Girl Who Was Not Called Mistral 01

They say the imagination is the most vital erogenous zone of them all...

It's late. The hour she loves most. It seems that now, Paris – with its night-veiled boulevards, is most perfectly itself. Reminding her of a sensual woman wrapped in dark cloaks, dreaming dreams of illicit lovers, the odour of bodies, the paleness of flesh, the pulse of breath, laughter and wine. And

'Les Café Des Poetès'

is a plague of smoke, a void of vague green lighting in Cubist décor, the haze giving it all an ill-defined blur. The esprit of la vie bohéme.

Faces reach out to touch her. She moves stylishly, with conscious hauteur. The simple black dress contouring her, concealing and revealing in exact proportions, if it was any tighter they'd see the seams of her underwear, a punctuation of neat pearl buttons down the front. She's class. They know it, and she knows it. She chooses the privacy of a table in an alcove from where she can see the movement of the clientele, hear the soft jazz drift. A short while later, the waiter brings a bottle (Tollot-Beaut's '78 Corton-Bressandes) with a crystal glass, indicating a man at a separate table. He smiles and nods. She returns the smile coolly, with reserve, but her tongue already tingles with the heat of the liquor. Unconsciously she visualises their tongues in moist embrace. And for a moment she can't breathe for the pressure of their imagined bodies clasped together. Her dreams are populated with fantasy lovers. Perhaps tonight she can take those dreams further...?

She looks back at him, forcing herself to smile more openly. Indicating for him to join her. As if this is a rendezvous. A game. Something they've worked out beforehand. He bows in a mock-chivalrous gesture that has her laughing, and he sits opposite her. His eyes burn deep, layering her naked. He's as dark as a Gauloises ad, his voice smooth, soothing, intimate.

She says "monsieur?"

He watches her, and stage-whispers "in

'Les Café Des Poetès'

, men buy the girls drinks. Then they go upstairs together. Perhaps you know this? Perhaps you don't. This is the way relationships develop here. You think money can't buy you love? You've come to the wrong place."

"And you imagine that is why I am here?"

He inclines his head slightly. "Not necessarily. But it might be interesting to pretend."

She laughs again. Finds herself talking with unaccustomed openness, things she's seldom confided to anyone else, and when it's time to leave, she already knows she'll leave with him. Tasting the forbidden fruit of strange bodies.

"Two people meet without names. Without pasts. All we possess is what we have now. From that we can create all manner of possibilities. We can drive to any destination we choose. We can see a Movie. We can go to a Hotel and make dreams with our bodies and poems with our sex. I own a property where we can be alone. Where we can be naked and gorge on each other. We can be anonymous and free to do whatever we most fantasise without guilt or constraint."

"You are very confident," spoken with a subtext that says 'you are a man who puts the Phallic into Gallic.'

"No. The choice lies with you. The choice always lies with you."

In her imagination she has become... Audrey Hepburn, while he is a character from a Jean-Luc Godard movie. He has a metallic-green Renault parked alongside

'Les Café Des Poetès'

. It seems natural she should slide in beside him, sinking into the upholstery, not caring where he's taking her. The lights come up and they move out into traffic, night-time Paris swirling by though the windshield. The silhouette creatures of the dark who stroll its shadows seem detached and dreamlike. But where before, the city was melancholy in its sad grandeur, now it's excitingly alive.

"Perhaps this is the point where we should introduce ourselves? What's your name?" she begins. "Mine is..."

But he reaches over to clamp his hand over her mouth. "No. We have no names. You can be whoever you want to be. Madame Rècamier, Madame Pompadour, Madame Bovary, Marie Antoinette, Simone De Bevoire, Anaïs Nin. I will be whoever you want me to be. We have no past and no history. No ties or responsibilities. Tonight we shall invent everything. We shall invent each other. We shall choose names. I want to know who you are in your dreams. I want to know what you are

not

called."

"What I'm

NOT

called? Well – I'm not called... Mistral."

