She hears the somber note in my voice and turns to me, distraught. “Frederic, of course you’ll be wonderful. I’m sorry I teased you.”
This is the last show I’ll ever do. It might not be what I am remembered for by most, but it’s what I’ll remember, and what the people in the circles I move in will talk about. If I do a terrible job and then announce my retir
ement they will say behind my back, He clung on too long. It’s sad when they can’t let go. I will not have people say that about me. I will not. I will do this, I will do it well, and then I will go quietly.
“Not at all, minette. You can tease me all you like. You’ll keep me grounded.”
She still looks uncertain. “Are you very worried about it?”
I cast about for a way to explain my feelings to her. “I’m practically an unknown quantity in Britain. It’s been years since I’ve done a show there. The critics may pan me or the audiences will be indifferent.” I shake my head, annoyed that I’m so rattled. “I’m not usually like this before a show, I promise.”
She watches me for a moment, her lips pressed together. “As soon as you said you’d been cast I knew you would be perfect for the role. Your look, your bearing, your voice. I promise, the audience will love you, and the critics will, too.”
I suspect she’s nice enough to tell me I’ll be good even if she thinks I’ve been miscast. But I like that she teased me. Teasing probably means she thinks I’ll be all right, otherwise she would have given me platitudes. “Thank you, chérie. You know the book well so that means a lot to me.”
Evie smiles at me, a smile so beautiful and open that I feel a tug in my chest. I’ve seen her in floods of tears and giggling like a schoolgirl. I’ve even seen her glaring in anger at me and those eyes filled with hurt. Evangeline Bell wears her heart on her sleeve. I need to be careful with her.
We walk all day, in and out of galleries and along the wide streets. Paris is made for walking and I enjoy showing her my favorite sights.
In the late afternoon we head back toward Le Marais and have dinner, and then back to the flat. She flops onto the sofa while I open a bottle of red wine. Cheerful and talkative all day, she suddenly seems pensive.
I hand her a glass and sit down on the adjacent sofa. We haven’t talked about what happened between us the other night and I wonder if we should. Every time I remember her tearful confession I feel furious with her ex. How could he have seen her so distraught, over and over, and kept sleeping with her?
It seems Evie’s thinking about the same thing. She tilts her glass left and right in the lamplight, watching the deep color of the wine, and says, “You seemed to know why I used to cry after...you know. And that I should be able to figure it out. I’ve tried, and I haven’t.”
I suppose it’s not so strange. She may have only had one partner, and he didn’t seem the sort to explore what she might and might not like. Some of her stories were quite explicit, though the sexual scenarios didn’t seem to be connected to actual sex. “I think it’s because you were frustrated. There was a disconnect between what you needed and what you were getting.”
She nods, watching the wine as she swirls it in her glass. “You made me cry but it was from release, not sadness. I felt better than I had in a long time, and I—I liked what you did.” Still watching the wine, she says, “Frederic, will you take me to bed?”
There’s something so very arousing about the quiet, needful way she asks this. I look at her carefully. She’s barely touched her drink, and she had just one glass with dinner. It would be a lovely end to the day, taking her to bed, and I wonder when the last time was that she came with someone and she didn’t cry. But I don’t understand her well enough to make sure she enjoys herself. “I have another suggestion, if you’d like to hear it?”
She looks up at me, expectant.
“You sit there. I sit here. You tell me about something that turns you on and you touch yourself.”
The wine stops swirling. “Why?”
“I’m curious to know what turns you on. The things you fantasize about might tell you something about what you need.”
Evie makes a face, half shock and half disgust, as if her fantasies are dirty or strange. I doubt very much that they are, but it only reinforces my suspicion that she wants something very different to the sort of sex she was getting. She might feel easier talking about it if she tackles an easier question first, so I ask, “How old were you when you started?”
She swallows a gulp of wine. “What, masturbating? The usual age, I guess.”
I’ve asked many of my lovers this question and discovered that there doesn’t seem to be a usual age for women. One woman I once knew didn’t start until she was nineteen because she “didn’t think girls did that.” Can you imagine, Fred? But I’ve been making up for lost time, it’s brilliant.
“What was it that set you off—a boy at school? A film you shouldn’t have been watching? A book you were reading?”
She covers her face with her hands, half laughing, half embarrassed.
“Stop that. I can’t see you going delightfully pink when you cover your face.”
Lifting her head, she gives me a pained look. “If I tell you, you have to promise you won’t make fun of me.”
I put my hand on my heart. “I promise I would never do that.”
As if she’s confessing to some terrible crime, she says, “It was you, all right? I was thirteen, my father brought us here to see Notre-Dame de Paris and later that night I touched myself thinking about you.”
I stare at her, because I wasn’t expecting that. It’s not often that people surprise me and the silence stretches on a little too long.