I wander aimlessly around the apartment; occasionally I press my hand to the window. It’s raining heavily. There are ominous rumbles of thunder. People scurry over the bridge, huddled deeply into their raincoats. Across the landing I can hear the soothing strains of Chopin as Madame Culotte gives one of her music lessons. She’s really quite a talented pianist. ‘Where are you Tom?’ I glance at the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece. It’s now time, and he’s never late.
Sighing, I wander through to the kitchen and place the coffee pot on the hob. I am just spooning coffee into the filter when I hear it, a distinct tap at my door and feel the breeze as the door I left off the latch in anticipation is pushed wider. It’s not Madame Culotte as I can hear her anxious raised voice quite clearly, as she chastises her student.
I hold my breath, dare I believe it? Dare I believe it’s Tom? Closing my eyes I lean against the countertop, suspended in a fever of sexual anticipation. I should have known, I should have had more belief in my convictions. I am a talented window dresser and I never fail. They always come.
Satisfaction swells inside me, pops like a bubble, and is followed by a rush of arousal so intense it burns. In preparation for Tom I have been the most exacting étalagiste. I have bathed in rose oil before massaging my skin with lotions. Shaved my sex to ultimate smoothness and lightly sprayed myself with my favourite erotic scent.
‘I thought you didn’t enjoy me any more?’ I whisper.
He comes to me and, wrapping his arms around me from behind, he squeezes my breasts and rubs my nipples with rhythmical motions of his fingers.
‘How could I not enjoy such a breathtaking performance, Evasin?’
I turn to him and assault his lips with my own as I push him against the wall reaching for his pants’ zipper. Then I drop to my knees and, taking his penis in my hand, I slide my lips up and down the slick length of him until he is groaning with lust. My performance never fails to excite them.
Taking his hand I lead him into the salon where I push him onto the sofa and, gripping his turgid staff, I move my hand rhythmically up and down his pole. He swells and stiffens, the penis becoming taut and red and bursting with juice. I raise myself above him and, pushing my cunt to his mouth, I let him taste me. His tongue darts out, moves in and around, up and down, as he devours me. ‘You taste so good,’ he says huskily as he licks and sucks. ‘Jesus, so good.’
‘Taste me more.’ I press against him, urging his tongue on my clit.
‘Oh that’s it.’ My hand sinks into his hair as I pull him hard onto my sex. Yet this is the limit. I never allow a man to do more than taste my delicacies, because my inner sanctum belongs to Paolo. I part my flaccid red lips and he gives a sigh and plunges his greedy mouth back down on me, the lips and tongue working in a frenzy to give me the orgasm I so desire. When it comes it tears through me like a rip tide. I’m victorious once more.
‘Evasin.’ He groans. ‘Let me make love to you properly, let me put my dick inside you?’
‘No, my darling.’
‘Why not? Aren’t you even tempted?’ He sighs.
‘It’ll be just as erotic like this, chéri. Just lie back and enjoy.’
His body arches in spasm as I press down with my thirsty lips to meet him. I have complete self-mastery over the game. I am the window dresser.
Satiated by the provocative whore of tongue and finger, he sleeps.
Moving stealthily, I slide out from under the bedcovers, evading his hand which reaches for me. I slip silently and expertly into my dress and pull on my shoes. I am curious because there’s something different about Tom, something intense in the way his eyes bore deeply into mine as if he hopes he can be the key to unlock me. For an instant I think of Madame. What was it she said? One day a fish may gobble me up? Aha, never Madame.
My hands search through his clothes pockets. I expect to find police ID. Once I was so very nearly caught. But he’s clean. Leaning over him I wet my finger in my cunt and then I press it to his cheek in a butterfly kiss. Madame Culotte you’re a fucker. I guess you ought to be pleased with yourself as you’re making me paranoid. It won’t stop me, you know. It’s not that easy to stop an addiction.
I feel so high I am flying. It’s like taking a really heavy-duty shot of a stimulant. With the hardened addict it hurts a little, and maybe it frightens you shitless for an instant, but you always do it again.
