SECRET Revealed

by L. Marie Adeline

“I’m flattered, b-but—” I stammered, trying to resist the woman’s prodding, but unable to resist Alain’s urging. “I haven’t done this in so long—”

  My protestations were to no avail. I was ushered closer and closer to a grinning Alain and his inviting quartet, one of whom was now plunking a stool right in front of the microphone.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Alain said, extending his hand to help me up the steps of the stage. “Please welcome Solange Thompson.”

  Over applause, I began apologizing ahead of time for what would no doubt be a disaster. When the applause ebbed, a microphone was slapped into my hand. What happened next occurred because there was just no time to course-correct, no time to stop the band from striking up “Summertime,” one of my favorites, no time to dig in my heels or flee in shock. Something took over for me, something ancient and beautiful, something embedded in my DNA. My body rose from the stool, and began to move to the opening chords, my eyes closed, my hand slapping out a gentle beat against my sequined thigh. Then I opened my mouth and sang. I sang words to a song long stored in the vault of my brain, and I sang it well. Alain leaned forward. We shared the mike for a few moving bars, our mouths inches apart and in complete harmony, like we’d been doing this for a long time too. Tears were stinging my eyes. But I wasn’t crying. This wasn’t sadness. This was old joy. And when the crowd applauded, a few in the front row springing to their feet, I could have kissed them on every one of their French mouths.

  Song after song I gave them, from “I Get a Kick Out of You” to “Everybody’s Talkin’,” each perfectly suited to my vocals and Alain’s harmony. I was singing. My shoulders were moving, I was smiling, performing for an audience in a strange city. I stood there and let them take me in. I was Solange Thompson again, the girl with all that hair, in the red satin dress and shiny lipstick, before the husband and the baby and the demanding career, before the awards and the disappointments, the tantrums and tears, the death of parents and the end of love—before everything that happened, it was just me, singing happily, in the dark.

  Alain receded when the band struck up the open bars to “My Man,” that lush song becoming my only solo. The lighting darkened my peripheral vision and the band gentled its tempo. The spotlight was on me and the only thing missing was a gardenia behind my ear. I sang and I sang, but this time with a heart heavy, not from missing “my” man, but from missing this part of my life, the part that had been mine and mine alone. I missed myself. And after I finished that song, the crowd’s applause nearly levitated me off the stage and over to the table where Alain, my young Julius, sat waiting for me, the sexiest grin on the sexiest of mouths.

  “You were spectacular,” he said, gently bowing his head. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” I said, warily taking the seat next to him. Was he real? He leaned towards me, his hand sliding around the back of the banquette. “And how did you know I could do that?”

  “Music stays with you. Maybe it hides for a while, but it’s always there in your bones, waiting to come out again.”

  Before I could ask him how he knew my maiden name, let alone that I sang at all, I had to get something out of the way.

  “You know, this might sound strange, but you look an awful lot like—”

  “Let’s get out of here,” he interrupted, whispering in my ear.

  His voice sent shivers down my spine. He sounded just like Julius. “That is … if you’ll accept the Step.”

  I turned to face him. Good lord, he even smelled like Julius. The gals at S.E.C.R.E.T. had done their research. No sooner was my hand in his than we found ourselves spilling out of the club and onto the lively street at night.

  “I’ll show you my Paris,” he said, throwing his tuxedo jacket around my shoulders. He held my hand, tugging me towards the Saint-Germain-des-Prés station. He never let go of me, not while we were trotting down the street against the stream of crowds going in the opposite direction, not when we were navigating the gummy stairs to the damp subterranean cavern below. We came to the turnstile and he pushed in first, handing me his card to swipe myself through.

  I hesitated.

  I needed to take in how impossibly handsome this young man looked in his white tuxedo shirt, top button undone, the tie hanging loose around his neck like a Rat Packer. For a moment it was enough to freeze this in time, him smiling at me from the other side of the copper turnstile in Paris after midnight, looking like a vision of my best past. There was me dressed in my shimmery column of a dress, looking incongruous against the backdrop of this tired, disheveled crowd of hipsters and tourists and students heading home for the night, or just going out.

