Empress Bianca (13 page)

The bossa nova, of course, was hardly the sort of dance one would choose to set a romantic mood, but Bianca smiled and laughed her way through it as if she were having the time of her life. In reality, she couldn’t wait for the song to end. She hated exerting herself on the dance floor, not because she minded the effort (lethargy was not one of her faults), but because she loathed ruining her clothes and makeup with perspiration.

Moreover, she would have wanted romantic music to set a romantic mood, but violent threats called for violent remedies. As soon as the song ended, she took control of the situation. Once more dragging Philippe by the hand, she said, ‘Come with me. I must get them to vary the tempo. They’re not playing enough cheek-to-cheek music. At the rate they’re going, everyone will look like a thoroughbred after a race. It’s time they gave everyone a break from all of this vigorous dance music.’ She walked straight to the bandstand, excusing herself graciously on the way, and whispered her instructions to the bandleader. She then turned, smiled triumphantly at Philippe, slipped her arm through his and said, ‘Let’s really dance now.’

The band struck up ‘
Spanish Eyes
’. Bianca swung her body into Philippe’s, and they closed in on each other with the naturalness of people who are used to dancing together. Philippe adopted the attitude they had always formerly had: correct, friendly and comfortable. Bianca, however, subtly edged in a degree closer than she had ever done before and applied the slightest amount of pressure to Philippe’s hand and back. He responded by mirroring her actions.

‘So far, so good,’ Bianca thought, taking care not to dance so suggestively that the suspicions of any onlooker - Bernardo especially - would be aroused.

Four slow dances later the band changed tempo again, and Bianca
indicated - by the slightest facial gesture - that the time had come to stop dancing. While she and Philippe were making their way off the floor, she said lightly and flirtatiously: ‘Philippe, I do believe you’ve been trying to seduce me.’ He blushed, giggled slightly as if he were a sixteen-year-old girl whose older and much more experienced boyfriend was making a welcome pass at her and squeezed her hand.

The evening after her New Year’s Eve dinner dance, Philippe tried to kiss her, grabbing her clumsily in the drawing-room while Bernardo and the children were on the veranda having ice cream after dinner. He pressed his lips on hers and tried to stick his tongue down her throat.

Bianca pulled back. ‘Not here, not now,’ she said, relieved that he had shown his hand so completely. Although the incident might not have counted for Philippe - or for most women - as a success, to Bianca it did.

It showed her that he really did desire her but that he was also inept, at least in terms of seduction and kissing. This, however, was no bad thing. A woman always has more power over a man who isn’t exactly a lady-killer than over one who is an accomplished lover. She was also intrigued to discover that she had not disliked the sensation of his lips on hers, nor had she been repelled, as she had feared she might be, by the taste of his saliva.

Although Bianca had not actually intended to begin an affair with Philippe, once the genie of his desire was out of the bottle, it proved impossible to stuff it back in. She was now confronted by a stark choice: either she gave him the license he sought or she refused and ran the risk of sullying the friendship. Reluctantly she allowed him to court her into bed.

It was with relief that Bianca discovered, three weeks into the new year, that her fear that she might find Philippe physically repugnant and thereby ruin their relationship was unfounded. True, he had a body that would have challenged the sexual desire of any woman with conventional appetites. At five foot four and one hundred and seventy pounds, he was no Adonis, but he had a masculine build: muscles in all the right places.

Good broad chest. Good solid arms. Substantial, indeed protruding, stomach, but at least it was firm. His legs, while short, were muscular. And he was covered in hair, front and back; and to Bianca, a hirsute man was more appealing. Indeed, his back was as hairy as his chest, which was a mat
of long, silky black hair. She already knew this, of course, from the countless times she had seen him swimming. What surprised her that afternoon when he dropped in unexpectedly at three o’clock, knowing that the children would be at school and Bernardo at work, and pulled her into the men’s changing room of the swimming pool - built for her by Bernardo to celebrate their fifteenth wedding anniversary - was the frisson of attraction she felt when he was naked and his manhood fully exposed, his short but thick penis throbbing and his large, well-rounded testicles tight with desire. This, of course, should not have surprised her the way it did, for Philippe possessed the three essentials for attractiveness in Bianca’s eyes. One, he desired her. Two, he was hairy. And three, he had a thick penis. ‘Length is at best a luxury, at worst uncomfortable,’ she used to say whenever the subject of Porfirio Rubirosa and Baby Pignatari, Latin America’s two most famous lovers, was discussed around Mexico City dinner tables. ‘But width is absolutely fundamental to satisfaction.’

