The Paris Apartment(36)

“What do you do, Ben?” he asked, pouring him a glass. A hot, late summer night: white would have been better. But Jacques wanted to show off the vintage.

“I’m a writer,” Ben said.

“He’s a journalist,” Nick said, at the same time.

I watched Jacques’ face closely. “What sort of journalist?” He asked it so lightly.

Ben shrugged. “Mainly restaurant reviews, new exhibitions, that sort of thing.”

“Ah,” Jacques said. He sat back in his chair. King of all he surveyed. “Well, I’m happy to suggest some restaurants for you to review.”

Ben smiled: that easy, charismatic smile. “That would be very helpful. Thank you.”

“I like you, Ben,” Jacques told him, pointing. “You remind me a little of myself at your age. Fire in the belly. Hunger. I had it too, that drive. It’s more than can be said for some young men, these days.”

Antoine and his wife Dominique arrived then, from the first-floor apartment. Antoine’s shirt was missing a button: it gaped open, the soft flesh pushing through. Dominique, however, had made what could be described as an effort. She wore a dress made of a knit so fine that it clung to every ripe curve of her body. Mon Dieu, you could see her nipples. There was something Bardot-like about her: the sullen moue of her mouth, those dark, bovine eyes. I found myself thinking all that ripeness would fade, run to fat (just look at Bardot, poor cow), anathema to so many French men. Fat in this country is seen as a sign of weakness, even of stupidity. The thought gave me a nasty sort of pleasure.

I watched her look at Ben. Look up and down and all over him. I suppose she thought she was subtle; to me she resembled a cheap whore, touting for a fare. I saw him gaze back. Two attractive people noticing one another. That frisson. She turned back to Antoine. I watched her mouth curve into a smile while she talked to him. But the smile was not for her husband. It was for Ben. A carefully calculated display.

Antoine was drinking too much. He drained his glass and held it out for a refill. His breath, even from a couple of feet away, smelled sour. He was embarrassing himself.

“Does anyone smoke?” Ben asked. “I’m going to go for a cigarette. Terrible habit, I know. I wondered if I might use the roof terrace?”

“It’s that way,” I told him. “Past the bookcase there and to the left, out of the doorway: you’ll see the steps.”

“Thanks.” He smiled at me, that charming smile.

I waited for the sensor lights to come on, which would be the sign that he had found his way to the roof terrace. They did not. It should have only taken him a minute or so to climb the steps.

As the others talked I got up to investigate. There was no sign of him out on the terrace, or in the other half of the room beyond the bookcase. I had that cold, creeping feeling again. The sense that a fox had entered the henhouse. I walked along the shadowed corridor that leads to the other rooms in the apartment.

I found him in Jacques’ study, the lights off. He was looking at something.

“What are you doing in here?” My skin was prickling with outrage. Fear, too.

He turned in the dark space. “Sorry,” he said. “I must have got confused with the directions.”

“They were quite clear.” It was difficult to remain civil, to suppress the urge to simply tell him to get out. “It was left,” I said. “Out of the doorway. The opposite direction.”

He pulled a face. “My mistake. Perhaps I’ve had too much of that delicious wine. But tell me, while we’re here—this photograph. It fascinates me.” I knew instantly which one he was looking at. A large black and white, a nude, hung opposite my husband’s desk. The woman’s face turned sideways, her profile dissolving into the shadows, her breasts bared, the dark triangle of her pubic hair between white thighs. I had asked Jacques to get rid of it. It was so inappropriate. So seedy.

“It belongs to my husband,” I said, curtly. “This is his study.”

“So this is where the great man works,” he said. “And do you work, yourself?”

“No,” I said. He must know that, surely. Women in my position do not work.

“But you must have done something before you met your husband?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry,” he said, after the pause had grown so long it felt like a physical presence in the air between us. “It’s the journalist in me. I’m just . . . curious about people.” He shrugged. “It’s incurable, I’m afraid. Please, forgive me.”

I had thought it that first time I met him: that he wielded his charm like a weapon. But now I was sure of it. Our new neighbor was dangerous. I thought of the notes. My mystery blackmailer. Could it be a coincidence that they had arrived almost at the same time—this man, with his air of knowing—and the demand for money, threatening to reveal my secrets? If so, I would not allow it. I would not let this random stranger dismantle everything I had built.

I managed to find my voice. “I’ll show you to the roof terrace,” I told him. Followed him until he walked through the right door. He turned around and gave me a grin, a brief nod. I did not smile back.

I went back and joined the others. A few moments later Dominique stood up, announced that she, too, was going for a cigarette. Perhaps she was embarrassed by her husband drinking himself into a stupor on the sofa. Or—I thought of the way she looked at Ben when she arrived—she was simply shameless.