Foreign Tongue

by Vanina Marsot

  I made a note to look up pulpeuse—does it mean voluptuous or fleshy?

  —lips and heavy eyelids. A former model, she was now studying for an advanced degree in political philosophy. She’d begged off coming to dinner that evening, claiming her essay on Machiavelli and Han Fei was too pressing.

  I went to Robert’s birthday celebration alone, so it was with an unhampered and luxurious curiosity that I observed Eve, seated next to me.

  “Would you prefer white or red?” I asked, offering to pour her a glass of wine. She mistook my stilted gesture for withering irony, considering the casual tavern we sat in. It was Robert’s favorite dive. He was a writer who hobnobbed with the police investigators he wrote fat thrillers about.

  “White. I prefer a headache to indigestion,” she said in a snooty, languid voice.

  “You’re really a bitch with expensive tastes, aren’t you?”

  No, that wasn’t right. The phrase was “une poule de luxe,” a female chicken with high-class tastes. “Poule” was also old-fashioned slang for a prostitute. In any case, the implication was insulting, but not as sledgehammer dull as “bitch.”

  She turned to face me, an impassive sphinx look in her eye, and casually backhanded the bottle onto my lap…

  Oy vey. I counted the many ways in which I already disliked the writer. One, he sounded like a prick. Two, he sounded like a prick. Three, he dated models and bragged about it. Four, she’s Egyptian, and in the first chapter, he’d already referred to her “sphinxlike” gaze. Five, he insults her and she spills wine on him: it was exactly how Americans imagine over-the-top French people behaving. Pretty soon, there’d be slaps in public places, screaming matches, loud arguments, a woman crying and wrenching open the door of a taxi in the middle of the street in the pouring rain, mascara running down her face. It was a bad French movie, all right. Or a Chanel commercial.

  Four pages later, I stopped to shake my wrist and change the cartridge in my fountain pen. I’ve always liked fountain pens. I’d started using them when I was a student here. Clara and I had taken a course on Marivaux at the Sorbonne. It met in a large amphitheater, and everyone smoked, which felt sophisticated in a bad way, exactly what I wanted in life when I was nineteen. The only thing I remember from the class now is the term “marivaudage,” a specific kind of courtly banter, light in tone, heavy on meaning(s). Which basically describes a lot of French conversation.

  Back then, Clara took notes with an antique Waterman her father had given her. When I’d mentioned this to my grandmother, she’d remarked that the only acceptable way to write letters was with a fountain pen. Years of thank-you notes and Christmas cards I’d written her with crayons, pencils, and ballpoints went down the drain: I was the bar baric, American grandchild in refined, old-world France. But she’d unlocked her Second Empire secrétaire and taken out a gold and burgundy Sheaffer.

  “It belonged to your grandfather. You must fill it from a bottle.” She’d demonstrated, twisting the top until a narrow metal tube protruded from behind the nib, lapped up ink from a glass inkwell, and retracted. I’d used the pen for years, filling it with violet ink and delighting in the scratch of the nib against paper. That same crisp rasp, as distinct as the sound of fingertips across razor stubble, always made me happy.

  I scarfed down my mousse and looked back at the manuscript, thinking about the characters. There was no hesitating, no dawdling between them. Was this akin to the French aversion to snacking between meals? They went straight to her apartment, and boom, she already had her clothes off: She stepped out of a pool of her clothes, dripping nakedness.

  I groaned. They’d spent the past few pages expressing dislike for each other, which would have been enough to discourage me, but no, now they were staring at each other like ferocious animals across an expanse of ironed sheets.

  I read on and felt my face flush as I came to a vivid description of a certain sexual act. I put down my pen. This thing was going to flay me alive with mortification.

  I picked it up again and doodled in the margin. This wasn’t going to work if I got prim. I reread it and got back to work.

  I eased her down to the edge of the bed and gently spread her legs, caressing the damp, warm silk of her skin. I knelt forward and ran my lips along her inner thigh, letting my hair brush up against her, feeling her muscles tense, then tremble. I pressed my ear to her flesh, then my cheek. She smelled of ripe, sweaty oranges—

  I was going to have to work on that. I shook my hand out and continued.

