The Paris Apartment (20 page)

He sat down next to me. I looked at him—this man who had been a thorn in my side since he arrived, who had occupied so much space in my thoughts. Who had made me feel seen—with all the discomfort that came with that—just when I thought I had become invisible for good. Invisible had been safe, if occasionally lonely. But I had forgotten how exciting it could feel to be seen.

I was in a kind of trance, perhaps. All the wine I had drunk before coming here to face him. The pressure that had been building
in me for weeks as my blackmailer taunted me. The loneliness that had been growing for years in secrecy and silence.

I leaned over and I kissed him.

Almost immediately I pulled away. I could not believe what I had done. I put a hand up to my face, touched my hot cheek.

He smiled at me. I hadn't seen this smile before. This was something new. Something intimate and secret. Something just for
me.

“I—I need to leave.” I put my wine glass down and as I did I knocked his beer bottle to the ground. “Oh,
mon Dieu
. I'm sorry—”

“I don't care about the beer.” And then he cradled my head in his hands and pulled me toward him and kissed me back.

The scent of him, the foreignness of it, the alien feel of his lips on mine, the loss of my self-control: these were all a
surprise. But not the kiss itself, not really. In some part of myself I had known I wanted him.

“Ever since that first day,” he said, as though he were echoing my own thoughts, “when I saw you in the courtyard, I've wanted
to know more about you.”

“That's ridiculous,” I said, because it was. But what made it feel less so was the way he was looking at me.

“It's not. I've been hoping to do that ever since that night at your
drinks party. When it was just the two of us in your husband's study—”

I thought of the outrage I had felt, finding him in there looking at that photograph. The fear. But fear and desire are so
tangled up in one another, after all.

“That's absurd,” I said. “What about Dominique?”

“Dominique?” He seemed genuinely confused.

“I saw you two together at the drinks.”

He laughed. “She could eye-fuck a statue. And it was convenient for me to be able to distract your husband from the fact that
I was lusting after his wife.”

He reached out and pulled me toward him again.

“This can't happen . . .”

But I think he heard my lack of conviction because he grinned. “I hate to say it. But it already
is
happening.”

“We have to be careful,” I whispered a few minutes later as I began unbuttoning my shirt. As I revealed the lingerie that
had been bought at great expense but hardly ever seen by eyes other than my own. Revealed my body, denied so much pleasure,
kept and kempt for a man who barely glanced at it.

He dropped to his knees in front of me, as though worshipping at my feet. Pushed down the tight wool of my trousers, finding
the thin lace of my knickers with his lips, opening his mouth against me.

I didn't sleep well last night, and not just because of the bass from the party in the
cave
thumping up the stairwell all night. In the bathroom I shake two more little blue pills into my hand. They're about the only
thing keeping me functioning right now. I toss them back.

I wander out into the apartment. As I pass the iMac the screen flickers to life. Did I jolt it? If so I didn't notice. But
there it is. The photograph of Ben and me. I stand frozen in place in front of it. Drawn to it in the same way, I suppose,
that a self-harmer is drawn to run the razor blade over the skin of their wrist.

After that dinner on the rooftop everything was different. Something had shifted. I didn't like the way Papa had favored Ben.
I didn't like the way Ben's eyes slid away from mine when he talked about our Europe trip. I also very much didn't like the
fact that every time I suggested we go for a drink, he was too busy. Had to rush off to see his editor, to review some new
restaurant. Avoiding my calls, my texts, avoiding my eye when we met on the stairs.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be. It wasn't what I'd planned when I had offered him the apartment. He had been the one
to get in touch with me. His email had blown open the past. I had taken a huge risk, inviting him here. I had assumed we had
an unspoken agreement.

I walk across to the wall behind my iMac, run my hands over the surface. Feel the thin crack in the plaster. There's a second staircase here. A hidden one. Antoine and I used to play in it when we were kids. Used it to hide from Papa, too, when he was in one of his dangerous moods. I am ashamed to admit this, but there were a couple of times when I used it to watch Ben, peering into his apartment, into his life. Trying to work out what he was up to. Wondering what he could be writing so busily on his laptop, who he was calling on his mobile—I strained to hear the words, but caught nothing.

