Passion in Paris

by Allie Hayden

  I knew I was doing it correctly and that it was making him putty in my hands.

  I began to push his hands to my crotch, and then I pulled his head towards me. I knew it was working when I began to feel his tongue messaging my clitoral hood; he was clearly a man who knew his way around a woman, and this woman was no different from any of them.

  I felt only desire flood through me, and he knew all my small foibles—my clitoris was too sensitive to be touched directly. His gentle but firm touch on my hood was achieving the ends I needed. I was no longer demure, no longer trying to soften his touch—I wanted it rough.

  I tossed the food out of the way and pulled down his pants around his shapely legs. I ran my hand from his ankle to his crotch, making him gasp and moan with joy. I moved to his ear and put my mouth on it and kissed him. Then I whispered in his ear: “I want you in me now!” It was not said with subtlety or tact. It was a command, and he obeyed without question.

  He took his slick penis, wet with my juices and his intermingled. Like a ramrod, he shoved it straight and true into my warm and waiting cavern; I tightened my legs around him to increase the feeling of awe.

  I was completely in command for the first time in my sexual life, and I was loving it. I was directing him to the exact spots where my fury and ecstasy were lingering. Little moans and gasps escaped me as I pulled him farther and farther into me.

  And at a point where I was unsure if I could take another second of this dancing around the main issues, a massive tidal wave of emotional pressure came tumbling down on both of us. That miracle, that holy grail, it happened. I came exactly as I felt him spurt on my tummy.

  It was kismet; it was synchronicity; it was love made physical. And I had never experienced that kind of lovemaking before. I was spent, absolutely exhausted and basking in a sea of glory and joy.

  The closest I had come to this feeling was the feeling of finishing the tutti section of the Dvorak concerto and hearing the orchestra bear down on me like this musical perfection that so many before me wondered at.

  Lying quietly and happily on the blanket had put down, Darius grabbed my hand and held it. He covered me with my clothing while touching me gently and stimulating me further.

  I was in heaven: the sun was shining in that spring way, making things comfortable but not hot. The slight breeze cooled my ardor and gave me a level of joy that made me feel complete elation. Shortly, I was overcome with ravenous hunger and sat up, taking a piece of Banon. Some sort of round goat cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves.

  One bite and I realized my mistake; it was awful! My face must’ve registered my horror, and Darius laughed.

  “I guess it’s not to everyone’s taste!” he said. “That cheese is the favorite in this area, but I have never warmed to it.”

  “It tastes like it’s rotten!” I said.

  “I feel the same way. Here, have some wine to kill the taste.” He offered me a glass, and I eagerly accepted.

  The wine was a perfect companion to the rest of the day, with the exception of that awful cheese, but somehow the terribleness of the cheese accentuated the beauty of the day and of the man I was with.

  The contrast between Darius Wilde and my husband was not so obvious to me as it became later, because I had frankly forgotten about my husband altogether, and while I had a strong impression that I needed to let things settle with Bill, I also wanted very badly to spend every possible waking moment with Darius.

  He had the ability to turn a perfectly normal day into a magical experience. He was attuned to my every need and brilliantly creative—right down to the types of flowers he strewed around the blanket.

  In this case, it was what he called Muguets, or what I believed was lily-of-the-valley. I was not a huge flower person, never having received a single carnation in my life, but I knew of some of the basics. The gentle and subtle notes were delicate and beautiful.

  “Darius,” I ventured but stopped dead. He looked at me intently, directly into my eyes.

  “It’s so difficult to resist your beautiful eyes,” he said, smiling.

  “I need to know something,” I said, matter-of-factly. His demeanor changed, and he became serious, looking down, accentuating his long eyelashes. The sight of these beautiful lashes almost took my breath away. It required a great deal of concentration to continue, but I soldiered on (as my father used to say).

  “I need to know if you planned this…seduction,” I said.

  Darius looked hurt, his long auburn hair falling over his beautiful face. “I have never been very successful with women, Cecilia. And I am certainly no player. I had no plans to do anything except help you to get your equilibrium back.” He said it with such sincerity that I instantly believed him. But then he surprised me. He looked up, smiling. “Do you?”

  I would never admit that I’d had a very deep erotic dream about him that came true, but I had a vague feeling that he knew that I had been attracted to him form the very moment we laid eyes on eyes. Should I lie?

  “You know something? I didn’t, but I admit I was very drawn to you when we first met. I don’t know why. I mean, I’m a married woman, and until this day, I was happily married, I think.”

  “You think?” he asked. He was paying almost too much attention to me.

  “I think so,” I said. “But to be honest, when I look back at the last few years, I guess I was yearning for a change, and maybe this is the change I need. What I don’t know is if this is a temporary thing or a long-term thing. You see, you are almost a complete mystery to me.”

  “I see that,” he said. “And so, to help you make your decision, I am an open book.” He turned back to me and gazed deep into my eyes. “What would you like to know?”

  I sat up and dressed quickly, so as to avoid any more distractions. “I want to know how you ended up here from Denver. It’s the obvious next step, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t. The fact is, I am the victim of bourgeois values. My father is Nathan Wilde, the industrialist, investor in all that is destructive in this world. He has coal mines and oil fields and is to be seen in the company of people like the Koch Brothers.”

