Frédéric's car, which was parked a few blocks away, didn't look operational; the front grille was bashed in, one of the headlights pointing up at a forty-five-degree angle. “Don't worry,” Tasha said. “Frédéric's an excellent driver. He only crashes when he feels like it.”
“How are you feeling tonight?” Alex asked.
“I feel like dancing,” he said. He began to sing Bowie's “Let's Dance,” drumming his hands on the steering wheel as Alex climbed into the back.
Les Bains Douches was half-empty. The only person they recognized was Bernard-Henri Lévy. Either they were too early or a couple years too late. The conversation had lapsed into French and Alex wasn't following everything. Tasha was all over him, stroking his arm and, intermittently, her own perfect left breast, and he was a little nervous about Frédéric's reaction. At one point there was a sharp exchange he didn't quite catch. Frédéric stood up and walked off.
“Look,” Alex said, “I don't want to cause any trouble.”
“No trouble,” she said.
“Is he your boyfriend?”
“We used to go out. Now we're just friends.”
She pulled him forward and kissed him, slowly exploring the inside of his mouth with her tongue. Suddenly she leaned away and glanced up at a woman in a white leather jacket who was dancing beside an adjoining table.
“I think big tits are beautiful,” she said before kissing him with renewed ardor.
“I think your tits are beautiful,” he said.
“They are, actually,” she replied. “But not big.”
When Frédéric returned, his mood seemed to have lifted. He laid several bills on the table. “Let's go,” he said.
Alex hadn't been clubbing in several years. After he and Lydia moved in together, the clubs lost their appeal. Now he felt the return of the old thrill, the anticipation of the hunt—the sense that the night held secrets bound to be unveiled before it was over. Tasha was talking about someone in New York whom Alex was supposed to know. “The last time I saw him, he just kept banging his head against the wall, and I said to him, ‘Michael, you've really got to stop doing these drugs. It's been fifteen years now.’”
First stop was a ballroom in Montmartre. A band was onstage, playing an almost credible version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” While they waited at the bar, Frédéric played vigorous air guitar and shouted the refrain, “Here we are now / Entertain us.” After sucking down their cosmopolitans, they drifted out to the dance floor. The din was just loud enough to obviate the need for conversation.
The band launched into “Goddamn the Queers.” Tasha divided her attentions between the two of them, grinding her pelvis into Alex during a particularly bad rendition of “Champagne Supernova.” Closing his eyes and enveloping her with his arms, he lost track of his spatial coordinates. Were those her breasts in his hands, or the cheeks of her ass? When she flicked her tongue in his ear, he pictured a cobra rising from a wicker basket.
Then he opened his eyes and saw Frédéric conferring with another man and watching him from the edge of the dance floor.
Alex went off to find the men's room and another beer. When he returned, Tasha and Frédéric were slow-dancing to a French ballad and making out. He decided to cut his losses and leave. Whatever the game was, he suddenly felt too tired to play it. At that moment, Tasha looked across the room, waved, then slalomed toward him through the dancers, Frédéric following behind her.
“Let's go,” she shouted.
Out on the sidewalk, Frédéric turned obsequious. “Man, you must think Paris is total shit.”
“I'm having a good time,” Alex said. “Don't worry about it.”
“I do worry about it, man. It's a question of honor.”
“I'm fine.”
“At least we could find some drugs,” said Tasha.
“The drugs in Paris are all shit.”
“I don't need drugs,” Alex said.
“‘Don't wanna get stoned,’” Frédéric sang. “‘But I don't wanna not get stoned.’”
They began arguing about the next destination. Tasha was making the case for a place called, apparently, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Frédéric insisted it wasn't open, instead pushing for L'Enfer. The debate continued in the car. Eventually they crossed the river and, later still, lurched to a stop beneath the Montparnasse tower.
The two doormen greeted his companions warmly. They descended the staircase into a space that seemed to glow with a purple light, the source of which Alex couldn't discern. A throbbing drum and bass riff washed over the dancers. Grabbing hold of the tip of his belt, Tasha led him toward a raised area above the dance floor, evidently a VIP area.
