. . . you come undone, “miss.” Why would David “miss” me? That wasn’t like him. Still, I had come to the inevitable and horrifying conclusion that David was my harasser. Yet it didn’t make a lot of sense for him to talk about himself in the third person. And why would he denigrate himself like that?
Was he that crazy?
Another equally baffling question: How was he reading my thoughts? Had I said them out loud? Maybe in those moments between waking and dreaming? My mom said I used to sleepwalk when I was little and that sometimes I even talked in my slumber. Maybe it was happening again?
I dressed quickly and spent the rest of the morning feverishly rummaging through the house—the term doesn’t really do justice to the place, the luxury and size of which made it more of a palace—looking for a note or anything that David could have written by hand. Nothing in the bedroom, soon our bedroom, nothing in the living room or in any of the other common rooms in Duchesnois House. Nothing on the famous console table in the entry. As for his office, the obvious place to look for such a thing, it was locked. And I didn’t know how to ask Armand to open it without arousing suspicion.
“May I help you with something, Mademoiselle?”
I was on all fours, digging through the kitchen garbage.
“No . . . ,” I stammered. “No, I think I accidentally threw out my to-do list.”
“Oh, that’s annoying . . . Do you want me to look? I think I know what your handwriting looks like.”
If the message in the envelope had not been so personal, I could have used Armand as a resource. He knew David so well. But, alas . . . that’s not how he’s going to make you come undone, miss.
“Thanks, Armand . . . I can handle it. We shouldn’t both get our hands dirty over this.”
I laughed nervously. He nodded and disappeared into his office.
When at last . . .
Tennis with François rescheduled: Friday 9 p.m.
The fluorescent Post-it spotted with milk and tomato sauce was definitely David’s work. Compared with the handwriting on the anonymous notes, David’s script was much rounder and more elegant. It was less nervous, almost feminine. This was incontrovertible evidence: David was not my harasser. Immensely relieved, I also felt badly. I froze on the floor next to the garbage, my bottom glued to the cold tiles. How could I have doubted him?
After a while, I put the new message in the silver notebook next to the others. I stared for a moment at the strange writing. Who could have written them? What was his or her problem? Why did the jerky, almost haphazard script make me feel so uneasy? Why did I get the feeling that writing these notes caused their author great suffering?
I SPENT THE AFTERNOON ON the phone with Mom and Sophia. I also received calls from some recruiters with whom I’d recently interviewed—all unfruitful. Then I got this text message from David:
I’m getting home early tonight. Want to go out?
Early for David meant nine o’clock, at best.
No, sorry. I promised Mom I’d go to her last checkup with her before she leaves for L.A.
Your appointment is that late?
It isn’t easy lying to a man who deals with half-truths all day for a living. I would have to be more convincing.
No, it’s at 6:30, but you know how it is . . . They keep you waiting for at least an hour, then there’s the time with the doctor . . . I don’t think we’ll get out before 8:30, 9 o’clock, and then I have to take her back home.
Right. No worries. Text me when you’re on your way home.
OK, but don’t wait to eat. I’ll probably have dinner with Mom. You know how she is: once I’m with her, she won’t let me go.
I understand. Hope all goes well. Love you.
Love you, too. And thanks again for everything you’re doing for her.
David didn’t reply. He’d probably been whisked into a meeting or off to deal with some emergency. My phone buzzed an hour later. This time it was someone else:
BDN Mission: Meeting at the Alban Sauvage Gallery, 15 Rue de Sévigné in the 3rd Arrondissement, 8:30 p.m. SHARP. The client will recognize you.
Invitation attached to this message.
Have a nice night.
BDN, Belles de Nuit. Rebecca, my boss, always sent this kind of last-minute mission. And she would keep pestering me until I had answered and she was sure I would make the meeting. The agency’s reputation depended on it.
The first time she’d sent me a message like that, she’d also included instructions on what to wear. Now that I had more experience—and she’d gotten positive feedback from my clients—she dispensed with such advice.
