Hotelles (25 page)

21.
The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir
, Toni Bentley

Whether it was
The Eleven Thousand Rods
or
Irene's Cunt
, I could not imagine reading any of these books in front of David, much less in a public place like the metro.

I did not feel ready—would I ever be? did I ever need to be?—to show that part of myself to the world. But the desire was there. Undeniable. Pointing its finger at me.

As far as I could tell, neophyte that I was, there did not seem to be any kind of logic behind the list: it was not in chronological order—it went from Sade to Philip Roth without skipping a beat; there was no linguistic or even erotic consistency since light and crude readings were all mixed up. Was I simply to trust him and begin reading from the top of the list to the bottom? I didn't doubt that he'd spent a lot of time thinking about these books and compiling them for me.

 

Crude thought:
Sex
Physical love, the kind that tears us from earthly concerns, the kind that makes us forget everything, is never just a question of anatomy, of two bodies in fleeting union. The only kind of sex that really thrills us is the fruit of our imagination, of our doubts, our questions and hopes about an unknown world. To fantasize is to believe you are the first to plant your flag on a new planet. You know it's not true, but if the dream is big enough, you can take flight—and come back! One small step for my pussy, one giant step for my dream life.

Sex blooms in the hollow of our thoughts and wet dreams. There, it is even better than in the flesh of our bellies and buttocks. By letting our spirits wander and our bodies be caressed, we become capable of deep pleasure, here and now.

 

Handwritten note by me, 6/10/2009

 

LIKE THE DAY BEFORE, I
heard the door open at an unusually early hour. I was immediately pulled out of my torpor, away from the moist and craggy, oh-so-exciting lands toward which Louie beckoned me.

“Elle, are you there?”

David's voice chimed like a bell. His spontaneous cheer seemed to ignore our row from the day before, treating it as a minor obstacle to be fixed with a simple change of mood.

“In the living room,” I said lifelessly.

He appeared at once, beaming, more solar than ever, his arms loaded with a gigantic garment bag, his body half hidden. Only his gaping smile managed to peek over the mass of pink plastic. My instincts told me that this puffy, impossibly large thing did not contain men's suiting.

“Ta-da!” he trumpeted childishly.

If any one of his hundreds of employees, those gentlemen of the economic press, or his close financial partners saw him like this, the Barlet Group's stock would plummet!

“What is it?”

I had decided to play it cool. I had not gotten a half-confession from Louie without a little sacrifice. Nor would I be able to get David to talk unless I played my part.

“Your dress!”

“My dress?”

I greeted his surprise with a conciliatory smile.

“I mean . . . It was Mother's. It dawned on me the other day: she had the same curvy figure as you. More or less, of course, I've had it altered. And here it is!”

Do not strangle him. Do not ask if the dress is like the ring he gave me: something that once belonged to his mother, and also someone else. His first wife. The dead one.

“But darling,” I purred, “aren't you forgetting that you aren't supposed to see it before D-day?”

“Who says I've seen it?”

He gloated triumphantly, an expression I imagine he developed as a teenager after beating an opponent on the tennis court.

“Well now . . . I'm guessing you have.”

“You guess wrong, Madame Barlet. It has not left its opaque garment bag since it's been in my possession. Except when it was with the seamstress, of course, but I didn't cheat!”

“What about your parents' wedding? The photos, I mean.”

“They're yellowed. You can barely make anything out . . .”

His pout was touching. How could I refuse such a frank—and generous—offer of reconciliation? And when I took the dress out of the bag, all my anger vanished. Taking him at his word, I slipped into the dining room to look at it in private. I had never seen, much less worn, something so extraordinary.

“It's . . . It's fabulous!”

“It's a Schiaparelli,” he hollered from the next room. “Elsa Schiaparelli was already very old at the time, but she designed it specially for my mother. It's one of a kind!”