Though he snubbed me, it seemed he did have time for the other residents of this place. I found them in the
cave
one afternoon when I came down to do my washing. Heard the laughter, first. Then Papa's voice: “Of course, when I inherited
the business from their mother it was a mess. Had to make it profitable. Have to be creative now, with a wine business. Especially
when the estate's no longer producing and it'll all turn to vinegar soon. Have to find ways to diversify.”

“What's going on?” I called. “A private tasting?”

They stepped out of the wine cellar like two naughty schoolboys. Papa holding a bottle in one hand, two glasses in the other.
Ben's teeth when he smiled were tinted from the wine he'd drunk. He held one of the few remaining magnum bottles of the 1996
vintage. A gift from my father, it seemed.

“Nicolas,” Papa drawled. “I suppose you've come to break up the party?”

Not:
Would you like to join us, son? Care for a glass?
In all the time I have lived under his roof my father has never suggested the two of us do anything like their cozy little
wine tasting. It was salt in the wound. The first proper betrayal. I'd told Ben what sort of man my father really is. Had
he forgotten?

 

Ben grins out at me from the photograph on the screensaver. And there I am grinning away next to him, like the fool that I was. July, Amsterdam. The sun in our eyes. Talking to Jess has brought it all back. That evening Ben and I spent in the weed café. Telling him all about my birthday, the “gift” from Papa. How it was like a catharsis. How I felt cleansed, purged of it all.

Afterward, Ben and I wandered out into the darkening streets. Just kept walking, chatting. I wasn't sure where we were going;
I don't think he had a clue either. Somewhere along the way we'd left the touristy part of town and the crowds behind: these
canals were quieter, more dimly lit. Elegant old houses with long windows through which you could see people inside: talking
over glasses of wine, eating dinner, a guy typing at a desk. This was somewhere people actually lived.

You couldn't hear anything other than the lapping of the water against the stone banks. Black water, black as ink, the lights
from the houses dancing on it. And the smell, like moss and mold. An ancient smell. No queasy clouds of weed to walk through,
here. I was sick of the reek of it. Sick, too, of the crush of other people's bodies, the chatter of other people's conversation.
I was sick even of the two other guys: their voices, the stink of their pits, their sweaty feet. We'd spent too long together
that summer. I'd heard every joke or story they had to tell. With Ben it was different, somehow—though I couldn't put my finger
on why.

This quiet: I felt like I wanted to drink it in like a cold glass of water. It felt magical . . . And telling Ben all that
stuff about my dad—you know when you've eaten something bad and after you vomit you feel empty but also kind of cleansed,
almost better than before in some indefinable way?

“Thanks,” I said again. “For listening. You won't tell anyone, will you? The other guys?”

“No, of course not,” he said. “This is our secret, mate. If you like.”

We were walking along a part of the canal now that was even darker; I think a couple of the lamps had stopped working. It
was deathly quiet.

You know those moments in life that seem to happen so smoothly it feels like they've been scripted in advance? This was like
that. I don't remember any conscious decision to move toward him. But the next thing I knew, I was kissing him. It was definitely
me that made the first move, I know that—even if it was like my body moved before my brain had worked out what it was going
to do.

I'd kissed plenty of people. Girls, I mean. Only ever girls. At house parties, or drunk after a formal, a college ball. Fooled
around. And it wasn't unpleasant. But it had never felt any more intimate or exciting than, I don't know, a handshake. It
didn't disgust me, exactly, but the whole time it was happening I'd found myself thinking about the logistical things—like
whether I was using my fingers and tongue right, feeling a little queasy about how much saliva was being passed back and forth
between us. It felt like a sport I was practicing, maybe trying to get better at. It never felt like something exciting, something
that made my pulse quicken.

But this—this was different. It was as innate as breathing. It was strange how firm his mouth seemed after the softness of
the girls' I'd kissed—I wouldn't have thought there would be a difference. And it seemed so right, somehow. Like it was the
thing I had been waiting for, the thing that made sense.