"So tonight you are Mistral. Remember, Mistral, how it was that we met last year at the Film Festival? I wanted you at first glance. You played your lines so cleverly, and never missed a cue. I pursue you with such intensity, although at first you resist me. You are a journalist working for the magazine

'L'Evènement'

, and are there to interview a New Wave movie director. I secure an introduction for you on condition that you come for a meal with me at

'Les Café Des Poetès'

, and afterwards – in my Hotel room, you play the interview tape back while I draw the shoulder-straps of your dress down so I can cup your breasts and kiss your nipples. The tape still playing, his voice and your voice interacting, as I lick deeper, down between your legs, your most secret moistures on my tongue. So rich and delicious I can taste it still. There's a line between love and an erection that's hard to tell at moments such as this. As I enter you, you call my penis the beautiful invader, the sexual intruder. And we kiss so deeply you nearly bite my tongue off as you come. Remember? – in the morning, on the pillow beside me, you look so beautifully disarrayed. Like you're emerging from a long night of absinthe... and I wonder, why are you here? Has all this just been the fulfilment of our contract? Your debt now repaid in full...? or is there more? I scarcely dared to hope. Yet there was to be nothing more. Nothing, until now..."

They drive out across the Seine, out where cataracts of cars crawl around the Periferique. She melts into the curve of his arm, protected by the warmth of his body heat... she knew she was being followed, even as she left the Bistro. The laughter of small dark women still in her ears, the fumes of Gauloises that lie like a hot sweet haze across her vision – but they can't obscure from her the whisper of expensively tailored shoes close behind her.

She does not slow or quicken her pace as she goes on through the Rue Fontaine.

A Paris evening, warm now, growing humid. A breeze scented with tulips. A breeze blowing the sounds and smells of Europe's most exciting city through and around her, but still there's emptiness. A void inside that nothing can touch. Something unreal too, as if she's detached from it all, out of sync. A city that's surreal, dislocated...

Perhaps that's to be expected. The autowreck on the autoroute. Through the windscreen? Concussion – amnesia – but no, I'm O.K. They released me from the Hospital – didn't they? I'm booked into the Hotel off the grand boulevard, I have the key-fob here, it's firm and cool. The numbness, the unreality are just after-effects. It's bound to feel a little... odd.

So let's reiterate what's known. She's thirty-four, and at the terminal end of a ten-year marriage run aground. From the start it was a calculated match, she'd got material security, a level of luxury she'd rapidly come to despise – while he'd acquired an attractive pliable possession, rich olive complexion, bright dark eyes, a woman that women envy and that men desire. A useful adornment for those months he chooses to be 'home'. But love, sex, lust, passion, aren't they supposed to be part of the marital equation too?

In her shoulder-bag is a flask of ampoules, and a French-language glossy magazine. The cover story concerns the terminal end of a ten-year marriage run aground, from the start, a calculated match...

The sound of footfall continues behind her. She loses herself in a maze of indistinguishable alleyways and streetlets off the Left Bank. Even now, city lights must be glimmering on the dark Seine somewhere far beyond these boulevards. She'd imagined a long weekend alone in Paris would help untangle the situation in her mind, a chance to think through the confusion. But all she's discovered is a deeper sense of isolation... and, where is she now? Monmarte? – the dark ways that used to be the Bohemian artist's quarters? Here there are old buildings rich in character and gently stylish decay... yet there's still a man behind her. He stands on the street corner between a collage of ripped wall posters. He's watching her with undisguised interest. His gaze at once flattering, and a little scary.

He's approaching me now. An elegant slouch practiced from the Movies. Quick – select your pseudo – Zouzou or Frou Frou, Eloise or Aline.

Unconsciously she visualises tongues in wet embrace.

I can't breathe for the pressure of our bodies clasped together...

Walking by the Seine earlier she'd heard a strange murmuring, almost subliminally low. Eventually it separates out into a profusion of long sighs, brief intense moaning, and gasping cries. She paused. Watching the eddies of tide, listening for long moments to the sounds of Paris making love. A million couples. Maybe more. A sound distilled from all the sweet wickedness of the world.

But already it's too late. The man who's followed her from

'Les Café Des Poetès'

is now barring her path.

"Suzette, I'd like to make a small deposit in you, if that's not inconvenient?", in a rich Marseilles accent. He's acting as though he's Alain Delon. As if this is a Movie scene, like something out of the cinema. And she's – say, Maria Schneider, hot and sexable.

