“Go ahead,” hissed Vanessa.
He uncovered her ass, leaving her panties halfway down her thighs.
“Take them off,” she said.
“Shut up.”
They were talking in low voices, their chests tight. The tent was now drifting far from the mainland. Hidden and nervous, they no longer felt constrained by anything. For more than a year now, they’d gotten into the habit of occasionally fucking like this, when they felt like it or the opportunity arose. They didn’t ask any questions, made no demands, reproaches, or promises. More than anything, the secret of their hidden lovemaking had led to a boundless complicity. It had allowed them to acquire a lot of experience. They already knew a great deal about their predilections, their little quirks, their turn-offs. In bed, you would think they were thirty-year-olds. That progress made them happy and proud and eventually resulted in an unusual affection. Anthony appreciated Vanessa’s giving him the training he would need for future conquests (as in making girls like Steph come). Vanessa liked Anthony because he was rugged, naïve, and malleable. It was a win-win situation, even though they were mismatched. In bed, one good turn deserves another.
Meanwhile, Anthony had grabbed Vanessa’s panties and yanked them up between her butt cheeks. Between being tightly held and the rubbing of the cotton against her pussy, Vanessa thought she was going to go crazy. Displaying herself, she arched her back a little more and spread her legs. The shorts stretched across her thighs suddenly ripped.
“Don’t sweat it,” said Anthony.
He tore the shorts off. God, how good it was to feel that strength. In the beginning she’d had to push him a little; he was just a kid, awkward and timid. Even if he’d denied it, she immediately realized she was his first real lover. So she had to show him how to proceed, what to do, and in what stages. Then, once he’d grasped the female basics, Vanessa showed him what she herself needed.
And what she wanted was to be held.
Because, generally, getting what she wanted was what Vanessa had always done in life. She always took the bit in her teeth, made the effort, displayed strength of character. She was known for knowing what she wanted. Talk about a consolation.
Vanessa grew up in an affectionate, stable family, and her parents didn’t succumb to the widespread fashion of getting divorced and remarried. They had lived in the same three-bedroom house for the past twenty years with their two children, a boy and a girl. Her father worked in the registry of deeds; her mother was a secretary at City Hall. Every year, they spent two weeks in Sanary-sur-Mer. They were satisfied with decent salaries and reasonable raises and didn’t try to change their life. They knew their place, favored the status quo, were a bit shocked at the forces that rejected it, worried about the perils they saw on TV, were content with the good moments that life gave them. Cancer might someday put this static harmony to the test, but in the meantime, things were good. They sat by the fire in the winter and went on walks in the spring.
Thomas, their eldest, was studying sports physiology, which his parents thought was fine. On the other hand, they worried about their daughter’s unusual aspirations, which threatened to involve expenses that would be hard to meet. Vanessa had been putting on airs ever since she was a teenager. Studying prelaw only confirmed the family’s feeling that she thought she was superior.
Still, she had been pretty frivolous until she turned fifteen. And then, when she was a senior, something hit. She started studying hard, suddenly horrified at the thought of being stuck in Heillange, where she in turn would lead a comfortable and moderately happy life. Maybe the flash of insight came in sociology class, or when shopping at Leclerc with her mother. Whatever the case, that’s when she started distancing herself from her longtime best girlfriend, Carine Mougel, the cousin’s sister. As a result, she’d done very well on the baccalauréat and was now studying law. In a state of constant anxiety, she spent all her time holed up at the library with her soporific textbooks, her Bristol index cards, and her three-color felt-tip pen.
When she came home on weekends she found her parents busily leading the life she no longer wanted, with their general goodwill and hackneyed phrases about pretty much everything. To each his own. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. We can’t all be rocket scientists. Vanessa loved her parents deeply and felt pained and a little ashamed to see them just chugging along, with neither triumphs nor failures. She couldn’t grasp how much determination and humble sacrifice was required to keep an average existence afloat, to bring home a salary, plan vacations, maintain the house, cook dinner every evening, and be present and attentive, while still giving a scattered teenager the chance to gradually earn her autonomy.
Vanessa saw them as small, subservient, constantly weary, bitter, constrained, and vulgar. They had their Télé Star magazine and scratch-off games. Her father wore his daily suit and tie; her mother dyed her hair every three months, went to fortune-tellers, and thought that all psychologists were crooks.
Vanessa wanted to flee that world at any cost. And the anxiety she felt was as strong as her desire to get out, by the skin of her teeth if need be.
Before her first midterms, she studied so hard, she worked herself half to death. Her zeal was partly due to her family’s warnings. Her parents said that if she flunked her year, she’d be hauled right back to Heillange, because they didn’t have the means to support a dilettante. She actually didn’t quite believe those threats. On the other hand, she had heard scary stories about university life since she was very little. Kids who up to then had done fine in school suddenly found themselves getting subatomic grades. The professors’ viciousness was limitless, their conceit proverbial, and humiliating students was the rule. Moreover, those students were now on their own, far from Mommy and Daddy, sleepwalking from one class to the next, and feeling depressed amid general indifference. Many of them yielded to the easy temptation to party, spending their time sleeping or fucking, getting stoned in their studio apartments or playing Legend of Zelda instead of studying. The stories were enough to alarm even the most hardened souls.