I slide the small case from inside the wardrobe door and I feel the familiar sense of satisfaction. Once again I am complete, I am repaired; at least until the next time. Within me there is a warm pool and it is spilling its contents and spreading through me, filling me with a renewed passion for the loving Paolo. I have taken my medicine, but soon I will appear in the next shabby vacant apartment. Perhaps in Paris. It could be Milan. Actually I quite fancy Venice at about the time of the Masquerade ball.
I leave no note of farewell. Well, what could I say? Darling Tom, you were the antibiotic that failed to cure the incurable virus?
When he wakes up I’ll be gone and he’ll preserve me as a simple fantasy, and that is best and for the best. The rented flat will soon be home to someone else, but he will always wonder. Who was that woman called Evasin, who enticed him from the window? And Madame Culotte will say, ‘Thank goodness. Now I can put away these opera glasses and forget about that filthy putain.’
About the Story
I knew my friend’s apartment situated in an atmospheric maison particulière would one day provide the perfect setting for a story. In this case it was part of my inspiration for ‘The Window Dresser’.
‘The Window Dresser’ is a tableau drama. It is not a sexual procession of physical liaisons, but a simple little observation about monogamy, love and addiction.
For this story, I wanted to focus more on ambiance and gradual seduction, using a strong heroine.
Why Paris?Well Pucette is a charming whore sophisticate, and, to my mind, she could not execute her little game in any city other than Paris. The layout of the typical bourgeois apartment is the perfect sexual prop for this talented and sensual actress. Indeed the apartment is her theatre, the window her stage. The Parisian populace her audience and Tom her leading man.
Certainly every city has its charm and its unique genus of woman. Pucette could only be Parisienne though since she possesses the unique and intriguing idiosyncrasies of the Paris femme. Outwardly chic and sophisticated, but beneath the classic polish beats the heart of a stylish Paris whore. Only a Parisienne can be both respectable and a putain.
Many other observations led to the ‘Window Dresser’. A man leaning against a lamp post smoking a cigarette, as he watched a girl and undressed her with his eyes. A woman on the arm of her husband, crossing the road outside the Galeries Lafayette. They were evidently in love but she had naughty eyes which intercepted men, giving suggestive glances of which the husband was aware but indulgent. Did the couple share a secret sexual accord, permitting erotic leniency?
A Madame Culotte exists I am sure, in every apartment block in Paris. She’s probably the concierge, but may be a lonely Madame with nothing to do but recall her vivid sexual youth.
For me, Paris is simply Paris and always enchanting. Uniquely inspirational to poets and writers, painters and musicians; it is the city par excellence of artfully concealed human dramas. It is a distinctive blend of eclectic personalities and salacious undertones which Parisians are so good at creating. It is a city elegant, scintillating and possessed of panache, yet at its heartwood darkly erotic and dirty.
Unexpected Emotion
by Debra Gray De Noux & O’Neil De Noux
She came out of the rain and stopped just inside the doorway of the small café. LaStanza watched her wipe the water from her arms, lean forward and squeeze the water from her long dark hair. A sudden coolness filled the café, damp with the smell of rain. She closed the door with her right foot.
She was a looker, wearing a tight charcoal-grey dress, mid-thigh in length. LaStanza’s eyes traced
the sleek lines of her body as she wrung out her hair. When she stopped, she looked right at him with bright green eyes. He narrowed his own eyes, also green, but much paler. He also ran his left index finger and thumb down over his moustache, which he did automatically when nervous, or excited.
The café smelled of coffee again and sugar and faintly of milk. The lone waiter, a portly man with balding grey hair and a clichéd white apron around his midriff, moved to the girl with a white towel in his hand. She smiled at him and said something in French. LaStanza understood only one word of the conversation, ‘Merci.’ Her lips, painted a deep crimson, stood in direct contrast with her ivory skin.
The rain continued slamming against the picture window at the front of the café. Dabbing herself with the towel, the girl stepped over to a table next to the window. Her high heels, the identical colour grey to her dress, clapped on the tile floor as she moved. LaStanza watched her sit in profile to him and run the towel down each leg. She wore black stockings, which seemed to accentuate her long legs. Placing the towel on her table, she crossed her legs.