‘Oh, Bianca, I love you,’ Philippe declared, pressing himself against her fully clothed body. ‘I’ve loved you and wanted you since I first met you.’

‘Not here, not now,’ she replied between his fumbling kisses.

‘Marry me. Marry me. You won’t regret it. I’ll give you an even better life than Bernardo does.’

Bianca raised her index finger and gently put it against his mouth, pleasure coursing throughout her body and soul. Philippe was hers, to do with as she pleased, and even though she did not really want him, she nevertheless thrilled at the idea of having someone so ardent and so useful in her power. If only she could keep him dangling forever, that would be ideal. ‘We’ll speak about this outside. I can’t stay here any longer. If one of the servants discovers us, it will be a disaster.’

‘I’ll marry you, Bianca,’ he said, trying to reassure her.

‘I know, and I love you for it, but I have the children to consider.’ With that, she pecked him on the lips and let herself out onto the veranda of the pool house.

Within minutes, he came back outside, a large bath towel covering the erection that had not quite disappeared. Bianca, noticing his state of arousal, felt another frisson, this time of satisfaction. It was so gratifying to be desired.

Before Philippe could say anything, she said: ‘Darling, I want you to know how very happy you’ve made me this afternoon.’

‘We need to be together properly,’ he replied.

‘In marriage or in bed?’ she asked, sharp as a whip: a trait that never failed to quicken the pulse of this most astute of men.

‘Both,’ he said, reaching for her hand. She let him take it and allowed him to caress it, although she was not responsive the way she would have been with Bernardo. ‘What about coming to the apartment tomorrow afternoon at siesta time?’

‘Philippe, I can’t slink into a man’s apartment at siesta time, as if I were some common prostitute.’

‘No one will know.’

‘Your porter will, for one. It leaves us open to blackmail. No. I can’t behave like that. I have a husband and children and a reputation to consider.’

‘You can always divorce Bernardo and marry me. I’d love to be a stepfather to your children. You know Bianca, I’m a rich man, relatively speaking. I can take care of you. I may not be as rich as Ferdie, but I am worth a few million dollars.’

‘You’re going too fast for me. We haven’t even slept together…’

‘I know we’ll be fantastic together…’

‘That may be so, but I can’t just leap from one marriage to another, Philippe.’

‘We need to be together.’

‘Not here. Not in Mexico. We would have to meet abroad,’ she said, stalling for time.

‘That’s very clever, Bianca. No wonder I want you so much. You’re so much more than a pretty face. I’ve always said that brains are the ultimate turn-on to a man with a mind. The problem, of course, is that so few women with brains look the way you do,’ Philippe said, taking her hand and resting it near his penis. ‘And let’s face facts: a man doesn’t go to bed with a woman’s brains. You’re the perfect package.’

She smiled, pulled her hand away and said: ‘Maybe we should meet in New York in March. I’ll tell Bernardo I’m going shopping for the new season’s clothes. But you must tell him that you’re going to Paris or some such place.’

Although Bianca did not enter into the affair with any enthusiasm, the March trip was an unexpected success. Although the sex was perfunctory and could not compare with what she had with Bernardo, she nevertheless
did not mind sleeping with Philippe. He was so sweet and so ardent that she almost desired him and would have done so, had he been more proficient in bed. However, he was like many highly successful men: highly effective out of bed, totally deficient in it. Still, his acumen as a businessman made dealing with him easy, if only because he was used to making compromises as a part of deals. Therefore, when she insisted that they occupy suites on separate floors (‘Just in case Bernardo is having me followed. I don’t think it’s likely, but you never know for sure’) he booked a suite for her and, three floors beneath, a double room for himself which he never once slept in, although he was careful to stash his clothes there (‘In case one of the staff is a private detective,’ Bianca suggested.)

