Cleopatra�s Perfume (16 page)

Ah, but it was a sight to behold, this palace of sin. Carved with stone snakes, elephants and dragons, the abandoned home of a bankrupt Turkish businessman sat neglected for years until Ramzi hired local workmen to turn it into a dazzling den of decadence. A lush garden surrounded the building, boasting numerous nude statues in various acts of copulation. Frescoes filled with naked men and women, their bodies drawn with exquisite detail, greeted the visitor in the massive hallway.

Two tall Moors guarded a gilded door with a golden doorknob that opened into a main room with a geometrically designed parquet floor and winding balustrades leading upstairs. Belgian mirrors with beveled glass hung everywhere, even on the ceilings. A huge fireplace with inlaid marble glowed night and day with red-hot embers to stir up passion. Two lifts took special visitors upstairs to the private area we called the Cobra Room. One lift took visitors up, the other down, so they’d never meet. Secrecy was tantamount to the success of the Cleopatra Club. No one knew for certain who frequented the backroom, which made its mystique even more intriguing.

Adding to the seductive aura was live tango music. I’ll never forget the first time I saw Josette La Fleur sit down at the piano. She played the tango as if her fingers flitted across the willing flesh of a lover, teasing him while pleasing herself, the music guiding her, her provocative movements glittering like stardust. Shaking her
nearly exposed breasts, pumping the piano pedals with her nude slim brown legs peeking through the long split in her red velvet gown, her music worked its magic on me, but it was her hands I remember most. Flying about in wild gestures, flawless skin, her long fingers with oval-trimmed nails, hands that drove glove makers mad. I felt the sensual vitality of a woman much like myself, a woman who knew the pain of not belonging.

Josette was a light-skinned Negress who could pass if it fit her style, but it didn’t. She was a talented musician, playing the accordion and the guitar as well as the piano, and proud of her heritage. I never knew which story, if any, she told me was true, whether she was extolling the attributes of the proud handsome figure of her father, an Algerian diplomat, or her mother, a model from Paris, slim as a ballet dancer with a long neck and small bosom. Other times her father was a tribal king brought to France from the Belgian Congo and her mother a divorced American heiress with gray eyes. Josette’s eyes were also gray, framed by long, long black lashes that hid her thoughts as well as her past. Who was I to judge this dazzling young woman? I had my own secrets that I concealed and must continue to do until I complete my mission.

I take a breath, pause. That time draws near. Sitting before the vanity in my hotel room in Berlin, I pencil in my light brows, drawing an arc in the soft brown color, then gloss my lips in bright red for courage. I must leave soon for my luncheon appointment with Maxi. My job is to receive the information from her, then make my way back to London. But first I will finish my diary, and so with a great fondness for the young chanteuse simmering in my soul, I shall continue the story of Josette.

She portrayed a sexy elegance seated at her piano, but I knew it was a veneer covering an inner toughness, the hard lessons she’d learned making her way around the cabarets playing hot jazz. She brought a vibrant style to her act with her husky voice sliding and skittering through a song like a kitten’s tongue licking milk off her master’s fingers. Paris loved her, so intrigued were the French with
le tumulte noir,
a fascination with Negro culture. That didn’t help her when her lover’s wife hired thugs to threaten to cut up her pretty face with a knife unless she left Paris. Grabbing her flashy costumes and her musical instruments, she set out across the continent to forget him.

How well I understood the need to forget a lost love, so I asked no questions when she showed up at the club, looking for work. I hired her before she finished playing my favorite Cole Porter tune, since our last piano player took off with the singer for a job at the Hotel St. George in Algiers. Tall and thin with dark straight hair swinging over her shoulders, Josette always wore a flower behind one ear and a cigarette behind the other. That said it all about Josette La Fleur, the flower. Husky voice, sensual body, and all female when she sang.

I indulged my soul when I sat in the club bar in the afternoons, listening to her rehearse with a Russian violinist, a virtuoso with a penchant for Mendelssohn and vodka martinis. With a glass of brandy in one hand and a cigarette burning in the tray in front of me, I hummed along with the pretty mulatto singing French ballads with a seductive intimacy that stirred my sexual juices for Ramzi, who was more often than not involved with Laila in a business meeting.

