“Claudine, that’s not the way to go about things. Men usually don’t care if a woman comes or not. They’re in it for themselves. That’s why you need to develop a real relationship with someone. So he cares about your needs.”
“I tried. You think I didn’t try? My last boyfriend. But it was a disaster in the end. Even he was crap in bed.”
I sucked in a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry but I can’t help you. What I can do is pay for you to see someone. A psychiatrist or a counselor—someone you can discuss all this with you in depth.”
“All those bloody book boyfriends don’t help.”
“What?”
“I feel so inadequate. All the women in those stories come in thousands of different positions as easily as if they were brushing their teeth. They even come on command. On command for fuck’s sake! All the guy has to say is, ‘Come for me baby,’ and the woman comes, one point zero seconds later. Just like that! As fast as clicking a finger. Is that even possible for a woman? Because it sure as hell isn’t possible for me! I can’t come at all, let alone on bloody command. What’s wrong with me?”
“Claudine, that’s fantasy, not reality. In reality things are more complicated. Don’t believe what you read. I know…my mother’s into that shit. You think if all women were coming on command they’d be reading those books? No, they’d be busy fucking instead.”
“It’s not just the novels but the magazines, too. It’s all about the men. How to please the man. How to be a sex goddess. What about us? Why aren’t they being taught how to please us?”
I thought of Sophie. This was her next business plan—to set up a ‘romance spa’ as she described it. Very chic. Expensive, where men would be trained to please women—women would be the only clientele—no male clients allowed. The sex workers cum ‘escorts’ (yes, the word cum is very appropriate here) would be handpicked. Models—really good-looking types who would learn everything from scratch. Have their bad habits wiped clean. Learn how to make a woman come from just a foot massage. How to give her mind-blowing orgasms, even if she’d never experienced one before. There would be sex workers to accommodate gay women too. It would be fantasy haven. But better than fantasy, fantasy made reality.
“Alex? Are you there?” Hell..ooo?”
“Yes, Claudine, I’m still here. I was just thinking about my sister’s business plan, sorry. Listen, I’m serious—I’ll pay for a shrink or someone you can talk to, but I can’t see you myself. I told you I was serious about Pearl. We’re getting married.”
“But you’re not married yet?”
“As good as. We’re engaged.”
“But you haven’t got a ring on your finger.”
“Claudine—”
“Which means you’re still technically single.”
I took another deep breath and looked at my bare left hand. I wanted that wedding band on my finger more than I imagined Rex wanted a big, fat, juicy bone.
And damn it, I wasn’t bloody well going to wait until winter.
4
When Pearl suggested that we go to LA, I jumped at the chance. Her bad dreams had gotten out of control but she wouldn’t discuss them with me, just insisted she couldn’t remember what had happened each time. Yet I could feel her pulling away. Her desire for me was wavering like a flickering candle. Why all of a sudden? As if something had triggered the bad dreams, which in turn were making her jump when I touched her as she slept. What and why?
I wondered if I was somehow responsible; if I’d been too sexual with her—too dominating, too insatiable. She was holding something back but I had no idea what. So I put it down to the documentary she and Natalie were making on child trafficking. The tales she told me of young girls being raped and beaten were pretty horrific. Selfishly, I was glad that Pearl wanted to take a break from making controversial documentaries and move into something less harrowing: feature films. Although, dealing with actors’ egos could also be pretty tough, but at least her day-to-day work would be somewhat more lighthearted.
So LA would be a breath of fresh air, I thought. We’d go, take a vacation and then I’d leave her there if she wanted to stay on as I had a business trip in Canada coming up. I hoped that it would calm her down a bit—a change of scenery would stop those nightmares. She could tinker with the Stone Trooper script with the scriptwriter, as Alessandra Demarr had insisted on changes. Being a Tony award-winning actress, Alessandra had some clout and Sam Myers seemed to be bending over backwards to keep her sweet.
