“I’d come visit you.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“I’m not spoiled, Kay.”
I thought of the do not disturb sign, the chained door. I touched his neck and traced the angle of his strong jaw, lingering on the corner of his mouth. I had not felt a man’s beard against my skin in more than a year. I reached up with both hands and pushed my fingers through his thick hair. It was warm from the sun, and his eyes were in mine, waiting to see what I might do with him.
I pulled him to me. I kissed and touched him aggressively, running my hands up and down his hard, perfect body as he fought with my clothes.
“God, you’re so beautiful,” he said into my mouth. “Christ, you’ve been driving me insane . . . !” He tore’off a button and bent hooks. “Sitting there in front of the fucking secretary-general and I’m trying not to stare at your breasts.”
He gathered them into his hands. I wanted it raw and without limits. I wanted the violence in me to make love to his violence, because I didn’t want to be reminded of Benton, who had known how to slowly smooth me like a stone and skip me through erotic waters.
I pulled Talley into the bedroom, and he was no match for me because I had experience and skills he knew nothing of. I controlled him. I dominated. I helped myself to him until we were exhausted and slippery with sweat. Benton wasn’t in that room. But had he somehow seen what I just did, he would have understood.
The afternoon moved on and we drank wine and watched shadows change on the ceiling as the sun got weary of the day. When the phone rang, I didn’t answer it. When Marino thumped on the door and called out to me, I pretended no one was home. When the phone rang again, I shook my head.
“Marino, Marino,” I said.
“Your bodyguard.”
“He didn’t do a very good job this time;” I said as Talley fit as much of me into his mouth as he could. “I suppose I’ll have to fire him.”
“I wish you would.”
“Tell me I haven’t committed yet another felony this day. And that your name, Agent Talley, has nothing to do with keeping score.”
“Okay. My name has nothing to do with keeping score. But I don’t know about the felony part.”
It seemed that Marino gave up on me, and as it got dark, Talley and- I took a shower together. He washed my hair and made a joke about the age difference between us. He said it was another example of his being contraire. I said we should go to dinner.
“What about the Café Runtz?” he asked.
“What about it?”
“What the French would call chaleureux, ancien et familial-warm, old, familiar. The Opéra-Comique is next door, so there are photographs of opera singers all over the walls.”
I thought of Marino. I needed to let him know I was not lost somewhere in Paris.
“It’s a nice walk,” Talley was saying. “Maybe only fifteen minutes. Twenty at the most.”
“I need to find Marino first,” I said. “He’s probably in the bar.”
“Would you like me to look for him and send him up?”
“I’m sure he would be most appreciative,” I said facetiously.
Marino found me before Talley found him. I was still drying my hair when Marino showed up at my door, and the look on his face told me he knew why he had not been able to reach me.
“Where the hell you been?” he asked as he walked in.
“The Institut Médico-Légal.”
“All day?”
“No, not all day,” I said.
Marino looked at the bed. Talley and I had made it, but it didn’t look quite the way the housekeepers had left it this morning.
“I’m going out to . . .” I started to say.
“With him,” Marino raised his voice. “I goddamn knew this would happen. I can’t believe you fell for it. Je-sus Christ. I thought you was above … .”
“Marino, this is none of your business,” I wearily said.
He blocked the door, hands on his hips like a stern nanny. He looked so ridiculous, I had to laugh.