Goodbye, Janette (7 page)

She tried to turn her head away from him but the cat slashed across her shoulders as he angrily forced her to her knees before him. He pulled her head back against her neck, forcing her mouth open. “Suck it!”

She tried to close her mouth. This time the cat fell across her back and she gasped in pain. “Now. Will you do as I tell you?”

Slowly she reached for his phallus with one hand as she inched closer to the small couch next to where he was standing. She closed one hand around it, drawing it toward her mouth, as with the other hand she searched between the cushions and found the razor.

Maurice laughed triumphantly. “I told you I knew what she wanted.”

Jerry giggled. “She’ll never get it in her mouth. That’s the biggest cock in Paris.”

Now the razor was in her hand. The silver blade flashed briefly in the light. A line of blood suddenly appeared on Maurice’s body reaching from his bellybutton down into the hair over his pubis.

Maurice screamed in sudden pain. He stared down at himself. “What have you done to me, you bitch?” Then he saw the blood. “You’ve killed me!” he screamed and fell to the floor in a faint.

She got to her feet, staring down at him, the razor still bloody in her hand, then she turned to look at Jerry.

He was suddenly sober, his face white, as if he were going to be sick. He stared at the razor in her hand and tried to speak, but no words would come to his lips. Then his eyes fixed on her with horror.

“I could have killed him but I didn’t,” she said calmly. She stepped across Maurice and started for the bathroom. At the door she turned back to Jerry. “You’d better call a doctor. He’ll need some stitches or he could bleed to death.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked hoarsely.

“I’m going to my daughter’s room to sleep,” she said. “After all, I’m not responsible for what you to do to each other when you get drunk.”

***

It was about ten o’clock the next morning and she was seated at the breakfast table having a cup of coffee after dropping Janette off at her new school when he came into the room. She glanced up at him. “You’d better sit down,” she said calmly, as if nothing had happened the night before. “You don’t look too well.”

He dropped into a chair. “The doctor says I might have the scar the rest of my life.”

“Too bad,” she said noncommittally.

He reached for the coffee and filled his cup. He took a sip and looked at her. “Now what do we do?”

She met his eyes. “We stop playing games and go to work. Isn’t that the reason for this whole arrangement?”

He nodded morosely into his coffee cup.

“You’re a good businessman,” she said. “Wolfgang said that a long time ago. I respect that and I respect your abilities. I haven’t changed in that regard.”

He raised his eyes. There was a growing respect in his voice. “You’re a strange woman, Tanya.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But there is one thing you and I have in common.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re both survivors,” she said slowly. “We’ve come this far together and there’s no reason to let a moment’s stupidity fuck us up and keep us from going a long way further.”

He took a tentative sip of his coffee. It was already cold. He put it down. “And you’re not angry over what has happened?”

“Should I be?” she asked. “As far as I’m concerned it’s over. Are you hungry?”

He thought for a moment. “Yes. And no. But you are right. It’s over.”

“We can still make it the good life, Monsieur la Marquis.” She smiled. “For both of us.”

He raised his head and looked at her intently. Then he nodded his head slowly. “Madame la Marquise, I’m beginning to believe you are right.”

“Of course, I’m right, Maurice.” She smiled. She picked up the service bell. “Now, let me call Henri and get you some hot coffee and breakfast.

***

The voice came through the telephone, echoing through a corridor ten years long. “This is Johann Schwebel.”

Maurice felt the knot tighten in his stomach. Even after ten years, fear gripped him. He couldn’t speak.

“Remember me?” The German accent was faint. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yes,” Maurice answered. “It’s been a long time.”

“I called Madame la Marquise but she was not in. They transferred me to you.”

“Yes. She had a luncheon appointment.”

“We should arrange a meeting,” Johann said.

“Of course,” Maurice answered. “Where are you?”

“I’m in Paris.”

“Let me check with Tanya and I’ll get back to you,” Maurice said.

“No, I’ll be moving around too much. Let me call you tomorrow morning about eleven o’clock.”

