You Deserve Nothing (10 page)

She closed the door and I stood in the center of the room, in the dark, in the blowing wind, listening to her footsteps fading as she descended the stairs, and when I couldn’t hear her any longer I walked to the open window.

There were a few people left sitting at tables in the yellow light of Bar du Marché. Marie came out onto the street, passed in front of the café and walked fast toward boulevard St. Germain.

It was nearly dawn and she was alone. I could hear her shoes clicking against the pavement. I wondered where she was going and how she’d get there. I hadn’t asked and as I saw her vanish around a dark corner, I felt a quick sense of dread.

MARIE

I
’d spent the entire summer lying in the sun thinking about him. I barely ate. I was so tan. Everyone told me I looked great. When my dad showed up for a few days he kissed me on the forehead and told me I was beautiful.

Even my mother. The first day of school I’d come down wearing a loose black embroidered top she’d bought for me from Isabel Marant. And I had the bag she’d given me too, not a backpack, but a woman’s bag, a pretty leather Jerome Dreyfuss sac which was totally unrealistic and just like her.

I came down the stairs and she turned around.
Oh Marie
, she said. She had her hands at her face. She was beaming.
Oh Marie, qu’est ce que t’es belle, ma chérie! Mon dieu, qu’est ce que t’es belle.
I thought she was going to cry. And maybe she did a little bit. She came over and kissed me.
Oh la la, Marie. Oh la la. T’es belle.
I was so happy that morning. We sat together and ate our
tartines
with coffee and it felt as if everything would change, like we were celebrating together the rest of my perfect life. Now I was beautiful. And at school, waiting for me, was this man, this man, this tender man.

* * *

Over the summer I began to masturbate. Not just nervous experiments. I’d take a bath then lock the door to my bedroom. I’d get into bed and with the lights off and the windows open, listening to the ocean at the bottom of the cliffs, I’d close my eyes and think about him kissing me. I felt completely in myself. As if in those evenings there was no separation between my self and my body. I was just there. It was as if I were drunk. Soon I learned to make myself come. There was no going back. All summer was like a love affair.

So walking downstairs that morning, seeing my mother look at me like that, I mean for the first time in my memory just completely satisfied, and sitting with her eating breakfast together and knowing that I’d see him. Oh, it was like everything was laid out in front me. As if finally, finally, I don’t know, something had changed.

It was pathetic. What was my plan exactly? But at the time, it all made so much sense.

* * *

At school it was as if I didn’t exist. I did everything I could to run into him, to pass him while he was eating lunch or in the hall when I knew he was on his way to class. Of course he wanted nothing to do with me. He wasn’t rude or even cold. He just treated me like anyone else, like any other student. He’d smile, maybe hold my gaze a few seconds longer than was safe, but that was it. It ruined me. I was so surprised. Then I was angry at myself for being surprised. How could I have been so stupid and all that. But those first few weeks, the first month, all of September I was thrown, and everything seemed to get worse and worse.

I’d planned to cut myself off from Ariel, to pull away from her, just kind of drift. Nothing dramatic. I’d be strong and passive. But when I realized that he wasn’t going to do anything at all, that he wouldn’t take a step, I went back to my old life. It felt like such a defeat but there I was at Ariel’s apartment on Friday nights. She pretended to feel sorry for me but it was clear that she was thrilled. What’s worse is that she was in his class and got to see him every day. She’d tell me what a great teacher he was, how he was always staring at her. Once she said, If I get him I promise we’ll share him Marie, we’ll have a little threesome. I thought I was going to punch her.

One Sunday at her apartment we got up and her parents were both there. They’d come back from some trip and were in the kitchen making scrambled eggs and toast. We ate together and I remember having a good time. It was nice. You know, pass the salt and all that. It was strange in their giant apartment, usually so quiet and still, and then that morning really filling the kitchen. All of us talking. Ariel was so happy, just sort of bouncing around, really at ease and without any of her usual stiffness. She laughed a lot and I remember thinking it was the first time I’d ever heard her laugh naturally.