I took hold of the chain around his neck, the one I had watched so many times appear and disappear beneath the line of his
shirt, the one with the little figure of the saint hanging from it. I gave it a little tug, pulled him closer to me.

And then we were moving backward into the darkness—I
was pushing him into some secret corner, falling to my knees in front of him, again every movement so fluid, like it had all been written out in advance, like it was meant to be. Unzipping his fly and taking him in my mouth, the warmth and hardness, the secret scent of his skin. My knees stung where I knelt on the rough cobblestones. And even though I had never allowed myself to think about this, I must have thought about it, somewhere in my subconscious, somewhere in my deepest thoughts hidden even from myself, because I knew exactly what I was doing.

He smiled, afterward. A sleepy, lazy, stoned smile.

But for me, after that rush of euphoria, there was an immediate descent. I've never had a comedown like it. My knees hurt,
my jeans were damp from something I'd knelt in.

“Fuck. Fuck—I don't know what happened there. Shit. I'm just . . . I'm so wasted.” Which was a lie. I had been stoned, yes.
But I'd never felt more clear-headed in my life. I'd never felt more alive, either—electric, wired—so many different things.

“
Mate
,” he said, with a smile. “It's nothing to be worried about. We were a bit pissed, a lot stoned.” He gestured around us, shrugged.
“And it's not like anyone saw.”

I couldn't believe how relaxed he was about it. But maybe at the back of my mind I'd known this about him; this side of him.
I'd once heard someone at Cambridge describe him as an “omnivore”; wondered what that meant.

“Don't tell anyone,” I told him. I was light-headed with fear, suddenly. “Look, you don't understand. This—it has to stay just between us. If it somehow got back . . . look, my dad, he wouldn't get it.” The thought of him finding out was like a punch to the gut, it winded me just thinking about it. I could see his face, hear his voice. Could still remember what he'd said
when I told him I didn't want that birthday gift, what was in that room:
What's wrong with you, son? Are you a
faggot
?
The disgust in his voice.

He actually might kill me, I thought. If he suspected. He'd probably prefer that to having a son like me. At the very least,
he'd disinherit me. And while I didn't know how I felt about taking his money, I wasn't ready to give it up just yet.

 

After Amsterdam I decided I never wanted to see Benjamin Daniels again. We drifted apart. I had a string of girlfriends. I
left for the States for nearly a decade, didn't look back. Yeah, there were a couple of guys there: the freedom of thousands
of miles of land and water—even if I still always seemed to hear my father's voice in my head. But nothing serious.

It doesn't mean I didn't think about that night later. In a way, I know I've been thinking about it ever since; trying not
to. And then, all those years later: Ben's email. It had to mean something, him getting in touch like that, out of the blue.
It couldn't just be a casual catch-up.

Except after that dinner on the terrace, when he'd so impressed Papa, I barely saw or spoke to him other than in passing. He even had time for the concierge, for God's sake, but not me—his old friend. He was ensconced here practically rent-free. He'd taken what he needed and then cut loose. I began to feel used. And when I thought about how shifty he was each time I approached him I felt a little frightened, too, though I couldn't put my finger on why. I thought of Antoine's words about Papa disinheriting us on a whim. It had seemed like madness at the time. But now . . . I began to feel that I didn't want Ben here after all. I began to feel that I wanted to take back the invitation. But I didn't know how
to do it. He knew too much. Had so much he could use against me. I had to find another way to make him leave.

 

The computer's timer must have run out; the screen of my iMac goes black. It doesn't matter. I can still see the image. I
have been haunted by it for over a decade.

I think about how I nearly kissed his sister last night. The sudden, shocking, wonderful resemblance to him when she turned
her head just so, or frowned, or laughed. And also the resemblance of the moment: the darkness, the stillness. The two of
us held apart from the rest of the world for just a beat.

That night in Amsterdam. It was the worst, most shameful thing I had ever done.

It was the best thing that had ever happened to me. That was how I used to see it, anyway. Until he came to stay.