Dennis staggered back to his office. It couldn’t be… it couldn’t be. What the hell… ? He sat dazed until well past going-home time. Drove home as if by remote control. Slumped into his chair. The story was on the evening news: dramatic escape from hospital trolley. So that had been the plan all along… sell the house and make a clean break, either as a couple or with Fred in tow. Fred: accomplice rather than lover. Scheming with Selina to set her husband free. He took out the copies of her correspondence with Blaine, reading each one through, looking to see if there was anything he’d missed.
No, of course there wasn’t. They could have made plans each time they met. Always the chance of being overheard, of lips being read. But that had to be the way it was. Nothing more or less to it… Dennis couldn’t face sitting here a moment longer, surrounded by her letters, her photos, his senses flooded by memories of her: the shopping trip, her house, her clothing…
He walked to his local bar and ordered a whiskey with a lager chaser. Downed the whiskey in one gulp, shaking the remnants into the beer glass.
“Hard day, Dennis?” one of the regulars asked. Dennis knew him; knew his first name anyway. Tommy. He’d been drinking here for as many years as Dennis had. All Dennis really knew about him were his first name and the fact that he worked as a plumber. It was amazing how little you could know about someone. But there was a third thing: Tommy liked quizzes. Quizzes and puzzles. He was captain of the bar’s Pub Quiz team, and there were trophies behind the bar as proof of his prowess. He was busy right now: tabloid open at the “Coffee-Break Page.” He’d completed both crosswords and was working away at something else. Selina and her crossword puzzles.
Crosswords… and what was the other thing Blaine had said: acrobatics?
“Tommy,” Dennis said, “is there a word puzzle called an acrobatic?”
“Not that I know of.” Tommy hadn’t bothered looking up from his paper.
“A word like that then.”
“Acrostic, maybe.”
“And what’s an acrostic?”
“It’s when you’ve got a string of words and you take the first letter from each one. The cryptics use them a lot.”
“The first letter from… ?”
Tommy looked ready to explain further, but Dennis was already heading for the door.
I miss your hardons. See, Paul, I’m totally, absolutely lovestruck!
And embedded in it, the word “hospital.” Dennis stared at his work, the work of several hours. Many of her letters contained no hidden messages. Those that did hid them within raunchy passages, presumably to stop anyone noticing them because-as Dennis had been-they’d be too busy reading and rereading the saucy bits.
Helping Elaine at Riddrie tomorrow. Perhaps ring our Bill, lift Elaine’s morale?
While Dennis had been wondering about the identities of Elaine and Bill, speculating on their relationship, Selina had been sending another message: “heart problem.” She’d suckered him. He’d never suspected a thing.
Fred’s off up north. (Denise isn’t talking to him-and not keeping sober!)
“Found it. Thanks.”
Found what? The cash, of course: another bundle of Blaine’s cash. He eked it out to her a bit at a time, his way of ensuring she stuck around, or didn’t blow it all at once. His letters to her contained messages showing where the money was hidden. Little stashes all over the place. Blaine’s were clumsier than Selina’s. Maybe Dennis would have spotted them, if he hadn’t been more interested in her.
Infatuated with her. Those photos… all the little sexy bits… all there to stop him spotting the code.
And now she was gone. Really was gone. She’d finished the game, stopped playing with him. He’d have to go back to Jean and Tam and all the other letter writers, back to the real world.
Either that or try to follow her trail. The way she’d smiled at him… almost in complicity, as if she’d been enjoying his part in the charade. Would she send another letter, to him this time? And if she did, would he head off in pursuit of her, solving the clues along the way?
All he could do now was wait.
Dangerous Women - Penzler, Otto Ed v1.rtf
THIRD PARTY
JAY McINERNEY
D
ifficult to describe precisely, the taste of that eighth or ninth cigarette of the day, a mix of ozone, blond tobacco and early evening angst on the tongue. But he recognized it every time. It was the taste of lost love.
