I Was Waiting For You (3 page)

One dark evening, after he'd tied her hands to the bedpost and, somehow, her ankles, he'd taken her by surprise and despite her mild protests, had resolutely shaven away her thick thatch of wild, curling jet-black pubic hair and left her quite bald, like a child, which not only brought back bittersweet memories of her younger years but also a deep sense of shame. She'd always insisted Peppino should not even trim her.

The next day, the Frenchman used his belt on her arse cheeks and marked her badly.

Sitting watching a film that afternoon in a small art house by the Odéon was painful, as Giulia kept on fidgeting in her seat to find a position that did not remind her of the previous evening's punishment. Her period pains had also begun, as bad as ever; she'd once been told they'd only start improving after she'd had her first child.

That night, the bad man wanted to fuck her, as usual and she pointed out that she was having her period. He became angry. He would have been quite furious had she actually revealed that she had once allowed Peppino to make love to her on such a day and the blood communion they had shared was still one of her most exquisitely shocking and treasured memories. He brutally stripped her, tied her hands behind her back and pushed her down on the floor, onto her stomach and sharply penetrated her arse hole, spitting onto his cock and her opening for necessary lubrication. She screamed in pain and he gagged her with her own panties and continued relentlessly to invest her. Giulia recalled how she had once assured Peppino as they spooned in bed one night how she would never agree to anal sex with him or anyone. Another promise betrayed, she knew. She grew familiar with the pain. She had never thought it would be so easy to break with her past.

Later, as she lie there motionless, the bad man said:

“Next week, I shall continue your education. I'm taking you to a club and I want to watch you being fucked by a stranger, or more, my sweet Italian girl. Time we tamed you.”

He asked her for her mobile phone and took it away with him. Giulia just felt numb. Before he left the apartment, he retrieved her spare set of keys from her handbag and locked her in. They were on the fifth floor and she had no other way out. Giulia sighed.

It was a night full of stars and the Seine quivered with a thousand lights.

The taxi had dropped Cornelia around the corner of Les Chandelles. She looked out for a decent-looking café and sat herself at a table overlooking the street, where she would be highly visible to all passers-by. She wore an opaque white silk shirt and was, as ever, bra-less. Her short black skirt highlighted her endless pale legs and this was one of the rare occasions when she had lipstick on, a scarlet stain across her thin lips. She'd ruffled her hair, blonde medusa curls like a forest, and slowly sipped a glass of Sancerre, a US paperback edition of John Irving's
A Widow for One Year
sitting broken-spined on the ceramic top next to the wine carafe.

The bait was set:a lonesome American woman on a Friday night in Paris, just some steps away from a notorious ‘
club échangiste
': L' Américaine
.
She'd found out earlier, through judicious tipping and a hint of further largesse, from the club's hatcheck girl who drank her pre-shift coffee here, that her target was planning to attend the club later this evening. The entrance fee for single women was advantageous but she felt she would attract less attraction if she were part of a couple. She'd gathered on the grapevine that lone men would often congregate here before moving on to the club, in search of a partner.

She'd been told right and within an hour, she'd been twice offered an escort into the premises. She hadn't even needed to uncross her legs and reveal her lack of underwear. The first guy was too skanky for her liking, and altogether too condescending in the way he spoke to her in the slowly-enunciating manner some automatically do with foreigners. She quietly gave him the brush-off. He did not protest unduly. The second candidate was more suitable, a middle-aged businessman with a well-cut suit and half-decent after shave. Even sent her over a glass of champagne before actually accosting her. Much too old, of course, but then there was something about Paris and older men with younger women. The water, the air, whatever!

They agreed that once inside she would have no obligation to either stay with him or fuck him, at any rate initially. Maybe later, if neither came across someone more suitable. He readily acquiesced. Cornelia knew she was good arm candy, tall and distinctive, a beautiful woman with a style all her own, and an unnerving visible mix of brains and provocation. She'd worked hard on that aspect of her appearance.

Despite its upmarket reputation, Les Chandelles was much as she expected. Tasteful in a vulgar but chic way; too many muted lights, drapes and parquet flooring, dark corners or ‘
coins calins
' as they were coyly described on the club's website, semi-opulent staircases leading to private rooms and a strange overall smell of sex, cheap perfume and a touch of discreet disinfectant not unlike the cabins of erstwhile American sex shop cabins or the tawdry rooms set aside for private lap dances in the joints she had once merrily navigated through.

