Platform (25 page)

'Okay, Egypt gets adventure . . .' Jean-Yves concluded simply. He apologised for interrupting my story, but we had to move on to Kenya. A difficult case. 'I'd be quite tempted to put it in with "Adventure" . . .' he suggested, having consulted his files.

'Pity . . .' sighed Valerie. 'Kenyan woman are very pretty.'

'How do you know that?'

'Well, not just Kenyan women, African women in general.'

'Yeah, but there are women everywhere. In Kenya, you've got rhinoceros, zebras, gnus, elephants, buffalo. What I suggest is that we put Senegal and the Ivory Coast into "Aphrodite", and leave Kenya in "Adventure". In any case, it's a former English colony, which is terrible for its erotic image, but okay for adventure.'

'They smell good, the women of the Ivory Coast . . .' I observed dreamily.

'What do you mean by that?' 'They smell of sex.'

'Yes . . .' he chewed unconsciously on his pen. 'That could be good for an ad. 'Something like "The Ivory Coast, the realm of the scents" - with a girl in a grass skirt sweating, her hair tousled. I'll make a note of it.'

'"And the nude slaves imbued with fragrance . . ." Baudelaire, it's public domain.'

'We'd never get away with it.'

'I know.'

The rest of the African countries posed fewer problems. 'In fact, in general you never have any problems with Africans. They'll fuck for free, even the fat ones. You just have to put condoms in the clubs, that's all; from that point of view they can be a bit stubborn.' He underlined provide condoms twice in his notebook.

Tenerife took us even less time. The club's takings were average, but, according to Jean-Yves, it was crucial to the Anglo-Saxon market. You could easily throw together an adventure circuit with a climb to the summit of Mount Tiede and a trip on a hydroplane to Lanzarote. The hotel set-up was reasonable, it could be made viable.

We came to the two clubs which would be the chain's chief assets: Boca Chica in the Dominican Republic and Guardalavaca in Cuba. 'We could provide king-size beds. . .' suggested Valerie. 'Done,' said Jean-Yves immediately. 'Private Jacuzzis in the suites . . .' I suggested. 'No,' he cut me off, 'We're strictly mid-market.' One thing led effortlessly to another, with no hesitations, no doubts; we would have to liaise with the resort managers to standardise the local prostitution rates.

We paused briefly to go for lunch. At that very moment, two teenagers from the Courtilieres housing estate were smashing in a sixty-year-old woman's head with a baseball bat. I ordered maquereau au vin blanc to start.

'Have you got anything planned for Thailand?' I asked.

'We've got a hotel in construction in Krabi. It's the new, hot destination after Phuket. We could easily speed up the building work, it could be ready by January 1st. It would be good to have a high-profile opening.'

We devoted the afternoon to developing the various innovative aspects of the Aphrodite clubs. The central point, obviously, was authorised access for local prostitutes, male and female. Clearly, there was no question of offering to accommodate children; the best thing would be to restrict admission to the clubs to the over-sixteens. An ingenious idea, suggested by Valerie, was to list the single-room tariff as the basic catalogue price and to offer a discount of 10 per cent for double occupancy; to reverse, in short, the standard system. I think I was the one who suggested that we put forward a gay-friendly policy, and to circulate rumours that homosexuals accounted for 20 per cent of visitors to the clubs: that kind of information was enough to get them to come; and if you wanted a place to have an atmosphere of sex, they had it down to a fine art. The issue of the overall slogan for the advertising campaign kept us busy for some time. Jean-Yves hit on a solution that was basic and effective: 'Going on holiday: time to go wild'; but in the end, I got a unanimous vote for 'Eldorador Aphrodite: Because pleasure is a right'. Since the NATO intervention in Kosovo, the notion of rights had become very persuasive, Jean-Yves explained to me in a half-joking tone; but he was quite serious: he had just read an article on the subject in Strategies. Every recent campaign based on the idea of rights had been a success: the right to innovation, the right to excellence . . . The right to pleasure, he concluded sadly, was a new one. In fact, we were beginning to feel a little tired. He dropped us off at 2 + 2 before heading home. It was Saturday night, the place was quite full. We met a really nice black couple; she was a nurse, he was a jazz drummer - he was doing well, he recorded regularly. He admitted that he spent a lot of his time working on his technique, all his time in fact. 'There's no secret to it. . .' I said a bit foolishly, but, strangely, he agreed; without intending to, I had hit upon a profound truth. 'The secret is there is no secret,' he said to me with conviction. We finished our drinks and headed up to the rooms. He suggested a double penetration to Valerie. She agreed, as long as I was the one to sodomise her — you had to take it very gently with her, I was used to it. Jerome agreed and lay down on the bed. Nicole stroked his cock to keep him hard, then slipped on a condom. I pushed Valerie's skirt up to her waist. She wasn't wearing anything underneath.

