Claire’s Waiting

The Waiting

In the morning Claire sits a long while at the kitchen table, naked, her dressing gown half open. She reads Gian Piero’s words over and over. “I have to go, but I’ll be back soon. You are very beautiful and you don’t know it. I want you to remember last night. Walk in front of the mirror. Open your shoulders and look at yourself. You are dazzling…”

That evening she stands before the big mirror in the living room. She straightens up and arches her backside: at first she doubts, then the tips of her wide, light-brown nipples tighten and harden. She murmurs:

— I don’t believe it… The Genie comes out of the lamp, and before I can make a single wish, poof!… he’s gone!

Her eyes fill with tears.

On Monday, Marc, the director of the association where she works half-time as a volunteer, is particularly pleasant all morning. He takes Claire’s arm, on some pretext or other, and his eyes slip furtively down to her chest, which her blouse holds a little tighter than usual. He has never done that before, and Claire lets nothing show, but she is unsettled.

In the evening, standing at the bedroom window, she catches herself talking out loud:

— Something has changed, that image of me in the glass… I feel beautiful, I feel like a woman.

It’s mad to say it, but I want… I want to be with him. He’s marked me, but how? Yes, I had pleasure, but it isn’t only that. I miss him… Am I in love? What does it matter if he doesn’t come back?

Two days later she has lunch with Léa, in the centre of town. The moment she sits down, her oldest friend’s eyes widen:

— What’s got into you, Claire?

Claire blushes. Léa leans in:

— You hold yourself differently, straighter, you’re beautiful — but you look sad. What’s going on?

Claire doesn’t want to tell, and she turns the conversation to lighter things.

Late in the afternoon, in the big living room on the ground floor, under the filtered rays of the winter sun, she takes off her sweatshirt and her jeans. She feels in herself a diffuse craving for closeness, for hands on her, for letting go.

She unhooks her bra and lets her fingers run over the supple, elastic skin of her breasts. Massaging them, she lifts them, feels their weight, lets them spill gently out of her hands. The inside of her thighs is wet and hot, and she touches herself thinking of that mad night with Gian Piero, after they met on the ferry. And for the first time, the tears don’t come.

On Thursday, around four, without really having decided to, she finds herself at la Tourelle; she wants a coffee. Only a coffee? The place isn’t the same in broad daylight. The magic of the night doesn’t work any more.

A few tables away, facing her, a man in his thirties in a dark suit seems transfixed; he doesn’t take his eyes off her. And when she stands to leave, disappointed to have found nothing of what she had confusedly hoped for, he speaks to her:

— Forgive me for approaching you like this, but… I find you… radiant. May I buy you something?

Claire declines with a smile, inventing an appointment that won’t wait, and walks out of the café. That a man should approach her with that spark in his eyes hadn’t happened to her since… since when, actually? She can’t remember. On the way home she thinks of Gian Piero; she’s angry, she resents him for not being there… I’m surely not in love with a man because he made me come the same evening I met him?!

A few days later, in the changing room at her gym, she is naked to the waist and about to put on a sports bra when she notices a dark-haired woman, early forties, standing there, watching her insistently. Claire is surprised, but doesn’t hurry, and lets her nakedness stay exposed a moment longer, suddenly very conscious of the volume and the carriage of her chest. The woman swallows, runs her tongue quickly over her lips, and looks away. That evening, in front of the mirror, Claire stands a long time and murmurs, “Gian, come back…”

It’s raining this morning, and at the supermarket checkout, in the queue, a couple stare at her. The woman whispers in her husband’s ear and he reddens. Claire holds their gaze, and sees the woman bite her lip. She thinks: He wants me and it’s driving her crazy… I can hardly believe it.

Ten days have passed since the night of the ferry. It’s late afternoon. Claire lies naked on her bed, stretched out. Her breasts spread lazily to either side of her chest. A flash of memory electrifies her all at once — the feel of Gian Piero’s hands cupping them while she sucked him, kneeling on the bed. And the moment he exploded, flooding her mouth and her face.

