I feel him smile against the side of my face. The bed shifts and his breath ruffles my hair. I keep my features relaxed, my exhales even, because I never want to wake up. Never want him to stop talking to me like this.
“It’s Saturday again . . . I’m going to try and be home early tonight,” he sighs, and I hear the exhaustion in his words. I’m not sure I’ve fully appreciated how difficult this must be for him, to balance what he sees as his responsibility to me, and to his job. I imagine it must feel like being pulled in every direction.
“I asked you to come here and I’m always gone. I never meant it to be this way. I just . . . I didn’t think it through.” He laughs into my neck. “Everyone I know would roll their eyes at that. Oliver, Finn . . . especially my mother,” he says fondly. “They say I’m impulsive. But I want to be better. I want to be good to you.”
I almost whimper.
“Won’t you wake up, Cerise? Kiss me goodbye with that mouth of yours? Those lips that get me in trouble? I was in a meeting yesterday and when they called my name I had no idea what anyone was talking about. All I could think about was the way your cherry lips look stretched around my cock, and then last night . . . oh. The things I’ll imagine today. You’re going to get me fired and when we’re penniless on the street you’ll have no one to blame but that mouth.”
I can’t keep a straight face anymore and I laugh.
“Finally,” he says, growling into my neck. “I was beginning to contemplate pulling the fire alarm.”
EVEN AS I wake alone, a couple of hours later, I remember the way he whispered against my shoulders, and finally into my ears. I’d rolled to my back, eyes still closed as I wrapped myself around him in a drowsy hug, the fabric of his suit rough, the silk of his tie suggestive as it dragged between my naked breasts. Had I been more awake I would have pulled him down, watched as he matched his fingertips to the bruises pressed into my skin.
Ansel left me breakfast. There’s coffee and a wrapped croissant waiting on the counter, and along with the lace cap that went with my maid costume, a new list of scribbled phrases rests beneath my plate.
What time is it? Quelle heure est-il?
What time do you close? A quelle heure fermez-vous?
Take your clothes off, please. Déshabille-toi, s’il te pla?t.
Fuck me. Harder. Baise-moi. Plus fort.
I need the large dildo, same size as my husband. Je voudrais le gros gode, celui qui se rapproche le plus de mon mari.
That was the best orgasm of my life. C’était le meilleur orgasme de ma vie.
I’m going to come in your mouth, you beautiful girl. Je vais jouir dans ta bouche, beauté.
I’m still smiling as I step into the bathroom and shower, memories of last night running on a reel inside my head. The water pressure in Ansel’s apartment is terrible and the water is barely lukewarm. I’m reminded once again that I’m not back in San Diego, where the only person I needed to battle for hot water this late in the morning was my mom after her morning yoga class. There are seven floors of people to take into account here, and I make a mental note to get up earlier tomorrow, and sacrifice an extra hour of sleep for a hot shower. But that’s not the only thing I’d miss out on. Those few, unguarded moments in the morning when Ansel thinks I’m still sleeping might just be worth a cold shower. Lots of them.
GRUESIMONE IS OUTSIDE having a cigarette when I walk past the patisserie toward the métro. “Today has already been a fucking nightmare,” she says, blowing a plume of smoke out the side of her mouth. “We sold out of the scones everyone loves and I spilled a fucking coffee on myself. FML.”
I’m not sure why I sit with her for the duration of her break, listening to her vent about the trials of being a poor twenty-something in Paris, how her boyfriend can never seem to shut the coffee off before he leaves, or how she’d give up smoking but it’s cigarettes or customer homicide—their choice. She isn’t very nice, to anyone, really. Maybe it’s that she’s American, and it’s comforting to have regular conversations with someone who isn’t Ansel in a language I actually understand. Or maybe I really am that starved for outside human contact. Which is . . . really depressing.
When she’s finished her last cigarette and my coffee has long grown cold, I tell her goodbye and head toward the métro, and then explore as much of Le Marais as I can in a morning.
Here there are some of the oldest buildings in the city, and it’s become a popular neighborhood for art galleries, tiny cafés, and unique, pricy boutiques. What I love most about the neighborhood are the narrow winding streets, and the way tiny courtyards pop up out of nowhere, begging to be explored, or simply for me to sit and fly through a novel, getting lost in someone else’s story.