“That will be fine,” Maurice said. The telephone went dead in his hand. He stared at it for a moment, then slowly returned it to the desk. He took a cigarette and tried to light it. It wasn’t easy. His hands were shaking.

***

The doctor was silent as he helped her remove her legs from the stirrups on the examination table. He stepped back as she swung around sitting up, her white cotton examination gown falling shapelessly around her.

“Get dressed,” he said as the nurse moved to help her. “I will see you in my private office in ten minutes.”

He left the room before she could ask him a question. The nurse opened the small closet in which her clothing had been hung and moved around behind her to untie the strings that held the gown fastened behind her back.

She was seated in the comfortable leather chair in front of his desk as he came into the small office. Carefully he closed the door behind him and sat down behind the desk, facing her.

“You look very serious, Doctor Pierre,” she said.

He nodded. “You’re pregnant.”

She smiled. “That’s all? I was worried for a moment. We can take care of that.”

He shook his head. “Not this time.”

Her voice was shocked. “Why not? We’ve done it before.”

“You’ve waited too long. The fetus is fully developed. It’s about fifteen weeks old.”

“Damn,” she said.

“Why didn’t you come earlier? As you did before? Four, five, six weeks, and there’s no problem.”

“I was busy,” she said. “Besides I didn’t pay any attention. I skipped several periods many times and it came around.”

“You were wrong,” he said.

“I’ve heard of abortions when the fetus was this old,” she said.

“Yes. But it is very dangerous. Besides, you have several factors militating against it. One, you have had three abortions in the last seven years that I have known you and they haven’t done you any good. Two, you’re not a kid anymore. Thirty-eight, and physiologically speaking, your body is not that strong, neither do your womb and ovaries have the elasticity to withstand a violent shock like that. You could very well rupture and bleed to death before we could even find out what it is we have to repair.”

She took a deep breath. “Could I have a cigarette?”

He pushed a pack across the desk and lit it for her. He waited a moment. “The marquis should be pleased.”

She laughed shortly. “You know better than that, Doctor Pierre. The whole world knows better. They all know what he is. It will be the biggest joke in Paris.”

“You don’t have any choice,” he said. “Unless you prefer dying.”

She shook her head slowly.

“You could go away for awhile,” he said. “Have the child and no one would know.”

“For how long would I be gone?” she asked.

He looked at her critically. “You’re not showing yet. With diet you can stay small, and with the right clothes no one would know. Maybe only the last three months.”

She shook her head violently. “Impossible. I have too much to do. I can’t be away from the business that long. There would be too many problems.”

“Then I suggest that you have a talk with the marquis and see what you can work out. I’m sure that the two of you can get together on a story that would pass public muster.”

She laughed. “Maybe the public. But not the world in which we live.”

“Your life is more important than what people think.”

She nodded. “That’s the truth.”

“Do you know the father?”

She looked at him. “Why do you ask?”

“It would be helpful if we could get a blood type from him. Just for the RH factor. After all it’s been almost seventeen years since your daughter was born and there could have been many changes in your system.”

She thought for a moment. She had been with two men that month. But logically it had to be the American. She had been with him steadily the last three weeks of the month she had missed her first period. “Yes,” she answered.

“Would he give you his blood type?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Who knows? He’s back in America now with his wife and children. I couldn’t write him, it might be embarrassing. I would have to call.”

“It would be worth the call,” Doctor Pierre said.

She nodded slowly and started to her feet. “I’ll do it.”

He rose from his chair. “The nurse will give you a printed diet on the way out. Follow it carefully and you will keep your weight down. You will also get a supplementary list of vitamins and minerals to take every day to maintain your strength and energy. I would like to see you again in about a month.”

She looked at him. “Are you sure we can’t do an abortion?”

“It can be done but I don’t advise it,” he said. He met her gaze. “And don’t do anything foolish, because there are nine chances out of ten that you might die.”

“I won’t do anything foolish, Doctor Pierre,” she said. “I promise.”

“Good.” He smiled. “And send me the blood type if you get it.” He came around the desk and kissed her on the cheek. “And don’t worry, Tanya. We’ve all been through worse things.”

