It’s very liberating that I don’t have to worry about what you think of me. You didn’t know me before, you don’t know me outside this room. Our starting point each time is wherever I am.
I took a deep breath, knowing I was about to see Emily’s face change. ‘I’ve slept with someone else too.’
‘You did what?’
‘I wasn’t planning on telling you.’ And this was why. Emily looked like a detective who’s just stumbled across the tiny detail that tilts an investigation the other way. When it transpires that the victim is herself not blameless.
‘God, Alex, I was surprised about Philippe but this! Sorry,’ she said, holding up her hand, ‘I need a moment to take this in.’
When it was just Philippe screwing around, all was black and white. I liked it better that way.
‘You’d better tell me about it. Were you getting your own back?’
‘I was distraught about Philippe, but it wasn’t like that. It was just the one time. I mean, not that it makes a difference, of course. I shouldn’t have done it at all.’ Now I blew out hard. ‘You must think less of me, but it’s a huge relief to get it off my chest.’
‘Look, I can’t lie. This is a shock. But you must have felt so betrayed. What you did is understandable, in a way. He was doing the same. You’re only human.’
We’re all so pitifully human.
‘Who was it?’
‘Someone much younger. He came on to me. The attraction was very strong.’
She tilted her head, studying me. ‘How much younger?’
I winced. ‘He’s twenty-three. I know, I know!’
‘Bloody hell! Please tell me it wasn’t your intern?’ she said.
‘No, absolutely not!’ Wow. My best friend was ready to believe anything of me now. I moved on quickly from my indignation, given the further details I wasn’t prepared to reveal.
‘Is it someone you’re going to run into again?’
‘No. Well, I already have, unexpectedly. He knows I think it was a mistake. You’re always saying I overthink everything. Not this time I didn’t.’
‘So it’s not going any further?’
‘No, definitely not. I’ve told him so. I could hardly complain about Philippe if I was doing it too.’ My lapse was superseded by my resolve, which had a satisfyingly moral feel, if only because it placed me above Philippe, who kept going back for more.
‘That’s just as well. Because whatever’s wrong with your marriage both of you having affairs isn’t going to fix it. This really isn’t like you.’
The times I’ve heard that. Maybe because she was reassured that I wasn’t about to destroy my entire life, Emily gave in to curiosity, lowering her voice with a guilty expression.
‘So, what was it like doing it with someone so young? I’d be terrified of them seeing my body. You’re going to tell me he’s unbelievably gorgeous, aren’t you?’
‘That’s part of the problem. He really is. He made me feel so good about myself. It was the best sex ever, totally off the charts. Unfortunately!’ We were both laughing helplessly now. ‘Payback time for all your stories,’ I said. ‘Bet you never thought that would happen.’ Emily was into sex way before me and she never used to hold back on the detail. One way and another, I had a complex about it before I got started.
‘I’m even more worried now. I mean, if it was that good…’
‘It was better.’
Now Emily gave me a stern look. ‘Listen, I’m pleased for you. Oh dear, that sounds awful! But I can tell you’re tempted to do it again – if you could see the look on your face.’ My gaze cut away to the table. ‘But you can’t! You and Philippe will get through this somehow. I’ve seen how things have changed since you got together – you have to try and talk things over, go to counselling if you need to. You’d be risking so much compared to this kid. He’s only twenty-three, for crying out loud, all he wants is a good shag! This is just a game to him.’
That’s what I thought, at the very beginning. But when I recalled what passed between Jean-Luc and me after the launch, I almost argued back. Emily was wrong about something else too. The part where she said I had the most to lose.
Chapter Twenty Seven
It was an unknown number but I knew it was Jean-Luc. And knowing he could only have got mine from Geneviève’s phone I could hardly bring myself to read the message, looking all around me even though I was alone in the apartment.
