to our usual, mundane sex.

 

THE NEXT MORNING, IT WAS
not my notebook waiting for me on the breakfast table—this time I had carefully zipped it in an internal pocket of my purse—but a stack of typed papers held together by a silver paper clip that looked like an eagle's talon. I should have seen that as a sign . . .

“Good morning, Elle!” Armand surprised me.

He was already familiar with my morning routine, and didn't have to ask before serving me a large cup of green tea, steeped to perfection.

“Good morning, Armand.”

“David left this for you to read.”

“I see that . . . But what is it?”

Master Christian Olivo, Notary in Paris,
I read the austere header on the first page. A stylized Marianne, a French national emblem, was half hidden under the raptor's claw.

“A draft of your marriage contract. I also have a red pen and a block of Post-its for you, in case you want to make any changes.”

A prenup? David had never been so formal about our union in my presence.

With one hand, I stirred a spoon in my steaming mug, while the other leafed through the thick document. My gaze paused randomly on a line or paragraph, whenever a word or phrase caught my attention. Despite my limited experience with contracts, I had no problem understanding that the purpose of this document was essentially to protect the Barlet family's assets and estate. The paragraph on Marital Property didn't mince words: “Separation of individual assets,” it stipulated.

It was understandable. The independent woman in me, the one who loved her autonomy and believed women should be self-sufficient, tried to downplay what I was reading. But the cold way in which I was being subjected to the terms, the absence of dialogue, felt like a slap in the face.

“When am I supposed to have this read?” I asked icily.

“If possible, by the end of the day.”

I gazed for a moment at the neat stack of papers, then raised my eyes toward Armand, who was wearing his usual woolen waistcoat.

“It's fine. You can take it back now.”

He was momentarily taken aback, then asked:

“Are you sure you don't want to read it more closely? Or maybe show some passages to a third party? A lawyer?”

“No, no . . . it's fine as is.”

“The contract is binding, Elle. I wouldn't take it lightly.”

His advice reminded me of the fine print on ads for credit cards in France with exorbitant rates: “Credit is a binding commitment and must be repaid.” I tried not to hear his words in such bleak terms.

“I know. But I trust David.”

“Yes, of course,” he agreed meekly. “But still . . .”

“I'm right, am I not?” I interrupted, searching his eyes. “To trust him . . . ?”

He had trouble suppressing a little smile from his lips. Had he been drinking? So early?

“Yes . . . Yes, clearly.”

I dipped a piece of toast in my tea, which clouded with melted butter, and concluded with false optimism:

“All is well then.”

He took the stack of papers, Post-its, and pen, and added, as though he were also David's clerk:

“Well then, I'll have a final version ready for your signature this evening on the console.”

“Perfect.” I dismissed him with a look. “Thank you, Armand.”

 

NO SOONER HAD I FINISHED
breakfast than I received a call from Sophia, whose infectious happiness was like a breath of fresh air. I threw on some sweats and took the metro to meet her. She lived in a small, cheap apartment in Nogent-sur-Marne, at the other end of the RER line A from Nanterre. It only took thirty-five minutes from Mom's house, and without having to change trains. Her studio was on the top floor of a charmless block building from the seventies, but it was ideally located, just a few steps away from the Bois de Vincennes. The unobstructed view of the bus terminal and train tracks was depressing—probably why her rent was so low—but at least she didn't have any neighbors across the way peeping in on her Homeric, legs-in-the-air sessions.

She was wearing a light-pink tracksuit and standing in front of Le Relais, a big café with a veranda where the avenues Clemenceau and Marronniers intersect.

“Hey, ritzy!”

“Hey, fanatic . . .”

The kind of friendly jibes that showed our mutual affection, while also gently expressing whatever we found annoying in the other.

We started at a light trot down Avenue de Nogent. The bridle way was already scattered with turds from the early-morning cavalcade. On a Thursday midmorning in June, there wasn't a legion of runners, no more than there were cyclists and horseback riders. It felt like the park belonged to us, and I was glad, though I was also out of breath. I hadn't been running with Sophia since we used to go regularly in college. She had kept it up, but not me: every stride awoke a group of dormant muscles. I'd soon start to feel the pain.

“Come on, old lady!” she prompted. “Don't forget: in a week you're going to have to squeeze a dress over all that flab you call your body!”

The sky was clear, the air cool, and a breeze that smelled of flowers gently brushed past us, adding to the already enjoyable atmosphere. The road was almost entirely empty of vehicles, save a few rusted trucks whose purpose in these parts was unclear. The prostitutes, illegals from western Africa who had paid a fortune to get here, gave themselves up nearby for a few tenners. But they didn't leave their shabby stalls.

“If this keeps up,” Sophia wailed, “that's where I'll end up!”

“Don't be ridiculous! What are you talking about?”

“I'm broke, Elle! I received my first eviction notice. I haven't paid rent in months. I wish it were winter. At least then they wouldn't legally be allowed to evict me. But it's not. It's June!”

“Have you tried Rebecca again on her phone?”

“That bitch has totally disappeared. Her professional line has been cut. And I never had the other one.”

“Okay, it's not so bad. You still have your ‘shows' . . .”

The air quotes I drew around this word, so as not to say “peep show” in public, only added to her frustration. She stopped suddenly. Her face was flushed with effort and nascent anger, her hands on her hips.

“I would like to see you on stage, Madame-Barlet-and-her-golden-spoon!”

“Ha! Well then it would have to be the tiniest spoon,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. I remembered the prenup Armand had handed me that morning.

But my friend didn't give me time to explain.

“Shit, Elle . . . I'm almost twenty-six, I've got no boyfriend, no stable job, my parents are broke and, in any case, they don't care.”

“Soph—”

“Don't you get it? I'm out of options. Nothing! And I'm not going to shove my finger up my pussy for some nasty old men twelve hours a day in order to pay my rent!”

“I already told you. I can lend you some money.”

Suddenly, as we started down a narrow alley, we heard the sound of a motor from the road behind us. We turned around.

A dark limousine with tinted windows—a rare German model, I thought—hugged the raised sidewalk at a crawling pace. It would soon reach us.

A passenger window opened on our side. As in a spy movie, we could barely make out the face hiding in the shadows of his luxury vehicle, a study in shades of gray.

“Hello! You're Sophia, right?”

We could hear Ravel's
Boléro
playing in the background. The voice did not address me.

“Yes . . .”

“I am Louie Barlet. Annabelle's future brother-in-law. And also the director of communication at BTV.”

Sophia, whom I had always known to be self-confident and even cheeky, was now tongue-tied and speechless.

“May I borrow her?” he asked, pointing his chin in my direction. “You won't be mad, I hope?”

Only then did Louie's emaciated face appear, smiling, just as affable in that moment as he could be ferocious in others. The notes of vanilla and lavender wafting out his window mixed with the woodsy perfume of our environs. That was Louie Barlet's power: leaving his mark, shaping a place or situation to his exact image, reconfiguring the world through his sheer presence, as he had wanted to do for me when he'd inscribed my name in the city.

“Elle and I have a little emergency having to do with her show.”

How can a person be so careless about lying? It was obvious he had followed us here, and that his sudden appearance had nothing to do with our professional world.

His shoulder rested idly in the open window, his eyes transfixed by Sophia's figure, which was perfectly sculpted by her leggings and formfitting top.

“So . . . ?” he insisted in a playful tone. “You're not going to charge me rent, are you?”