by Serena Janes
She sighed with a mingling of pleasure and guilt, feeling she was in her element here, in the dark wetness of the tiny church, with the innocent eroticism of the pink and white flowers. Nothing would feel better than to stretch her aching, sinful body along this cool, damp pew, and sleep until the sun went down. Then she might wake up refreshed, cleansed. Forgiven, perhaps.
But soon it was time to face the noon heat and take more of the punishment that she knew she deserved.
Back on the trail, the group passed through quaint, quiet villages surrounded by fields of red poppies. Then they began a sharp descent to the river for lunch.
Luc threw his pack down on a grassy bank beside the water and invited Jo to sit with him. Grateful for his solicitude, she clumsily lowered her exhausted body to the ground. He’d bought a generous slice of veal terrine and fresh bread for them to share. Her tongue was sore, and her heart was hammering, but she managed to enjoy the food. When it was gone he pulled out two flakey pastries, filled with custard, which were heavenly.
After she devoured hers, he asked, with a twinkle in his eye, “And how did madame enjoy the millefeuille? I went to a special shop to get it for you this morning.”
“Mais oui, monsieur. C’est délicieux, merci,” she replied in her halting French. “I enjoyed it very much.”
He grinned mischievously. “Most women, I’ve noticed, have a particular weakness for pastries. I like to make sure on my walks that women’s cravings for all things French are completely satisfied.”
He laughed at the expression on her face as she blushed and mouthed, so no one could see, “Stop it!”
“That’s very good of you,” she mumbled, as she buried her face in her pack, pretending to look for something important. She was uncomfortably aware of Iris, sitting close by, watching every move the lovers made.
“The next town,” Luc said, turning to look at Carol, who was also listening closely, “has a particularly fine pâtisserie, too. I’ll be sure to point it out to everyone tomorrow.”
After eating, he stretched out on the grass. Similarly, Jo lay down, a safe distance away. But her eyes wouldn’t stay shut. As always, she couldn’t stop looking at her lover. Her stomach began its now familiar fluttering as she visually caressed the long muscular body that seemed to go on forever.
She knew Luc was observing her carefully as she watched him from behind her sunglasses. He stretched his body several times, and rearranged himself, obviously teasing her. A subtle flicker of amusement lit up his face as she fidgeted and tried to get comfortable. The way things were going, she wasn’t going to get much rest.
His lower lip looked quite sore, but it was the only part of him that seemed to cause him any discomfort. While she was one big walking ache, he didn’t look stiff at all. If anything, she’d noticed he seemed to be walking with an extra spring in his step. Again, she couldn’t believe she was fortunate enough to have found a lover like this—even if it was just the one time they would be together.
Surely we wouldn’t be able to come together a second time—would we? Could life be that good to me? Oh greedy, greedy girl!
She began thinking about greed. One of the seven deadly sins.
Just before it was time to go, she forced herself through a series of stretching exercises to pull some of the pain out of her stiff muscles. Sarah had taught her some new yoga poses, and she practiced them now. But stretching hurt—she winced as she tried to work on her back and Sarah came over to warn her to be careful she didn’t hurt herself even more.
Chatting with Sarah took Jo’s mind off herself. Sarah opened up a little, explaining that she was on vacation to try to forget about her boyfriend. Jo saw that Sarah suffered from a problem completely opposite to hers. Whereas Jo enjoyed too much freedom and was quick to mess up her life in any way she wanted, Sarah was constricted by her culture’s values.
She said to Jo, “I met David at the law office where we were both articling last year. But our parents didn’t approve and we had to break up.”
Shocked, Jo blurted, “But why?” She couldn’t imagine her parents exercising such power.
“Because I’m an Indian and he’s not.”
“Even today that’s an issue?”
“Yes it is. My family is very conservative. And I think David’s family is a little prejudiced.”
“How terrible for you, Sarah. I’m so sorry,” Jo said as she grimaced in pain through a hamstring stretch. And she was. Whether a woman had freedom or not, love was never easy.