LA was perfect. Sunny, blue sky, palm trees, people smiling incessantly as if they were taking some sort of happy pill. Our trip was made all the more enjoyable by our choice of rental car: a powder blue, 1960 Eldorado Biarritz convertible Cadillac. It had fins and glistening chrome that shone silver in the sunlight. I felt as if Pearl and I were riding on a giant shark, cruising the wide avenues, spotting other vintage cars and California girls as we sped by, the wind catching our hair, the music blasting through the speakers. Pearl looked like a true California Girl herself—tanned and lithe, golden and sun-kissed, so I played the song, California Girls by The Beach Boys, and we sang along.
We were on our way to Alessandra Demarr’s house in Topanga Canyon and when we arrived, my eyes strayed, not to Alessandra in her black negligee outfit, but to her classic car, a 1962 Porsche 356B, also black. As Alessandra eye-fucked Pearl, roaming her saucy gaze lasciviously all over Pearl’s body and suggesting Bloody Marys of all bloody things (yes, I know), I was only too glad to take Alessandra up on her offer of taking her car for a spin.
“She’s all yours, Alexandre, the keys are under the mat.”
“I can see you can’t get rid of me fast enough,” I said with a wink.
“Come back in half an hour,” she said in her lilting Italian accent, taking Pearl’s arm and guiding her away.
Pearl looked like a lamb being led to slaughter. Sophie had been right; beautiful seductress Alessandra was all over her. Funny, we could have been siblings, Alessandra and I. She had eyes my color: fiery green. I guess I was used to looking at myself in the mirror and didn’t think about my eyes, one way or another, but on Alessandra they looked predatorily unnerving, as if she were about to literally devour Pearl. I wondered if I looked the same. Like a wolf. Or a panther. Because before Alessandra began her feast, I imagined that she’d lick Pearl all over first and taste every inch of her body. It turned me on, actually, to envision this, and I felt rather wicked for leaving my fiancée in her clutches, but it also amused me.
At first.
The drive was beautiful. I took the car along Pacific Coast Highway, speeding, seeing how the old Porsche could handle corners, as the ocean shimmered on one side and scrubby mountains rose above on the other. I figured that if I got stopped, I’d just show the cops my French license—it usually did the trick. No points off because the paperwork was too much hassle.
When I returned, I found the two women snacking, and drinking their Bloody Marys. I wondered for a second if Alessandra had done a Laura on her, as Pearl was innocently sipping her drink through a straw. Alessandra was wet, had obviously gone for a swim; her pert breasts clinging to her see-through dress, her hand on Pearl’s thigh. A vision of them kissing flashed through my head. I closed my eyes to think of something else so my hard-on would go away.
Alessandra looked up. “Hi Frenchie.”
“Hi, baby,” Pearl said. “How was your drive?”
“Beautiful.” I stood there, legs astride, watching the two of them.
“I was just trying to persuade your fiancée to stay on as we need to work on the script.”
I knew it. She was going to get her smooth, gay fingers all over Pearl. For a second, I felt a frisson of jealousy tingle through my spine. I stared Alessandra down. She’s mine, bitch-on-heat. I walked over to stake my claim. I put my hands on Pearl’s shoulders and kissed the nape of her neck.
I’d test Pearl, I decided. If she wanted to stay…well then…she’d get seduced and she damn well k
new it. She’d have to battle with her inner-gay-goddess all on her own. If she came home with me, then she really was my girl. I couldn’t make that choice for her.
“Stay, chérie, enjoy the weather, have some fun with Alessandra,” I said with a wry grin. “Anyway, I have to go to Montreal for a meeting so you might as well hang out here for a bit.”
“I don’t know,” she wavered, looking at Alessandra and then at me. “I should really get home, but it is so beautiful here; so nice to feel the sunshine on my back.”
“You’re staying, Pearl,” Alessandra barked like the alpha female she was. “I won’t allow you to leave yet. We have important work to get done here with the script.”
I almost wanted to take the two women at once and fuck them both, there and then. Show Alessandra who was boss. I was also extremely turned on thinking about them together. My heart raced just imagining our threesome, but I knew it would be a very bad idea. Pearl would go wild with jealousy, and anyway, it would feel like incest; Alessandra was too similar to me.
