About five minutes later she finished. “Come on,” he said, eying her from head to toe when she stood with a look of mild distaste.
They waited outside for the car, Carol on the steps, André walking impatiently up and down the gravel driveway. It was very hot and she was already perspiring.
The front door opened and Gerlinde stepped out. She wore a loose lemon-and-lime colored shift, cut at an angle, baring one shoulder. “Hi, kiddo,” she said, her thin lips smiling a slightly crooked smile.
“Hi!” Gerlinde too had that hollowed out look, anorexic and pale.
For a few seconds Gerlinde watched André pacing and then remarked, “He’s no good before his first cup.”
“The chauffeur. And the maid. How come they don’t know you guys are... different.”
“We have our ways. Hypnosis, is probably the nicest way to put it. They can still do their job, they just don’t make the connection that they only see us at night.”
“Is that what you’re going to do to the doctor too?” And the police, Carol thought.
“Sure.” Gerlinde’s voice was a bit strained.
“Listen. Thanks for being so nice to me.” Carol touched her arm. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you there.”
A peculiar look came over the redhead. Suddenly her eyes seemed to catch fire and Carol was mesmerized. They reminded her of a piece of fruit she’d left on the patio one summer. Two days later, it began moving. It had taken her a moment to realize the fruit was covered with larva.
Gently Gerlinde pushed Carol’s hand away. “Hey, I’m not much before my first cup either. Keep a distance, honey. You smell like a fine blend to me.”
A green sports car with the hood down pulled up. Karl was driving. He, too, looked pale and drawn. Gerlinde got in, waved and they drove away. Within seconds the silver limo stopped beside the house.
André held the door for Carol and got in right after her. The car drove off immediately.
During the forty minute trip to Bordeaux he didn’t look at her once. He seemed agitated and Carol was smart enough to keep quiet. But as they drove along the harbor street on the left bank she asked, “Can I get out and walk around until you come back?”
He eyed her briefly, turned away and said irritably,
“Don’t be ridiculous!” As soon as the car stopped he was out and hurrying towards the wharfs.
Carol heard the driver’s door open and close. She tried the back doors, both of which were locked. There was obviously some kind of sophisticated mechanism for locking and unlocking them that she didn’t understand. She sighed and flicked on the inside light, hoping to find something to read. There was nothing. She sighed again. At least it’s air conditioned, she thought.
For a while she amused herself by exploring the little doors and drawers in the limo. There was a full mini liquor cabinet, a tiny refrigerator, empty except for ice cubes, a little closet with small plates, cups and utensils that looked as though they’d never been used, two spare seats, a monitor and computer keyboard, a radio, a disc player and a pile of music discs plus two movies, the new James Bond and a French film called La grande bouffe. She used the remote and turned on the television—all the shows were in French—and made a half-hearted attempt to concentrate on a sit-com.
Everything’s happening so fast, she thought. Only a month ago I thought I was free and now I’m a prisoner again, being forced to have a monster baby. And I brought this on myself. I don’t even understand why I came back. Three days ago it made sense. Now the whole thing seems like a bizarre nightmare.
Canned laughter burst from the speakers.
She had no feeling of the child inside her. But Carol had never really wanted children. Earlier, before the marriage ended, she and Rob talked about it. Neither felt ready. They were too young. And a baby was inconvenient. Carol hadn’t even taken the bar exams and Rob was still building his reputation. Maybe, a couple of years down the road, they’d both said. Now she was glad they’d waited. But she’d never felt a real desire. She didn’t look at babies on the street thinking, how cute, wish I had one. The two children that had been part of their circle of friends seemed bearable for about three hours at a stretch. But she’d often thought, thank God I can go home now.
A man yelled “Merde!” and there was more laughter. The station broke for a commercial—soup was being ladled into bowls by a woman in a frilly white apron who looked like she was having the time of her life.
