“I begin to touch her breasts and unhook her bra.”
“Do you remember what her bra looked like?”
“It was black.”
“Were the lights on?”
“No. But the bra was a dark color, I think black. I could be mistaken. But it wasn’t a light color.”
“How did you unhook it?”
Chandonne pauses, his dark glasses boring into the camera. “I just unhooked it in back.” He makes an unhooking motion with his fingers.
“You didn’t rip her bra off?”
“Of course not.”
“Sir, her bra was ripped in front. Ripped off from the front. Literally torn in half.”
“I didn’t. Someone else must have done that after I left.”
“All right, let’s get back to your taking her bra off. Are her pants undone at this time?”
“Undone but still on. I pull up her top. I am very oral, you see. She liked that quite a bit. It was difficult to slow her down.'”
“Please explain what you mean by, ‘It was difficult to slow her down.'”
“She began to grab for me. Between my legs, trying to get my pants off, and I wasn’t ready. I still had much to do.”
“Much to do? What else did you have to do, sir?”
“I wasn’t ready for it to end.”
“What do you mean by end? For sex to end? For what to end?”
For her life to end, I think.
“For making love to end,” he replies.
I hate this. I can’t stomach listening to his fantasies, especially when I consider that he might know I am listening to them, that he is subjecting me to them just as he is subjecting Berger to them, and that Talley is listening, sitting right there, watching. Talley isn’t so different from Chandonne. Both of them secretly hate women, no matter how much they lust for them. I didn’t realize the truth about Talley until it was too late, until he was in my bed in my hotel room in Paris. I imagine him close to Berger in the small interview room at the hospital. I can almost see what is in his mind as Chandonne gives us an account of an erotic night he has probably never lived even once in his entire existence.
“She had a very lovely body and I wanted to enjoy it for a while, but she was most insistent. She couldn’t wait.” Chan-donne relishes each Word. “So we went back to the bedroom. We got on her bed and took our clothes off and made love.”
“Did she take her own clothes off or did you do all of it?
Beyond helping with the snaps?” she asks with a hint of her underlying and overwhelming disbelief of his veracity.
“I took all her clothes off. And she took mine off,” he says.
“Did she make any comment about your body?” Berger asks. “Had you shaved your entire body?”
“Yes.”
“And she didn’t notice?”
“I was very smooth. She didn’t notice. You must understand, a lot has happened to me since then, because of them?
“What has happened?”
“I have been pursued and persecuted and beaten. I was jumped by some men months after the night with Susan. They beat my face very badly. Split my lip, crushed bones in my face here.” He touches his glasses, indicating his orbits. “I had many dental problems as a child because of my condition and had much work done as a result. Crowns on my front teeth so they would look more normal.”
“This couple you say you stayed with paid for cosmetic dental work?”
“My family helped them with money.”
“Did you shave before you went to the dentist?”
“I would shave those areas that would show. Such as my face. Always, if I was going out during the day. When I was beaten, my front teeth were broken, my crowns were broken, and eventually, well, you can see what my teeth look like now.”
“Where did this beating occur?”
“I was still in New York.”
“Did you receive medical treatment or report this assault to the police?” Berger asks him.
“Oh, that would have been impossible. The top law enforcement people are all in this together, of course. They are the ones who did it to me. I could report nothing. I received no medical treatment. I became a nomad, always hiding. Ruined.”