The Thursday Night Men (17 page)

As lovers filed by one after the other, she had persevered until she had her fortieth birthday in her sights: if she couldn’t find a father, she’d make do with a genitor. A guy just passing by, a guy she’d recruit for the occasion, a married man, already a father, in good health, and who would never find out he’d been used. But as each of her appointments with her ovular destiny failed, she turned to science and test tubes. Alas, the lady at the Center for the Study and Preservation of Human Eggs and Sperm had pronounced her far too single to aspire to insemination, and Marie-Jeanne had gone away with a heavy heart and an empty gut. The most preposterous ideas had crossed her mind: ask a friend, present the scheme to him as a joke, a proof of friendship. She’d take care of the diapers, all he had to do was come over one night with a bottle of vodka for Dutch courage and then he could disappear. The lad wasn’t too sure about it all, but he was flattered, then he vanished without a trace. In spite of everything, Marie-Jeanne Pereyres had not yet reached the limits of her imagination or of her patience. There must be a solution, however extravagant. Any woman who had ever burned with the desire to have a child would absolve her. What better way to get pregnant than to take a man hostage?

Kris was clearly the one who was more ill at ease, as she wondered what the true purpose of this impromptu off-duty meeting was.

“Would you like a little limoncello, Kris?”

“What I would like would be for you to call me by my real name, Christelle.”

This sounded like a far more intimate request than some new variation on the lotus position. For a whole hour she had talked about herself, how she’d interrupted her studies too soon, her wild youth, her future dreams. He had listened to her the way he did between two bouts of lovemaking, because he listened to all the women, and each one imagined she was the only one entitled to such special attention. Kris allowed herself a brief incursion of insane ideas, Edenic images. Having a never-ending affair with her special client. As for Yves, he was merely spending a pleasant moment with one of his bed partners.

“You’ve always told me that prostitutes play a role, and that their pseudonym is a part of it, just like their look and the way they speak. You are prepared to abandon that persona, just because we’ve shared a plate of
spaghetti al nero di seppia
?”

And here she’d thought she wasn’t the least bit vulnerable, not even to insults: it was as if she’d been slapped.

“With you I can’t be Kris anymore.”

Yves suddenly found himself in the position of an ingénue who thinks she’s with a confidant when he’s really only another suitor in her wake. He was flattered, but he was afraid he’d made a gaffe inviting her to dinner like this, since now it looked suspiciously like a romantic tête-à-tête. In her features he suddenly saw Pauline as she had been during their first times alone together—the modestly lowered eyes, the flushed cheeks, the impish smile. It was precisely the sort of face that he no longer wanted to see, that face of disarmed sincerity, pure intentions, and infinite tenderness to come. Ever since women of easy virtue had begun parading through his house, so many other emotions had become indispensable to him. In addition to the fever a stranger’s body could provoke, with that frenzy of immediate nudity and the bliss of hitherto unknown caresses, there was also the terrible pride of seeing the women leave his bed less mistrustful than upon arrival. This was essential: he had to get her to let her guard down, this woman who saw him either as an embarrassed fool, a cash register, or an enemy. Yves was not especially gifted as a lover, and had a perfectly ordinary body, but he knew now how to tame the wildest among them, and after a night or two he had them eating out of his hand. And so what if he never became a one-woman man ever again, if he never knew the joys coupledom: let his peers take care of that, they had the skills and the patience. For every Asia, Jessica, or Victoire who ardently impaled herself upon him, there was a Pauline he could thank for having betrayed him, for having released him from the duty of constancy.

“You don’t think it suits me?”

“What?”

“Christelle.”

“It does. Makes me imagine the little girl you used to be.”

That little girl was coming to the surface now, impressed by an adult, a man she wanted to charm with candor and frankness, the opposite of her usual weapons. Not taking his eyes from her, Yves tugged discreetly on his sleeve to look at the time, then asked the waiter for the check.

“Are you going home?” she asked.

“I can give you a lift, I have two helmets.”