It would have been best for him not to contact me at all, although I hadn’t specifically asked him not to. Strange as it may be for someone in my line of work, I’ve always been wary of words. The written kind can leave a trail or fall into the wrong hands. And spoken words are live ammo that can damage things between people, shrapnel lodging in the memory with the potential to break loose. Don’t you call me Mom.
Not that thoughts can’t be as lethal, but if they remain thoughts and you can keep the lid on, you’re only harming yourself. Well, the lid’s off now.
Must see you, only to talk. JL.
Oh, please, as if I was the one born yesterday! I stared at the solitary speech bubble. The only sensible option was to press delete and make like I’d never received it. My finger hovered over the screen (I wasn’t of the thumb generation); I was standing in the same spot where I’d spied on Philippe, scrolling through his exchanges with Nico. If I replied to Jean-Luc it would become a conversation like theirs, and about what, exactly? I’d said what I had to say, or rather, all I could. I wasn’t in a position to go sending messages like I want you.
Jean-Luc looked tired at the launch, as Geneviève mentioned, and older than before. I’d put that down to the smarter clothes he was wearing that night: black jeans, linen jacket, a blue shirt open at the neck. But what if it wasn’t just a line that he’d been lying awake thinking about me? He was on the verge of tears when I told him I had no intention of sleeping with him again. I imagined a terribly French star-crossed love story in which I was no more than a bit part: maybe he’d just been ditched by the girl of his dreams in LA and had returned to Paris broken-hearted. The romp with me was supposed to get it out of his system but it turned out more complicated; he didn’t just like the taste of my mouth, my breasts, my sexe, he liked me. It wasn’t for long but we did talk first, about art and monasteries! He liked my body just fine but it couldn’t realistically be the main attraction for someone his age who’d ‘had a lot of girls’. Maybe he did need someone to talk to. Vanessa had confided in me.
I might have a gift with younger people I never guessed at. Or maybe individuals who were a bit unbalanced sensed that we had something in common.
Jean-Luc would be staring at his phone, waiting for a reply. When I tried to picture his surroundings it brought home to me how little I knew about him. What did he do all day apart from think about me? When he said that, I believed it. If I didn’t answer he might feel I’d been using him for sex. Unwitnessed as I was, my face caught fire. If there was something serious on his mind it was better that he spoke with me than end up telling anyone else what had happened. I’m foolish enough to do stupid things but not enough to be unaware of the consequences. The idea of me as a predator was ridiculous but I was well aware how this might look. The one combination that wasn’t big in Paris was the older woman and the much younger man. Go figure. And where Jean-Luc and I were concerned that wasn’t the worst thing about it.
Once I crossed that line between respectability and this new incomprehensible place, I couldn’t win. My feelings were as strong as Victor Hugo’s when he wrote those beautiful lines to his fiancée, Adèle; as real as Philippe’s when he copied them out for me to read on a train. But it wasn’t romantic, poetic love consuming me to the point that I could barely function.
Philippe had shown no sign whatsoever of being in the throes of passion or crisis. In fact, it was his disconcertingly normal behaviour that allowed me to spend so long in denial. If he really thought cheating on me was no big deal then I was wrong about what we had together.
Maybe I’d been wrong about everything all along. It wasn’t as if I could explain my detour out of character. How was it possible to care about my marriage and be so powerfully attracted to another man? My best friend had warned me not to do this, not because she judged me but because she could see better than me where it was headed.
I had to find the courage to talk to Philippe. As Emily said, reciprocal infidelity wouldn’t solve anything. At one point in my attempts to exonerate myself I even blamed Christine for planting the idea in my subconscious. Nothing to stop you doing the same.
Except that it wasn’t the same – I can’t seem to do anything the easy way. If it was revenge I wanted or sex on the side I could have gone to a bar in an unfamiliar neighbourhood and responded to a stranger’s advances – I got those looks sometimes. He’d fuck me several ways, I’d forget my old hang-ups and suck him off, let him come on my face if that’s what he wanted. Afterward, I’d dress silently in his apartment or hotel room and steal away without him ever asking my name. Tawdry. Dirty. Just like me and Jean-Luc, in theory.
