Your nature, it says, predisposes you to dream. You are capable of deep feelings… Some words he cannot read…at the moment, you are not very lucky, but don’t fall into despair. Your destiny will soon be revealed. Courage! Belief! Her scent is Iris. Her lucky day Monday. He was wrong—at the very bottom there is a response to her thought: Your desire will be realized if you open your heart.

“Is that right?” Dean asks.

“No,” she says. “It’s printed.”

“Let me read it again,” he says. “Maybe she gave you mine.”

“But how did she know the month I was born?” Anne-Marie says.

“She smelled your scent. Iris.”

“What do you mean?” she says.

They drive home at midnight. It’s not often they’re out so late. Usually their evenings are quite simple. A meal somewhere. A stroll from which they return after dark. The trees above them are rich with silence. From the radio stations of Europe music pours forth faintly in the cheapest rooms. Her portable is on the floor. The dial is illuminated. It glows mysteriously. Luxembourg is on. Geneva. The orchestras of the world beat softly. The muscle in her behind is tight. It feels like a string around the shaft. He pushes in slowly and then, at last, plunges, like the bottom dropping out. Anne-Marie moans, her head buried in her arms. After he was dead I thought often of these moments, of this one. Perhaps it is her moan, her face pressing against the sheet. He can feel her tight around him, like a noose. He closes her legs and lies there contented, looking out the window, feeling the tender spasms.

“Es-tu contente?” he asks after a while.

Her voice, her very presence, seems summoned from afar. She answers quietly.

“Oui.”

[26]

“DON’T YOU GET TIRED of being down there for months on end?” Cristina says. “God!”

I don’t know what to say. They’re all looking at me. I’m really not sure. It’s not a question of being tired of something. It really can’t be compared.

“What on earth do you do there?” Alix says.

“Well, I’m doing some work.” A pause. “I’m doing a lot of reading—I know that sounds funny.”

“It must be fascinating,” she says. “Whatever you’re reading.”

They laugh.

“What is he really doing?” she asks. “It’s all so secretive. It must be something marvelous.”

I can’t tell whether she means it or not. They’ve asked her to dinner because of me. I’m uncertain how to take her though. She’s beautifully dressed in a blue silk suit, and she seems to be completely unaffected by my presence. At first, in fact, she ignored me, but her attention is worse. Billy asks if I want another drink.

“How long are you here for?” Alix says.

“Just a few days. You don’t mean in France? Altogether?”

“Yes, in France.”

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I’ve already stayed longer than I expected.”

“Um,” she says. “You like it then.”

I can’t answer that. Finally I nod. I say,

“Yes.”

She turns to Cristina.

“He’s rather nice,” she says and then, talking to them, abandons me.

By the time we go to dinner, I am nervously trying to play this game with her. It’s exciting to be in her company, but I’m always a little afraid of what she might say next, and this fear causes me to be helpless. She’s as tall as I am with a very beautiful complexion, not at all pale. I can’t tell how old she is. Twenty-six perhaps. I can’t very well ask. When Billy and I go down for the car, he tells me she’s been married. This puts me more at ease for some reason.

“She was married to Teddy Leighter,” he says.

“Who?”

“Teddy Leighter. Don’t you know him?”

“I’m not sure. Who is he?”

“Oh, you know him,” Billy says.

“I do?”

“Sure you do,” he says. “He played hockey.”

Then he says something I don’t hear. But we’ve arrived at the level of the garage.

We have dinner at the Calvados in a room filled with candles. I notice she reads the menu carefully, even with interest, but she practically ignores the food when it arrives. In the middle of the meal she tells me she’d like some Evian water. She goes on talking to Cristina while I try to find a waiter. A night, a long night in which I am captive, is beginning. It will end with a determined search for the negress we saw last time in the club near the Champs. Alix and I have to see her, Billy decides.

“I’ve seen her.”

“But Alix hasn’t,” he says.

Billy looks like a bullfighter, Alix says. She’s jealous of him. He’ll always be beautiful. She stares at him very directly, her chin in her hand. No, he says and orders more wine. He even moves like a bullfighter, she says. Cristina seems to think it’s funny.

