The Cap Dagde Tale Ch 02

"The past is never dead. It's not even past

."

William Faulkner,

Requiem for a Nun

(1951)

Preface: The Teller of the Tale

My name is Mitch Taylor. You may recognize my name if you follow the best seller lists. My fourth appearance on the most prominent such list in the USA will occur next week after the very recent publication of my new novel.

Although I went through the grind of getting a doctoral degree in literature, the best sellers earned me a lot of money and enabled me to shift to only part-time college teaching just for the fun of it, teaching my pet course, "Sex in Contemporary American Fiction." The students loved it.

Like my previous best sellers, the new book is based upon one or more trigger events or encounters I had in real life. In this case, it grew out of a visit to a unique beach in France that is favored by swinging couples.

What happened there was an unforgettable sexual encounter that, before I incorporated it into my new novel, became an erotic tale I told to a buddy of mine and his gorgeous wife Annie.

1. Remembering ...

It was several summers ago when I visited them, Annie and my buddy.

After we had several drinks sitting at their small kitchen table and as daylight smoothly transitioned into the dim evening, something prompted me to bring up my memorable erotic encounter at that Cap D'Agde nude beach.

Maybe it was that Annie had an uncanny resemblance to Desiree, like two material entities exhibiting the same Platonic form of feminine beauty. At the time, I didn't realize the significance of this perception.

Initially I didn't intend to be sexually explicit in narrating the tale that evening in the dim light of the kitchen. But as I began telling them about the experience, Annie displayed for me a wonderful down-blouse cleavage that my eyes locked on with a kind of rapture. At that point, two of my organs connected and one of them, my brain, was taken over by the other.

As I employed my novelistic skills, they shifted into explicit erotic gear to describe in detail my incredible Cap D'Agde experience with Desiree. As I continued the tale, I could see that Annie was becoming more aroused and her arousal stimulated my own.

As I concluded the tale Annie abandoned any remaining inhibition. She abruptly embraced me, kissed me passionately before removing her blouse and offering her lovely breasts to my eager mouth.

Before long she led me into the bedroom along with her aroused but submissive husband. Thereafter, what began as a threesome shifted into something distinctly different as he moved to a nearby chair where he sat and watched Annie and me make love on the bed.

I could have followed-up with her after that evening, but I felt uncomfortable with the idea of having a sexual relationship with the wife of an old buddy even if he appeared to enjoy the cuckold experience.

Hence, I kept my distance from them after that evening, although a few weeks later when I was at Cap D'Agde again, I sent them a postcard to let them know I had not yet found Desiree.

Time was rushing by and the following year, before the summer break from teaching, I received a postcard from Annie. She wrote that they were enjoying a short vacation in France. The postcard was from Cap D'Agde.

I could imagine her in a situation I didn't like to think about: her husband standing in the sand nearby as he watched his wife having sex with a stranger.

I felt a twinge of jealousy mixed with disapproval as I thought of other men having sex with Annie. Of course, I was being hypocritical. I had gone to that beach for sex but resented Annie's doing so.

Meanwhile my summer break from teaching was approaching. I still was intent on locating Desiree despite having no success in earlier searches at that Cap D'Agde beach. Her parting whispered statement was repeating itself in my mind, day after day:

"

I am Desiree. Remember me. Goodbye

."

Desiree: her very name was suggestive of eroticism and mystery.

2. Fiction as Remembrance

But the vacation, at least the Cap D'Agde phase of it, was a bummer. It proved to be another summer of failure to find Desiree.

When I returned to America, I did what a writer of fiction may be expected to do: I planned and then wrote a novel in which she was the central character. Although I knew nothing about her beyond her incredible beauty and her vibrant sexuality, I invented a past for her that led up to that unexpectedly passionate sensual encounter at the beach. Then I plotted a fictional future for her.

In writing a novel for the general public (aiming for a best seller) I had to convey the eroticism but without the pornographic language I had used in the oral tale I had narrated to Annie and her husband:

I was strolling along on the soft sand of the beach when I stumbled. I stopped in my tracks as I became aware of a nude woman lying on a blanket before me. When she became aware of me her eyes, initially hidden by fashion sunglasses that she now flipped off, were as blue as the clear water behind me. After moments of mutual admiring appraisal, she stood and came so close to me that I could detect the mild but delicious fragrance she exuded. I met her lips with eager gratitude and we kissed for what seemed to be a very long time. Then her lips left my own and moved to my brow, my cheeks, my ears, my neck ....

What I wanted to accomplish in producing what I hoped would be an exciting piece of fiction, was answers to a series of questions I had been asking myself about my encounter with Desiree.

How and why did this gorgeous woman end up

alone

on that nude beach?

