Fata Morgana (6 page)

And now Lazare. But how to take him—no good sniffing around his salon, he’s in complete control there. Speak with his guests, perhaps, those with whom he’s had financial dealings. But if he’s blackmailing them, they aren’t going to speak out.

Face it, Picard, you want to take a jaunt to Vienna, see some sights, recuperate a bit in the country, expenses paid by the Prefecture, and pick up Lazare’s threads along the way. Much better than talking to a bunch of idiots so dumb they’ve let him swindle them. Speak to the Viennese police, pin the bastard down the sure way, right through his velvet wings.

He sat back in his chair, drumming his fingers in anticipation of the journey. A young woman, alone at the end of night, saw his restlessness and moved in. She was a brunette in mauve, her eyelids painted with some dark witchery, and she slipped into the seat beside him, already smiling, for she knew she’d hooked him perfectly.

He nodded slowly. The firelight played upon her face, her coiled chignon; I’ll take it down, remove the pins and see it spread upon her pillow.

He reached out, touched the tiny bell earrings which descended from the smooth swaths of her hair.

“Do you wish something?” she asked, at the ringing of the bells.

“I do.”

She smiled again, and looked down at her shiny black boots, one dangling above the other, her legs crossed and revealing only the slightest bit of pale-blue stocking.

“Shall we go then?” said Picard, standing. She stood with him, and slipped her arm into his as they left the café. Her black satin jacket became one with the dark street for a moment, until they stepped beneath the lamppost, and she was radiant again, her jacket sewn with a pale thread that caught the light, revealing a faint diamond-shaped pattern—which suddenly became the hundred gleaming eyes of a Hindoo sorcerer.

“Are you unwell?” she asked, for he’d paused in the street, a feeling of suffocation upon him.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “I had some wine...”

“The wine of the Café Orient isn’t fit to wash one’s feet in.”

They walked along Pigalle, and she stopped at a tenement not unlike his own, where no questions were asked, and where the stairs were similarly teetering and filthy. She carefully raised the hem of her gown, above the garbage and broken bottles on the second landing. Perhaps sensing his thoughts, she turned and smiled. “It’s a ruin, I know.”

“But you...” he said, gesturing to her beauty.

“I too am ruined,” she said with a laugh, taking a key from her beaded purse.

She opened the door, and the room was the usual sort of Pigalle hole, an indelible smell of old wine and stale tobacco permeating it, the walls cracked and peeling. Generations of drifters had used it, and Picard felt at home, though not completely, for there was a delicate feminine thing which sought to hold its own against the smell, the dreariness. Her table had a lace cloth, her windows were hung with soft curtains, and her open closet was a silken tabernacle, where brocaded flowers bloomed in shadow and lovely butterflies danced. She had just now removed her boots, and was seated on the bed, wiggling her toes within her stockings.

Picard, still in his cape, knelt at her feet, held them gently in his hands. She leaned back, stretched her legs out; her stockings were embroidered with a design of dark-blue clocks. The voluminousness of her underwear made further exploration difficult; their fingers went together to the buttons which held her gown. It came off easily, leaving her arms and shoulders bare. The floorboards rumbled, the windows rattled.

“They’re working nights,” she said, dropping the strap of her camisole. “Blasting in the sewers.”

“No,” he said, helping her lower the other strap. “It’s because of you the room shakes.”

She smiled; a single candle burned in a stone lantern beside the bed, and the flame was fanned by passing petticoats, gently tossed toward a chair. He saw that the clocks upon her stockings continued upward till they were met by red lace garters; when the garters came away her soft white flesh was imprinted with momentary rings that faded even before he placed his lips upon the peach fuzz of her thighs.

“Your jacket,” she whispered, opening the buttons; her fingers touched the smooth butt of his revolver and stiffened, but he removed his jacket with an innocent smile, hanging it over the bedpost.

Her perfume reigned now, obliterating the wine and tobacco smell of the room. Naked she was even more lovely, and she knelt on the bed, waiting as Picard stepped out of his underwear. “I think you might crush me,” she said, seeing his barrel-framed body.