But I had been firm with her recently: until further notice, I wasn’t taking any more missions. “For personal reasons,” I had said. Her latest message suggested she didn’t care. For her, I was still in the catalogue of girls. So I sent her a curt Got it, thanks.
After all, I needed money now more than ever. My motives were pure: after this final mission, I would be able to afford the vintage watch I’d admired at Antiquités Nativelle. It was to be my wedding present to David. My way of surprising him, of taking his breath away.
I wasn’t cheating on David since it would be for him. “I am not cheating on David”—I repeated the mantra to myself several times.
Yes, this would be the last time.
“THE LAST TIME, HUH?”
“The last time.”
I tried to sound convincing. But it wasn’t easy. I had a hard time making myself believe it: the last time, really, and then it would all be behind me? This part of my life could be relegated to my memory, so long as no one went digging?
“Didn’t you say that the other day?” Sophia asked over the phone in a moralizing tone. I was choosing my perfume. “And the day before that, too!”
I didn’t want to feel guilty, so I tried to concentrate on the present moment. What was I going to wear? A black dress with a flowery tutu by Repetto, ballerina flats, and a black leather bag by Nina Ricci. And maybe this top my personal shopper said was really “in” this season. And which perfume?
Even in the secrecy of these pages, I’m a little embarrassed to admit it: I love how the male sex smells. To be precise, I love the smell of the man I love. My first time was when I was sixteen; even then I grew intoxicated as I inhaled the scent of the man who was about to possess me. If I concentrate, I can still catch a whiff of that heady bouquet, a blend of vanilla, alcohol, and fading flowers.
That’s why I always wonder how I smell. Does my scent awaken desire in my partners, as theirs does in me?
They would never suspect it, but whenever I meet a man I find appealing, be it just a tiny bit, one of the first questions that crosses my mind is: And what about his scent? Will it overwhelm my senses and make me burn for the man who produces it?
Anonymous handwritten note, 6/6/2009—Nonsense!
I FEEL NAKED WITHOUT PERFUME. When I turned sixteen, I started working at the mall every weekend as a greeter in a perfume shop called Quatre Temps. The extra money had made a big difference, and the experience left me with dozens of sample perfume bottles, all free, and a chronic inability to remain faithful to any one scent. I choose my perfume based on my mood.
“Are you still there . . . or did you hang up?”
Sophia brought me back to the present tense.
“Yeah, I’m here . . .”
“Don’t tell me you’re doing it to pay for that watch?”
How did she know?
“No!” I cried.
“Fuck, I can’t believe it . . . That’s why you’re doing it! You’re such an idiot. You’d marry the first schmuck who came along.”
Perfect: Miss Dior Chérie, an updated classic, a little old for me but not too much. I sprayed both sides of my neck.
“That’s not very nice to David,” I parried.
“About that, so . . . how was last night? What was his big surprise?”
I don’t know why, but I decided not to say anything about all that had happened over the past twenty-four hours, the marriage proposal and the latest anonymous letter.
“Oh, nothing. David just knows how much I love lobster. Last night he took me to Le Divellec.”
“Ugh. Don’t tell me, ‘the best seafood restaurant in Paris,’ barf.”
“Something like that, yeah.” I laughed.
“And after . . . how was it?” she asked, reverting back to her favorite topic.
“Umm . . . I’d give it an A-minus.”
“I see . . . So you guys aren’t comfortable with each other yet, to put it nicely.”
I couldn’t pull one over on Sophia when it came to sex. But I could cut the discussion short.
“Soph, I have to finish getting ready . . .”
“Go, get ready, girl!”
A half hour later, I took a cab to avoid being late.
THE ALBAN SAUVAGE GALLERY WAS on Rue de Sévigné, not far from the Saint-Paul metro station in the Marais. Its facade was narrow, but inside it felt spacious, thanks to its depth. The gallery was made up of a series of small rooms separated by white movable panels. The window displayed a giant pink resin phallus dressed as a doll in a white dress, black patent leather shoes, and a pearl necklace. There was no mention of the artist.
