That left the four of us with nothing to do but get to know each other. Laraine, her executive secretary, me and one of Paris’ rising whores on the subterranean StDenis human stock exchange, commodities division, where day-trading in harlotry was booming, in fact one of the few core businesses in France which hadn`t yet been submerged, or merged into an American conglomerate, because the French touch just had a twist to it that not even the franchisers could figure out. And, now Laraine’s semi-quizzical amused glance, as if asking, Franck, what the fuck are you doing with this trollop at your side? She looks like Jeanne Moreau in one of those cheapo film noir things you were always plaguing me with while I was recuperating from my last bout of cosmetic surgery in the solarium of my Boca Raton condo. And, what the fuck are those rings doing on your fingers, Franck? Have you really gone wacko this time? And that hat? Are you Alain Delon in The Samurai? Are you Peter Coyote in Bitter Moon? I am not cutting any more deals with you, Franck, until you come clean and tell me what the fuck is going on here. Her bulging, blue friendly eyes, and straight ahead ruthless New York facelift were all shouting it louder than any pronunciamento ever could. But, all that is coming out of her mouth is:
“Delighted to meet you, Ms. Sheba.”
She articulated the name as if it were an earthenware tajine being discounted at a souk, or the name of a lost toy Pekinese scheduled to premiere in the spring dog show. Sheba smiled.
“I have never encountered an American woman. Of course, I have heard a lot about them. From American men.”
“New York, honey. Nowhere further from America on this planet.”
They scrutinized each other for a moment.
“Sheba, you may be wondering where Franck and I fit in, so to speak. Let me reassure you. It’s always been strictly business. Although, for a time, Franck did fuck me in my marital bedroom while my ex romped in the rec room with his new boyfriends. Right, Franck?”
Laraine swivelled a hundred and eight y degrees, stabbed with the memory of something.
“Where the hell is my goddam cheese!!”
Sheba emitted a low whistle of appreciation. America one. Gaul zero.
“Now, Franck, if you don’t mind me getting to the point.”
“Be my guest, Laraine.” “You recall the Channel First people, Franck, don’t you?”
“Chanel, chanel, are we talking perfumes and the like here?”
“Speaking of fucking, Franck, you fucked me roundly on that file.”
“Correction, Laraine. They asked me what I thought of your accountant.”
“Stanley Kirsk is no worse than any other Manhattan Jew, Franck. Or for that matter, any Lebanese Christian, or Amsterdam diamond dealer, or anybody who’s any good at business. And, you torpedoed him, Franck. Him, and my own deal. Now, can you assist me on this IPO or not, but make up your mind. And quit harassing me with your goddam conflict of interest. Nobody even knows what it means anymore. By the way, do you mind if I tape this conversation? Just so there’s no confusion on the terms of any agreement. We’ve got the money, but I want this to work this time. Which it can, if you don’t go into sabotage mode.”
Laraine was Big Apple brassy with a nose for cash and connections, which was common enough, but she enjoyed spreading the wealth, and that made her special enough for me, and good to stay close to. Laraine knew everybody from Trump to Robert Dole to the junk bond dealers, and from the sounds of the preliminary sketches of her business proposal, this information had come right from the inner circle. In fact, it had insider scam written all over it. A no-brainer, hit-and-run job on the NASDAQ , and an easy skim of illicit profits before the man in the street got in and lost his hard-earned cash.
The setting was fitting enough. Sunday afternoon in the Flore. Spielberg, Quincy Jones and their wives at the next table. Inès de la Fressange f luttering around. Looking for a new sponsor or a new boyfriend. Bohringer ostentatiously lounging his feet on the table in front of him. Gainsbourg weaving his way down St-Germain, providing ringside seats to a preview of his upcoming funeral. Even from inside the Flore, you could see his breath streaking the air like a piece of cheap streamer graffiti. He was carrying a Mexican hairless under his left arm, and escorting a weedy-looking, middle-aged 60s leftover with oversized, capped teeth. But, as far as Laraine was concerned, I was the only celebrity in attendance. She was giving me the twice-over, like a plaintiff ’s lawyer in an asbestos litigation trial, occasionally tilting her head in Sheba’s direction with a convincing “why should being fucked by Franck prevent us from being friends” smile, then back to riveting me with relentless, head-shaking cruelt y. Sheba stood up.