Anyway, it was nice. Her parents were warm. I mean in the way that people like that are warm. It was as if they were our guests and we were people they really liked and they were happy to be there but you always knew that they would leave at the end of the party.

Her father was a big guy. Tall and wide with red hair. He was loud and had these huge hands. I think he’d been some kind of athlete. I liked him. He was just who he was. There was no formality at all. He looked at you when he spoke. Everything was simple with him. No subtext. Ariel’s mother was O.K. too. She was pretty of course. So much smaller than her husband and thin like Ariel. She looked at me the way Ariel did. Assessing. Just like my mother.

After breakfast Ariel and I went to study in her room. At some point she left to go running and I stayed on her bed with my books open in front of me. I must have been working on a paper for Ms. Keller. I worked hard for her. She was the only one of my teachers I cared about and who seemed to care about me. I was trying to figure out some poem and all of a sudden he was there drinking a cup of coffee, standing in the doorway smiling at me. He asked what I was working on. I told him and he came in. It didn’t feel strange to have him there. I mean, I didn’t feel uncomfortable or threatened. He told me how he never liked poetry or something like that. I was lying on my stomach facing away from the door and he sat down next to me. He sipped his coffee and looked at the page trying to figure the thing out. And then he said something like, I don’t know Marie, this might be over my head. Then he laughed his big wide-open laugh and put his hand on my shoulder. But he was just patting me you know? Like, O.K. I’ll let you get back to work. Hang in there. That kind of thing. Then Ariel came back and we both turned around. She was standing at the door in her running clothes looking at us.

Know anything about poetry, Ariel? he said. She didn’t say anything, or not that I remember anyway. She looked pale. She shrugged her shoulders and went to take a shower. She barely spoke to me the rest of the day.

* * *

Ariel never said a thing about it, but you could tell she hated me. It was over, you know? A week later we went out to this bar in the fifth, The Long Hop. Aldo was there, Mazin, and some other people I don’t remember. We were all drunk. The place was crowded and there were maybe, I don’t know, five of us at this little table. And then Colin shows up and sits down on some girl’s lap and smiles at me. I ignored him.

I mean he’d been around. It’s not like it was the first time I’d seen him since. But God his face made me sick. Seeing him there that night, I wish I could say that I only felt anger but the truth is that when he sat down I was afraid too. It’s a blur but at some point Ariel says, How’s Mr. Silver? And I think she’s talking to Colin because they’re both in his class but then I see she’s looking at me. And everyone’s looking at Ariel waiting for the point. So she asks again and I say, I don’t know. She says, Oh come on, Marie tell them. I look at her horrified and she says, Fine I’ll tell them.

Marie hooked up with Mr. Silver. After that I don’t remember what happened exactly. Just that Colin said it was bullshit. In your dreams, he said. Then I didn’t know who I hated more. My face was so hot and everyone was staring at me. They must have seen it. I turned to Ariel and I called her a bitch and I left.

I went to the river and walked fast and then I stood out on that bridge, it was the Petit Pont I think, or the Pont au Double and I stood there not knowing what to do feeling completely alone. Like it had never quite occurred to me before, the idea that I was really alone. Or that’s how it felt. And there I was in my stupid skirt, in that fucking outfit Ariel had chosen for me, and I was shivering and I just thought fuck it and I sent him a message. I wrote, “I’m in your neighborhood should I come?”

I waited looking down into the river watching the boats go by. Then, like a miracle, he said yes.

I walked along the river on the
quai
side past all the locked up
bouquinistes
. It wasn’t until I reached the Pont Neuf that I really thought about what I was doing, where I was going. I’d been walking in a fury thinking about Ariel. She knew what had happened with Colin. She’d promised to hate him. She’d wanted to call the police. Tell her parents or something. And there she was sitting in that bar with him laughing at me. It’s all I could think about, but when I reached the Pont Neuf and I crossed the street to walk up the rue Dauphine I realized where I was going. It slowed me down. I took my time walking up that street but I didn’t once think I wasn’t going to do it.