She opens her thighs. She is soaked. Her hand slides over her belly, strokes the soft fur of her sex, then her fingers slip between her wet lips. She touches herself slowly. And the memory of Gian Piero’s tongue inside her comes back, brutal, almost intact. She realises with astonishment that she is going to come, right there, right now, with no preamble. The pleasure rises in one surge, goes through her, shakes her, leaves her trembling for long minutes.

Afterwards she sinks into a soft drowsiness, savouring the contact of her shoulders and her backside with the warm, slightly rough sheet. When she wakes an hour later, evening is falling and she can see the street-glow through the curtains. She feels good, at peace, confident.

In the kitchen she makes herself a green tea, a Korean Jejudo she loves, when her phone rings. Withheld number. She jumps, she hesitates — not for long. What if it were him?

— Hello?

A silence, then a woman’s voice, young and well pitched:

— Claire? I have a message for you…

Silence. Claire can hardly breathe.

— Yes, tell me. Is it Gian Piero? Is he in Brussels? Who are you?…

— My name is Soo-ah (수아). I’m, how to put it, his personal assistant. He’s asked me to deliver a parcel to you. He’s stuck abroad at the moment. I’m in Brussels today. Can I drop it off?

— All right. Where are you now?

— Not far. I can be at your place in twenty minutes. I’ll ring twice.

Claire feels unease flood through her. She tries to imagine Soo-ah. Personal assistant? What does that mean?

— Very well. I’ll wait for you.

The line goes dead. Claire stays still a moment, the phone still against her ear, then sets it down slowly. In the bedroom mirror she catches sight of her tense face and this body she is learning, day after day, to look at differently. She isn’t quite sure what is winning in her — the unease, the jealousy, or this abrupt rise of arousal.

She dashes into the shower, soaps herself quickly, shaves her legs. She puts on a white linen shirt dress, fine, faintly transparent when the light comes through. Two buttons open. No bra. No knickers. She wants to be ready — ready for what, she doesn’t yet know. To take delivery of a parcel? To face this Soo-ah? To prove to herself she isn’t afraid?

At 5:12 p. m., two discreet knocks at the door.

Claire breathes in deeply, straightens, and opens.

Soo-ah

Soo-ah is there, just as she had imagined her — and worse. Small, an elegant figure, slender but well made, under a belted beige trench, black hair straight to her shoulders. Almond eyes that catch the light. A soft smile, but an assurance there’s no mistaking. In her hands, a small parcel in matte kraft paper, tied with a black ribbon.

— Hello, Claire. I’m Soo-ah.

Her voice is warm, velvety, with a strange accent that makes each syllable ring.

Claire holds her gaze a second too long, looking for a sign — a mark, a flicker of challenge that would give away more than a simple assistant. Nothing obvious. Just this magnetic presence that unsettles her.

— Hello… Come in.

Soo-ah crosses the threshold gracefully, holds out the parcel.

— Here. From Gian Piero. He said to open it when you’re alone.

Claire takes it; it’s light, and something shifts inside.

— Thank you. Have you… have you worked for him long?

Soo-ah tips her head slightly, a discreet smile.

— He’ll explain that to you.

Soo-ah takes a step closer; her scent — jasmine and sandalwood — brushes against Claire.

— He also asked me to photograph you. In front of the mirror.

Claire flushes violently. Knowing that Soo-ah knows about that… it’s humiliating. Arousing, too?

— Photograph me?

— Naked. He said you were very beautiful, and that he wanted pictures of you.

— But I don’t know you! I’m not going to undress in front of you! And you… you’re just his assistant?

Soo-ah pauses; her eyes don’t blink.

— I’m his assistant. His messenger too, sometimes. He likes things to go through someone he trusts. What should I tell him — that you refused because you didn’t know me?

Claire hesitates a moment, the kraft parcel still in her hands, the black ribbon sliding a little under her fingers. The silence stretches between them, charged, almost palpable. Soo-ah doesn’t move, doesn’t push; she waits with that patience that seems to be part of her, as though she had already watched this kind of scene play out.

Claire feels her pulse beating in her throat, in her temples, and lower too, between her thighs, where the shirt dress is already sticking slightly to her skin. She is wearing nothing but this thin cloth that traces the shapes of her body under Soo-ah’s calm, attentive gaze.