Did I suspect anything between them? No, though I saw evidence of her strange hold on him that had nothing to do with sex. She had
a habit of squinting and shaking her head so as to effect the wild swinging of her dangling earrings whenever she wanted Ramzi to do an errand for her. It was almost as if she was commanding his attention like a queen beckoning her male slave.

Speaking in a mixture of Arabic and French, he thought nothing of doing her bidding, bringing her a round pillow for her back, going to the bazaar, bringing home exotic foods, silks, then waiting on her, serving her strong
café arabe
as she cooed her orders to him, which he obeyed without question. She reveled in performing her dominant act in front of me, as if to prove she held a mental leash on him that wielded a stronger bond than any sexual attraction I possessed. No tenderness or warmth did I see her show anyone but Ramzi in her daily drama. Because she was powerless to enact the physical love she wanted from him, or so I believed, she found a cure for her impotence, if I may be so impertinent to use the word to define her loveless existence, by exacting complete control over him.

Did I care? No. Let her have her game. I wasn’t afraid of her malevolent looks cast in my direction, her long, dangling earrings swinging back and forth, her black eyebrows pulling up her face in what I assumed was a smile. I was polite, looking for any evidence of softness in her eyes, but none existed.

I wish I could say I found the woman cold and pale, her views boring, but she was intelligent and artistically articulate in the matter of Egyptian artifacts.
And
protective of Ramzi as a painter would be of her masterpiece. I realized later Ramzi
was
her creation, forged from her own soul, transferring her hungry sexual spirit into him and leaving nothing in her but a snarling creature ready to pounce on anything that threatened the existence of that creation.

What I didn’t know then was that she was mad, tormented, not in the sense of losing control of her own self, but she possessed a madness more deadly. She was sexless, her femininity cut from her by a society that demeaned a woman’s desires and so killed her female soul before the sweet pleasure of a man’s cock filled her. She exhibited no understanding of the physical satisfaction of sex. Only sullenness and a droll wit. Her comments were always sexual, biting, but never finished thoughts, like a poet drunk on absinthe, repeating the same bad phrase over and over again while he proclaimed his genius.

She took everything in her icy stride, though she played a dangerous masquerade which I will later reveal. Then, I saw her only as a woman unable to experience sexual pleasure, her eyes feasting on the flesh of others while her body remained cold and chaste. She reminded me of an
artiste
who shivers in the wings with stage fright before a performance, then can’t go on.

Thinking about Laila, her tiresome excuses for insisting Ramzi perform some menial task for her, her complaining about the heat, her damn earrings swaying against her bare brown shoulders, exhausts me. I shall not waste any more time discussing her, dear reader, not when I have matters of a more sensual nature to satisfy us both. I hunger for a man’s arms around me, holding me, his precious breath circling my neck, making me tingle. Yes, I’m lonely, which is why I indulge in writing this diary, jumping from one sexual encounter to another like a schoolgirl pasting photos of film stars on the bare walls of her room as well as on her heart. I’m not concerned with writing a great tome. Mine is not one the critics will expound upon with profound praise; I imagine they will proceed to
expurgate anything not to their liking. My objective rather is to tell the story of how a muddled group of obsessed individuals, these delirious denizens of the night, all ended up in Cairo on the eve of this terrible war and found a haven for their debauchery.
Fucking,
vulgar though the word is, aptly describes the heated, rushed, hot moments of lubricity—genitals crushed, bosoms heaving, heavy sighs. Reliving it fuels me with power, so I shan’t make any more excuses for bathing my soul in a mental ecstasy that makes me wet, though I refrain from touching myself, should I tire before I complete my mission.

I know when I close this diary, I shall be lonely again; but for the next pages I shall live my bliss with words, as if each letter I write elicits a pleasurable spasm between my legs, relieving my need for release. You may believe I dally too long in what you consider rhetorical verbalizing, but the importance of understanding the cast of players in this story is tantamount to your pleasure as well as, I hope, your tolerance for the events about to take place within the red silk bindings you hold in your hands. I sense your impatience, but I assure you, dear reader, the sensory diversions you have waited for shall be revealed to you in the most delicious details.

You have but to turn the page.

