You Deserve Nothing - Alexander Maksik [9]
“It’s your choice, Mr. Silver. I’ll understand if you want to leave, I’ll understand.”
Her mouth was inches from mine.
“I have to leave,” I said.
“O.K.,” she smiled. “If you have to.”
“Give me your number,” she said into my ear. “Whisper it to me.”
“No,” I said.
“Whisper it to me, Mr. Silver. Whisper it to me, just in case.”
* * *
Outside in the cold, early morning air I walked slowly along rue des Écoles until, as I knew it would, my phone rang.
“I’m meeting you,” she said.
I stopped and sat on the hood of a parked car and waited. A drunken couple walked past, laughing, and I asked them for a cigarette. Blowing smoke into the cold air, I thought about leaving. I thought about going back to my apartment, ignoring the phone calls.
She came around the corner barefoot with her high heels in her hand. She had light green eyes and long auburn hair.
We walked in silence along the empty rue des Écoles. At Boulevard St. Michel, Marie ran barefoot against the light, laughing, leaving me waiting on the corner watching her on the other side, her arms outstretched, shoes dangling from her fingers.
“Come on,” she yelled twirling on the pavement. “Come on.”
After the traffic passed, I crossed the boulevard. “Come on,” she said taking my arm. We were safer there where the streets were darker, hidden away behind l’École de Médecine, the cinemas closed for the night. Marie pulled my arm around her shoulders.
“I’m cold,” she whispered.
I held her against me. At rue Antoine Dubois she pushed me against a wall and kissed me, her mouth perfectly warm. For a moment she was slow and languorous and then instantly on fire, her hand between my legs.
And then again she stopped. “Fuck,” she said. “Putain! You’re making me insane.”
She broke away and walked to the steps behind the statue of Vulpian and sat down. I watched as she leaned back on her elbows, her bare feet on the cold stone. A couple came down the stairs from rue Monsieur le Prince. I stayed waiting in the shadows until they were gone. And then I went to her. She pulled me down onto the step and there was her warm mouth again.
“I can’t,” she said then. “Listen Mr. Silver, I’m really sorry but I can’t do this now. It’s not like I don’t want to. Because I do. Every girl at school would kill to be in my position right now but this isn’t a good time, O.K.? I’ve got my period and I just think that if we’re going to do this we should do it, you know, when everything is, I don’t know, right. You know what I mean?”
She looked at me, her lips smeared with red, and said that she’d better leave, that she’d better get back to her friends. Another time, she said. Another time we’d do this right. She’d show me what she was capable of. And how badly she wanted to. She stepped close, her breath smelling of the sweet gum she’d put in her mouth, and said, “Next year, Mr. Silver.”
She left me on the steps. I watched her walk away. “Bye, Mr. Silver,” she sang, waving with both hands and spinning in the street before she disappeared around the corner.
MARIE
25 YEARS OLD
I barely knew who the guy was. I mean, at the beginning of my junior year I don’t think his name would have meant anything to me at all. Maybe his name. I’m not sure. The point is that I didn’t know him. And more important is that I didn’t care. There were those kids who were interested in teachers, who really cared or fell in love with them. They’d search for a math teacher on the web and find out she had a secret life or something. It’s like they were amazed that a teacher might go home and take a shower, drink a beer, go to parties, fall in love. But I didn’t care. Or maybe it was just that there was no mystery. I didn’t get the surprise. Some of them you like. Some of them you don’t. They were like our parents or our older sisters and brothers. They were like us, really. A lot like us if you think about it.
And some of those teachers? I mean they only spoke one language. Not even French. They’d never even lived in another country before France. And so many of us had lived in three, four,