Putting It
In
in Paris
An Erotic Novel of the Eighties
Brett Tonaille
Copyright © 2010 Brett Tonaille
Published by Tartopwol Books at Smashwords
tartopwol@cheerfulcom
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Gabrielle
“Oh what a tangled web we weave...”
—Sir Walter Scott, Marmion
Licking back
Gabrielle had her tongue up his ass.
This is the kind of thing a man should notice. Especially the first time it happens. But since they'd gone in the bedroom, Gabrielle, with her schoolgirl air, had so surprised him, he'd lost track of exactly what they were doing. Only later, thinking through that afternoon, did he realize: at some point, she'd worked her wide, innocent face under him, thrust in her tongue, and started licking.
In August 1979, gold twice went above its long-time high of $520 an ounce. Soon, it just kept rising....
The week before she came over, Rufus flew back to New York.
Manny, his boss, was in Texas. But Carl wanted to see him.
“About time,” thought Rufus. Carl, a trim, neat man in his early forties, came alive for pep talks to the staff, but the moment he'd ended his spiel he again became impenetrable. Behind his glasses, his piercing blue eyes looked past anyone unimportant. Even his long blond hair was sleek and corporate, a friendly touch on sales calls, but not to be mistaken as casual. He never acknowledged Rufus except when he was with Manny.
But Rufus was no longer working in the coin shop – or as Cachet called it, the gallery. Anyway, he'd only done that as part of his training. Now he was their man in Paris. Of course Carl wanted to see him; he'd have to acknowledge him now.
Beverly, middle-aged and efficient, showed him in, then closed the door. Carl was on the phone, behind his giant modern desk. He gestured for Rufus to sit.
“Me,” he said to the phone, “I fucking love Jimmy Carter. His half-assed policies are putting gold through the fucking roof. And that's great for the coin business.”
Years among uncouth musicians had not prepared Rufus for the casual, aggressive vulgarity of career salesmen. Manny was an exception – with his curly beard and scholarly slump, he looked more like a disheveled academic. His habits were correspondingly abstemious; he didn't drink or smoke, and he only cursed when he'd made a serious score. But then he was a buyer, he wasn't out there hustling the public or even entire companies to invest in rare coins. All the guys on that side of the business, from Carl on down, used “fuck”, and worse, as punctuation.
Rufus sat up as Carl got off the phone. But Carl looked down at a pile of papers and began making notes on the top sheet. He did the same with three more before saying, his head still down, “I heard you got a two-bedroom across from Notre Dame.”
“Yes.” Rufus waited a beat. “Manny approved it.”
Carl grimaced.
Rufus knew, and suspected Carl knew, that that wasn't the whole story. Rufus, new to the business – new, in fact, to business, period – had hustled the Company. This was a perversion of the natural order, in which it was the Company that did the hustling.
He'd grabbed the apartment the moment he saw it, then made sure Manny got a look at it. Manny had had his doubts. Boy, had he had his doubts. The place wasn't cheap. But he also liked the idea of staying there when he was in town. He especially liked the idea of how it would look to any woman he brought by.
“The view will impress our clients,” Rufus said.
“I guess.” But Rufus knew that he was sold.
“And you paid the whole first year's rent,” said Carl, “Right up front?”
Rufus suppressed a smile. “It's not like I could show them a pay stub.”
As far as the elegant brunette at the agency knew, he was a student. In France, the fact that he was a student at almost thirty seemed perfectly normal. But both her mascaraed eyebrows shot up, and her jaw down, when he brought in the whole amount in one lump sum. “You're giving me that in CASH?” Her eyes narrowed. “You will be doing a little business here, perhaps?'
“Perhaps. A little.”
“Unofficially?”
Very unofficially. Cachet was well-known in New York; but in Paris, the idea was to keep a low profile. “Let us say, discreetly.”
That she could understand. Getting around the government was a time-honored French tradition.
Now Carl did look up, long enough to give Rufus a sharp glance. “You do know they'll get all the interest on that amount?”
