The Woman In The Fifth

by Douglas Kennedy

  She smiled and crawled in beside me.

  'I appreciate your myopia.'

  'And you say I'm hard on myself.'

  'After fifty, all women think: C'est foutu. It's finished.'

  'You barely look forty.'

  'You know exactly how old I am.'

  'Yes, I know your deep, dark secret.'

  'That is not my deep, dark secret,' she said.

  'Then what is?'

  'If it's a deep, dark secret . . .'

  'Point taken.'

  Pause. I ran my fingers up and down her back, then kissed the nape of her neck.

  'Do you really have a deep, dark secret?' I asked.

  She laughed. And said, 'My God, you are terribly literal.'

  'All right, I'll shut up.'

  'And kiss me while you're at it.'

  We made love again. Slowly, without rush at first . . . but eventually it built up into the same crazed zeal that marked our first encounter on the sofa. She was still remarkably passionate, and threw herself into lovemaking with ravenous intemperance. I had never been with anyone like her – and could only hope that my own ardor came close to the level that she reached.

  When we were finished, there was another long span of silence. Then she got up and returned a few moments later with her cigarettes and an ashtray. I refilled our glasses of champagne. As she lit up her cigarette, she said, 'Living in Paris must have corrupted you.'

  'Why do you say that?'

  'Because you don't criticize me for smoking. I mean, what sort of American are you, not playing the Health Fascist and telling me how passive smoking is rotting your lungs?'

  'Not all of us are that anal.'

  'Well, any of the Americans I have met . . .'

  'Have you ever been to the States?'

  'No, but . . .'

  'Let me guess. You've met the occasional anally retentive American at Madame's salon?'

  'I go there very infrequently.'

  'So it was my lucky night then.'

  'You could say that.'

  'Why do you go there if you so dislike it?'

  'I don't dislike it. Madame is absurd – and someone who thinks that her life is her ongoing work of art . . . whereas the truth is that she is a dilettante who had five minutes of fame back in the sixties as an artist's muse, and briefly married a rich man . . .'

  'Does that explain the big apartment?'

  'Of course. The husband's name was Jacques Javelle. He was a big-deal film producer back then – largely soft-porn junk, but it made him briefly rich. He married Lorraine when she was this sexy, flower-girl mannequin, and continued seeing his two long-standing mistresses. But Madame's strange American morality wouldn't put up with such sexual compartmentalization and she exploded the marriage. She came out of the divorce with the apartment and nothing more. Her looks began to diminish and she did not adapt well to the changing times. So what did she do? Reinvent herself as a curator of people. She found her little niche in Paris, the salon brings in an income, and for a few hours every Sunday night, she can pretend she is important. Et voilà – the story of Madame L'Herbert and her salon. Twice a year I find it amusing, nothing more. Occasionally it is good to go out and meet people.'

  'You don't have a lot of friends in Paris?'

  'Not really . . . and no, that doesn't bother me. Since I lost my daughter and husband . . .'

  'You lost your husband as well?'

  A nod. Then: 'Since then I have largely kept to myself. I like it that way. There is much to be said for solitude.'

  'It has its virtues, sure.'

  'If you are a novelist, you must appreciate it.'

  'I have no choice but to deal with being alone. Anyway, writing fills the hours when I do my job.'

  'So what – besides writing – do you do all night?'

  'I sit in a room, and make certain that no one is trying to break into the place, and also let in the staff who do all the shipping of furs.'

  'I never knew that furriers ran a twenty-four-hour operation.'

  'This one does.'

  'I see,' she said. 'And how did you get the job?'

  I told her a bit about arriving in Paris, and the horrendous experience in the hotel, and the day clerk who was such a bastard, and Adnan's kindness, and him getting controlled, and all the other strange happenstantial events that led me to rent his chambre de bonne and find my current employment.

  'It's all rather picaresque,' she said. 'A run-in with a classic Parisian connard – Monsieur . . . what was his name again?'

  'Monsieur Brasseur at the Hotel Sélect on rue François Millet in the Sixteenth. If you know anyone you hate, send them there.'