He's mistaken me for 'Suzette'. He's mistaken me for his whore. This must be a – what do they call it, a 'Red Light District'? And he's taken me for a prostitute. I should be offended. Do whore's dress like this, like members of the bel monde in stiletto-heeled alligator shoes? Perhaps they do. This is where the whores must peruse les homme sur la rue, taking a kir in a café. Where they call out to a stroll of potential customers 'hey lover, hey l'amour, hey Honeydick.'

Oddly, she finds herself returning his gaze.

He's trying to act confident, casual, but she can sense the tension in the lines of his face. He's more nervous than I am. Perhaps – somewhere deep in my most secret soul, I

am

a whore. Perhaps he's recognised that much within me. I married – not for love, but for security, for financial comfort, material gain. Isn't that a form of subtle whoring? Perhaps a need exists within me to be used?

Her hands tremble at the perversity of the idea. Can she really go through with the suggestion that's teasing her, and say 'oui'? Or should she get the hell out of here before it's too late? The urge, the temporary insanity, is overwhelming. Any second now he's going to turn away and disappear back into the night. A warm breeze blows the scent of tulips down the alley.

She can't resist the temptation. "I await your pleasure, Monsieur. Do you have a place we can go?"

The tension leaves his face, and he's leading the way, his eyes scarcely leaving me. It's almost as though he's imagining the supple play of muscles beneath my clothes all the while. Like he's imagining me naked already. Well – soon this dark attractive stranger will have me naked. I'll be compelled to undress for him, and then I must do whatever he wants me to. He's smiling at me, my guts turning to water at the thought of what lies ahead. This thing I'm willing. This situation I'm willing myself into.

They pass dark Bistro's, Brasserie's and black sleeping cars. She imagines she recognises something of the area. Surely if you were to walk swiftly in this direction it will bring you out eventually on St Germain des Pres? Chestnut trees fringe the boulevard. The night-black foliage is whispering.

"The usual place, Suzette." They arrive at an anonymous seedy-looking apartment house. She stands back as he talks in rapid French to the concierge. She tells herself – I've still got time to get out. There's still time to turn and run. But instead I'm following him, the black crone at the door smiles a toothless smile as I pass. "Suzette" she says to me, nodding her greeting. We climb a bare white-washed stairwell to a third-landing door. The steps move beneath their tread.

"The key?" For a moment 'Suzette' is confused. Then she fists the 'Hotel' key-fob from her shoulder-bag, and hands it across to him. He screws it into the lock, pushing the door open onto a small undecorated room. He hits the light switch. A single unshaded bulb which is pale and inadequate. She wonders how many girls have been brought here. How many have been fucked (and worse) on that dirty bedstead? She moves to the window bay. The louvers are closed. The air from outside is scented with night. Soon I'll be one of those girls. Just another anonymous fuck. Oddly, the idea is appealing. It makes her part of that erotic world of subterfuge, that lifestyle of tantalising danger. It draws her into a nebulously romantic underworld of debauchery and daring. It makes her a part of it all – if only for a single night. She's no longer trembling. No longer afraid. Her fear replaced by a frenzy of dark intensity. Names and identity dissolve. She's just woman, one woman with a horny man aroused by her sexuality, a universal primal archetype.

At that moment, she becomes the whore.

As she crosses the room, the magazine falls from her shoulder-bag. Its pages spray as it hits the floor, opening out to a text-spread concerning the 'CONFESSIONS OF A TEN-YEAR MARRIAGE RUN AGROUND'. The story reads 'from the start it was a calculated match, she'd got material security...' Beneath a photo the blurb runs 'desires I've suppressed all these years are suddenly surfacing and longing to find expression'. The photo is of a woman, a photo taken in a Bistro called

'Les Café Des Poetès'

. Her clothes are Laura Ashley. She is drinking a Kir.

He sits on the bed with a gesture of impatience. She sits beside him carefully. He kisses her roughly with their tongues in wet embrace. Then he watches her undress. She wants to be naked for him. She has a need for him to see her. A need to be desired. To show him that she can be even more than naked. The blouse is tugged free. The skirt, and more. Nude, she does not move. The space between them seems to be bright and burning. Neither of them stir or even seem to breathe. The pale glow paints their bodies, lean and taut with a softening of shadow. His eyes are the eyes of a man who looks upon a miracle.

After long moments she crosses to him, breasts moving free with slight sensual tremors, legs parted.

