“I’ve never felt livelier. I really don’t care where we go, as long as it’s cozy and quiet.”
“Cozy and quiet?” He tried to think, and wished that he had his Michelin, or better yet, that he’d never got into this.
She studied him. “You’re cute.”
“Well, so are you.” He determined to keep their conversation on an uncute plane. “I’m trying to remember some good bistro—”
“Where was it you told Medora you’re staying?”
“California Hotel.”
“Around the corner,” she said. ‘There’s a nice bar there.”
“That’s it, then,” he said.
For a moment, he suffered indecision about the most sensible way to reach the hotel. It was too close for a taxi. If they had to walk, there was the Champs-Élysées or the Rue de Ponthieu. On foot, the Champs-Élysées had its advantages and its perils. The busy main thoroughfare would be filled with night people, and this was anti-intimacy and therefore offered safety in numbers. At the same time, Denise Averil’s flashy attire and blatant physical attractions would draw attention, possibly from someone who knew him. The Rue de Ponthieu, on the other hand, had in its favor fewer pedestrians and subdued street lighting, but its isolation might invite too much provocative talk.
Teetering with indecision, Brennan damned himself for being one of those persons who became neurotically immobilized by small dilemmas. Suddenly, to his relief, Denise made up his mind for him.
“I’m thirsty,” she said, and she turned him toward the Rue de Ponthieu.
It was two and a half blocks, mostly along a darkened street only occasionally illuminated by dull streetlamps. Except for complimenting her on her performance in the show, which pleased her, and intimating that Medora might have exaggerated his status as a millionaire diplomat, which she would not believe, he kept his conversation to a minimum. But soon he sensed that she had misinterpreted his withdrawn and relatively mute behavior. To Denise, he had become the strong and silent type, a welcome change from the whispering seducers, and therefore more interesting.
As they walked along, her hand went down his arm and her fingers entwined themselves in his and squeezed them playfully. She began to lean more intimately against him, so that once, to give way to an approaching pedestrian, he was forced to put his arm around her waist and draw her toward him. Appreciative, she refused to unsnuggle afterward.
Passing between the rear of the Lido Arcade on the one side and his favorite small restaurant, Le Tangage, on the other, he realized that they were nearing the brighter, more traveled Rue de Berri up ahead, and he firmly separated himself from Denise.
“Around the corner,” he said.
“I know,” she said. Her green eyes were fixed on his mouth. “I can’t see you and Joe Peet together.”
Warily, he asked, “Why not?”
“You behave perfectly normal. You act like a gentleman. Joe Peet could hardly be called either.”
“I’d never quite thought of that.”
“It takes a woman to find out,” she said. “But even then, I don’t see what you and Joe can have in common. Medora told me you’re old friends.”
“Not exactly,” he said in haste. “Joe Peet’s father and I are friends. His father is extremely wealthy. He’s a meat-packer. We became acquainted in Washington years ago, and whenever I’m in Chicago I see him. That’s how I got to know Joe. He’s an odd, lonely young man, always seeking affection—”
“If that’s what you call affection,” said Denise tartly.
“—and I suppose he found something in Russia he could never find anywhere else.”
“His femme à passion,” she said coarsely.
They had arrived at the entrance to the Hotel California. Brennan had intended to lead Denise to the bar entrance down the block, but she had already turned into the lobby. Nervously, he followed her. It comforted him that neither M. Dupont nor the night man, Le Clerc, was behind the concierge’s desk. One of the uniformed grooms was in their place, sorting keys.
Quickly, Brennan caught Denise by the elbow, guiding her through the abandoned sitting area of the lobby toward the arch that led to the bar on one side and the dining room on the other. With familiarity, Denise turned toward the bar, but suddenly halted.
“It’s closed,” she said.
Brennan refused to believe it. He stepped inside the dim, empty room. There was no one in sight. He recalled that several times Jules, the affable and well-read bartender, had told him with the pride that came from independence that he closed the bar any hour he wished after ten, especially when business was slow.