Resolved to confide further in him, to confess what she felt for him, Kris decided that this night would be her treat. And a luxury for herself at the same time.

“I’ll come with you. On me this time.”

Not to ruffle her feelings, Yves tried to think of a way out, and could already hear himself lying about how tired he was, how he’d woken up at the crack of dawn. But what was the point justifying himself to Kris: didn’t he pay her in order to see her appear and disappear without having to owe her any explanations? He had almost reacted like a husband, or even a single guy bogged down in a relationship. As he was neither, he laid his hand on Kris’s and told her, as he generally did, the truth.

“Tonight I have an appointment with Kim, a Vietnamese girl who Jessica recommended. She wasn’t free until one in the morning. I can’t cancel. You don’t like it either, when a customer does that to you.”

She didn’t know what to say.

“I’ve never made love with an Asian woman, I’ve been looking forward to it for weeks. I’ve often told you as much but you don’t know anyone.”

What Kris heard above all was that he had trusted someone else for that sort of recommendation.

“You won’t hold it against me?”

“Me, hold something against you? The only clients I hold anything against are the ones who beat me up.”

Once again she was the whore, he was the john, everything was back in place. Kris might feel hurt, but he had broken no rules, he had never come to her wearing a mask, he had never reneged on a promise. He was simply, calmly pursuing his quest to the end.

Before leaving the table, she could not help but give him a warning.

“You can forget what I’m about to tell you, but I’ll say it all the same. Be careful. Be careful with your freedom, the ease of what you’ve chosen. I know where it leads. Today you can pick up the phone and have all the women you want, and this can go on as long as there are men with money in their pockets and women ready to relieve them of it. But ask yourself what you’re sacrificing by giving up the hunt, by not playing the charm game. Sooner or later your senses will become dulled, you won’t know how to recognize the signals anymore, you’ll no longer take the risk that a woman might read into you, and you’ll lose your fine casual attitude. Promise me you’ll think about it.”

He promised her, although he didn’t really think he would. Once they were outside he kissed her on both cheeks and left her, saying, “Bye, Kris.”

Philippe Saint-Jean was now the partner of one of the most beautiful women in the world, and the world had just found out about it. Thus, their few months of clandestine existence had come to an end, an existence that had given them the illusion of overcoming certain hurdles, of creating their relationship
in opposition to
,
of deserving their future. By becoming Mia’s official companion, Philippe was in danger of finding himself in the public eye far more than he ever had been as a philosopher; no doubt that was the price you paid, but why turn down such an adventure? Even if he refused to see his companion as a trophy, her exceptional fame had played a huge role. He had always known the importance of another person’s gaze on the object of one’s desire and, in the case of someone like Mia, that gaze was multiplied by a global coefficient; a simple exponential calculation allowed him to conclude that you don’t get tired of a girl like her: he had the odds on his side. And anyway, he felt he deserved Mia, she was his just reward for so many years spent defending just causes, separating truth from falsehood, advocating Beauty and Good, preserving his faith in humankind. Philippe may not have believed in fate, but fate, not one to hold grudges, had seen the wisdom, not once but twice, of placing Mia in his path.

He did, however, have one last reason to be seen on Mia’s arm that night. And that reason wore a pearl gray dress whose neckline proudly revealed, above her breast, a swashbuckler’s scar that Philippe could not get enough of. Mia could sense her boyfriend was troubled.

“Do you know her?”

He only ever ran into Juliette by chance, now; he refused to convert into mere friendship a love affair that had been so intense. They sometimes came across each other at lunchtime in a restaurant on the Rue de Bièvre where they used to dine together, back in the days, or in the corridors of a shared publishing house. As a rule, he acted indifferent and gratified her with a compliment taking them back to their lost intimacy. In those furtive moments he had to restrain himself from lifting his hand to stroke those curls he had smoothed so often with his fingers.

However, this sudden encounter in the gilt of the Hôtel Crillon owed nothing to chance. Because she had written a significant work on turn-of-the-century artistic movements, Juliette had been a consultant on the film being honored that night. Philippe had always known this.