  “Subway’s coming!” he yelled over the underground din. “Accept this Step, Solange! Just do it!”

  Could this be enough? Just the memory? To go forward was also to go backwards, and did I want to do that? To revisit all that pain and sadness?

  Then I felt the urge and my whole body said: Go!

  I swiped the card and pushed through the stile, joining him on the other side. Alain’s mouth was an inch from mine, his downcast eyes hungrily taking in my ruby lips. And then he kissed me, softly at first, pressing feelings into me, sending warm memories through my body. I lifted my hands to his sides, feeling his firm torso beneath the tuxedo shirt. Someone bumped into him, jarring us out of our moment. We moved to the platform, and when the subway came, he pulled me onto it. Giggling, we collapsed into two empty seats on the uncrowded car. I felt twenty again, when every night out offered endless possibilities.

  I had to fight back more tears, not from grief, but from relief, joy. We got off a few stops later and I let him lead the way up the stairs and into the warm, damp air of a different, quieter part of Paris. He told me this was the Montparnasse District, a place I knew only from stories about writers and artists. After navigating an endless maze of narrow streets, we stopped at an iron gate that he unlocked with a key as long as a pencil, which he kept on a string tied to his belt loop.

  “Four stories. No elevator,” he warned, quietly shutting the gate behind him.

  I felt my reticence melt away at each landing. And though the building was narrow and the stairs worn from centuries of tired Parisians making this same trip, his garret apartment was neat, masculine and surprisingly roomy, made more so by the high ceilings and slanted casement windows, which offered a spectacular view of the buildings around us and the Tour Montparnasse in the distance. He had taste and style. He knew better than to take out the worn tile floors or to remove the fading wallpaper; he had just decorated around these gorgeous relics of a bygone era.

  He took the coat from around my shoulders and placed it on the back of a paint-spattered chair. Then he carefully took my purse from my hand and put it on the small butcher’s block next to a beautiful antique porcelain sink. He didn’t have to turn on a light. The bright city illuminated the dim room. It was nothing like my suite at the George V, but a person could be happier here, I thought.

  I stood in front of his wide daybed, covered in throws and mismatched silk pillows and surrounded on three sides by elaborate wrought-iron grating. I was as nervous as the girl I once was. (You’re forty-one and he’s … not!) But his hands on my waist stopped my fear from traveling any farther up my body to my head. He had me, and he knew just what to do with me.

  His gaze melted me into place. He reached behind me, found my zipper, and slowly pulled it down. He slipped the straps off my shoulders. I closed my eyes as he peeled it down to my waist, reverently. I couldn’t watch him watching me. I felt his hand sliding down my arm, lifting my hand to his mouth and kissing the pulse at my wrist. Then I felt another kiss at the crook of my elbow, then my upper arm, my clavicle, my throat, my lips. Then I felt my dress melt around my ankles, leaving me standing in black stockings and garters. He whispered my name over and over, his face now buried in my breasts. I opened my eyes and looked down. From this angle, in this light, he was Julius, my Julius, in Paris, with me.

  What a s
trange, melancholy, beautiful fantasy.

  My breath caught as he suddenly sent me back onto my elbows on the daybed and stood before me as he removed his clothes. He sent the loose tie sailing across the room. The shirt he practically tore off, revealing a smooth, bare chest and rippled stomach.

  As I parted my knees, his hand casually circled his own gorgeous cock. I lay back on the pillows, my red-tipped fingers caressing my skin, trailing across my stomach as I watched him watch me. I knew I was wet before I touched myself.

  “You’re so beautiful in this light,” he whispered.

