“Of course not.”
I looked at him. His robust, aubergine aura had dimmed to a dull, thudding blue-violet. Whatever was going on was breaking him as it was breaking me. “I am listening,” I said.
“It’s … I know it’s shallow, but it’s the cigarettes. I’m allergic and … honestly, the smell makes me sick. It’s in your hair and in your clothes, and it just made me pull back for a moment.” He stepped closer and touched my cheek. “I’m really sorry.”
Even with his tender gesture, I could sense a slight wince as his face neared my hair. Father’s strength be damned. I took the pack of cigarettes and threw them from the deck.
“What do we do now?” I asked. The moment was ruined and with the call and my smoking, the perfect kiss had gone to waste.
Foss said, “Wait here. Give me five minutes.”
I nodded my consent and he rushed into the house. As he went, I saw lights go out, until there was only a dim glow from the second level.
Nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds later, he returned, out of breath. He’d changed from the khaki pants and crisply creased button-down shirt he’d worn before. Instead, he had on a pair of jeans, the only other clothing he had since his beautiful suit had been ruined and our bags claimed by the hotel as collateral for payment. Atop his rippling chest with the dragon tattoo he wore what I called a white vest, but which he referred to by the horrid name of a wife beater. Ça alors! Quelle romance.
“Come with me,” he said, taking my hand. As soon as I passed through the doorway, he stopped, bent, and removed my shoes. “Sorry, I didn’t have time to find rose petals for you to walk on.”
I took a step but he swept me from my feet and into his strong arms. I laughed. “Why did you take off my shoes if you weren’t going to let me walk?”
“I like your feet,” he said, giving me a sly smile.
We went up the steps, past the small bedroom in which I always slept, and past the larger one that I had assigned to him in order to avoid questions from curious sisters and children. Similarly, my emotions were on a path as well, traveling past excitement, then past disappointment, and now only at curiosity. Before I could ask him where we were going, he turned into the guest bathroom. Jette’s home is a real French farmhouse, exactly as Grand-père built it. The bath was little more than a wood-paneled room, well-lit from natural light, with a small sink, toilet, mirror, a bench for dressing and applying makeup, and in the center, a large, steel, oval tub with overhead shower and a detachable wand for washing by hand. Around the tub, on the bench, and on the counter, were candles. Curling rivulets of steam rose to the ceiling, fogging the skylight and further muting the light. It was perfect.
Foss set me down.
“I thought if the cigarette smell is my problem, then I should be the one to fix it.”
“It wasn’t you. I know you don’t like smoking. I shouldn’t have.”
He shook his head. “You are a grown woman, and my job isn’t to tell you what to do.” He came closer and I thought he would kiss me. I closed my eyes, but instead, he reached around and pushed shut the door.
“We’re alone here,” I said. I felt my cheeks pull into a broad smile.
“I know, but it’s going to get chilly in a second.”
I frowned, not understanding what he meant, but before I could even move, he reached to my waist, and with a single motion, pulled my blouse over my head.
“You have absolutely beautiful breasts.” He was looking not at my chest, but into my eyes.
“You can’t even see them. I’m wearing a bra.”
“I’ve seen them before.” He nodded ever so slowly. “Trust me, I have them memorized.”
My breathing hastened.
In contrast to the swift removal of my top, he took forever to remove my jeans. First, he unlatched my belt, then unfastened the top button. He bent to me, gave me his tongue and tasted mine. And while they reconnected and fell there, lovingly, slowly, deliberately, he unzipped my pants as if I were a ripe banana to be unpeeled. I pulled back, gasping for air. It had been a long time, too long. I was still panting when I felt cool air against my exposed legs. My knees buckled.
“Are you hurting?” he asked.
