Passion's Wicked Torment
Page 25
“Sell the ship, or buy me out,” she said coldly to Sean.
“All right,” he agreed, still frowning. “If it’s Paris we're off to, then it’s Paris we’re off to.”
She tried to make her words soft, to lessen the pain. “I didn’t say ‘we.’ ”
McShane was shocked, and he showed it. Then he shook his head. “You’re not yourself. I’m not letting you go gallivanting off alone in a foreign land in your condition.” He did not mention how hurt he was that she would even want to go away without him, He appealed to her on a purely practical, medical basis.
Finally, after listening to his argument, she acquiesced. “You can come. But I’ll tell you honestly, Sean, you’ll wish you hadn’t. You won’t be able to put up with me for very long. I’m not the same girl I was three days ago.”
“Ah, Kristy,” he said, smiling, “it’s just your shock, that’s all. When you’ve had a chance to recover, you’ll be the same old Kristy you’ve always been. And we’ll be closer than ever, I promise you.”
She didn’t have the heart to tell him what she thought would be the more likely outcome. She leaned back against the fluffy pillow and closed her eyes, pretending she was tired. The doctor gently told McShane to leave the room, and, after kissing Kristin on the forehead, he did so. Shortly thereafter, the doctor left too, leaving her alone.
Kristin opened her eyes. She had a crazy urge, and she responded to it. She got out of bed and threw off her cotton hospital nightgown. Naked, she went to the dresser and opened the drawer, searching through the contents of what had previously been in her purse. She found the lip gloss, which she only rarely used. She applied a very thick paste to her lips, something she had never done before. Then she stood before the dresser mirror and looked at her naked body and her gaudy painted lips. She rasied her chin high and threw her shoulders back, not proudly, but brazenly.
There, she thought. There! She knew in the deep recesses of her mind that she was embarking on a new phase of her life unlike anything that had gone before. Vaguely, intuitively, she understood that she was about to enter a new, self-destructive phase of her life, a phase that might even lead to her death.
Her hands moved over her breasts, down her flanks and over her rounded hips. I welcome it! she screamed in her mind to the mirror. So help me, God. I welcome it!
CHAPTER 26
Kristin laughed gaily and waved her champagne glass high in the air. There was an edge of hysteria to her laugh, but no one detected it.
“Kristin, come down from there,” pleaded the tall, slender Frenchman, André Clerc, half-jokingly. “You can’t go up there, chérie."
“Why can’t I?” Kristin replied playfully. She was on the middle rungs of the metal structural ladder, only a few feet off the ground, looking up at the stairway that began a few feet higher up. She had never even seen the Eiffel Tower before, except in pictures, and now she was clinging to the ladder at the base of one of its pillars, preparing to climb up to the stairway.
“Come, come, Kristy,” urged the young American writer who was standing beside André, looking up at her. “You know the tower’s been closed at night ever since the war. That’s why the bottom of the stairway extension was removed. You wouldn’t even have gotten this far if not for André’s being such a fool and picking open the lock on the gate surrounding the place.” He glanced at his French friend with mild reproof.
André retorted with mock indignation, stroking his pencil-thin mustache. “How dare you slight my skill, you ignorant cochon Américain! It is a skill handed down from father to son for generations in my family! I stand before you as one of the foremost lock pickers in France. I—”
“Oh, hush up a moment, won’t you? Can’t you see she’s serious?” The American writer, H. Craig Brady, turned back to Kristin and said, “Now, see here, Kristin, you can’t go clambering all over French monuments like that.”
“Why not?” she asked, smiling teasingly.
“Well, it’s dangerous, for one thing. And for another . . . how shall I put this tactfully? Darling, you’re as drunk as a skunk. Soused to the gills, I might say.”
Kristin laughed and held up her çhampagne glass in toast to his perceptive observation. Then she drank the last of the bubbly sweet liquid and tossed the glass away. André and H. Craig Brady leaped aside as the glass flew down and shattered in front of them.