A quick look around and I saw that the conceptual installation inside did not vary: a scrotum disguised as a Care Bear, a vulva wearing a Bob the Builder costume, and so on. Each sexual body part was somehow dressed up as a children’s toy.
“What do you think?”
A bald young man with five o’clock shadow had hurried out of the gallery to greet me. His smile as well as the glassy look in his eyes suggested alcohol. Behind the door, I could make out the sounds of laughter, glasses clinking, and whispered cattiness: a typical Parisian gallery opening. Nobody really cared about the art. The important thing was to see and be seen, enjoy the free food and drink, and, above all, get an invitation to the next gathering.
“I don’t know . . . I’m waiting for someone.”
“Come in. Maybe he’s already here.”
The way he said it, I could tell he was gay, but I still wasn’t sure I wanted to follow him in.
“Come ooooon,” he insisted, grabbing my arm and sighing dramatically. “Don’t be such a ninny!”
I had no other choice but to follow him through the packed quarters. It was a mishmash of people, from journalists in black uniform, to disheveled artists with tattoos or piercings, to half-naked creatures in designer dresses.
I was wondering who on earth would need an escort here, where everyone seemed so well connected and too-cool-for-school, when my bald man in horn-rimmed glasses handed me some champagne and stuck out his hand.
“Alban Sauvage.”
“Oh . . . !” I exclaimed. “So this is your place?”
“Yeah, mortgaged to the hilt and costing me arm and leg, but yes, it’s my place.”
Did he need a beard or something? A mom to impress? Investors to persuade? Or worse: Was I a kind of conceptual happening, something dreamed up by one of the sickos in attendance? The call girl in the land of contemporary art.
I didn’t know what to say.
“You . . . ?”
“No, not me. Follow me, I’ll introduce you.”
When I saw my client, I thought it must be a joke: he was wearing an elegantly belted suit that showed off his waist, while his open jacket revealed a matching vest. The man was in his forties and carried a silver-knobbed cane in his right hand. His face was fitted with a pair of sunglasses. Alban abandoned me without introducing us, whispering an excuse:
“I must go. I have some Chinese to fleece. Kiss, kiss, darlings!”
I couldn’t move. I was like a statue. The man removed his smoked-glass spectacles and looked me up and down without saying anything. But did he need to? Once he’d removed his slightly grotesque glasses, there was something magnetic about the way he gazed at me. And though the color of his eyes was nothing special—hazel that sometimes looked gold, depending on the light—there was a rare intensity in their expression. If looks could kill, I mused, before quickly banishing the thought from my head. It wasn’t easy. He was giving me a deadly look. I felt like I was his prisoner. He was searching me. He was trying to get inside me. Before saying one single word, he’d already taken up residence in my being.
“Good evening, Elle.”
He was good-looking: his face was long and egg shaped, with high cheekbones and a straight profile. His demeanor was stately, though his neck a little stiff. And his hands were like those of a surgeon or a pianist . . .
Without contest, he was in the top three of my most attractive clients. He wasn’t like those living statues that stand at the entry of some clothing stores. Nothing like that kind of vapid girl-magnet. He had the aura of someone who had come out of a novel and onto the silver screen. Like a god who had at last come down to the level of humans.
I did not have to look around to feel the room’s attention on him. Women especially were converging around us like flies to honey. He wasn’t doing anything special—he wasn’t doing anything at all, just standing there, immobile. And yet he crushed the male competition through his regal attitude alone. He was perfectly present while being completely detached. He appeared to be floating above the vile masses.
“Good evening,” I stammered.
With some effort, he took a step toward me, adjusting all his weight onto the precious cane. He wasn’t faking his infirmity, and instead of breaking the charm, it only added to it. He was a man of more than one posture, apparently. It was obvious he had a story, and a painful one at that. The mystery only made him more appealing.