What had especially intimidated Vanessa were the cool, with-it city girls who wore trench coats and loafers, with their beautiful hair and their Longchamp purses. Those girls walked to school, while Vanessa endured forty minutes on the bus from university housing. Instead of studying, they spent hours in nearby cafés drinking Perrier with lemon, talking about politics and their winter vacations, while upperclassmen tried to catch their eye. With their innate self-confidence, knowledge of the London and Amsterdam museums, downtown houses, and refined vocabulary, they scared Vanessa half to death. But at the end of the first semester, she saw what was what. Those little show-offs played at being relaxed, but they weren’t all that gifted, and the ones who hadn’t done a lick of work found themselves weeping in front of the list of grades. Vanessa hit the medium everywhere, and got an A in con law.
To celebrate, she took herself out for coffee, alone in a beautiful downtown brasserie, sitting nice and straight with an old edition of a Françoise Sagan novel in front of her, which of course dealt with love. For the first time in weeks she felt she was where she belonged.
So when she ran into Anthony, Vanessa wanted to be taken care of. She wanted to be taken, held, and fucked. She wanted to be hurt a little, to clear her head. She had a boyfriend at law school, a nice boy named Christopher who wanted to take the Sciences Po entrance exam, but that was something completely different. She had trained Anthony to meet her needs. He acted accordingly and never mentioned it to anyone. Basically, she adored him.
He now pulled Vanessa’s panties aside, and she knew he was going to enter her pussy and fill her up. She was dripping, it was really hot. She wasn’t thinking of anything anymore.
“Put your cock in me.”
“Wait…”
“Come on, fuck me.”
“I’m telling you, wait.”
Kneeling
behind her, he bit her on the ass and on the flesh of her thighs. Shivers ran all up her back, she started to tremble, and then, feeling his breath on her cunt, she arched her back.
“No, not that,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Stop. It’s hot. There’s no bathroom here.”
“So what?”
“Stop it, that’s all.”
Too late. Anthony’s tongue had found the velvet of her pussy. He followed a fold, slid up her groin, tasting her sweat and her slightly tart, deep inner juices. Vanessa could feel herself weakening and forgot to dissuade him. He was holding her firmly by the hips, spreading her cheeks, clutching her thighs. She felt like putty in his hands. It was everything she loved. She started moaning for real. Anthony grabbed her hair. She arched, seeking him with her lap. His swollen cock was there, pressed against the entrance to her cunt. He stopped moving.
“Can you feel me?”
She answered with a sigh. He was being talkative, which annoyed her. Also, she couldn’t think only about herself; since he liked to talk, she listened to him. He began to very gently sink his cock into her.
“The condom…”
“Too bad,” said Anthony. “Can you really feel me?”
“Of course! Go ahead.”
When he was all the way in, he embraced her. She ran a hand behind his neck and he fucked her in silence, in the sweltering heat of the tent, sticky with sweat, forgetting about the dangers and their problems. It felt good, but Vanessa knew that she could never come like that, all dirty, with the kids and the forest just a stone’s throw away. So she faked it, rocking faster and faster, enveloped, overflowing, determined.
“Are you going to come?” he asked.
“Yes…”
“Now?”
“Mmm.”
Sweat plastered her back to his belly. She moved faster and faster, burning up, he grabbed her by the throat, she said, “Now,” and a second later Anthony came deep inside her. Panting, she stopped moving. She could even count the spasms of his cock. They relaxed right away, with him satisfied, almost immediately indifferent. She had to hold him to keep him pressed against her.
“Wait, stay there,” she said.
“Did you come hard?”
“Yes.”
Anthony rolled over on his back, and she held his hand. The two of them now gazed at the ceiling of the tent, without saying anything. He was breathing through his mouth. Funny, she’d never noticed that before.
“I’m hungry,” he said.
“You’re kidding.”
He yawned, zipped up his pants, and straightened.
“I haven’t eaten since noon. Do you have a cigarette?”
“Don’t make any noise.”
He stepped out of the tent while she rummaged in her purse. Outside, nothing had changed, but the magic had dissipated. All that was left was the dense materiality of things, the sky’s uncaring beauty. Anthony stretched. The fresh air dried his chest. He felt good, his spirit cleansed. He took the cigarette she handed him, and she lit it.
“Aren’t you smoking?”
“No.”
Vanessa stayed in the tent. She seemed distant.
“What is it?” he asked, almost aggressively.
“Nothing.”
He was silent for a moment, then casually said:
“I’m going to see my father tomorrow.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah. I always wonder how it’s going to be.”
“It always goes pretty well.”
“Yeah, but it makes me feel weird.”
Vanessa stuck her head out, looking sincerely concerned.
“I hardly recognize him,” said Anthony.
“How so?”
“I don’t know. He’s not like he used to be.”
“What about your mother? What does she say about him?”
“Nothing. They don’t see each other anymore.”
“It’s better that way.”
“Yeah.”