Conversation became almost impossible, which was kind of a relief. Alex met several people or, rather, nodded at several people, who, in turn, nodded at him. A Japanese woman shouted into his ear in what was probably several different languages and soon returned with a catalog of terrible paintings. He nodded as he thumbed through it, since apparently this was a gift. Far more welcome was an unlabeled bottle full of clear liquid that a man handed to him. He poured some into his glass. It tasted like moonshine.
Tasha towed him out to the dance floor, wrapping her arms around him and sucking his tongue into her mouth. Just when his tongue felt like it was going to be ripped from his mouth, she bit down on it, hard. Within moments he tasted blood. Perhaps this was what she wanted, for she continued to kiss him as she thrust her pelvis into his, still sucking hard on his tongue. He imagined himself being sucked whole into her mouth, and liked the idea. But without for a moment losing his focus on Tasha, he suddenly thought of Lydia and the girl before Lydia, and the girl after Lydia, the one he'd betrayed her with. How was it, he wondered, that desire for one woman always reawakened his desire for all the other women in his life?
“Let's get out of here,” he shouted, mad with lust. She nodded and pulled away, going into a little solipsistic dance a few feet away. Alex watched, trying to catch and follow her rhythm, until he gave up and took her in his arms. He forced his tongue between her teeth, surprised by the pain of his recent wound. Fortunately she didn't bite him this time; in fact, she pulled away. Suddenly she was weaving back up to the VIP area, where Frédéric seemed to be having an argument with the bartender. When he saw Tasha, he seized a bottle on the bar and threw it at the floor near her feet, where it shattered. Then he shouted something unintelligible before bolting up the stairs. Tasha started to follow.
“Don't go,” Alex shouted, holding her arm.
“I'm sorry,” she shouted, removing his hand from her arm. She kissed him gently on the lips.
“Say good-bye,” Alex said.
“Good-bye.”
“Say my name.”
She looked at him quizzically, and then, as if suddenly getting the joke, she smiled and laughed mirthlessly, pointing at him as if to say, You almost got me.
He watched her disappear up the steps, her long legs seeming to become even longer as they receded.
Alex had another glass of the clear liquor, but the place now struck him as tawdry and flat. It was a little past three. As he was leaving, the Japanese woman pressed several nightclub invitations into his hand.
Out on the sidewalk he paused to get his bearings, then started walking toward Saint-Germain. His mood lifted with the thought that it was only nine o'clock in New York. He would call Lydia. Suddenly he believed he knew what to say to her. As he picked up his pace, he noticed a beam of light moving slowly along the wall beside and above him; he turned to see Frédéric's bashed-in Renault cruising the street behind him.
“Get in,” said Tasha.
He shrugged. Whatever happened, it was better than walking.
“Frédéric wants to check out this after-hours place.”
“Maybe you could just drop me off at my hotel.”
“Don't be a drag.”
The look she gave him awoke in him the mad lust of the dance floor; he was tired of being jerked around, and yet
his desire overwhelmed his pride. After all this, he felt he deserved his reward and understood he was willing to do almost anything to get it. He climbed in the backseat.
Frédéric gunned the engine and popped the clutch. Tasha looked back at Alex, shaping her lips into a kiss, then turned to Frédéric. Her tongue emerged from her lips and slowly disappeared into Frédéric's ear. When he stopped for a light, she moved around to kiss him full on the mouth. Alex realized that he was involved—part of the transaction between them. And suddenly he thought of Lydia, whom he'd told his betrayal had nothing to do with her, which was what you said. How could he explain to her that as he bucked atop another woman, it was she, Lydia, who filled his heart?
Tasha suddenly climbed over the backseat and started kissing him. Thrusting her busy tongue into his mouth, she ran her hand down to his crotch. “Oh, yes, where did that come from?” She took his earlobe between her teeth as she unzipped his fly.
