Satin Doll (19 page)

“Discovered in the act,” Alain contributed helpfully. “Recriminations, et cetera.”
 

Sam moaned again. The audience around them was beginning to rustle and there were a few titters. The tall blonde woman stormed out and the girl sank down on a couch, expressing some kind of emotion by wringing her hands. She made another long speech.
 

“The girlfriend has gone to buy a dildo,” Alain said out of the corner of his mouth. “But the girl says it won’t do any good; she wants the real thing.”
 

Sam had already guessed what was coming when a man wearing a beret and a windbreaker slouched onto the stage. He was greeted by a few scattered cheers from the audience. Rather unexpectedly he turned and faced the packed theater and took a bow, grinning broadly. The audience roared with laughter.
 

“This guy is quite good,” Alain whispered. He took Sam’s icy fingers again and drew them under his arm comfortingly. “He’s a Parisian from Montmartre, what we call a real tough
Apache,
and he puts on a good show.”
 

Sam sat up a little straighter in her seat and opened both eyes determinedly. Alain seemed to be struggling with laughter as he watched her. The conversation on the stage was full of fury as the man grabbed the girl’s arm. The Frenchman made a melodramatic show of discovering the girl was nude from the waist down. He promptly dropped her arm and started taking off his clothes. As he tore off his shirt and flung it to the floor, he was greeted by enthusiastic catcalls and whistles from the theater. He gave a large wink and slowly drew down his pants. His equipment was respectably large, Sam saw, but definitely not aroused.
 

Alain whispered, “He says since her girlfriend is gone and he has broken into their room, the sight of her so excites him that he is going to have her. By force, if necessary.”
 

Sam was staring at the stage, wide-eyed. “He’s going to have a problem,” she muttered. She heard the man beside her give a snort of laughter.
 

The audience was giggling as the would-be attacker drew the girl to the couch, pushed her on her back and then stared down at himself ruefully. He shrugged, and the audience broke into roars. The girl on the couch grabbed him with her hand and, leaning on one elbow, began to stroke him in a businesslike way. After a few long minutes he was aroused enough to push himself against her and enter her.
 

Almost immediately the blonde woman came storming on stage, discovering the man and the girl in their intimate act.
 

“More recriminations,” Alain whispered.
 

Sam was watching all this with disbelief. The three principals had taken all their clothes off. A few moments later she was watching three totally nude people cavorting about in various combinations of sexual activity. But it wasn’t especially erotic; if anything, it was a comedy. What was fascinating was that the muscular Frenchman, still wearing his beret and nothing else, apparently had tremendous staying power. Nothing the two women did shook his formidable sangfroid, or brought him to a state of more than half-erect arousal. Suddenly he lifted the big blonde woman and entered her. Then, with her legs clasping his hips, he carried her down the three steps from the stage and into the audience. Sam grabbed Alain’s arm with both hands.
 

“Be calm,” he whispered. “It’s part of the show.”
 

The Frenchman carrying the woman looked over the rows of Japanese men with lifted eyebrows and passed them by. He also passed by the Indians. But he stopped at a group of American couples and carefully laid the naked woman down in the laps of two men sitting in aisles seat, not breaking his connection with her.
 

The nude woman looked up at the face of the man whose lap she was covering. “Where are you from?” she asked in a heavy German accent. “What did you say—Minneapolis?” Standing in the aisle, the Frenchman stroked into her, looking somewhat bored. “How many people in the theater tonight are from Minneapolis?” the blonde asked, raising her head as best she could to look around.
 

A wave of enthusiastic shouts and whistles answered her. “Toledo,” someone yelled in the back.
 

“Just call me when it’s over,” Sam said, covering her eyes with both hands.
 

Alain was choking with laughter, but he pried her hands away from her face and held them in his. “Watch—here they come.”
 

The Frenchman lifted his passenger and carried her up the aisle, his roguish eyes fixed on the upper rows. The blonde, her hands grabbing his naked shoulders tightly, her legs wrapped around his body, strained to look over her shoulder to see where they were headed. Her eyes widened as they singled out Alain des Baux. She muttered something to the man carrying her and he stopped beside their row.
 

“
Ah, le m
’
sieur tres beau—vous êtes Francais, non?
” the blonde said brightly as the man laid her across Alain des Baux’s lap. For the first time that evening she looked genuinely enthusiastic. “
Et la demoiselle ravissante,
” she said, twisting her head to give Sam a speculative look.
 

Alain looked down at the naked woman across his thighs, taking it all with enormous good humor. “She says you are ravishing,” he told Sam.
 

He said something to the man, who was standing in the aisle and pumping away against the naked woman with the air of someone turning in a day’s work. The Frenchman shot Alain a quick, perceptive look and then answered him, apparently with a wisecrack. Both men broke into laughter.
 

It’s really happening,
Sam thought, staring down at the woman whose neck rested on Alain des Baux’s right forearm. I’m seeing a sex show in Paris and it’s not at all what I thought it would be. In fact, it’s totally crazy.
 

Close up, the blonde’s hair was rather sweaty and several shades darker at the roots. Sam’s left hand was still clasped tightly in Alain’s. He hadn’t forgotten her, but the three of them were having an animated conversation in French.
 

With a nod and a broad smile to Alain, the nude man in the beret lifted the big blonde woman and carried her back to the stage. As the principals lined up, still naked, to take their bows, the audience whistled and stamped approvingly. The curtain jerked closed across the stage, catching on that part of the Frenchman’s anatomy, which was now noticeably better than half mast due to its recent prolonged activity. There was another roar of laughter.
 

Alain leaned to Sam, his eyes full of devilry. “No chains or whips—” he began.
 

