The French Kiss

by Peter Israel

  Well, I said to the Giulia on the way back to the hotel through the quiet streets, good luck to them all.

  Sure I said it. Sure, sure, and triple sure.

  But there was another element in the equation. Freddy Schwartz had mentioned it. He hadn’t been the only one. It had been on my mind that night in Montparnasse even after Grunen left, and it came again in the silent pre-dawn, and again when I woke up later on. Like I’ve said, not even all the skills of Josiane and her mates had ever managed to erase it altogether. So that I had no call to be surprised, and in fact I wasn’t. Only shook. The big shakes, the ones inside that you never get rid of entirely.

  I was, of all places, lying in my tub. It was a big tub, big enough for me and all my rubber ducks and sailboats, and the water came out so hot it all but peeled the enamel off the tiles. I’d ordered breakfast, and when the knock came at the door, I figured it for the chambermaid with the tray. And so it was. But she wasn’t alone, and the voice in the bathroom doorway spoke to me across a gulf of five years:

  “Hello, Cagey. Will you tell her to bring another pot of coffee?”

  The skin at the back of my neck prickled and tingled. I called out to the chambermaid. I heard her “Oui, Monsieur,” and then the door to my suite shut.

  I turned around.

  She was about as I’d pictured her in my mind, so much so it was uncanny. The last time I’d seen her, in fact, she’d been asleep in a bed, the sheet tangled over her, but I’d carried around another image of her, a pretty corny one at that but you live with what you live with. The image was of palm trees blowing in the wind. I saw her with her back into the wind, and the wind blowing her hair off the neck and spraying it forward around her face. I don’t know where it came from—there’s not much wind in L.A. and less in a hotel bathroom in St. Germain-des-Prés—but that’s what I saw again, in the doorway … for a split second.

  There wasn’t much to her. There never had been. The only difference I could detect were some lines around the eyes when she smiled. They did her no harm. She was wearing an off-white raincoat, unbuttoned, with the belt hanging loose on either side and her hands in her pockets.

  “Have I changed that much?” she said, one cheek lifting in a sheepish sort of grin.

  “No, Binty,” I answered. “Not at all, I’d say.”

  “You’re not doing so bad yourself,” she said, laughing. There was that too, the laugh that was pitched lower than her voice, husky, pleasing if you go for husky laughter.

  I had once.

  By this time I was standing up in the tub and reaching for a towel. I told her I’d be with her in a couple of minutes, that the chambermaid would bring her coffee, that we’d have breakfast together. But she stayed in the doorway, watching me while I shaved. She always had—that is to say, during that week or so of her life—and she knew, I suppose, that I’d remember, and that the memory would unnerve me whether I showed it or not. It did, and I didn’t.

  We had breakfast in the sitting room, I in my bathrobe and nothing else, Binty Dove in her raincoat with a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans underneath. Or rather: I had breakfast and Binty Dove watched me eat.

  Binty Dove said: “I suppose you’re surprised to see me, Cagey.”

  “Not really. I’d heard you were in Paris.”

  “Who told you?”

  “A little birdie.”

  “And do you know why I’ve come to see you?”

  “More or less. You want me to bail Al out of trouble again.”

  The laugh again, husky. “You don’t forget, do you.”

  “Sure I forget. Like just until this min …”

  “Or bear grudges either.”

  “No, of course not. No grudges. You did what you wanted to do. You saw how to do it and you did it.”

  “I did what I wanted to do?” she repeated, slowly. “And that’s all?”

  “That’s all. That’s all she wrote.”

  She looked me in the eye. “You lousy son of a bitch,” she said flatly.

  “Sure,” I said, “the guy who gets played for a sucker is always the lousy son of a bitch.”

  “You weren’t played for a sucker, Cagey. No, that’s not true. You’re right. You were, in a way. But I tried to explain. I wanted to explain.”

  “After you’d walked?”

  “I couldn’t face you. But I called you. I don’t know how many times I called.”

