“Well, if you hadn’t already told me, I would know now that you haven’t had sex by the question alone. At least not good sex. If you had you would know the answer to that. We could eat all night, and I would never tire.”
It’s when we get to the creme brulee that I realize something has changed. The conversation is still foreplay, but we aren’t talking about sex. Even in veiled terms. We’re talking about childhood and dreams. We’re talking about intimacy, which is all the more disturbing.
“It’s the cars,” I admit my weakness. “I would see them pull up night after night with rich men and beautiful women. These Porches and Bugattis. I knew that one day that would be me.”
“And now that is you,” she says, pride in her voice, as if anyone would consider being a prostitute a success.
“I suppose—” Suspicion narrows my eyes. “How do you know what I drive?”
She flushes a deep crimson. “I may have seen you out the window.”
“Really?” I ask, because it’s the right thing to say. It makes her feel charmed, but the truth is, I’m the one charmed by her. This sweet mysterious creature.
“I don’t usually use that window,” she says, the words rushing together. “It’s too bright from the lights on that street unless I keep the drapes shut. But this time… well, I was over there.”
“And?” I prod gently, because there’s clearly more.
“And there was so much dust. I sneezed, and then the lamp fell over, and then Minette got so freaked out she ran behind the dresser and wouldn’t come out.”
I don’t mean to laugh, but the image of this girl watching for me out the window like a nervous prom date is too adorable. “I’m sorry,” I tell the hands that are hiding her face. “I’m really not laughing at you.”
“I think you are,” she says, her voice muffled.
“Bea. Bea, look at me.”
Her hands finally drop, revealing this wry twist on her lips that I’m coming to recognize. “Are you done now?”
“Only getting started, darling. But I do have to ask, why do you live here? Besides the fact that it’s safe. You must have money to go anywhere.”
At some point in the meal there was a bottle of wine. It hasn’t made me drunk, but there is a pleasant lightness to me. Any walls I might have had are gone.
The same might be true for Bea, because she leans close as if to tell me a secret. “Because I don’t leave. I can’t.”
“Don’t leave where?”
“L’Etoile.”
“You mean you aren’t allowed to move?” I understand what she’s telling me, but I don’t want to understand. This woman is so young, so full of life. How can she be imprisoned?
“No, I mean I don’t leave the hotel. Like, to go to the grocery store. Or the park. Or anywhere.”
Jesus. “How long has it been since you left? I mean, you weren’t born here, were you?”
“No, I wasn’t born here. I moved in when I was ten. I was… troubled, you know? The way only a rich kid can be.” She laughs at herself, the sound hollow. “So my guardian, he got me a tutor who came every day. A therapist who came every week, for all the good that did.”
I blow out a breath. So many years in the tower. “That’s terrible.”
She makes a face, self-deprecating. “Yes, it’s a hard life, living in the penthouse.”
“‘I am a winged creature who is too rarely allowed to use its wings.’”
With a strange look she replies, “‘Ecstasies do not occur often enough.’”
“So you can quote the Diary of Anais Nin, but you do not believe in pleasure?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe in pleasure,” she says, her voice painfully earnest. “I’m sure it’s very nice. But it isn’t necessary tonight. Only the act itself.”
“The act?” I’m taunting her, and it’s only a little about foreplay.
“Fine,” she says, speaking fast like she does when she’s nervous. “Fine. I want to have sex with you. I want you to have sex with me. You know, the whole thing.”
There’s more she isn’t telling me, and it feels important. I have never asked a woman her motives for hiring me before. It’s never mattered. “Because you can’t leave?”
“Yes, because I want to do this thing, and I need to do it here.”
I glance behind her, at the many meals happening around us. There are women who look at me. And men. I am somewhat ostentatious with my suit and my assuredness. But even beside me, she shines. “And there has never been a man passing through the hotel that you have wanted? Someone sitting at the bar who bought you a drink?”
“There’s you,” she says softly, which isn’t really an answer.
It’s a distraction, and a successful one. Because for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, I want her. Not her body or her money. I want to unlock her secrets. “Then let’s go upstairs, and we will see if we can make those ecstasies come more often.”
Entering the penthouse, this time knowing that Bea lives here, is a revelation. Minette greets us with a plaintive meow, winding around our ankles as if we both belong.
There is a coatrack, beside the entrance, draped with a herringbone coat. A tightly wrapped umbrella sits in the base. I know without touching them that they won’t be damp, despite the weather, because Bea didn’t go outside today. She didn’t go outside yesterday. How long has it been since she stepped foot outside this hotel?
“Do you want some coffee?” she asks in that too fast way. I’m not sure whether she’s asking as a kind of date etiquette or whether she wants a reprieve, but I say what I always tell my clients.
“Yes, please. I would love some.”
I follow her to the corner of the suite where a wet bar would be. It’s been expanded, I see, to include a small two-range stove top with a wardrobe beside it that I assume serves as a pantry. It’s still less than even a small apartment would offer, but much more utility than any ordinary penthouse suite. A gleaming mini-fridge must hold the meager contents of her food supply, when she doesn’t order down for baked camembert or oysters.
What a life she leads, both decadent and desolate.
Her hands are shaking. The mug trembles for a beat too long against the metal plate of the fancy machinery, revealing her weakness. I take it from her, gently, setting it aside.
“Darling,” I say, softly.
She gives a small shudder. It isn’t quite a sob. That’s the only warning I have before she crumples, not against anything, not on top of anything, it’s more like she becomes suddenly small. Tiny. Like she’s shoved herself behind a dresser in an effort to be invisible.
I wrap her in my arms before I can think better of it. That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? To provide comfort with my body. That’s all I am—my hands or my mouth. My cock. And if that makes me feel cold and paper-thin, it does not matter.
This woman, though, she seems to like me for my arms.
I stroke her back softly, murmuring words of assurance. In French, I realize belatedly, but it doesn’t matter. She proved downstairs she could understand, and the language doesn’t matter. Not for what we’re doing here.