She could refuse. Say no, politely but firmly. Close the door. Keep her dignity, her fear, her anger at Gian Piero who is playing with her. But something holds her back.

She sets the parcel down on the hall console, slowly, as if to buy time.

— Come properly inside, she says, in a voice she’d like to be steadier. We’re not going to do this on the doorstep.

Soo-ah tips her head slightly, unruffled, and comes forward. She closes the door behind her without a sound. The air seems to thicken.

Claire crosses the sitting room and switches on the floor lamp, whose warm light gilds the edges of the room. She stops in front of the big wall mirror and finds her reflection there: hair still damp from the shower, the dress open on the furrow of her chest, bare legs, red-varnished nails under the tawny leather strap of her heels. When she turns, the curve of her heels, revealed at each step, adds something offered and dangerously unsettling to her silhouette.

She turns back to Soo-ah.

— What exactly did he say to you? Word for word, please.

Soo-ah takes her phone from her trench pocket, sets it on the low table without switching it on.

— “Ask her to walk slowly, naked, as if she were alone. To open her shoulders. Take her front on, in profile, shoot a lot. No filter, no posing. Just her, natural.”

Claire swallows. Her eyes sting, but she is aroused.

— And you… do you do this often? Take photographs of women for him?

Soo-ah’s shoulders lift imperceptibly.

— I do what he asks me. As well as I can.

A silence.

Claire closes her eyes, breathes deeply. Her breasts pull at the white linen. Then, without a word, she undoes the buttons of her dress. The cloth slips off her shoulders, falls in a light heap at her feet. She is naked, keeping only her heels, and her fine ankles invite the eye higher, up the curve of her legs. The lamplight strokes her skin, follows the line of her hips, cuts out the darker triangle of her pubis, and lays bare the full shape of her chest.

She turns to the mirror, her back to Soo-ah at first. She sees the reflection of her green eyes. She straightens, arches her lower back slightly. Her breasts hang naturally, heavy, magnificent, the way Gian Piero loved them.

Then she pivots slowly, defying Soo-ah.

— Take your photographs.

Soo-ah takes a small latest-generation Canon from her bag. No comment. No complicity. Just a cold, precise attention. Discreet flash. Click. Click. Front on. Three-quarters. Several in profile, where Claire’s chest fills the frame insolently.

When it’s done, Soo-ah puts the camera away.

— Thank you. He’ll be pleased. I’ll go.

Claire doesn’t move straight away. Naked, still, she feels the cool air on her skin.

— And now? she asks, her voice hoarse.

Soo-ah heads for the door.

— Gian Piero will contact you. Oh, and Claire…

She turns back, almost whispering:

— You’re even more beautiful than he said.

The door closes softly.

Alone at once, Claire sits down, the little kraft parcel still tied with its black ribbon in her hands. She pulls gently at the knot; the paper opens like a skin being bared. Inside, a tiny phial of dark glass, barely bigger than a finger, capped with a chased silver stopper. And underneath, carefully folded, a note:

“Claire, I’ll be back soon. Try this perfume, it was made for you. I’d like you to buy yourself some beautiful lingerie. Something really daring, that will show you off. Imagine I’m there.”

She unscrews the phial’s stopper. A fragrance rises at once, dense, almost palpable. It’s a subtle blend of sambac jasmine and ylang-ylang, with a touch of sandalwood and a smoky point of oud, evoking aged leather and forgotten spices. The scent fills the room and sets her heart going. She closes the bottle, overwhelmed.

The next morning she leaves the house in a grey wool coat, belted at the waist, over a plain sweater dress. Underneath, nothing. Just her skin and the air stroking the inside of her thighs and the cleft of her buttocks at every movement.

In the Galeries de la Porte Louise she goes into a shop with dark windows, lit by dimmed spots: high-end lingerie, pieces in French lace, Italian silk, audacious cuts. Stylised mannequins wear open-work bodysuits, string thongs barely wider than a thread, and transparent bras that serve only to show off. Claire feels the saleswomen’s eyes slide over her the moment she walks in — polite curiosity at first, then… something else.

