Erotica (the collected works of Amelie)

for
Fabienne

and
Guy De Maupassant

T
welve months we’d been trying and no luck.

Mike came back from the garage at lunchtime
as promised.  He hadn’t cleaned up and I could see there was still oil under
his fingernails. Not that it mattered. Foreplay was something he left for the
golf course when he went out with his mates for the Sunday escape.

I was already in bed waiting. 

Everything was right. My temperature was up
and it fitted in with the chart the doctor had given us.

I had the pillow under my hips and the
electric blanket was keeping me warm.

Mike didn’t say a word when he undressed. 
He hated it when I was ovulating.  The pressure was getting to him, I knew
that.

First of all he couldn’t get it up.  It was
always like that these days.

I had to give his cock a suck to see if I
could bring out the giant I knew was lurking there, but there was nothing.

Mike blew air from his nostrils like a
dragon unable to produce flames.  He pushed my head away and picked up the book
from his bedside table.

‘Erotica’ it was called.  There was a
picture of a woman’s mouth on the front with a cherry teasing her lips.

It’s what he had to do to get a hard on. 

He read holding the book with one hand and
rubbing himself with the other until the job was done.

When he was ready he put the book down and
thrust inside me.

I’ve never lost the pleasure of feeling him
there. It’s like he’s reaching into my stomach he’s so huge. But it’s not the
same. Not like it used to be. He grunts, moves back and forwards and never
bothers to kiss me. He pushes harder and faster and just before he comes he
gives out a moan like he’s in pain. He squirts and rolls off me then lies back
like a beached whale.

So his job's done.

He lit up a cigarette and stared at the
ceiling.

With the pillow under my hips, I sank down
into the mattress and let gravity take his sperm down to meet my egg.  That’s
if there was any sperm.

Mike looked at me and seemed to read my
doubts.

We’d talked about it.  About him going to
the doctor. It just made him cross.

I reached over and touched his hand.

“It’ll be all right this time, you’ll see.”

“Yeah,right.” He pushed my hand away and
threw the duvet to my side. “You know, it would be easier if you were more like
Crystal.” He reached over and lifted his book, then held it up to me like it
was the bible and he was some kind of preacher. “Crystal likes sex. Delights in
it. She’s a real woman. Why the hell didn’t I marry a real woman.”  There was
so much bitterness in the way he said it that the tears were rolling down my
cheeks before his words were finished.

I watched him as he picked up his overalls
and left the bedroom slamming the door shut.

It took me a few hours to pull myself back
together.

I’d stayed in bed to help that sperm. 
There was no point standing and letting all that work go to waste.

Some women, mothers, say that they can tell
the moment of conception as if there’s  been a tiny kick inside them or
something. I couldn’t feel a thing.

I cried some more and fell asleep.

When I woke up, the light was already
fading outside.

I switched on the lamp and looked at the
book Mike had unceremoniously dumped on his side of the bed.

Erotica.

I wasn’t even sure what that meant.

Maybe, I thought, if I read a little and
became a little more like this Crystal character...

page 53

EROTICA  - Paris: Day 3

Paris is all I thought it would be and
more.

Today I wandered through the streets
soaking it all in.

Everyone’s so beautiful.

The men come in all shapes and sizes, but
no matter what they’re either handsome or rugged.  Each one of them looks like
they know how to treat a lady.

The women are beautiful.  All of them. 
Even the old dears who wander with their tiny dogs for company.

It’s the younger ones I love.  They’re so
elegant.  Their summer dresses flow off their bodies and suggest untold
treasures lying beneath. Their skirts flow like silk as they walk. And it’s not
like home. Nobody under the age of forty is fat. Not even plump.  I’m going on
a diet soon as my feet hit American soil. But not yet.

By the time I’d got to the top of the steps
of the Sacre Coeur I didn’t feel like going inside the church. Instead I just
looked at the city unfolding below. I imagined all the heated conversations
going on behind closed doors and all the love making that was taking place below.
A little electric shock flickered through my stomach as I imagined that,
followed by pangs of hunger. 

