77 Rue Paradis

by Gil Brewer

  He whipped the car down the road, drew up at the outside gate. The guards carefully inspected his identity card, did not smile, waved him on.

  Driving down the tortuous mountain road, with the cliff dropping off beside him, Baron felt utterly lost. He knew now that he was already beyond any explanation. He knew there was no turning back now.

  CHAPTER 14

  He spent the better part of an hour, after arriving back in Marseilles, prowling the streets north of St. Charles Station. He took the Fiat up one street, down another. He tried one alley after another, seeking the entrance to Hugo Gorssmann’s headquarters. He knew he would recognize it, but the more alleys he attempted, the less confident he became. He found nothing. He discovered many doorways, and tried them all. None was the one he sought. He watched every car carefully, searching for the small gray Opel.

  Hugo Gorssmann was well hidden.

  Baron drove back toward the Rue Paradis. His head ached dully and his tooth throbbed in time with the headache. He felt dirty inside and out. He knew he was doing what was right, yet he had to keep reassuring himself.

  And already he was beginning to dislike Paul Chevard. He could not prevent it, and did not want to. It was better that he hate the man. When all was done, complete, there would be no turning back of time. They could never again be friends. He knew he would never again be able to enter the air industry. He wondered who he would be, where he would be.

  He wondered truly if he would be anybody or anywhere.

  Above all now he wanted to contact Gorssmann, get word of Bette. He drew the car in to the curb and parked, looked up at the windows of his room at 77 Rue Paradis. That was a hot one, all right. Paradise. He had used to joke with Elene about that, and now Elene was gone and he hoped she had found some sort of paradise wherever it was you went, but he doubted it, believing only in the endlessness, the darkness, the complete emptiness and unconsciousness of sleep.

  He felt tired, groggy from last night, fogged with the memory of what he had seen this morning. That place out there near Cassis would have been very interesting if it hadn’t been for his problem. He felt that he could have remained out there for days, just looking, watching. But now, sitting in the car, he had consciously to summon energy to climb out and slam the door.

  He stood a moment on the sidewalk, staring up at the gray-brick face of the building he lived in. Two feet of lawn, almost the only lawn on the street along here.

  He stepped over the gray grass, his foot crunching on a rusty sardine can, and went through the door.

  Inside his room, he closed the door, and saw the door to the closet on the other side of the bed move. He said nothing, waiting. The room smelled musty, as it always did at midday. The bed was still unmade. He stood there staring across the room, seeing himself in the mirror. He looked haggard, worn out. His eyes were slightly wild.

  “Oh—thank God, it’s you.”

  Lili stepped from the closet, cast him a quick, sly smile that vanished instantly.

  Looking at her, he was suddenly tremendously glad to see her. Again that good feeling seeped into him, up through him, and he knew he wanted her. He wanted her badly and with a calm, stolid abruptness that was pure need. He did not know at first whether it was Lili, or merely surcease. He did not care. Just seeing her standing over there across the bed from him washed the fatigue from his system. She was sharp and clear and waiting.

  “You’ve come back,” she said. She swallowed, still not moving. He wondered if she sensed the way he felt. He wondered if he recalled rightly what she had said the night before about not having a man, with the intimation that she wanted one. He knew she was not a street girl, not a casual lover, perhaps not even an uncasual lover. Thinking he might not be able to have her when he wanted her like this excited him, and he stepped toward the bed, then stood still, watching her as before.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ve come back. How long have you been here?”

  “Not long.” She stepped to the foot of the bed, gripped the bedrail with one hand. She looked very good to him. There was something reedy about her, yet full and lushly desirable. She was wearing the pale tan coat again today and now she peeled it from one arm, flipped it across her back, let it slip from her other arm onto the bed. She shook her thick head of black hair, tipping her head back, watching him from beneath slightly lowered lids, with the eyes sly and conspiratorial, and maybe patient. She wet her lips lightly with the tip of her tongue, not smiling, quite somber, contained, patient.

  “I’m on an errand,” she said. “Paint.” She nodded toward the dresser, and he saw a small parcel.