  I gasped. In my liberal circles of Minneapolis, these people were the enemy. “I see that impressed you not at all,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “Well, I studied literature at Yale, and I excelled in my field, which was creative writing. I talked to my father about grad school, and he wanted me to take an MBA at Harvard. My first choice was the Iowa Writers Workshop, so I decided to defy him and go.

  “I did well and had a few good publications, but he warned me that this was no life for an heir to a fortune. I gave him letters of recommendation from Ann Patchett and other well-known writers, but he persisted and told me that this was something that would absolutely end the inheritance. This was all about ten years ago, and I, at the time, was much more…of a firebrand and so I decided to defy him.

  “In the end, he agreed to give me three million dollars as a test to see what I would do with it.” He paused, smiling sheepishly. “Well, this bastide is what I did with it. I have barely enough to live on, but I own this place outright. Not a penny invested in coal or oil, and he hit the roof and disinherited me. I moved in and, to be honest, in the last few years, even my writing has suffered. I’ve produced nothing of note in five years.”

  “May I read some of your writing?” I asked.

  He seemed taken aback by that. “Of course,” he said hesitatingly, standing up and dressing awkwardly. Then he added, “I would be honored.”

  “I’ll read it tonight if you can stand to put our dinner off for another day,” I said.

  “I can.”

  He offered me his hand and held it firmly as we walked back to the place where the taxi would be waiting. In perfect time, at four o’clock on the nose, the driver arrived and took us both back to the bastide.

  As we rode, neither of us spoke. We looked at one another, and I wondered how a man could be so beautiful.
I knew Darius found me fascinating, so passionate, so inspiring and inspired, and so…married.

  The driver kept looking back at the two of us, and I assumed that our mutual attraction would be the subject of some laughter and merriment in the servant’s quarters. All the way back home, I grew more and more curious about his writing.

  What if he was a terrible writer? I remembered that wonderful and inspiring short story by Somerset Maugham called “The Alien Corn,” about the heir to some manor who wanted to be a classical pianist. He begged his father to allow him to pursue his passion, and eventually, his father acquiesced. Darius’ situation reminded me of this.

  As we stopped in front of the bastide, Darius paid the taxi driver and spoke to him at length. I stood entranced by his linguistic facility, smiling despite myself. After a few minutes, he turned to me and smiled.

  “A demain,”3 he said. “I’ll have some of my writing sent up to your room. I assume you want to dine alone.”

  “I would feel better if I did,” I said reluctantly. “But I promise I will devote tonight to your writing.”

  “I understand,” he said, turning to the path that led to the cottage.

  After our event-filled afternoon, I returned to my room exhausted. I no longer felt the need to share everything with Bill, of course. And Bill seemed not to care what happened to me anyway, I had noticed. I laid on my bed, contemplating the new normal that had occurred today, but I did check my phone to see if Bill had called or texted. He hadn’t.

  Chapter 14

  (Cecilia)

  I entered my lonely cottage feeling things I’d not felt in years. The stirrings of what I used to call inspiration were flooding through me. I opened the large cedar chest in which I stored my writings.

  Inside, each story was carefully marked with a number and a letter, filed alphabetically, color-coded for date of completion, and lovingly bound in cloth. I chose a story that I hoped would inspire Cecilia, one that would make her think I was someone worth getting involved with.

  At the same time, I was not too keen on being a homewrecker. I knew a little about her life story and the happy marriage I seemed to be ruining. Bill Palmer was a stand-up guy, I supposed. And he didn’t deserve this cuckolding. But Cecilia had made it clear that she desired me. I’d become a virtual recluse here in Provence.

  Strangely, I had seen a lot of love, and years past, I had moved in the chicest circles. I remembered going to Hollywood parties put on by producers who took my father’s money and turned it into inane movies about action heroes and stupid, insipid American-pride garbage, and feeling honored to be among the Hollywood elite.

  The very idea of it now turned my stomach. But I had maintained a few distant connections with Hollywood; I still emailed periodically with some of the more thoughtful stars I had met. I still used Facebook to connect to some of the writers.

  Of course, Hollywood had undergone a considerable change and was not the place it used to be. It was less friendly to my father’s brand of jingoistic Americana, which, ironically, made him a little more sought-after, since he was remembered as a firebrand who, at several of these parties, took on the political and social quagmire that his money had created.

  This ingratiated himself to the likes of Spike Lee and Rob Reiner, and that most liberal director of them all, Gabriella Bernard, the Franco-American feminist genius who had been rumored to be the one to break up Johnny Depp’s marriage to Vanessa Paradis.

  The stories of his romance with her were written up in all the gossip columns and had not a shred of truth to them; no Hollywood gossip columnist would understand that a man could be friends and colleagues with a woman without falling into bed. He proved them all wrong.

  I flipped through the pages of my work and settled on one about a cellist who brought memories of a lost past to an old man. This was the story I would send to Cecilia.