After a moment Vanessa asked him:
“Would you like me to come along? I’m free tomorrow evening.”
Anthony looked at her without understanding.
“What do you mean?”
His tone was needlessly sharp, but she was used to it.
“I don’t know. I was just saying.”
“You’re not coming to my father’s place.”
“Okay, fine. I couldn’t care less.”
That’s what always happened: Vanessa would go too far, and Anthony would immediately shut down. More so this time than usual. Now, all he was thinking about was his meeting with Steph in two days. Anthony finished his cigarette and crushed it into the grass, and gave Vanessa a peck on the cheek.
“So long.”
“So long,” she answered.
She wasn’t mad at him.
Later, under a tree away from the clearing, she cleaned herself off with a bottle of mineral water and a T-shirt. She didn’t hear any noise or see anyone. But she couldn’t shake the strange feeling that someone was watching as she washed her pussy.
4
After going through his pockets, Patrick Casati spilled all his small change onto the Formica bar top. It was mainly two-franc coins and centimes and didn’t amount to much.
“Is that all?” asked Georges, the owner.
“Wait, lemme see.”
Patrick searched some more, turning his jacket pockets out. Today was Monday, collection day. He eventually found two fifty-franc bills and dropped one of them onto the pile of change.
“I’m keeping fifty francs for myself. I have to eat, after all.”
“For sure,” said the owner, who knew about life.
“So, are we good, or what?”
“Let me see.”
The owner turned to the imposing coffee machine towering behind him. In the corner next to it stood a big glass jar that was full to the brim, mainly with change but also a few grayish banknotes. He took the jar in both hands and jingled the coins.
“A very nice sound,” said the barber, raising his glass.
“We can’t be too far off, I think,” said Patrick.
The owner set it down on the bar. It was a three-liter jam jar with a waterproof rubber top and a “Quetsch 1987” label. The Damson jam it once held had long since been eaten.
“Want to count it?” asked the owner.
“Let’s do it,” said Patrick with a smile.
He came to L’Escale for his coffee every morning. It was a bistro not far from his job, run by Georges and his wife, a dark, unreadable Portuguese couple who worked fifteen hours a day. The wife wasn’t around that day. Georges’s hair was so thick and bushy that the guys never tired of teasing him about his supposedly North African origins. Portugal was right next door, after all; centuries of invasions had surely made for some hybridizations. Georges just nodded silently, looking as if to say, “He who laughs last, laughs best.”
“All right, let’s count,” said the barber, “but first…pfiiit!”
With his thumb, he mimed filling his glass, which was already empty. The owner went to serve him a little muscadet for the road, the barber’s third. He came here every morning as well. Starting at eight, he had his first glass of white wine with a slug of lemonade. It helped steady his hand. In fact, the greatest surgeons did exactly the same thing; he’d read that in a magazine. And nobody had ever complained about his work. Still, a certain Mélodie had set up a salon practically across the street, and his business wasn’t as brisk as before. She offered a loyalty card, children’s haircuts for fifty francs, and a plunging neckline. It was almost unfair competition. The barber considered repainting his shop and replacing the old transistor radio, but those modernization fancies had vanished at the bistro, like the rest. Aside from
that, he was completely bald, and a card-carrying member of the conservative RPR party. He loved meetings, cold cuts, his country, and Charles Pasqua.
The owner filled the barber’s glass, then tipped the contents of the jar onto the counter.
“Upsy-daisy!”
A few coins went bouncing onto the tile floor, but no one bothered to pick them up; they would get them later. The three men began sorting the coins by category, in piles of ten. They had plenty of time. Patrick didn’t start work before 9:30, and the place was almost empty during school vacations. The only people to be seen in there were the regulars: the barber, Patrick, and Namur, a fat man on a disability pension who sat in the back reading the newspaper with his little dog on his lap. Villages don’t have idiots anymore, but every bar has its designated wreck, a semi-drunk invalid who spends his time drinking from morning till night, right to the very end.
Georges took out a notepad and began the final tally. The men smoothed the bills and started counting the ten-franc coins. They checked the totals twice, wary of celebrating too soon.
“That’s really it: 5,268.”
Impressed, the barber whistled.
“New francs?”
“Of course.”
“You never know.”
“Well, then…”
Patrick had to admit it wasn’t bad. He had been feeding this piggy bank with the money he saved by not drinking. Over time, it had made a pretty penny. With the feeling of having done their duty, the two other men gave him a brotherly look. His pals.
“This is worth celebrating,” said the barber, lifting his glass.
Patrick gave him a little sarcastic nod, as if to say, “You don’t miss a trick, do you?”
In the beginning, quitting drinking had really put Patrick through the wringer. It was worse than anyone could imagine. Over time, liquor becomes another organ among the others in your body, and no less essential. It’s there, deep down inside you, it’s intimate, and helps keep things going, as much as your heart, kidney, or intestines. Stopping drinking means amputating a part of yourself. Patrick had wept. He had screamed at night. Spent hours in scalding hot baths, his teeth chattering. And then, after two months of migraines, aches, and night sweats, he woke up one morning, weaned. Everything had changed, even his smell.
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