What would happen, I wondered, if Pearl was truly gay, though? If she played around with Alessandra and got converted? The woman was every inch a movie star. She had the X factor, that je ne sais quoi that set her apart from the crowd. And she wanted Pearl. I almost felt like calling Ellen DeGeneres to break up the happy party… distract Alessandra, get her away from my woman. Insanely, I felt threatened by her. Ridiculous! Being threatened by a she-wolf when I was the alpha male?
I guess that’s why I toyed with the idea of Pearl staying on. To prove to myself I could handle it. So paradoxically, by not stopping her and being so blasé about it all, I actively encouraged Pearl to remain in LA for a few days.
The next morning, while Pearl and I were making love—and I say ‘making love’ because it was far more than just a fuck—she pushed me off her, saying she felt sick. It was sudden. A click-of-a-finger sudden. One second she was squirming beneath me in ecstasy, and the next she was repulsed, looking as if she really was about to throw up. Was I going crazy? Was this Alessandra Demarr thing for real? Jesus. Is my woman a fucking full-on lesbian?
As the day went on, I still wasn’t sure what was going on. Pearl thought she had food poisoning. Then I decided that perhaps she was pregnant. Hallelujah!
We were walking along the oceanfront by Venice Beach. I could feel Pearl’s coolness. Normal, I decided, pregnant women often push their males away—human nature.
“Could you be pregnant?” I blurted out after a long bout of silence.
“I wish,” she said in a sad voice. “No, if I were pregnant my breasts would feel swollen and I would have missed my period by now.”
“What’s wrong then, baby? I get the feeling that you’d rather I weren’t around for a while.”
“Just that smoothie I drank yesterday, I think.”
I was hoping that she’d say, Don’t be crazy, of course I want you around. Or, I’m coming back with you, coming with you to Montreal. But she didn’t. She just clutched my arm and walked ahead in silence, her private thoughts ticking away in her head. Not letting me in. Mentally pushing me out. Everything seemed more interesting to her than opening up to me. She people-watched the assortment of nutters that passed us: a guy on roller-skates with a guitar, a bodybuilder wearing a leopard-print leotard, a woman with huge round breasts that looked as if they would pop any second, a dog wearing shades.
“Pearl, are you sure you’re okay?”
“It would be nice to live by the ocean, wouldn’t it?”
Ignoring me. “Just say the word and we can buy a house in Malibu. Whatever you want. I could surf and you could walk along the beach with Rex, unless you’re brave enough to brace the icy water. Would you like that?”
“Maybe.” She smiled weakly. Nothing I said seemed to warm her.
“You don’t have to keep working, you know. You can throw in the towel with HookedUp Enterprises any time. Be my kept woman. Read novels and laze about in the sun.”
“I’ve worked all my life; I’d get bored. Anyway, what about you? You said you’d break things up with Sophie and HookedUp, yet you still carry on, even though it’s obvious she wants to see our relationship come to an end.”
The Sophie issue again. Whatever I said, Pearl was convinced that Sophie was out to get her. I kept my mouth shut. I got the feeling that whatever I told her, it wouldn’t work out in my favor.
“Alexandre, if you and your life met right now, right here, what would you say to it?”
“What?”
“If you and your life could have a conversation, what would you tell it?”
“Je ne regrette rien,” I said with a laugh, quoting the Edith Piaf song.
“Seriously.”
“I am serious. The only thing I might regret is not having kissed you sooner.”
“If you could re-live your life, is there anything you’d do differently?”
I tried to gauge her expression but she wasn’t giving anything away. I answered, “I am who I am because of all my choices; the good and the bad. Even the mediocre.” I thought of Laura and a shiver of shame crept up the back of my neck. “I mean, thank God things happened the way they did, or I might have ended up with Laura and I wouldn’t have met you.” The second I said those words I wished I hadn’t bloody mentioned Laura.
“Do you still think about her?”
Yes. That she’s a fucking fruitcake! And I just escaped a bloody close shave. “She’s a friend, I guess. We shared a past, that’s all.” I felt my face heat up.