Alex started smoking again whenever he lost a woman. When he fell in love again he would quit. And when love died, he’d light up again. Partly it was a physical reaction to stress; partly metaphorical-the substitution of one addiction for another. And no small part of this reflex was mythological-indulging a romantic image of himself as a lone figure standing on a bridge in a foreign city, cigarette cupped in his hand, his leather jacket open to the elements.
He imagined the passersby speculating about his private sorrow as he stood on the Pont des Arts, mysterious, wet and unapproachable. His sense of loss seemed more real when he imagined himself through the eyes of strangers. The pedestrians with their evening baguettes and their Michelin guides and their umbrellas, hunched against the March precipitation, an alloy of drizzle and mist.
When it all ended with Lydia he’d decided to go to Paris, not only because it was a good place to smoke, but because it seemed like the appropriate backdrop. His grief was more poignant and picturesque in that city. Bad enough that Lydia had left him; what made it worse was that it was his own fault; he suffered both the ache of the victim and the guilt of the villain. His appetite had not suffered, however; his stomach was complaining like a terrier demanding its evening walk, blissfully unaware that the household was in mourning. Ennobling as it might seem to suffer in Paris, only a fool would starve himself there.
Standing in the middle of the river he tried to decide which way to go. Having dined last night in a bistro that looked grim and authentic enough for his purposes but that proved to be full of voluble Americans and Germans attired as if for the gym or the tropics, he decided to head for the Hotel Coste, where, at the very least, the Americans would be fashionably jaded and dressed in shades of gray and black.
The bar was full and, of course, there were no tables when he arrived. The hostess, a pretty Asian sylph with a West London accent, sized him up skeptically. Hers was not the traditional Parisian hauteur, the sneer of the maître d’hôtel at a three-star restaurant; she was rather the temple guardian of that international tribe which included rock stars, fashion models, designers, actors and directors-as well as those who photographed them, wrote about them and fucked them. As the art director of a boutique ad agency, Alex lived on the fringes of this world. In New York he knew many of the doormen and maître d’s, but here the best he could hope was that he looked the part. The hostess seemed to be puzzling over his claims to membership; her expression slightly hopeful, as if she was on the verge of giving him the benefit of the doubt. Suddenly her narrow squint gave way to a smile of recognition. “I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you,” she said. “How are you?” Alex had only been here twice, on a visit a few years before; it seemed unlikely he would have been remembered. On the other hand, he was a generous tipper and, he reasoned, not a bad-looking guy.
She led him to a small but highly visible table set for four. He’d told her he was expecting someone in the hopes of increasing his chances of seating. “I’ll send a waiter right over,” she said. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.” So benevolent was her smile that he tried to think of some small request to gratify her.
Still feeling expansive when the waiter arrived, he ordered a bottle of champagne. He scanned the room. While he recognized several of the patrons-a burly American novelist of the Montana school, the skinny lead singer of a Brit Pop band-he didn’t see anyone he actually knew in the old-fashioned sense. Feeling self-conscious in his solitude, he studied the menu and wondered why he’d never brought Lydia to Paris.
He regretted it now, for her sake as well as his own; the pleasures of travel were less real to him when they couldn’t be verified by a witness.
He’d taken her for granted-that was part of the problem. Why did that always happen?
When he looked up a young couple was standing at the edge of the room, searching the crowd. The woman was striking-a tall beauty of indeterminate race. They seemed disoriented, as if they had been summoned to a brilliant party that had migrated elsewhere. The woman met his gaze-and smiled. Alex smiled back. She tugged on her companion’s sleeve and nodded toward Alex’s table.
Suddenly they were approaching.
“Do you mind if we join you for a moment?” the woman asked. “We can’t find our friends.” She didn’t wait for the answer, taking the seat next to Alex, exposing, in the process, a length of taupe-colored, unstockinged thigh.
“Frederic,” the man said, extending his hand. He seemed more self-conscious than his companion. “And this is Tasha.”
