The Gorgeous Girls (9 page)
All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.
âDorothy Parker
His hand moves fast.
I hold my breath and stand as still as the angel atop Sacré-Coeur, which I can see over his right shoulder. His intense, dark eyes focus on the furrow between my brows. “You think a lot,” he murmurs, à la Jean-Paul Belmondo in
Breathless
. His hand never stops moving.
“Yes. I'm a writer,” I reply.
“But they are also the lines ofâhow do you say? Sexual excitement . . .”
I blush. He exudes a youthful sexuality as delicious as any sweet found along the Rue Mouffetard.
“How much do you charge?” I ask tentatively.
“A million dollars!” He laughs.
“No, seriously.”
“If you don't like it, then
rien
.”
His hand moves ever faster and I know a culmination is imminent. Indeed, moments later, his hand performs a final flourish. He is done.
Quickly, he rolls up the portrait and hands it to Wyatt, who is sitting nearby on a tourist-packed sidewalk patio, sipping Sancerre and watching.
“Come, have a drink with us,” Wyatt says to the artist. Belmondo obliges and takes a chair at the table. I look around for another chair, but there are none.
“Sit here,” Belmondo calls to me, patting his lap. I raise an eyebrow and look at Wyatt, who smiles and nods.
Questions racing through my mind, I perch on the artist's lap.
“Wanda,” Wyatt says, leaning across the table to take my hand. “Remember what I said the other night?”
“You said a good many things the other night.”
“I like to watch.”
My confusion is soon overruled by arousal as I feel Belmondo's desire growing hard against my ass. My eyes are firmly fixed on Wyatt's. He smiles his crooked smile and I think I understand. Yet this is a learning curve I hadn't expected, one whose trajectory I'm beginning to like.
Suddenly, as if my lover's smile were the switch, a bolt of electric sexual charge flashes through me. My breath quickens while the rest of me remains oddly paralyzed. I feel that if I were to move, there would be an explosion: stars bursting, rivers flooding, volcanoes erupting.
Belmondo's hard cock against me, his breathless French muttering and Wyatt's obvious pleasure are melting me into a pool of pure sexual desire. Wyatt holds my gaze, knowing I am wet with anticipation and reveling in the knowledge. He pours us each a glass of Sancerre.
*
With his teeth Belmondo pulls at the marshmallow-pink ribbons on my new panties, his breath hot against my skin. His dark hands move hungrily over my breasts, his nails, buffed with charcoal, finally touching me, just as I'd wanted them to as I watched them whisk the black stick over paper in Montmartre less than an hour ago.
Wyatt stands beside our hotel bed, his hand fixed around his lovely erection, which, like a divining rod, seeks its treasure. His hand never stops moving.
The small room, with its flowered wallpaper and gabled window, envelops us securely while our rapture is given free rein. I reach out and touch the tip of Wyatt's spectacular, blood-infused cock. He takes my hand and places it on Belmondo's ass, which I instantly grasp, pulling him down toward me. I want him so badly. The unbearably gorgeous pressure in my groin is as white-hot as these two cocks, and I want one of them in me now. But Belmondo has other ideas, and moves to put his cock in my mouth.
I suck with one hand firmly grasping his cock and the other feeling for the deeper shaft, the inside one that feels like an extension of his cock. Now my tongue runs the length of him, lingers at the tip, plays, sucks, and then plunges down again.
Belmondo moans with a French accent (I swear), then moves down to hover invitingly over me. Beyond his shoulder I can see Wyatt, his eyes fixed on us, two bright, sky-blue orbs cutting through me with hot passion. I find this as stimulating as Belmondo's cock teasing my clit, which it now is.
“Fuck me. Now,” I command. The artist enters my wet cunt. My pelvis rises to meet his and we undulate in unison, first enticingly slowly, then faster and still faster until we fall into a furious and delirious rhythm.
“Wanda,” Belmondo mutters, and then all heavenly hell breaks loose. Wyatt steps into full view. As he releases his cum over us, I climax in great, earth-moving throbs. The artist finishes with a flourish and a howl, and the three of us pulse and breathe together in ecstatic carnal union.
Women and elephants never forget.
âDorothy Parker
Dear Joe,
In a dream long ago there was someone. He knew who I was, understood me, saw me from all angles, caressed me in all the right places, saw the beauty in my soul, the light in my heart.
