PALE END OF DAY and the station empty. In the cafés the lights are not yet on. Dean sits outside at one of the iron tables. Along the tree-lined street which comes down from the square, small, almost alone, Anne-Marie descends. She turns the corner. One can almost hear her footsteps. The pigeons hurry away from her, uncertain where to go, cross back, flutter and finally burst upwards on creaking wings. When they are gone the quiet returns, the quiet of a hospital.
It is curious how I have begun to discern patterns, motifs that somehow had no significance for me at the time. As I view once more the many fragments of this encounter, as I touch them, turn them around, I find myself subject to sudden, illuminated moments. Meeting at the station, for instance. I had never really considered that. But then I remember that Dean, having left college the first time, spent six months in travel, driving to Mexico and then on to California, the legendary coast. And I think of the very symbol of his existence which continually appears and reappears to me, emerging from behind the trees in the dusk, its lights floating out, its dark shape fleeing along the road, that great, spectral car which haunts the villages, its tires worn, the chrome on its wheels beginning to speckle with rust. Journeys and intimations of journeys—I see now that he has always kept himself close to the life that flows, is transient, borne away. And I see his whole appearance differently. He is joined to the brevity of things. He has apprehended at least one great law.
She comes along the sidewalk to join him, a cheap, metallic blouse over her slacks. She looks like a tramp. Dean adores her. She says something as she sits down, a vanished word, and he nods. And now the waiter appears in a soiled, white coat.
Around the Champ de Mars a green Oldsmobile is turning, black soldiers inside. They are wearing sunglasses. My blood jumps. I can see them as they go by, very slowly, not talking, taking it all in. They are going to recognize me, suddenly I’m certain of it. I can’t look at them. The negro lover who has been seeking her for months has finally arrived. The car is going to stop across the street from the café and three men step out, lazily slamming the doors. The fourth remains in the back seat. My mind is racing. Is it him? Is he the one to whom she will be delivered? Dean is pushing someone. There’s a scuffle among the chairs.
Of course, it never happens. I have invented it all, their vengeance, their slow, deliberate walk. Instead, they drive slowly around the square, turning, turning. I become calm as I see them stop near the direction signs, read, and then head off on the road to Dijon.
The darkness has come down, and they walk in its fragrance. They reach her street. In the fruit store the lights are still on. The Corsicans are drinking. They’re in their undershirts, passing a bottle of wine back and forth as they sit half-buried among the crates. The floor is covered with newspapers. One can hear them laughing. A cat slips out the door.
“They’re very nice,” Anne-Marie says. “I pass them on the stairs. They always stand aside.”
They’re all sons, dark, the short hair curling out of their shirts.
“I find them good-looking,” she says.
She opens the door to her room. The key rattles. Dean is nervous. In his clothing he conceals, like an assassin, a small tube of lubricant—he would be frightened to have it seen. Still, it exists, cool as a surgical instrument. His answers are vague.
“I love the smell of the fruit,” she says.
She has opened the shutters. The room is darker than the night outside. Dean stands close behind her. She is quite naked. Air as cool as water washes over them.
“Can you smell it?” she asks.
“Yes.”
They lie in bed. The minutes seem somehow suspended. He feels she is waiting. He is afraid to recognize the moment.
“Do you want it that way?” he says. His voice sounds unfinished.
She was expecting it. She hesitates.
“Ne me fait pas mal.”
She watches in silence as he lays a thin coating on his prick. The strength seems to have left her. She behaves as if she has been condemned. He lowers himself carefully onto her back. He is determined to perform the most gentle act, but he doesn’t know exactly where to enter. He tries to find it.
“Plus haut,” she whispers.
His arms are trembling. Suddenly he feels her flesh give way and then, deliciously, the muscle close about him. He tries not to press against anything, to go in straight. She is breathing quickly, and as he withdraws on the first stroke he can feel her jerking with pleasure. It’s the short movements she likes. She thrusts herself against him. Moans escape her. Dean comes—it’s like a hemorrhage—and afterwards she clasps him tightly. He can feel faint annular twitches. He lies perfectly still until these final agonies, these quenching hugs which draw the last semen from him, subside. Then he withdraws. There is a tight, failing embrace of the head, then that, too, is gone. They have parted.
“Did you like it?” he asks.
“Beaucoup.”