“Lyons crystal!” exclaimed the Frenchman in halfdrunk horror. “She shattered my Lyons crystal champagne glass! Now I’m really mad,” he said. “Now I’m going to teach you a lesson.” He charged forward to the metal ladder and tried to grab Kristin’s legs. She quickly scurried farther up the ladder out of his reach. Then she kept climbing until she reached the first stairway landing, from which she climbed onto the metal circular steps.
“Now you’ve done it,” Brady chastised his friend. “Look at that. You’ve made her climb up higher. I think she really means to climb to the top.”
Kristin looked down at them. They were young, handsome men, and at the moment they were looking up at her, wondering what she was going to do. The night was pleasant and balmy, and a breeze continually swirled her chiffon skirt up above her knees. She had her white-gloved hand down, holding the skirt to a modest level. The streets and boulevards of Paris stretched out before her, but she could not see enough of them. She was still too low. She bent slightly back to look up at the top of the Eiffel Tower, leaning a bit dizzily over the edge of the stairway landing to get a good view.
“Kristin, damn it now. Be careful!” shouted Brady from below.
“Chérie, if you fall, I will never forgive myself! And more important, the authorities, they will never forgive me! It was I who brought you here from the party. It was I who picked the lock. So please, chérie! Please, come down!”
Kristin laughed at him, smiling gaily, desperately. “I want to see all of Paris, André. From the top!” She started climbing the cold, circular metal stairs. She was barefoot, as she’d kicked off her shoes before climbing the ladder to this landing.
“Chérie, I beg of you!”
“And when I reach the top,” she shouted down to them, playfully, “you know what I’m going to do? Something very romantic, André. I’m going to jump.”
The two men looked at each other, first in wonderment, then in horror. “She is mad, you know, André. I do believe the girl is capable of anything.” They ran for the ladder and clambered up it to the first stair landing, from which they could take the circular stairway the rest of the way.
The two men were panting for breath as they hurried after her. She was not really trying to get away, though, and about a quarter of the way up they caught her. She sat down on the landing, out of breath. They sat down too.
"Chérie,” scolded André, “you are too much for a poor, simple Frenchman such as I.” Andre was not really a poor, simple Frenchman. His family owned the Pattiepeden department store chain in Paris and Lyons, and since the war had ended, he had become a millionaire several times over. Brady was no pauper either. As the most successful expatriate American novelist, of what was being referred to as the “lost generation,” he was quite well-to-do. Together, André and Brady were staunch pillars of the dissolute, disrespectful class of the young, wild and rich whom Kristin had fallen in with since coming to Paris.
“I say, old sport,” said the American to his friend, “so long as we’re here already, we might as well make a party of it, wot?”
“Party!” exclaimed Kristin, laughingly. “Party!”
André raised his eyebrows in interest, but then shrugged at the difficulties this presented. “We could import the rest of the lads and ladies we left behind at my chateau. But how do we let them know we’re here? Kristin ran out so suddenly, and we after her, we didn’t take time to let anyone know where we were going.” “Well, I for one have come prepared.” Brady reached into his back pocket and produced a hip flask. Not just any hip flask, but a gleaming, silver-plated one. He uncapped it and offered
it gallantly to Kristin, bowing.
Without even asking what was in it, she took a swallow, found that she could stomach it and took several more. It tasted like gin, but she could not be sure. She had taken up drinking shortly after she had come to France two months ago, and by now she had reached the point where she could handle the hard liquor without getting sick. But she still could not tell one type of drink from another. It was her drinking that had been the last straw in finally convincing Sean to leave her over a month ago. But she did not want to think of him now. He had failed her in a major way, as she knew he would, though through no fault of his own.
André took several swallows when the flask was passed to him, then gave it back to Brady. The Frenchman turned his attention to Kristin, taking her hand in his. “Chérie, I am wild about you. You drive me crazy! You’re like no American girl I know—like no girl I know of any nationality!”