I set one leg on the coverlet next to him so my vagina gapes for his inspection, and he kisses deep where I'm already moist. I move with feline speed to cover him, enveloping him in tumbling black hair. He detects the sex-sharpened fragrance of my skin. The intensity of my eyes glittering like those of some strange predatory animal. Greedily, I reach down to his groin. He lies back as I release his cock.

She reaches out and grasps his penis in her hand. The beautiful and deadly slimness of it, the length and perfect balance. The hilt is black with pubence, it guards the balls which fit so perfectly into the cup of her fingers. A single smoky jewel of moisture glistens from its tip. Her name is etched along his penis-length in blue veins of ancient primitive symbols, it seems to penetrate her already with its animal wisdom.

He kisses and thumbs her aroused nipples to an aching intensity as she manipulates her hand up and down in his groin. Until she eels round to straddle him, holding him, targeting his fierce erection into her, sinking down onto him with a long low deep-throated moan. She fucks him with a speed, fury and abandon she feels she's denied herself for so long, her breasts quivering with the motion as his hands and his lips trap them, squeezing and teasing them.

Eventually she slows her rhythm torturously.

He groans "je viens." I come.

She answers "je jouis." A more subtle come.

Again she increases her speed gradually. Until the soft explosion of orgasms come almost too soon and he's emptying into her as she collapses down onto him. Her hair disarrayed over their faces. Her body glistening with a sheen of perspiration. The after-effects of sex are like a hot sweet haze across her vision, she moves to suck his tongue. She's lost track of the hour. Sex is a door to infinity that lies outside of time and beyond all nature. To lovers, time means nothing. Their bodies glisten together in shadows.

But now he's standing beside the bed, his shorts already concealing his quiescent penis. He's counting out notes from a monogrammed black leather wallet. So the adventure is over so soon?

I can't take his money – can I? Perhaps I should be grateful for small 'merci's'.

The pun makes her laugh suddenly, holding her face between her hands. To take his money is to

really

become the whore. Should she? Can she maintain the illusion right to the end? She sits up nude, and smiles. Suzette takes the money and says "merci monsieur, merci." A pause, "but why do you call me Suzette? Why act as though we've done this before? Is it part of the game for you?"

"I call you Suzette because that is your name. I bring you here because this is where we always come to make love. Your key, it fits the lock. The concierge, she greets you by your name. Why complicate what is so simple?"

"You don't understand. Perhaps I should explain, my husband, my car – the accident on the autoroute, the Hospital."

He looks at her strangely. Picks up the discarded magazine absently from the floor, and sits down on the bed beside her, riffling through its pages. "It is memory which inhibits our freedom. Memory is what controls our actions because it exerts patterns of expectation onto them, the knowledge that other people too have their expectations of us also shapes our actions. Without memories, without knowledge of self, we are free to build whatever new selves we please from whatever actions suggest themselves or whatever themes snag our attention. You are Suzette, my sweet whore. The accident, the confusion, these things may also be true, I don't know. But they are not true for us, not for you and I. Here is the story you're telling me now..."

He passes the magazine to her. She begins to read. A strange and exotic romance about a creature of the bel monde who marries into uneasy wealth. The life-style seems increasingly strange.

This bed, this man, are real.

She looks up to meet his eyes.

I am Suzette the whore. This is my room. He is my client.

She smiles.

They drive out across the Seine, out where cataracts of cars crawl around the Periferique. She melts into the curve of his arm, protected by the warmth of his body heat. Some time later she opens her eyes... There's a hiss of gravel beneath the Renault tyres. He's pulled off the boulevard. There's a darkness inhabited by strange shadows. At first she can't make out where they are. But the headlights are picking out trees, and stone monuments. Her skin crawls with odd fascination. He's brought her to a cemetery. Perè Lachaise? It's a vast forbidding place full of ornate tombs, massive stone mausoleums draped with moss and creeping vines, in which the departed rest in granite silences.

Night is black and enormous. They drive through the dark, surrounded by tombs. Ahead of them a huge circular crypt looms massively. It's now he slows to a halt. She tenses in anticipation. But he indicates for her to step outside. The engine dies. There's muted jazz in the green glow of the in-car stereo. The air outside seems strangely scented, a night that's whisper-quiet. She imagines the sound of the dead breathing as a breeze stirs the foliage of ghost trees. Far away there must be lights, movement, noise, here there's only stillness.