“Oh, hell.” She looked at him accusingly. Then her mouth quivered. “How did he do it?” she gurgled, torn by laughter. She leaned against him as the crowds surged around them and into the aisles.
 

“I knew you’d ask that.” Alain put his arms around her, holding her to keep them from being separated. “The best male performers in sex shows are homosexuals.”
 

Sam stared up at Alain des Baux’s face, remembering the brawny Frenchman who had carried the big blonde so easily and his swaggeringly macho manner. “You mean he’s gay? But he looked so—”
 

He threw his head back to roar out his laughter. “Ah, my darling, don’t be so naive. He was propositioning me, didn’t you know?”
 

They left the theater and came out into the warm, muggy sidewalks of Pigalle. Sam clung to Alain’s arm with both hands as he stood on the curb trying to signal a taxi.
 

“We need a drink,” Alain was saying, as he held the taxicab door for her. “Somewhere quiet. The Crillon bar should do it.” He gave the driver the address in the Place de la Concorde and sank back into the seat next to her.
 

“It was fun,” Sam said uncertainly. She needed a drink, too. The show had been an assault on the senses, but not in the raunchy way she’d expected. In fact, it had been almost comic.
 

Alain held her hand and bent his head to look down at her inquiringly. “What is it, beautiful Samantha?” He frowned. “You are looking unhappy again.”
 

No, not unhappy, she thought.
Confused
. She turned her head to the window so that Alain couldn’t see her expression.
Don
’
t be naive
, he had said to her in the theater. Well, she wasn’t naive, not any longer; she couldn’t be, not after the last two years in New York, and not after Jack Storm. But she was having another attack of feeling wildly out of her element, and Alain des Baux was the cause of it. She found it hard to get him out of her mind. Every moment she spent with him was exciting, and he had that unselfconscious air of command that attracted her to powerful, sophisticated men. Yet he had a wild, off-the-wall sense of humor, too, like tonight’s “naughty show.” So far, they had gone to dinner at the fabulous Tour d’Argent and had strolled through the cathedral of Notre Dame. They’d gone to the races at Auteuil in the Bois de Boulogne, a select clubby atmosphere both in the grandstand and in the bar afterward filled with beautifully dressed, patrician crowds who greeted Alain with affection and who eyed Sam with well-mannered curiosity. Sometimes, as in the lobby tonight, she felt as though Alain were on the verge of putting his arms around her and kissing her.
 

But right now, in the taxi, she was bothered that she wasn’t getting the right signals. These things in Paris obviously didn’t go the way they did in New York and other places, because so far there hadn’t been a repeat of his kiss. Alain was so romantic yet polite that Sam sometimes had the strange impression he was courting her in the old-fashioned sense. As though they were already sedately in love. As though they were engaged to be married.
 

“Darling?” Alain leaned to her, the glimmer of passing streetlights illuminating his long, elegantly handsome face, his marvelous eyes. He was so close Sam felt the heat of his body. “What are you thinking? You’re so far away.”
 

They were coming down the hill of Montmartre through wide, lighted boulevards with crowds strolling under the trees. The cab stopped at a red light on the boulevard Haussmann in front of a brightly lit corner sidewalk café. Sam stared at the café’s patrons at their little tables under the lights. If she had to answer, she would probably blurt out that she wanted him to take her in his arms and kiss her again. She could still feel the warmth of Alain’s mouth, the sweet taste of his lips, that sensuous current flowing into her very bones. It was crazy, so soon after Jack, but she was falling in love with Alain des Baux.
 

Right now, in the back of a taxicab waiting for a red light somewhere in Paris, he was waiting for her to say something.
 

Christopher Chiswick sat at the last row of tables of the Café Cardinal Richelieu, having chosen one away from the brighter lights near the front. Still, he was fairly easy to spot by anyone coming along the boulevard.
 

She was late, damnably late, he told himself irritably, keeping a sharp eye on the strollers pausing at the intersection for the light to change. He had passed beyond boredom dawdling over a succession of vermouth cassis and now he was merely tired. There was nothing he could do about it; she’d show up eventually.
 

The woman he was waiting for was reliable in her own way—that was one of her more endearing qualities—but hardly what one would call punctual. In the past, he suspected, she’d had quite a few endearing qualities; now they were hard to find. He wondered, not for the first time, what she had been like even a couple of years ago. Delectable—no doubt about it—sexy, desirable, charming as French women were always charming. He thought he probably would have been more than a little interested then.
 

An unfortunate twist of fate, Chip told himself as he drained the last of his watery drink. He was on the scene a bit too late, and a couple of years ago he’d been heavily involved with a bit of Italian fluff named Alida. Or Francesca. At that stage of his life the names hadn’t been all that important.
 

Chip watched the waiter serve a tray of beer to some noisy Americans up front and resisted the urge to take another look at his wristwatch. Patience, he told himself, just for another half an hour. She had to show up.
 

Then he saw her, drifting along the boulevard with that air of being lost in a better place and hour.
 

Damn her. He felt a surge of cold fury for the bastards who got her into this state. She was wearing a thin, red silk shirt and tight black pants with white ankle socks and high heels, a very Parisian look—the high-heeled shoes and little socks. Her beautiful dark red hair was blowing in the slight breeze that picked up the gritty dust of the street, but her face was drawn, the big dark eyes even darker, and the expression, as always, pathetically vague.
 

He lifted his head and tried to catch her eye. She wasn’t seeing anything clearly tonight; she stumbled slightly crossing at the traffic light. He half rose from his seat, telling himself he wasn’t going to motion to her, but he didn’t want to lose her. He didn’t want to have to leave his table and follow her along the sidewalk until she remembered where she was going. It was too risky.