The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles (6 page)

“If you don’t stop I’m going on strike,” she said. “I won’t let
you touch me for forty days and forty nights! And this time I’ll keep my promise, I swear.”

To break the last forty-day embargo he’d had to give her a necklace of cultured South Sea pearls, with a platinum clasp set with diamonds.

And because Marcel was crazy for everything about Josiane—her body, her mind, and her earthy common sense—he listened.

“Promote Chaval, or he’ll go to the competition.”

“There’s almost no more competition left. I cut them all off at the knees.”

“You may have hurt their business, but they could come back to bite you. Especially if Chaval helps them.”

Josiane, who was as serious about business as she was about pleasure, sat up.

“It’s simple. Chaval’s a great salesman, but he’s also an excellent accountant. I’d hate to see you have to compete against a guy with both people and money skills.”

Marcel propped himself up on one elbow.

Josiane went on: “Salesmen know how to sell, right? But they usually don’t get the finer points of a financial transaction. Payment schedules, due dates, shipping costs, discounts—you know, that stuff.”

Now Marcel was also sitting up, his head against the copper bed frame. He took Josiane’s logic one step further:

“So you mean that before Chaval can turn against me and become a threat—”

“You promote him.”

“What should I do with him?”

“Put him in charge. And while he’s growing the business, we diversify, we start new product lines. We’ll let him wrestle with the day-to-day while we surf the wave of the future! Not a bad idea, eh?”

This was the first time Josiane had said “we” when speaking about the business. Marcel moved away to get a good look at her: she was intent, flushed, focused, her thick blond eyebrows knitted in thought. He thought of how this woman, who never hesitated at any sexual act, also had all this ambition. What a combination! Generous and insatiable in bed, tough as nails at work.

Marcel had hired Josiane as a secretary fifteen years earlier. Her only diploma was from some rinky-dink school that taught her stenography and very approximate spelling. She came from the slums, same as him, and life had kicked her around. Rough men had felt her up and screwed her whether she liked it or not. When Marcel met her, he understood at a glance that Josiane just wanted a way out of the gutter. He flipped a mental coin and hired her. A few weeks later, he got her into his bed.

Nine months after starting the job, she came to him and said, “My salary is pitiful. Why don’t you cheer it up?” He did that and more. He taught her business, made her his executive secretary. And little by little, she displaced the other mistresses consoling him for his loveless marriage. And he didn’t regret it. He was never bored with Josiane. The only thing he regretted was that he’d married Henriette in the first place.

“Are you listening to me, Marcel?”

“Yes, sweetie-pie.”

“Specializing is over. We need generalists again, people who are good at lots of things. And that’s exactly what Chaval is.”

Marcel smiled. “I’m a generalist.”

“That’s why I love you.”

“Tell me more about Chaval.”

As Josiane talked, Marcel could see his own past before him. Marcel’s parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland who’d settled in the Bastille neighborhood of Paris. His father had been a tailor, and his mother took in laundry. With eight kids living in two rooms, there was very little tenderness, many beatings. Very little luxury, lots of stale bread.

Marcel earned a degree in chemistry from a second-rate school, and landed his first job at a candle factory. The boss there didn’t have any children and took a liking to him. He loaned him the money to buy out a business that was going under, then another one, and another. That’s how Marcel had become a turnaround specialist, a vulture capitalist. He didn’t like the phrase, but he loved the work, buying failing companies and building them back up with savvy and sweat.

Maybe because his own home life had been so barren, Marcel decided to launch a company built around the concept of “cozy.” Within a few years, his Casamia stores were offering scented candles, table settings, lamps, couches, frames, bathroom fixtures, kitchenware, and so on. Hominess on a budget. Everything was made abroad. One of France’s first businessmen to outsource, Marcel opened factories in Poland, Hungary, China, Vietnam, and India.

Then one fateful day, a big supplier said to him, “Look,
Marcel, the stuff you sell is fine, but your stores don’t have any style. You should hire a designer. Someone who can give your products that certain something, turn your business into a brand.”

Marcel was still mulling this over when he met Henriette Plissonnier, a stylish middle-aged widow.

What class!
Marcel thought when she showed up in response to his help-wanted ad. Henriette had just lost her husband and was raising two daughters alone. She didn’t have any experience, she admitted. What she had, she said, was a first-class education and an innate sense of elegance, form, and color.

“Would you like me to demonstrate?”

Before he had the chance to answer, Henriette moved two vases, rolled out a rug, pulled a curtain aside, and shifted three knickknacks on his desk. Then she sat down, smiling. His office suddenly looked like something out of an interior design magazine.

He first hired her as an accessories consultant, then promoted her to decorator. She designed his shop windows, and chose the color of the season—blue, tan, white, gold.

And Marcel fell head over heels in love with her.

Henriette represented a world that would forever be out of his reach. At their first kiss, he felt he was touching a star. During their first night together, he snapped a Polaroid picture of her while she was asleep and put it in his wallet. For their first weekend together, he took her to the Hotel Normandy in Deauville. She didn’t want to leave the room. He interpreted this as modesty, because they weren’t married. Much later, he realized she was ashamed to be seen with him.

A few months later, he asked her to marry him.

“I have to think about it,” she said. “It’s not just me. I’ve got two little girls, remember.” Six months passed and she never mentioned his proposal, which drove him crazy. Then one day out of the blue she said, “You know that question you asked me? Well, if the offer still stands, the answer is yes.”