The smells of aromatic tobacco smoke,
frying butter, musty wine and seafood teased my appetite.

I wandered through the square with my mouth
watering.

The place was packed with easels and
artists and tourists just like me.

Everyone was taking their time, no matter
what they were doing.

The cafes were filling up for service and I
checked them all out until I found a price to fit my budget.

As soon as I sat, the waiter arrived.

He had on a maroon waistcoat with an old,
leather money belt around his hips.

“Madame?”

The way the word rolled from his tongue
made me want to join the lovers of the city.  I squeezed my knees together and
ordered a glass of Sancerre.

When he turned to go to get the order, I
must have dropped my bag because there was a man looking up at me holding it
out to me.

“Maybe I think this is yours.”

Oh my God.

He was gorgeous.

His hair was long and midnight black.  It
was pulled tight to his head and was tied back into a ponytail.

His brown eyes shone like pebbles against
his perfectly tanned skin and the open buttons of his shirt revealed a chest
that was covered in rugged curls of hair.

I can’t have said anything because he was
talking again.

“I think you may have dropped your bag.” 
The lilt of a soft French accent softened the deep tones of his voice.

“Yes. Yes it’s mine.”

He handed the bag over and I took it, then
he pulled back the chair opposite me and gestured towards it.  “Would you mind
if I joined you?”

Mind? A sexy Frenchman in Montmartre
wanting to sit with me?  Hell no.

And that was the beginning of the most
wonderful holiday of my life.  The most wonderful week I’m ever likely to live.

We shared a dinner of mussels cooked. 
Nibbled our way through cheeses. Sipped through two bottles of the crisp, cool
Sancerre until the world seemed to roll back in time.

As the waiter went to pick up our bill, the
man reached out to me.

I felt his strong, warm fingers at my
throat as he lifted the necklace from my skin.

“Your jewellery is wonderful. Are they
real?”

I hadn’t worn my pearl necklace for a long
time.  Not since Errol died. I don’t know why I’d even put it in the suitcase,
but there I was in Paris with a man admiring them from across a table.

“Do you know, I’m not actually sure.”  Of
course they probably were.  Errol wasn’t in the habit of buying anything but
the best.

“There’s an easy way to tell. May I?” He
lifted my hair and reached behind me with both hands. If I hadn’t known better,
I might have been worried that he was going to strangle me.  Or steal my
jewels.

As he unclasped the necklace his chest came
close to mine. I wanted to bury my face in that forest of hair.  Wanted to keep
that raw, masculine scent of his in my nostrils for as long as I could manage.
The moment was over far too quickly and he had the necklace in his hand.

“If you rub the pearls against your teeth,
you can tell.  Like this.” He opened his mouth and I could see the perfect
softness of his moist tongue hiding. I wanted it on me. Imagined it caressing
me. Crossed my legs tight to stop the buzz between my legs.

He rubbed the pearls on the top of his
slightly crooked teeth.

“See.  It’s easy. You try.”

He gestured and I leaned forward.

He held out the necklace and I parted my
lips. The moment was tender and I was worried he might notice me trembling.

He placed his left hand on my thigh to
steady himself and rubbed the pearls against my teeth. I thought I might faint
right there and then.

“You see, fake pearls are smooth. Can you
feel the roughness of them as I rub them against you?  No? These are as natural
as fucking and eating.”

And he was right. I could feel the
roughness of their texture and knew I had the real deal.

When that waiter returned with the bill, he
looked twice as handsome as the first time I’d seen him.  God, he was hot. And
so was I!

My new friend nonchalantly passed over some
money to the waiter as the two passed some pleasantries that could easily have
been mistaken for birdsong.

“Exquisite.” I was referring to what had
just been. To his hands. To the bulge in his trousers. I don’t think he
guessed.

“For us in France, a pearl necklace can
mean many things,” he said.