  “Oh.”

  “Yes.” Her fingers tightened around the bedrail and she did not move. She wore a pink dress of flannel, with a high curling collar, the throat slit open to the waist. A silver chain with a padlock on it swung from her smoothly rounded waist. The padlock swung like a pendulum, tapping lightly against the full round thrust of her right thigh. Each time it struck soundlessly against her thigh, Baron saw the tiny indentation, almost a shadow, and it drove down into him angry and hot.

  She moved from the foot of the bed, walked slowly around, and stood looking at herself in the mirror.

  He could not, did not want to, take his eyes from her tightly sheathed hips. The immaculately smooth surface of the pink flannel cloth was drawn just tightly enough around the swell and curve of her hips; it clung to her thighs, stopped at the first outward curve of rounded calf tightly snug in sheer black silk. She wore high-heeled pumps, the heels like two thinly tapered pink promises.

  The flannel across her hips was shadowed slightly where the twin curves were separated and he could see the fine movement to her body as she waited.

  “I see you,” she said.

  He glanced into the mirror, met her gaze.

  “I’ve been watching you watch me,” she said.

  “I want to watch you.”

  “Yes.”

  Wind blew the curtain on the window, came across the room, dallied a moment with the smooth hem of her skirt, laying it in a molten caress against her leg, and for that moment her leg was completely outlined to him. He saw where her stocking ended, where the stocking was gartered high on the thigh, and the garter was the only obstruction to the flawless fit of pink flannel.

  “You want me,” she said.

  He could not answer. It was in his throat, the wild need. He felt as if he were rooted to the floor. Then he went over to her in one step, whirled her around tight in his arms.

  “I’ve had no man,” she said. “I have grown up with Hugo Gorssmann. I was fourteen when I last saw my father.” She held tightly to him and he wanted to crush her completely. It was all he could do to restrain himself from tearing her dress off her body as she bent to him, arching her back, the warm depth of her thighs cleaving to him, the faintly harsh movement of her body a taunt. Her words rushed at him between parted lips, her breath hot and fierce against his face, her eyes wide and unafraid.

  “You knew you were coming here, didn’t you?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You planned it. You planned this, didn’t you?”

  She nodded, keeping her eyes on his. “Yes. Yes, all of it. Yes.”

  They spoke against each other’s breath and her breath was sweet to him, and he held her against him, rocking her against him, and she rocked with him, whispering to him, moaning low. And in the back of his mind still was the thought that he could not trust her, that she was doing this for a reason, setting him up like tenpins, to be socked into a crock. He tried to rid himself of the doubt, to stop caring. You fool, he thought. You goddamned fool, forget it!

  “You still don’t believe me,” she said.

  It no longer mattered whether he believed her or not. He lifted her, carried her to the bed, moving with mountainous care, feeling like cement, grooved, set, established. He sat on the bed and stripped her, while she stood there in front of him, doing it slowly, and she watched his eyes all the while, not moving t
o help him, only waiting, and they came onto the bed together, savagely, intent and fused….

  She had not lied. She was ready. She had waited…. And with the moment of spending, with her body a still dying crescendo of laughter and tears, spent yet still spending, Baron heard the knock on the door.

  They froze.

  For one instant their eyes locked.

  His guts seemed to turn to water. In one movement then they were off the bed. Again the knock came. “Baron!”

  It was Gorssmann.

  She stood like a rock. She could not move, not speak, not anything. He knew it. He shoved her into the closet, retrieved her clothes. He threw them in after her, seeing only her half-closed eyes sharp with memory as he closed the door. He had forgotten her coat. He took that over, stuffed it in.

  “I’m coming,” he said, saying it slowly.

  All Gorssmann had to do was try the door. It would flip open like an eyelid.

  CHAPTER 15

  Baron grabbed his wadded robe from the foot of the bed. He whirled toward the door, slipping the robe on, and now the door opened. He was covered with sweat, his heart slamming in his chest, and he knew he would look anything but composed. He glanced quickly toward the closet. The door was closed, not tightly, but partially, and the closet was in shadow. He could not think straight, and as the huge hulk of Gorssmann came through the door, he slumped to the bed.