Picard stretched out beside her on the bed, taking the pins from her hair. It tumbled around her shoulders; her eyes were still amused by his physique, which she took in slowly, running her fingers over his shoulders, his neck, twining her fingertips in the tangle of grey-black hair that covered his rock-hard chest. His gut was where his torso weakened, where all the lemon tarts had settled, and she rolled the fat playfully, lingering on the scar that crossed his belly like an obscene grin. “Someone carved you badly, darling.”

“There was a large stone in my bladder,” said Picard. “The largest ever seen in French medicine. Large and perfectly formed.”

She knelt between his legs and brought her lips to the scar, kissing it gently. “Your surgeon was a butcher.”

“He was an American dentist.” Picard reached toward the chair on which his jacket was slung and put his hand into the vest pocket. “I carry the stone with me wherever I go.”

She raised her head, looked at him curiously.

“Here,” he said, taking the largest of the three brilliant pearls from his handkerchief. “You may have it.”

She laughed and took the pearl in her hand. “A perfect fake.”

“Have it appraised before you throw it away.”

Her eyes narrowed. “It’s real?”

Picard reached into his jacket again. “My card.”

“Africa Oyster Bed Company.” The young woman looked up with a grin. “Are you good bed company, Monsieur Fanjoy?”

“We’ll see,” said Picard, drawing her to him, and turning her, so that her back was to him. They lay that way, stretched out against each other, and he slipped his left arm beneath her ribs and wrapped his right arm around her waist, so that he could squeeze both her breasts.

“Especially the left one, Monsieur Fanjoy,” she said softly; he gave it careful attention, laying his palm against the nipple and rubbing it quickly and lightly. The sewer crew blasted again, rattling the street, the foundations, her few dishes.

“Is it me, Fanjoy?” she asked, putting her hands between her legs and taking hold of him, putting him where she wanted him.

“Yes,” he said, kissing her shoulders and stroking her gently. She pressed back against him; it was his favorite position, for he knew he was too heavy for women, and he was also lazy. This way he could lie like a magnificent pig, fondling her breast, fondling her little wet beard. He’d seen a painting somewhere—the Empress riding to Fontainebleau—it came to him now, then faded, and other things came and went, a gondola, the smell of lime-tree flowers. Is it her perfume, the essence of lime-tree flowers?

“With the whole hand, Fanjoy,” she said in a gently pleading voice.

He could feel the rhythm of her pleasure and he toyed with it, steering it with his fingers and his slow deep thrusts. He was in control; one learns certain things only after the hair on one’s balls has turned grey; he was happy to steer her, concentrating completely on her pleasure. Her breasts were small, the left one extremely sensitive; the blasting powder made the candle flame dance again, and she moved her hips faster, as if the explosions were indeed taking place inside her.

“Stop,” he said softly, into her ear, and she stopped while he caught his breath and cooled a little, but he didn’t let her cool; his fingers moved between her legs, slowly, and her wild racing became a dreamlike coiling and uncoiling. He felt her place exactly, knew just how far she had to go, and he took her there as slowly as he could, making her desire double up against itself, crash and magnify itself. As she coiled toward the edge, just as her spring began to snap, he stopped and she hung suspended over the depths.

The Empress came by again, in a boat filled with her handmaidens and a Turkish oarsman. They sailed slowly along, disappearing into the black reaches of his mind, trailing only a few bright bubbles.

“Oh, please, Fanjoy, Fanjoy...”

He pressed his face into her hair; it was dry and stiff from acids and curling irons, like the hair of a mare. “Please,” she groaned, “please, I can’t wait...”

He slid his fingers back into her slippery lips, drummed his fingertips, lightly, as he’d been doing when she first saw him, drummed her over the edge. She fell with a long laughing moan, tangled her ankle back around his, trying to drag him with her. He let go, into her laughing chasm, his body dissolving in ecstasy, madness, annihilation, and out of the darkness he heard the voice of Madame Lazare speaking softly in his ear,
There are secrets,
she said, and Duval echoed her voice,
As you say, madame, there are secrets.