No, Rufus didn't. Until six months ago, he'd been living on a folksinger's budget. Earning interest hadn't been a big concern.
Having made his displeasure known, Carl went on. “So, Manny's teaching you the business?”
“Oh yes.” Like hell. Manny had him watch while he did deals all over Europe, but almost never explained what he was doing.
“Not that you'll be buying on your own.”
Got that right.
Carl initialed another sheet. “OK then. We're done. Unless you've got anything else?” His tone was not encouraging.
“Well...”
Carl kept his eyes down. “Is it important?”
“It's just, I'm a little worried that some of what we're doing isn't, strictly speaking –”
“Manny says there's no problem.”
Manny had gotten Rufus the job. So he couldn't very well say, “Manny's not what you'd call reliable on the subject of legality, especially when it won't be his ass on the line. Or his name on any paperwork.”
“I just want to be sure – .”
Picking up his phone, Carl punched a button for a line. “Talk to Manny.”
When Rufus came in the next day, Manny was already holed up with Carl. So he went back to his borrowed desk and browsed through World Coins, trying to convince himself he was learning something. He saw Manny come out and stop at the mail bins before heading towards him. Among the Grey Sheets and other official mail, he held a small lavender envelope, which he ripped open, taking out a note card. He looked up from the card as he reached Rufus. “Boy, are you lucky.”
“How's that?”
“Remember that Eurasian brunette we met on the rue Mouffetard?”
“The one you thought was hot?”
“She is hot.”
“Cute.”
“You're an idiot.” He handed Rufus the card. “A lucky idiot.”
Rufus read the note, written in French in neat, square letters: “I understand Rufus has an apartment in Paris. Could you give him my number?”
“I mean, it's not like she was ugly,” said Rufus, pocketing the card.
He remembered Gabrielle as a brunette, not yet twenty, with a big smile, black eyes, and a trim boyish body. At first, he'd had missed the slight Asian shape of her eyes.
It was Manny who guessed: “You're part Vietnamese?”
“Yes!”
But Manny himself had ended up with her friend, Magali, a thin, dusky woman.
At the time, Rufus had already met one woman in Paris – Luz, a tall, light-skinned métisse with high cheekbones, slim hips and long legs. Her daughter spent the summer with her father in Martinique, so Luz did her best to get as much sex in as she could before September. She was happy to fuck, which given her model-like build worked out nicely. But fucking was it.
Back in the States, “Last Tango in Paris” had made one alternative downright fashionable. But when he brought the subject up to Luz, she snorted. “Why would I want to do something that not only gives me no pleasure, but actually causes me pain?” Lacking an answer for that, he let the subject drop.
Her other refusal was more frustrating. “It makes me throw up.”
“Oh, come on.”
Still one night, after he'd treated her to a particularly nice dinner and she'd come back to his empty new apartment, she'd stripped to a pair of black silk panties, cuddled up by his crotch and started to solidly suck him off.
Just then the ceiling lit up, as pink, green and white ovals slid across it. Far below, speakers spit out phrases in alternate languages. The first time this had happened, Rufus had expected to see a flying saucer outside his window. Instead he'd looked down to see a long modernistic boat – a bateau mouche – filled with tourists. Now he accepted this as a regular event, the price of living across from one of France's major tourist attractions.
The room went dark again just as he came – and Luz leaped to her feet, racing into the “water closet”. Gagging sounds were followed by flushing and the squeak of faucets.
Coming out, she glared at him. “I told you that would happen.”
He tried to look contrite. “Thanks for trying, anyway.”
Otherwise, sex with Luz was a straightforward treat. She was in it for one thing and the last thing she wanted was a relationship. “I'm a Gemini,” she said. “They say we like pleasure.”
Though Rufus thought astrology was a crock, he suddenly wanted to meet more Geminis. At least the ones like Luz.
But September had taken her off his menu. Until next summer...
The student
Back in Paris, Rufus waited a day for his jet lag to wear off. Then he rang the number on the card.
A man answered. He sounded like he'd taken a Quaalude. Or two. Rufus hesitated. “Uh... That is....”