“Thank you,” Sarah said, eyes downcast. “I had to learn that my job is not really the law. My job is to find a nice Indian boy and raise a nice Indian family. Here, bend your arm over your head and lean to the left.”
“Ow!”
“You really hurt yourself. What on earth have you been doing?”
The rest of the afternoon was hot and exhausting for everyone. If Jo hadn’t been lost in a Luc reverie, she would have suffered unbearably. Watching him from behind, she just kept putting one foot in front of the other. When she could see it, her eyes focused on his red bandana, as if it were a beacon.
Just before entering St. Sozy, they stopped at a campground with a swimming pool. The water looked clear and inviting, but Jo hadn’t packed her swimsuit because of her grazed back. So she just sat at the pool’s edge with her feet dangling in the water, sipping a soda and watching the others. Almost everyone was too tired to swim, so they just floated or sat quietly submerged in the cool water.
Luc, however, was the exception. He walked confidently out of the change room, wearing swimming trunks this time, and dove into the deep end of the pool with grace. He expertly swam a dozen laps and then floated on his back. The entire time, Jo watched him carefully, appreciatively, anxiously.
When can I see him again? Can I see him again?
A sudden longing seized her so violently that her hands began to tremble. Tears welled in her eyes, and she had to force herself to pretend to laugh when Duncan swam up to her, splashing her gently, and teased her for not coming into the water.
She was too self-absorbed to notice she was being watched.
* * * *
Glenda and Edward exchanged surprised looks as they simultaneously caught the expression on Jo’s face. It showed anguish. And although she was hiding behind dark glasses and the rim of her hat, every part of her body showed her feelings, Glenda thought.
“Someone’s not feeling very well today,” she whispered to her husband.
“Oh. Right. I see that,” Edward replied softly. “It seems she’s suffering from more than just muscle strain.”
“Yes, I think it’s a lot more complicated than that,” said Glenda.
Anyone could easily follow the trajectory of Jo’s eyes—how intently they followed Luc.
Glenda also observed Peter, who clearly wasn’t watching Jo’s face. Instead he was trying to see as far as he could up her shorts as he slowly swam past her at calf level. He was disappointed she hadn’t come into the water, he was telling her. Glenda figured he felt cheated out of the chance of ogling her in her swimsuit again.
Ignoring Peter, Jo looked as if she would burst into tears. Glenda couldn’t fathom why. What had happened that would make her look so agitated, so unhappy?
Whatever was upsetting her—and Carol insisted there was something funny going on between Joanna and Luc—Glenda could empathize. Men were vain, difficult creatures. But still, you had to love them.
* * * *
After the cooling swim, the group had only to cross a bridge to enter the lovely village of St. Sozy. Their hotel was modest, but Jo didn’t mind as long as she could have a bath and get a good night’s sleep. Her corner room overlooked a leafy town square on one side and the hotel’s outdoor patio on the other. The patio looked a little glum, with its sports logo umbrellas, dirty tables and gravel floor littered with cigarette butts. So did the lobby, for that matter. But she was too tired to care. She needed a nap.
A mourning dove w
as calling softly, repetitively. Jo could hear its soothing song an hour later as she rested after her bath. She could also hear the leaves on the tall trees rustling slightly in the hot breeze. Something delicious was cooking nearby. A good meal and a good sleep would be bliss. Every part of her body hurt. She couldn’t have managed Luc even if the opportunity arose—she was invalid. She dozed off to the bird’s sweet voice.
Soon it would be time to go down for drinks and dinner. She wasn’t looking forward to eating with the rest of the group. Surely they would know she was a different person from the one they’d met a few days ago? But she couldn’t get away with missing two dinners in a row. People would begin to suspect something was up. So, with a groan she forced herself out of bed. Every cubic inch of her body was so sore that she grimaced.
I’m not a pretty sight, she thought as she tried to stand up straight.
