Rémy was gabbling on about his vision of paradise. “Soon we’ll be sunbathing in Ibiza with lots of money to spend on gorgeous babes like you.” He leaned over and rubbed her leg.
Now Monica felt lightheaded. She rolled down the driver’s window and the cold sharp air hit her cheeks like needles on a pin cushion. How had she ended up here, with these two sinister companions, Jean-Michel and Rémy? Just weeks ago, she was strolling down the Champs Êlysées with her girlfriends without a care in the world. They all had promised to look out after one another. At the time, their promises seemed like a benign invocation, an innocent toast to the beginning of their dreamy year in Paris. But tonight those same promises seemed like wicked incantations that had hexed her life. Monica was all alone, in a location unknown to a single one of her housemates, her moral courage crushed by the weight of the events of the last few days. Monica shook her head violently in an attempt to restart her own sense of self––to snap out of her daze and apply her survival skills. Rémy gazed at her, perplexed, and then he too shook his head like a manic rocker and rolled down his window.
“Putain, c’est choutte!” He shouted at the dark trees lining the road.
Monica exhaled a miserable groan. She and Rémy were following the commands of a sadistic tyrant, a man whose animalistic sexual prowess satisfied her beyond her control. She had allowed Jean-Michel to strong-arm her into actions that had never previously entered her consciousness. Her obsession with leaving the ranch girl behind—with replacing that persona with that of a daring, sophisticated, and sexually audacious Parisienne—had failed deplorably. Monica realized now that her desire to have a dramatic adventure in Paris, to find the love of her life among the intellectuals of the Latin Quarter, and to follow the cockeyed advice of her housemother had led her to this fateful moment: driving a getaway car with some type of lethal explosive in the trunk.
Monica’s heart thudded and she gripped the wheel even tighter. She had to think of a way to find herself again, to recapture the goodness she once possessed. But the cacophony of Rémy’s nonstop chatter, his drum rolling on the dashboard, and the loud music blasting from the car radio overpowered her own jumbled thoughts, preventing her once-abundant goodness––and good sense––from resurfacing.
For forty minutes Monica drove from one country road to another, not once seeing another car until they reached Chambord. Rémy instructed her to turn off the headlights as they approached the targeted bridge, and to park the car under the canopy of a tree, a good distance from their target.
“Now that you’re the driver, I’ll be the one to carry the package and set it under the bridge,” the jittery Rémy lectured her. He pointed at the distant bridge. “It’s a man’s job anyway. Look how far I’ll have to walk carrying a dangerous device! You might sprain your ankles walking on the uneven path. I can see that you fall easily by the look of your scraped knees! Putain, wish me luck.”
He leaned over and kissed both of her cheeks. Monica resisted the urge to scrub her face clean.
“Pour toujours jusqu’à la victoire,” Rémy added, quoting Che Guevara’s famous saying: “Until victory always!” He winked at Monica and climbed out of the car. She sat holding her breath, sitting as still as she could while he took the deadly package out of the trunk and strutted up to the bridge carrying it in his meaty arms.
Both car windows were still rolled down, so Monica could hear the crystal-clear nocturnal orchestra of osprey whistles and the warbling of stone curlews and black kites hidden among the trees. Their melodies filled the moonless night with a pastoral harmony that was deceptive, Monica knew: the beautiful sound was at such odds with the blackness of the action they were about to commit.
She strained to spot Rémy on the path. He had more than a football-field distance to walk before he could set the package under the targeted bridge. Once her eyes focused on his shadowy movements in the distance, Monica saw the red glow of an illuminated cigarette. What was he thinking, lighting that? Was he trying to calm his nerves?
But before she could call out a warning, Monica saw a vivid flare of light, and heard an explosion that stung her ears and her soul.
Monica started the car and got back on the road with a wild U-turn. Her heart was beating faster than ever, and all she knew was that she had to keep driving away from this place, away from the explosion. She spotted a sign for Tours, and followed it. At Les Charmilles, she would find Christophe, and he would protect her and keep her from harm.