  'I'll keep that in mind. But you do have fantastic material, n'est-ce pas ? Getting milked by a horrid hotel desk clerk and then ending up in a chambre in le quartier turc. I'm certain, during all those years that you were practicing your French in . . . where was it that you lived . . . ?'

  'Eaton, Ohio.'

  'Never heard of it. Then again, never having set foot in your country . . .'

  'Even if you're an American, you've probably never heard of Eaton, Ohio . . . unless you happen to have heard of Crewe College, which is the sole reason to know about Eaton, Ohio, though it's not exactly a big-deal college to begin with.'

  'But it's where everything went wrong in your life, yes?'

  I nodded.

  'But that's another conversation, isn't it?' she asked.

  'Maybe not. It's something I'd rather not talk about.'

  'Then don't,' she said and leaned forward and kissed me deeply.

  Then she stubbed out her cigarette and drained her glass and said, 'And now, I must ask you to leave.'

  'What?' I said.

  'I have things I must do.'

  'But it's not even . . .' I checked my watch. '. . . eight o'clock.'

  'And we've had a lovely cinq-à-sept . . . which was so lovely that it nearly became a cinq-à-huit.'

  'But I thought we'd spend the evening together.'

  'That cannot be.'

  'Why not?'

  'Because, as I said, I have things to do.'

  'I see.'

  'You sound like a little boy who's just been told that he has to leave his tree house.'

  'Thanks for that,' I said, sounding hurt.

  She took my face in her hands.

  'Harry, do not take this badly. You simply have to accept that I am busy now. But I do want us to have another afternoon together.'

  'When?'

  'Say three days.'

  'That long?'

  She put a finger to my lips.

  'You should know better,' she whispered.

  'I just want to see you before then, that's all.'

  'And you will – in three days.'

  'But . . .'

  Her index finger again touched my lips.

  'Don't overplay your hand.'

  'OK.'

  She leaned forward and kissed me.

  'Three days,' she said.

  'What time?'

  'The same time.'

  'I'll miss you until then,' I said.

  'Good,' she said.

  Eleven

  THE NEXT THREE days were difficult. I went about my daily routine. I woke at two. I picked up my wages. I killed time at the Cinémathèque. I ate dinner at the usual collection of cheap traiteurs and cafés that I patronized. I went to work. I wrote. Dawn arrived. I picked up my croissants and returned home.

  So far so normal. The difference now was that every waking hour of every day was spent thinking about Margit. I replayed our afternoon together, minute by minute, over and over again: a continual film loop that kept running in the cinema inside my head and wouldn't pause between showings. I could still taste the saltiness of her skin, still feel her nails as they dug into me as she came, still relive the moment when she threw her legs around me to take me deeper, still remember the long deep silence afterward when we lay sprawled across each other and I kept thinking how my ex-wife
told me repeatedly what a bad lover I was, and pushed me away for months, and how I always tried to get her to talk about what I was doing that was wrong, and how she always shied away from what she called 'the mechanics', and how, when I discovered that she was involved with the Dean of the Faculty, I knew I had lost her completely, and . . .

  Stop. You're doing what you always do. You're harping back to the unpleasant in an attempt to block out the happiness you feel . . .

  Happiness? I'm being forcibly kept away from my daughter – so how could I be at all happy?

  Anyway, this isn't happiness. This is infatuation.

  But in my more rhapsodic moments, it also felt a bit like love.

  Listen to you, the lovesick teenager, head over heels after an afternoon of passion.

  Yes – and I'm counting down the minutes until I see her again.

  That's because you are desperate.

  She's beautiful.

  She's pushing sixty.

  She's beautiful.

  Have a cup of coffee and sober up.

  She's beautiful.

  Have three cups of coffee . . .

  I kept telling myself that I should brace myself for a disappointment . . . that, when I arrived at her place again, she'd show me the door, announcing that she'd changed her mind about continuing with our little adventure. It was all too good to be true.

  When the third day finally arrived, I showed up in her quartier a good hour before our 5 p.m. rendezvous. Again I killed time in the Jardin des Plantes, then stopped in the same grocery store and bought a bottle of champagne. I loitered for three minutes outside her front door until it was exactly the hour in question. I punched in her code. I ascended the second escalier. Outside her front door I was hit by a huge wave of nervousness. I rang her bell. Once. No answer for at least thirty seconds. I was about to ring it again when I heard footsteps behind the door, then the sound of locks being unbolted.

  The door opened. She was dressed in a black turtleneck and black pants, a cigarette between her fingers, a small smile on her lips. She looked radiant.

  'You are a very prompt lover,' she said.

  I stepped forward to take her in my arms. But one of her hands came up in traffic-cop style and touched my chest, while her lips lightly touched mine.

  'Du calme, monsieur,' she said. 'All in good time.'

  She took me by the hand and led me to the sofa. Music was playing on her stereo: chamber music, modern, slightly astringent. She relieved me of the champagne I had brought.

  'You don't have to do this every time you come here,' she said. 'An inexpensive bottle of Bordeaux will do.'

  'You mean, you don't want huge bouquets of roses and stuffed cuddly animals and magnums of Chanel No. 5?'

  She laughed and said, 'I once had a lover like that. A businessman. He used to send me mortifying presents: heart-haped bouquets and earrings that looked like a Louis XIV chandelier . . .'

  'He must have been mad about you.'

  'He was infatuated, that's all. Men really do have a little-boy streak. When they want something – you – they'll shower you with toys, in the hope that you will be sufficiently flattered.'

  'So the way to your heart is to be mean and ascetic. Instead of diamonds, a box of paper clips, perhaps?'

  She stood up to fetch two glasses.

  'I am glad to see your sense of irony is up and running this afternoon.'

  'By which you mean, it wasn't up and running when I last saw you?'

  'I like you when you're funny, that's all.'

  'And not when I'm . . .'

  'Earnest. Or a little too eager.'

  'You certainly put your cards on the table,' I said.

  She opened the champagne and poured two glasses.

  'That's one way of looking at it.'

  I was going to say something slightly petulant like, I stuck to the rules and haven't called you once in three days. But I knew that would simply re-emphasize my earnestness. So instead I changed tack, asking, 'The music you're playing . . . ?'

  'You're a cultured man. Have a guess.'

  'Twentieth century?' I asked.

  'Very good,' she said, handing me the champagne.

  'Slight hint of gypsy edginess,' I said, sipping the champagne.

  'Yes, I hear that too,' she said, sitting down beside me.

  'Which means the composer is definitely Eastern European.'

  'You're good at this,' she said, stroking my thigh with her hand.

  'Could be Janácek.'

  'That is a possibility,' she said, letting her hand lightly brush the top of my crotch, making me instantly hard.

  'But . . . no, he's Czech, you're Hungarian . . .'

  She leaned forward and touched my neck with her lips.

  'But that doesn't mean I listen exclusively to Hungarian music.'

  'But . . .'

  Her hand was back on my crotch, unbuttoning my jeans.

  'It's Bartók,' I said. 'Béla Bartók.'

  'Bravo,' she said, reaching into my jeans with her hand. 'And do you know what piece it is?'

  The Woman in the Fifth

  'One of the String Quartets?'

  'Thank you for that blinding glimpse of the obvious,' she said, pulling my penis out of my pants. 'Which one?'

  'I don't know,' I said, my body tightening as she began to run her finger up and down my erection.

  'Have a guess.'

  'The Third, the slow movement?'

  'How did you know that?'

  'I didn't. It was just . . .'

  I didn't finish the sentence as her mouth closed over my penis, and began to move up and down, her hand accompanying the movement of her lips. When I was close to climax, I uttered something about wanting to be inside her, but this just increased the rhythm of her sucking. I didn't so much come as explode. Margit sat up and downed her glass of champagne in one go, then lit a cigarette.

  'Feeling better?' she asked.

  'Just a bit,' I said, reaching for her. She took my hand, but resisted my attempts to pull her down toward me. So I sat up and kissed her deeply. But when I began to slip my hand up the back of her top, she whispered, 'Not today.'