  “Well, Baron,” Gorssmann said. “Sorry to disturb you.”

  Baron looked up at the man. Gorssmann stood beside the door, a smirk on his lips, his eyes faintly sneering. He wore a dark blue suit today, with a white checked vest. He carried a derby and a white stick. “Sleeping?” he asked.

  Baron said nothing. Sitting there, he tried to keep his breathing level, seeking to calm it down slowly. With the tail of his robe he mopped the sweat from his face. He wanted to say, The hell with Gorssmann. But he knew he couldn’t. He still could not be sure of Lili, God bless her. He did not know what to do about Lili.

  Gorssmann turned beside the door and, watching Baron from the corner of his eye, spoke toward the hallway.

  “You wait there, Arnold.”

  Baron heard Arnold mumble something. There was disagreement in the tone, but he couldn’t make out the words.

  “Kindly refrain from speaking to me that way,” Gorssmann said.

  Arnold said something again, snapping it at the man.

  Baron watched. He saw Gorssmann’s hand come up suddenly. The stick lashed out. He heard the smack, the cry, the rapid steps as Arnold scurried from the doorway. Gorssmann thrust his head forward and spat past the door into the hall. Then he closed the door and looked at Baron. He was smiling politely.

  “Well?” he said. “What is the good news, Baron?”

  “How?”

  Gorssmann rapped his stick on the floor.

  “You know precisely what I mean, thanks.”

  “What’s the idea, barging in this way?”

  Gorssmann stepped over to the window and looked out. Then he turned and blinked at Baron. He hung the derby on the back of the chair by the window, but held onto the cane. He glanced toward the hall door and pursed his lips, and Baron heard the dry whistling hiss of his breathing.

  “I knew very well where you were this morning. Also of your—shall we say—picnic last night. Poor Joseph is so drunk I’ve had to confine him to his bed. He was appointed your shadow last night. You didn’t know that, did you? Joseph is silent in more ways than one.” Gorssmann paused, paced over by the dresser, and stood there.

  Baron noticed something and his energy began to pick up again. Gorssmann’s hand was not a half inch from Lili’s package of paints, there on the dresser. Gorssmann had laid his hand on the dresser top. He twiddled his pinky, close to the packaged paints.

  “How is your friend Monsieur Chevard? He is well, eh? He took great pleasure in seeing you?” Gorssmann chuckled, panted, blinked slowly at Baron with his head thrust slightly forward. “Come, come, Baron—loose the tongue. A close-mouthed habit does not become you. Please relieve my anxiety.”

  Baron knew he would have to talk. There was no point in holding back. He wanted to get everything over with as quickly as possible. He knew he had to, and the hate inside him seemed to grow with this thought. Hate for everything—hate for himself. And looking at Gorssmann, he recalled something else. If Joseph, the deaf-mute, was in bed recovering from too much drink, and Arnold was in the hall, and possibly the chauffeur outside in Gorssmann’s car, then that left but two persons who might be relegated to keep tabs on him today: the man who had originally been in the rear seat of the Opel that first night, and Lili.

  It was an evil thought after what had happened between them, and what he had discovered about her. But suppose she were here under Gorssmann’s orders? Suppose Gorssmann even knew about that package on the dresser, knew what had happened, perhaps? It ate down into him like a frothing acid. Lili, standing inside the closet, there behind him, perhaps smiling and giggling to herself about this. And Gorssmann brooding quietly as he stared at the bed, knowing possibly what had happened there. He could even imagine Gorssmann giving her the order: Keep him happy. Sleep with him—it’s high time you slept with somebody, thanks.

  He wanted to rise, go over there, and fling the closet door open.

  But he didn’t.

  “Yes,” he said instead. “Everything is well with Paul Chevard.”

  Gorssmann waited and Baron saw the impatience, the dim light in the huge man’s squinting eyes. Gorssmann licked his narrow lips, and his hand moved out and he clutched the package of paints unconsciously. He did not look at what he had in his hand.