The negress cannot be found. Paris is filled with the fresh smell of trees as we go from place to place. She cannot be found, but finally there is another in a dress made of flowers. The room is crowded. Alix dances very close to me.

“Have you really been down there all winter long?” she says.

“Yes. Why?”

“I’ve been thinking about it, that’s all.”

“You’re embarrassing me,” I say. “It’s not that interesting to talk about.”

“You like it though.”

“Yes.”

“You must have fallen in love,” she says.

“No.” Perhaps there was a slight pause.

“Ahh,” she says. “That’s it. You have a girl.”

She smiles at me for the first time. At last we have found each other.

“That’s right, isn’t it?” she says.

“No.”

“Oh, you’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“You have a little French girl.”

“I’m ashamed of it, but I don’t.”

“They can be very nice,” she says.

“I’m sure.”

Back at the table she tells them I’ve confessed. Carrying on a wild affair, she says.

“It’s not that woman across the street?” Cristina says.

“Madame Picquet?”

“Is that right?” Billy says happily.

“No, no. She’s getting married.”

“I thought she was married,” Cristina says.

“She’s divorced.”

“The town whore,” Cristina explains.

“Who’s she marrying?” Billy says.

“Oh, some student. I don’t know. I’ve never seen him.”

“How about you?” he says.

“It’s nothing. Alix invented it.”

“Come on.”

“No. Really.” I feel like an idiot.

Alix is smiling. The show comes on again.

“I don’t like this singer as much as the other one,” Cristina says.

When we finally come out the sky is still dark, but its authority is gone. The night has passed. We drive back to their house. Billy turns on all the lights. He insists on preparing breakfast. He wanders around the kitchen with a huge pan in his hand. He begins to break a dozen eggs into it.

“How about making the toast?” he says.

I’m not even hungry. He gives me a dish with a big square of butter on it, right out of the refrigerator. It’s too hard. When I try to spread it, I tear the toast. He is pouring milk into the eggs, then Worcestershire sauce.

“How do you like them?” he asks me. “Hard or soft?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He looks at the color.

“They need more milk,” he says.

In the long, richly furnished salon, the women are sitting on the sofa. It’s almost light outside. The brightness of the room and the windows paling makes it seem like the end of a long crisis. Their hands are moving. I can hear their palms against their wrists. I sit near them.

“What are you doing?”

“Flipping,” Cristina says.

They compare coins. Their attention to the game is solemn, unreal.

“We’re flipping for you,” she says. A pause. “It’s one up.

Neither of them looks at me. They match again and hold their wrists near each other. Cristina breaks into nervous laughter.

“Who won?” I ask.

No answer.

“Three out of five,” Alix suddenly says.

“All right.”

The coins flicker in the air. Cristina drops hers. It doesn’t seem right for me to help her find it. She searches the dark, Oriental rug on which it has disappeared.

“It’s by the coffee table,” Alix says.

“Where?”

“Just inside the leg.”

Cristina’s on her hands and knees.

“It’s heads,” she says.

Billy comes in to announce everything is ready.

“What’d you drop?” he says.

“Hm?”

“Where’ve you been?” Alix says.

We sit in the dining room in the five o’clock light of a Paris morning. Against the wall is a huge, mahogany buffet. Mirrors which reflect the dawn. The table is large enough for twelve. Billy brings in the platter heaping with eggs that smell alarmingly strong.

“What are these?” Alix says, taking a small portion. “Eggs?”

Billy is sitting at one end of the table. He stares at her. He becomes serious when he drinks. Cristina begins laughing. She can’t stop. She laughs as she tries to serve herself, and Alix starts in, too. They laugh insanely; helpless, crying laughter. Eggs have spilled from the serving spoon onto the table, and Cristina tries to pick them up. By now she can’t even control her hand. She can’t look at Alix. They slowly fall into silence, but the slightest sound from either of them starts it again.

“What’s so funny?” Billy says. He hasn’t even smiled.

“Nothing.” The last syllable explodes. They are laughing so much it hurts.

“Aren’t you going to eat any eggs?” he finally says.

“What?” Cristina forms the word cautiously.