“Go say hello to her,” said Mia.

He did not need her permission, but he thanked her with his eyes.

“Still six foot one and a hundred and thirty-nine pounds?”

“What are you doing here? In a tux no less?”

Somewhat too evasively, they both tried to find out whether the other was seeing someone. Not wanting to face the answers, Philippe refrained from asking her the questions that were burning his lips. He would rather preserve his image of a Juliette finding it hard to get over their separation, incapable of falling in love from that moment on, feeling somehow soiled if she spent the night with another man. On the other hand, he managed to slip the words
my
partner
into the conversation fairly quickly, pointing her out a short way away, where she was surrounded by admirers.

“She’s famous, that girl, what’s her name already?”

“Mia.”

“She’s magnificent.”

“And not just on the outside.”

“I remember, you met her at a dinner one night. You thought she was ordinary and full of herself.”

“I gave her a second chance.”

Philippe was about to add,
I was so afraid I’d see you on another man’s arm that I grabbed the arm of one of the most desirable women on the planet. Take that as a tribute.

Marie-Jeanne, languid, put her reading aside for a moment to sit up on the sofa and greet her host with a smile. He ignored her the way he generally did, and went into the kitchen in a tomb-like silence to fix himself a sandwich. Exhausted by all his speculation about the intruder’s presence, he preferred to avoid any new hostility and headed straight back to his bedroom. She was too quick for him.

“I have a request for you this evening, but promise me you won’t take it badly.”

“Too late.”

“I know this will seem somewhat awkward to you, and I will understand if you refuse.”

“The more you try to take precautions around me, the more exasperated you’ll make me.”

“I would like to sleep with you tonight.”

He stared at her inquisitively.

“Don’t go imagining anything sexual. In short, let’s say that this promiscuity between us is beginning to have undesirable effects.”

“ . . . Have what?”

“Seeing you shut yourself in your bedroom like that, day after day, because you’re afraid I’ll attack you has made me see you as an impregnable fortress. Obviously this has been making me think.”

“A madwoman has moved into my house—”

“In other words, I don’t want to go away from here with the memory of your terrible mistrust. Sleeping together just for a night is probably the only way to lay down our arms.”

“This woman is out of her mind.”

“Let me tell you a childhood memory: when my parents first took me to the Louvre, I came upon a canvas by Toulouse-Lautrec entitled
The Bed
, which shows two people sleeping side by side. I must have been five or six years old, and I was incredibly moved by the impression of peace and abandonment coming from the painting. I thought it must take a tremendous amount of trust to dare to sleep next to someone.”

Denis looked at her questioningly.

“Moreover, I haven’t spent the night in a man’s bed for a long time and, oddly enough, what I miss more than anything is not the usual acrobatics but the sleeping in the same bed. So you have nothing to fear, I’m not even going to touch you. All you have to do is lie down on your own and go to sleep, and I’ll slip under the comforter and you won’t even notice, and tomorrow morning, before you wake up, I’ll move back to the sofa. And I promise never to ask you for anything again.”

Denis didn’t know what to say.

“Go on, it won’t cost you anything . . . ”

“You’re sick in the head, you need medical attention.”

“It’s not like I’m asking for something extraordinary. You’ll be silent and calm, close by, breathing deeply, your weight on the mattress, moving about while you’re dreaming.”

“I haven’t had a single dream since you moved into this place. My life is nothing but one long nightmare, and if I’m lucky I can escape from it at night when I’m dead tired, for a few short hours before the alarm goes. And now you want to take that away from me?”

“A woman who wants to sleep by your side for one night, is that the end of the world? What can be so awful about that?”

“I know exactly what you want, trying to get into my bed. You have some plan.”

“A plan, me?”

“You got hooked on me already a long time ago. I don’t know where you saw me, maybe you were having dinner at the brasserie where I work, I must have served you a dish and something was triggered, I became your obsession. A woman consumed by passion can quickly turn into a stalker, there’s no lack of news items to prove it.”