A few more light stretching exercises might help, she decided. So with difficulty she got down on all fours on the bedside rug and pushed through a short routine designed to loosen her tight muscles. One yoga pose could be particularly effective, she remembered. She cleared a space on the floor beside the bed to make enough room to lie down with her legs resting up the wall.
While she was lying there she happened to turn her head and look under the bed. It was none too clean in there. She saw dust bunnies galore. Slut’s wool, she’d heard it called once. She was careful to avoid it.
Best that the slut not get any telltale slut’s wool stuck to her. It might give her away to the others.
She sighed at the condemning tone of the voice in her head.
Oh please! Quit the dramatics! Calm down and relax. It’s just dinner. You can do it. Make it short and sweet and then go to bed. Alone.
With mixed emotions, she laboriously got up off the floor to get dressed. She was eager to see Luc, but extremely nervous about how she’d behave in front of everyone else.
Absent-mindedly she put on her short summer dress—the black and white African print she’d been wearing when she first met Luc. It barely covered the back of her shoulders where her red skin might catch people’s attention. Her hair was partly wet, but she just tucked it behind her ears and let it hang down her back. No makeup. No panties, either. Some cool fresh air would do her a lot of good down there.
Everyone was enjoying drinks by the time she limped into the patio garden. The men were segregated from the women this time, drinking pastis. Jo moved past their admiring glances, sat down between Sarah and Marcie and ordered a beer.
The women’s hushed conversation had stopped abruptly when she sat down, but Jo had heard enough to get the gist of it. Luc’s mysterious disappearance the day before was still of great interest. Carol and Marcie had been explaining to Ellen that Luc must have a woman on the side. That lip of his had certainly been bitten in a moment of passion. How otherwise does a grown man, who clearly could hold his liquor, manage such an injury? Who would bite himself there, on the outside of his own mouth?
“It has to be a love bite,” Marcie tittered, the others joining in.
Jo had to fight to keep a neutral expression on her face as Carol turned to her with a threatening little smile. “We’re all in agreement that our guide is getting better looking every day. What do you think?”
Before she could open her mouth, Glenda interrupted. “He’s certainly a fine-looking fellow, for my money. Don’t you agree, Iris?”
Iris, scowling into her beer, said nothing for a moment, then offered, “He’s alright, if you fancy that type.”
Sarah said, “He would be much nicer if he weren’t so hairy, I think. I don’t like hairy men.”
“Oh he’s far too old for you anyway,” said Marcie. “He’s got to be in his mid-thirties, don’t you think?”
“Oh, no. Not near thirty five, surely,” exclaimed Carol. “There’s not a sag or a bag or a grey hair anywhere.”
“Anywhere? As if you’d know,” crowed Marcie. Everyone laughed, and Jo felt herself turning pink.
Even Ellen got into the spirit of the conversation, despite her seniority, offering, “Whatever his age, he certainly is a fine figure of a man.”
Carol sighed loudly. “If only I were fifteen years younger, I’d likely make a right fool of myself. I’d find a way to trip him up behind a bush somewhere on the trail. He doesn’t know how lucky he is. Fifteen years ago I was a looker, I tell you. He wouldn’t have been able to resist me, I swear.”
And so their conversation went. Jo forced herself to participate, saying, “He certainly is the tallest Frenchman I’ve ever met. Most are quite short, aren’t they?”
This half-hearted observation included her in the conversation without raising suspicion, she thought, as she twisted her ring around and around on her finger. She lowered her eyes to check her dress for any telltale bits of slut’s wool after seeing Carol roll her eyes backwards in mock hilarity, and Iris’s red-faced scowl turn into a sneer.
Eventually the beer began to relax her aching limbs, but when dinner was announced she found her body had seized up like a rusty pair of pliers.
“Ow ow ow,” she said to the women around her as she struggled to her feet. “I’m a wreck from too much walking. And too much yoga. I need a vacation.” She smiled at her own joke.
As luck would have it, Jo found herself seated beside her lover at the dining table. The composure she’d so carefully cultivated over the last half hour collapsed as a cavalier Luc pulled out her chair for her. She lowered herself gingerly, apprehensively, an anxious knot twisting in her belly.