Why did she select

me

in for passionate sex and not, in particular, one or more of those three Brazilian men surrounding her and intent on having her?

Why, in parting, did she then give me her name and tell me to remember her before she said goodbye?

And, above all, I needed to resolve a major question: What happened to her after our encounter at Cap D'Agde? Why had I not found her despite repeated attempts?

While the story I wrote would have inventive answers to my questions, the real Desiree remained a mystery to me.

3. Calling Annie, but Recalling Desiree

As I indicated at the outset, eventually the novel was published.

I decided to call Annie. I wanted to tell her the good news that my new novel was in print and about to be another best seller.

I guess I should have been thinking about calling the two of them, both Annie and my buddy, her husband. But it was only Annie I wanted to contact, not him.

Fortunately, it was she who answered the phone.

It seems we each had some exciting news to tell the other.

Very quickly after we happily greeted each other, I excitedly told her about the new novel.

She was pleased to hear about it but then she excitedly told me her own news that she and her husband had agreed to a divorce.

"Oh, uh ... sorry to hear that Annie," I responded without conviction.

"I'm on my own now," she said. "I'm looking forward to some relaxation time before figuring out what comes next. "Actually, I was thinking ...."

Maybe her pause was a cue for me to pick up on but, if so, I missed it. I wanted to talk to her more about the book.

"Guess what I called it?" I asked her. "I mean the novel."

"I'd say the title is

Desiree

," she said, although she sounded disappointed, whether about the shift away from her announcement or about the title, which I told her was correct.

I continued on about the book's dedication page.

"Do you want to guess the dedication?" I asked her.

"Uh uh, I have no idea on that," she answered a bit testily I thought.

"It's

For Desiree. I remember

. Sound good?"

"Very nice," Annie murmured.

But her voice conveyed an emotion that did not resonate with my own egoistic pleasure about how both the title and the dedication matched the words that the woman on the beach had used after she kissed me goodbye:

I am Desiree. Remember me.

There was another pause, then Annie spoke. "Mitch, are you planning to visit Cap D'Agde again? I mean to search again for her ... for Desiree?"

"Definitely," I said. I was in an upbeat mood. "I'll take along a copy of the book to give to her. I'm leaving for Cap D'Agde in a month."

"OK, I understand," she said in a whisper I barely heard. "Mitch, sorry, I have to go. An appointment."

There was another brief pause.

"I'll be seeing you," she murmured just before hanging up.

At that point, I realized I had made a mess of the call. There was so much I could have said to Annie. Instead all I had talked about was my book ... and so about myself and Desiree.

For one thing, I should have told her that I remembered

her

.

I could have told her that I remembered her loveliness, her intelligence, her passion. I could have said how much she meant to me.

What a fool!

4. Another Search, "Oh Desiree!"

After

Desiree

entered the best seller list at number 7 in a list of 15, I was riding high in pride. Apart from that, I was in a constant mood of eager expectancy as, perhaps foolishly, I awaited some sign from somewhere that the real Desiree would contact me -- as if readers in France were paying any attention to an American best seller list!

The weeks went by. The book climbed to number 3 and then began to fall. I worried that once it was no longer a best seller, the likelihood of Desiree taking notice of

Desiree

would decline to zero. But as long as it remained a best seller, I held out hope that she would learn of it somehow and then find a way to contact me.

But no. Nothing of the sort occurred.

And then

Desiree

was no longer on the list.

Not long after that, my teaching term ended and during the break, I once again departed the United States to resume my search for Desiree at Cap D'Agde.

I spent my days strolling along the soft sand. Except on the nude beaches, I wore a bathing suit. It had occurred to me that her visit to "our" beach might have been a one-off whim. Maybe she was married with one or more children and the family would go to one of the family sites. Or maybe she was divorced. Then she and her child might be at a family beach. That wasn't what I had created for her life in my novel but who knows?

But, as days went by my hope dwindled. Desiree was nowhere to be seen.

Then something happened that changed everything.

I was packing my bags to get ready for my trip back to the USA when I decided to first have lunch at the hotel before checking out. As I sat there alone at a restaurant table, I could not help but hear some of the animated conversation between two other guests at the hotel, mature British women sitting at an adjacent table.

"It sends a chill down my spine when I think of that murder," said one of the women.

"They say that she was the most beautiful woman in Cap D'Agde, perhaps in all of France," the other commented.

"And very wealthy, I heard. Could it have been an insurance plot of some sort? A beneficiary?"

"It's possible, but the police would have looked into that."

"I read that two Brazilian men were suspects but it turned out they had an alibi."

Then what I heard struck me like a bullet in the chest.

"Desiree," one woman said, "that was her name. What a beautiful name! What a tragedy."

"Oh Desiree!" I cried out in anguish.

