Mistral's Daughter (16 page)

At first there was a
dissonance in their rhythms. Maggy, accustomed only to Mistral's urgency and
roughness, was several paces ahead of Perry, who brought a grave, slow rapture
to his caresses, taking one step at a time and lingering over it, but, as she
felt herself swelling with readiness, budding hotly and wantingly, and then
swelling even more demandingly, Maggy realized that she had no need to hurry
toward quick satisfaction.
 
She matched
herself to him, abandoned her haste for languorous waiting, almost holding her
breath, proffering herself to his fingertips and his mouth with blissful
curiosity.
 
Each moment was enough in
itself, one blending into another like notes of music.
 
He smelled like honey, she thought,
driftingly, as he finally took her, sure of himself, strongly.
 
As they strained together, suddenly she felt
as if a fluttering flight of bright butterflies had just been released from her
body, borne in
 
soft surprise between her
thighs, launched into the quivering air.

Twice during that perfect
night they woke from sleep and turned toward each other, deepening and
confirming their need.
 
When Maggy
finally woke it was bright daylight outside and Perry was sleeping as if
nothing could possibly arouse him.
 
She
slid out of bed, put on her silver-kid evening shoes, and, stark naked under
her black cape, she dashed down the stairs to the bakery at the corner where
she bought six still-warm croissants.
 
He
was sleeping when she returned and picked her way carefully through the flower
baskets toward her single gas ring to make coffee and heat milk.
 
Maggy filled two enormous cups half-f of
the strong brew, put
them on a tray with a pitcher of the steaming milk,
a bowl of sugar, and the croissants and cleared a place for the tray on the
floor next
to the bed.

Perry lay flat on his stomach
and, at some point in the night, he had dragged the quilt so far up that
everything was hidden but the top of his head and one outflung hand.
 
Should she pull his hair or...
 
Maggy bent her head and licked the knuckles
of his little finger.
 
He groaned and
lapsed back into sleep.
 
She slipped her
tongue between the top of his little finger and his ring finger and slid it
back
and forth between his fingers.
 
He moved his hand away but she imprisoned it and sucked the tip of his
index finger.
 
The quilted mass rose from
the bed as if a bell had been rung in his ear.

"What the hell?
 
...where?
 
Maggy, you devil!"
 
He lunged
for her and threw her on the bed. "Why are you wearing your coat?
 
Take
it off!
 
Kiss me!
 
Kiss me!"

He captured her, and pushed her
back on the pillow so that her hair spread like red banners against a white
cloud.
 
It seemed to him, as he felt her
lips open against his, that he had awakened as a child again, with every hour
full of possibility, every moment stretching before him, free and shining and
ready to be filled with his dreams, with no day yet used up, none tarnished or
forgotten.

"The coffee!" she
managed to gasp finally. "It'll get cold." "Why didn't you say
coffee
?"
he demanded, releasing her.
 
"I
smell it but I don't see it."

Maggy squirmed to the edge of
the bed and managed to raise the tray
carefully so that nothing spilled.

"My God!
 
Where did it come from?" he asked, as
she poured the hot milk into the big cups. "Last night you said there
wasn't room to make a cup of coffee...
 
this morning there's a feast!"

"In the morning certain
things become...
 
more important, so I
reconsidered.
 
Have a croissant."

"It's so good.
 
It's the best thing I've ever eaten in my
life.
 
How did you get them?"

"I went down to the
bakery before you woke up," she said hungrily, taking another.

When everything on the tray
had been consumed Perry lay back on the bed and stretched. He looked around him
and really
observed his surroundings for the first time.
 
The only beauty of the room was in the flower
baskets and now his clothes, cast aside hastily, covered a number of them.
 
The walls were covered with faded and
splotched wallpaper, the gilt of the bed was scratched and tarnished.
 
Maggy's tenth-hand armoire sagged in the
middle and the ceiling was low and confining in spite of the sun that poured
from the two open windows.

"Could I use your
bathroom?" he asked.
 

"Down the hall, second
door on the left."

"You don't have your
own?"

"One to a floor,
sir.
 
I have a sink and a bidet
—
cold water only
—
but whenever I want a bath I have to go to
Paula's.
 
And when I want to go to the
bathroom I go down the hall."

"You don't happen to
remember what happened to my trousers?" he asked, casting his eyes around
the room.

"They must be here
somewhere."

"If they're not, I'll
have to piss in the bidet," he threatened, surprising himself.
 
He'd never spoken to Mary Jane so freely in
twenty years of marriage.

"There they are on those
pink roses
—
no, stay, I'll get them."
 
Maggy prowled catlike among the flowers, at
ease in her miraculous nakedness, with a total lack of modesty that made Perry
waver an instant between awe and shock.
 
Never in all of his married life had his convent-bred wife walked around
like that.

By the time he had returned
from the bathroom Maggy had hastily brushed her teeth, washed her face and made
a collection his clothes on the bed, where she was perched, covered now in her
peignoir of lilac silk.

"Maggy."
 
He sat on the bed with the air of someone
about make an announcement.

"Was the bathroom all
you had hoped?"

"And more.
 
Listen, my darling love, you can't stay
here."

"But why not
—
I
have the best view in Paris."

"Because we can't live
on coffee and croissants.
 
Because I
can't stand to think that you don't have a bathroom.
 
Because there are so many things I want to
give you.
 
Because I can't sleep here
every night and get to work in the morning without going back to the Ritz to
bathe and shave and change and I don't have time for that.
 
Because there isn't enough room for your flowers."

"Sleep here every
night?" she asked, seizing on the one phrase he'd used that had really
caught her attention.

"Don't you want
me?"

"Oh, yes, I want
you!"

"Every night?" His
gray eyes insisted on affirmation.

"I'm not sure about
every
night." She caught him around the waist and lay in his lap, looking up
at the thatch of blond hair that covered his chest. "But certainly
tonight, and tomorrow, and the day after..."

"Then, you see, my
beautiful girl, you have to move.
 
There
isn't room here for my clothes."

"Or your valet."

"Especially my
valet.
 
Would you like to live at the
Ritz?
 
No, forget that
—
in five
minutes the whole hotel staff would be talking about it and I don't see why
anybody should know our business.
 
Maggy
—
will you let me find an apartment for you?
 
Will you let me
make
the arrangements so that we have a decent
place?"

"But you're so
proper," she protested. "Here you have a chance for an adventure in
the real Paris, the part of Paris only the artists and the French really know
—
the place all those other visiting Americans are trying so hard to make their
own
—
but immediately you want to change it into something else; a nice
place to live, to sleep, with servants no doubt, and the best meat from the
best butcher and all the bills paid on time...
 
this 'decent place,' would it be for me or for us?"

"What's the
difference?"

"I won't move into
any
man's apartment or house or suite
—
I'd rather keep my little room
here.
 
It suits me.
 
But if it's a place of my own, a place to
which I alone have the key, my own, private place, like this one, I might
begin, just
begin,
mind you, to consider it..."

"I promise!
 
Your own, absolutely.
 
Only one key.
 
I'll call for an appointment.
 
Is
Mademoiselle free this evening?
 
Would
Mademoiselle care to receive Monsieur Kilkullen?
 
Is Mademoiselle in the mood to entertain a
gentleman caller?
 
Does Mademoiselle want
to be kissed on the back of her neck or does Mademoiselle have more unorthodox
desires?
 
Does Mademoiselle want to be
touched between..."

"Stop!" Maggy
wriggled away.
 
"Mademoiselle has no
desires left this morning."

"But do you promise,
Maggy?
 
Will you move?
 
You still haven't said yes."
 
He looked at her anxiously.
 
She was so unpredictable, he thought, so
unownable, that he feared she might prefer a way of life
that offered
her complete freedom.
 
There was not a
domestic hair
on her head.
 
But he
couldn't bear to think of her living here in this impossible room in which he'd
spent the most beautiful night of his life.
 
Daylight did not become it.

"Perry, what you want,
put quite plainly and without chichi," Maggy said, with sudden
seriousness, "is to
keep
me. My own key or no key, I'll be a kept
woman if I agree, won't I?"

"That's such a sordid
word!" he said, horrified. "Why put it like
that?"

"But am I correct?
 
Isn't that exactly what other people would
say?
 
What else would I be but a kept
woman,
une femme entretenue
?" she kept on, relentlessly.

"Oh, Maggy, you're
impossible," he said wretchedly.

"And I suppose you'd
want me to dress in couture clothes
—
you wouldn't think my own things
are good enough
—
and you'd want to buy me jewels and furs..."

"Yes!
 
Goddamn it, I would!
 
What's so terrible about that?
 
Damn!"

Maggy jumped on the bed and a
wide smile began to appear on her lips as she whirled around and around with
her lilac peignoir swirling about her bare legs.
 
"Diamond bracelets all the way to m
elbows?
 
Chinchilla to the floor?
 
Trips to Deauville?
 
My own car?"

 
Perry looked up at the mischief in her face.
"Bracelets on both arms, to your shoulder if that's possible...
 
ten fur coats...
 
a coach
and four...
 
six tall footmen...
 
one of each number in the new Chanel
collection...
 
and that's only the
beginning!"

"Oh...
 
oh!" She whirled faster and faster until
she collapsed on top of him.
 
"I've
always wanted to be a kept woman!
 
It was
the dream of my depraved youth
—
oh, the thrill of it...
 
kept...
 
just like in
la Belle
Époque."
 
She shivered deliciously.
 
"What would Aunt Esther say if she only
knew?"

"Let's not tell
her," Perry said hastily.

"I wouldn't dream of
it.
 
Listen, darling
—
how soon do
you intend to start keeping me?
 
To tell
you the truth, I want to leave Montparnasse and never come back.
 
I'm finished with my life here.
 
It's over, this chapter, and done with... everything
except Paula."

"Today, this
morning.
 
I'll get a suite for you at the
Lotti
—
it's just a few steps from the Ritz and we'll start looking for
a place."

"Oh, yes!
 
I knew being kept would be heaven
—
but kept by a rich, tall,
handsome, generous, crazy American!"
 
Maggy covered his face
with a torrent
of kisses. "
Ça, alors, Ça c'est la vie, mon chéri
—
la bonne
vie!
"