  He crawled towards me. He was all panther now, this young man and his young skin, his strong shoulders and firm arms. No sooner had I wrapped my fingers around his hard shaft than I was guiding it towards my eager mouth. My tongue explored the tip, the tender opening, the delicate rim, my fingers dancing along his pulsing veins. He grabbed the bedrails behind me as my hand gathered his smooth balls. He fed himself to me, his moans matching the creaky sounds the bed was making as he rocked slightly, helping me take him in all the way. My hands circled his haunches as my mind searched for a word to describe the rest of his body; uncanny. Even the way he tasted …

  Just before I felt him ready to give himself over to me, he stopped abruptly, taking himself out of my mouth to bend over and kiss me again and to say my name once, twice. His voice was just like … I opened my eyes and saw it again, that flash of my past, my younger love above me. I wanted all of him inside me, now, and he knew it, spinning around to wrestle a condom free from his wallet. My heart raced as he returned his focus, shifting me down the bed, opening my thighs.

  “I’ve been wanting to do this all night,” he said, his head dipping down.

  His mouth found me first, and he ate me eagerly, hungrily. My arms flung to the sides, I felt like I was coming apart as he licked and bit, his tongue by turns lapping and fucking me. My hips began to grind against his mouth as the climb started. I squeezed my eyes closed and then I felt it, his shaft entering me, filling me, his hips picking up on my rhythm, never losing the beat. I wrapped my arms around his strong shoulders and my legs around his lean hips as he bore into me. There was barely a warning before my orgasm shot hot through my center and out my limbs, in wave after wave of shuddering pleasure, my head thrashing. He drove into me with renewed ferocity, increasing the intense spasms. My thighs squeezed him harder as yet another plundering wave rolled over me, signaling his mounting pleasure was only beginning. As I was coming down, he cascaded over me, a look of ferocity taking over his sweet face, aging him in the sexist way. In a dark flash I saw my Julius, now, and then he was gone again and Alain was in my arms. After a few moments, he peeled his sweat-misted face off my chest and rested his chin between my breasts.

  “Mother of God.”

  “Why do people always invoke religion at times like this?” I asked, still panting.

  “I think it’s all the church steeples I can see from my bed,” he said, smiling. “You’re so fucking beautiful. Holy shit.”

  “They train you to say that?” I asked, looking down at his sweet, sweet face, not even caring that my chins must have tripled at that angle.

  “Did I pull it off okay?”

  I slapped his ass. Hard.

  He scrambled off me and reached beneath the daybed for a small box, which he carefully placed on my still rising and falling chest.

  “Ceçi est pour vous, madame,” he said, surprising me with his perfect French accent.

  “You mean mademoiselle,” I said.

  “Mais oui.”

  While he rested on an elbow, I opened the box and lifted out my Curiosity charm. It took on a burnished glow in that dim, cozy garret. This charm would remind me of my wonderment, and what happens when you let your curiosity take you back in time. I had sung again in a red dress for a crowd of strangers in a strange city. I’d rushed giddily into the streets of Paris, kissing a younger version of an old love on the Metro, turning back the clock for just one night.

  The next time I opened my eyes, the sun was peeking up over Montparnasse, turning the white buildings pink with new promise. Alain snoozed while I quietly dressed. Holding my shoes, I took one last look at his face. Uncanny, even in repose. Then I descended the ancient stairs to the street below and flagged the first cab I found. In the back seat, I cracked open the window, taking in the smell of a city only just beginning to awaken.

  CASSIE

  After that Committee meeting, I had the sense that something had been unleashed into our little universe. Not necessarily something bad, but an unsettling energy abounded, one whose wake would probably leave my world, and Will’s, reordered. And yet, I felt powerless to stop it.

  The day after Will was recruited, Dell and I were in the kitchen blanching peppers for stuffing. One by one, she dipped them into boiling water. After a few minutes, she scooped them out with a slotted spoon, dropping them in ice water. My job was to wait a few seconds, then fish them out and peel them. It was strangely hypnotic work, and for a moment I forgot what I knew; I wasn’t thinking about what had happened and what was coming.

  Claire was popping in and out of the kitchen dropping dirty dishes on the conveyor, so for a moment I thought it was her, not Will, who punched through the doors loudly. I was about to ask her to be a little less mean to the door, but when I saw him standing there with a clutch of baguettes, his hair a sexy mess, his stubble longer than normal, my heart did its requisite tumble in my chest. I had long made peace with my body’s reaction to Will; it would always jolt a little, no matter how often my brain scolded it. I could do nothing to prevent my face from burning. And instantly I knew Will knew that I knew that he had been recruited by S.E.C.R.E.T. And that we both knew things had changed, and that they were going to change some more.