Alex moaned as she reached into his shorts. He looked at Frédéric, who looked right back at him, adjusting the rearview mirror as he drove even faster. Tasha slid down his chest, feathering the hair of his belly with her tongue, his vague intuition of danger fading away in the wash of vivid sensation. She was squeezing his cock in her hand; then it was in her mouth, and he felt powerless to intervene. He didn't care what happened, so long as she didn't stop. At first he could barely feel the touch of her lips, the pleasure residing more in the anticipation of what was to follow. At last she raked him gently with her teeth. Alex moaned and squirmed lower in the seat as the car picked up speed. The pressure of her lips became more authoritative.
“Who am I?” he whispered. And, a minute later: “Tell me who you think I am.”
Her response, though unintelligible, forced a moan of pleasure from his own lips. Glancing at the rearview mirror, he saw that Frédéric was watching intensely, even as the car picked up speed. When he shifted abruptly into fourth, Alex inadvertently bit down on his own tongue as his head snapped forward, his teeth scissoring the fresh wound there.
On a sudden impulse he pulled out of Tasha's mouth just as Frédéric jammed on the brakes and sent them into a spin.
He had no idea how much time passed before he struggled out of the car. The crash had seemed almost leisurely, the car turning like a falling leaf until the illusion of weightlessness was shattered by the collision with a guardrail. He'd tried to remember it all as he sat folded like a contortionist in the backseat, taking inventory of his extremities. A peaceful Sunday silence prevailed. No one seemed to be moving. His cheek was sore and bleeding on the inside where he'd slammed it against the passenger seat's headrest. Just when he was beginning to suspect his hearing was gone, he heard Tasha moan. The serenity of survival was replaced by anger when he saw Frédéric's head moving on the dashboard and realized what could have happened.
Hobbling around to the other side of the car, he yanked the door open and hauled Frédéric roughly out to the pavement, where he lay blinking, a gash on his forehead.
“What was that about?” Alex said.
The Frenchman blinked and winced, inserting a finger in his mouth to check his teeth.
In a fury, Alex kicked him in the ribs. “Who the hell do you think I am?”
Frédéric smiled and looked up at him. “You're just a guy,” he said. “You're nobody.”
1999
In the North-West Frontier Province
“And where is your beautiful wife this fine day?” the Pathan asked, when Trey found him at his stall in the bazaar. The woman in question was not his wife, and by his lights it wasn't much of a day—no wind, the sun a degree higher in the sky and hotter than it had been this time the day before, and still no sign of Rudy. The Pathan's question had an ironic tone, as if the man understood all of this. But then, he always sounded that way to Trey, who replied that Michelle was back at the fort where she was relatively safe from lecherous Pathans. This was meant to be a joke, but the anxiety of waiting two weeks in a place where he didn't want to be put a sharper edge on the words than he'd intended.
The Pathan quit smiling.
Something bumped Trey's thigh. He looked down and saw a sheep nosing at his jeans. The animal then turned and waddled off down the bazaar, poking into stalls as if it were shopping.
He had insulted the Pathan, a stupid thing to do. Their sense of honor was extremely delicate, their sense of redress extreme. They killed each other over such matters. Here in the hills between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the code of tribal honor, blood relation and vendetta was the only law that was ever enforced. Pathan tribesmen with Enfield rifles strapped over their shoulders and bandoliers of ammunition wrapped around their baggy shirts strutted past the stall, and the man he was talking to had a revolver holstered on his hip.
“You have heard from your friend?” the Pathan said after a minute.
Trey shook his head, relieved that his indiscretion had been passed over.
“He was not Australian?”
“Scottish.”
“Ah.” The Pathan nodded. “There is an Australian passport for sale.”