However hard it proved – and I never doubted it would be – I had to get over this episode with him before I could face Philippe. If I wanted our old life back, I had to let these fantasies go and start behaving like my old self. Too bad if it wasn’t the real me. I didn’t know myself the way you’re supposed to by forty, and if this was how it felt, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
A good twenty minutes had passed since Jean-Luc texted me. I decided it was best to get it over with. OK, now. Where? I replied.
Our apartment was a generous size, a hundred and twenty square metres in Paris-speak. Spacious until it comes to pacing, that is. By the time I had circled the living room and hallway five times it felt more like the maid’s room up in the attic. I considered going up there – those confines had become intimately associated with this whole mess. But I couldn’t risk it. There might not be a signal and what’s more, I didn’t have the energy. That afternoon I was seeing the author of our Baudelaire title. It was a routine meeting but this was my career, which suddenly seemed less precarious than the rest of my life, the one thing that anchored me. No doubt the great poet would have found my scruples comically tame, what with his laudanum addiction and predilections for debauchery and vice. They had, however, killed him.
Chapter Twenty Eight
When Jean-Luc’s second text arrived I couldn’t help thinking of sandy-haired Daniel from the Jardin du Luxembourg, he of the conveniently located love nest. Inexplicably, the rendezvous Jean-Luc had given me was on the western edge of the 19th arrondissement. Still, it was vastly preferable to anywhere I risked bumping into Geneviève. Paris isn’t very big to start with and a small world gets smaller when you have something to hide.
On the Metro a young woman wearing vertiginous nude stilettos and three clashing shades of pink was conducting a furious argument, barking into her phone in an Eastern European language, letting go of the chrome pole to slice through the air. I left the train in a wave of people heading one way, to be replaced by another, everyone struggling with cases and strollers, feeling an urgent need to be somewhere we were not. Where were we all going? Back to work, on vacation, shopping. It was too late for lunch. To meet a lover: to kiss them passionately and not care who was watching, to tell them it was over and that it wasn’t them.
That’s how it had felt with Jean-Luc after the launch. I wasn’t just saying it was a mistake and I couldn’t do it again. It felt like I was telling him it was over. Why had I agreed to see him when there was nothing else to say? I could only hope I’d wake up and pull myself together.
I changed lines and emerged at Stalingrad, the area itself a battleground in its chaos and ugliness, with traffic pouring in from every angle. It was also swarming with people, some heading for the canalside beach that the City set up, along with the main one on the banks of the Seine, for those who didn’t have the means or sense to leave for the summer.
The address Jean-Luc had given me was off the rue d’Aubervilliers, close to the railroad leading out of the city to the northeast. This was a very different Paris from the beaux quartiers I knew or even the nearby Canal Saint-Martin, where I used to take solitary Sunday afternoon walks before it became a mecca for hipsters. The place I was looking for now was next to a kebab joint frequented by scowling men who were leaning against the wall smoking and staring at me. Outside someone had dumped an ancient bathtub and toilet with the word merde scrawled across the lid. The doors were open and a young man greeted me as he wheeled a moped with a pizza delivery box out onto the street. A fusion of samba and French rap coming from different apartments filled the neglected courtyard, accompanying another heated discussion in a language I assumed was Arabic. As I searched for the right staircase, two contractors dressed in dusty work gear emerged from one of the lobbies hauling the cracked sink which would complete the set on the sidewalk. They too stared at me, standing there with my briefcase.
I needed to go where they’d come from, they told me, right to the top. It was like being back on the servants’ staircase in my building but even more treacherous. After my running accident I was still nervous and had no choice but to grab the filthy banister as I went up, dirt ingraining my palm. The wooden stairs were worn diagonal on the lower floors. On the third I passed an apartment which had been completely gutted, with bare electric cables dangling from exposed beams. Nothing about the neighbourhood or the building made me want to stick around.