She chooses without hesitating: a black bodysuit in ultra-fine tulle, fishnet over the breasts with just two bands of lace to hide what can’t be shown, a matching string thong, so minimal it disappears between her buttocks, and finally a push-up set in blue and white satin that she wants to try on, though she knows perfectly well that no bra of that kind can contain the natural volume of her chest.

In the spacious fitting room, mirrors on three sides, warm and flattering light, she lets the coat drop, then the dress. Naked, she opens her shoulders, for Gian Piero. The wide, light-brown areolae of her breasts shrink at the thought that someone might see her. She lifts them slightly, lets them fall back with a shiver. The drop of perfume she dabbed on her wrists fills the cubicle.

The curtain parts without a sound. A young saleswoman — twenty-five, twenty-eight perhaps, short ash-dyed hair, a small bird tattoo on her collarbone — comes in with another size of bodysuit in her hands.

— I’ve brought you the 95F in case… Oh.

She stops dead. Her eyes take in Claire’s naked body, and linger a second too long. She reddens, stammers:

— Sorry, I… I’ll come straight back.

She goes out hurriedly. Through the badly drawn curtain, Claire hears the smothered whisper:

— God, you should see her… She must be thirty-five. Her body is unbelievable. I’d kill to look like that. And her arse, her legs… it’s not fair, honestly.

The other saleswoman lets out a slightly awkward laugh. Claire feels a warmth in her belly. She isn’t ashamed. Not really. On the contrary: she feels new, and she knows she’s being watched. She puts on the black bodysuit first. The fishnet embraces her breasts without containing them; the nipples point through the fine fabric like invitations. The string thong disappears between her round buttocks, leaving only a discreet triangle of cloth over the pubis. She turns in profile in front of the main mirror, imagines Gian Piero behind her, hands on her hips, and her belly tightens, wet.

She chooses the most daring set: the black fishnet bodysuit and the string thong. She keeps it on, slips the sweater dress over the top, then the coat. No bra, no knickers underneath — just this spidery lace stroking her skin at every step. The memory of Gian Piero’s sex erect in front of her face comes to her suddenly in a flash, and her breathing quickens…

On the tram home, sitting by the window, she is aware of everything. The passengers around her know nothing, but she knows: under the sensible wool, her body is offered, adorned for him, soaked with anticipation.

She closes her eyes, leans her head against the cold glass, and murmurs for herself alone:

— I want you to come back…

A murmur barely audible, swallowed by the purr of the tram and the low hum of conversation.

Brussels goes past — lit shop windows, hurried silhouettes under the fine March rain — and for the first time in a long while, Claire feels alive. Dangerously alive. As though her body, finally woken, refused to go back to sleep.

Claire Gives Up

Two months have passed since Soo-ah’s visit. No news. The silence is total, merciless.

At first Claire accepted the absence as a trial, a challenge, something that could make her grow, that would make her still more desirable when she saw Gian Piero again.

These days she swings between despair and sadness. She still presents herself at the mirror, straight, shoulders open, breasts bare. But she doesn’t really believe in it any more. All of it was just one evening’s game, a parenthesis of hope now closed.

And one Friday evening, she goes back to la Tourelle.

Perhaps the exhaustion of fighting the emptiness. Perhaps the unconscious wish to prove she can still please, still exist for a gaze other than her own. Or simply to see again the place where it all began. The light lasts longer now — it’s May, and spring is properly settling in.

It’s seven o’clock. The light is golden, the conversations hushed, a smell of coffee and waxed wood.

And he’s there. The man who spoke to her two months earlier. At the same table.

He looks up, recognises her instantly. An immediate smile, almost relieved, lights his face. He gets up, crosses the room without hesitating.

— Good evening. My name is Julien. We ran into each other here a while ago. Do you remember?

His voice is steady, warm, not pushing. He seems genuinely glad to see her again.

Claire nods, a little surprised by the gentleness of this ordinary moment.

— Yes… I think so.

He’s thirty, maybe a bit more, regular features, short salt-and-pepper hair, a frank gaze without aggression. He offers her a drink. She accepts. Why not? she thinks. This or something else…

They talk. He’s a consultant for a big firm, travels a lot, single. He laughs easily, asks questions without insisting. Claire catches herself smiling, and talking about herself. For the first time in a long while, Gian Piero isn’t in the foreground.