She didn’t want to have this baby, that’s the one thing she was positive of. But she had the feeling there wasn’t much she’d be able to do about her situation. She felt okay right now, but lately she’d been so ill, vomiting daily, that she was weak all the time. And emotionally she was a wreck. She’d feel settled, balanced for five minutes and then, wham, she was off the deep end, as Gerlinde had put it. It scared her to think that last night she had come so close to considering suicide.
On the small screen she watched a preview for a made-for-TV movie. A woman dressed in black cried while another woman comforted her.
I wish things were different, she thought. That I hadn’t been exposed to the virus. That André was normal. And he was nice to me all the time. She wished he wouldn’t berate her, demean her, brutalize her. Maybe he would treat her better now that she was pregnant. He’ll have to, she thought. He won’t endanger the baby. I can bargain a little for what I want.
Carol heard the driver’s door open and close and then the rear door opened. André got in. He looked alive, filled out. He switched off the TV and the light, picked up the phone, punched the buttons and spoke to the driver. She understood the words, Royal Medoc. On the five minute trip into the downtown, he turned in the seat, studying her in silence.
When they reached the hotel, André got out first. While he talked through the front window, giving the chauffeur instructions, he gripped Carol’s upper arm securely. The minute the car was gone he turned towards her, pulling her close. He took her face in his hands. “Put your arms around me,” he said softly.
The street was crowded. Out of the corner of her eye Carol saw people glancing at them, smiling, nodding approval, assuming they were lovers. She formed a split-second plan to scream for help as loud as she could.
“I’m only going to say this once,” André said, so seriously that her attention became riveted to his face. “Don’t do anything stupid, although I’m sure you’ll find that difficult.”
He kissed her gently on the lips. “If you get out of line I’ll hurt you more than you’ve ever been hurt before, baby or no baby. You’ll have to redefine the word pain. Understand?”
Carol nodded. He smiled at her, kissed her again, then draped an arm around her neck tightly. On the way into the hotel, he nodded at several passersby and exchanged ‘bonsoirs’. He’s really nuts, she thought.
They stopped at the desk to pick up the key to her room then went right up. As soon as they were inside he flipped on the lights and said, “Take that dress off and give it to me!”
Carol froze for a moment, then put down her purse and undid the safety pins she’d used to hold the sun-dress together where he’d torn it two nights before. She slipped the dress down over her hips, folded it carefully and handed it to him. Immediately he ripped it to shreds and threw it in the trash can. “Don’t wear anything this ugly again, not while you’re with me. Take everything else off too.”
Carol removed her underpants, also torn, and her shoes.
“Lie down and spread your legs!”
“Don’t talk to me like that!” she blurted out.
He laughed sarcastically and crossed his arms over his chest. “Like what, the whore you are? What did you expect? You planned to give me AIDS. Did you think I’d find that endearing?”
“I didn’t plan anything. I figured if you could get it you probably already had it, because of all the sailors. At least you couldn’t give it to me.”
“Then what was the big tease about not taking your blood?”
“In case you weren’t immune, I wouldn’t give it to you. But that’s what I thought at first, before we had sex. But then I didn’t want to die, that’s all. I tried to tell you so many times. I came back to tell you.” She was completely flustered.
“Right!” he sneered.
Andre went to the closet and took out her luggage. He pulled her dresses, skirts and blouses off their hangers, one by one, tossing them haphazardly, with disgust, into the suitcase. “You dress like a cleaning woman with the taste of a chambermaid.”
When the closet was empty of her things, he sorted through what was in the bureau, picking out a black and red True Blood T-shirt and tan cotton army shorts. Except for her hairbrush, toothbrush and makeup bag which he put into her shoulder bag, everything went into the suitcase.
He tossed her T-shirt and shorts at her. “Put these on.”
She went to the suitcase to get underwear but he stopped her. “Nothing underneath, just the shirt and shorts.”
She dressed then slipped on the same flat shoes she’d worn earlier.