“Please excuse me, I have to telephone someone.” Laraine ordered more coffee.
“So, fill me in, Laraine. What’s the schtick?”
She shook her head, stamped out her cigarette.
“Not quite your style, is she Franck?”
“Just to keep in touch. French culture, ear to the ground and all that.”
“Aren’t you reversing the usual roles here, Franck?”
“Say what, Laraine? You’re not serious. You think some little piece of French poontang is going to fool old Franck Robinson?”
“You never leave people indifferent, Franck. I’ll give you that. There’s talk in the city about Franck Robinson.”
“Well, it’s nice to hear people still remember me.”
“The talk is don’t go anywhere near Franck Robinson, unless you want the Securities Commission and fraud squad down your throats.”
“That’s ridiculous. I haven’t done more than six IPOs in my life. Excluding immigration files of course.” “Franck, you like risks, but this looks kamikaze to me. She looks like dotcoms, circa 1998. Hot as hell and ready to fizzle. A short sell, Franck, and you know it.”
“How’s Colbert, Laraine? Has he found himself ?” “Fuck off, Franck. You know damn well Cuthbert and I are divorced. I sicked Howard Rosenbaum on him. Cuthbert is a bottom, Franck, so I thought I’d get someone to carve him out a second asshole. A going away present. So to speak.”
“Must have been a blow to him. No pun intended. Divorce always very painful. Many never recover from the experience.”
Laraine flashed her post-op facelift smile.
“Don’t try and pass that hubris off on me, Robinson.
I’m more than surviving. I have a low investment-high return gig that the Rothschilds and the Chase Manhattan people are losing sleep over, but take the little piece of cunt, Franck, see what I care. I mean, Franck, I’m sure this time will be different. Oh, and here’s Sheba, how did your phone call go. Everything settled?”
It was a great meal. The food was good. The Veuve Clicquot cost triple whatever else everyone had. Laraine was making a point of being funny, expansive, gregarious; in other words she obviously hadn’t been properly fucked since Cuthbert had crossed the great divide. I made a mental note to send a Chippendale escort up to her apartment. Sheba was charming while she scoped out Laraine for future considerations. Even Laraine’s six foot tall dyke of an Austrian secretary with the Nana Mouskouri eyeglasses, the lime-green, feathered hat and the face of an embalmer wore a smirk to go with her smock for the afternoon. And of course I was in attendance. In a manner of speaking. That is, I was physically present, although at the same time, Laraine had read the situation perfectly. I was history.
V
It was only a Paris weekend, nothing more, but after my return to Montreal, things started drifting a bit. Not that they’d ever y been completely on course. After a while, I thought, fuck it, I’m not married anymore, no reason to clean up after myself, so I moved into a hotel near the downtown core, a grey square building named after a governor who ran Quebec while the territory was an English colony. I think the guv’ was best known for a plan to exterminate a tribe of Indians with a flu virus. A man two centuries ahead of his time.
But I had picked the hotel for geographical, not historical, reasons. It was close to my office, which I leased on th
e waterfront in the old part of the city. The quarter hummed during business hours, then vacated at dusk.
This suited the rhythms of my new plan. As others’ days were coming to an end, mine would begin.
I had been half-heartedly practicing law, while I waited for something to turn up, something in the way of a lottery win or another good quad case in the courts before I left the racket for good. The office was still necessary, as it would take some time to wind things down, close files, let people know that I was no longer available. I fell into the habit of walking down towards the old port during the early evening, past the abandoned sugar factories, breweries and textile houses which had made the city rich a century previous, but which now stood like sightless beggars, muted by the grinding screech of freight cars rolling into the container port.
About six months after my return, I found myself drifting down my usual route along the rue de la Commune during the early evening. Stopped at a liquor store and picked up a few bottles of wine, then returned to the hotel. I retrieved a straight-backed wicker rattan chair, ersatz colonial-style, and placed it in front of a drafting table. I had purchased the two items from an architect. He had retired following a ner vous breakdown. I placed two of the bottles on the table beside a writing pad, and a black telephone.
I stared at the phone for a few minutes, f lipped through the yellow pages, looking for an escort service close by as I glanced at a clock perched outside just over a video porn shop, flashing a neon triple x from the opposite side of the street. It was just after nine p.m. Don’t ask me why I remember the time. But, it was nine. It suddenly came to me that I had been rehearsing a mental choreography for a number of days, possibly weeks, as if I were somnolent.
I reached into my pocket, retrieving a crumpled up note. It contained the message she had dropped into my pocket six months previous. The note had the impression of a mouth on it, traced by magenta lipstick:
“we can do anything together. If you call me, I will come ...” There was a cell phone number beneath the message. I perused the handwriting again. The letters appeared to be rising and falling, beckoning me forward by their slow, undulating curve, reminding me of the way she moved. As if each member of the Roman alphabet occulted a series of secondary hieroglyphic symbols representing mistresses, jackal heads, motions of flight. I still felt pretty well on top of things, but at the same time, her cunt was drawing me closer. Emitting signals from an ocean away.
Nothing new, it had happened before. As if a miniature devil periodically crawled inside my brain and squatted there for the evening before moving on. Earlier in the week, while in a similar state, I had spent a while drinking and more or less examining myself in the mirror, watching sweat rivulets seep right out of my scalp and onto my forehead. But, that was last week, and this was now.
I continued drinking for a time, watching the crimson-bouqueted liquid descend into the glass, then rise upwards to my mouth, then down the gullet to wherever that led. The wine was a Gigondas, a wine so thick and coarse, drinking it was like swallowing dirt. Pleasurable, type of liquid that can make you forget anything. I had purchased it several years previous to commemorate an evening after my ex-wife had announced within the same sentence that she was pregnant and that she was aborting. Something about not being able to bear bringing life onto the planet with my genes.
It was a common enough comment from my ex-wife. But, since I didn’t care, the thought would evaporate. I had a general feeling that humanity had been nuked, yet I’d miraculously escaped. A feeling of anesthetized perfection. While mulling over this, I had finished the first bottle of Gigondas, and was working my way steadily through the second. I wrapped my hand around the neck of the bottle, choking it, and slowly poured some of the wine into the cup of my hand. I lifted my hand over my head and allowed the drips of thick liquid to slip through my f ingers and leak onto my face. I poured more of the wine into the cup of my palm, and clawed out a suppurating, clotted trail up my forearm with my index and forefinger. I leaned back in the chair, laid my head back, and poured the rest of the bottle into my mouth, steadily, swallowing some, allowing the rest to spill out over the edge of my mouth, recalling the memor y of my unborn offspring and knowing that I would never create life. Drinking this Gigondas triggered the issue of completely banal clichés which somehow kept me happy for the evening that I was alone. The current axiom went: a blood pact between men is about loyalty, and a blood pact between a man and a woman is about betrayal.
I was drunk. Again. Time to figure out who to disturb next. My mind was in order, but my body would no longer follow. I stared listlessly at the phone, languishing in a fatalistic stupor, incapable of anything but pouring out another glass of Gigondas. The wine now formed into a pool on the hardwood floor beneath.
I leaned over the phone, picked up the handset, dialed the international exchange. A vocal recording informed me that the telephone exchanges in France had changed. The recorded voice was recent Parisian, with a trace of an accent from the Southwest. Biarritz. Or Toulouse. I hung up, and redialed. After three rings, an answering machine kicked in.
“Bonsoir. Vous êtes bel et bien dans le domaine de Sheba.” The phone fell out of my hands. Like I said, I was pretty drunk. I picked it up. Dial tone.
I started thinking back to the Sunday morning we had spent together in Paris. We were walking down rue Mouffetard. The markets were open. An old anarchist was giving a speech to an assembled crowd. We stopped for a moment. He interrupted his speech, beckoned Sheba forward with a show of gallantry and a big bow. Further down the street, we could hear the echoes of accordion, concertina, orgue de Barbarie, bal-musette. We were completely insulated from the world. I was thinking at the time: this is what my life is about. Not life. Just my life. It wasn’t a hell of a lot, but nothing much else looked better. I hadn’t conquered anything, hadn’t saved anybody, but I had stumbled across this f irst-class whore, and she seemed to actually enjoy spending time with me. That was plenty for me. Nothing mattered. Nobody else existed.
I picked up the phone and dialed. This time she answered.
“Sheba, this is Franck Robinson. You may not recall me.”
She said nothing for a second. I saw no point in apologizing. I had her pretty well pegged as a night hawk.
“... et alors? ”
“Sheba, do you know the meaning of the word contingency?”
“Non.”
“Contingency, bear with me, Sheba, is one of the three ways of accumulating considerable sums of money without working.”
“Really, Franck. It’s Franck, you said?” It went on like that. I don’t recall the other details. Except that she never hung up. She may have entered into one of her mediaeval inquiries about me being worthy, or whether I was the chosen one. I don’t recall. If it were banal or kitsch, I wanted more of it. Or she might have suggested we move into a tent, or under a bridge on the Rhone, or inside a cave somewhere in the Dordogne valley. That might appear absurd to others, but to me it made perfect sense. The details are vague, but she relented, although I’m pretty sure that the word contingency caught her attention.
VI
I spotted her from the upper departures level, gliding through customs, accompanied by two men in business suits who wore flushed schoolboy grins twenty years too old for the wear and tear of their faces. From my angle, I could only make out an oversized, white brimmed fedora and beneath, a pair of spiked heels. By the time she emerged from within the arched walls of immigration on the main floor, the two men had disappeared. She prowled down the drab floor as if it were a YSL cat walk, putting on her own invitation-only performance for an audience of half a dozen Sikhs and three baggage valets sucking on cigarettes. I could now see, from the front, a halter neck dress over a black velvet skirt tied at the waist with a jewelled belt. At some point during her passage through customs, her fedora had disappeared. In its place, she wore a turban, tightly coiled around her head like a boa. She walked towards me, coyly, pouting her magenta lip
s, playing it up for a couple of baggage handlers and a Punjabi cab driver gawking at her backside. She had no baggage, and a white handbag dangled carelessly from her left hand as she wound her way up to me and planted a light kiss on my lips. She retreated two steps, examined me briefly, smiled.
“Hello, Franck.”
We turned around, and I escorted her across the floor of the arrivals level, neither of us speaking. It was late April. Montreal was still feeling the wrath of a lingering winter. Snow flurries and sleet storms had been sweeping the city for days. As we neared the exit, she broke away from me and walked towards the wide plate glass windows that surrounded the arrivals level like a welder’s mask. She pushed the index of her left hand up against the glass, and drew a vertical line on it, then peered through it at the whiteness outside. She uttered my name, sending a small whiff of vapour into the window.
“Franck.”
I approached her from behind and wrapped my arms around her waist. She continued staring out the window, witnessing for the first time the cold winter I had endured for the previous decade. A low, whistling sound accompanied the gusts of snow piling up on the ramp outside and slowing traffic to a crawl. Two burly policemen, wearing raccoon caps, their arms vertical, motioning like air traffic controllers. The traffic inched past and between them, through the whistling silence.
“Oh-la-la, Franck, I knew, but this ... Franck, put your coat around me.”
She curled up under my arm, and we ran out onto the road, through fifty metres of the driving storm, then into the relative safety of a multi-tiered parking lot. We were under shelter, but I didn’t pull my arm away.
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