And when, later, he offers to walk her home, she says yes.

At her place, they move closer. A glass of wine, then another. The low light of the sitting room. It’s clear that Julien wants her. The looks, the brushes of contact, the tone of his voice. He comes to her, kisses her gently at first, and Claire lets it happen, on autopilot.

His man’s hands unbutton her blouse, work their way under the fine lace of the fishnet bodysuit she still wears sometimes “for herself” — really? He murmurs that she’s superb, and confides that the image he’s kept of her chest since their first meeting at la Tourelle obsesses him, that he masturbates regularly imagining her. She lets him take her breasts in his hands, and he massages them, weighs them, then begins to lick them. Oddly, she doesn’t feel much. She feels the man’s hard sex against her thigh through his trousers.

Julien draws her towards the bedroom. Clothes falling in disorderly cascade. He’s already naked, aroused, and he rolls a condom onto his erection. Claire lies back, thighs open, the bodysuit pushed up to her waist, the string thong pulled aside. He positions himself over her, rubs the head of him against her wet lips. She closes her eyes, a little drunk… and braces for the sensation of this man’s sex about to enter her, when suddenly — an invisible wall, but a clear one. Her body doesn’t want it. No panic, no disgust, just… a refusal, sharp, clear, that wakes her.

— Wait… she murmurs, sitting up.

Julien stops, surprised.

— I… I can’t. I’m sorry.

He draws back, shocked, then looks at her, incredulous. Then insulted. Very insulted.

— Seriously? You let me kiss you, you undress, you lie down, and now you tell me no?

— I don’t know why. It isn’t you. Really. I can’t, that’s all.

All at once, frustrated, he tears off the condom, throws it on the floor in a rage, and grabs his boxers and his trousers, pulling them on in a dejected silence. Claire stays sitting on the bed, naked, hands flat on the mattress, strangely calm.

— You’re completely out of your mind, you know that? he throws at her as he puts on his shirt.

The front door slams, and she hears him go.

The Car

Claire gets up and goes to the window. She sees him come out, cross the street furiously, get into his little grey Audi and pull away hard. She stays there, motionless, at the cold glass.

And that’s when she notices the car. Parked on the other side of the street, under the streetlamp. Gian Piero’s old dark-green Saab, the one he was driving the night of the Chalet Robinson.

Her heart explodes in her chest. A physical shock, violent. Legs shaking, she steps back, then again. No. It’s impossible. Not just now. Not when a man is walking out of her house.

And yet the car is there. Still. Engine off. Someone inside? She can’t make anything out through the dark glass.

Claire pulls on the old fleece dressing gown lying on a chair and, barefoot, goes down the stairs four at a time, crosses the hall and throws the front door open. The cool night air takes her breath.

She crosses the street in three strides, the gown floating over her bare legs. And she slaps the flat of her hand against the driver’s window.

The window comes down slowly, with that discreet electric purr.

He’s there. Gian Piero. Hair a little longer, three days of beard, the same black gaze, intense, that had gone through her the first time. He doesn’t smile. He looks at her.

— Claire… his voice is low and rough.

She stands frozen, the gown open over her chest, barefoot on the tarmac, unable to speak. The tears rise without her being able to hold them.

— You… you were here this evening?

He nods in silence.

— Yes, I saw you go in.

The silence is dense. The street is deserted. Only the far-off sound of a siren and Claire’s ragged breathing.

— I waited for you, all this time.

Gian Piero’s eyes travel over her: the half-open gown, her heaving chest, her bare legs…

— I think I’ve come too late…

His voice is calm, almost gentle, well pitched. He’s still looking at me, his eyes going down over my half-open gown, over my chest that rises too fast, over my bare legs that are shaking.

I feel something break in me.

The sobs come all at once, violent, uncontrollable. I clamp a hand over my mouth to try to hold them in, but it’s no use. The tears run, hot, salty, and I’m shaking so much I have to lean on the roof of the car.