Disconcerted, Brennan turned to face Denise. “You’re right,” he said. “Well, I guess we’ll have to go somewhere else, Denise.”
She had finished dabbing at her eye shadow with a Kleenex. “Why?” she asked. “Haven’t you got your rooms here?”
“Of course—”
“My feet are too tired to walk anymore. Let’s have some drinks in your room.” Abruptly, she raised one shapely leg and pulled off a high-heeled pump. Then balancing against him, she lifted her other foot and removed the second pump. In her stocking feet, holding aloft her spike-heeled shoes, she was happier. “I’m ready,” she said.
He knew that he was sentenced to quarters. There were two fifths of Scotch upstairs. If he gave her a couple of strong drinks, he’d probably manage to learn Peet’s hideout quickly enough, and then have no trouble hustling her out to a taxi.
He simulated good cheer. “Swell, I’ll get the key. Meet you at the elevator.”
Before she could accompany him, he strode back into the lobby to the concierge’s desk.
“Key to 112,” he commanded the groom. Taking the key, he added, “Have Room Service send up two highball glasses, a bottle of Evian, and a bucket of ice. “Tout de suite.”
“Oui, Monsieur Brennan.”
He hurried straight through the lobby to the two elevators. Both were in use. He could see Denise Averil, swinging her pumps and her hips, crossing languidly toward him. He peered up the elevator shaft. One cage was slowly descending.
From behind him he could hear the chatter of guests entering the lobby from outside. A single voice was clearer than the rest. “Concierge, any messages for Miss Collins? I’m expecting one.”
Brennan stood petrified. Lisa’s voice and his heartbeat were deafening in his ear.
Her voice drifted across the lobby again. “Well, if anyone calls, you can get me in the bar.”
“Apologies, madame. No bar tonight. Closed early.”
“Darn it!… Sorry, folks. I’d ask you up to my room here, but it’s only for work, a hole in the wall. We can go back to my suite in the Plaza-Athénée, or the bar there, and …”
Her voice trailed off, and Brennan turned his numb face to look over his shoulder, praying that Lisa and her party were leaving. Instead, he saw her, still at the concierge’s desk, staring past the group of four women and two men in her party, her gaze settled on him. For Brennan, it was like looking up the barrel of a machine gun.
Shrinking, he half expected her to call out his name, but suddenly, he understood the reason why she did not, for he felt Denise Averil’s arm slip cozily inside his own. He stared helplessly at Denise, who was rhythmically snapping the nimble fingers of her free hand, undulating sexily, as she did a little dance shuffle in her stocking feet. “Elevator’s waiting, big boy,” she teased. “What’s keeping us?”
Brennan wanted the lobby floor to open up, swallow him, deposit him deep in the bowels of the earth for all eternity, but it was only the metallic creaking elevator gate that was opening. Denise danced into the elevator.
Madly desperate, Brennan cast another glance at Lisa. His instinct was to rush to her, explain, but with her friends around her, this would be impossible. Lisa was continuing to glower at him. From the distance across the lobby, he could not make out whether her face was really as white as it seemed.
He held out his hands, a d
umb supplication for temporary understanding, a pantomime promise of explanations later. He did not know whether Lisa saw this begging. She had swung angrily toward her friends and said something, and she stalked out of the hotel as they straggled after her.
Cursing Joe Peet under his breath, cursing his own juvenile excursion into mystery and adventure, Brennan entered the elevator, which now reeked with the scent of Carnet de Bal—or possibly—could it be?—La Vierge Folle.
FOUR SHOTS OF SCOTCH and one hour later, Matt Brennan felt no pain. Denise Averil lay back on the velour divan, deep among the puffs of pillows, light-headedly studying the reflection in her half-filled glass. Brennan was still sitting upright, a few feet from her, draining the last of his drink.
On first entering the sitting room of his suite with Denise, he had been suffering the aftermath of the encounter with Lisa in the downstairs lobby. He had ruined Lisa’s evening and disrupted her dinner party by bowing out of it at the last minute. He had betrayed her confidence in him by telling her that he was meeting with “some decrepit old Frenchman somebody feels I should meet.” She had caught him taking a shoeless and sexy young Marseille show girl up to his room. He had doubted that he would ever be able to talk his way out of it, and he had felt heartsick over his stupid white lie. Life had never seemed bleaker than when he had poured the first drinks for Denise and himself.