“Oh, oui, I am. I have been hurting since the day we met.” I pulled his wife beater and together, our tongues entwined, we beat the hell out of that wife until I was spent, breathless, and gasping for more lips, tongue, love, always. I could see colors dancing before us and between us that would intensify whenever we touched. There was a vague buzzing, like electricity, that I’d never heard before, but I knew instantly that it was our connection finally being closed. Foster kissed my cheek, my shoulder, slid off the strap, kissed the other, repeated the gesture, kissed my breastbone, and reached around, unlatching the bra so that it fell silently to the floor. Precisely as my nipple was freed and hardened against the cool air, he slipped his warm mouth over it, tasting me for the first time and warming my breast and heart. My eyes glued closed but still I could see the purple flare of him. He fell to his knees, somehow still erect there before me like a knight waiting to be crowned. He waited until I met his eyes and then slowly, painfully, teasingly, removed my culotte—inch by inch.
By inch.
By inch.
I tried to step out but he stopped me. “From now on, all the work is mine, love.” It was the first time he said that word since we met, and it stopped me. After five seconds, I remembered to exhale.
“Do you love me, Foss?”
He stood, meeting my gaze with intense, brown eyes. “Baby, I love you rivers, love you heaven and stars and all the galaxies beyond. I love that the sun waits to rise until you smile and refuses to set until he sees you’re safe. I love the day you were born and when your mama was born and grandma was born and when the first woman was born, all of them proud, knowing one day they’d evolve into you. Honey, I loved you the moment we met and every crazy minute since, and I promise you, when we’re done here on earth and it’s time to rejoin the heavens, I’ll still be loving you.”
It began to rain outside with the droplets’ tapping on the clay roof tiles making a perfect percussive accompaniment to my tears and to my Foss, who lifted me, placed me upright in the tub, and began washing me. He explored my curves, starting at my neck, and then to my shoulders, back, and bottom. He washed my breasts, gentle with them, saying nothing and not meeting my eyes, but focused on the soft cloth and my skin. When I was lathered, my curves sudsy and my secret places clean, he took a steel pot that sat nearby, and instead of using the shower’s wand, he rinsed me by hand, slowly, sensually, tenderly. I remember thinking, even now, that until that moment, that magical night with Foss, I had never been washed before. When I was clean and rinsed, he sat me in the tub. The water was no longer hot, but still warm and soothing. He lifted my right leg, held my ankle, washed my foot. On the left, he repeated the process, but carefully, minding my hip.
“Lean back,” he said, and I did.
He washed my hair, using only my shampoo and his strong hands, and to my dismay, I had my first orgasm there, just then, as he held me with one arm around my chest and the other rinsing shampoo from my hair. I had heard stories of women who could climax with a kiss or a touch, but never from a good shampoo. I was like a silly schoolgirl, wishing for longer locks so that the washing, and my orgasm, would last. When we were done, he sat me on the side of the tub and toweled me dry with one of the enormous red towels that Jette loved so much. I wrapped it around myself like a cocoon.
“You look great in red,” he said. “You should wear it more often.”
“I will if you wear jeans more often,” I said.
“It’s a deal.” He sighed and sank to the floor.
“Tired?” I asked.
“Uh-uh. Just content, for the first time in … ever.”
“Then, I guess you wouldn’t want to risk spoiling it by making love to me,” I said. I had been waiting for him since the day we met. I will never understand s
hy American men.
“Oh baby, I plan on spoiling it all night.”
“Good. I haven’t made love in years.”
“Me either.”
I laughed and hit him. “Liar!” It was sweet, but seeing how women were drawn to him, I knew it wasn’t possible. Besides, he had a fiancée when we met.
“No, I mean it. Remember, I said, ‘make love.’”
“Love, oui.”
He kissed me—then, later, all night long.