S
o many nights I stripped in the moonlight, Ramzi lounging on huge green silk pillows, watching me, the white orb flooding through the latticed window of my hotel suite with light. I peeled away the deep orange of the fading desert day from the sky with the seductive sway of my shoulders as I let fall my sumptuous satin pajamas the color of pure ivory, then kicked aside the Oriental garb with my bare toe. The room was so bright it was as if the moon herself scooped them up and adorned their richness for her own pleasure.

Standing nude in the intense glow, I closed my eyes and believed Ramzi was a sculptor and my body was soft clay in his hands, molding it to his desires. Slicking his palms with oil of jasmine, he applied it all over my body, its emollient effect to moisten as well as soothe my skin. Then, cupping my breasts, as if he were reaching out to create something magical, his fingertips brushed up against my supple flesh and brought it to life.

I arched my back, moving closer toward him by instinct, not
resisting when his fingers became rough, twisting my nipples and making them hard. I let out a moan, unable to stop the heat building between my legs, nor did I wish to do so. A subtle tingling worked its way up and down my body as Ramzi massaged every inch of me, exploring me. His touch was possessive, hungry to dominate me.

No,
my mind said.

I pulled out of the hypnotic scene for an instant, the feeling so sharp it bit my pleasure center with momentary pain. I knew why. I had experienced that
same
feeling when Lord Marlowe touched me, dominated me. A twinge of guilt branded me. What was wrong with me? Why was I thinking about my late husband at a time like this? Or was it a warning? A warning that dominance was a dangerous game and I was merely a player.

The moment passed when Ramzi dipped his finger inside me, rubbing the hard ridge of my clitoris with his thumb back and forth, faster and faster, making it throb until I could stand no more. Driven by a force greater than myself, I let go of my past. I shuddered, ready to surrender to him.

But he had other ideas.

I opened my eyes and saw him staring at my breasts, round and firm, my nipples high. My entire body was oiled and glistening like morning dew covering an ancient statue, but he did nothing but look at me. In his eyes, I was a living piece of art. I didn’t understand then he was practicing the ritual of sexual subjection peculiar to East African Muslims by making me a slave to self-indulgence and sensual luxury. I knew only I didn’t want to live without him.

“You are the embodiment of sin, my English lady,” he said, wiping the jasmine oil from his hands, “and thoroughly depraved.”

“Does that disturb you?” I asked, dropping to my knees and licking the smooth head of his cock, my tongue tingling with sensation. I couldn’t wait for him to touch me.
I
would begin the sexual game on this evening.

Gritting his teeth, he threw back his head. “You excite me, watching you metamorphose into a goddess, turning the tempest inside you into a thing of beauty.”

“Like this?”

I flicked my tongue up and down his hard shaft, the heat of his body arousing me with his raw scent. Ramzi considered himself more European than Egyptian and knew how much I enjoyed his muskiness. I noticed he hadn’t rubbed Cleopatra’s perfume on his skin, a slight I ignored since Egyptians used scent to anoint the body. I’d long forgiven him for seducing me with his silly game about the power of the perfume. But I couldn’t forgive Laila for her constant taunts, pressuring me to buy more ancient artifacts from tombs newly unearthed, then insisting she resell them for me at a profit. After deducting her commission, of course. I imagined her so-called artifacts were no more than stolen goods with questionable provenance or skillfully rendered fakes, though I admit to you, dear reader, the perfume box and its contents allegedly belonging to the young Egyptian queen were the most brilliantly executed fakes I’d ever seen. The detail was remarkable, so much so I kept the treasure hidden in the suite I’d taken at Shepheard’s Hotel, if only because I found the scent of Cleopatra’s perfume addictive to my occupation with sexual games. I prayed I’d never have the occasion to find out if the perfume held any real magical power to save the wearer from a violent death.

I continued my game with Ramzi on this evening as I did all evenings, inhaling his cock, letting it slide down my throat, trembling as it throbbed with energy. Licking, sucking, tasting. I didn’t stop, feeling his cock grow harder. My fingers slid below to his testicles and I felt them contract, then, before I could pull back, a fiery surge filled my mouth. I tasted his salty semen drizzling down my chin before I swallowed it. I didn’t find it unpleasant, as I had with past lovers. I have no idea why, except to say I was more occupied with watching him experiencing a most exciting orgasm. His breathing forced, his body shuddering, he yelled out, then collapsed on top of the large square pillow, the sweat from his skin discoloring the vibrant green silk with dark stains.