But with - each drink his anguish had been alleviated a little more, until soon an alcoholic mist protected him from remorse. From the start, as self-protection, he had encouraged Denise to speak about herself, her earliest past, her growing up, her entry into show business, her life in Paris and at the Club Lautrec. Willingly, she had succumbed to the reminiscent mood. Twice he had tried to bring her around to the subject of Joe Peet. She had not been interested. She had preferred to discuss, if not herself, then her fascinating escort. Brennan, after a brief and unsuccessful attempt to undermine Medora’s fiction about him, had at last decided to play out his assigned role, and had therefore remained a potential substitute for the affluent and generous Mr. Peet.
Now, before they both became too drunk and before he took her in a taxi to her apartment, he felt that he must revive the name of Joe Peet. He sat contemplating his empty glass, wondering how to begin.
“Matthew,” she said.
She had startled him. “Yes, Denise?”
“Pour your baby one more short one.” She held out her glass.
He set down his own glass, took hers, and went unsteadily to the tray on the leather-inset desk next to the closed and draped windows. He opened the second bottle of Scotch.
“You married, big boy?” Denise asked,
“No.”
“Funny. I thought you might be.”
He poured her drink on a cube of ice. “I used to be, once. But not now. Not for a long time.”
“I thought you were.”
He dropped another cube into her glass. “Why?”
“I dunno. What’s the difference? You going to be around Paris a while?”
“For a while. I come and go. I’ve got some business to finish here.” He paused. The moment seemed propitious. “Then I promised Joe Peet’s father I’d see Joe. I’ve got to find him.”
“How come old man Peet didn’t give you his son’s hotel address?”
“He did. Plaza-Athénée. But when I got there—I had something important to pass along from his father—well, Joe wasn’t there. He checked out and forgot to leave his forwarding address. He could be in any one of a hundred hotels or boardinghouses or apartments—”
“A hotel,” said Denise.
“That’s right. Medora did say you knew where he moved.” Brennan returned to the divan and handed Denise the drink.
“I know all right.” She sipped the Scotch tentatively, and then she took a big swallow.
He remained standing over her. “I’d appreciate it if you’d give me the name of his hotel. I should see him tomorrow and get it over with.”
She took another swallow, and savored it. “Oh, I’ll tell you, in due time.” She handed up the drink. “Here. I’ve had enough. Finish it.”
Brennan brought the glass to his mouth and tipped it. The Scotch went down warmly.
She watched him. “Now maybe you feel the way I feel.”
“How do you feel?”
“Sexy,” said Denise.
He refrained from replying. He gave much attention to finishing the last of the drink.
“Put the glass down,” she said. As he did so, she patted the divan beside her. “Sit here.”
Dutifully, he obeyed. He felt the fullness of her large thigh against his own, and the nearness of her flesh and scent of her perfume overwhelmed him.
“What’s wrong, big boy?” she pouted. “You’ve been a million kilometers away all evening. You’re still too far.” She reached out with both her hands. “Come on back here to baby.”
He hesitated. “Look, Denise, I’m not sure this is the time for—for—”
“For what, big boy? For a little loving? It’s always time for loving. Maybe you’ve had too much business on your mind. Let baby take care of that. What else can there be? Joe Peet and his papa? Didn’t I promise to help you before I left—in the morning?”
He had been avoiding her mocking eyes, but now he looked up. She had stated her conditions without stating them. He could have the name of Peet’s hotel in the morning. If he would not let her stay the night, there would be no morning and no information on Peet.
His conscience sought Lisa, but Lisa had fled. There was nothing, no one, to be found by his conscience. There was only, behind his eyes, a wondrous intoxication and feeling of irresponsibility.