  “Hey,” Will said, his wary eyes on me.

  “Hey.”

  He placed the baguettes on the counter and pulled a large blowtorch out of the bottom of the bag, his eyes still on me.

  “This the one you wanted, Dell?”

  Dell turned to examine it. “You could repair a tanker with that thing. I just need to brown crème brûlée.”

  “I can’t get anything right,” he muttered.

  I changed the subject, to give time for my nerves to settle. “So, Dell tells me the Poulet Marengo special was a big hit last night.”

  “Yes! And we tried it with the black-and-white quinoa. Great idea.”

  “That was Claire’s,” Dell announced, just as Claire entered the kitchen.

  “Nice idea, kiddo, the quinoa,” Will said as she beamed, dropping off more dirty dishes.

  Dell nodded at her and she skipped back into the Café with a new lightness. She seemed to be coming out of the darkest part of the tunnel.

  “Well, it was an incredible dish, Dell.”

  She had the same reaction to praise as she did to criticism, which was none.

  Will continued. “So, um, Cassie … do you have a minute? I need to talk to you about … something important that has to do with … something important.”

  Dell looked up from her blanching, but only to stare straight ahead at the tiled wall as though to say, Jesus Christ, please take this outside, whatever it is.

  “Be right back, Dell.”

  I wiped my hands on my apron and followed Will out of the kitchen, my heart pounding. Be cool, be cool, be cool. Once in the office, he shut the door behind us.

  “I’m sure you know what this is about.”

  “I do,” I said, as evenly as possible.

  “Matilda called me this morning. I was … I am glad. I’m flattered. I’m not sure what to say. But I really, really need to know—are you sure you’re okay with this?”

  I nodded before speaking, trying to give myself time to knock the words loose.

  “Yeah. For sure. Totally okay with it.”

  “Because I told Matilda if you had a problem with this, I would never—”

  “Why would I have a problem with this?�
� Did that come out too fast? That came out too fast.

  “I don’t know. I mean, you said so yourself, you know, it’s just sex. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

  “Right.”

  “So. No problem then?”

  “Nope. I’m happy for you, Will. It’s fun and you’ll get to see what I’ve been saying all along, that S.E.C.R.E.T. helps people. It helps women. And I think you’re doing a very good thing. For a very … good woman.”

  “Yes. Thanks. Good.”

  “So. Ah. Did she … also tell you who would be training you?”

  “Yes. She did.”

  “And are you okay with that?” Here it comes. Here’s where he rejects me and I die a thousand deaths.

  “Yeah. Totally. As long as you’re okay with it.”

  “Well, I had to be okay with it. No one else wanted to,” I said, laughing at my own stupid joke, not understanding its harm until I watched Will’s entire face fall.

  “No. No-no-no! Will. Jesus, that came out wrong. I didn’t mean no one wanted to have sex with you. I mean, everyone voted for you. They all would have volunteered. But they just felt that you and I … that maybe it would be best if I were the one who … Will, they’re my friends.”

  He looked at me seriously. “Are you sure this is a good idea, Cassie? I mean we have a business together!”

  “Well, if you think having sex with me again would jeopardize our business, then by all means, we don’t have to do it! It’s not like you signed a contract or anything. It’s just sex.”

  “Yeah. It’s just sex.”

  He stood there biting his bottom lip in deep consternation. Hands behind my back, I began to pace like Nixon, each of us waiting for the other one to speak first.

  “Look,” I said at last. “I’m a grown-up. You’re a grown-up. And it’s not like we’ve never had sex.”

  “True. True. You’re right,” he said. “Tell you the truth, Cass. Knowing it was you took some of the performance anxiety away. Someone I trust. Someone who knows me. I can hear it from you, you know—criticism, or direction, or whatever.”