  “I got the message.”

  “But you didn’t call back, Cagey. I even wrote you a letter.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but you didn’t send me an invitation to the wedding.”

  “Did you read my letter?”

  “No,” I said. “I tore it up.”

  It was the truth. I remembered doing it.

  Her head dropped. She held her chin in her hand and her hair sprayed forward over her face. Maybe if we’d had it out five years before, I thought in passing, things would have been different. More likely, that was what she wanted me to think in passing. I had my doubts. A lot of things change in five years. So they say.

  “Look, Binty,” I said. “You didn’t come here to talk over old times. What’s on your mind?”

  She looked up at me, dry-eyed.

  “Believe what you want to, Cagey,” she said. Her head was at a slight angle, but she fixed me with her eyes. “Al and I are washed up. Finished. All she wrote, like you said. For quite a while, believe it or not, it’s been only business between us. Now that’s gone too.”

  She paused, as though waiting for a reaction.

  “Gee,” I said gallantly, “that’s a nasty break. But …”

  “How much do you know about what he’s been into lately?”

  “Well, enough to say it sounds like a sweet little racket. I understand you’re in it with him?”

  “I have been.”

  “As well as some other people he’s dummied for in the past?”

  “As well as some other people.”

  “Well,” I repeated, “a sweet little racket. And maybe not so little at that.”

  “No, not so little.”

  She told me about it then. Essentially it was what I’d already gotten from Freddy Schwartz. The product mix was of hot art and cool all right, but they had a system of laundering the former so that anyone who did start asking the wrong questions would have a hell of a time coming up with the right answers. Very sweet. Al Dove was the front man, he’d made it work at the Paris end, while Binty minded the store in Beverly Hills. To her credit, she didn’t fudge on the slimier parts. Nor did she brag when she laid their sales figures on me. She didn’t have to. It was more like the chairman of the board delivering the annual report to the faithful.

  No, I thought, not so little.

  “It sounds pretty great to me,” I said. “A sweet operation. So what’s gone wrong?”

  “Al has.”

  “How come? Don’t tell me he’s overextended himself again.”

  “In a way. You know Al. His expenses went sky high. Then he started dabbling on his own. Badly. It was the wrong time. He lost his shirt.”

  “Except that it wasn’t his shirt?” She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. “And then … don’t tell me, let me guess. He found Helen Raven? Or was it Helen Raven who found him?”

  “Al can be a very persuasive person. And Helen Raven’s a very misguided woman.”

  “Misguided? I’d have thought single-minded more than misguided.”

  “She had some paintings to sell.”

  “Which, the way I hear it, she hadn’t been able to sell before?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But Al saw a way of hyping them over here. The only trouble being there weren’t enough of them, right? Which is where Rillington must have come in. Whose idea was Rillington, Binty?”

  “Rillington was Helen Raven’s student. He’s also a very gifted young painter.”

  “I bet he is. Particularly with the right teacher. But what was in it for him? He didn’t do it
just for love, did he?”

  “Al offered to underwrite his career.”

  “Ahh. Al’s always been such a generous guy.”

  She scowled at me. It was one of her best expressions, eyebrows down, mouth tight with the lower lip jutting.

  “And you’re so fucking pure,” she said. “You’ve always been so fucking pure.”

  “Me? Pure?” It was my turn to laugh. “On the contrary, it all sounds very clever to me. You had a shortage of product so you found someone to produce it. The only person in the world who knew how many late Blumenstocks there were was Helen Raven herself. And with Helen Raven on hand to inspire the artist and authenticate the finished product, how could you go wrong? With, in addition, Cookie Lascault as the prospective buyer and her husband to grease the way?”

  She didn’t contradict me.

  Only it had gone wrong. And I was beginning to see why.

  “What happened, Binty? Did Al get greedy? How many Blumenstocks has Rillington turned out? Or was it simply that Al decided to go it alone?”

