Locust Lane(11)

They’d met at Papillon, during her first visit. She’d gone for lunch with Celia. Michel had emerged from the kitchen; their eyes had met; he’d come over to say hello. It turned out his son was Hannah’s friend Christopher, a slight boy with a shy smile he’d figure out how to use one day.

She’d spent the next hour catching him staring at her through the swinging door. She’d stare back, their eyes launching darts of passion through the food-perfumed void. She’d returned a few days later, alone, and he’d joined her at her table. They talked and then she left her number on a napkin. It was cotton, fine quality, like everything at Papillon. Not the sort of thing you’d normally jot a note on. But he’d handed her a Sharpie and told her to go right ahead. It belonged to him, after all.

He’d texted her that night, inviting her to dinner on Monday, when the restaurant was closed. Her own private meal. The menu was etched eternally on her parietal lobe. Fillet de Cabillaud in a saffron broth, jasmine rice laced with thinly sliced almonds, steamed mangetout that seemed like so many little green dirigibles ready to float away. White wine whose austere label made it clear it was doing her a favor by letting her drink it. They ate and they talked and then he took her back to his office and fucked her brains out. He wasn’t particularly gentle. He didn’t dilly-dally, didn’t ask permission, didn’t try to find out what it was she was into. He just let her have it; rough because he was not necessarily in control of himself. Which made her lose control as well. The result of this onslaught was her first non-auto-induced orgasm in a long time. In fact, she had four of them, one after the other. A pileup on a foggy highway with no survivors except the lone woman who staggered from the wreckage, eyes glazed, hair and clothes in disarray.

Driving home that night, all she could think was that she had done this terrible, forbidden thing and there was going to be hell to pay. When she encountered Geoff she expected him to see right through her lies about a girls’ night out. But he was too lost in the neural pathways he was fabricating. And so she kept it under wraps. It wasn’t easy. It required strategy. She had to create a counter story for everything she did. Another self, a double to provide her with cover. And thus was Good Alice born, a virtuous version of herself who would be out doing Pilates or lunching with a friend while the real her, Bad Alice, was in the arms of an absurdly handsome restaurateur with a French accent and slightly aloof manner. Sometimes she wondered what Good Alice would have made of her bad version had they ever met. Would she be jealous? Loathe her? Judge her?

And then came last Friday. He’d finally overcome his reservations about his place, at least for one night. Luxuriating at his sweet little house had changed the way she thought about what they were doing. Before that, she hadn’t seen the need to give it a name. It was just another crazy thing that was happening to Alice A. Hill. But that night had made it real. They were a couple. She suddenly saw how this might actually work. No longer having to borrow time or steal moments. No longer having to lie. And so, as they lay entwined, she’d let herself get carried away by the moment.

“Do you ever think about buying the restaurant?” she’d asked. “The building itself, I mean?”

“Only about ten times a day. But property values here…”

“I have money.”

“What do you mean?” he asked after a surprised silence.

“Geoff and I have a prenup. I get half of everything.”

“But you would have to get divorced for that.”

She rose herself onto an elbow.

“Yes, Michel. I’d have to get divorced. That’s how a prenup works.”

“I might not be so popular around here after that,” he said.

“Are you serious? Nobody would care. But if that’s really an issue for you, then we could move somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“Boston. Paris. You name it.”

“How much is this prenup?”

“My part’s like nine million.”

The sum had driven him into a silence she couldn’t fathom. She decided to leave it at that. She wondered if it had something to do with him being raised Catholic. And then there was the matter of his dead wife, who’d undergone an apotheosis to saint since succumbing to breast cancer. The Virgin Maryam. There’d been a photo of her in his office that had vanished after their first romp. She was hot as hell, surprise surprise, but there was something in those obsidian eyes that frightened Alice, reminding her of the moralizing zealots in the benighted Pennsyltucky shithole she’d fled as a seventeen-year-old. Forget about that death-do-us-part business, said those eyes. Your narrow ass is mine ’til kingdom come.

In the days that followed, he hadn’t answered. There had been no “yes,” no “no.” Time became a slow, corrosive drip that ate away at her initial elation. She’d pushed too hard, too soon. But every time she’d reached the edge of despair, she’d console herself with a simple thought. He loved her. He understood they were a perfect match. He also loved his restaurant—and hated paying rent. His four-day blackout had to have a perfectly good explanation. A problem at work, an issue with his extended family, spread out as it was over three continents. Stop worrying, she told herself. She’d see him; they’d find a few whispered seconds together and he’d touch her and let her know that everything was all right.