He cared about me. And meant it. His love didn't stop or turn to hate.
A distant memory of someone. A buried sketch of someone not unearthed till you. A dream of someone who moved through my life long ago, in the brightly lit ghost world of my imagination. Someone who loved me. Gone, not seen all these years. As if never having existed. Like a much-loved doll from childhood. Buried, forgotten, perished with time.
Now this ancient memory stirs. This someone moves from the long-forgotten world of my dreams and materializes before me. Someone who knows me. Someone who cares. Someone who loves me.
Someone. Someone like you.
Love,
Rose
Fill up my heart with a secret treasure.
âDorothy Parker
I'm standing on a
footbridge watching the sun sparkle on the Seine. It's our last day in this enchanted city and I want to drink in every gorgeous detail. We have seen so much, and shared even more.
When I turn to find Wyatt, a dark-haired woman bending to pick something up distracts my eye. Her face lights up like the Eiffel Tower at night as she holds the object up to the sky and offers thanks to the heavens. The sun glints off what appears to be a fabulous piece of jewelry held between slender fingers.
Suddenly, in the midst of her rapture, the woman notices me. Her long flowered skirt flutters in the breeze as she approaches. Speaking in rapid-fire French, too fast for me to understand, she shows me her newfound treasure. Hearing the fuss, Wyatt approaches. In broken English the woman blesses our union, then presses the ring into my hand. She cries and laughs and thanks God again.
Then she asks for money. The request surprises me, but Wyatt takes it in stride and gives her two euros. She pockets the coins and demands more.
“Non,”
he says.
“Oui,”
she counters.
He tells me to give the ring back. She refuses it, wants us to cross her palm with silver, not fool's gold. Ah, but we are fools, fools in love, and she knows it.
Finally we give in. Laughing, we walk away with a shiny, scratched-up 24K “gold” wedding band. Married on a bridge over the Seine by a Parisian gypsy for three euros.
I came away from the land of silver fairy lights and golden gypsy jewelry deeper and stronger, feeling as fearless as I had before my heart was shattered by what's-his-name. I had questions, to be sure, a whole new set of questions, a whole new reality facing me, but I was unafraid to take it on.
The less fear you have in your soul, Paris whispered to me, the more room there is for
l'amour.
But what is that? It's the way van Gogh painted irises, and it's a kiss in the Parisian rain. It's a blackbird on a chimney singing sweetly in the morning, and it's your lover bringing you Rhum Baba from the Rue Mouffetard as you lounge in bed.
And it's an understanding of life and all its players that reaches the depth of your soul. Suddenly, plunging into those depths, you feel as light as a fairy wing, ancient in understanding, born anew into love, a scarlet scarf blowing in the breeze.
Outspoken by whom?
âDorothy Parker
Despite Rose and Wanda's
insistence that Con and Tyler name their baby Mrs. Parker, they didn't. The proud parents christened their gorgeous babe Neo, and decided not to reveal the gender. Not yet, anywayânot for as long as they can hold their tongues.
In their congratulatory card, Rose and Wanda paraphrased their patron saint: “Good work, Con. We knew you had it in you.”
Two months later, the girls met at The Only Café, where they toasted Dot with a quote from her good friend Alexander Woolcott: “So odd a blend of Little Nell and Lady Macbeth. It is not so much the familiar phenomenon of a hand of steel in a velvet glove as a lacy sleeve with a bottle of vitriol concealed in its folds.”
Between frothy slurps of her Brandy Alexander, Rose observed, “Anyone who'd bequeath her entire estate to Martin Luther King Jr. and the NAACP had more than vitriol up her sleeve.” She offered her glass up once more. “To Dorothy Parker, the original Gorgeous Girl!”
fin
Marie Wilson was born in Vancouver, where she attended the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. As a regular contributor to Toronto's
NOW
magazine, she wrote a record number of articles for their Naked City feature. She has written for
The Globe and Mail
,
Fireweed
,
Urban Graffiti
, and
Burning Ambitions
, and she is also the author of the popular blog Vargas Speaks. She lives in Toronto.
The Gorgeous Girls
Copyright © 2013 by Marie Wilson.
All rights reserved.
Published by Patrick Crean Editions, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
First edition
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