He sat blinking at Denise, her tangle of short black hair against the pillows, her beckoning green eyes and long white arms, one bulge of the lacy white brassiere entirely exposed by the fully opened front of her silk blouse, her thin short skirt caught on the edge of the divan drawn high to reveal the curve of her ample thighs. It was breathlessly wanton, and he wanted it. Senselessness rejecting sense, he wanted it now and completely.
He turned, reaching for tantalizing arms, and fell backward beside her in the pillows, embracing her, as her arms slid around him, drawing him against her, pressing him into her wriggling body.
“Denise,” he whispered, “we shouldn’t,” but his hand did not stop at her buttocks but moved around to the skirt drawn even higher until he touched the flesh of her thigh.
Her tongue kissed his ear. “Foolish big boy. Your talk is américain, but your hands are French.” She groaned, and her head fell back, and she groaned again. He put his lips to her throat, and her back arched and her breasts swelled against him. “Good, good, good,” she cried.
Suddenly, her hand groped for his below, gripped it, and pulled it away. She tried to sit up, and finally succeeded. She sat, eyes tightly shut, breathing hard.
Brennan was beside her, arm around her. “What is it, darling?”
“It is all right, everything is fine. We will make beautiful love. But not here. Only in bed. Your baby makes love only in bed. First, I must go to the bathroom to put in the—” She offered him her back. “Help me undress, big boy.”
Drunkenly Brennan sought for buttons. There were none. There was a knot at the waistline of the blouse. He picked at the knot and undid it, and the blouse fell apart in front She began squirming out of it, and he pulled it off.
“The brassiere,” she said.
Enjoying the sight of her broad shoulders and smooth back, he unhooked the brassiere. It dropped to her lap, and she tossed it aside.
She leaped to her feet and whirled about to face him, boldly cupping the undersides of her great naked breasts in her hands. “You will love me all night?”
“Denise—”
He reached to caress her breasts, but quickly, she covered the hardened brown nipples. “Not yet, not so fast, big boy, unless you have—” she cocked her head. “You have les préservatifs?”
�
��Les pré—oh—no, I don’t, I don’t have any.”
“Then I must be the one to take care. My purse. Hand me the purse.”
The liquor was high in his head now, and his blurring eyes searched for the purse. He yanked it off the end table beside the divan, and she took it from him. Quickly, she opened it, removed the white plastic case inside, then returned the open purse to him.
“Where is the bathroom?” she inquired.
Brennan stumbled to his feet and signaled her to follow. They went into the bedroom, and he pointed to the vestibule and bathroom beyond it. Gravely, she thanked him, laughingly evaded his effort to kiss her, and started for the vestibule.
About to enter it, she turned and indicated her purse, which Brennan still held in his hand. “It’s in there,” she said.
“What?”
“Your friend Peet’s hotel,” she said. “Tonight, he sent me a letter with also his spare hotel room key to use when I would come to him. The hotel name is on the disk. You can keep the key. Give it back to Peet when you see him. After tonight, I will not want to see him again, will I?” She smiled. “I will have you, won’t I?”
“Yes,” he said drunkenly.
She began to unbutton her skirt. “In five minutes, big boy.”
As she disappeared into the vestibule, he stared at the open leather purse. When he heard the bathroom door close, he sank down on the bed, ignoring its tremulous squeak, and clumsily riffled through the contents of the purse. He found the iron key and took it out, hypnotized by what was on the dangling key ring. He held the disk in his hand. It read: HOTEL CONTINENTAL, 3, RUE CASTIGLIONE, CHAMBRE 55, ETAGE I.
Joe Peet, at last.
Another door was opened distantly, and then it slammed shut hard. Brennan sat upright. It was the corridor door to Lisa’s room. He could hear her tread, and he realized that he was facing the two doors that connected their adjoining bedrooms. He leaped off his brass bed, wincing at its second prolonged squeak, and staggered forward to see if his side of the door was locked. He found it exactly as he had left it earlier for the maids, bolted fast. Pressing his ear against the double partition, he listened. The muffled noises were more eloquent than an outraged wife’s temper: Lisa was banging angrily about her bedroom.
The Plot Page 77