— Why… why do you say that? I almost scream it, my voice cracked. Why? Why didn’t you come sooner? Two months! Two months where I waited like an idiot, where I looked at myself in the mirror every single evening, where I did everything you wanted even though you weren’t there! I wore your perfume, I bought that fucking lingerie, I… I thought about you every day!

I hit the roof of the car with the flat of my hand, hard; it makes a dull sound. My knuckles hurt, but I don’t care.

— And you? Where were you? You sent me your little Soo-ah with her parcel and her photographs, and then? Nothing! Radio silence! You left me alone with… with all of that in my head, in my body! Do you know what it’s like to wake up every morning wondering if today you’ll call? If you’ll turn up again? Do you know what it’s like to touch yourself thinking of you and then cry afterwards because you’re not there?

I’m crying so hard I’m breathing in jerks, nose running, throat burning. I wipe my face with the sleeve of the gown, but it changes nothing. I’m angry, but my anger and my tears are setting me free.

— And tonight… tonight I let that man come up to my place, because I thought: what’s the point?! Because I told myself you wouldn’t come back, that it had been a one-off for you, and that life had to go on!

— Did you sleep with him?

— What do you think?

— I don’t know, Claire. It’s your life, it’s for you to tell me…

My tears burst out; I’m almost naked, in the middle of my own street, anyone can see me but I don’t care, I shout, furious.

— NO! I couldn’t! My body said no. Because it’s you. And nobody else. Even now. What have you done to me?

I lean into the open window, forearms on the sill, my breasts touching the cold metal of the door. I stare into his eyes, furious and in tears. I shout:

— Answer me! Are you just going to drive off and leave me here? With my need and my fear, and my memories?

My voice breaks on the last words.

— Why didn’t you come sooner? Why are you doing this to me? Am I nothing to you?

He looks at me without moving, without blinking. His face is impassive, but imperceptibly tight.

— Let’s go inside, Claire, he says at last, still just as calm. I’ll answer you. But not here, not in the street.

He gets out of the car, takes me by the arm and walks me to my front door. And I go with him, I give myself up to his strength and to that kindness I know he’s capable of. He shuts the door and draws me towards the sofa, sits down with me, then gets up again and runs a glass of water that he hands me gently.

He breathes in slowly, out through his nose. And I begin to breathe normally.

— I couldn’t come sooner, Claire. It’s a complicated situation, which I’ll explain to you. Is it too late for you?

The silence. Just our breathing, mine broken, his controlled.

— What am I to you, Gian? I want to know.

He holds out his hand to me, palm open, saying nothing.

I look at it. Then, still crying, I take it.

— I want you to be mine, Claire — a woman, a mistress and an ally. I want you to live for me, and with me.

Love

I look at him, and I feel my body waking after these two months of forced sleep. I search for the exact meaning of those words — “mine”, “live for me, and with me…” — but my brain skids, too much at once. I don’t need to understand every syllable. My body says yes before my mouth can answer.

— I want to be yours, Gian, I want to be yours. My voice is still broken from the sobbing. The words come out on their own, like a surrender I’ve been waiting for all my life.

He looks at me in silence a moment, his face relaxed. He pulls his jumper off over his head. He takes a condom from the pocket of his jeans and tears the wrapper with his teeth. The jeans slide down his thighs in a single movement, and the cloth falls in a heap at his feet.

He rolls the condom down the column of his sex, already up, thick, long, vertical.

His body is lean, well put together: broad shoulders and a flat stomach, with a line of black hair running from the navel down. A fine scar crosses his left hip — a memento of a life that hasn’t always been gentle. His skin still carries the far-off smell of travel, a mix of sandalwood, clean sweat and aeroplane metal.

He takes me by the wrists and pulls me against him. I’m burning. His palms travel over my shoulders, sweeping the gown to the floor in one fluid gesture. He presses me against him, takes hold of my bare buttocks and lifts me in a single movement, as though I weighed nothing. He slides his forearms under my thighs, one after the other, and I hold on to his shoulders. I feel him hard against my belly, and my body answers instantly — I’m wet and hot, already ready to take him, and I moan, a low sound, almost plaintive.