  —and had a beautiful, round ass. I plunged my hands underneath her to grab her buttocks and lift her to me, opening her up like a split fruit in late summer. Her sex was a rainbow of pinks, glistening and wet. I ran my tongue along the delicate fissure, slowly tracing every inch of her most intimate geography, lingering when I heard her breath catch. I pulled her into my mouth and slid a finger inside her swollen sex. Her back arched, hips rolling. A low moan escaped her lips and she thrust herself toward me, her hands clenched, bunching fistfuls of bedsheet—

  “Vous aurez besoin d’autre chose, mademoiselle?” a waiter asked.

  “Huh?” I said, stupidly. I looked around: the restaurant was empty. He probably wanted to go home. I gathered my papers and left.

  I strolled down the sidewalk, gazing in boutique windows: pinstripes and organza at Dior, open-toed platforms and capes at Chloé, black and pink chiffon at Chanel. The sun broke through the clouds, dappling the street. The air was thick and still.

  I stopped at a crosswalk. My legs felt funny, and my skin was a little clammy. A bus went by, ruffling my skirt and filling the air with warm, sooty exhaust. When I crossed the street, I noticed another, heavier dampness. Son of a bitch, I thought. That odious, pompous, self-satisfied, self-congratulatory idiot of a writer, whoever the hell he was—

  He’d managed to turn me on.

  6

  Paris has the reputation of being the naughtiest city in the world and it is true. Paris is Naughty. Naughty if you want to look for it. The American Tourist goes back home and whispers sly tales about Purplish nights in Paris.

  —BRUCE REYNOLDS, Paris with the Lid Lifted (1927)

  There was a message from Francis, an entertainment lawyer, on the machine. He represented a French band called Chronopop, and I’d done some translation work and writing for their electronic press kit and U.S. label launch. We’d never met, but from our numerous phone flirtations in L.A., I knew he was Irish, divorced, older. He was in Paris and wanted to take me out for dinner.

  A date. My first date since Timothy. I mulled it over. I’d lost weight, and I had a silk dress I’d bought in the summer sales. I called him back. His voice, thick with that familiar brogue, barked a time into my ear.

  “See you soon, you gorgeous thing,” he added.

  “How do you know I’m a gorgeous thing?”

  “You American girls. Not good at compliments. Fuck, should I have said ‘women’? Are you mortally offended now?” He barked with laughter and hung up.

  I didn’t feel like a gorgeous thing, but being called one nudged me in the right direction. A date, after all. Dinner with a man I’d never met. Anything could happen.

  I put on stockings and high heels, sprayed myself with scent, and spent twenty minutes on my face. Two coats of rarely used but very effective curling mascara plus use of the eyelash curler that Timothy used to pretend to be afraid of. By the time I was done, I looked a little fatale, almost feverish—dark eyes, shiny lips, and hollow cheekbones. I powdered my long, thin nose as I listened to oldies on Radio Nostalgie and sang along: “Je serai la plus belle pour aller danser.”

  I shimmied into the dress. It was a slip of a thing, with tiny straps and a ruffled, flamenco-style hem that swooped up in front to midthigh. I scraped my brown hair back into a tight chignon. I looked more theatrical than I was used to: somewhat Carmen Miranda, sans fruit; a bit, as the French say, olé-olé.

  “What the hell,” I said to the mirror.

  Fra
ncis was pretty much the way I’d imagined him: about fifteen years my senior, navy blazer, gold chain, tanned skin, and bulging eyes with deeply etched laugh lines. His face lit up when he saw me, and he pushed a man purse off the passenger seat as I got in. I suddenly wished my dress wasn’t quite so insubstantial.

  “Look at you,” he said, whistling. “Snow White with cleavage.”

  Over a pleasant meal at a fancy Italian restaurant near l’Opéra, he told me about himself, how he’d piloted planes in the Caribbean, run a nightclub in Zagreb, and produced a few Spanish films in the nineties. He’d been divorced three times, no children, and now poured most of his money into a rhinoceros preserve in South Africa. “I’ll tell you, Anna, being there,” he said, “is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.”

  “I’ll bite,” I said. “Where’s the most fun you can have with your clothes off?”

