by Rozsa Gaston
“So where are we going for dinner?” I asked.
“Dinner is for later,” he said mischievously. “Let’s be here now.”
I nodded. There was nowhere I’d rather be. Sitting back, I pretended to survey the passersby in the street. At the same time, I watched him out of the corner of my eye.
“When’s your performance?” he asked after a minute. “At that place you mentioned – The Blue Cactus?”
“I thought you wanted to be here now,” I teased. Had I told him about my upcoming gig? Then, I remembered. It had been in the kitchen while we’d sipped white Rhine wine at the party.
“I do, but I also want to be there when you’re singing or whatever it is you do.”
“Well, it’s a week from tomorrow. I start at eight, finish around midnight.” It seemed like a year from whenever. My mind hadn’t been on music since the previous Tuesday afternoon when he’d called.
“I’ll drop by.” His voice was low, intimate. The arrogant, self-dramatizing man I’d met at the party was nowhere in sight.
“That’d be great. It’s near here. We can walk by it later.”
Our conversation progressed easily. Arnaud was articulate, inquisitive, and one hundred per cent on fire. When he emphasized a point, his broad forehead bulged out as if synapses firing inside his brain were trying to punch their way through to the outside. I couldn’t decide which I was more attracted to – his brain or the way he looked when he was using it.
Our drinks finished, we strolled out onto Rue de la Roquette, Bastille’s most fashionable thoroughfare, taking in the sights and smells of early evening. Young, stylish Parisians and less-well-dressed tourists filled its sidewalks, a heady excitement in the air at the onset of a summer weekend.
We turned down another side street. In a minute, we came upon a small restaurant, the name Agadir hand painted over its entryway. Exotic smells drifted from its interior along with a slim, olive-skinned man with a full head of dark, wiry hair. He ushered us inside and out a side door to a table in the garden. Amber light streamed from lanterns, bathing the diners in a golden glow.
Arnaud sat next to me, instead of across the table. It was a very European thing to do. We’d be able to breathe each other in as we took each other’s measure.
He ordered a carafe of sangria. Then, we sat back and surveyed the passersby. Be here now, he’d suggested. It was exactly the reason I’d left New York for Paris. Being here now never seemed quite enough in New York. In Paris, it did.
The waiter came to take our order. We both chose lamb tagine, a thick Moroccan stew served with couscous. While we waited, we sipped sangria. I was tempted to take out the pieces of orange, lime, and lemon with my fingers and suck on them, but my New England side counseled against it. Best to behave in a ladylike fashion on a first date.
Our dishes arrived in ceramic casserole pots with conical tops, also known as tagines. Inside, thick chunks of lamb nestled in a fragrant sauce side by side with apricots, golden raisins and almonds.
I dug into the stew. Soon, I was scraping the bottom of my casserole dish.
“I like the way you eat,” Arnaud commented.
“What do you mean?” I tried not to blush. I had always been a good eater, especially when stimulated by both good food and company. Nothing ever put me off food.
“I mean you’re not afraid to eat,” he explained.
“It was delicious. Why would I be afraid to eat?”
“Some women just pick at lettuce leaves when they eat,” Arnaud replied. “Or have one bite of something and that’s it.”
“I try doing that when I’m dieting, but it never works,” I confessed.
No matter how much I wanted to give him the impression I was a larger, blonder version of Audrey Hepburn, it was as if I’d taken truth serum that evening. Authentic statements about my less-than-perfect self kept tumbling out of my mouth. Now, he knew I was both unsure of myself as a performer and possessed an appetite like a horse.
“Don’t diet. You don’t need to,” he said with conviction.
Music to my ears. This man would light a candle to the Venus de Milo, not a stick-figure Giacometti. With deep contentment, I took a long sip of sangria. Then, I fished an orange slice out of my glass and sucked on it.
Despite my newfound pride in my hearty appetite, when the waiter came to ask about dessert, I declined, as did Arnaud. A minute later, the bill arrived, and I reached for my bag.