“You want Gabrielle?”
“Oui. S'il vous plait.”
Gabrielle's exuberant response more than made up for that first shock.
“Rufus!” she said, in sweetly accented, over-precise English. “So Manny gave you my number.” Back to French. “Ça fait plaisir de t'entendre.”
“Me too. Do you want to meet up?”
“Bien sûr. I can come over right now, if you like.” He did. He liked very much.
In the small student restaurant on the rue Mouffetard, she'd looked like many a French college student, wearing a simple sweater and a pair of jeans. But now she looked almost like a lycéenne, one from a particularly strict all-girls' school. She wore a neat white blouse and a prim gray skirt. She kissed him on the cheeks with immediate familiarity, then sat demurely on his new white couch. He poured out some wine.
“C'est magnifique, cette appart'.”
Yes, he had to agree, the place was pretty impressive. Aside from the unbeatable view – all you saw was the sky, Notre Dame and, if you looked down, the Seine – , the living room and dining room were open to each other, creating one huge space. He'd bought a few things – the cream white couch, a glass and metal coffee table, a white pseudo-fur rug and a large round pouf for the living room, a marble-topped table and some chairs for the dining room. Far opposite where they sat, on the wall behind the table hung a mock-Japanese print of a Eurasian woman looking out over the sea. She could have been Gabrielle.
Otherwise the space was pretty bare, a broad expanse of reddish brown tiles. He'd bought the same huge bed for his room and for the guest room (mainly to be Manny's) with a big cozy comforter for each and some good sheets. But there wasn't much in the bedrooms either.
He couldn't help checking Gabrielle out as he sat across from him: enough of a chest not to miss, but nothing dramatic; sweet, but small hips. And she was pretty. Beautiful, even. Her sleek black hair was pulled back, showing her broad, slightly exotic face.
Maybe Manny had been right.
“So who was that guy?”
She grimaced. “This couple's been staying at my place. It's awful. They don't help with the rent; they eat up all my food.”
“Jesus. Why don't you kick them out?”
“Where would they go? I can't just put them out on the street.”
That explained the male voice. “So, you're not dating anyone?”
The corners of her eyes went up, matching her mouth in a wicked grin. “I just broke up with this guy. Would you believe ” – she laughed at the thought – “he threatened to commit suicide?”
“Damn.” But she didn't seem that worried. He changed the subject. “Have you seen your friend Magali?”
“Oh my God!”
“What?”
“Manny spent the night with her, you know.”
“I've heard, yes.”
“She shouldn't have done that.”
“Why?”
Again that grin, all way into the corners of her eyes. “She's not supposed to just spend the night with guys. There are men she's supposed to go through.”
“Men? I don't get it.”
She studied his face. “You're very naive, aren't you?”
“I am?” Rufus, who had played in some pretty dicey clubs and had his share of tawdry adventures, thought he was pretty hip.
“Manny could have gotten hurt.”
Rufus felt a touch dizzy. Whatever was involved here was way beyond him.
Just the same, it wasn't too long before he'd taken Gabrielle's hand and tugged her towards him. Minutes later, he was on his feet, with Gabrielle in his arms. She looked up, as he bore her into the bedroom. “I'm a fine one to criticize Magali, eh?”
He'd bent her over the edge of the bed, then lifted up her proper gray skirt and yanked down the prim white panties beneath it. Her butt, made bulkier by her position, looked more appetizing now. Quickly, he'd unzipped and pushed into her. Soon the only sounds were the slight squeak of his moving in and out and her small, half-suppressed sighs.
He watched the saints descending the steeple of Notre Dame, gripping her buttocks as he came.
After that, they both undressed and he soon lost track of exactly what they did. He put her on her knees at one point, but she did more licking than sucking; he never did quite come in her mouth. Then she climbed back on the bed and they romped incoherently until, at some point, he found himself seated on her face, her tongue hard at work. But by then this soft thrusting against his most intimate orifice barely registered.
It was as if he were drunk. Drunk on sex.