After the loud blast of the explosion, it was as if her mind had been erased of Rémy and of her involvement as the getaway driver. After driving a few kilometers, Monica wasn’t even sure anymore what she was doing in this clunky car. She drove it cautiously down the still-deserted road, as though she was transporting Rocky and her other horses in their trailer to one of the numerous horse shows in California.
“Rocky, don’t worry,” she murmured. “We’re almost back home.”
In her mind Monica heard his familiar neighing, and it comforted her. She kept the headlights off on the straight stretches of road, hoping that no one would see her.
She was driving instinctively, unable in the darkness to see any more road signs. Something loomed on the hill: not Les Charmilles, but the entrance to the cave. It was lit up, and three vineyard workers stood outside the gate, laughing as they unloaded farm equipment. What was she doing here? Why had she returned to this place?
Monica was completely disoriented, her mind a whirl of confusing images. Could it be that in her mental turbulence she had transposed Christophe for Jean-Michel, and vice-versa? She had pictured Jean-Michel blowing kisses to her as he pedaled his bicycle along the back roads dotted with châteaux, and it was Christophe’s calm face she’d seen, scowling and fierce, as he bit her nipple.
Monica cringed at the games her mind played on her. She’d confused one man for the other, and she was returning not to Christophe, but to her tormentor. She had wanted to run into Christophe’s arms, but instead she’d driven herself back to Jean-Michel’s terrifying cave.
But when she saw the cave gate open and the interior of the cave illuminated, Monica’s own internal light bulb flickered and shone. She was no longer afraid of the cave, she realized. The only thing that terrified her now was one awful certainty: that wherever she ran, she couldn’t hide from Jean-Michel’s dark heart, or from his far-reaching tentacles.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Madame is in Love
But don’t you think that this shade of red polish is très chic?” Madame Caron de Pichet waved her purple-veined hands at the concierge.
“I suppose so,” said the concierge, frowning with thin-lipped disapproval. “But if I may make a suggestion, at your age a natural nail might be more appropriate.”
“Ha! I don’t know why I bother to ask you. After all, what do you know about style?” Madame sneered at the concierge’s boxy house dress and raw red hands. “Next I suppose you’ll say that I’ve gone too far by having my toes polished the same ravishing red.”
Madame attempted to slip off her sensible pumps to display her pedicure, but lost her balance and almost fell over. The concierge was tempted to let her fall, but the old woman was standing at the entrance of the building, and if any of the tenants observed the concierge allowing Madame to fall––well, perhaps they wouldn’t continue to tip her for her errands.
The concierge had noticed that the old woman was acting positively giddy these days, ever since the gentleman with perfect manners stopped by to visit her a couple times. This young prince, as she’d decided to think of him, had not neglected the concierge, either. After his last visit to the old lady, he’d sent the concierge a small but remarkable bird cage filled with a tropical floral arrangement complete with a stuffed iridescent hummingbird. The attached note read: “To a unique lady, from your secret admirer.” Mellowed by this sweet memory, the concierge helped the old lady regain her balance, smiling smugly at the thought that Madame’s admirer––the young princ
e––had eyes for her, as well.
“I’ll be on my way,” Madame dismissed the concierge’s helping hand. “My adorable Lola, ma belle rousse, is waiting for me in my salon. Unlike certain other people, she’s an engaging conversationalist.”
Madame hobbled up the stairs, her head held high, and made her way to the sanctuary of the salon.
“Oh, ma belle rousse, you have my drink all ready for me! You’re a true treasure.” Madame Caron de Pichet kissed Lola on both cheeks and eased herself onto the divan. “I have the most urgent topic to discuss with you.”
“Sure, Madame. What would you like to talk about?” Lola pulled down her midriff-baring crop top, knowing that Madame disapproved of such blouses.
“Love, my dear––love.” Madame paused for effect and for just the right words to say next. She didn’t want to divulge too much information about her latest, unbelievable heartthrob, Jean-Michel. “At my age, I do believe that I am in love again.”