“My invitation,” Arnaud grabbed my arm, pulling it back to the table.
“Thank you.” I said, remembering my grandmother’s advice to let a man pay if I wanted him to pursue me. He wouldn’t be able to chase me if I met him halfway, would he? And I didn’t want him to think he’d been relegated to buddy status. Au contraire.
“Let me take you somewhere I haven’t been for a long time.”
“Why haven’t you been there in a long time?” I asked as we rose. My mind raced at the challenge of asking him questions as clearly and precisely formed as the ones he asked me.
“I wasn’t with the right person.”
Now, he was.
I took in his panther-like walk as we exited the restaurant. Like a hunter, his steps were silent, almost stealthy. I imagined him sneaking up on a woman in a dark alley, embracing her from behind. Trying not to allow my mind to wander down that alley, I failed gloriously.
We proceeded back to the boulevard and, after a few blocks turned down another side street even narrower than the one where the couscous restaurant was located. Ancient stone buildings leaned over the cobbled street, askew, their foundations warped with time. I was tantalized to think of the scenes they’d stood before over centuries. Could a European appreciate the awe struck in an American’s imagination confronted by a building over five centuries old? For once, I felt lucky to be from the New World, so acutely appreciative of what the Old World offered.
Finally, Arnaud stopped before a hole-in-the-wall place with English lettering over the canopy. Tequila Bar was all it said.
Tequila was my downfall. Despite being a strong drinker, genetically pre-disposed on both the Hungarian and Anglo-Saxon side, I had to draw the line at tequila. It was the Mexican version of absinthe, the drink that proved the downfall of many French artists and intellectuals in the late nineteenth century. Both were spirits with hallucinogenic properties.
“Come on,” Arnaud encouraged me.
“I don’t do well with tequila,” I demurred.
“Let’s have one shot, then we’ll go.” He sounded less like a Frenchman by the second. I’d never met any French person who did tequila shots.
“How about if I just get some mineral water or a coffee?”
“One shot. That’s all.” This time, his voice was a whisper, his eyes veiled like storm clouds.
God knew how much more intriguing Arnaud de Saint Cyr would become after a shot of tequila found its way to the pit of my stomach.
Entering through silky, floor-to-ceiling curtains, we sat on the only two unoccupied stools at a miniscule bar. Exotic, trance-like music played from the P.A. system. Instead of overhead lighting, small lamps with fringed shades gave off a dim, golden glow. Arnaud had become Apollo at ease against the near-black backdrop of the room.
The bartender approached, and Arnaud held up two fingers. In a minute, two shot glasses appeared in front of us. The bartender filled them slowly with a clear liquid. Arnaud picked up his.
“Here’s to what?”
The ball was in my court.
“Here’s to secrets,” I said.
“And?” He gazed into my eyes, his own clear, direct, intelligent.
“And?” I parried. I wanted to know what his ‘and’ was, since I already knew mine.
“Here’s to uncovering them,” he finished.
We touched glasses, and the tequila went down, raw and fiery, speeding our way toward the great unknown.
An hour later, we were outside, walking toward the cathedral of Notre Dame. Arnaud had be
en as good as his word, not pressing me to take a second shot. Instead, we’d had an espresso, accompanied by lots of water – neither had done anything to put out the fire lit deep in my stomach.
We turned into a side street off Notre Dame that I remembered from French classes at the Sorbonne. The classes had been held in a building on a narrow lane dating from the Middle Ages; now seemed a good time to wander down it again.
I walked ahead, keenly aware of his presence a few paces behind. He would be absorbing the ancientness of the thick-walled buildings on either side, the cobbled stones under our feet millions of souls had walked over through at least fifteen centuries. But his eyes would be on the hourglass curve of my body in the black and white dress. Unlike Eurydice, I was sure my Orpheus followed.