“For once, Rebecca does not disappoint.”
His compliment, his way of making it clear he was a regular, annoyed me. It was vulgar. Usually our clients at Belles de Nuit tried to lighten the situation by pretending everything was normal, as though we hadn’t needed an intermediary to set up our meeting. Not he. And his unusual frankness irritated me. It was as if he were trying to tarnish his first impression.
“And yet we manage it every time . . . keeping our promises,” I replied brusquely.
“You have all night to convince me . . . Elle.”
I hated the way he detached my first name from the rest of the sentence, playing with it like a cat with its prey.
I had been hoping that on my last mission I would get someone gentle and clumsy, someone who would simply be proud to show me off. But an escort doesn’t get to decide these things.
“I don’t even know your name,” I snapped. “You are Monsieur . . . ?”
“Patience . . . You have all night to find out.”
With every passing second, the man seemed less and less charming. I, for one, was having a hard time staying composed. I wanted to leave, and had to keep reminding myself of the watch in the window at Antiquités Nativelle to motivate myself to stay. Without this eccentric man and his money—Rebecca had told me he was willing to pay double for me—I might as well kiss the watch good-bye. But how long did I have to endure this?
As though sensing my panic, the limping dandy shifted tones, making himself more affable and even a little playful. He asked questions to be polite: Was I a student? Was I from Paris or the provinces? Did I like contemporary art or not really?
He had at last stepped down from his pedestal.
“Admit it, you’re not really that into galleries . . . ?” he said, breaking into an open and almost charming smile.
“No . . . Not really.”
“In that case, will you allow me to be your guide?”
“My guide?”
“Yes, here, tonight. You know, David Garchey is an up-and-coming artist. He’s already very popular in New York and London.”
David. So that was the artist’s name. I smiled to myself, pleased by the irony and coincidence. David Barlet. David Garchey. The similarity was troubling.
“Okay, that would be nice,” I said, relaxing.
He offered me his firm but slim arm, which was tense and gave off a kind of nervous energy. As he guided me to such and such piece, to such and such corner of the gallery, he allowed himself to behave with me as with an intimate. His fingers ran through a stray tendril, brushing over the nape of my neck and sending an electric current through my body.
“You see,” he pontificated in a calm, deep voice, “David isn’t just another spoiled child from a good family who feels guilty about his background.”
“If you say so . . .”
If I was going to cut this tedious night short, then I’d have to let him do the talking. The less you contradict someone like him, the more quickly he’ll grow bored of his own opinions. I figured he was like those university professors who go after naive students. I had been approached by some when I was in college—only to disappoint them.
I could smell his cologne, its notes of vanilla and lavender accentuated by a persistent charcoal that seemed to follow him everywhere.
“I’m sure of it. The social meaning of his work goes well beyond his background.”
As he said this, he pointed to a giant statue of Sophie the Giraffe with huge breast implants and a silver lamé string bikini riding up her backside.
The sleeves of his jacket and shirt were slightly bunched and revealed a tattoo of a miniature a and the tip of a feather pen on his left forearm. The rest of the word was hidden from view.
“Sorry, but I don’t follow. I don’t see the interest in making fun of children’s toys by turning them into grotesque sexual objects . . . How exactly does that diverge from the petulant bourgeois youth biting the hand that feeds it?”
I hadn’t been able to hold myself back. He had awakened my critical mind, which had reacted before my better judgment could kick in.
I expected him to dismiss me for the night—and without pay—or at least shoot me a death look. Instead, his eyes shone with renewed interest, searching mine. He was smiling both in surprise and excitement.
“Notice the choice of characters, Elle: David could have chosen to use toys that are already known for their oversexualized attributes, like Barbies. Instead, he transformed objects synonymous with childhood and innocence into symbols of sexual emancipation . . .”
“Okay, if you say so. And so what?”