“And to us in the States, too,” I told him
and wondered if he felt like giving me a pearl necklace, preferably within the
following half an hour.

From then on, the day was perfect.

As we wandered between the artists on the
square, he grabbed my wrist. Firmly.

Sat me down in front on an easel and asked
the man to sketch. The artist looked old, as if he’d been there since the days
of Toulouse-Lautrec himself. The cigarette stayed at his lips as he talked and
the beret on his head was tilted at such an angle that it looked like it was
trying to escape without being noticed.

As I feigned protest, he reached down to
the neckline of my dress.  Undid the top two buttons between my breasts to
reveal a little more that I would normally show in public. I almost wished I’d
worn a bra, but the wine meant I didn’t care as much as I should have.

While the artist sketched with his pastels,
my friend stood and watched. He’d look at me, then the picture and then back at
me. I imagined him undressing me with his eyes, not that there was much
undressing left to be done.

As the pastels brushed the paper, I imagined
my new friend stroking my hair, caressing my neck and letting his fingers snake
down my body until it reached my pussy. The heat I felt down there owed nothing
to the strong sun that was beating down on us from above.

When the old man had finished, he turned
the picture towards me.

I could have fallen off my chair.

I looked stunning.  Like I was ten years
younger and ready to start college or something.

The way he’d seen me as was with a pink
flush to my cheeks.

I felt a real flush glow at my face when I
looked down the picture. My dress was hanging open and he’d captured the shape
of my breast and the space beneath like he was Henry Moore. There, just
underneath the orange fabric of my dress, was the crescent moon of the side of
my nipple. I wanted that nipple to be kissed.

The men chatted, their babble like the
music of a stream. The artist seemed to be giving the picture to my friend for
nothing. My friend accepted with a regal grace, bowing his head modestly and
bringing the picture back to me.

The artist moved forward and kissed me on
the left cheek, then the right, and backed away smiling.

“Pour tu,” my friend said.

“Mercie bien,” I replied. Those years of
studying had clearly not been entirely wasted.  “He gave that to you, didn’t
he?”

“Yes he did.” It was as if such things were
a regular occurrence the way he took it into his ample stride.  “These things
happen.”

“Not to me they don’t.”

“It has something to do with working for
the magazines.”

“You’re famous?”

“Not exactly.”

“Not exactly famous for what?”

He slid his hands into his pockets.  I
looked down and them and then at the shapely hill between them.

“Photography.  I take photographs.”

Maybe it was the heat or the wine or a
combination of the two, but my mouth spoke before I’d had a chance to think. 
“Would you photograph me?”

He smiled and stopped there on the
pavement. A man carrying a rolled up carpet on his shoulder swerved by him and
gave him a hard stare along with an explosion of colourful language.

“It would be my pleasure.”  And I was sure
it was going to be mine, too.

His flat was cool and dry. The rooms were
small and were filled with antique furniture. Books were neatly arranged on
tables, ornaments decorated shelves and impressionist paintings hung from the
walls.

The smell was of lavender mixed with the
scents of Galoises and garlic mingling within.

The slats of the wooden shutters let in a
steady stream of light.  Behind them window boxes full of herbs.

As he walked me through to the bedroom, I
admired the photographs on the walls of the hallway.  There were all of women,
beautiful shots of bodies and curves, of breast and buttocks clad in the finest
of lingerie.  Some of the faces I recognised. Film stars, I guess.

When I got to the bed, I sat back. 

The mattress was firm underneath the soft
give of the quilt.

My friend turned his back on me as I kicked
of my shoes.  When he turned around again, he had a camera in his hand.

He lifted it to his face, looked through
the lens and pointed it at me.

While he clicked, I performed like a girl
down at the Moulin Rouge.

First I undid the buttons on my dress until
my breasts were almost completely exposed.

Next, I raised the hem of my skirt, little
by little until it had slipped up from my knees to reveal the lace edging of my
panties.