The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [33]
“I said, I want you to come to my apartment.”
“Why?”
“I want to give you a bath.”
“A bath?”
“Yes.”
A great boyish grin crept over him.
“First you didn’t want to be seen with me and now you want to take me to your apartment?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
Osborn could see her blush. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Yes. I have it in my mind that I want to give you a bath, and in the thing they call a tub in your hotel you could barely wash a small dog.”
“What about ‘Frenchy’?”
“Don’t call him that.”
“Tell me his name and I won’t.”
For a moment Vera was silent. Then she said, “I don’t care about him.”
“No?” Osborn thought she was teasing.
“No.”
Osborn looked at her carefully. “You’re serious.”
She nodded definitively.
“Since when?”
“Since . . . I don’t know. Since I decided, that’s all.” She didn’t want to examine it and her voice trailed off. ‘
Osborn didn’t know what to think, or even feel. On Monday she’d said she never wanted to see him again. She had a lover, an important man in France. Today was Thursday. Today he was in and the lover was out. Did she really care for him deeply enough to do that? Or had the lover business been only a story to put him off in the first place, a convenient way to end a brief affair?
The breeze off the river caught her hair and she tucked a strand of it behind her ear. Yes, she knew the chance she was taking but she didn’t care. All she knew was that right now she wanted to make love to Paul Osborn, in her own apartment and in her own bed. She wanted to be with him completely for as long as they could. She had forty-eight hours before her next shift began. François, Osborn’s “Frenchy,” was in New York and had not contacted her for several days. As far as she was concerned, she was free to do as she pleased, when she pleased, where she pleased.
“I’m tired. Do you want to come? Yes, or no?”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” she said. It was five minutes to ten in the morning.
20
* * *
THE SOUND of the phone woke her. For a moment she had no idea where she was. A harsh glare came in through the French doors partially open to the patio. Beyond them, over the Seine, a midafternoon sun had given up trying to push through a stubborn overcast and vanished into it. Still half asleep, Vera rose up on one elbow and looked around. Bedclothes were strewn everywhere. Her stockings and underwear were on the floor, half under the bed. Then her mind cleared and she realized she was in her apartment bedroom and her phone was ringing. Covering herself with part of the sheet, as if whoever was on the other end might be able to see her, she snatched up the phone.
“Oui?”
“Vera Monneray?”
It was a male voice. One she’d never heard. “Oui . . .,” she said again, puzzled. There was a distinct click on the other end and the line went dead.
Hanging up, she looked around. “Paul?” she called out. “Paul?”
This time there was concern in her voice. Still there was no reply and she realized he was gone. Getting out of bed, she saw her nakedness reflected in the antique mirror over either dressing table. To her right was the open bathroom door. Used towels lay on the sink and on the floor by the bidet. The bath curtain had come down and was lying half across the tub. On the far side of it, one of her shoes perched ceremoniously on the closed lid of the toilet. To anyone entering now there would be no mistaking that long and forceful love had been made in these two rooms and God knew where else in the apartment. In her life she’d never experienced anything like the past hours. Her entire body ached, and what didn’t ache was rubbed raw land sore. She felt as if she’d locked union with a beast and in so doing had unleashed a primitive fury that had built, moment by moment, thrust by thrust, into a gargantuan firestorm of physical and emotional hunger from which there was no escape or release except through complete and utter exhaustion.
Turning away, she saw herself again in the mirror and came closer. She wasn’t sure what she saw, exactly, except that somehow it was different.