Fair Warning
Page 20
I stripped off my dress and I stripped off my panties and I laid my palms and my nipples and my forehead on the cool glass and I stared at the river as she took in the light from Paris and broke it up and put it back together and made it her own. I watched her and I watched her and we were alone together here, she and I.
And then a great white searchlight raced along the quai and up into my eyes, flaring silently on me, and I let go of the window with nipples and hands and face and the light was bright on my body and I heard the distant growl of a motor. Moving through the river, opening the long luit of water like a lover, was a bateau-mouche, its tourists making a late-night collection of the sights of Paris—the Grand Palais and the Place de la Concorde and the Tuileries and the Louvre and the Île St-Louis and Notre Dame and the facades of these apartment houses and this naked woman.
I pressed against the window again. I had not seen Paris yet this time round. I’d been caught in an old and wearying track so far, but now suddenly I was Paris. I waved. The bateau honked.
I stayed pressed there until the boat was gone and its wake had subsided and the river was self-possessed again, unchanged. I felt a tender thing now for the Seine, for the trees and the lamps and the quai and the zinc roofs across the river and the cathedral burning down the way and the lights beyond. They were waiting for me. I’d walk alone through a Paris night to the Ritz and I’d collect myself along the way. I slipped my clothes back on and I took my first step, and as I did, I glanced toward Venus.
I understood now the look in her upturned face. She was alone in the world, but she was still rapturous with love. Even in the dim light I could see the twinkle in her eyes.