In a single movement, she impaled herself on Jerome's prick, then lay down on top of him. I spread her cheeks, lubricated her a little, and then started to fuck her up the arse with short, careful strokes. At the point when the head of my cock was completely inside her, I felt her rectal muscles contract. I stiffened immediately, breathed deeply, I had almost come. After a few seconds, I pushed in deeper. When I was halfway in, she started to move back and forth, rubbing her pubis against Jerome's. There was nothing more for me to do; she started a long, modulated groan, her arse opened and I pushed into her up to the hilt. It was like sliding down an inclined plane -she came surprisingly quickly. Then she became still, panting, happy. It was not that it was particularly more intense, she explained to me later; but when everything went well, there was a point when the two sensations fused, it became something gentle and irresistible, like being warm all over.

Nicola had been watching us, fingering herself all the time; she was starting to get really excited and immediately took Valerie's place. I didn't have time to change my condom. 'With me, you can just go for it,' she whispered in my ear; 'I really liked to be fucked hard up the arse.' Which is what I did, closing my eyes to lessen the excitement, trying to concentrate on pure sensation. Everything went smoothly, I was agreeably surprised by my own stamina. She, too, came very quickly with loud, hoarse cries.

Then Valerie and Nicole knelt down to suck us off while we talked. Jerome was still touring, he told me, but he didn't like it so much any more. As he got older, he felt the need to stay home more, to look after his family - they had two children - and to work on his drumming by himself. Then he talked to me about new time-signatures, 4/3 and 7/9; to be honest I didn't really understand very much. Right in the middle of a sentence he gave a cry of surprise, his eyes rolled back: he came all at once, ejaculating violently into Valerie's mouth. 'Ha, she got me there . . .' he said, half-laughing, 'she got me good.' I felt I was not going to hold out much longer either: Nicole had a most particular tongue, large and soft, eager; she licked slowly, the ascent was insidious, but almost irresistible. I motioned to Valerie to come nearer and explained to Nicole what I wanted: she was to close her lips round my glans, rest her tongue and remain motionless while Valerie jerked me off and licked my balls. She agreed, closed her eyes, waiting for the ejaculation. Valerie started immediately, her fingers quick and vigorous: already she seemed to be back on top form. I spread my arms and legs as far as I could, closed my eyes. The feeling mounted with sudden jolts, like bolts of lightning, then exploded just before I ejaculated into Nicole's mouth. For a brief moment I felt almost concussed, points of lights flashed beneath my eyelids; a little later I realised that I had been on the brink of passing out. I opened my eyes with difficulty. Nicole still had the tip of my cock in her mouth, she sucked up the last drops of semen. Valerie had slipped her arm around my neck, she was looking at me tenderly, mysteriously; she told me I had screamed very loudly.

A little later, they drove us home. In the car, Nicole had another surge of desire. She slipped her breasts out of her basque, lifted her skirt and lay down on the back seat, laying her head on my thighs. I masturbated her thoughtfully, confidently, expertly controlling her sensations, I felt her hard nipples and her wet pussy. The scent of her sex filled the car. Jerome drove carefully, stopped at the red lights; through the windows, I could make out the lights of the Place de la Concorde, the obelisk, then the Pont Alexandre III, Les Invalides. I felt good, at peace, but still a little energetic. She came as we neared the Place d'ltalie. We went our separate ways after exchanging phone numbers.

Jean-Yves, meanwhile, feeling a little depressed after he had left us, had parked on the Avenue de la Republique. The excitement of the day had subsided; he knew that Audrey would not be home, but he was actually rather glad of that. He would run into her briefly tomorrow morning, before she went out rollerblading; since coming back from holiday, they slept in separate rooms.

