by Robyn Sisman
Ah, this was more like it. Malcolm examined a display of small Cellophane-wrapped packets, disappointed to see that they weren’t all that different from what you’d find in England. He even saw one advertising itself as “sensible ”; there couldn’t be many takers for that. Alicia would expect something very unsensible, judging by the sound of her. Would unusual colors impress her? Or flavors? Or the ones with “extra features” sometimes advertised in the back of his men’s magazines?
He was just reaching for something called superglissage when he became aware of the tippety-tap of approaching heels. Quickly he snatched away his hand, scuttled back down the aisle and tried to hide behind the cardboard cut-out of a svelte blonde placing electrodes on her pertly presented bottom. But it was too late. There was the soft rustle of stockings, and a frighteningly attractive woman of about thirty bore down on him with a pink, glossy smile. Her skin was dewy with perfectly applied makeup, her dark hair swept up into some complex bun affair. A spotless white coat skimmed her figure from cleavage to knees. She stopped a few inches away from him, eyes shining with professional fervor and good health. Malcolm stared back glassily. (“Turn over now, Commander Bond.”) Her lips parted. She leaned toward him, exuding enough perfume to make his head spin, and in a soft, siren’s voice asked if there was anything Monsieur desired. Smiling weakly, Malcolm mimed the action of brushing his teeth.
Half an hour later, sweating with nerves and exertion, he was back in his hotel room with five toothbrushes and a packet of something called Everest, bearing a misleading picture of a mountain peak with a flag on top, which turned out to be mints. Fortunately, the sixth pharmacie he visited had been staffed by a man, so he was also in possession of a variety-pack of condoms (Sélection Exotique).
But it was already nearly six o’clock. In half an hour he would have to be back on duty downstairs, for drinks and a stint of brown-nosing with the PLB-sponsored doctors and their spouses. (“Excellent work on the spleen! I gather congratulations are in order” . . . “May I top you up, Madam?”) That would take him until eight, when Alicia was due. There was barely time to smarten himself up for his hot date. Meanwhile, his room looked more like a secretary’s office than a seducer’s den, and he still hadn’t rehearsed his speech for tomorrow. Trying to suppress rising panic, Malcolm undressed quickly, hung up his suit, grabbed his sea-moss exfoliator and headed for the en-suite shower.
The gushing water cleared his head. Confidence, Malc, confidence. After all the work he’d put into it, his presentation was going to go down a storm. First off, he’d decided to do something different from the usual bland introduction (“delighted to welcome” . . . “another excellent year for PLB” . . . “go forward in partnership with the medical community,” yakkety-yak). With all the big bosses there, he’d be mental to miss the opportunity to make his mark, to show he could think outside the box. So he was going to put on a real show, no messing, following the tips he had picked up from speech-writing manuals. Even little things helped, like making sure you looked good (“Always check yourself in a full-length mirror”), and standing up straight. (“A mere five minutes a week with a large book on your head will develop a posture that gives you instant presence.” He’d been practicing with the new Terry Pratchett.) There were some brilliant pointers on how to pep up your talk: “Draw in Your Audience with a Relevant Personal Anecdote,” for example. That had been dead easy. Gastroenterologists dealt with stomach and bowel disorders, right? What could be better than the hilarious story, well honed now after many riotous retellings in the pub, of his holiday in Turkey last year, when he’d had a runny tummy on the twelve-hour coach ride from Istanbul to the coast? Malcolm soaped his chest hair complacently.
“Set Your Audience At Ease with a Joke” had proved more tricky. This was an international conference, with doctors from all over the world, so it had to be a joke they could all relate to. Luckily, he’d remembered the one about the Frenchman, the German and the Irishman who go into a pub and find a goat behind the bar. Using his Visualization Technique, Malcolm could see himself standing triumphant at the podium, the roar of a standing ovation in his ears, before he stepped down modestly and handed over to the boffins with their scientific guff. There was a smile on his face as he reached for his Follicle-thickening Finish Rinse (as used by the cast of The X-Files, so he’d read: not cheap at thirty-seven quid a bottle, but what was good enough for Scully and Mulder was good enough for Figg).