“What he’s trying to express is how fast children today transition from a state of innocence into sexualized beings. And how violent that is. To the point where the child and the sexual predator coexist in the same person, becoming at once the hunted and the hunter.”
The moral undertones of his speech made me uneasy. Above all, I was surprised to hear this sort of conversation from a man I barely knew. But he did not seem very hampered by strict principles.
“Do you know the average age at which a person sees a pornographic film for the first time?” he asked in a serious tone.
“No . . . I don’t know . . . Fourteen?”
“Eleven. By the age of eleven, most preteens, girls included, know all there is to know about fellatio, sodomy, double penetration, and even more extreme practices.”
“Right, clearly, it’s a prob—”
“No!” he erupted. “They don’t really know anything! That’s the whole point! The fact that sex has become so banal has created the illusion that everyone is properly informed on the subject. All the porno-chic advertisements, all the suggestive clothing, all the sexualized television programs kids binge on these days . . . none of it actually teaches them anything about sexuality. It’s just one big, incredibly lucrative marketplace. But you could hardly call it a sexual education. Everything about it is fake, deformed, ridiculous, and even violent . . . It’s everything but erotic. Anything but true!”
“So if I understand you correctly, then the problem isn’t simply that sexual content exists, but that children are exposed to it before they’ve reached any kind of natural sexual maturity?”
“Yes.” He nodded passionately. “That’s what David’s work is expressing: all this ambient sex is nothing but a trompe l’oeil. And a real education in sexuality has simply vanished. None of these children bombarded with sex at a very young age are capable of understanding sexualized images. Any semblance of truth has been occulted. And somebody is making a fortune off this shit. That’s the tragedy! That’s the scandal!”
“So then according to you,” I inquired, “what would be the right age at which to learn about sex? And who would teach it?”
I immediately thought of my notebook and its mysterious notes. Wasn’t the person writing to me trying to educate me, albeit in a way that was brutal, intrusive, bordering on rape?
“It’s different for everyone. There is not one age at which the libido blossoms, contrary to what some lawmakers and statisticians argue. Each person has his or her own schedule. Some are ready much earlier than others. Sexual education should not follow a one-size-fits-all curriculum.”
The man was the Rousseau of sex. His philosophy was that each person’s natural sexuality should be allowed to express itself, and that people needed to be protected from society’s market-driven mentality. He had not answered my second question, though: Who could we entrust to teach it? He was right to criticize the current market-driven model of sexual education, but who would he have replace it?
Thinking about it, I didn’t disagree with his assertions. But was this artwork really the best way of getting the message across? What about the teenagers from the nearby high school who walked by the gallery several times a day? Was exposing them to Sophie-Gomorrah monsters without any sort of explanation really all that helpful? Was it really any less toxic than the pornography they encountered online? Wasn’t the artist (involuntarily?) complicit in the evil he was trying to condemn?
I kept my ethical concerns to myself. My companion was so passionate about what he was saying that I started thinking he himself was David Garchey, the artist and author of the abominations in question.
“Speak of the devil . . . and the scent of sulfur fills the air!”
He nodded furtively to someone behind me who noticed and navigated through the crowd of art show moochers to join us.
“Good evening,” said the young man timidly. He was practically a teenager. He wore a white shirt, his long brown hair hiding half his face.
“David, allow me to introduce Elle. Elle, this is the young man whose work I so admire, as you’ve probably guessed.”
That was an understatement.
I threw a polite smile in the direction of the artist, who looked about as confident as a coat hanger.
“Good evening . . . and congratulations on the show.”
“Thank you,” he replied shyly.
“I bet the media has taken interest.”
“Actually,” my date piped in, “we’ve had several nice articles. But that’s not what counts. The important thing is that some of your fellow newspeople have seen beyond the most shocking features of David’s work, which are only there to grab public attention, and grasped the social and educational thrust of his message.”
How did he know about my future profession? Wasn’t Rebecca supposed to keep our personal information confidential?