It took a minute to sort this out, and to construe the warning. Trey thought he knew where the passport had come from. A few days before, he'd met an Australian in the bazaar who had mined opals in the Outback for two years. He had a dry, brick-red tan against which his green eyes and the gaudy opal pendant on his chest glistened. Over kebabs he told Trey, who hadn't asked, that he was in Landi Kotal to score hash oil. He was going to swallow it, in condoms, just before he flew out of Karachi and then shit out a small fortune when he got back to Sydney. That was his plan. When he finished talking, he beamed as if he were the first person to have penetrated the mystery of demand and supply. Trey felt obliged to tell him that it was an old trick and that people had died in the bargain; any residual alcohol that hadn't been boiled off in the processing of the oil would eat through the condoms, and once that happened it was permanent deep space. But the Australian smiled and rubbed the opal on his chest. “My lucky amulet,” he said. Trey had left him licking chili sauce from his cracked lips and yesterday had seen the opal pendant for sale at a stall in the bazaar. He felt awful then, thinking he might have been more sympathetic, more persistent.
It was an object lesson, he told himself. The Pathan was reminding him of what could happen.
“Excuse me,” Trey said. “My humor was crude.”
The man nodded. “Your wife. She is still sick?”
Trey nodded back. It was a convention of their transactions that Michelle was sick and that the junk was a temporary analgesic. This was, in fact, how Michelle viewed her habit.
“There is anything else I can do for you,” the man asked after they'd made the usual exchange.
“How about a fifth of scotch?”
“I am sorry. But you know I am a believer.”
Trey nodded once more.
“I hope your wife will be well soon,” the Pathan said. “A good woman is a pearl of great price.”
Trey had met him the day after they'd arrived in Landi Kotal. Rudy intended to leave for Kabul later that afternoon. The three of them spent the morning in the bazaar. It was Michelle's first time here and she wanted to look at everything. The close-packed stalls displayed bolts of Scottish tweed, Swiss watches, Indian ivories, sundries with the initials of Italian and French designers, Levi's jeans, Japanese cameras and radios, Buddhas in bronze and clay, vintage British cavalry swords and U.S. Army-issue Colt .45s. A hand towel embroidered with the legend Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island, Michigan was laid out beside a stack of Tibetan prayer rugs. Smuggling was the region's main industry. Much of the contraband was what it appeared to be, but it was safe to begin with the assumption that the Western-looking goods were Asian counterfeits and that the handcrafts and antiques were mass-produced.
At one of the stalls, Rudy and Trey examined some pale, crumbly hash. Rudy shook his head sadly. It was water-pressed, he explained, the dregs of last season's pressing. He was
confirmed in his decision to cross the border and get the pick of the new crop in the mountain villages outside Kabul.
A small boy with a large knife sheathed in his belt stepped into their path waving his arms. “I got stone, man,” he announced. “Very hot stuff. Brand-new.” He reached into his pocket and drew out a cassette that he pressed into Trey's hand, the blocky roman letters on the inner lining reading EXCITE ON MAIN ST. BY ROLLING STONE. The boy wiggled his shoulders and hips vigorously, then took Trey's arm and coaxed them over to his rock-and-roll emporium. There were more bootleg cassettes, several Japanese cassette players and a Fender Stratocaster displayed in a gun rack at the back of the stall.
Michelle wanted to buy a cassette player. Rudy told her that even if it wasn't confiscated at the border when they went back to India, they'd still end up paying more duty than it was worth. Trey reminded her that their money was tight.
Michelle slammed down the tape she'd been looking at. “Always you and Rudy gang up on me,” she said, then turned and stalked off into the bazaar.
Rudy went after her while Trey bargained for the cassette player. Michelle had been clean for three weeks and he wanted to keep her happy. When he caught up with them, he saw they'd gathered a crowd. Michelle's red chamois shirt was on the ground and she was trying to tug her T-shirt up over her head, Rudy trying to restrain her as men and boys in turbans were closing around them.
Earlier in the morning they had counseled Michelle on keeping herself covered no matter how warm it got. She didn't like being told what to do. And she didn't like clothes. In Goa they'd spent the days nude on the beach. But Goa was not Muslim.