***
Foster had touched or tasted every inch my body by the time the sun rose. He was an adventurous lover, a traveler at heart who wanted to see the world in my body. I was delighted to explore with him. The hard flesh of him, the chocolate fury and his tenderness, the warmth of his tongue on me, inside me, with mine, they were all secrets I had to know and would never forget. And when he had breached my shores and explored the desert I had become, he planted his flag and made my body his home. I was on top and then he was on top, and then my turn again. I remember riding him just as dawn broke and the first light crept through our bedroom window and alit my love in her embrace. Both of my hips ached in a way that felt like the first tinge of orgasm and I didn’t want it to stop. His face was the marriage of joy and pain, of pleasure and thunder. He exploded then, with me, in love, and I rocketed with him, just as happy. I taught him what it was to be French, and he taught me, finally, what men are truly for. We were spent flesh and rent almost raw, but we were content, we both, for the first time. I lay there with him, neither of us speaking for a long time as we watched the distant hills alight with the dawn.
“You should come in the summer,” I said.
“I’ll come with you anytime you like.” He pulled me to his broad chest. It was like lying on padded steel. “Especially if you’re going to be on top again.”
I laughed. “Shut up, I’m being serious. You would love it. The entire back three acres are filled with lavender flowers all summer—rows and rows of purple, like you.” I thought and smiled, my first yellow smile ever. “And to the side, facing the patio where you first kissed me last night, are the sunflowers ma grand-mère planted. Almost an acre of them as well.” I left off the detail about my father. It was time those horrid sunflowers heralded something other than death.
“It sounds perfect,” he said. His eyes were closed. “We should come back.” He paused awhile and I thought he had fallen asleep. “Maybe we should just stay,” he said.
I looked at him to see if he was teasing, but found no hint of a smile.
We lay there, eyes closed, listening to the percussive clanging of raindrops that had found twin holes in the roof and were beating against two steel pots in a tempo that had slowed to languid, larghissimo time. I smiled, remembering how their allegro rhythms beat in concert with our impassioned lovemaking during the prior night’s storms. I thought, perhaps, the universe had orgasmed as well and was smiling at us via the sunrise. Oddly, it was that the roof leaked—that little imperfection in the French Provincial décor of the boudoir—that made it perfect. I opened my eyes and began to wonder why I’d always hated the room so.
“Marry me.” I gasped, for it was as if my words had come out on their own. I didn’t know I was considering it at the time. Once said, however, it felt right. “Marry me,” I repeated, softer, for myself this time. I lay on his chest trying to will myself to sleep before he could remind me that such talk was only the silly impulsiveness of a woman in love.
“Okay.”
I looked at him, the dawning light causing me to wince, but I didn’t want the filter of my shades just yet.
He said, “Maybe we can marry in the lavender fields. My mom would die to see them.”
I opened my eyes fully, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. The rain stopped and a first shaft of sunlight burned through the clouds, bent through droplets on the window, and filled the bedroom with prisms of light. God had spoken.
“That simple? Okay? You don’t need to think about it?” It took all of my resolve not to smile.
“Been thinking about it since you played that song for me. What was it, Porgy something?”
“I loves you Porgy.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” he said. “Hold on a sec.” He rolled over, leaving me wanting for him, and switched on his phone. “I was gonna play you Bess, You Is My Woman Now, but this is more honest.” From the small speakers in the bedroom came a pulsing beat, a rhythm and blues song that I’d never heard before. It was powerful, sensual, Foss.
“We should have made love to this,” I said.
“We’d have both melted if we made love to this.” I laughed. “You French may have invented American jazz, but you didn’t invent this. It’s New Birth’s It’s Been a Long Time.”
I tried to reply, but he hushed me.
“You’re missing the words.”
I quieted, and the singer sang the refrain, You for me and me for you, and I was there, in the moment, with my love. His eyes were closed and he was moving to the beat. I closed mine and moved with him, and we danced there, naked, side by side in the big bed. I am a good dancer on my back. Then, imploringly, I’ve been missing you baby, yes I have, and the dance changed and Foss spoke, still with closed eyes.
“That day you left, when I woke up and I was alone, I kept playing this song. I told myself it was my partner I missed.” He laughed, a sour, ironic little laugh. “But it wasn’t my partner I missed at night. It was you, knowing you were there, wanting to touch you, to make love to you, knowing I mustn’t.” He looked at me. “It was hell with you gone, Jeanne.”