‘You came.’ Jean-Luc hadn’t shaved in days, reminding me of the night he showed up in that restaurant, eclipsing a roomful of people who had to try. When he pushed the hair out of his eyes I had to turn away like someone was shining a flashlight in my face. He looked more devastating every single time.
Who knows how long we might have stood there, drinking each other in.
‘Can I come in?’ He stood aside and I skirted past to avoid any physical contact although as I’d already found out, with him it didn’t have to be sex to drag me in deeper.
‘Do you live here? It’s quite a contrast to the Seventh.’
He gave a sniff of contempt. ‘I lasted a week at my parents’. It’s so dead round there – and then there’s my mother, she’s always preferred her fantasy version of me. This belongs to my friend László. Do you smoke?’ he said.
I hoped he was talking about tobacco because there was a distinct aroma of weed in the air. When Jean-Luc offered me a light, I took the book of matches and did it myself to dispel the reminder of Philippe the evening Vanessa arrived. ‘I can’t stay, I have a meeting this afternoon.’
Hearing my tone, I belatedly hit on a plan: to substitute Jean-Luc’s fantasy version with the real me, accentuated for effect. Brusque and frosty, borderline rude. Nobody could find that sexy.
And anyway, who asks their lover over without picking up their dirty laundry? The deep blue shirt he’d worn to the launch was lying on the floor with several pairs of socks and boxer shorts. My resolve evaporated at the memory of his sculpted backside as I’d watched him dress: in the flesh, skintight black cotton, faded denim.
Gosh, it was hot in this place.
It was a studio, with dishes piled in the sink and a wall of floor-to-ceiling bookcases eating into the space. The bed was made up with fresh white sheets I bet he’d brought from the family home. It wouldn’t do to stare at it but nor could I trust myself to look at him for more than a second at a time.
He didn’t speak and I didn’t dare ask what he’d wanted to say. We’d started with passionate, graduated to tender and now it was plain awkward, worse than ever because this time I’d chosen to come here. It was a mistake. Another one, but still reversible: all I had to do was walk back out the door. A door that no longer existed. So much for the hope that seeing him would make me snap out of it. That had only worked in part: I was shocked and ashamed. I was also still here.
‘It was me who started this and I take responsibility,’ Jean-Luc said, out of nowhere. ‘I’m sorry
you regret it.’
Oh, God help me, he’d been in therapy. I held up my hand, my heart clanging with indignation at the suggestion that anything had been done to me. It wasn’t a seduction of one by the other. I was damned if anyone was going to absolve me of my half share.
‘As I recall, we both got pretty carried away,’ I said. ‘Neither one of us was doing anything against our will.’ By now we’d spent more time discussing it than doing it. ‘Let’s just agree to keep it to ourselves. Then we can both move on.’
So much for telling Philippe. It wasn’t strictly necessary.
Jean-Luc’s eyes lanced me. ‘But I don’t want to move on,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think you do either.’ I didn’t have to say anything for him to know he’d hit home. ‘You wouldn’t be here if that’s how you felt. If you’d ignored my message or told me to get lost I would have respected that. You don’t feel guilty because you wish we hadn’t slept together. You feel guilty because it’s what you want and you are scared.’
I put my bag and briefcase down on the floor and rubbed at the muscles in my neck and shoulders. Sometimes it’s only when the weight is lifted that you feel the pain. And the fear. He wasn’t wrong about that. He wasn’t wrong about any of it.
There was no point avoiding his eyes when he seemed able to see right into my head. I felt my grip loosen as I surrendered to that mesmerising green-blue and the relief of not fighting any more. And where my head went, my body was quick to follow. He’d sat down on the other side of the room but it was as if he were right next to me, his breath warm and inviting on my cheek, my collarbone. The wanting started small and rippled right through me.
‘It’s good to be scared,’ he said. ‘Fear makes you feel like you’re really alive.’
Until now it had only ever had the opposite effect on me.
Paris Mon Amour Page 12