One of a kind, yes. It was splendid. Nothing about it, no detail or finish, not even the state of conservation, betrayed its age. Unlike most wedding dresses, it was not a sickening, misty soufflé of tulle or gauze, iced in embroidery. My first impression of the dress came out in a hushed cry:

“It's a real dress . . . quite simply, a real dress.”

“What's that?”

“Nothing, I was just saying: I'm going to try it on.”

“Go ahead, beautiful! That's why I brought it. If there are any adjustments to be made, we need to know ASAP.”

There wouldn't be. I could barely feel the silk, the color of mother-of-pearl, against my skin. My hips, my waist, my breasts, and even my overly generous backside, everything that I normally had so much trouble jamming into ready-to-wear clothing . . . My whole body fit, naturally, fully, as though molded by a sculptor. The top hugged my torso perfectly. The V-shaped bust, with its scientifically measured flounce, flared out into a draped corolla at the waist. The three superimposed movements of the skirt swished back and forth like a waltz. Every layer was linked to the next by large flowers of the same material. And dotted inside each flower was a cluster of diamonds that made the whole dress shimmer.

“So?”

“So . . . it's perfect!”

Led by some invisible dance partner, I spun around to face myself in front of the large mirror in the dining room. I recognized the woman whose reflection was smiling at me, and yet she seemed different. Nothing had changed on the outside: I had not lost or gained one ounce over the past several weeks, but something had changed in her, in me, Elle. I found myself more radiant, more generous. Even my complexion seemed clearer. The freckles sprinkled over my face, which I had always hated, suddenly looked like the most sublime and natural of jewels. Two or three had recently budded on my lips, like blossoms over a fresh and moist field.

So what they said was true: a gaze of desire can make you see the most beautiful, lovable parts of yourself. And the eyes from the night before had definitely pulled me out of my adolescent shell where, until today, I had been trapped. I'd left my old skin in the Hôtel des Charmes and walked out of the building a new person dressed in a new me. I could now see myself as beautiful, desirable. It no longer seemed absurd to me that someone might want to possess my body.

 

BEHIND THE DOOR, WHICH I
had been sure to lock, David was growing impatient. I figured now was a good time to drop my act of gratitude and submission.

“If you don't mind my asking,
she
never wore it, did she?”

“Wore what? Who are you talking about?” He feigned ignorance.

I persisted in my sweetest, most loving tone:

“Aurora . . . Did she ever wear this dress?”

“No! Why would she . . .”

He was lying. I could tell from his shrill, wavering tone. He never sounded this unsure. And at once, he started casting around for ways to change the subject.

“May I come in?”

“No . . . Not until you answer my question.”

“Elle,” he begged. “I told you everything there is to know: a prosaic love triangle. Louie loved Aurora, who loved David . . . who didn't love her. Period. There is nothing else to add.”

I pretended to buy his overly tidy story, then tried another line:

“And was that the reason for her depression?”

“Not at all. She had been sick long before Louie and I ever met her.”

“So then why did she decide to go swimming on a stormy night . . . if not for her broken heart?”

“I don't know. No one knows what really happened. Not even Louie. And yet he was the first one to arrive at the scene.”

“Did he try to save her?”

Louie's story had been quite different. He had cast his brother in the role of the hero. But why?

“Yes. But there was nothing he could do . . . except shatter his knee on the rocks. In the weeks that followed the incident, we thought he might never walk again.”

“Is that the whole story?”

“Yes,” he said, with renewed confidence. “Except the police did a small and theoretically routine investigation.”

“Why ‘theoretically' ”? I asked.

“Because Louie kept contradicting himself.”

“But nothing came of it, did it?”

“No . . . the cops concluded it was an accident.”

His voice had gotten closer. I guessed he had glued himself to the door, ready to burst in at any moment.

“And you . . . what do you think?”

A few seconds went by before he said gravely:

“Knowing Louie's dark character, I admit that some unsavory thoughts have crossed my mind.”