I slowed my pace, as the taps of his footsteps rang louder. Warning, warning. Red code alert. Surrender is nigh.
His hands closed upon my upper arms – his mouth on the back of my neck. Never before had I been kissed by a man for the first time from behind. I was electrified. His mouth sucked at my neck until I moaned.
A mouse in the talons of a hawk, I sank back into him. His arm came around the front of my neck as the other slid around my waist. I struggled to face him, but he held me in a vise-like grip.
Again I moaned, locked in his embrace. We were one of countless couples over the past fifteen hundred years who had passed down this ancient street. Heloise and Abelard had clung to each other here in the dead of an inky black summer night some eight hundred years earlier. Arnaud and I had become the couple under the bridge I’d stumbled across ten years earlier.
He turned me to him, his mouth meeting mine. His tasted warm and dry, his fresh virility cutting through any trace of tequila aftertaste. Beneath my fingers, tight sinewy cords marbled the broad expanse between his shoulder blades.
His hands slid down my shoulders and found their way to my waist. There, they squeezed me hard, then traced the outward swell of my hips and circled around to my back. The sharp intake of his breath told me he was mine, at least for the moment.
My hands were as fascinated to explore his torso as his were mine. I had never gotten this close to a man with both intelligence and an athlete’s body. My tastes in men ran to the exotic, in direct contradiction to my desire for a close meeting of minds. Arnaud offered both.
The silent street shrouded us, muffling all but the pounding of our hearts – a bass accompaniment to our moans and sighs.
Finally, we broke apart, resuming our walk down the winding, narrow street, as if nothing had changed. But everything had.
At the end of the street, just before we stepped onto the large square in front of Notre Dame, Arnaud pinned me to the wall. With a hand to either side of my neck, he kissed me hard and then pulled at my lower lip with his teeth. I could feel it swell almost instantly. Henri and Marceline would know how our date had gone the minute they laid eyes on me.
Grabbing his longish, thick hair at the base of his neck, I pulled slowly. As his head went back, I slid my tongue along his well-defined jaw to his ear. Then, I nuzzled his earlobe.
He moaned.
Gently, I bit.
He moaned louder.
Releasing him, I stepped out onto the square into a beam of light from the streetlamp.
Finally, I saw his face. A wondrous expression shone on it. The thought that I had put it there empowered me.
“Want to walk down to the river?” he asked.
I nodded. Anywhere would be fine. The river divine.
In less than ten minutes, we were there. After midnight, the Seine took on a romance largely missing from its brownish-hued daytime aspect. We slipped down the steps of a massive stone staircase to the side of the black, shining water bathed in moonlight.
A reverence quieted our seething thoughts. I was enmeshed in a midsummer night’s dream with no desire to break the spell. Instead of walking hand in hand, we swung our arms until we came upon an empty bench, where Arnaud sat, pulling me onto his lap. I faced the river, mesmerized by the coolness of the breeze in contrast to the warmth of Arnaud’s chest against my back. The night spoke to me.
“Don’t get too close,” whispered the breeze from the Seine.
“Guard your heart,” the leaves on the tree above the bench rustled.
“Less is more,” the inky sky counseled overhead.
My desire was taking a different path with Arnaud than it had with other men. With him, I would need to retain my independence if I wanted to maintain power in whatever transpired between us. I leaned back against him, my eyes on the river, then the sky, until they closed in an ecstasy of sensation as his hands wandered up my torso, circling my breasts, then closing on them, squeezing hard.
Careful, Ava. Slow down, I told myself. Enmeshing my fingers in each of his, I brought one hand to my throat, the other to my thigh. His fingers were surprisingly fine, long, and well-shaped. There was something wild and savage about him that provoked me. His squeezes weren’t gentle, they were shocking, as were his bites on my neck and lower lip.
I shivered. Something subversive simmered just below the surface of this man. I was dying to discover more. But I would have to play lion-tamer if I didn’t wish to be eaten alive by whatever I found.