The only thing still worrying him, as he toweled himself dry and leaned a hand against the bathroom mirror to trim his armpit hair (a grooming tip that reduced body odor by half!), was that he hadn’t yet checked the graphics disk. Not that he didn’t trust that Dr. Griffin, though it was weird the way he’d asked so many questions about Molly—but who was to say the stupid girl hadn’t muddled it up with one of her own CDs, and he’d wind up blasting the conference with the Bridget Jones soundtrack. Now that would be embarrassing. He decided to nip into the exhibition hall as soon as he was dressed, and test it on one of the computers before he presented himself for drinks.
And—Christ! He’d better ring his mum. She liked to know he was safe when he was abroad, and it would be a right cock-up if she rang him later, when he was . . . busy, though he had her pretty well trained now. Still, he wanted to remind her to have his Paul Smith shirt ironed for Monday morning. She was a bit slack sometimes, even though she had nothing to do all day. Some of his mates teased him for living at home, but it made sense, didn’t it? Domestics taken care of, no mortgage to eat into his disposable income, proper food like toad-in-the-hole and treacle pudding, and the prospect of a nice little property when his mum popped off. He bunged her the odd wodge of notes from time to time, but he needed most of what he earned to maintain his lifestyle: clothes, car, holidays, pension—and girls, of course, who banged on about equality and “paying their way” but always ended up costing him. He was going to think very carefully before selecting the future Mrs. Figg. Malcolm pulled up his trousers over his lucky jockey shorts, white with a huge red St. George’s cross front and back, and tucked in his shirt. Only his shoes to go, and he’d be ready. He checked his watch. Yeah, he reckoned he could spare his mum a minute, especially if he styled his hair and slapped on his aftershave at the same time.
But all thoughts of his mother were driven from his head by a horrific discovery. His bottle of Tiger was empty! He couldn’t face another pharmacie; besides, there was no time. Then he had a brainwave. Quickly he grabbed his briefcase, rummaged through it until he found the magazine he’d bought at the airport and thumbed through the pages. Jackpot! There was one of those ads where you peeled off a tab to get a whiff of some new product. Malcolm ripped it free and pressed the impregnated page to the skin behind his ears, then undid his second and third shirt buttons and smeared it across his chest. He looked at the crumpled page. Calvin Klein, the latest fragrance, very expensive. Alicia would be dead impressed.
Unless she didn’t turn up. Malcolm rebuttoned his shirt thoughtfully. And what if she was a dog? The guy on the reception desk had called her “pretty,” but he was French, one of the same beret brigade whose high spot music-wise was “La Mer,” and who thought a horse was something you ate. Malcolm didn’t want to get stuck with a fatty in glasses, as had once happened to him on a blind date. He could still remember the agony of sitting opposite her in a bar and watching her chins wobble. In the end, he’d had to fake an “emergency” call on his mobile, and she’d burst into tears and sobbed about her thyroid. He shuddered. The best plan would be to tip the concierge the wink, and hang about in the lobby to check her out. If he didn’t like the look of her, he’d scarper. The way he was looking tonight, he ought to be able to pull another bird, easy. There were even one or two query shaggables among the doctors’ wives.
But Alicia would be a goer: he could feel it in his bones. Picking up the disk, Malcolm gave himself a last admiring glower in the mirror. He patted his pockets to run a final check: breath fresheners, e
mergency comb, wallet ostentatiously fat with credit cards. Truth to tell, he cheated a bit by bulking it up with his AA card, Blockbuster Video membership, Sainsbury’s loyalty card and his rail pass, but many was the time he’d seen a girl stare open-mouthed as he flipped through the multiple plastic folders. An Australian wouldn’t recognize the cards anyway. Malcolm felt a ripple of excitement: he’d never had an Australian before. Maybe she had yet to discover the privilege of going to bed with an Englishman. They were strangers in a strange city: who knew what would happen? But it was a fair bet that the Crazy Horse Saloon would give them both some pretty wild ideas for games they could play with his didgeridoo.
16
She was floating on a cloud, unimaginably high in a sky of hazy gold. Her arms were outstretched, her legs sprawled in delicious lassitude. Somewhere out of sight she could hear birds calling. How odd that they could fly this high. If she raised herself to peer over the edge of her cloud, she might be able to see what kind they were. But she was too contented to move. And she was naked. Why was that? she wondered. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except—except something was missing. She chased a sweet, elusive memory. What was it? She mustn’t let it slip away.