“Like what?”

“Stupid things . . .”

“You do know that I'm not letting you in until you've answered?”

“I've considered that he might have pushed her off the rocks, there!” he barked. “He and Aurora knew that part of the beach by heart. What I mean is, I was surprised a wave caught her off guard there . . . even on a stormy night.”

“Do you really think he'd be capable of such a thing?”

“No . . . I don't know . . . I think it is impossible to know in advance what a bitter person is capable of doing.”

He was right about that. But I wasn't going to let him off the hook so easily. There were holes in his story: What about his arm? What happened to it?

But I was wise enough not to provoke the same outcome as in our last exchange. He had just confided more about the topic to me than he probably had to anyone.

I took off the dress and carefully put it back in its bag, adding simply:

“You were mad at yourself . . . Weren't you?”

“Yes . . . I suppose I was. But it's all ancient history . . .”

Was he trying to convince himself? To bury guilt and ghost under the heavy weight of forgetting?

He tapped lightly at the door, and I unlocked it. It wouldn't be the first time he'd seen me in my underthings  . . .

. . . But it would be the first time he took me in this room, where the old-fashioned decor was more reminiscent of quiet evenings by the fire than gasping and excitement.

He glued himself to me before I was able to decide if he was looking for pleasure or consolation. He remained still for several seconds, his nose buried in my neck, jerking slightly as his body adjusted to mine. Like a wounded child taking refuge in his mother's bosom.

I ran my hand over the nape of his neck, a long, gentle movement that I thought more comforting than erotic, and that he took as an invitation. His palm caressed my back, wandering down the valley to my rounded buttocks. Reflexively, my pelvis responded to his touch. Again, he took this as a sign to continue. He and I had not made love since the two times I had given in to Louie at the Hôtel des Charmes.

Which part of the new Annabelle, the woman I had just discovered in the mirror, still belonged to him?

“We haven't christened this room yet, have we?” he whispered in my ear.

He had never said that kind of thing before. Our lovemaking was usually so ordinary, so devoid of challenge. It lacked any sense of play. What was going on with him?

I contemplated the two of us in the giant mirror, and how the raw lighting of the summer afternoon sculpted us; we were as beautiful as we could be. Any third-party witness would have said we were well matched. I was not the only one who had changed. The difference was more subtle in him than me, but for a second I could have sworn I saw that same rough and carnivorous, cannibalistic smile that Louie reserved for his prey.

“Come!”

Without further ado, he carried me to the bronze-footed marble table and laid me across the cold stone. I barely had the time to shiver before he pulled me toward him, my legs spread wide, my feet hanging in midair. He pushed my thighs up toward my hips and leaned down until he was facing my panties. I could feel his hot breath through the satiny cotton, titillating my hitherto bone-dry vagina.

He pushed the material aside with one finger and began licking my vulva from bottom to top, as though painting me with his tongue. Whenever he reached my erectile mound, which was still hiding under its protective skin, he started from the beginning again. His diligence was textbook worthy.

Happily, he made up for such studious awkwardness: his tongue moved at an excruciatingly slow pace, driving me wild:

“Faster . . .”

“Otherwise, is everything okay for you?”

“Yes,” I fibbed. “But faster.”

He obeyed, and not without success. With each lick of the tongue, I could feel my lips opening wider, readying themselves for entry. Of course, with his metronomic movements and concentrated efforts to moisten the entire area, he never lingered long enough for my taste on my sensitive button. It wanted more, much more. His hands wandered to my breasts, kneading them in a not at all displeasing way. I placed my index finger on my lonely clitoris and began rolling it under its jacket, such as I had learned to do long ago.

Disconcerted by my initiative, David froze:

“You are so beautiful like that . . .”

But I heard more than his smooth, enchanting voice in those sweet words. It was joined by ten voices, one hundred or even one thousand voices, as many as the Hôtel des Charmes could fit men at my mercy.