  “Thailand.” He grinned. “But Claude, my partner, keeps raving about this insane French dominatrix.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said, for lack of anything better.

  “Honest injun,” he said, holding up his palm. I may have winced. “Hold on, I think I even have—” His phone rang as he searched his wallet. “Bloody hell. I’ll be right back.” He pushed a card across the table and went outside to take the call.

  Francis was a character, it had been an interesting evening, but I was done. I slouched back in my chair, contemplating my after-dinner options: face mask, mint-verbena tea, maybe crack open the Flaubert.

  I slid the black and gold business card toward me. It read: “Madame Véronique: bondage, sado-masochisme, domination, soumission, fétichisme, spécialiste en accrochage. Donjon disponsible. Attention, âmes sensibles s’abstenir.” Dungeon available. Hey, not everyone has a dungeon. I wondered about the phrase “specializes in hanging.” There was a phone number printed in Gothic gold type.

  I could see Francis pacing up and down the sidewalk, gesticulating as he talked on his cell. I looked around the restaurant: a mostly older crowd, lots of couples, and a corner table of youngish businessmen in suits and ties who were all staring at me. Granted, I had paranoid tendencies, but this was unmistakable. Had I spilled something? Had my dress shifted? I glanced down, but the dress was fine. A little revealing but fine. Actually, very revealing. I looked up again, feeling a rush of blood to my face.

  They thought I was a call girl. I felt it in the knowing, haughty glances of the women, the calculating looks from the table in the corner. The waiters, in their smokings, remained icily polite. They called me “Madame” and didn’t make eye contact; they’d seen it all before. It wasn’t my imagination: a waiter placed a snifter of cognac and a business card on the table in front of me, murmuring, “De la part de monsieur,” as he cocked his head toward the businessmen. One of them, a florid, beefy type with slicked-back hair, grinned. I thought I could hear the snap of his lips on his teeth.

  He looked like one of my former students, from my days teaching English to a senior manager at a telecom company. He’d hated lessons, resented my presence, and warmed up only when we talked about cars. He’d had shiny black hair parted on the side, worn tight suits around his barrel-like midsection, and bathed in cologne.

  “I like, comment dit-t-on, difficult cars,” he’d said.

  “Sports cars?” I’d ventured.

  “Non, non, des voitures nerveuses. I like to dominate them.” He’d shot his cuffs as he said it, and admired his pudgy, manicured fingers. I’d been seized with a violent feeling of sexual repulsion.

  I stared at my wineglass, frozen with embarrassment. I could feel my face turn red. I heard a low chuckle. I looked up, narrowing my eyes, and thought, You have no idea who I am. The gold print on the card twinkled at me.

  And you never will. I fumbled in my evening bag for a pen. Not finding one, I pulled out a tiny stub of lip liner.

  I flipped over Madame Véronique’s card and scribbled “Appelle-moi” in waxy red. Then I drew a heart around it and motioned to the waiter to take it to my admirer.

  I bit the inside of my cheek, took a deep breath, and looked up coolly. They passed the card around, and one of them gave a low whistle. Another said, “Excellent,” and snickered. They watched, silent, as Francis came back and sat down. When they left, I waved good-bye. Madame Véronique owed me big time: I had a hunch some bad boys needed spanking.

  We left after a round of espresso. In the car, Francis asked, “Shall I drive you home?”

  “Yes, please. Unless you want to go out clubbing,” I joked. He maneuvered out of the parking spot and slid his eyes over to me.

  “Depends on what kind,” he said. “I know a sex club nearby.”

  I felt a slight shock, a rattle, like when you hit your funny bone. I didn’t say anything, wondering if he was putting me on.

  He wasn’t. “It’s in a medieval building in the Marais. Very posh, with a restaurant, disco, and a few orgy rooms,” he continued. Now I was perturbed. “You can watch,” he added. “You don’t have to do anything.”

  “So, it’s like a porn movie but more erotic?” I asked.

  “Sometimes less erotic. If the people aren’t particularly attractive, for instance,” he said, shifting gears.