A deep moan of thunder rumbled through the café– through all of Paris. She ordered coffee from the waiter and turned her gaze to the picture window, to look out at the dark sky over the Rue St André. A wicked slice of lightning flashed across the rooftops of the Latin Quarter. LaStanza saw it, through the glass above the girl’s head.
He watched her, trying not to be obvious watching her. He loved watching women. He especially liked the fine lines of this girl’s face in profile. She was young, probably in her early-twenties. He was thinking how he’d like to know her, how he’d like to touch her.
LaStanza felt that hollow, lonesome feeling a man gets when he sees a woman he’ll never know, that hollow yearning for someone who’s beyond reach. He remembered feeling that same way about his wife, when he first met her. Silly, he told himself, he was acting like a schoolboy. Hell, he was almost thirty-four now.
She was waiting for someone, he told himself. Just like he was. She watched the window; waiting for someone, he told himself. Then she’ll be gone.
The waiter brought her a steamy cup of coffee, nodded and left. On his way past he asked LaStanza, ‘More coffee, monsieur?’
LaStanza nodded. As the waiter stepped away, the girl looked at LaStanza again. Her face remained expressionless, like fine porcelain and her eyes were so bright.
LaStanza was the only other customer in Café Degas that stormy afternoon. He loosened his red tie and unbuttoned the top button of his white dress shirt. In his dark blue suit, he figured he looked like a typical American tourist. If there was one thing he learned in seven days in Paris, the French could spot a foreigner miles away.
The waiter returned with a fresh cup of café-au-lait and removed his old cup. LaStanza stirred in two spoons of sugar.
He had been day-dreaming when she came in about a movie he and his wife had seen two nights earlier, an unlikely story of a man and a woman on a sea that was a blue dream. It was a boy meets girl story– boy loses girl– boy gets girl story. It was a French movie, of course, without the typical puritanical American restrictions. Which meant there was plenty of nudity, full frontal, female and male. The sex scenes were hot, NC-17 if shown at a U.S. theatre.
The lead woman was immediately drawn to the man, but fell to the temptation of a younger man and wound up making love to both separately as the three sailed across the Caribbean. Neither man knew the woman was screwing both. There was a lot of titsucking and simulated cocksucking and fucking that looked pretty real, may have been.
The best scene was shot behind a waterfall where the woman is first seduced by the young man, then as he slips away, the other man comes and finds her lying on the rocks and climbs atop her and she’s panting again with the cooling water flowing around them in mists. Good cinematography with a gorgeous background and a beautiful naked woman kept LaStanza’s attention.
He took a sip of café-au-lait, rested an elbow on the table, cupped his chin in the palm of his hand, and began to feel very drowsy. He went back to his day-dream of the lovers on the blue sea, feeling a stuffiness a few moments into his day-dream, a sudden heat. He didn’t hear her, but felt her just before she said, ‘You are American, are you not?’
He felt the coolness of the rain on her dress as she stood next to him now.
Blinking, he sat up and said, ‘Yes. I’m American.’
‘I like Americans.’ She flashed a shy smile at him. Her voice was smooth, like velvet, coated with a French accent that added a sensual tone to her words. She shifted her weight from her right leg to her left.
‘May I sit with you?’
‘Sure.’ Absolutely, he thought.
He noticed she had her cup and saucer in hand. She placed it on the table in front of the chair to his left. She moved around to his side of the chair, before sitting. He could hear the faint, sexy sound of nylon brushing nylon as she crossed her legs. She put a small purse, which matched the colour of her dress, on the table.
‘My name is Juliette.’ She extended her hand to shake.
It was cool and still damp.
‘LaStanza,’ he said. ‘Dino LaStanza.’
‘That is a nice name.’ She took her hand back. ‘Italian, is it not?’
‘Sicilian.’
‘My last name is Le Bourget. Like the old airport.’