They fucked a few more times and then she had to go. Overall, it had been a very nice afternoon.
He didn't see her again for two days. She had to study, she said, and Rufus was still getting settled in. He also had to go over to the Bourse – the stock market – and talk to the dealers in that neighborhood, then report back to Manny.
Though he didn't really know what he was doing, he'd spend a few hours behind shop counters or in back rooms, chatting with colleagues who'd done this all their adult lives, lifting pieces of gold into brilliant light, squinting through a loupe, gingerly lifting rarities out of velvet-lined boxes. At noon, he'd use his expense account in some cozy old bistro, having a good pâté de campagne and a steak au poivre with one of the better Beaujolais as he studied the antique prints and copper kitchenware hung on the walls and the nattily dressed French businessmen, and more rarely women, always made-up and discreetly bejeweled, lingering over their two-hour lunch. Dessert was a chocolate mousse or a tarte tatin, the caramelized apple slices buried in crème chantilly. This was a big step up from the Chinese food that had made up the bulk of his restaurant meals in New York, or the salads and spaghetti he'd made at home.
But then, even the food he'd had here as a student had been memorable. Simple as the couscous or the steak frites at the restaurants universitaires had been, washed down with small bottles of vin ordinaire, he had fond memories of them. And the sex, for a young American surrounded by other foreign students, hadn't been half bad either.
This time around, one thing hadn't changed: Paris was proving full of pleasures.
These occupations filled a good part of the day and allowed him to report to Manny that he was working. But they still left him a lot of free time. Some of this he used to shop for the apartment. Some of it he used to fuck Magda.
Magda
Finding Magda again had been a bonus, another proof that Paris was working out. They'd both been Gabrielle's age when she, a recent refugee from Hungary, had tried out her femme fatale tricks on the easily impressed young American from her grammar class. He'd been to her tiny room numerous times without getting more than a few kisses. Somehow she kept him waiting for more; somehow more never happened.
He'd noticed a picture above her dresser, a photograph of an elegant woman with carefully coiffed hair and a contrived glow. “Who's that?”
“That's me.”
“Really?” He looked at the small, curvy blonde beside him, with her mischievous eyes and simple air. “Why do you have a picture of yourself?”
“I'm an actress. Didn't you know?”
One day, when the school year was almost over, he'd dropped by to see her. Just as he was about to leave, she'd said, “I'm going to take a shower. Stay.” He'd waited a few minutes before getting restless and was almost about to leave when she came out, warm and clean, in a bathrobe. She let him start to open it before, suddenly, turning to flee again. Feeling like a fool, standing there with his bulging pants, he was completely unprepared when she reappeared – she'd gone to squirt perfume in the nape of her neck. That done, she'd opened her robe at last, showing her small, ripe body, pale pink and freshly cleaned, giving herself to him with a triumphant smile.
Just after Luz had returned to her maternal duties, he was in the library at Beaubourg and drifted into the language lab, where he spotted a familiar blond head in one of the cubicles. Magda'd been working on her English. She peered up at him, struggling to remember his name: “Robert!... Richard!... Ronald...” The important thing was that she remembered him. Better yet, she'd just gotten divorced.
She invited him over. After acting in some films (Rufus had even heard of them), she'd married a famous journalist. Her failed marriage had left her with a handsome apartment, the living room plush with deep gold carpeting. All along the walls, bookshelves brimmed with understated culture.
Sitting on the fine leather couch, she proudly showed him pictures of her elegant wedding. He kept hoping she'd show him the bedroom, but instead she closed the album, stood up and said, “Now show me your place.”
She was duly impressed with the view, but that was all she saw before they moved to his over-sized bed. Her hips were just a bit fuller than he remembered, but the same exquisite grip still lay between them, tightening delightfully as he entered her. She had no interest in teasing him now. She'd come for sex and wanted it right away, straight and hard. She was less limited than Luz, though her hindquarters, too, were off limits. Still, he savored the sight of them – ripe and full – as she methodically, almost politely, sucked him off.
Once they'd done all they were going to do, it was past midnight. “Now walk me home,” she said.