She nodded. During the war he had been in a concentration camp. He still bore the numbered tattoo on his arms. Only the fact that he had been a doctor saved him from the gas chambers. Impulsively she kissed his cheek. “That’s true, Doctor Pierre,” she said. “Thank you.”

***

Janette folded the blouse carefully and placed it in the valise, then stepped back. That was the last of the packing. She looked around her room carefully. Satisfied that nothing had been forgotten, she closed the valise and locked it, then placed it on the floor next to the other valise. Tomorrow morning at seven thirty she would be on the train to Switzerland and school.

She walked back to her desk near the window and called her friend Marie-Thérése. The telephone rang a few times before Marie-Thérése picked it up. As usual, she sounded breathless. “Hello.”

“I’m finished packing,” Janette said.

“Oh, God,” Marie-Thérése exclaimed. “I haven’t even started yet.”

“Would you like me to come over and help you?” Janette asked.

“I sure would.” Marie-Thérése giggled. “But then we’d never get finished. Like last night.”

Janette remembered. In the afternoon they had gone to an American movie on the Champs-Elysées.
Rebel Without a Cause
, featuring a new American star, James Dean. It was the fourth time each of them had seen the movie and it was about American kids just like them. Their parents didn’t understand them either. And there was something about James Dean that reached inside them. All either of them had to do was to close her eyes and she was Natalie Wood being held roughly in James Dean’s arms.

This time on the way out of the theater, Marie-Thérése had bought a poster of James Dean. He was standing there in tight, worn jeans, skinny hips, and legs slightly bent, his face surly and angry, eyes peering defiantly out at them under a shock of brown-blond hair falling over his eyes. She wanted it for the wall over her bed in school.

When they got home, Marie-Thérése took a valise from her closet and placed it on the bed. She opened it and placed the poster, still folded inside. “Might as well begin packing,” she had said.

Janette nodded. “I’ve already started. One bag is finished and I just have one more to do.”

Marie-Thérése looked at her. “I wish I could be like you. You’re so organized. I always wind up rushing at the last minute.”

Janette laughed. “But you always manage to get it done.”

Marie-Thérése giggled. “Yes. But I don’t know how.” She opened a bureau drawer and took out an armful of underwear and dumped it on the bed next to the valise. She began to separate it into stacks—brassieres, panties, slips. She stared down at them with distaste. “Aren’t they ugly?”

Janette shrugged her shoulders. White and beige cotton. “It’s regulation,” she said. “The school wants it. We don’t have any choice.”

“I hate them,” Marie-Thérése said. “I don’t think Jimmy Dean would like these, do you?”

Janette laughed. “I don’t know what he would like.”

Marie-Thérése giggled suddenly. “Let’s show them to him and see what he thinks.” She took the poster, opened it up and stuck it against the wall with two thumbtacks. He stared down at the two girls with an angry look. Marie-Thérése picked up a brassiere and panties and held them across her over the front of her dress. “Do you like these, Jimmy?” she asked.

After a moment she turned to Janette. “See? I told you he would not like them. You take a pair, see if it’s any better.”

Janette picked up a set and did the same thing that Marie-Thérése had done. Marie-Thérése looked at her, then at the poster, and shook her head. “No better.” She threw the garments back onto the bed. “Stupid school.”

Janette folded her things neatly and placed them back on the stack from which they had come, then turned to take the poster down from the wall.

“No,” Marie-Thérése said quickly. “Maybe the reason he does not like it is because we have it on outside our clothes.” Quickly she pulled her dress over her head and stood there in brassiere and slip; a moment later the slip joined her dress on the floor. She stood in front of the poster, her full breasts straining against the beige cotton brassiere. “Is this better, Jimmy?”

She turned to Janette. “Take off your dress.”

Janette felt the warmth of her body rush into her face. “That’s silly.”

“No, it’s not,” Marie-Thérése insisted. “How else can he make a fair judgment? Besides I haven’t seen you since school closed. I want to see if you’ve gotten any bigger.”