I was about to ask him about this when a tall, ethnic-looking woman, in a sequined dress the size of a swimming suit, sauntered over and glued herself to him. She coiled her long body and perfect curves around my interlocutor. Unlike David, my David, he did not look like a famous actor. His feverish demeanor put him in a category with the likes of Willem Dafoe, Christian Bale, or Anthony Perkins—the dark and nervous types. He was not a beautiful statue, but still was rather incandescent.
“Shall we go, Loulou?”
“Yes, let’s. Elle, I leave you with the future of contemporary art.”
The future in question was staring at his shoes.
“Wait . . . you’re leaving?”
It was the first time a client had left me like that, and on the arm of a girl who was a hundred times prettier and more sophisticated than I. My tutu flounced in rage and indignation. I was so irritated I forgot that his early departure also meant I would not be getting the promised bonus. I was just so offended. I felt rejected.
“Don’t fear. We’ll see more of each other,” he promised as he put his arm around the tall and tan Vine, whose dark eyes were glaring at me. “Oh, and I forgot . . .”
What had he forgotten? The most basic forms of politeness? Or maybe to pay me? Typically clients paid me directly and sent the agency its commission separately. Some of the regulars settled everything with Rebecca, who would then give us our share. I didn’t ask, but assumed that he must be in the latter, more exclusive category.
His tattooed arm reached toward my low bun, which had come undone over the course of the evening. I stiffened at his touch.
“What?”
“You should use hairpins instead of barrettes,” he advised, as though he could read my thoughts. “It would show off your neck better. It’s a shame to hide it.”
“Oh, I don’t know . . . ,” I stammered.
“Good night, Elle.”
The duo was just about to disappear into the crowd, the loud clap of the man’s cane on waxed cement echoing behind them . . . when suddenly he turned and started back. Now what did he want from me?
“I forgot to introduce myself.”
“Right . . .” About time, I thought.
“I’m Louie . . .”
I was still curious. Louie who? I gestured for him to go on.
“Louie . . . ?”
“Barlet. I’m David Garchey’s patron . . .”
Louie Barlet, I repeated to myself, trying to grasp the meaning of the two names. Suddenly I felt sick.
“ . . . and David Barlet’s brother.”
Again he took his leave, but stopped for a brief instant to smile and throw what felt like a grenade in my face:
“But I suppose you’d already guessed?”
So this was the brother David barely mentioned. I had never seen his picture, and David had clearly been avoiding a proper introduction. Now we had met. And in the worst circumstances imaginable.
He and his creature disappeared into the night, leaving me there, breathless.
“ELLE?”
Alban was like a jack-in-the-box; he popped up in front of me without warning and handed me a thick envelope.
“Here, Louie told me to give this to you.”
“Thanks, what is it . . . ?”
“You’d better get going. Your taxi is outside. Open it in the car.”
Without saying good-bye, I ran out the door and found a large sedan idling curbside. I hesitated a moment, unsure of how to address the chauffeur, then said:
“3 Rue de la Tour-des-Dames, please. In the 9th Arrondissement.”
He put the car in drive without saying a word. I settled comfortably into the back seat and opened the envelope Louie had left for me with his gallerist friend. It contained eight perfectly crisp one-hundred-euro bills that could have come directly from the Banque de France. Eight hundred euros. Or exactly double my usual rate for a date, including a night at the Hôtel des Charmes. It’s what he’d promised. Louie Barlet had decided against possessing me while he was anonymous to me . . . but he’d still paid for me like any courtesan.
His generosity made me a vulgar whore. And he knew it. Just like he must have known I would soon be family.
I started texting David a message to tell him I was on my way home when my smartphone suddenly buzzed. There was no indication of the sender, but I knew right away who it was:
See you tomorrow.
I should have thrown my phone out the window. Or at least erased the two last messages from its memory. I was shaking, my head sweating and inflamed, and I didn’t do a thing. I fought to contain my tears, which flowed uncontrollably from who knows what old painful memory.
That is how I met Louie Barlet.