Why go home? He pushed back in his seat, thought about trying to turn on the radio but didn't. Gangs of young people, boys and girls, went past on the street; they looked like they were having fun, at least they were yelling. Some of them were carrying cans of beer. He could have got out, mingled with them, maybe started a fight; there were many things he could have done. In the end, he would go home. In some sense he loved his daughter, at least he supposed he did; he felt for her something organic and potentially blood-stained for her which corresponded to the definition of the word. He felt nothing of the kind for his son. In fact, the boy might not even be his; his reasons for marrying Audrey had been rather minimal. For her, at any rate, he felt nothing more than contempt and disgust; too much disgust, he would have preferred to feel indifferent, at the moment he still keenly felt that she should be made to pay. I'm more likely to be the one to pay, he thought suddenly, bitterly. She would get custody of the children and he would be landed with huge alimony payments. Unless he tried to get custody of the children, unless he fought her on that; but no, he decided, it wasn't worth it. It was too bad for Angelique. He would be better off on his own, he could try to start a new life, which meant, more or less, find some other girl. Saddled with two kids, it would be tougher for Audrey, the bitch. He consoled himself with the thought that it would be hard for him to do worse, and that, at the end of the day, she would be the one to suffer as a result of the divorce. She was already no longer as beautiful as when he had met her; she had style, she dressed fashionably, but knowing her body as he did, he knew she was already over the hill. On top of that, her career as a lawyer was far from being as brilliant as she made out; and he had a feeling that having custody of the children would not help matters. People drag their progeny around with them like a millstone, like some terrible weight which hinders their every move — and which, as often as not, effectively winds up killing them. He would have his revenge later: at the point, he thought, when it had become a matter of complete indifference to him. For some minutes more, parked near the bottom of the now deserted avenue, he practised feeling indifferent.

His worries came crashing down on him all at once as soon as he had walked through the door of the apartment. Johanna, the babysitter, was sprawled on the sofa watching MTV. He hated this listless, absurdly trendy pre-adolescent; every time he saw her he wanted to smack her round the face, to wipe the expression off her nasty, sulky, careless face. She was the daughter of one of Audrey's friends.

'Everything OK?' he shouted. She nodded casually. 'Could you turn it down?' She looked around for the remote control. Exasperated, he turned the television off; she shot him a hurt look.

'What about the children, everything go alright?' He was still shouting though there was no longer a sound in the apartment.

'Yeah, I think they're asleep.' She curled up, a little scared.

He went up to the first floor and pushed open the door to his son's bedroom. Nicolas looked round at him abstractedly, and then went back to his game of Tomb Raider. Angelique, on the other hand, was sleeping like a log. He went downstairs, a little calmer.

'Did you bathe them?' 'Yeah . . . no, I forgot.'

He wandered into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. His hands were shaking. On the worktop, he saw a hammer. A couple of slaps wouldn't have been enough for Johanna; smashing her skull in with hammer blows would be much better. He toyed with this idea for a while; thoughts crisscrossed his brain rapidly, barely controlled. In the hallway, he noticed in terror that he was holding the hammer. He placed it on a low table, looked in his wallet for the taxi fare for the babysitter. She took it, mumbling thanks. He slammed the door behind her in a gesture of uncontrolled violence; the sound reverberated through the entire apartment. Something was clearly not right in his life. In the living room the drinks cabinet was empty; Audrey wasn't even capable of looking after that. Thinking of her, a wave of hatred coursed through him and he was surprised at its intensity. In the kitchen he found an open bottle of rum; that would probably do. In his bedroom he dialled in turn the numbers of three girls he had met on the internet: each time, he got an answering machine. They had probably gone out, fucking on their own account. It's true they were sexy, cool, fashionable, but they were costing him two thousand francs a night; it became humiliating after a while. How had he come to this? He should go out, make friends, spend less time on his work. He thought about the Aphrodite clubs again, realising for the first time that it might be difficult to get the idea past his superiors; there was a fairly negative attitude to sex tourism in France at the moment. Obviously, he could try getting a toned down version past Leguen, but Espitalier wouldn't be fooled; he sensed a treacherous shrewdness in the man. Anyway, what choice did they have? Their mid-market positioning made no sense up against Club Med - he would have no problem in proving that. Rummaging through his desk drawers he found the Aurore mission statement, drafted ten years earlier by the founder, and displayed in every hotel in the group: