Authors: Unknown
“No! I mean … well, maybe. God, Emmett, I don’t know anymore. How long can you stay in love with someone who doesn’t feel the same as you?”
His eyes narrowed, the tiny squint lines at their corners spreading outward, as if he were gazing into bright sunlight. “A long time, I reckon.”
Annie knew he wasn’t just talking about her, but before she could probe further, a harried-looking young waiter appeared, and Emmett ordered their drinks.
Annie listened to him, marvelling, as always, at his fairly fluent French. He hadn’t studied it in any classroom, he’d told her, but had picked it up here and there, mostly among the Cajuns he’d hung out with in New Orleans. While she, with her four years of private-school French, could barely order a croissant without tripping over her tongue.
But Emmett was like that, she’d noticed, picking up things and people as easily and naturally as a roaming hound picks up burrs. Like the pigeon lady they’d met in the Tuileries the other day-within minutes, Emmett had learned her whole history, her husband who’d been in the Resistance during the war and had died of tetanus poisoning; the three sons she’d outlived; her rheumatism that ached on cold nights; the pigeons she fed every morning, her favorites among them named after France’s great generals. Annie remembered how the old lady in her black shawl, touched by Emmett’s attention, had then pointed out an unusual-looking pigeon with feathers the dull red of terra-cotta, and chirped, ”‘Pour vous,” meaning she would name it after him.
On their way back, Emmett had laughed and said, “I can think of worse things than being a pigeon.”
Now, feeling lightheaded from the Pernod, Annie said suddenly, “I lied before, when ฯ told you I wasn’t
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sure if I loved Joe. I do. Why is that so hard to admit? Why do I feel as if I’m confessing to some horrible crime?”
She felt the tears she’d almost (but not quite) talked herself out of pressing close to the surface again.
“Because you’re afraid of making a fool of yourself,” he said. “You’re not alone, Cobb. Most folks’d rather be hit by a bus than be made a fool of. ‘Specially in love.”
“If only I knew how he felt … then I could …” She shrugged, and felt her mouth form a small, crooked smile. “Well, then you wouldn’t have to sit here listening to me make a fool of myself.”
“You sure it’s him holding back? Or could it be that it’s you?” He tipped his head to one side, eyeing her with some amusement while he stroked the stem of his glass with his square, callused thumb. His crinkly hair, in the amber glow of the old-fashioned street lamp overhead, was the color of old pennies worn smooth by countless exchanges.
Annie, feeling his words hit home, looked down, staring into her empty glass-its rim a circle that seemed to grow wider, swimming up at her like the mouth of an approaching tunnel. She realized with a tiny ripple of unease that she was a bit drunk. God, was she now going to make an even bigger fool of herself?
“I think I’d better be getting back,” she said. “I don’t know about you, but getting up at five every morning means that by ten o’clock at night I’m ready to turn into a pumpkin.”
He laughed. “Now that you mention it … yeah, you are looking a little orange around the gills.”
Minutes later, recrossing the river on the Pont au Change, it struck Annie that in just a few weeks she’d be back in New York, and Emmett… well, who knew where he’d be? Mayfe they would never see each other after that. She felt a pang, and quickly pushed the thought away. Right now, he was here, and she was grateful for him. For his friendship, for having so patiently listened to her carry on like a moonstruck teenager.
As they stopped to watch a barge decked in fairy
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lights glide under the bridge, Annie impulsively leaned over and kissed Emmett lightly on the lips.
Then, unexpectedly, Emmett was kissing her back. Not tentatively, or halfheartedly, but full and hard, bruising her almost, his mouth sharp and sweet with the anise taste of the Pernod. One arm circling her waist, holding her so tight she couldn’t have gotten away if she’d wanted to, which somehow she didn’t-God, oh dear God, what am I getting myself into here?-at the same time cupping the back of her neck, the tips of his fingers lightly pressing into the curve of her skull, as gently, as tenderly, as if he were cradling a newborn.
Annie felt a sharp tug low in her belly. The blood seemed to drain from her head; sparks of light danced on the insides of her eyelids. She felt heat rising in her, collecting in the hollow space where moments before her stomach had been. God … how could she be … how could it feel this good when it was Joe she wanted, not Emmett?