  “I went out to the plant. I think I spotted where what we want is,” Baron said. “I can’t be sure, because Chevard said nothing. But I’m pretty certain.”

  “Good. Good.” Gorssmann’s tone was throaty, yet high-pitched with excitement. He was holding himself down tightly.

  “That’s all there is,” Baron said. “I’m free to come and go as I wish. Frankly, he trusts me too well.”

  “No, no. He is your friend. He trusts you, that is all. Don’t you comprehend human nature? You say he has not told you of the breather?”

  “Never mentioned it.” Baron felt truly bad now that he had spoken. It hit him all at once, hard, knowing what he had done. He had betrayed the last confidence he would ever be likely to get in this world. He stared down at the floor between his feet, thinking about it, and wondering almost frantically if Lili were in it with Gorssmann. If so, all right—then it wouldn’t matter.

  But it would. That was the trouble. Having her had settled nothing. He realized he wanted more from her than just that. He wanted her. He sensed something in her he had never before found in a woman. Elene had been fine, and true, and she had given her life, yes. It hurt to know this. But nevertheless, he had never felt with Elene what he did with this little sly one. And this had been only the third time he’d seen her. When he came through the door, he had wanted her, and now that he’d had her, he still wanted her, more than ever.

  “You are very silent,” Gorssmann said. “I should think you would be happy.”

  “Yes.”

  Gorssmann chuckled again. He picked up the package of paints, glanced at it, dropped it back atop the dresser, went over and sat heavily in the chair by the window. He sort of backed into the chair, and he had to jam himself between the arms. He was obviously uncomfortable and Baron liked knowing this.

  Gorssmann said, “You have discovered something else, I see.”

  He’s wise, Baron thought. He’s wise about Lili!

  But it wasn’t that. “You have discovered hate regarding your friend Chevard already. So soon, Baron? It takes the best of us a little while. Even I. Here nor there.” He waved his hand, tried to settle himself more comfortably in the chair. He hissed short laughter. “Perhaps we should keep you in my employ. Would you like that? I have a little enterprise in South America. We will take that up as soon as this
is off the hooks, eh? Baron, what do you say?”

  “Go to hell.”

  Gorssmann leaned forward in the chair, the arms creaking with his weighted pressure, and he blinked solemnly.

  “Very well,” he said. His voice was sad with concern. “Alors, tell me everything—everything, Baron!”

  Baron did not want to. He felt that if he retained some small part of what he had seen out there at the plant today, it would boost his morale. But as he looked at Gorssmann, he knew the man would know if he lied. So he told it, and hated himself some more. He rose from the bed and went over to the dresser, unconsciously hiding the package of paints now, because it had been on his mind.

  Gorssmann sat there, gloating.

  “I want to know about Bette now,” Baron said. “All about her. And I’ll tell you this,” he said, looking into Gorssmann’s glistening eyes. “You harm one hair of her head, or let her get hurt in any way, and I’ll blow this whole thing sky-high.”

  Gorssmann laid his head back in the chair and hissed quiet laughter at the dingy ceiling.

  “You forget,” Gorssmann said. “We have her. As to your question, Baron, Bette is fine. Yes. I took her shopping yesterday, we bought all sorts of pretty things.” Gorssmann’s eyes turned inward with remembering and Baron began to feel ill. “She is a beautiful girl, very beautiful,” Gorssmann said. “Young and coltish, and gorgeous. A body that would destroy—” He glanced up, caught Baron’s look, waved his arm. “Here nor there.” He smiled, trying to smile away remembering. Baron saw that Gorssmann wished he had not spoken as he had.

  “Just remember what I said,” Baron told him.

  Gorssmann raised his hand. “I shall treat her like my own daughter, never fear. Just as I have treated Lili. Lili has been like my daughter, Baron. Don’t you think she’s a sweet one, though?”

  “Very nice.”

  “Yes. Bette is getting the best care.” Gorssmann looked up quietly at Baron. “I heard, through Joseph, about something,” he said. “Ah, my taste, as it were, in women. Baron, is it true about this girl—this one with the goat?”