She spent some time at the bar with her escort and enjoyed further champagne, and allowed him to show her some of the nooks and crannies of the swing club, where he appeared to be a regular. Now she knew the lay of the land. She offered to dance with him.

“Not my scene,” he churlishly protested.

“It warms me up,” she pointed out. He nodded in appreciation.

“Just go ahead,” he said. “Maybe we can meet up later, if you want?”

“Yes,” Cornelia said.

From the dance floor, she would have a perfect vantage point to observe new arrivals as they trooped past on their way to more intimate areas of the club. She shuffled along to a Leonard Cohen tune and marked her area between a few embracing couples, embracing the melody with her languorous movements. She'd always enjoyed dancing, it had made the stripping bearable. Cornelia closed her eyes and navigated along to the soft music. Occasionally, one hand or another would gently tap her on the shoulder, an invitation to move on and join a man, a woman or more often a couple to a more private location, but each time she amiably turned the offer down with a smile. No one insisted, obeying the club's basic protocols.

Amongst the French songs she had not previously known, Cornelia had already delicately shimmied to recognisable melodies by Luna, Strays Don't Sleep and Nick Cave when she noticed the new couple settling down at the bar.

The girl couldn't have been older than 25 with a jungle of thick dark curls falling to her shoulders and a gawky, slightly unfeminine walk. Her back was bare, pale skin on full display emerging from a thin knitted top, and she wore a white skirt that fell all the way to her ankles, through which one could spy on her long legs and a round arse just that little bit bigger than she would no doubt have wished to have, an imperfection that actually made her quite stunning, what with deep brown eyes and a gypsy-like, wild demeanour that reminded Cornelia of a child still to fully mature. She wore dark black shoes with heels, which she visibly didn't need, as she was almost as tall as Cornelia. But there was also a sad sensuality that poured out from every inch of her as she followed her companion's instructions and settled on a high stall at the bar. The man ordered, without asking the young girl what she actually wanted. Her eyes darted across the room, looking at the other patrons of the club, judging them, weighing them. It was evidently her first time here.

Cornelia adjusted her gaze.

The man squiring the exotic young woman was him, her target. The bad man. Her information had proven correct. As she watched the couple, Cornelia blanked out the music.

Less than an hour later, she had innocently made acquaintance with them and suggested to her new friends they could move on to a more private space. Throughout their conversation, the Italian girl had been mostly silent, leaving her older companion to ask all the questions and flirt quite openly and suggestively with the splendid American blonde seemingly in search of local thrills. At first, the man appeared hesitant, as if the visit to Les Chandelles had been planned differently.

“I've never been with a woman before,” the Italian girl complained to the man.

“Would you rather I looked for a negro to fuck you here and now with an audience watching?” he said to her.

“No,” she whispered.

“So, we all agree,” he concluded and pushed his stall back, and gallantly took Cornelia's hand. “Anyway, you can do most of the watching as I intend to enjoy the company of our new American friend to its fullest extent. You can watch and learn; I do find you somewhat passive and unimaginative, my dear young Italian gypsy. See how a real woman fucks.”

Giulia lowered her eyes and stood up to follow them.

Once they had located an empty room on the next floor, Cornelia briefly excused herself and insisted she first had to walk back to the cloakroom to retrieve something from the handbag she had left there as well as picking up some clean towels, which their forthcoming activities would no doubt require.

“Ah, Americans, always keen on hygiene,” the bad man said and broadly smiled. “We'll be waiting for you,” he added, indicating to his young companion to start undressing.

“I'll leave my clothes too,” Cornelia said, turning round. “Don't want to get them crumpled, do we?”

“Perfect,” the man said, turning his attention to Giulia's slight, pale, uncovered breasts and sharply twisting her nipples while she was still in the process of slipping out of her billowing long white skirt. There were red marks on her butt cheeks.