And Emmett, did he really want her! Or was there someone waiting for him back home… someone he hadn’t told her about?
Emmett, drawing away, seemed to stagger a bit, and she wondered if maybe he was a little tipsy as well. And whether, if they’d been perfectly sober, this would have happened at all. She stared at him, his face inches from hers, his breath quick and warm against her cheek, and it suddenly occurred to her that probably she had wanted this, needed this, for a very long time. Was it reassurance she was looking for … the reassurance Joe wasn’t giving her? Proof that she was lovable, desirable, even?
“Jesus,” he muttered, staring at her and rubbing his jaw. “Where do we go from here?”
“Not my place.” She gave a short, breathless laugh. “Madame Begbeder would throw us out,” she said, feeling overtaken by a kind of reckless momentum. What are you suggesting?
“That kind of whittles it down, doesn’t it?” He stepped back and grabbed her hand, squeezing it hard.
Before she could think it over, they were in a taxi,
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rocketing along the boulevard St-Germain on the way to the place Victor Hugo, where Emmett was subletting. Annie felt both exhilarated and oddly resigned … as if she’d climbed aboard a roller coaster and now had to see it through to the very end.
Then there was a massive wooden door with a button that automatically buzzed them into a courtyard, and then into a vestibule smelling of fresh laundry. Climbing the winding stairs, Emmett thumbed a button on the wall at each landing, and light flooded the stairs above. But by the time they reached the next landing, the light had gone off.
“Timers,” he explained, knowing that the private home in which she rented a small room had none. “That way, no one can forget and leave them on. Smart, huh? It’s only us ugly Americans who act like electricity and oil and gas are gonna be around forever, like the air we breathe.”
How could he be so calm? With her legs wobbling, her heart thundering, she could barely climb the stairs. I shouldn’t be here. I should turn around right now … this very instant…
But somehow her feet kept moving, and then they were past the tall, brass-handled door, and inside the narrow but high-ceilinged salon. The woman who owned the place would have smiled, Annie thought, to see Emmett, broad and rugged, clumping in his cowboy boots amid the plump, satin-covered sofas and spindly Empire chairs, the tiny round table covered in a fringed shawl and crowded with S่vres figurines and silver-framed family photos.
But even with his limp, Emmett was surprisingly graceful as he moved about the room switching on lamps, not the least hindered by all this clutter. Watching him right a picture frame that had tilted to one side, she thought of the pigeon lady in the park, and how gentle he’d been when he helped the old woman up from the bench.
Still, she wondered, What am I doing here? I don’t love him.
At the same time, she felt drawn to him, the tug in her belly when she kissed him on the bridge now a low
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throb of wanting. She let herself imagine how it would be-Emmett taking her clothes off, kissing her all over, his hands rough and hot against her skin. No, she didn’t love him … but, dammit, she wanted him. She wanted him, now, at this moment-regardless of reason or possible repercussions-the way a hungry person needs to eat.
But could she?
Emmett, who seemed to sense her confusion, came to her and, with his arms loosely about her shoulders, kissed her forehead. When she pulled away, she saw that he was smiling, almost as if he found her amusing … possibly childish.
Annie felt embarrassed, annoyed even, at herself and at Emmett. “Emmett, I shouldn’t have come. This is … crazy. I don’t love you. And you don’t love me.”
“And you … you’re not the kind of girl who’d go to bed with a man just for the fun of it, right?” He was mocking her now; she was almost sure of it.
“Not if I wanted us to stay friends afterwards.”
“Is it us you’re worried about, or this fellow of yours back home?”
“Joe. ” Like a shield, she held Joe’s name out in front of her, letting it fill the silence that was broken only by the measured ticking of a clock somewhere. “No,” she lied, “it has nothing to do with Joe.”
He shrugged and stepped back with a low, easy chuckle. “Hell, Cobb, you could walk right out of here, right this very minute, and I promise you there won’t be a speck of hard feeling.”
“Em …”
“On the other hand,” he added soberly, placing a work-roughened fingertip under her chin, “if you stay, I can promise you something a lot better.”
When he kissed her this time, Annie felt it flash through her like summer lightning. In the heat that followed, she thought, Joe, and felt a small, mean triumph. I don’t need him.