“She’s an institution unto herself,” suggested Brady in an amiable way, helping his friend with his line.
“Chérie, you are an institution unto yourself,” declared André. “And I want to marry you.”
“I accept,” said Kristin.
“Hear, hear!” applauded Brady. “My heartiest congratulations to you both.” He raised his flask in honor of the occasion and took another swig.
André dismissed the toast with a wave of his hand. “She always says that. Every single time I have proposed to her, she has accepted. But she never goes through with it.”
“You’re never quick enough,” Kristin said. “You always wait until I sober up. What you should do is get me while I’m still drunk.”
“A wonderful idea! I accept!” He got to his feet and pulled her up with him. “Come, we go to the minister! Craig, you come with us. You are to be my best man.” “An honor I’ll treasure for the rest of my . . . weekend. Which, by George, is almost gone, do you realize?” Brady was glancing at his pocket watch. “It’s Monday already. Several minutes past.”
“I have to get up early to go to another party,” said Kristin with false alarm at the lateness of the hour. She pulled away from André.
“I’ll never let you go, chérie! I’m mad for you! You hear?”
He started coming for her again, but she began running up the steps once more. He began following, as did Brady. They climbed as she climbed, and when they took a minute or two to rest and catch their breaths, she did also, always staying above them. When they started after her again, she would begin climbing. Finally she reached the very top and let them catch up with her.
She was looking out over the parapet when they reached her. The wind was blowing her hair wildly about, and the balmy air was pressing against the skin of her face, making her feel good. She had let her blond hair grow longer, and she now wore it in a style that was becoming quite the vogue in Paris. It was cut in many layers. Kristin was one of the first to have her hair styled this way, which contributed to her reputation as an avant garde woman who was in the fashion forefront. She was known to the gay, reckless and wild, and willing to try anything for a laugh or a good time. No one detected the hurt and desperation that was driving her, never giving her a moment’s respite.
“She is beautiful, is she not?” said André to Kristin, referring to the city of Paris beneath them. The broad avenues extended in all directions, brightly lit even at this post midnight hour. There was no need for the streets to be lit now, for there was very little action this late at night. But since the end of the war, Paris had become the most glamorous, most scandalous city in the world, and it had a reputation to protect. Even the Eiffel Tower would soon be open at night, Kristin knew, having read about it in Le Figaro only this morning.
“Do you realize,” she asked the two men, “that this is the last chance we’ll have to make love up here?”
Both men looked stunned, and then intrigued. Neither had been permitted to indulge their lascivious natures with Kristin, other than a bit of flirtatious kissing on her part before she pushed them away.
Brady, seeing the hopeful, delighted look on his friend’s face, was quick to put a damper on his mood. “She’s teasing us, old sport. Don’t let’s fall for it and be made fools of again.”
André was entranced by the notion though. "Chérie, do you really mean it? I would love to ... to. . .
He got down on his knees and hugged her against him, burying his head in her skirt, his arms around her. His voice was filled with hopeful enthusiasm. “If you would do this thing for me, chérie, I would ... I would marry you! Oui, I would! Come, I show you. We go down right now, we go to the preacher!”
“You’re afraid I mean it,” she said slyly, showing more perceptiveness than either of the men expected her to have.
“Of course, you don’t mean it,” said Brady, scowling. “You’re just leading us on, as usual. Oh, but don’t feel guilty about it, for God’s sake. I, for one, don’t mind being toyed with, having my feelings raked over the coals as if I’m some insensitive brute.” His sarcasm was not real, but only playful. He sighed as if with monumental weariness. “Well, I should be used to it by now. You’ve broken my heart enough times with your teasing ways.” He turned to André, who was still kneeling before Kristin. “Will you kindly get up off the floor, old sport. Or at least have the decency to give my wing tips a good polish while you’re down there.”
