Don chose the perfect moment to tell us about the cunt book. The second pitcher of sangria was empty. So were the dinner plates, except for a few charred pieces of barbecued lake fish and slicks of vinaigrette shimmering in the light of the citronella candles.
We certainly needed a nudge to keep the fantasy going: that we'd invited Meg and Trevor over for their amusing rich kid ennui, not because they were the only other people with a summer cottage on this end of the lake. That I was here as lady of the manor instead of the semi-secret girlfriend of my nearly-divorced boss.
Don even gave his story a title of sorts. "Let me tell you," he said, "about Uncle Jacques' Legacy."
Don called him "Uncle Jacques," but he was really his father's childhood friend, a second-generation Frenchman with Cardinal Richelieu's nose and pockets full of caramels for Don and his brothers. It was always an event when he came to dinner. Don's mother worked in the kitchen for hours making odd foreign dishes, beef wrapped in pastry or stews that made the boys tipsy from the vapors alone. Uncle Jacques was what they used to call a confirmed bachelor—though he wasn't gay, Don was very sure of that. His mother was always trying to fix him up with her unmarried friends: prim maiden ladies and pretty widows. Around Uncle Jacques they giggled and touched their hair. But his mother's hopes always came to naught.
When Don went to Paris his junior year of college, his parents insisted he visit Uncle Jacques in the Dordogne, where he'd retired to his ancestral village. Don went for the free meal and stayed on for half a bottle of Sauternes—a golden liquid so sweet it made his mouth ache. Uncle Jacques was surprisingly easy to talk to for an old man. He admired Don's camera, a Nikon F2, and confessed his own interest in the art of photography. Don spouted some nonsense from an art course about the pursuit of ideal form and the challenge of conveying depth and suddenly, there in his hands was a photo album, the old fashioned kind with thick black pages and a cord at the binding. He thought at first he might be required to ooh and ah over European landmarks, or worse yet, pictures of Uncle Jacques and his father as boys. But then he opened the book to the first page. What he saw took his breath away.
"What was it?" Meg was the first to bite.
"Art photos," Don replied with unusual delicacy.
Trevor twisted his lips into an amiable prep school sneer. "He means pictures of naked women."
"Or parts of them," Don corrected. "In extreme close up. I wouldn't have guessed what it was at first, except for the fingers, holding the outer lips wide."
"It was a book of cunt pictures?" The sneer stretched into a cartoon leer.
"Yes. On one page," Don said. "On the facing page was a formal portrait of a lady fully clothed. The kind you might see displayed on any mantelpiece. I'd guess from the hairstyles that some were from the forties and fifties. But others were recent, too. Girls my age."
"How decadent," Meg cooed. "Do you think he screwed them all?"
"I wondered that myself, but didn't have the nerve to ask. He did tell me that since he had no son of his own, he wanted to pass the book on to me one day if I thought I might have use for it."
"Do you have it now?" Trevor's question had a hopeful lilt.
"Unfortunately not. Uncle Jacques must be over eighty but he said in his last Christmas card he's feeling quite fit."
"I don't know if it was wise of him to make the offer," Trevor said. "Now he's got someone anxious for him to die."
"Who? You?" Meg asked with a grin.
I asked Don if he recognized any of the faces. One of those maiden ladies or pretty widows?
"Hell, maybe one of them was your mother," Trevor laughed.
Don gave him an indulgent smile. "That I would have noticed. Frankly, I didn't pay much attention to the faces. What struck me was how different the women ...."
Meg's Adirondack chair creaked. I saw Trevor's hand settle over her thigh.
"How different they looked
down there
," Don continued. "Far more variety than you find on lips on a face. One was nearly fleshless, a slit peeking from a thicket of curls. The next was plump and meaty, almost prehensile. And then a Baroque extravaganza, folded and draped like swirls of rich cloth." He leaned back in the lounge chair and closed his eyes. "It's been thirty years, but I can still see those photographs."
We all gazed into the darkness as if we could see it, too—a woman's legs dropped open like butterfly wings and the secret, scarlet fruit within, suspended before our eyes in the summer night.
*****
What was it that made me doubt him? The way he touched me between my legs as soon as we got into bed, murmuring satisfaction when he found me wet? Or, and this occurred to me as he cupped my breast and stroked the nipple with his thumb, was it the way that cunt book story put him so firmly back in charge, throwing Trevor off his game, making Meg squirm around on her little heart-shaped ass? He already knew my weakness for stories of his young, impressionable days—but surely he could do better than a libertine uncle who was, of all things, French?
I turned to face him. "Did your uncle really have a book like that?"
Without his glasses Don's eyes looked smaller, the tender skin mapped with lines. He smiled.
"Do you really have an Uncle Jacques?"
His smile broadened. "Would I lie to you?"
He saved me from the answer with a kiss. In the year we'd been seeing each other, I'd become used to his evasions, about his wife, about his feelings for me. The price for sleeping with a man who was almost old enough to be my father. Or my uncle.
If the story was real there was so much I wanted to know. Did he get hard in front of the old man? Did he masturbate later that night in the guest bedroom, vintage vulvas fluttering through his head? Which picture did he see first when he took his cock in his hand? Or when he came, biting back his groans so Uncle Jacques wouldn't hear?
But he'd never tell me these things. I knew that. Don's tongue was too clever, dancing lazily, darting in and out, feeding me a taste of the pleasures to come. Feeding me pictures, too, rising from the growing heat in my belly. Of a lady, lips glossed and softly parted, gazing heavenward as they always seemed to do in pictures back then. But down below she was hitching up her skirt, spreading her legs, half-teasing, half-shamed, to show her secret to that cool glass eye. She wanted it, even back then, when proper ladies didn't do such things. Or didn't tell. And I wanted it, too. I wanted it to be real.
I pulled away and lay back on the pillow. "Take my picture."
Don looked at me blankly.
