Woman in the Fifth

‘Hiding out here?’

‘That’s right.’

‘We do like our guests to mingle, you know.’

‘I was talking with someone out here,’ I said, hating myself for being defensive. ‘She just left.’

‘I saw no one leave.’

‘Do you watch every corner of the apartment?’

‘Absolutely. Coming back inside?’

‘I have to go.’

‘So soon?’

‘That’s right.’

He noticed the card in my hand.

‘Meet someone nice?’ he asked.

I immediately slipped Margit’s card into the pocket of my shirt.

‘Maybe.’

‘You must say goodbye to Madame before you go.’

That wasn’t a request, but a directive.

‘Lead the way.’

Madame was standing in front of one of her nude triptychs — with arms of war sprouting out of her vagina, only to be enveloped by Eden-like flora and fauna. It was beyond stupid. She was holding an empty glass and looked decidedly tipsy … not that I was one to talk.

‘Mr Ricks must leave us,’ Montgomery said.

‘Mais la nuit ne fait que commencer,’ she said, and started to giggle.

‘I write at night, so …’

‘Dedication to one’s art. It is so admirable, isn’t it, Montgomery?’

‘So admirable,’ he said tonelessly.

‘Well, hon, I hope you had a fabulous time.’

‘Yeah, fabulous,’ I said.

‘And remember: if you need company on a Sunday night, we’re always here.’

‘I’ll remember that.’

‘And I just can’t wait to read that book of yours.’

‘Nor can I.’

‘Monty, he’s so witty! We must have him back.’

‘Yes, we must.’

‘And hon,’ she said, pulling me close to her, ‘I can tell you’re a real ladykiller, a total dragueur.’

‘Not really.’

‘Oh, please. You’ve got that vulnerable-lonely-artist thing going which women just love.’

As she said that, I could feel her fleshy fingers slide into mine.

‘You lonely, hon?’

I gently disengaged my hand from hers. I said, ‘Thank you again for a very interesting evening.’

‘You’ve got someone, don’t you?’ she asked, sounding sour.

I thought of the card in my breast pocket.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think I do.’

Ten

LATER THAT NIGHT, as I sat at my desk and tried to work, my brain kept replaying that scene on the balcony. Margit’s face continued to fill my mind’s eye. Six hours after our embrace, I could still discern the musky scent she wore, as it had adhered itself to my clothes, my hands, my face. Her taste was still in my mouth. Her low husky voice continued to reverberate in my ear.

I must have looked at her card a dozen times that night. I wrote down her phone number in a notebook and on a pad I kept on the desk, just in case the card was misplaced. I tried to grind my way through my new quota of one thousand words. I failed. I was too distracted, too smitten.

The hours dragged by. I was desperate to leave this room early and walk the streets and try to clear my head. But if I did leave here before the specified time …

Blah, blah, blah. I knew all the old arguments, and knew that I’d play the good employee and stay put until 6 a.m. arrived. And then …

Then I would call her and tell her that I couldn’t wait until 5 p.m. tomorrow; that I had to see her now. And I’d hop in a cab over to 13 rue Linne and …

Completely blow this affair before it has started.

A little detached cool is demanded here, mon pote.

So when I woke up at two that afternoon, I picked up my wages and ate steak- frites at a little cafe near the Gare de l’Est, and then took an extended mid-evening stroll along the Canal Saint-Martin, and caught a 21h30 screening of Chabrol’s La Femme infidele at the Brady (they were doing a mini-festival of his films), and walked to my job, thinking at length about Chabrol’s complex morality tale. The story is an old one: a husband discovers his wife’s infidelity. He confronts and kills her lover, at which point …

But here’s where Chabrol pulls a very interesting rabbit out of the hat. Upon discovering that her husband has murdered her amant, the wife doesn’t become hysterical and hyper-moralistic. Nor does she turn him over to the cops. Rather, the couple become collaborators in the crime — the notion being that, in any intimate relationship (especially one that has lasted many years), we are always complicit with the other person. And once the frontier of sexuality is crossed, we are, in some ways, hostages to fortune. You can compartmentalize, you can tell yourself that you know the person with whom you are sleeping is rational and playing on the same page as you … and then you discover one of life’s great truisms: you can never really know the landscape of somebody else’s mind.

But how desperate I was to cross that frontier with Margit.

Still … discipline, discipline.

So I didn’t call her until the following afternoon — from a phone kiosk on the rue des Ecoles. I inserted my France Telecom card. I dialed her number. One rings, two rings, three ring, four rings … oh shit, she’s out … five rings, six …

‘Hello?’

She sounded groggy, half-asleep.

‘Margit, it’s me … Harry.’

‘I figured that.’

‘Did I wake you?’

‘I was just … dozing.’

‘I can call back if …’

‘No need to be solicitous. I expected you to call now … just as I expected you not to call yesterday.’

‘And how did you figure that?’

‘Because I knew, though you might be eager to see me again, you wouldn’t want to seem too eager, so you’d wait a day or so before calling me. But not more than that, because that would indicate disinterest. The fact that you rang exactly at five p.m… . especially after I told you that I shouldn’t be disturbed before that hour …’

‘Shows how completely predictable men are?’

‘Your statement, monsieur, not mine.’

‘So do you want to see me or not?’ I asked.