Molly’s eyelids fluttered open. There were spots of tawny light on the ceiling. She watched them glimmer: pale, then bright, then pale again, lacing themselves into fantastic patterns. Idly, her gaze slipped down to walls covered with fabric, traversed the panels of a narrow door, focused on the outline of a bottle; there was something familiar about its shape. Then a seagull shrieked, raucously close, and consciousness returned in a rush. She turned her head on the pillow, already smiling at what she would see. But Fabrice had gone!
Molly sat up in bed and looked wildly round the room. She felt desolate. She peered over the edge of the bed: his jeans and shoes were missing, too. But what was that, half tucked under the empty bottle? Reaching over, she drew out a piece of paper, obviously torn from a pad and faintly criss-crossed with lines, like graph paper, with words and drawings sketched across it. As she turned it the right way up and started to read, a smile spread across her face. He’d drawn her a strip cartoon! The first box showed his head on the pillow, yawning as he woke up. Next, the focus widened to show him full-length on the bed, with Molly beside him looking like a mermaid, with cascading hair and an undulating body (her breasts weren’t that big!), her legs draped by a sheet. A bubble emerged from Fabrice’s head, filled with hearts and exclamation marks. How lovely . . . Now a close-up of Fabrice’s face, smiling wistfully as he thought about smoking a cigarette; then another, more anxious face, and another bubble in which a giant box labeled “Cigarettes” radiated lines of urgency. There now followed a flurry of drawings depicting his search for his cigarettes—checking the pockets of his jeans, then his jacket, finding the packet (oh, joy!), discovering that it was empty (hélas), tearing his hair. Eventually, he appeared fully dressed, tiptoeing out of the apartment. The final box showed him back in bed with Molly, contentedly smoking. A scrawled arrow pointed to his watch, with the hands set at six twenty.
Molly reread the cartoon with smiles and croons of delight. She kissed the paper. How marvelous he was! She found her watch curled on the bedside table, and saw that it was already twelve minutes past six: not too long to wait. Probably his shutting of the door had woken her up. She gathered the pillows together and flopped back in an orgy of down. Above her loomed an elaborately carved headboard with gilded rosettes; she felt like a queen lounging on her throne. Arise, Sir Fabrice. Molly giggled at her joke and stretched luxuriously, relishing each small ache, each tender spot, as if they were battle scars from a magnificent victory. A faint breeze drifted across her skin through the open window. The light slanting through the shutters was dusky orange. She lay cocooned in happiness, listening to muted footfalls in the street, birds returning to their trees, the pleasurable sounds of a city catching its breath before the excitements of night.
But now something much louder began to obtrude. A thrumming noise, as from a giant refrigerator, grew to a growl, a roar. Molly jumped out of bed, padded across polished boards, and pushed open the shutters just in time to see a tourist boat—a bateau-mouche—approaching down the river, fat and wide as a gigantic water-beetle, with a glass carapace sheltering throngs of sightseers. As it trundled level, a disembodied monotone floated to her across the water from multiple loudspeakers. “. . . And on our right we can see the Île St-Louis, known as the Island of Cows until the seventeenth century, when Louis XIII allowed it to be developed for housing. It was here that the famous composer Chopin . . .” Molly leaned out of the window and waved vigorously, thoughtless of her nakedness. A surprising number of people waved back. How friendly of them! “Hello!” she wanted to shout. “I’m Molly Clearwater. Isn’t Paris wonderful?” She watched the boat pass, its twin wakes turning fiery as they caught the evening sun, and followed a line of ripples to the far bank, where they set barges rocking. One day she would like to live on such a barge, with geraniums on top and a cozy stove inside, and sit on deck on evenings like this, under a turquoise sky shredded with pinky-gray cloud.
Leaving the shutters open, she returned to the bed and lay back with her hands clasped behind her neck, gazing complacently along the length of her body. This afternoon she had done several things she had never done before, and some she’d done but had never seen the point of. Now she knew what love was like: irresistible, overwhelming, frantic, uninhibited. Molly hovered for a moment over the word “love.” Then she remembered the urgent tussle of limbs, his shadowed face above hers, the sound of their voices rising and falling together, and gave a secret smile. Never again would she be ashamed of her body. She would rejoice in something that could receive and give such intensities of pleasure. When Fabrice returned, she would not hide herself with a sheet. In fact, she was going to lie right here, in the most provocative position she could think of, to give him a surprise.