“Bitchin’!” shouted Lola, her eyes wide.
“Quoi? But what does this mean?”
“Superbe, c’est magnifique,” Lola explained, clapping her hands with glee. “Ooh là là! Give me all the dirt on this guy, Madame.”
“But I can be so long-winded, my dear. And I know you girls are always in a rush.” Madame looked hurt, and waited for Lola to insist on hearing her love story.
“Let me get Monica.” Lola wanted Monica in the salon, in case Madame’s story went on for too long: Lola could duck out and leave Monica there, listening to all the gory details. “She just got back from her own little love tryst––you know, with that viscount you introduced her to. Down in the Loire.”
“Christophe?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. But I think she’s kind of upset with him. She fell off her bike or something and got all bruised up. I think she blames him for the fall. So maybe she needs some cheering up.”
“But of course! Fetch her at once. I would like to hear both of your opinions.” Madame blushed. “My new lover is quite young, you know.”
“Bitchin’––let me get her.” Lola scampered out of the salon to get Monica––and to stifle her discourteous laughter at the mention of a younger lover.
Madame luxuriated on her divan. She stared at her hammertoe and her long fingers, but did not see their old-age deformities or unsightly veins. All she saw was the enameled scarlet toes the German officers liked to lick, and she purred with delight at the thought that she still had that je ne sais quoi, that elusive sensual quality that drove men––even much younger men––wild.
Finally Lola returned with Monica, though the latter slipped in without a word and took a seat in a dark corner. Madame greeted her, but did not comment on Monica’s swollen lip and bruised cheek. Not so much out of discretion, but mainly because Madame now saw the world through the narrow lens of her recent wild infatuation with Jean-Michel––rose-colored lenses, just like Monica’s own perspective of Paris once upon a time. Everything and everyone in Madame’s Parisian world suddenly seemed aglow and soft-focused. Once again, life was beautiful.
She looked up at the black-and-white photographs framed on her damask-upholstered walls, including a couple kissing passionately on a street corner near the Hôtel de Ville, and she absentmindedly licked and puckered her own lips. The adjacent photograph was the focal point of her salon, and of course, it was of her. Because of Doisneau’s genius with lighting and composition, he had captured the sensuality of Madame’s own slender leg as she climbed up the staircase in open-toe high-heel shoes, her red-polished toenails a beacon to the gentleman following her up the spiral steps, anxious to lose himself in Madame’s notorious whirlwind. This photograph was a surefire conversation piece and a testimony to her personal charms, all in one sexy image.
“Ahhh,” Madame sighed dramatically. “There is no better feeling than to be in love in my Paris. Wouldn’t you two darling girls also agree?” She waved her hands in the air.
Lola shook her corkscrew curls. “I’m afraid I haven’t followed the lead of my role model, La Belle Otero. All I’ve managed to do is fall for a mysterious dud––make that a missing-in-action dud—instead of a wealthy millionaire.”
“But you must rectify this tout de suite,” Madame advised Lola. “You’re far too luscious and vivacious to waste your time on a flop. We will find you a new lover. And as for La Belle Otero, she was nothing but a grande horizontale. She exploited men, and never did she believe in anyone but herself.”
“Wow!” For once, Lola looked genuinely impressed. “Did you really know La Belle Otero?”
Madame laughed. “Ma belle rousse, you have your decades all jumbled up in your head of curls. She was forty years my senior! But yes, I do recall seeing her once or twice losing her fortune at the gaming tables in Monte Carlo. You do know that she died in 1965, penniless in a tattered hotel room in Nice, don’t you?”
“Yes, but when she was in the spring of her youth, men fought duels for her attention.” Lola still loved talking about her heroine. “And back in 1900 her rival, Diane de Chandel, fired a shot at her when she was dancing on stage at the Marigny Theatre.”
Madame was feeling her young oats. “That was ages ago, my dear. Let’s talk about the great love stories of today.”
Lola slumped on the lumpy down-filled sofa. “Gosh, but there aren’t many great love stories left anymore, are there? La Belle Otero had it all––love, fame, fortune. Please tell us about your new passion, Madame.”
