“Alo, Brooke?” came from inside the room, and Brooke sprang from her chaise on the terrace. The two cousins squealed and hugged as they had when they were twelve.
“I can see now what you meant when you said that you work “close to God’,” Brooke said as they walked out on the terrace under the deep purple and orange hues of the Mediterranean’s last breath of sunset.
“Sometimes this whole hotel is inside a cloud.”
“You look great,” Brooke said. She did; Mathilde was perpetually thin but curvy. She had always looked good in the pictures they sent each other as kids. Now her hair was relaxed, long and wavy. Her green eyes had always been surprising in how they lit up.
Mathilde did a little prance as she flared out her skirt. “You like? There is a designer who always comes to the hotel. She gave me four of her samples. This is my favorite.”
“Like it was made for you!”
“I think maybe so, because she is a little, you know, into the femmes, and she is always giving me big tips. I think maybe she made it for me.”
“Whatever works,” Brooke said, shaking her head as she poured her alter ego a glass from the four-hundred-dollar bottle. “A toast! To cousins who are like sisters.”
“To my sister who happens to be my cousin!” Mathilde said.
To Brooke, who grew up with four brothers, that notion tickled her heart; she realized she did have a sister.
They sat on the two chaises and spent the next half-hour catching up on family — who had gotten married, had babies, and who had died. When Brooke told her that Harley had been killed in action, Mathilde crossed herself and uttered a little prayer in French for the cousin she only remembered as a boy. Brooke was glad she had held that bit of news off Facebook and until she was face to face with her cousin. They sat for a long minute, then Mathilde took a deep breath, smiled and scanned the horizon that encircled her world. “You like the room? I am sorry I was in town when you checked in, but you were early!”
“No problem; I’m here and that’s all that counts.” Brooke looked over the edge of the patio down at the sea. “I can’t believe there is a spot like this, this high up, with such a breathtaking view. I felt so sorry for the bellman, carrying my stuff up the little path. It must be a half-mile from the front desk, uphill.”
“That is why they are all young and very well built. I make sure of that.”
The girls laughed again as the women regressed to a giddier time.
“What is the name of the one who brought me up here, red hair, blue eyes, wide shoulders?”
“Ah, Benji. He is from the farms to the north. Sweet and dumb. Just the way I like them.”
“Mathilde, in America that could be considered sexual harassment by a superior.”
“Brooke, if I have sex with them, it is superior.”
“You don’t really — do you?”
“We are way up on a mountain. Sometimes it gets quiet and sometimes the only thing to do is sip wine and let nature take its course.”
“Yes, but how do you face them the next day? How do you go back to telling them what to do?”
“What go back? I am telling them exactly what to do the night before — sweet and dumb.”
“Whatever works.” Brooke toasted again.
By the time the Mediterranean was snuggly wrapped in a deep blue blanket of stars and a blue-white moon, they had killed off the whole bottle of expensive wine and decided to head down to the restaurant. The chef, who Brooke compared to Gérard Depardieu, didn’t they all look like him?, came out and greeted them. He actually did the French thing and kissed Brooke’s hand. Well, the true French way, more like he blew a kiss onto her hand. He then spun a wonderful tale of what he had prepared, why, and where his ingredients had come from, making special notice of the fact that he went to an out-of-the-way market that morning for the morel mushrooms that were a leading ingredient of his creation for them that evening. He had a twinkle in his eye and a boyish smile that said to Brooke, “Don’t worry about your food; cooking is the way I make love to women, and I do it every day.”
As he returned to the kitchen, Brooke lifted her Cosmo and proposed another toast. “To you, who really knows how to make a girl feel welcome.”
Mathilde took a long sip. “I am so excited to see you. What has it been, twenty-four years? And as soon as I see you, it is like we live on the same street for all these years. You know, I got this job because of you.”
“Me? How did I manage that?”
“Your letters helped keep my English good. I followed what was going on in America because I knew you and you were there. This hotel caters to many Americans. I always am telling my guests from New York, I have a cousin there, she is a big cop.”
“That must make them nervous.”
“No, I tell them, you are with bureau of federal investigation.”
“Actually, not so much anymore. Now, I work more at the White House.”
“The White House, like Clinton?”
“Well, that was a few years back, but yes, that’s the place.”
“He was so sexy. I went to see him speak in Paris once. He make the room all…all…swoon.”
“He was never my type, but I understand the attraction.”
“There were thousands of French girls who would have cued up to be his Lupinsky.”
“Lewinsky, but I get your point.”
“So, what is it that you do for, who is it? Michelle?”
“It’s Mitchell.”
“Yes, I am sorry, but no Clinton that one.”
“No, no he’s more the father figure. Not a sex symbol.”
“Too bad, it would make your job more intriguing,” Mathilde said as she snapped a breadstick in half and chomped down on one end.
“Mathilde, you make me feel like I have never had sex before in my life.”
“If you are not having sex four, five times a week, then you aren’t having sex.”
“Come on, don’t give me that; you really do it almost every day?”
“Look around; you are in France, and the most playful part. One of the chambermaids, she is huge and she has pimples on her face. A man has to search to find her pussy and yet she is making love more than me.”
“You are terrible — ”
“It is true; everyone here is always making the love.”
“Well, it might be sex but I wouldn’t necessarily call it making love.”
“Ah, you speak like it has grown back and you are once again a virgin.”
“Might as well. I am so busy all the time.”
“But look at you. You are beautiful and you have a great body. I would kill to have your tits; don’t you meet men?”
“Yes, but half the time I am trying to put them in jail and the other half, they are afraid I will. I travel a lot and at the end of the day, I just don’t have it in me.”
“That is the problem, you don’t have it in you — enough!”
Brooke laughed, but that one landed a stomach punch from the inside out. “Hey, I got an idea; let’s talk about something else. How is your father? My dear Uncle Daniel.”
The conversation took a small detour as the courses came out. But Mathilde eventually started discussing the men in her life.
“… and I call him the choker. All he wants to do is choke me with his penis — very rough, but after, he is so gentle and attentive; he gives me many orgasms.”
Brooke kept looking around, but no one seemed fazed by Mathilde’s now totally explicit recitation of each and every man with whom she had sex, her little nicknames for them, and the size and ability of their manhood.