Picard gasped, felt himself in Lazare’s clutches, felt lost and disintegrating, a fool with a girl in the night, caught in a trap he cannot see, a trap which closes softly, and then it was over and he felt only the soft, gently closing lips of the young woman, opening and closing on him, draining him sweetly and completely. It’s only a screw, one of a thousand, a million, the night, the night. The stairway rattled again, he thought perhaps someone had fallen down it, perhaps I’m falling down it, down it. He reached far into the blackness, discovering lime-tree flowers, candlelight, the young girl’s bare shoulders. He was looking at them, she was soaked with sweat, and he was already feeling the morning train to Vienna.

“Stay there... just a moment more,” she said. He liked her sobbing laugh, knew that he could easily fall for her, and was anxious to clear out before it happened. After a few weeks with this one, I’d be groveling, as usual, or wanting to clip her on the jaw. Better not to suffer that again; don’t look in her heart too long.

He felt the flopping in his stomach, where she had gained a hold on him, where he was helpless and already loving her. A helpless pig about love, he understood himself too well.

He found his undershirt. If we’re lucky we’ll never meet again. He glanced back and saw the look in her eyes. Young girls sometimes fall quickly too. But not for long. In two weeks she’d be using my head for a soup bowl. Clear out, Picard, while you still can. Where are my shorts?

She knelt at the edge of the bed, ran her fingers up his leg, to his groin, fondling him there. “Your jewel, dear Fanjoy,” she said, touching his battered, half-hidden nut. “What happened to it?”

“Did you know St. Gervais, the bodyguard of David Orleans? He hung out in this neighborhood.”

“Did he...?”

“He kicked me in the jewel.”

“Men are so stupid.” She helped him close the buttons on his pants. “And you, what did you do to him?”
 

“He was buried with his rib cage torn out.”
 

“How disgusting...”

“But necessary, for he certainly would have torn out mine.” He went to the mirror, adjusted his tie. Within the glass he watched her return to bed. She lay down and placed the pearl in her belly button, staring at it, smiling faintly.

“The perfect setting,” he said, turning back to her. It was all right now, the danger had passed. He felt his freedom, and hers, and just now they were two swift birds of the night.

“Will it pay my rent?” she asked.

“It will.”

“You’re a gentleman, Monsieur Fanjoy.”

“No,” he said, “I’m a fool.” He looked away from her again, for they could easily lose their wings, especially if she gave him any sort of compliment. A pig with women, a simple and incurable pig.

“Perhaps I’m the fool,” she said, “believing this is real.” She toyed with the pearl, setting it between her breasts. “Perhaps you’re just a liar...”

“Tomorrow, when you find an honest jeweler...”

She looked up, smiling. “But even if you’re a liar, Fanjoy, I don’t care. Come back to bed with me. Give me some more of that.” She closed her eyes, and squeezed her thighs together.

He fastened his cape, found his cane and hat. In less than a week with this one. In three days I would be enslaved.

He opened the door, turned toward her as he stepped

into the hall. She was seated on the bed, looking at him, raising her hair up over her head.

I am already enslaved. Fly, Picard, fly!

He went quickly down the creaking stairs, past the broken bottles, into the street. What a wonderful girl. Don’t look back for the address—but I know her building, could pick it out of a million others.

A winged pig of love, flying over the gutter.

He walked slowly through the darkness of the late hour. Café dancers stood in the shadows of a doorway, smoking, speaking low, apparitions in the smoke.

He stopped in front of the Hôtel Royal. Its restaurant was still open, couples seated by candlelight in the windows. And in the dark wreath that surrounded the building there floated a memory, of Abdul the Bird.

Picard walked beside the fence of the hotel, tapping his cane lightly on the iron spikes. That one down there, I marked it with my pocketknife.