Oh God! How’s this going to work? How can I possibly eat?
Just sitting beside him was making her sweat, turning her into someone she didn’t recognize. Her hands started to shake. She wanted him too much. And she liked him almost as much as she wanted him.
She wondered if he felt anything at all for her. For all she knew, he banged the hell out of some bimbo like her on each walking trip. She didn’t have a clue what was going on in his head. Except for the sex part—one thing she did know was that he desired her in a way that made her knees weak again to remember. The passion for that had to come from some sort of feelings for her, didn’t it?
Not necessarily. He might not even like me. He doesn’t even know me. Be careful what you’re projecting onto him, an inner voice cautioned. He’s most likely a born and bred Lothario.
Be very, very careful.
But then she had to wonder at herself—why do I want him to care for me? Isn’t the sex alone good enough? Does he have to have feelings for me too? Am I beginning to have feelings for him?
She found she couldn’t answer her own questions, and she immediately forgot them anyway as he turned towards her and smiled, his crooked little tooth adding such charm to his expression that she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
All of a sudden the anxiety she’d been nursing all day evaporated. Her lover was a kind man, she realized. Nothing terrible was going to happen to her. She could get through this meal. Yes, she would eat and then she would go directly to bed and lose herself in the oblivion of sleep.
Luc leaned towards her and asked in a low voice, “Today’s walk must have exhausted you. You were very brave. Would a little wine help you relax?”
She nodded, looking up into the kindest, the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen.
He reached for the open bottles in front of him.
“Red or white? Which would make you feel the best, do you think?”
His words were innocent, but his look said something else to her. They told her quite clearly that he wanted to rip the dress from her sore body, throw her down on the table, and take her right there, in front of the entire world. Her eyes spoke back to his, telling him he was killing her.
Stop it—but not quite yet. Not yet, please.
She smiled, “White, please,” and watched him fill her glass. Then she made herself turn her eyes away from his to join the discussions flowing up and down the table.
But as conversation continued, she couldn’t keep her eyes averted for long. She couldn’t help herself from gazing down at the body in the chair beside her. She marveled at his thick, strong thighs. Unlike hers, which flattened against the wooden seat of the chair, his thighs looked as solid as the limbs of young trees. They reminded her of the trunks of clump maples back in the Pacific Northwest rain forests—round, hard, and smooth like that.
She imagined putting her hand on his leg…
He refilled her glass, interrupting her train of thought. Then he made a point of telling her and everyone within earshot where each of the wines on the table was made.
“I am especially eager that everyone appreciate the fine dark red wine from near Cahors, my home. But right now I want to know what you all think of this local white, a Côtes de Duras Rivières, which I think is excellent.”
Murmurs of appreciation and merriment flowed around the table, and dinner was served.
The chef had prepared a fabulous meal, to the surprise of everyone, for the dining room looked to be no better than the rest of the hotel. A mangy collie had been lethargically wandering in and out of the kitchen’s open door. Flies buzzed lazily at the dirty windows. But the cooking smells were enticing, and the first course proved to be an amazing dish of pan-fried whitefish fillets over a bed of fresh greens with herb vinaigrette. The wine complemented it beautifully. The fish was very fresh, and Jo discovered she was very hungry.
For some reason, the knot in her stomach loosened, for the moment, and she enjoyed her meal. Maybe she was too exhausted for nerves. In fact, she found she could actually look at her lover while she ate. She relaxed some more, feeling she had it all under control. A feeling of peace—inappropriate as it was—descended on her.
Despite sitting beside the sexist man in the world, the best lover I’ve ever had. The man I can’t wait to give myself to again.
As soon as I’m up to it…
She tried to ignore Iris, sitting diagonally from her, chewing on her fingernails between courses. Iris was watching Luc’s every movement as closely as Jo had earlier at the pool, listening carefully to every word he spoke. Iris rarely spoke herself, and Jo thought this was so she could observe while remaining almost invisible.