The contrast between his light brown skin and her paleness struck him when they were pressed together, reminded him of mayonnaise on rye bread. Her skin looked like it had never seen the sun. She was the whitest woman he’d ever been with. She didn’t want to play, kiss, or caress. She wanted to be taken, and responded with encouraging mewls the more aggressively and selfishly he performed. He pretended he was in control.
Her name was Sophie Duxín, and when he exploded inside her the first time she took a sharp, sweet intake of breath.
At four in the morning she stood at the window, a naked silhouette against the sheer curtains, said, “You must go now,” without turning to look at him in the bed.
He was ready, but confused. “Is everything okay?”
She turned, smiled; he could see the whiteness of her teeth. “Everything is okay. Three times, that is very good.” She patted her belly as she said it.
He was sore. “This apartment…”
“My husband owns it. He owns lots of flats.”
“And he doesn’t mind?”
“He doesn’t know.”
Jimmy felt hungover, although he hadn’t drunk anything. He wished he had something now, though.
“But—”
“Don’t talk,” she said again, crossing the floor to him, again pressing her fingertips to his lips.
“We have an understanding,” she said, looking away. “Actually, we do not.” It took him a moment to understand she was referring to her husband.
She watched him dress with cool, appraising eyes. As he pulled on his beaded jacket, he said, “What does he do, your husband?”
“He’s a businessman and politician,” she said, sighing. “He is very well known. He works in the government. But we won’t talk about him again.”
“Okay,” he said, wanting to know more but not wanting to risk her anger.
“I will see you in three weeks,” she said, rubbing her flat belly. “By then I will know. I’ll contact you.”
He didn’t ask, Know what?
She was done with him and he was exhausted and felt oddly hollow. He wanted to leave, but he also wanted to ask:
Where is he, your husband?
What would he think of what we just did?
What would he think of me?
Do you have other children?
Where do you live?
When will I see you again?
Why an Indian? Why an Indian child? Why me?
But she said, “Don’t talk.”
In mid-April there were hints of spring, and several days of cloudless but pure sunshine that seemed to fill Jimmy up like red meat. He’d not realized how the endless gray days had beaten him down until the sun came out. He was sitting on a bench in a small park near their apartment building, reading a note from Sophie in the sun, when Lyle joined him wearing sunglasses.
“That from her?” Lyle asked.
“She wants to see me again,” Jimmy said, charmed by the way she’d written the note in English, not her language, the way she’d drawn out the block letters. He wondered who had helped her.
Lyle shook his head, lit a cigarette, blew out the smoke in a long stream. “You’re doing this wrong, Jim. The point isn’t to get all monogamous. The point is to spread your love around, baby.” He said it with a flourish. “You understand what I’m saying?” Lyle asked.
Jimmy grunted.
“This town’s filled with French women who want to have little Jimmys, little children of nature. Why deny them?”
He wasn’t sure how to answer, and knew Lyle wasn’t the type who wanted to hear what he was thinking, which was a combination of his carnal desire to see her again and a leaden realization that she could do him harm if he got too close.
“Might as well go,” Lyle said. “Just don’t be shooting blanks. That’ll really piss her off.”
“You think that’s why she wants to see me, then?” Jimmy said.
“Why else?” Lyle said.
Sophie met him at the Champs-Elysées Clemenceau station, wearing a scarf and large sunglasses and she seemed very happy to see him. The moment he touched her hand, to give it a little hello squeeze, he felt her cool electricity shoot through him and it made his toes curl in his boots.
She told him they couldn’t go back to the apartment again, they were going to another place that was “not in such a nice neighborhood.”
“It is Gabrielle’s,” Sophie said. “She gave me a key.”
He asked why they didn’t go back to her husband’s apartment, and she answered by dismissing the question with a wave of her hand.
They walked a long way and were soon virtually alone on the sidewalk. Jimmy noticed the decline in the appearance of the buildings from the area around the station, and the lack of people. He saw several hand-painted signs in French and Arabic.
“Not so nice,” she said.
They turned a corner and he saw four Middle Eastern men in their twenties on the sidewalk coming at them smoking cigarettes, chattering. One barked a laugh at something another said.
Jimmy felt her clamp down on his hand, practically pull him across the street to the other sidewalk. He didn’t like being steered like that, as if he were running away.
The men certainly noticed, and one of them said something that made the others laugh. Jimmy didn’t know the words, but could read the tone and body language. They thought he was a coward for avoiding them like that. So he stopped, fixed his stare on them as they cruised down the sidewalk across the street.
“Jimmy, no,” Sophie whispered urgently.
He shot a glance at her. She was scared, the skin pulled back on her face in a way that seemed to flatten it against her skull.
The men were now adjacent to them, talking among themselves, staring back at him with fixed grins on their faces. All were unshaven, with shocks of dark hair, dark eyes. Jimmy heard the words “cowboys and Indians” clearly amid the Arabic. He felt a little tremble in the inside of his legs.
In a moment, they were past. Sophie tugged hard on his arm, and he gave in when the men were far enough away to not make it look like a retreat. He wondered what he would have done if they had come at him. He was confident he would have lost. He was no fighter, and vowed to buy a knife or a gun, some kind of weapon.
In Gabrielle’s apartment, Sophie said he was “brave and foolish,” which he took as a compliment.
Then she stepped up to him and kissed him lightly for the first time, and took his hand and pressed it against her breasts. He liked that.
Then, deliberately, she moved his hand down until it covered her belly.
“I hope our baby is brave and foolish, too,” she said.
“You mean…?”
“Oui. Merci beaucoup.”
Which sounded to Jimmy like “good-bye,” although they had sex again but it was different. She was clearly going through the motions, waiting for him to finish, her hands no longer grasping at him, pulling him in, but placed on his back because she had no place else to put them. He pretended not to notice. Afterward, while she sprawled back and he caught his breath, he shifted in the bed and lay his head on her belly. When he did, he felt her stomach muscles tighten.
She said, “No,” and wriggled away.
“I wanted to try and hear the baby,” he said.