  In his bedroom, Bedrich listened as Josefá held the final note of Dvorák's music and let it die away in the bushes around the gazebo. Smiling, he felt a tear tickle inside his ear. He rose and walked to the window.

  Outside, Josefá sat on a wooden chair, leaning on her instrument, feeling the night chill. She hugged her arms and then rose, holding the cello in her right hand. Above her, she saw a trembling light up the steps. It seemed feeble and small, a beacon from a fairytale tower. She stood on the step, looking through the dense air, trying to make out the face in the window. Slowly, she moved toward the garden, her white dress gently bending the dew-damp bushes as she ascended toward the light where the man's face, framed by the windowsill, looked down at her without emotion. She smiled at him, indicating her cello.

  He looked back but made no move. She stopped steps from the garden fence, in a clearing dimly lit by a street lamp, and dug the spike of her cello into the grass. It sank easily. Then she kneeled and put her bow to the strings. She began to play Schubert's “Death and the Maiden.” As she played, she watched his face: still young but tired, so much weight pulling him down. His blue eyes curved down at the corners, his lips arcuate. His whole face was bruised by gravity except his short, white, skypointing hair. He seemed unable to hold his head up as she played. His neck lowered to the windowsill, and she watched his eyes close as if in prayer. His bare arms rose above his head and rested on the top of the frame.

  "Do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall?" he asked in English when she finished. His voice sounded as if it hadn't been used in years.

  "No, how?" she answered.

  "Practice," he said, nodding. She laughed. Bedrich looked down, assessing what he had said. It had never occurred to him that this was funny. "Ah, yes," he intoned, smiling.

  "Can you take me there?" she asked.

  "You know, I have been there."

  "To play?"

  "No, to dream. But New York is not for dreams; it is for coyotes. Me? I am afraid of coyotes."

  "So, you came home?" she asked.

  "Yes, home." She watched him, his eyes looking off to the gazebo where she had been playing.

  "I am Josefá."

  "Of course, Josefá."

  "And you?"

  "Bedrich."

  "Bedrich, of course." She laughed again, and Bedrich looked down at her face and laughed.

  "Play `Leave Me Alone,'" he asked her, leaning on the wet window sill, "and I will never be without you again." Josefá began to play, her eyes fixed on Bedrich. He smiled at her, watching the rain fall on the lawn through a green mist as though she were walking on the bottom of the sea.

  Chapter 15

  (Cecilia)

  I put the paper down. So, he really is a writer, I thought to myself. The lyrical writing was so clear in his character, and I knew that this man was gifted. A true writer. I resolved to help him.

  Helping was more than just something I wanted; it had become a necessity. This was a piece of literature, and it inspired me. The cellist, the woman playing the night. When had he had the time to write this? I was torn; I kept checking my phone to see if Bill had written, but all evening he was silent, and there was this beautiful story, so clearly modeled on me.

  It made me tip toward the beautiful man so near to me. It was all I could do not to go over to his cottage and ravage him.

  I forced myself to calm down and stay in my room, reading his other work. It was amazing. All of it. The single theme that dominated it was loneliness, and there was an undercurrent of abandonment.

  This was something I knew he would never say to me; he would only be able to transmit this through his writing, and I was thankful to have this little peephole into his soul, because, by the time I put down the last paper, I was pretty sure I was going to dedicate some significant time to Darius, to helping him reconcile with his father and with this world.

  I went downstairs to find Charlotte, the woman who had made my stay so effortless and pleasant. She was sitting at a small table in the vast sunny kitchen that overlooked the pool.

  “Bonjour Charlotte,” I began, noticing that C
harlotte was startled; I was fairly certain that Charlotte had not encountered many guests and tended to be a sort of behind-the-scenes eminence grise to the joy of the vacationer. But today, we were face to face, and I met her with a huge grin.

  “Ah, Madame, you are comfortable in your room?” Charlotte asked in a somewhat stilted but unaccented English.

  “Very, oh, yes.” I said. “But I wanted to ask your opinion on something.”

  Charlotte looked confused. “About what subject?”

  “About Darius Wilde.” Charlotte blushed deeply. As most of the French people I met were friendly, they had a way of showing it in their faces. At least, I was not put off by the almost sour face of Charlotte as I began to ask her favor.

  “You see, I have begun to get to know Mr. Wilde well, and, well, I want to know your thoughts about him. You must have gotten to know him quite well in the years you’ve been here.”

  “You mistake me, madame. I have only been working here for one year, and in that time, Mr. Wilde has kept very much to himself. In fact, it is a miracle that you have managed to get him to accompany you into Le Castellet. And I can assure you I have never spent such an afternoon with him, and neither has any other patron.”

  I was impressed, flattered, and happy to hear that. I had no idea how to respond though. I stood there silently for a minute, looking confused.

  “What I mean to say, Madame, is that you are very fortunate because Mr. Wilde is very reclusive and almost never warms to the guests. He has never even met another one, and so you should be flattered. I’m sure you know he was once a very accomplished writer but has been discouraged from his work by his father.”

  “I gathered that,” I said. Then I remembered my quest. “What I wondered is if you have a number or email for his father.”