  She hesitated, biting down on that lower lip.

  “He’s got some property that belongs to us,” she said. “We want it back.”

  “Who’s us?” I said. Then, when she didn’t answer: “I bet you do. Including Helen Raven and Rillington?”

  She hesitated again. Then she nodded.

  “That’s right,” she said, “them too. Though not for the reasons you think. Al’s out, Cagey. We’re not going to let him take us all down with him. There’s more at stake. There’s the whole … well, call it what you want to.”

  I could see that too.

  “And so? Don’t tell me you want me to find him for you?”

  She nodded again.

  There was one of those pungent silences.

  “It’s not like before,” she said, averting her eyes. “I asked you to save his neck then. All right, maybe that was for my sake. But this time it’s strictly business. Whatever happens to Al is strictly his look-out. We’re ready to pay you anything you want, in dollars or francs, here or in the States. We’re ready to cut you in if that’s how you want it.” She smiled at me. “If you’re not too pure, that is.”

  This was the third time somebody had tried to hire me that week, and each time the price had gone up. It was very flattering. Probably I should retire more often.

  “One thing I’ve been trying to figure out,” I said, “is how Lascault got to me in the first place. I mean, I’ve been out of action a long time, ever since I got to Paris, yet he knew where to find me and all about my unsavory past. How well do you know Bernard Lascault?”

  “We’ve talked.”

  “About what to do about Al?”

  “Yes, that.”

  “And so you put him onto me, is that it?”

  “Yes I did. Maybe it’ll surprise you, Mister B. F. Cage, but I’ve managed to keep tabs on you.”

  She looked across at me. Unconsciously she ran her hand through the strands of hair to one side of her face. Then she grinned.

  I guess I was surprised.

  “All these years,” she added softly.

  I heard her inhale.

  I don’t know how to describe what happened next, or how it came about. Probably I shouldn’t try either. All I can say is that one minute I was sitting there in my bathrobe, drinking coffee, brainstorming away and fairly crackling with wit and acrimony, and the next we were both on our feet, and there wasn’t any breakfast table between us, much less half a decade. She came up to about level with my collarbone. That hadn’t changed either. I don’t think either of us said much of anything. Her head tilted back. She looked up at me with that shining female expression in her eyes and just a twinkle behind it that said I know that you know that we know that it’s all a bunch of shit.

  I took her by the scruff. I kissed her, in French.

  And so, to put it succinctly, a conversation that had started in the bathtub ended up in bed. And where it had been all wrong one minute, the next it was all right.

  Or almost.

  EIGHT

  Because there’s always a kicker to it, isn’t there?

  Or, to be exact, the absence of one?

  For if I’d had a lovely erection sprouting in the sitting room, by the time we got between the sheets, lo and behold, it was long gone. And not all the devices known to the advanced class at Masters & Johnson would bring it back.

  A disconcerting development, to say the least.

  “It’s like everything else,” said Binty, holding my bedraggled member in her hand and shaking her head, “they just don’t make ’em like they used to.”

  She bent over it, her hair in her face.

  “Don’t give it a second thought, little chap,” she told it. “He’s just worried about his reputation. Besides, we’ll get you in the end, just leave it to Binty.”

  She kissed it on the head. Then she pushed me back down, and snuggled into my shoulder, and started tracing plans on my chest.