His mouth searches for mine, and my tongue melts into his. I feel the hard head of him looking for its way into me, finding it, entering me with a slow, powerful push. It’s a sensation I’ve never known; my ex-husband had neither this desire for me nor this strength. He draws back almost all the way and sinks in again to the deepest part of me, then again, and again. His sex fills me, slicker with every thrust of his hips. I breathe into his ear, “Gian, Gian…” My breasts crush against his chest at every stroke. My legs tighten around him, and my heels dig into the small of his back.

The wet sound of our bodies in the room, the sound of his groin slapping against me. I tense around him. I’m soaked, on the edge. I cry out.

In a few strides he carries me to the big table in the living room — the one where I put my files, my cups, my bills. He sets me down on it, still inside me. I grip the edge of the table, arms above my head, legs open. I see him above me, I want him with all my flesh. I close my eyes.

He takes hold of my thighs and the thrusts begin again, harder now. My breasts roll heavily to the rhythm of his battering, nipples hard and up. The table creaks under us, cold against my back, but I don’t care. He puts a hand on my throat, and my pulse goes wild.

— Look at me.

I open my eyes. His are black, intense. I dive in and lose myself. He goes faster still. I arch violently, and I cry out, I cry out my pleasure, and my wanting to be his, to give myself over to his will…

The orgasm lifts me brutally as I feel his sex explode in long spurts that swell the condom, while a wet heat runs down the cleft of my buttocks.

The sound of our breathing in the room, mine panting, his deep and slower…

I’m shaking. He strokes my hair, damp with sweat. He speaks in a low voice.

— You’re mine. At last.

I nod, exhausted but filled.

— I’ve been yours since the first night…

He carries me to the bed, and I sink slowly into nothing, one hand on his heart, as if to make sure he won’t disappear again.

When morning wakes me, pale and soft, I’m still curled against him, my breasts pressed to his side. I watch him sleep: his features relaxed, his three days of beard, that discreet scar on his cheekbone I’d never noticed before. I put my lips on his shoulder, very gently.

He stirs and opens his eyes. We stay silent, naked under the sheet. Finally I ask him, very low:

— Why did you disappear, Gian?

He looks at me, sighs and says nothing. I feel his warm hand on my hip, and I wait; I have time now. In the end he speaks, in a low, measured voice:

— I’ve knocked about a fair bit these last twenty years, and I tried a good many things before I found my way. Silence. I’ve always loved women. Certain women. Listening to them, watching them live, dancing with them, touching them, sometimes making love to them. And one day I realised the decisive impact I could sometimes have, the way I could be a strong, positive influence on the life of certain women. It was a revelation, and it took me a while to take it in, but once I understood that it stimulated me, and once I saw clearly the good I could do… I felt I was in my place, and I carried on.

He looks at me, as though weighing what his words are doing to me. I hold my breath, but I say nothing. I don’t know what to expect, but I fear the worst…

— I help women. Women who have cut themselves off from themselves, from their own desire, without even noticing. I help them come back. To be whole again.

He looks at me, to see whether I understand, or whether I’m going to run.

— It means entering their intimacy. With their agreement, and their husband’s, when there is one. Sometimes it goes as far as the body. I have to want it too — otherwise it doesn’t work.

— And… it’s a profession? You’re paid for it?

— Very well paid, yes.

I sit up, I get out of the bed.

— It was too good to be true. Right. We’ll stop there.

Naked in the middle of the bedroom, my sobs come up, uncontrollable; I don’t know where to put myself, my chest is rising too fast, I don’t know what to do with my hands, with my body, with me. And I cry, like a child watching her dream collapse. I shout.

— Did you want me to pay you, too?

He gets up as though on a spring, and comes towards me. I back away.

— Don’t touch me!

He doesn’t make a move; he looks at me. Intensely. I’m on a wire, the tears running down over my chest.

— Claire.

— What?!

— Claire?

— What? What do you want from me?

— I love you.

The words seem to come out of nowhere; they make no sense.

— I’ve wanted you since the first evening. I love you, Claire.

— But Gian…!

— What I do — my work — has nothing to do with you. Please, calm down and come here to me.

Once again I’m overtaken, swamped. I’m in shock, everything I think I know is colliding inside me, but he’s looking at me, and I feel it, beyond the words. He really wants me. I’m afraid; everything he’s telling me is so new. He takes me by the hand and I let him. We sit on the edge of the bed.