He nodded, although he hadn’t he faintest idea what that meant. She brushed her hair back with her hands and smiled at him. Her eyes looked even brighter up close.
‘What part of America are you from?’
‘New Orleans.’
‘Nouvelle Orléans?’ Her eyebrows raised. ‘You speak French?’
LaStanza shrugged. ‘Naw. I can say merci, oui. No. That’s about it.’
Juliette smiled broadly, then took a sip of coffee and put her cup down in the saucer. He noticed she did not return her cup to the centre of the saucer. Rather, she placed it to one side, sort of askew.
She stared into his eyes, those dark eyes suddenly sad, widening as she looked at him for long moments. They moved slightly as if searching for something within his eyes. Her chest rose and she took in a deep breath.
‘I work for a bookseller,’ she said. ‘Here in the Latin Quarter. What do you do, Monsieur LaStanza?’
‘I’m a policeman.’
She blinked twice and sat back, a slight smile to her lips. ‘Do you drive a motorcycle?’
It was his turn to smile. ‘I’m a detective.’
Juliette leaned forward, put her elbows on the table, cupping her chin in the upturned palms of her hands.
‘Are you from Paris?’
‘No,’ her voice was lower now. ‘I am from Provence. In the south. A town called Arles.’
He had no idea where that was. She could probably tell from his eyes, because she added, ‘It is near Marseille. Van Gogh, the artist, painted there.’
He reached for his coffee again. They both took sips, and he noticed she put her cup down askew again.
‘Are you married?’ She was looking at her coffee when she asked that.
‘Yes. My wife is at the Sorbonne right now, delivering a lecture. Are you married?’
‘No.’ Her voice barely above a whisper. Juliette looked up at him with wide eyes. Her face became expressionless and looked like porcelain again.
LaStanza took a sip of his café-au-lait.
He was thinking of asking her how old she was, although a good southern boy never asked a woman her age. But the thunder boomed again, louder even than before. The picture window rattled and the coffee in their cups made little ripples.
Looking back at Juliette, he saw she was staring at him again. Her face looked different, almost sad now, almost frightened, yet so damn pretty. Her left hand toyed with an oval earring in her left ear. There were four earrings in her left ear lobe, all small and delicate and gold. One appeared to have a diamond in its centre. Her hair, parted down the middle, was drying in places. It seemed a
shade lighter now. He could see red highlights in her hair, which looked golden in the quiet light of the café. Her eyes kept staring into his, as if she could look through his eyes, into his mind.
LaStanza reached for his café-au-lait. Juliette did not break her stare. He watched her over his cup as he took one more sip. As he lowered his cup, she said something that made him stop midway between his mouth and the saucer.
She said, ‘I think I would like to walk with you. In the rain.’ She looked away momentarily, before looking back at his eyes. Behind her, the rain still fell against the picture window.
He felt goose bumps on his arms.
‘How long before your wife comes?’
LaStanza shrugged. ‘It depends on how many encores.’
She didn’t get it. It was a bad joke anyway.
Juliette leaned forward slightly, and he could see her eyes were damp. She blinked away the dampness and said, ‘I think I would like to make love with you. In the rain.’
His breath slipped away. He felt his heart stammering, racing suddenly, as if it had just been kick-started. The next seconds dragged by, like something from a Dali nightmare. He knew this was one of those indelible moments in a man’s life, one of those rivers to cross, one of those magical instants that are so fleeting–
LaStanza felt himself rise and pick up his coat, felt his hand reach into his pants pocket, felt the texture of the money he tossed on the table, felt her hand as he took it and led her out of the café, into the rain where she helped him into his coat.
He liked the way she snuggled next to him, her hands wrapped around his right arm, the faint smell of perfume in her hair. Strands of her long hair brushed against his cheek in the breeze and the rain. Half a block into their walk, the rain began to diminish. Without looking at him, she disentangled herself, pulled his right hand out of his coat pocket and led him into an alley. He could see it was a dead end, with houses lining each side, and two cars parked at the end of the alley. Juliette’s heels clicked on the cobblestones as she led him to a spot beneath a balcony.
Sex in the City Paris Page 7