  “Ah,” I said, studying his profile. I’d heard about these sex clubs, or private libertine clubs, as they were sometimes referred to, but I’d never been invited to one. It sounded so much better in French, libertinage—like it has a philosophical or political element, something that links it more to the racy eighteenth century rather than the seamy 1970s. No way in hell was I going, but it occurred to me Francis had some interesting knowledge. “How does it work?”

  “The women rule. It only happens if a woman wants it to happen. For instance, someone—a man, or a woman—might make a gesture, and depending on your reaction, things would go from there. Like this.” He ran his thumb down my bare arm. It was casual and insinuating at the same time, as if he’d licked me instead of touched me.

  “I have a girlfriend in Paris, Ariane. She and I almost never have sex, but she loves going to this place, it turns her on. The last time we went, she ended up in a ménage à trois with an Italian stud and his girlfriend. I can tell you one thing, whether you have an orgasm at the club, or with me, or by yourself later on, it will blow your mind,” he said. Then he giggled. He was like a horny bulldog puppy, happy and ready to hump furniture.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “You’re curious, admit it.”

  “No one’s ever invited me to a sex club before,” I confessed, wavering. Hell, I didn’t know ordinary folks could go—I thought they were reserved for card-carrying denizens of some secret underworld. I could actually go to a sex club this evening, I thought, toying with the idea. I was curious. I could just watch.

  “It’s right there,” he said, pulling over and pointing to a building with a valet parking attendant.

  I laughed. It was a fake, tinsel laugh like, Oh, aren’t I sophisticated? It was a laugh like, Isn’t it interesting to imagine that I might actually contemplate going to a sex club in Paris? Francis turned to look at me. I opened my mouth to say no.

  “When was the last time you surprised yourself? Did something wildly out of character, just for the hell of it?” he asked.

  There it was: la phrase qui tue, literally, the sentence that kills, an arrow to the heart or, more likely, my self-image.

  “I can’t remember,” I said, answering truthfully. I didn’t often do unpredictable things: I’d gotten on a plane to Paris, after all, not Ushuaia or Ulaanbaatar. I looked down and traced a pattern in the thin silk of my dress, trying to conjure up another version of myself, someone adventurous and fearless, even reckless. It was seductive, this flirtation with another me. Before I could think it through any further, out rushed “One drink, and we leave the second I feel freaked out.”

  “Done,” he said.

  Inside, Francis shook hands with a doorman in a long black coat, then paid an entran
ce fee at the counter and took my elbow. We went down a stone stairwell, the rock cold and slightly moist to the touch, to a large room. I eyed the buffet, with an enormous cheese plate and trays of cakes and pastries, and wondered who came to a sex club for food. There was a strong smell of eucalyptus in the air. Between several low sofas, upholstered in an unfortunate airline-seat print, were shiny white ceramic statues of life-size naked women in suggestive poses. Ropes of fairy lights hung in swags along the walls. So far, it seemed almost ordinary.

  At the bar, Francis greeted the owner, a petite woman in a tailored lace suit named Ginette. He explained that it was my first time. She smiled and told me not to be nervous. As they continued talking, I watched the bartender pour my drink, making sure he didn’t slip some mysterious drug into my gimlet. I poked my head in the disco, where one couple slow-danced alone while an older man sat between two women wearing skimpy dresses on a leather sofa. As he rested his head against the wall, the two women leaned across him and started kissing. I watched for a moment, trying to look nonchalant, until the man unzipped his pants and waved me over. I backed up into Francis, who danced out of the way of his splashing whiskey.

  “Ahoy, matey,” he said. “How is our stranger in a strange land?”

  “Observing the mating habits of the natives,” I said, a little prim.

  “Come along, Little Bo Peep.” I followed him down another set of stairs to a salon. Through the somewhat low light, I could make out a wall with a giant “X,” against which a naked man stood blindfolded, his arms and legs attached to leather restraints. A woman bent over him, her head bobbing up and down, while another man stood behind her, thrusting. I blinked and looked away, then looked back. Francis laughed.

  In another dimly lit room, I squinted at various groupings of writhing bodies and tried to figure out who was doing what to whom, while a lot of squishy, slapping sounds made me think of cake batter and spatulas. There were men and women of all different ages and sizes, and most of them were tan and trim.