“Turn up the cuffs,” he instructed.
Carol rolled the cuffs on her shorts up twice.
“More.”
She did another fold.
“Twice more,” he instructed.
The pants were now very short. Too much of her bottom showed. “I can’t go out like this. I’d be embarrassed.”
“Typical mortal angst. You’re all a bunch of ego-maniacs.”
While she sat on the bed waiting, he phoned the desk.
Within two minutes a bellhop arrived at the door. André gave the boy some money and instructions in French. Then he told Carol, “I’ll lock your suitcase away at my place so I don’t have to look at these rags. You’ll get it back when you leave. Come on!”
The small elevator was crowded but they squeezed in.
Immediately his arm went around her waist. He slid his hand down her backside and up under the shorts, in clear view of the other passengers.
Carol felt totally ashamed. She knew her face was flaming. He acts like a rebellious teenager, she thought. Erratic, constantly trying to embarrass and humiliate me.
He paid the bill while she cleaned out her safety deposit box. As they were leaving the clerk called out, “Mademoiselle! I nearly forgot. A letter. It arrived for you yesterday.”
She reached out to take it but André intercepted the envelope.
He glanced at both sides quickly before pocketing it.
They got in the car and drove two blocks to a hair salon.
The owner, a short handsome man with an affected manner, greeted André warmly, kissing him on both cheeks, calling him, “Ma belle bête noire.” Most of the staff said hello to André too. The owner looked Carol over with what she thought was disapproval, ran his hands through her long hair in a professional way and quickly had her washed and sitting in a chair before a large mirror. She realized she could see André in the mirror and was surprised. He almost had me believing he’s a vampire, she thought.
While the stylist pinned sections of her hair up, preparing it for cutting, André sat on the edge of the counter flipping through a style book. The two men consulted together frequently, with lots of laughter and mock-arguments accompanied by wild hand gestures, and at last seemed to come to an agreement.
Within half an hour Carol’s hair had been snipped into a short, smart, modern style that showed more of her face than she normally exposed. The stylist massaged in gel and blew her hair dry while using his fingers to shape it. He sprayed the end result into place. A pretty young girl came by and made up her face with vivid colors, outlining her eyes in kohl so that they appeared very round, and her lips in a dark red pencil. Carol glanced in the mirror thinking, I’m a teenager again!
Their next stop was a clothing store on the chic rue Ste-Catherine. André made her try on several outfits, out of which he bought three skirts, all similar, four tops and an oddly-cut summer pant suit the color of watermelon. Her T-shirt and shorts were packed in with the new things. She was now dressed in a very short black leather skirt and a red and white horizontal striped tube top, no underwear. He hung a silver chain belt around her hips. It was made of wide links inter-locking with smaller links and clasped at the front onto a flat sharply-angled piece of metal that resembled a padlock with a stylized keyhole. An old-fashioned key hung from one of the links. Overall she looked like a modern Apache dancer.
Next they went across the street and he bought her two pairs of shoes with three inch heels and thin straps around the ankles.
She wore the red ones, her flat shoes packed with the black patent leather pair.
On the way back to the car she said, “A month from now these things won’t fit.”
“A month from now the style will be passé and I’ll buy you something new.”
He made another brief stop. When he came back he had one long silver earring, shaped like a pair of handcuffs, which she put on, and a red studded leather wristband with a large red stone imbedded in it.
“Turn around,” he said. He hooked something around her neck. It fit snugly, although he fastened it so there was just room for her to breath. She touched it. “This is a dog collar!”
“Try not to bark too loudly.”
When they next got out of the car, he snapped one end of a six foot chain onto a ring on the front of the collar and the other end onto a loop in the waistband of his pants which already had one half of a set of handcuffs hooked on. It’s like he’s walking a dog, she thought, which depressed her. But soon she was too disconcerted to be depressed.