Bianca’s nervousness and the precautions it forced upon them only added to the excitement of the occasion. ‘If Bernardo finds out you were here, we can say that we ran into each other and linked up for companionship,’ she said. ‘And if he doesn’t discover that you were here, we’ll keep our mouths shut.’

Having lived in Lebanon and travelled extensively on business throughout Europe and the Americas as well as the Far East, Philippe was actually considerably more sophisticated than his new mistress. This sophistication now came to his aid, helping to seduce her and lure her more deeply into the relationship. He made sure he served up all the treats a great metropolis such as New York has to offer to those in the know. For the four days of the trip, he laid on the latest Broadway shows, lunched and dined at
Le Pavillon, La Cote Basque, La Grenouille
and the other fashionable watering holes. They danced at
Le Club
, the chicest discotheque in Manhattan, and Bianca was supremely impressed to discover that he had been one of its founding members. Clearly, she noted with surprised delight, this funny-looking and superficially dull little man had hidden depths.

By the time Bianca flew back to Mexico while Philippe made his way to Paris, their relationship had undergone a fundamental change, even though it was not enough to make her contemplate leaving Bernardo for him. It was on their second foreign assignation, however, that her respect for him surged, bringing her closer to the precipice she did not yet know existed.

Once more, Bianca and Philippe stayed at the Pierre, that most sumptuous of hotels on Fifth Avenue diagonally opposite the Plaza, where
Ferdie Piedraplata’s good friend, Aristotle Onassis, kept a permanent suite.

Once more, they did all the things chic New Yorkers did, but it was when he introduced her to the magic of Mainbocher that she entertained for the first time the idea that one day she might…some time in the very, very far future…replace the solidly parochial Latin American Bernardo with the more cosmopolitan Philippe.

On the morning after their arrival in New York, he’d simply said to her: ‘This afternoon, you’re going to receive an invitation to visit the salon of Mainbocher. I’ve arranged things through the King of Morocco’s sister-in-law, who’s a friend of mine from Lebanon. If you’d like me to come with you, make the appointment for eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. Otherwise, go and choose whatever you want.’

Mainbocher was America’s premier couturier. You couldn’t just walk into his salon on the eighth floor of the KLM Building on Fifth Avenue without first being invited, because this man, who had made his name between the wars in Paris, did not have clients. He had house ‘friends’.

These included the Duchess of Windsor, whose dress for her wedding to King Edward VIII had been his creation; Babe Paley, CZ Guest; Gloria Vanderbilt and every other luminary on the American social scene. Never in her wildest dreams had Bianca ever hoped to become a house ‘friend’. Never had she imagined that she would reach the stage in life where she, Bianca Barnett de Calman, would have her own dummy made, the way all Mainbocher’s other ‘friends’ did, and that it would repose alongside all the Ford, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Van Rensslaer, and Windsor ones, ready and waiting to be draped, pinned, pricked and fitted with a creation that would be hers, and hers alone. The idea that she, Bianca Barnett de Calman, would ever be able to spend $2,000 on a suit, the way Mainbocher ‘friends’ customarily did, had never occurred to her. Sure, she was well off and had a reputation in Mexico City for being a lavish hostess, but this was something else again.

Bianca at first was too stunned to reply to Philippe’s invitation.

However, she was not so taken aback that she did not notice that Philippe had been too elegant to add that the bill would be sent to him, which she knew would be the case. He was also, she knew, too proud to say that he’d like to come with her, but she had no doubt that this was what he wanted.

‘I wouldn’t dream of going without you, darling,’ she said. ‘You must
come and give me the benefit of your guidance.’

The following morning, the lovers were received on the dot of eleven by the premiére vendeuse, who introduced them to Main himself. He was so charming, confidential even, that Bianca could see why he had ‘friends’ instead of clients.

On that first occasion, Bianca chose - but only after consultation with Philippe - a magnificent emerald-green silk jacket with contrasting skirt and a burgundy boucle woollen suit with a plunging neckline. Those garments would perfectly complement the emerald parure Bernardo had given her as a present and would give her the opportunity to wear the necklace to cocktails instead of only with a long dress, as she had been obliged to do until then.