“So you don’t agonize over choices you made and wish that there were things you hadn’t done?”
Pearl was onto me. Somehow, she knew. That’s why she’d cooled off. Did she know about Laura trying to fuck me? Or perhaps she’d guessed about my mother? The way she was staring into my eyes had my solar plexus feel as if someone had swung a baseball bat at my gut.
I tried to sound cool. Unfazed. “Sometimes you don’t have a choice, Pearl. External forces choose for you.”
“We always have a choice. A choice not to get ourselves into bad predicaments in the first place. At least when we’re adults, that is. Children don’t get a chance to choose.”
And was she now choosing to break up with me, or something? Her glass-cold face wasn’t revealing a thing.
“Your mother, for instance? She had a choice,” Pearl went on.
Jesus! What does she know? Does she know what my mother did? “My father was a monster,” I said in retaliation, my teeth gritted.
“What happened to your father, anyway?” she asked, her eyebrows raised as if she had guessed the real truth.
“He disappeared,” I said, as casually as I could.
“Oh really?” Her brows did their thing again.
“Yes, really, Pearl. That nasty douchebag just disappeared into thin air.”
“Aren’t you worried that he may come back and haunt you?”
I told her that he had disappeared but she seemed to know that he was dead. She used the word ‘haunt.’ How did she know? I said in a cold-fire voice. “He’s gone for good. He won’t come back. Ever.”
5
I feel his hands around my shoulders. He’s behind me, pressing himself up against my back; his hug tight—he’s squeezing the breath from my lungs with his grip. I can smell the whiskey on his breath, like dragon fire, and I wonder what would happen if I lit a match—would his breath go up in flames?
I imagine myself as St. George, piercing this creature—because when he’s like this, he IS a creature. Yeah, I could lance this slimy dragon right through his leg. He would roll over in pain. I wouldn’t actually kill him but I’d maim him so he could never hurt me again. Because he would truly fear me.
Forever.
I want to move. But I don’t. If I move, it’ll wake him and he’s beginning to snore; the air around us thick with molecules of whiskey, dancing around his smelly mouth. Molecules of hate. And lies. I mustn’t hardly breathe. I mustn’t make a sound. He’ll
fall asleep, snoring like a wild hog, and when he’s out cold, I’ll leave the room.
I want to go to my mother but she’s so weak she can’t protect me. She can’t protect herself. If she cared, she’d do something. Only Sophie cares but Sophie isn’t here.
I can hear the snow, softly tapping against the windowpane of my room. I look at the posters on my wall and wish I could escape inside them. Fly in my spacecraft to a different planet and never return. I close my eyes and prepare myself for the cold outside. My parka will have to do. If I walk fast enough, I’ll keep warm. There’ll be the man selling chestnuts—in a couple of hours. I want to steal some coins from Papa’s pockets but he’ll hear. Like a bat, he is, even when he’s drunk.
Why? The only word now in my head is why.
Why, why, why?
Why does it have to be this way?
I felt something pressing into my back and realized with relief that it was Rex, his paws digging into my shoulders as he stretched out on the mattress, snoring rhythmically. I was about to push him off the bed (when did he jump up?), but a wave of gratitude swept over me, a surge of butterflies swooped about my stomach, knowing that it was just my boy Rex, and I flung my arms about him and hugged him close, kissing his soft ears. I was grateful for every goddamn thing in my life at that moment.
I had escaped. I got away free and clear. Scarred, both mentally and physically yes, but free. Not in a mental hospital somewhere. Not beaten down. Not the speck of dust, the vessel of despair my father wanted me to be. I was a survivor, I am a survivor, and like all survivors, we learn the hard way.
I am who I am because of my past. Je ne regrette rien.
However crazy Sophie drove me at times, I thanked her for everything she had done for me. She gave me my dignity back. She told me I was a hero and deserved to be called Chevalier. She taught me to be strong, and how to fight. She fed me.
I owed her, literally, my life.
Belle Pearl Page 3