They strolled slowly along the length of a promenade in le Vieux Bordeaux, André holding her tightly around the waist, the chain attaching them. This area of town seemed frenetic. Trendy types, artists and actors brushed shoulders with hookers, drug addicts and derelicts, a general assortment of odd characters. On the streets people juggled, sold hand-made jewelry, paintings and hot iPads, walked pit bulls and Chihuahuas and performed mime shows. Bag ladies dressed in faded orange or yellow crepe de Chine begged for coins, musicians hooked up to mini amplifiers played loud grating music, artists sketched caricatures in pastel charcoals on the sidewalk itself, exquisite older women costumed in expensive attire flirted with bi-sexual hustlers dressed to draw attention to their genitals, Tunisians smoked aromatic tobacco in long pipes, couples gyrated to music blaring from the open door of a nostalgia shop/night club and they all seemed to know André. Many of the women kissed him passionately, and some of the men. Everyone examined his newest acquisition—Carol.
She felt awkward, embarrassed, picked apart, ignored and then paid too close attention to, not to mention trapped.
They all had something to say about her. And she couldn’t understand one word of it.
André seemed to be taking in everything with a lot of enthusiasm. He’s obviously very popular, she thought. Right at home with all the other nuts. He savoured the attention, smiling with the pride of a collector when these creatures of the night fussed over Carol. She just wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and hide.
After what seemed like hours, he led her to a little café on a small street off one end of the promenade near La Grosse Cloche, a large Gothic eighteenth century bell tower featuring a big clock surrounded by graceful figures. They sat outside, in a prominent place. André chatted with people at nearby tables and called to others who were passing. He ordered a spinach salad for Carol plus a piece of meat she thought was steak until she bit into yet another piece of liver, which was served with pommes frites. At one point, while André was busy talking, the waiter asked her in broken English if she wanted something to drink.
“Vin,” she said, adding, “rouge,” two of the dozen or so French words she knew. But when the wine came, André made the waiter take it back and bring her a glass of milk instead.
About four in the morning they left the café. He took her hand as they walked down to the river and crossed the Pont de Pierre. André point
ed out spots of interest along the way, just as if she was a friend visiting the city. Le Monument des Girondins, l’Hôtel de Ville, and the Gothic Cathédrale Saint-André with its nearby Tour Pey-Berland. “See the gold statue of the virgin at the top of the tower?” he nodded. “The virgin and St. André’s are linked by an underground passage.”
Eventually they recrossed the Garonne and walked along the left bank taking the same path that Carol had taken, the path where the carpenter had died. Tonight the water level was higher. They passed that spot and headed further west beyond the large ships, away from the downtown core. It was still very warm out but the humidity had dropped a little so Carol wasn’t as uncomfortable. But she felt tired. “Can we stop for a while? My feet hurt. It’s the shoes.”
André turned towards her and pulled her close. He examined her, apparently pleased by the new look, then kissed her lips. A couple passed behind them going west.
Soon he was kissing her passionately, aggressively. He pulled the tank top down, exposing her breasts, and lifted her skirt up to her waist.
“Don’t!” she said, trying to cover herself. But he was all over her.
He turned her around. “Hold on to that.” He nodded at the streetlight post.
Carol heard a whine in her voice as she said, “Why here, now?” but she was too exhausted to muster a strong protest. And what does it matter anymore, she thought.
He took her from behind, grasping her hips, entering her vagina slowly, moving rhythmically up into her. The sky above was clear, the moon full. Below she heard water splashing against the dock, and both of them breathing. She was surprised that her vagina was moist and more than amazed to hear herself moaning with pleasure.
Chapter Twelve
The rest of her second month and throughout the third, Carol settled into her pregnancy, and life at the château. Many evenings she went into the city with André, or they walked along the beach, other nights she spent downstairs talking with Chloe or Gerlinde, and Karl, when he was around. For a prisoner she was being treated well enough, although she was bored with the daily rations of liver and/or spinach they fed her.
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