LA BELLE BELLE-SOEUR
FRIDAY MORNING. Everybody had gone to Emile's chalet/camp in the mountains, on some lake about 100 miles away or so. I stayed back so I could talk to Phil, who was editor of bunch of pop-science journals. In a previous life, I often edited some of the stuff for his magazines. I figured I could take the train or maybe hitch a ride with my anthropologist sister-in-law, Dr. Luce, PhD and everything, the whole kit.
Phil agreed to email me some raw copy from time to time, and I left for Emile's downtown apartment where we were staying and telephoned the train station -- next train was at 10 that night. Not relishing a bus trip of any length at all, nor arriving at Emile's after midnight, I telephoned Luce's office. She was supposed to join the party at the lake after she took care of one of her grad students later that afternoon. "The woman just called to cancel," she said in English, continuing in French, "We can get something at Cafรฉ Degas and leave right afterward."
That was how I found myself sitting at a corner table in an expensive cafรฉ, with my sister-in-law in the chair on my right and a backpack of shorts and T-shirts in the chair on my left. She had prepared it all before I arrived: Salad. Mussels and fries. Entre Deux Mers. Coffee with Armagnac. Simple. It was a trap, of course.
Still, I was determined not to fuck her. She's a gossip and can be quite mean spirited toward her sisters. I was certain she would get drunk one night and just for spite announced that she had fucked the husbands and boyfriends of her sisters, aunts and cousins, listing names and places.. (I think she did it to chalk up victories, the way golfers keep count birdies. I didn't want to be listed on her scorecard.)
Oh, there was a time, quite long ago, when I would think of fucking my oh-so-tight and ever-virgin 17-year-old sister-in- law, my own French Lolita. It was a fantasy that lasted a year or two... at least until my tryst with the teenage tennis player got me fantasizing about her. I worked the late shift at a newspaper then and would often get home at 2 o'clock, after a stop down the block for a drink or more. Claire was usually sound asleep, and often the drinks and the well built bartender left me hard and randy. On those nights I would go into the study and stare at a picture of my bikini-clad teenage sister-in-law and spend rivers of cum in her honor. As I was ready to finish, I would close my eyes and whisper, "Luce, Luce, Luce," and hear her echo with my name as we came together.
Years later, when Claire decided against sex, it didn't occur to me to think of Luce, by then a 30-something bitch of the first order.
# # #
I think I realized how much she had changed when we were at my in-law's a few Christmases past. The weekend before the holiday, we went to Emile's apartment for drinks. Luce, still in graduate school, arrived stoned. She kept bumping into me, her modest boobs brushing my back, shoulders, arms. She even managed to rub her knee against my crotch a few times. It was no mistake, but I was cautious. I mean, wife, mother-in-law, father-in-law in front of the Christmas tree.
After a couple or three drinks we left for a restaurant down the block. Luce managed to slip on the ice as she was walking past me and gave me this terribly devilish smile as I helped her regain her balance. As I said she was stoned. She sat on my right in the middle of the long table against the wall. I had a whiskey, straight up, while everyone else had beer or wine. I figured I was going to need as much liquid support as I could get. Emile's wife raved about the salty raw oysters on the menu, but I was the only one who seemed interested. When I volunteered for half a dozen, Luce agreed to share a dozen with me. (Ah the power of bivalves.) The whole evening she kept rubbing my leg, running her fingers up the inside of my thigh from time to time, almost to my crotch. At first I was a bit put off by her approaches, but after the whiskey kicked in, I was beginning to enjoy it. After consuming more than my share of the Chianti, I found myself getting a hard-on. I was trying to organize those long-ago fantasizes, but was conflicted between fantasy and sanity, considering the company at the table. At the end of dinner, I was the first out the door. I just wanted to get away.
As I mentioned, I suffer from what they used to call manic-depression, which I keep under control more or less with lots of pills. But, after a week of steady drinking the dope was losing its effect -- I needed a few belts every day to help me endure the in-laws. With the meds in an off position, I soon found myself in a manic phase, talking constantly, driving 90 on the expressway, and assessing the asses of ever woman I saw. (Wife's uncle's wife had a terrific one -- I may have even told her so once.)
By the time Christmas Eve came I was crazy enough to take aim at Luce. And as the whiskey went down the manic went up, and soon I was in lust again with my sister-in-law. But she, now straight and sober, seemed to spend the evening trying to avoid me. And, without the marijuana, she was mindful of being among the family.
# # #
That was then, Now, let me get back to Cafรฉ Degas where Luce was going out of her way to make sure I got a good look at her breasts: as I said, not big but firm. She wasn't wearing a bra, and I was expecting any moment for her to spill water across the front of her silk blouse. Kind of a wet T-shirt contest for the lunch bunch. After we had eaten, she took my hand and placed it on her knee,. She smiled that devilish smile from oysters past and excused herself from the table. "Encore d'Armagnac," she said as she headed for the ladies room. As always, when a woman speaks, I do as I am told. I ordered two more brandies.
Luce apparently knew about our platonic life down South. And she knew full well the signs of mania and its symptoms, one of which is having a series of dangerous affairs, the more dangerous the better, like my tennis playing teenager. She knew I was manic and she knew my resistance would be down. Thus with enough booze and a little patience, she could add my scalp to her belt. Spider to the fly kind of thing. I knew I was in a manic period, and I knew I should have left the Cafรฉ right then, and waited for the night train to the lake.
But, jackass that I am, I just stayed glued to my seat trying not to think about what my sister-in-law would be like in bed. It was hard, so to speak: I couldn't focus on much else. The Armagnac arrived before Luce came back, and I was tempted to down both in one gulp. But, at least for this part, I knew better. Back at the table, she lifted her glass in a toast of sorts and proceeded to finish half of the glass. She then reached for my hand under the table and put her panties in my palm.
I balked before saying to myself, "Why not? It will probably happen eventually anyway." I took a whiff of my sister-in-law's and, saying "fuck" in disgust semi out loud, reached over to let my fingers move up the inside of her thigh.