“Are you cold?” he asked, wrapping his arms tighter around me.
“No.” I shook my head.
“What do you need?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“What do you want?”
A more interesting question.
“Everything,” I replied. Might as well set up his expectations now. He would be both demanding and generous. I had not yet learned how to ask for what I wanted from a man. With him, I vowed I would.
He laughed softly. Then, his lips found a place behind my ear and under my hair. After his lips, his teeth.
“Ahh,” I exhaled.
“Ça te plaît? That pleases you?”
“Yes.” The lock of his hair still in my hand, I pulled hard. “Do you like that?”
“Yesss.” His response came out like a hiss. In the Garden of Eden, we frolicked with the serpent. Would he hold it against me if I played tough with him? Yes, most likely. But there was no other way to play with Arnaud de Saint Cyr. If I didn’t play tough, I’d be played. Or dangled and discarded. I’d dated good-looking, arrogant men before. It was much more complicated than dating average ones. One had to be meaner to them than one wished to be. Otherwise, they’d be mean to you. This one had the added advantage of being a Parisian. The only way to handle the situation was to dazzle him with my American freshness and charm. Coming from Manhattan increased my advantage times ten. I would work it.
Eons later, we rose from the bench and made our way back to Place de la Bastille. In random alleyways and at dark street corners, we took turns pushing each other up against walls, kissing deeply, then backing off without a word. It was as if we both understood perfectly the game we played.
As we approached Place de la Bastille, streaks of pale pink shot through the eastern sky. Delivery trucks rumbled past, and men in orange or royal blue workmen’s uniforms appeared on the sidewalks. We stopped into a working-class café to toast the dawn with big cups of coffee with steamed milk. As we stood at the counter, I took pleasure in the discretion of the workmen, who barely glanced our way. Paris was a big, sophisticated city – just like New York or Tokyo. Some people began their day at five A.M. Others ended their evening of the night before. Paris was large enough to accommodate both, with no censure attached.
“Are you around this weekend?”
I nodded.
“I’ll call you.”
I sipped my coffee to hide my smile.
Leaving the café, we continued our walk up the Boulevard de la Bastille. It was light enough to read a newspaper by now, shops and cafés beginning to open here and there.
“You don’t need to see me home,” I told him as the metro entrance loomed into view.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll call you this evening,” he said.
My eyes slit into cat eyes as I nodded then turned homeward. I didn’t doubt him for an instant.
At my door, I let myself in as quietly as a jewel thief, then fell into bed. It was shortly after noon when I awakened. Marceline and Henri had already gone out.
The day passed in a blur. Mid-afternoon, Marceline returned in an exceptional mood, unloading packages of baby equipment in the living room, ordering Henri to assemble various items. Around seven that evening, the phone rang. Marceline’s eyes passed over my still bee-stung lips as she handed me the receiver.
“How’re you feeling?” Arnaud’s voice was low, intimate.
“I’m great. How was your day?”
“It just got started. Do you want to get together this evening?”
Heat flooded through me at his suggestion. I did, but I didn’t. I didn’t know him well enough to proceed so quickly.
“I can’t. I’ve got plans.” I had none, other than a master plan to keep Arnaud on the hook, and not reel it in too fast. It would end in disaster if I did. I’d known that sort of thing since fifth grade on, not that I’d always been good at it.
“Are you free tomorrow evening?”
“What do you have in mind?” Yes, yes, and yes, but it never hurt to make a guy work.
“Dining outdoors on as many oysters as you can eat.”
“Washed down with?”
“Pinot Gris. Or a good Sauvignon Blanc.”
“Umm. I’m tempted.” Oysters, an aphrodisiac. Was I ready for this?
“And the answer is?”
“Pourquoi pas, Monsieur?”
“Très bien, Mademoiselle. I’ll pick you up at seven. What’s your address?”
“Why don’t we meet at café de la Bastille again?”
“Not ready for me to meet your family yet?”