She heard a small sound. Was that him already? How quick he’d been! She pictured him running back through the streets with his precious cigarettes, bursting out of the lift in his impatience to return to her. Yes, that was the heavy front door slamming shut. With a look of mischief on her face, Molly grabbed the champagne bottle and placed it upright between the tops of her thighs and her foufoune (another new word to add to her vocabulary). Quickly she flung herself back onto the pillows in a position of abandonment. “Yoo-hoo,” she cooed. “Je suis ici-ee. Dans le lit-ee.”
She heard footsteps. The door handle angled downward. The door opened, and a man she had never seen before stepped into the room.
With a screech of fright, Molly scrambled to the headboard in a tangle of limbs and hair, and crouched defensively, clasping a pillow to her breasts. In her rush she must have kicked the champagne bottle. It fell off the bed with a clunk, rolled thunderously across the floor, and rocked to a halt by the man’s immaculate shoes. “Who are you?” she demanded, in a high voice, clawing desperately for the sheet. “What are you doing here?”
He looked at her with a resigned expression, his hand still poised on the door-handle. He was quite old, well into his fifties, but very good-looking, with haughty features and silvery wings to his sleek black hair. “I suppose my worthless son has been here again.” He sighed.
“What do you mean?” Molly reared up so aggressively that one of her breasts popped over the top of the pillow. She recaptured it quickly, and yanked at the sheet until at last she had enough material to tuck under her armpits.
Cold eyes flickered over her. “I am Armand Lebrun, Fabrice’s father. This is my home. I would like you to leave, please.” He turned to go.
“One moment!” Molly staggered to her feet on the wobbly mattress, and kicked a tangle of bedding free of her ankle. So this was the monster who was ruining Fabrice’s life! This was the man he couldn’t talk to, the only parent Fabrice had, who refused to educate his son while he himself lived in wild extravagance. How dare he call Fabrice worthless? “How da
re you call Fabrice worthless!” Molly shouted defiantly, tugging at the sheet as she tried to drape it round her bottom. “He’s not worthless. He’s marvellous! He has shown me beautiful things. He has talked to me about art. He’s intelligent and kind and—and I like him!”
The man was looking at her with mild interest. “Ah. An English girl.”
Molly tossed her head at this irrelevance. No doubt he found her accent amusing. “Fabrice thought you were in the country,” she told him. “It was a mistake. Anyway, why shouldn’t a son be allowed to visit his own father’s apartment?”
“I decided to come back early. Tell me, how long has Fabrice been here? Should I count the spoons, I wonder?”
Molly gasped. Her eyes blazed. “Are you suggesting that Fabrice would steal? From his own father?”
He shrugged off her outrage. “At all events, he does not appear to be very attentive. Where is Fabrice, by the way?”
“On the contrary, Fabrice has been extremely attentive, thank you. He went to buy some cigarettes, that’s all.”
Fabrice’s father rolled his eyes.
“You see?” Molly said accusingly. “Even his smoking makes you cross. No wonder Fabrice can’t talk to you. No wonder he calls you ‘rigide.’ ”
“Does he?” He frowned. “Is that what he says?”
Molly caught a note of uncertainty in his voice and decided to press home her advantage. Perhaps she could effect a reconciliation. At the very least she could try to explain Fabrice to this coldhearted man who was obviously more concerned with his personal grooming than with his son. Who but a pampered peacock would wear cream slip-ons and knife-creased trousers to the country? His attempt at a tweed jacket was ridiculous. She could smell his cologne from here. Back home, he wouldn’t even make it to the bar of the village pub.
But he was Fabrice’s father. It was her duty to make him understand the pain he was causing. Molly hitched up her sheet and addressed him earnestly. “Monsieur Lebrun, you’re a cultured man. I’ve seen the books on your shelves. Balzac and Proust, John Updike, Julian Barnes. How can you, a man who loves literature, treat your son so cruelly?”