— I was in the Emirates for a young woman. Too alone, too unhappy for all that she had. I succeeded — better than I should have. She became attached to me. Her uncle held me there, my passport confiscated, to force me to come back and see her one last time.

His hand stays in mine, still.

— Soo-ah came to fetch me. She’s over there, as a guarantee of my word.

My sobs have quietened, but I’m still breathing in jerks, like a small child after some enormous grief.

— And you’re going back?

— Tonight. Three days, no more.

I feel empty. I ask in a tired voice.

— And Soo-ah… is she really just your assistant?

He smiles slightly, almost tenderly.

— No. Not only. Eight years ago, in Korea, she was a teenager, and she found herself in a very dangerous situation — a family debt, gangsters ready to sell her. I got her out of it. I took her away, protected her, taught her the codes of the world I live in, and paid for her studies. She’s intelligent, capable and determined. And she chose to stay with me and work at my side.

— You’re going to fetch her?

— Yes. We’ll come back together in three days.

A silence. My voice breaks. I look at my knees.

— And the two of us, in all this?

He takes my chin and gently makes me lift my eyes. He sees me; I have the feeling he feels my grief and my doubts.

— You — you’re the one I’ve been looking for, for so long… His voice alters, for the space of a breath. I’d stopped hoping I would meet you one day. I was afraid you wouldn’t have waited for me, and when I saw that man come out of your house, I thought I’d come too late. Look at me?

First my mind wavers, and then his presence, his gaze, his voice — what else? — carry off my doubts and my sadness the way the wind carries off leaves.

— I’ll be back in three days, Sunday at the latest. I’ll have three weeks free: do you want to travel with me? Would that be possible, with your work?

I close my eyes. Do I want that? I waited for him, hoped for him, despaired of him, for two months, and he’s here in front of me… YES, of course! But I’m afraid, it’s all so new. Am I going to have to share him? With Soo-ah? With others? Will I be able to bear it?

— Just you and me?

— Most of the time, yes. Come on, get up, I’ll make us coffee — but come here first.

He rises in one fluid movement and draws me against him; his arms come round me, and we stand there wrapped together, naked, in the morning light.

I feel full of his presence, his smell; we breathe together in the silence, and I want it never to stop.

— If you say yes, we’ll go to Rome. It’s a superb city at this time of year, and there’s a little restaurant in particular I want you to know: Osteria da Fortunata, near Campo de’ Fiori. And after that, wherever you like — you decide.

I give a half-smile — and yet inside me, a real one, for the first time in two months.

— I’ll think about it, but why not…

He looks at me… he knows I have no need whatsoever to think about it…

The coffee steams on the table, its smell filling the room.

On my little JBL speaker, Al Green’s voice dances over Take Me To The River while I lay the breakfast table: baguette, cheese, ham, butter and raspberry jam.

The moment is calm, almost unreal; I try to look detached. I gaze at him while he eats, hardly able to take in that he’s finally here for me, with me.

We eat almost in silence, but this silence has nothing of the one from earlier this morning. He puts his hand on mine, and I look at it.

— Your number — I don’t even have your number, Gian. How do you expect me to agree to come to Rome if I can’t even write to you?

He smiles, takes his phone from the pocket of the jeans over the chair, hands it to me.

— Put your number in for me?

I type my name in front of my own eyes, my number, and I ring my phone, which starts to ring.

— There. Now you can write to me, at any hour.

— And you’ll answer?

— Cross my heart and hope to die! Of course…

The coffee goes cold in the cups, but neither of us seems to want to leave the table.

When he finally gets up to dress, I follow him into the bedroom. He pulls on his jumper and his jeans, and draws me into his arms. I put my arms round his neck, and he crushes my naked body tenderly against him. I press my cheek to his chest, I breathe his smell, I want to melt into him.

— Three days, Claire… I’ll be here on Sunday.

At last I manage to detach myself from him and I push him gently away. He goes out. From the window, I watch the Saab start up in the still-sleeping street.

I feel full of a new energy, and I dial Léa’s number. I’m smiling.