“Please, sit,” Alex said. Some instinct prevented him from giving his own name.
“What are you doing in Paris?” Tasha asked.
“Just, you know, getting away.”
The waiter arrived with the champagne.
Alex requested two more glasses.
“I think we have some friends in common,” Tasha said. “Ethan and Frederique.”
Alex nodded noncommittally.
“I love New York,” Frederic said.
“It’s not what it used to be,” Tasha countered.
“I know what you mean.” Alex wanted to see where this was going.
“Still,” Frederic said, “it’s better than Paris.”
“Well,” Alex said. “Yes and no.”
“Barcelona,” Frederic said, “is the only hip city in Europe.”
“And Berlin,” said Tasha.
“Not anymore.”
“Do you know Paris well?” Tasha asked.
“Not really.”
“We should show you.”
“It’s shit,” Frederic said.
“There some new places,” she said, “that aren’t too boring.”
“Where are you from?” Alex asked the girl, trying to parse her exotic looks.
“I live in Paris,” she said.
“When she’s not in New York.”
They drank the bottle of champagne and ordered another. Alex was happy for the company. Moreover, he couldn’t help liking himself as whoever they imagined him to be. The idea that they had mistaken him for someone else was tremendously liberating. And he was fascinated by Tasha, who was definitely flirting with him. Several times she grabbed his knee for emphasis and at several points she scratched her left breast. An absentminded gesture, or a deliberately provocative one? Alex tried to determine if her attachment to Frederic was romantic. The signs pointed in both directions. The Frenchman watched her closely and yet he didn’t seem to resent her flirting. At one point she said, “Frederic and I used to go out.” The more Alex looked at her the more enthralled he became. She was a perfect cocktail of racial features, familiar enough to answer an acculturated ideal and exotic enough to startle.
“You Americans are so puritanical,” she said. “All this fuss about your president getting a blow job.”
“It has nothing to do with sex,” Alex answered, conscious of a flush rising on his cheeks. “It’s a right-wing coup.” He’d wanted to sound cool and jaded. Yet somehow it came out defensive.
“Everything has to do with sex,” she said, staring into his eyes.
Thus provoked, the Veuve Clicquot tingling like a brilliant isotope in his veins, he ran his hand up the inside of her thigh, stopping only at the border of her tight short skirt. Holding his gaze, she opened her mouth with her tongue and moistened her lips.
“This is shit,” said Frederic.
Although Alex was certain the other man couldn’t see his hand, the subject of Frederic’s exclamation was worrisomely indeterminate.
“You think everything is shit.”
“That’s because it is.”
“You’re an expert on shit.”
“There’s no more art. Only shit.”
“Now that that’s settled,” said Tasha.
A debate about dinner: Frederic wanted to go to Buddha bar, Tasha wanted to stay. They compromised, ordering caviar and another bottle of champagne. When the check arrived Alex remembered at the last moment not to throw down his credit card. He decided, as a first step toward elucidating the mystery of his new identity, that he was the kind of guy who paid cash. While Alex counted out the bills Frederic gazed studiously into the distance with the air of a man who is practiced in the art of ignoring checks. Alex had a brief, irritated intuition that he was being used. Maybe this was a routine with them, pretending to recognize a stranger with a good table. Before he could develop this notion Tasha had taken his arm and was leading him out into the night. The pressure of her arm, the scent of her skin, were invigorating. He decided to see where this would take him. It wasn’t as if he had anything else to do.
Frederic’s car, which was parked a few blocks away, did not look operational. The front grille was bashed in; one of the headlights pointed up at a forty-five-degree angle. “Don’t worry,” Tasha said. “Frederic’s an excellent driver. He only crashes when he feels like it.”
“How are you feeling tonight?” Alex asked.
“I feel like dancing,” he said. He began to sing Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” drumming his hands on the steering wheel as Alex climbed into the back.