He lived on the top floor. No elevator and this little uneven stairwell that went around and around, up and up. At the top the door was open. When I walked in he didn’t do anything but look at me. I was a mess. My heart was beating so hard. The minute I saw him, all I wanted was for him to wrap his arms around me. Just walk over and take me in your arms. But he didn’t and I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Somehow I ended up sitting on his kitchen counter. I don’t remember. I just tried to be tough. I told him I came there to fuck him. I mean if you can imagine. I came here to fuck you, Mr. Silver, I said. He must have thought I was a joke. He watched me with those eyes and that smile like he was so fucking smart. Like he pitied me a little bit. As if he saw everything, knew everything about me. The prick.

At some point he touched me. He came forward and slid his hands into my hair and then it was over. I mean never in my life have I felt so out of control as I did with him. It isn’t as if he was some big super-masculine guy who just wrapped me up and took me away. But there was something about him I swear to God. I could feel the warmth of his hand against my neck, you know, his fingers touching my skin and all I felt, I swear, was thank God, thank God, thank God you’re touching me. I was so grateful. With my whole body I was grateful and relieved. And then he kissed me the way he kissed with that soft slow fucking tender gentle you’re the love of my life way so that I could barely stand.

I took off my clothes. He made me do it for him while he watched. I was so cold and the window was open and the apartment was cold too, and it was as if I’d been shivering for hours. But I did it and he smiled at me and there was something in that smile that reminded me of the way my mother looked at me when I came down the stairs the first day of school. Then it became a game. I mean I relaxed and I pushed back a little bit, I told him to take off his own fucking clothes and he liked that I think. We laughed together and Christ what a relief that was, the two of us laughing, and then I was so glad to be there. Then all I wanted was him to take me up to his bed. There was nowhere else I wanted to go. Nowhere else.

I watched him. He never looked away from me. Not even to step out of his jeans. He was in O.K. shape. I mean he was stronger than I’d imagined. He had hair on his chest and on his legs. It frightened me. Not that I found it unattractive. Or attractive. Or anything really at all. Just that I noticed it. Then he pulled off his underwear. I was embarrassed as if it was too much for me to see even if I
did
see. I mean it was the first time I’d seen a man standing naked like that. I turned away and started climbing up. I noticed he’d made his bed and I thought that was nice, that the sheets were clean and the pillows were in their place. Then I got under the comforter and it was maybe the most wonderful thing I’d ever experienced in my life up to that moment. I mean I was so cold and then there was this man there, and I was sliding into his bed, slipping in like that with the sheets cool against my skin.

Then he was there behind me, his arms, his body. He was hard against me. He held me so tight. He was very warm and smelled good like lemons and ocean water and I closed my eyes and just waited there. I could feel the hair on his chest pressed against my back. Then there was his mouth against my neck. He wasn’t really kissing me, just sort of holding his lips against my neck and I could feel him breathing, could hear him sort of sigh and I thought, maybe this matters to him. Maybe he feels something.

The way he touched me, I mean everything he did was strong you know? He seemed so certain of himself. Or maybe it was just that he was practiced. I don’t know. It felt good. I was afraid for a lot of it. Afraid of him. I felt out of control. I mean I would have let him do anything he wanted to me. Anything. He was so slow the way he put it inside me like that, just a millimeter at a time, that I felt like I was losing myself. I didn’t even think about the condom. It didn’t even occur to me. He was the one who said it. I’m going to put a condom on, Marie. But at that moment? I didn’t care. Do what you want, I thought. Do whatever you want.

I had this sensation of falling, or maybe flying, of being in motion, of being in motion and somewhere else, away. And then all I wanted was for him to come, as if his coming would confirm something. When he did, when I felt him give in, he lay down next to me, and he was sweet. He kissed me and took me into his arms and we lay there together for a long time listening to the night outside with him stroking my back, my head on his chest.

I had to leave. I’d have never asked to sleep there, though that’s what I wanted more than anything. I wanted to stay there and never leave the way you want things like that. But I got up and dressed and left him there. I left without having any idea where I was going. I didn’t even think about it until I got into a cab and realized I’d have to go back to Ariel’s. There was nowhere else to go.