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“Drive carefully, chéri,” the woman said, dreamy, replete. His doing.
“I’m all right now,” he said. “I’m not drunk anymore.”
The woman twisted and reached out and lit a lamp on the bedside table. He got out of bed, proud of his nakedness. Adolescent vainglory, he admitted wryly to himself, and dressed. The woman rose, too, strong, supple body, breasts full, haunches muscled, and covered herself in a gown, sat in a chair watching him with a little smile as he put on his clothes. He wished she hadn’t put on the light, had not wakened. Then he could have left a hundred francs, maybe a thousand francs, on the mantelpiece, darkness and sleep concealing his provincial American ignorance of such matters; he could have slipped out of the apartment and out of the house, all co
There was no avoiding the moment. He took out his wallet. “Is a thousand francs enough?” he asked, stumbling a little over the “enough.”
She looked at him curiously, the smile vanishing. Then she began to laugh. The laugh was low at first, then became raucous. She bent over, put her head in her hands, her thick, gleaming hair falling in a dark cascade, hiding her face, the laugh continuing. He watched her, feeling his nerves twitching, regretting that he had been in her bed, that he had offered her a drink, that he was in Nice, regretting that he had ever set foot in France.
“I’m sorry,” he said inanely. “It’s just that I’m not accustomed …”
She raised her head, her face still distorted by laughter. She stood up and came over to him and kissed his cheek. “Poor dear,” she said, the laughter still there, at the back of her throat. “I didn’t know I was worth that much.”
“If you want more …” he said stiffly.
“Much more,” she said. “I want nothing. The most exorbitant price. Dear man. Thinking all this time that I was professional. And being so polite and gentle, too. If all customers were like you, I think we’d all become whores. I liked Americans before, but I like them even better now.”
“Christ, Jea
“Don’t say anything. You’re too modest, my charming American, too modest by half.”
“Well,” he said, “it never happened to me before.” He was afraid she was going to start laughing again.
She shook her head wonderingly. “What’s wrong with American women?” she said. She moved over to the bed and sat on the edge. She patted it. “Come, sit down, please,” she said.
He sat down next to her. She took his hand, sisterly now. “If it will make you feel any better, chéri,” she said, “it never happened to me before, either. But I have been so lonely—starved—Couldn’t you tell?”
“No,” he admitted. “I’m not really a ladies’ man.”
“Not a ladies’ man,” she said, gently mocking. “Not a drinking man. Just the sort of man I needed tonight. Let me tell you a little about myself. I’m married. To a major in the army. He was an aide to the military attaché in Washington.”
That’s where the English came from, he thought, no lobbyists, no congressmen, no motels.
“Now he is stationed temporarily in Paris. At the Ecole Militaire,” she said. “Temporarily.” She laughed shortly, harshly. “He’s been there three months now. I have two children in school here in Nice. They are visiting their grandmother tonight.”
“You weren’t wearing a wedding ring,” he said. “I looked.”
“Not tonight.” Her face grew grim. “I didn’t want to be married tonight. When I got my husband’s telegram this afternoon telling me he was going to call, I knew what he was going to say. He was going to say that once again he would be too busy with his work to come to Nice. He has been too busy for three months. They must be preparing a terrible war at the Ecole Militaire when a poor little major can’t get off for even one day to fly to Nice to see his wife once in three months. I have a very good idea of what kind of war my major is preparing in Paris. You heard me on the telephone …?”
“Yes,” Rudolph said. “I couldn’t hear what you were saying.… You sounded angry.”
“It wasn’t a friendly conversation,” Jea
“More or less,” Rudolph said.
“I was on the point of quitting and going home when you came into the café and sat down,” she said quietly. “Two men had approached me before. Posing, stuffy men, experts, co
“One-night stands,” Rudolph said.
“That’s it.”
“At least they didn’t think you were a whore,” he said ruefully. “Forgive me.”
She patted his hand. “There’s nothing to forgive,” she said. “It added just the right note of comedy to the evening. When you came in and sat down, with your decent, bony, respectable American face, I decided not to go home.” She smiled. “Not just then. It turns out I didn’t make a mistake. You must never be modest again.” Another sisterly pat of the hand. “Now, it’s late. You said you had to go.… Do you want my telephone number? Can I see you again?”
“I suppose I ought to tell you a little about myself, too,” Rudolph said. “First of all, my name isn’t Jimmy. I don’t know why I …” He shrugged. “I guess I was ashamed of what I was doing.” He smiled. “What I thought I was doing. Maybe I half believed if it wasn’t my own name it wasn’t me who was really doing it. More likely, if we ever met and I was with somebody else and you said hello, Jimmy, I could say, I’m sorry, madam, you must be thinking of somebody else.”
“I wish I could dare keep a diary,” Jea
“My name is Rudolph,” he said. “I was never fond of the name. When I was a boy I thought it sounded un-American, though it’s hard to tell what sounds American anymore and what doesn’t. And why anybody should care. But when you’re a boy in his teens, your head full of books, with heroes with names like Huckleberry Fi
“Rudolph,” Jea
“Much better.”
“Good,” she said teasingly. “From now on I will call you Rodolfo.”
“Rodolfo Jordache,” he said. It gave him a new, more dashing view of himself. “Jordache. That’s my family name. I’m at the Hôtel du Cap.” All defenses down now. Names and addresses. Each at the other’s mercy. “One more thing. I’m married.”
“I expected as much,” Jea
“My wife is with me in Antibes.” He didn’t feel he had to tell her that they were not on the best of terms, either. “Give me your telephone number.”
She got up and went over to a little desk where there was a pen and some paper and wrote down her telephone number. She gave him the slip of paper and he folded it carefully and put it in his pocket.