  Because she was all full of plans, was Binty. She had it all worked out. The way she had it figured, the Blumenstock deal could still go through, once they got the paintings back. Cookie Lascault had proven a more formidable customer than anyone had expected—that was partly Al’s fault, he’d overplayed his hand—but Cookie Lascault could kick and connive all she wanted, she’d pay in the end. Bernard would see to it. Bernard knew how to bring her around. Besides, said Binty, the Blumenstock deal was only small potatoes compared to the overall operation. The overall operation was what counted. It had to go on. She and Bernard had been talking about that for some time. The setup was intact, and it was pretty near foolproof. A beautiful setup, said Binty. The only trouble was that, with Al out of the way, there was a beautiful vacuum right in the middle of it. The beautiful vacuum had to be filled. She’d already talked to Bernard about that too, Binty had. She had an idea of her own, a pretty crazy idea maybe but he’d had nothing against it in principle. She didn’t think the California people would either. She didn’t want me to say anything either way, not now, not yet. She knew I was too pure, but what was pure any more? She knew I was a loner, that I’d never worked for anybody else, but it wouldn’t be like working for anybody else. The partners were silent, they kept their hands off. She knew I was retired too, Binty did, but she thought that was ridiculous. Was I going to spend the rest of my life in a hotel suite and screwing around with a bunch of sexpots from the airlines? Besides, what did a bunch of sexpots from the airlines have on a red-blooded California girl like her?

  By this time she was back up on her knees, the sheet thrown back. She rocked forward onto her hands. Her head came up over mine, the hair spraying down along her cheeks. Her eyes fixed mine, and I could see the glitter of laughter in them.

  “Hooooo,” she said mockingly, “you really think I mean it, don’t you? Well don’t you? And why not? D’you think it’s so farfetched? You’d be good at it, we’d make a fortune! Only d’you think I’m going to spend the rest of my life pining away in California while you’re here? Man, you must be out of your cottonpickin’ mind!”

  She boxed me in the face with her titties, then when I snapped for them, danced them out of reach, like plums on a tree. She whooped and yelled and dared me to come play, until I grabbed her wrists and pulled her down on top of me, her body suddenly writhing and slithering in my arms. Pound for pound, she was as strong as they come. She bit and fought, she scratched and hollered and kneed, she didn’t give a damn about the overall operation, all she wanted was me, all she’d ever wanted was me, why didn’t I know that, why was I such a dummy? Until, exasperated, I rolled her, pinning her small body under mine, kissing her, because it wasn’t playtime any more but one thing leading to another, until she freed her hands and reached …

  … with, however, the same disconcerting result.

  “What is it, Cagey?” she said, panting for breath below me. “You’re not that out of practice, are you?”

  Then the skin crinkled ne
ar her eyes. She smiled up at me. It didn’t matter, she said, she’d still get me in the end. Then she pulled me back down to her and breathed in my ear. She licked. She licked some more, and around to my mouth, into it, out, back to the ear. A little later she started to giggle.

  “Well the least you can do, you big bastard,” she whispered, “is tell me what the B. F. stands for. You never would, ’member? I’ve decided there are only two things it could be: Benjamin Franklin and Big Fucking. So come on, tell me now, which one is it?”

  I started to laugh too. Yeah, I remembered. Then suddenly, without warning, I felt something letting go inside me while she held me fast, five years’ worth of it and maybe a lot more. It was like a ship sliding down the rails at a launching. I felt it go all right, with a whooosh, and nothing I could or wanted to do to stop it. Splash. And what do you know? When the answer came burgeoning up from where it had been stuck between our bodies, it was big as life and twice as ambitious.

  It was afternoon by the time we left the hotel. Afternoon, I should say, of the following day. In between we stopped the world. We sent out for Glenfiddich and champagne, oysters and chicken Kiev. We had strawberries flown in from California and baklava from a bakery I’d heard about in downtown Beirut. We ate it all in bed, in no particular order or position, although if you’ve never had oysters fed to you while you’re flat on your back, I suggest you try it the next chance you get. At some point Freddy Schwartz called. I told him to call back in the morning, and when he called back—it must have been the morning—I unplugged the phone, stuck it in an envelope, stamped it, and sent it to him by the hotel carrier pigeon. And you could say: Whoa, Boy! Wa-hoa there! You’ve been there before, remember? And sure, I remembered all right. Only the last time it had gone on for a week, give or take a few days, and it had ended with Binty saying to me (in bed, it’s true): My darling man, there’s something you’ve got to do for me. Whereas this time we put it on a strictly business basis.