When Cornelia returned a few minutes later, the bad man was stripped from the waist down and the Italian girl was sucking him off while his fingers held her hair tight and her head forcibly pressed against his groin, even though his thrusts were making her choke. He turned his own head towards Cornelia, a blonde apparition, now fully naked and holding a bunch of towels under her left arm.

“Most beautiful,” he remarked, and released his pressure on Giulia's head. “Truly regal,” he observed, his eyes running up and down Cornelia's body. “I like very much,” he added. His attention now centred on her groin. “A tattoo? There? Pretty? What is it?”

Cornelia approached the couple. The man withdrew his cock from the Italian girl's mouth, allowing her to breathe better, and he put a proprietary hand on Cornelia's left breast and then squinted, taking a closer look at her depilated pubic area and the small tattoo she sported there.

“A gun? Interesting” he said.

“Sig Sauer,” Cornelia said.

There was a brief look of concern on his face, but then he relaxed briefly and nodded towards the American woman, indicating she should replace Giulia and service his still-jutting cock. Cornelia quietly asked Giulia to move away from the man so that she might take over her kneeling position. The Italian girl, in a daze, stumbled backwards towards the bed. Cornelia lowered herself. As her mouth approached the man's groin, she pulled out the gun she had kept hidden under the white towels, placed it upwards against his chin and pressed the trigger.

The silencer muffled most of the sound and Giulia's sharp cry of surprise proved louder than the actual shot which blew the lid of his head off, the lethal bullet moving through his mouth and into his brain in a portion of a second. He fell to the ground, Cornelia cushioning his collapse with her outstretched arm.

“Jesus!” Giulia exclaimed.

She looked questioningly at Cornelia who now stood with her legs firmly apart, the weapon still in her hand, a naked angel of death.

“He was a bad man,” Cornelia said.

“I know,” the Italian girl said. “But …”

“It was just a job, nothing personal,” Cornelia said.

“So …”

“Shhhh ….” Corneliasaid. “Get your clothes.”

The young Italian girl just stood there, as if nailed to the floor, every inch of her body revealed. Cornelia couldn't avoid examining her.

“You're very pretty,” she said.

“You too,” the other replied.

Cornelia folded the gun back inside the towels. “Normally, I would have killed you too,” she said. “As a rule, I must leave no witnesses. But I'm not big on killing women. Just dress, go and forget him. And me. You've never seen me. I don't know how well you knew him and suspect it wasn't long. Find yourself a younger man. Live. Be happy. And …”

“What?”

“Forget me, forget what I look like. You don't know me, you've never known me.”

Giulia, still shaking from the shock of the summary execution, nodded her agreement as she pulled the knitted top she had worn earlier over her head, disturbing her thousand thick dark curls. The other woman was in no rush to dress, comfortable in her white nudity. Her body was also pale, but a different sort of pallor, Giulia couldn't quite work out the nature of the difference.

Cornelia watched her hurriedly dress.

“Go back to Italy. This never happened. It's just Paris, Giulia. Another place. A bad dream. OK?”

Back in the street, Giulia initially felt disorientated. It had all happened so quickly. She was surprised to see that she wasn't as traumatised now as she should have been. It was just something that had happened. An adventure. Her first adventure since Peppino. Under her breath, she whispered his real name to herself. “Jack”. It all felt unreal. The Paris night did not answer.

She checked her handbag; she had enough money for a small hotel room for the night. Tomorrow, she would take the train back to Rome.

The Louvre was lit up and she walked towards the Seine, and towards the darkness. At her fourth attempt, she found a cheap hotel on the Rue Monsieur le Prince. The room was on the fourth floor and she could barely fit into the lift. Later, she went out and had a crêpe with sugar and Grand Marnier from an all-night kiosk near the junction between the Rue de l'Odéon and the Boulevard Saint Germain. People were queuing outside the nearby cinemas, people mostly her own age, no older men here. She walked towards Notre-Dame and wasted time in a late-opening bookshop, idly leafing through the new books on display. She would have dearly liked to have a coffee, but none of the Latin Quarter bookshops also served coffee, unlike her favourite haunt, Feltrinelli's in Rome, where she had almost spent a majority of her teenage years. But she knew that if she walked into a café and took a table alone, someone would eventually try a pick up line and disturb her, and tonight she felt no need for further conversation.