I was crying once more. It felt as if I’d been crying all night—all my life really, but finally, I had something worth crying over.
“I’ll never leave you again,” I said.
“Then say it.”
“Foss, I is your woman now.”
18 - South by Southwest
By the time noon rolled around and Jeanne had finally gotten out of bed, I was halfway through repairs on the roof. Instead of being exhausted by the previous night, I felt energized, and after a couple of hours’ worth of tossing and turning she politely suggested I get up—by unceremoniously pushing me onto the floor. To be fair, despite her frown, I think she was still asleep. I must have lain there laughing for two minutes before I could get up. Autumn leads gently into winter in the French Provence, and it was warmer than usual, in the mid-sixties Fahrenheit. After giving myself a daylight tour of the grounds, I found a work shed that was full of tools and a fair amount of clay tiles that were a pretty decent match for the ones on the roof. I grabbed a ladder, started pulling off the flakey tiles, and replaced them with new ones. Within an hour, I found and fixed the holes in the flashing that had allowed water in and just needed to replace the tiles I’d removed. I figured that left me time to patch, sand, and touch up the bedroom ceiling before Juliette showed up that evening. My plan went awry at fifteen minutes after twelve when a tall blonde woman peered up at me from under a large, white, floppy hat with her right hand cupped over her eyes.
In French, she asked, “What are you doing on the roof?”
In my stultifying version of French I said, “There was leak. I fix.”
My pronunciation must have been horrible, I presumed, since she answered me in what sounded like a proper English accent. “Yes, I know there is a leak. I’d meant to have it repaired but there hasn’t been time. What I am asking is why you are fixing it.”
Normally, if a woman with two tow-headed children standing behind her sees a strange man standing on her roof holding a nail gun, she would be at least a little ill at ease. This woman, whom by now I’d realized was Juliette, was beaming a bright smile at me.
“I’m Foss. We spoke on the phone.”
“Silly, I know who you are. I am asking why my lazy sister has you working. You are our guest.”
“I let her sleep in. We had a pretty late night.”
Jette’s expression didn’t change, but there was a flash in her eyes that
told me something was going on in her pretty head. She turned and ushered her kids to go wake up their aunt. “If she is still asleep, be sure to jump on the bed,” she added, laughing.
They ran off, giggling, but not before waving at me and calling, “Goodbye, Monsieur Foss.”
“I hope she’s naked. Serves her right,” she said. Jette cupped her hands over her eyes once again and twisted her head, waving me closer. I walked to the edge of the roof and knelt down. Jette stared up at me for a few seconds, not speaking. Then, much in the way that the first dawning rays of sunlight will burst over a mountain to illuminate a shadowed valley, she erupted into another smile. “Come down from the roof and kiss me.” She said it in French, which made me feel better than either the smile or the invitation.
Not one to disobey a kind hostess, I clamored down the ladder and walked over to where Jette was standing. She was taller than Jeanne by a couple of inches, and nothing like I’d pictured. From Dark’s descriptions of her sister, I’d pictured a frumpy, square-bodied professional with a scowling demeanor. Instead, I was being greeted by a pretty woman with smiling eyes that sparkled like jade in the midday sun. She had an oval face with a rounded jawline that softened her and made her appear to smile even when she wasn’t. She had Dark’s full lips and full eyebrows and the intense, discerning gaze I’d seen on my partner a thousand times. Were I half-blind and had no idea Jeanne had a sibling, I would have picked Jette to be her sister out of a crowd of lookalikes. Around the time I realized how similar the two women were, I also realized I had stopped short and was staring at her. This was no stony, emotionless, sourpuss unhappy with her life and the twenty extra pounds she carried. The woman before me was a hard-body with only the sexy curve of womanly tummy to indicate she’d given birth to two children. She wore form-fitting jeans, a tank top, and a sweater whose rolled-up sleeves displayed her toned arms, both of which were now extended in my direction.
“It’s impolite to make a woman wait,” she said, winking.
The Little Burgundy: A Jeanne Dark Adventure Page 25