Henriette was the one who’d christened him “Chief.” She thought “Marcel” was common. Now everyone called him Chief—except Josiane, of course.

René had warned him about Henriette. René was his warehouse manager and buddy, and they often had drinks together after work.

“I’ll bet she’s frigid.”

“I admit that my johnson spends a lot of time out in the cold with that woman. Hand jobs? Blow jobs? No dice. She’s too uptight.”

“So dump her.”

As if it were that easy
, Marcel thought. Not only was he married to Henriette, he’d made her head of the Casamia board of directors. He also signed a prenuptial agreement making her his sole beneficiary, so when he died, she would inherit everything. He was bound hand and foot. Yet the worse she treated him, the more devoted to her he became. He sometimes told himself he’d gotten slapped around so much as a kid that he had developed a taste for it.

And then Josiane had come along. But Marcel was sixty-four, too old to start over. If he got divorced, Henriette would claim half his fortune.

“No way
that’s
going to happen!” he said aloud, startling Josiane.

“Okay, so we give Chaval a nice contract without any profit sharing. Or maybe just a little slice, so he feels invested in the business.”

“A tiny one.”

“Got it.”

“Christ, it’s hot in here. Honeybunch, get me an orangeade, okay?”

Josiane rose from the bed in a rustle of lace and jiggling thighs. Marcel, who liked plump women, smiled.

He took a cigar from the ashtray and rubbed his bald head.
I’d better watch this Chaval character
, he thought.
Not give him too much power or status in the business. I also have to make sure the punk doesn’t replace me in Josiane’s bed. She’s thirty-eight; she must think about younger guys.

“I can’t stay over tonight, honeybunch. Big dinner at my stepdaughter’s.”

“The prima donna or the wallflower?”

“The prima donna. But the wallflower will be there with her daughters. Hortense, the older girl, is hot stuff, I’m telling you. She’s got me pegged, that kid, she really does. I like her. She’s got class, too.”

“Those females wouldn’t have class without your money, Marcel. They’d be like the rest of us, giving blow jobs or cleaning houses.”

Marcel didn’t want to get into an argument, so he just patted Josiane on the rump.

She handed him the ice-cold orangeade. He gulped it down, rubbed his stomach, and belched loudly. Then he burst out laughing.

“If Henriette heard me do that, she’d have a fit.”

“Don’t mention that woman if you want me to be your little snuggle bunny.”

“All right, already! You know I haven’t touched her since forever.”

“I should hope not! And I mean it: don’t ever let me catch you in bed with that old bat. That stuck-up, self-important bitch!”

Josiane knew that Marcel loved it when she tore into Henriette. It excited him to hear the insults in her deep, husky voice.

“That freeze-dried, wrinkled-assed toothpick! She probably holds her nose when she takes a shit. Maybe Her Holiness doesn’t have a hole between her legs like the rest of us? Because she’s never been fucked by a nice big prick, never had her plumbing reamed by the giant snake.”

That was a new one, and it went straight to Marcel’s crotch. He impatiently grabbed Josiane and pulled her close, swearing he was going to eat her up, and then eat her some more.

Josiane stopped ranting and eased herself down on the bed with a sigh of pleasure. She loved this big, fat man. She’d never met anyone so giving or so full of energy. And at his age! He’d chase her around the desk several times a day, and sometimes she had to slow him down, afraid he’d have a heart attack.

“What would I do without you, Marcel?”

“Oh, you’d probably find someone else just as fat, ugly, and
stupid to spoil you. You’re a love magnet, sweetie-pie. They’d be lining up get a taste of your cute ass.”

“Don’t say things like that. It makes me feel weird, just thinking about it.”

“Oh, stop. Come pay Mister Johnson here some attention. He’s feeling lonely.”

“Marcel, if anything should ever happen to you, what would become of me? Are you sure you’re leaving me something in case you—”

“If I suddenly croaked? Is that what you mean? Don’t worry, honeybunch, you’ll be taken care of. In fact, you’ll be at the head of the line. Make sure you look beautiful that day. Get out all your pearls and diamonds. I want you to do me proud at the lawyer’s. God, how I’d love to be there to see Henriette’s face! But right now Johnny really needs you.”

Josiane hummed as she hungrily took her lover’s cock in her mouth. No special talent required: she’d learned very early how to make men happy.

I
ris dropped her keys in the tray on the hall table. Then she took off her coat, kicked off her shoes, and dropped her purse and gloves onto the large kilim she had bought with Bérengère one bleak winter afternoon. She asked Carmen to bring her a good strong whiskey. She planned to hole up in her study, where no one was allowed, except her ever-faithful housekeeper—once a week—to clean.

“Whiskey?” Carmen asked in disbelief. “In the middle of the afternoon? Are you all right?”

“Not really. And no questions. I need to be alone, to think.”

Carmen shrugged and went to get the whiskey. “So now she’s taken to drinking alone,” she muttered.

Iris curled up on the sofa and looked around her den.
Either I confront Philippe
, she thought,
tell him I can’t stand the situation and that I’m leaving and taking my son with me. Or I can wait and pray that this lousy business doesn’t go any further. If I leave, I prove the gossips right, expose Alexandre to scandal, hurt Philippe’s practice, and therefore myself. If I stay, I’ll be denying the
fact that we’ve been living a lie all these years. But at least I don’t lose the comfort I’ve enjoyed for so long.