The Frenchman stood up and leaned back against the railing, looking dejected. Neither of them believed Kristin was doing anything more than taunting them for the pleasure of seeing them squirm with frustration. They were astounded when she nonchalantly reached down to the hem of her dress and raised it up and then off over her head. She threw the dress into the wind, and it was almost carried right off of the Eiffel Tower, except for André’s quick response in snatching it out of the air.
She wore a short pink chemise and nylon hose that were held up by a garter belt. She felt the breeze on her body much more sharply now. It was a pleasant sensation. The breeze was much stronger this high up, having no obstacles to block it. The Eiffel Tower was the tallest structure in France.
“I say,” said Brady, becoming serious. He realized for the first time that the woman he had wanted to possess from the first moment he saw her might really be within his grasp. “André, why don’t you. be a good sport and go down a few flights and . . . um . . . look for low flying aircraft or something.”
“Mon ami, I was about to suggest you do the same. You Américains are so much better at things like that. And we French are so much better at things like this.” He put his arms around Kristin. He started to kiss her, but she drew her head back. He thought she was just being playful, and he tried again, but she drew her head away a second time.
“I don’t want to kiss you,” she said.
“Ah!” he said, truly angry now. He pushed her away. “You play games with me once more!”
In answer, Kristin undid her nylons and slithered them down her thighs. Then she stood straight, braced slightly back against the wind, her shapely body clearly outlined by the thin silk of her chemise. Her eyes held his unwaveringly. André’s expression became intense now, and he gave a heavy sigh of lustfulness. He went to her and put his hands to her breasts. He touched her through the fabric of her chemise, his fingertips encircling her breasts, slowly traveling inward to converge on her excited nipples.
“See here, old chap,” said Brady, flustered. “It’s about time we flipped a coin or drew lots, or however you Frenchies prefer to do it. But one of us really must go downstairs a few flights.”
“Oui,” said André. “You go.”
“No, you go.”
André smiled. “I agree, then. We must flip a coin. The loser goes down. Agreed?”
“Yes,” said Brady.
“No,” said Kristin.
They both looked at her. Brady was frowning. He seemed unable to believe that Kristin could really be as debauched as she seemed to pretend.
“Take off your jacket, André,” she said to him. And
when he did so, she took it from him and spread it on the metal floor of the stair landing. Then she lay down on her back upon the jacket. She shut her eyes. “It’s both of you, or neither of you.” Her voice was strangely weak and flat.
“You really like it that way?” asked Brady, disbelievingly.
No, thought Kristin, I’ll hate it. But it’s what I deserve.
She heard the two men undressing. She could tell they were uncomfortable. Neither of them had made love to a woman in the presence of another, she was sure, and they certainly had not made love to the same woman at the same time. But she had insisted, and both wanted her badly enough to put up with the perversity. If that was the only way they could have her, they would accept it. Neither of them understood that she was doing this out of helpless self-loathing. Kristin felt the need to punish herself.
Hands began moving up her smooth thighs. Other hands caressed her breasts. André’s mouth was on her throat. She felt his thin mustache. Brady’s mouth was on the inside of one of her thighs, moving slowlý upward. She felt her heart racing. She felt thrilled, but she wanted something other than a thrilling feeling. She wanted ... no, she couldn’t name it. But instinctively she knew what it was.
When a hand began gently sliding one strap of her chemise down over her shoulder, she slapped it away. “Marshmallow,” she said hatefully. “You’re so tender, so gentle. You’re not a man.”
There was a stunned silence. She heard heated, angry breathing. The hand returned now and grasped the top of her chemise and ripped it down. It ripped the garment completely off her.
Hands were all over her now, squeezing, fondling, rubbing. She opened her eyes and saw the naked bodies of the two young men, unquestionably impassioned. Brady’s mouth was at her bosom and began licking and sucking at her nipples. Her body jerked with a small shock of pleasure. André parted her thighs, and his head moved down between them. She found her back arching sharply in reaction to the wild sensation.
But the sensation was not enough of what she wanted. “You’re both pussy cats,” she said scornfully. “I thought there were real men here in Europe.”