Le Bain Douche was half-empty. The only person they recognized was Bernard Henri Levy. Either they were too early, or a couple of years too late. The conversation had lapsed into French and Alex wasn’t following everything. Tasha was all over him, stroking his arm and, intermittently, her own perfect left breast, and he was a little nervous about Frederic’s reaction. At one point there was a sharp exchange that he didn’t catch. Frederic stood up and walked off.
“Look,” Alex said. “I don’t want to cause any trouble.”
“No trouble,” she said.
“Is he your boyfriend?”
“We used to go out. Now we’re just friends.”
She pulled him forward and kissed, slowly exploring the inside of his mouth with her tongue. Suddenly she leaned away and glanced up at a woman in a white leather jacket who was dancing beside an adjoining table.
“I think big tits are beautiful,” she said before kissing him with renewed ardor.
“I think your tits are beautiful,” he said.
“They are, actually,” she said. “But not big.”
When Frederic returned his mood seemed to have lifted. He laid several bills on the table. “Let’s go,” he said.
Alex hadn’t been clubbing in several years. After he and Lydia had moved in together the clubs had lost their appeal. Now he felt the return of the old thrill, the anticipation of the hunt-the sense that the night held secrets that would be unveiled before it was over. Tasha was talking about someone in New York that Alex was supposed to know. “The last time I saw him he just kept banging his head against the wall, and I said to him, Michael, you’ve really got to stop doing these drugs. It’s been fifteen years now.”
First stop was a ballroom in Montmartre. A band was onstage playing an almost credible version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” While they waited at the bar, Frederic played vigorous air guitar and shouted the refrain. “Here we are now, entertain us.” After sucking down their cosmopolitans they drifted out to the dance floor. The din was just loud enough to obviate conversation.
The band launched into “Goddamn the Queers.” Tasha divided her attentions between the two of them, grinding her pelvis into Alex during a particularly bad rendition of “Champagne SuperNova.” Closing his eyes and enveloping her with his arms, he lost track of his spatial coordinates. Were those her breasts, or the cheeks of her ass in his hands? She flicked her tongue in his ear; he pictured a cobra rising from a
wicker basket.
When he opened his eyes he saw Frederic and another man conferring and watching him from the edge of the dance floor.
Alex went off to find the men’s room and another beer. When he returned, Tasha and Frederic were slow dancing to a French ballad and making out. He decided to leave and cut his losses. Whatever the game was, he suddenly felt too tired to play it. At that moment Tasha looked across the room and waved to him from the dance floor. She slalomed toward him through the dancers, Frederic following behind her.
“Let’s go,” she shouted.
Out on the sidewalk, Frederic turned obsequious. “Man, you must think Paris is total shit.”
“I’m having a good time,” Alex said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I do worry about it, man. It’s a question of honor!’
“I’m fine.”
“At least we could find some drugs,” said Tasha.
“The drugs in Paris are all shit.”
“I don’t need drugs,” Alex said.
“Don’t want to get stoned,” Frederic sang. “But I don’t want to not get stoned.”
They began to argue about the next destination. Tasha was making the case for a place called, apparently, Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill. Frederic insisted it wasn’t open. He was pushing L’Enfer. The debate continued in the car. Eventually they crossed the river and later still lurched to a stop beneath the Montparnasse tower.
The two doormen greeted his companions warmly. They descended the staircase into a space that seemed to glow with a purple light, the source of which Alex could not discern. A throbbing drum and bass riff washed over the dancers. Grabbing hold of the tip of his belt, Tasha led him toward a raised area above the dance floor that seemed to be a VIP area.
Conversation became almost impossible. Which was kind of a relief. Alex met several people, or rather, nodded at several people who in turn nodded at him. A Japanese woman shouted into his ear in what was probably several languages and later returned with a catalogue of terrible paintings. He nodded as he thumbed through the catalogue. Apparently it was a gift. Far more welcome-a man handed him an unlabeled bottle full of clear liquid. He poured some into his glass. It tasted like moonshine.
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