5

.

The Crime

The women heard me and approached, trying to console me in some way.

After a while, I was able to gain some control of myself. I left the restaurant, checked out of the hotel and, after inquiring to the clerk, proceeded to the commissariat where there was an inspector who had dealt with the case.

To my mind, those British women might have been wrong about the entire matter. The first thing I asked the inspector was "Please, sir, let me see a photograph of the woman."

I think he saw how distraught I was. He produced two photos.

One was taken at the crime scene and had not been shown to the public. She had been strangled. The contorted appearance of her face was unbearable to look at. It did not fully convince me that the woman was Desiree.

The other picture showed the woman looking down at an infant in her arms. Clearly it was taken some years earlier, but I felt little doubt that it was Desiree.

The police filled me in on what they had learned about her. She had married a wealthy man who suffered a stroke and left her substantial assets, including a château. He did not live to see her give birth to their only child, a boy. Tragically, the boy lived only a year before succumbing to a rare childhood disease.

It seems that after the loss of her young son, Desiree had lived alone and only satisfied her erotic needs by occasional trips to the beach where I had encountered her.

I felt miserable.

For just a little while, Desiree and I had established some sort of emotional bond that seemed to transcend the sexual pleasure we enjoyed together.

Why did she leave me and yet in doing so tell me her lovely name that would haunt my mind forever?

But such thoughts were cut short when the inspector, who had been so gracious in letting me see the photos and who had been watching me closely, got down to business. I was a suspect.

I won't go into details about the interrogation. The police had been looking for a man others had observed having sex with the woman not long before she was assaulted and killed. I fit the physical description the police were given. They had assumed that the killer would have left the area immediately and so they didn't search the beach, where I had remained to dwell on our encounter after she left.

I might have continued to be a suspect except that at a certain point in my account of what occurred, the inspector looked up sharply and asked, "Three, you say?

Three

Brazilian men?"

"Yes, I remember the other guy well." I gave him a description of the colorful tattoo on the man's left forearm. Neither of the other two men had a tattoo.

It turned out the police were right about the behavior of the killer: when they inquired at a nearby hotel they learned that a single male Brazilian guest had checked out on the evening of the murder. And, yes, the clerk recalled that he had a prominent tattoo on one forearm.

With a name and address available from the hotel, the wheels of justice spun into action. Interpol contacted the Brazilian authorities who quickly located the man and obtained a confession. The killer had followed her home after she said goodbye to me that day, eventually assaulting and strangling her when she spurned him again, as she had done on the beach.

Thus, my search for Desiree had ended with tragic news. How different from the happy ending I had given her in my novel! As for me, I now saw my remaining life through a glass darkly.

6. Last Return to Cap D'Agde

As I left the commissariat I felt a need to return to Cap D'Agde beach. I just needed to be there once again, for the last time, I told myself.

I strolled along in the sand, gazing at the many human forms around me. I was not in the least interested in observing sex and not for a moment did I think of having sex with anyone.

Something else was troubling me. I had said to myself again and again

Desiree is gone

forever.

But below this conscious level of my tormented mind, something was fighting against that reality. The inner struggle produced a plaintive question:

Maybe not?

In this distracted state, I stumbled over the edge of a blanket.

I glanced over at the occupant and stopped short.

It was a woman, stretched out on the blanket, a shapely nude woman. There was something very familiar about her. She had on fashion sunglasses and below them she had draped a small towel that concealed the remainder of her face.

Suddenly, I recalled how I described the woman on the beach in my novel, after I had revised that part of the Cap D'Agde tale I told to Annie and her husband:

Her entire body was that of a dream goddess painted a soft tan by the sun's rays. Her breasts were neither too small nor too large and her legs were stretched out, one crossing over the other, to reveal only what she might wish to reveal of her hidden treasure.

I remained frozen in place, gaping in wonder at the reclined figure matching that description.

She had not yet become aware of me. I had a strange feeling and a shiver went down my spine.

"Desiree," I dared to state aloud, as much a question as a pronouncement. I teared up as I did so.

The woman became aware of me. She flipped off her sunglasses and threw aside the small towel that had covered her face.

She stood up and approached me.

The tears in my eyes prevented me from seeing her face clearly.

Then she was upon me, reminding me of that very first encounter. I felt her kisses everywhere -- my lips, my forehead, my nose, my cheeks, my neck, my chest.

Then she paused. "Mitch," she murmured, "it's me, I've been waiting."

My eyes cleared. It was a revelation. I took her in my arms and kissed her deeply.

"Annie," I whispered, "Oh Annie."

"I told you I'd be seeing you," she murmured.

She gave me a little punch in the chest. "You fool."

"I know," I admitted, thinking of the cues she had given me.

The End