“Perhaps Monica does not want to hear it. Or better yet, perhaps she’d like to tell us about the consuming love affairs she’s having?”
Monica groaned. “I’ll pass. I’d rather hear your thoughts about what makes a great love story.”
Madame smiled, relishing the chance to recount her litany of love stories and her evaluation of each one of her lovers. The rays of early fall sunlight penetrating through the vast windows of her apartment illuminated Lola and Monica’s faces, making them look all the more young and lustrous. The lust surging through her own body made Madame believe that she, too, must be gleaming. But when she glanced at her own reflection in the Venetian mirror, expecting to see the luminescent skin of the girl in Renoir’s Woman Reading, Madame was appalled to see Rembrandt’s wrinkled Old Woman Reading staring back at her.
Madame turned away from the image, so disoriented that she couldn’t speak without stammering.
“Gr…gr…great love stories are those where the heroine is a complex person. Often there are two rivals fighting for her love and, don’t forget, the lovers must face unexpected dangers.” It dawned on Madame that her personal booby trap would be the age gap with Jean-Michel, which meant she could never be seen in public with him. Their love affair would be limited to the privacy of her apartment. Could she restrict a young man to such a reduced space? And how could she get rid of her American tenants so she could savor the last scrumptious morsel of love that had come so late in her life?
“And, and, and of course, there’s got to be a bit of decadence.” A flustered Madame blushed at the memory of the fellatio she performed on Jean-Michel––and countless others. Was it inappropriate, at her age? Really, she didn’t care. Within the confines of these walls, she could keep Jean-Michel happy and satisfied over and over again. Anything to feel love again, as warm as an aged Armagnac flowing down her throat. She shrugged in a devil-may-care gesture. “Above all, a great love story is one worth waiting for,” she continued, panting in anticipation of more time with Jean-Michel, “and one worth sacrificing for.”
Monica pulled on her bloody hangnails. “Would you ever risk your life to save the love of your life?” she whispered.
“Hell, no,” said Lola.
Madame waved her index finger. “I sacrificed myself only for France, but never for a man. There might be an instance where a sacrifice is necessary, but in my long life, I have never found one. No, I must agree with ma belle rousse.”
The three women sat morosely, each one hidi
ng the truth about the man with whom she had fallen in love. Lola refused to accept that she had fallen in love with Charles, even though his anxious demeanor was in utter contrast with her own confident, playful nature. She had not been able to contact him, and was ready to give up on him, but the memory of his mournful face pulled at her heartstrings. Monica’s heart ached to be with Christophe, yet she didn’t want to put him at risk of Jean-Michel’s retribution. Her great love would wither on the vine. And Madame welcomed the dusk that enveloped her apartment, anxious to light candles to conceal her wrinkled flesh while she enjoyed the virility of her young suitor.
Madame noticed that in previous conversations both of the young women had cringed when she vividly recounted her past sexual partners. Now, she decided, she must begin an especially sordid tale as a ruse to get them out of her apartment before Jean-Michel arrived.
“Before we get too melancholy,” she began, “I must tell you about the time a German officer, who was madly in love with me, invited his fellow officer––a very well-endowed officer, I must say––to sit and watch as we––”
Lola was the first to stand up. “I’d love to hear the story, but I have to meet some friends. Are you coming with me, Monica?”
Monica covered her face.
“No, I just want to stay locked in my room,” she whispered. “ I can’t face anyone.”
“Well, in that case, perhaps my suitor would also enjoy your company,” Madame purred. “Do you like to watch others make love? Are you a voyeuse, my dear?”
“Ugh, gag me with a spoon,” Lola said. “She’s coming with me, Madame.”
Lola dragged Monica out of Madame’s steamy apartment and into the cool of the stairwell, pausing only to grab the bag she’d strategically positioned by the front door.
“Honestly, Monica. Get ahold of yourself! Things can’t be that bad.” She led the way down the stairs, clutching Monica’s limp hand.
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