Then Emmett was leading her into the bedroom. A massive headboard decorated with ormolu like the icing on a wedding cake seemed to dominate the tiny space. As
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if in a dream, Annie lay down on it, and let Emmett undress her. His callused ringers were rough … but at the same time, surprisingly tender and adept. No fumbling with buttons or hooks-he seemed to know exactly how to go about this, where to touch her. Kissing her lips, her temple, throat, and now-as he removed her bra-each of her breasts, causing her to shiver and goose bumps to break out. She’d been undressed before-by Steve, and by Craig Henry back in high school-but never had it been so arousing as this. Annie felt her heart racing, as if she were skimming close to the edge of some kind of illness.
Now, watching Emmett sit down on the bed and begin prying off his boots, she wondered how seeing his crippled foot would make her feel.
When she did-its purple, puckered flesh and oddly bent shape-she felt a welling of tenderness. She touched it lightly. “Does it hurt?”
“Only when I’m walking in places I shouldn’t,” he said with a wry, cockeyed smile.
“Like now?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, okay, I’m a little scared, too. Mind if we leave the lights on?”
He drew a ringer across her belly, tiny spurs of rough skin scratching her lightly. She shivered, and then he was bending down, his tongue warm against her skin, and then moving lower-God, he shouldn’t do this, no one ever has … but, oh, it feels so good-the wiry ends of his hair, so soft, softer than she could ever have imagined, brushing the insides of her thighs. And now his tongue, quick, feather-light …
She was burning up. She would die of this heat. She would die of wanting him. Please, oh please … 7 can’t bear it. I’ll go out of my mind.
Then Emmat was getting up, taking off his shirt and trousers, not seeming impatient, though she could see he was aroused. He’s had a lot of practice at this. She was surprised at the hair on his chest and down below, not red but dark brown. Muscles broad and thick as beams, a scattering of freckles across his belly. He looked as if he’d
spent a lot of time outdoors, his forearms a shade darker than the rest of him. But what struck her most was how utterly unselfconscious he seemed, as if this were an everyday thing, their being naked together like this.
But when he lay down beside her, she could feel the tightness of him, of his wanting her; his whole body clenched, almost quivering.
He went on tasting her, teasing her, exploring even places she hadn’t known could feel so exquisitely sensitive-the half moon of flesh under each breast, the backs of her knees, and between her fingers. She was hot, but she was shivering, too, wanting to draw her knees into her chest, protect herself from this agony of wanting. But Emmett now was slowly stroking her, soothing her, and she could feel herself opening to him, arching to take him into her. Yes … oh yes …
Then there was only his solid weight pressing down on her, into her. Over his shoulder, a pane of moonlight glimmered on the wall, and seemed to grow brighter, expanding until it appeared to encompass the whole wall, until she became part of the light, inside it, its white heat consuming her… .
“God!” Hardly aware of what she was doing, Annie bit into Emmett’s shoulder. A sharp, briny taste, and then she heard him cry out, too, and push high up into her, several short, fierce thrusts.
Afterwards, she clung to him until the mingled sweat of their bodies began to dry. Emmett, his face buried in the hollow of her neck, murmured, “Annie.”
Annie. Since the very first day at Girod’s, he’d never called her anything but Cobb. Just now he’d called her Annie. What did it mean? What did he want from her?
Annie shivered, feeling out of control, as if the roller coaster she’d been on, instead of stopping, had dropped off the edge of the world. And what about Joe? Why, if she owed him nothing, did she feel as if she’d betrayed him?
Now it was her turn to murmur, “God, Em, where now? Where do we go from here?”
Stroking her hair, and her neck where it still burned from the roughness of his stubbled jaw, he said gently,
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“We don’t have to go anywhere, Annie. We’re already there.”
Dolly felt the plane begin to bank. Looking down, she caught her first glimpse of the island. So green! No roads or buildings that she could see … as if not a soul lived there. Not at all like Bermuda, where Dale had taken her for their honeymoon. She remembered Bermuda as a sort of tropical English countryside, neat drystone walls, manicured golf courses, clipped lawns, and trimmed hedges of colorful hibiscus. Nowhere near as lush and primeval-looking as this.