“Don't you want to spend the night?”
She stroked his cheek, almost maternally. “Peut-être une autre fois.” But, Rufus realized at once, nothing would change “another time”. This was what she wanted to do: fuck, intensely but discreetly, at his place, then go home.
He was being used. Used for his body.
Dinner with Gabrielle
His afternoon with Gabrielle was unrelated to his convenient, if unflattering relations with Magda, which now had gone on for several weeks. The idea of sleeping with two eager, cooperative women for the next few months made perfect sense to him.
And so he spent that Wednesday evening satisfying Magda, delighting in her inside's muscular hold as he pushed against her fleshy rump. But before he went to pick her up (she always had him pick her up), he called Gabrielle and made a date. She came over the next evening.
After a quick, half-dressed fuck, they'd headed out to the Boulevard St. Germain. Now they were seated on a restaurant terrace, enjoying the flow of returning students, lingering tourists, hawkers, beggars, and occasional musicians. A middle-aged couple sat at the neighboring table. More than once, the husband snuck a look at Gabrielle.
“They're eating me out of house and home.”
Charmed by the candlelight in her dark eyes, Rufus poured her more Brouilly,
“You're being used, you know.”
“I'm too good, aren't I?” She slowly licked the cream from her escalope de veau normande off the spoon, merrily watching Rufus' reaction. “That's what happens when your father's a diplomat. You learn early on to think of others.”
“Where was he stationed?”
“Cameroon. I learned my English there. Half the country speaks it, you know.”
He didn't. But it pleased him that she did.
“It was wonderful. We were real pashas. Huge house, lots of servants, people bowing when we passed.” A little gypsy girl came up and handed her a card, begging for money. Gabrielle took out a two franc piece and handed it to her. She didn't let go of her purse until the girl was gone. “They'll rob you, you know. And there's nothing the police can do. They're too young to put in jail.”
He studied the breasts – they weren't that small, really – nudging at her bronze blouse. She looked as sophisticated tonight as she had naive a few days before. A diplomat's daughter, eh? She was full of surprises. Her Spanish was as good as her English; she'd seen the world.
She was more than a cute little student, for sure.
When they got back to the apartment, she went to one of the windows to look at Notre Dame. Hidden spotlights lit the gray stone; one square tower and the broad flank of the church loomed before them, almost as if in reach. Snapping the clasp on the French windows, she opened them to either side, then leaned on the balustrade. Rufus watched her from a few feet away, enjoying the sight of his young lover's head, silhouetted by the lit church. That, and her butt, thrust out towards him.
He came up behind her and brought his hand up between her legs. “Bête,” she said softly, as he worked his hand into her panties and moved his finger up through the moist mass. He started to stroke the most sensitive spot. She took a deep sharp breath as the pleasure intensified, fighting not to cry out. He pressed his other hand against the small of her back as she started to come, her face still out above the street. After a long low sigh, she was still, as he pressed the hand between her legs towards the one on her back. Claiming her.
He opened his zipper and pulled down her panties, then, hands on her bare flesh, wedged his way into her. He began to move; Gabrielle gripped the balustrade. Suddenly he heard a potpourri of languages – English, Italian, German, Spanish and Japanese – , describing the glories of Notre Dame. An instant later the windows beside them lit up, as the spotlights from a bateaux mouche began to sweep the quays. “Rufus!” she whispered, but he held her hips between his hands and worked her even harder, as the brilliant lights, one after the other, lit them up. Gabrielle fought back her own response until, as the last lights bathed them in that glare, she cried out: “Oh!”.
Again they were in the dark.
Both burst out laughing, she with her head hanging down. Slowly he pulled out and cupped one hand between her legs, catching dribbles of his own come.
“What do you think they thought we were doing?”
“I doubt they had to guess.”
A bit drunk, and happily sated, they went right to bed.
The next morning, he slipped out of the bed and stood looking at Gabrielle's bare, slim body, pale against the dark blue sheets. She half-opened her eyes, squinting affectionately at him as she lay on her stomach.