Tatiana de Rosnay - A Secret Kept

“They’ve gone?”

“Yes.”

A silence.

“I’m divorced.” I don’t know why I say that. It sounds pathetic.

“So you’re stuck here for a bit, it seems?”

“Yes. She can’t be moved.”

She nods, gets up from the Harley. I admire the lithe way she swings her leg over the saddle.

“You have time for a drink?” she says.

She looks straight at me.

“Sure,” I say, trying to sound like this happens to me every day. “Any idea where?”

“Not much choice. There’s a bar over there, near the town hall. But it’s probably closed at this hour. Or there’s the bar at the Dauphin Hotel.”

“That’s where I’m staying,” I say.

She nods. “There’s no other place to stay. It’s the only hotel open at this time of year.”

She walks faster than I do, and I get breathless trying to keep up with her. We are silent, but the silence is not heavy. When we get to the hotel, there is no one in the bar. We wait around for a while. The place seems totally empty.

“You must have a minibar in your room,” she says.

Again that direct look, straight at me. There is something both terrifying and exhilarating about her. She follows me to my room. I fumble with my keys. The door slides open, clicks shut, and there she is in my arms, the glossy hair against my cheek. She kisses me deeply, thoroughly. She tastes of mint and tobacco. She is stronger, taller than Astrid or any other woman I’ve held in my arms recently.

I feel stupid, standing there being kissed, like a clumsy teenager, swamped by my own inertia. My hands suddenly come to life. I grasp her. Like a drowning man clasping a life jacket, I clasp her to me feverishly, my palms flat against the small of her back. She melts into me, makes small, crooning sighs that come from deep within her. We fall onto the bed, and she straddles me with the same easy movement she used on her motorbike. Her eyes seem to glow like a cat’s. She smiles slowly, then unbuckles my belt, unzips my fly. She touches me with a precise yet gentle sensuality that has me rock hard in seconds. She never stops looking at me, smiling at me, even as I enter her. She immediately slows me down, masterfully, stops my hips from bucking, and I know this will not be one of those rapid, rudimentary fucks that is over in minutes. This is something else.

She rides me, and I watch the tawny lines of her body. She leans down to clasp my face between her hands, and she kisses me with a tenderness that surprises me. She takes her time, revels in it. What happens is something slow, unhurried, but the buildup is so powerful that I can feel it searing up through my toes to my tailbone and spine, scorching me, almost like pain. She lies flat out on me, breathless. Beneath my palm, the skin of her back is damp.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “I needed that.”

I manage a dry chuckle. “I beg to differ. I needed that as well.”

She reaches across to the table, grabs a cigarette, lights it, and hands it to me.

“The moment I laid eyes on you, I knew.”

“Knew what?” I ask.

“That I’d have you.”

She takes the cigarette from my fingers.

I suddenly notice I am wearing a condom. I have no recollection of her putting one on me. She must have slipped it on with a dexterity that I had not even fathomed.

“You still love her, don’t you?”

“Who?” I say that, but I know exactly who she means.

“Your wife.”

Why bother hiding anything from this unusual, beautiful stranger?

“Yes. I still love her. She left me for another man a year ago. I feel like shit.”

Angèle stubs the cigarette out. Then she turns to face me again.

“I could tell. Just by the way you looked at her. It must hurt.”

“It does.”

“What do you do? Your job, I mean.”

“I’m an architect. But the boring kind. I refurbish offices and warehouses. Hospitals, libraries, labs. Nothing exciting. I don’t create.”

“You like putting yourself down, don’t you?”

“No,” I say, stung.

“Then stop it.”

I remain silent, discreetly sliding the condom off. I get up to throw it away in the bathroom. I avoid looking at myself in the mirror, as always.

“And what about you, Madame Rouvatier? What do you do?” I say, coming back to the bed, keeping my stomach in.

She looks at me coolly.

“I’m a mortician.”

I swallow.

She smiles. Perfect white, square teeth.

“I handle dead people all day long. With the same hands that were stroking your dick a few moments ago.”

I glance at her hands. Strong and capable. Yet so feminine.

“Some men are turned off by my job. I don’t tell them. If I do, they lose their hard-on. Are you upset?”

“No,” I say truthfully. “Surprised, I guess. Tell me about your job. I’ve never met a mortician.”

“My job is about learning to respect death. That’s all. If your sister had died last night in that accident-and thank God, she didn’t-it would have been my job to make her look peaceful. So that you and your family could lay eyes on her one last time and not be afraid.”

“How do you do that?”

She shrugs. “It’s a job. The same way you do up offices, I do up death.”

“It is tough?”

“Yes. When you get children. Or babies. Or pregnant women.”

I shiver.

“Do you have any of your own? Children or babies?”

“No,” she says. “I’m not a family person. That’s why I admire other people’s.”

“Are you married?”

“You sound like a cop. I’m not the marrying kind either. Anything else?”

I smile. “Nope.”

“Good. Because I need to go now. My boyfriend will be wondering where I am.”

“Your boyfriend?” I cannot keep the bewilderment out of my voice.

She flashes her teeth at me. “Yes. I do have a couple of those.”

She gets up, passes into the bathroom. I hear the shower run briefly. She appears wrapped up in a towel. I watch her. I cannot help but find her fascinating. She knows it. She slips on her underwear, jeans, T-shirt.

“I’ll be seeing you again. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I breathe.

She leans over and kisses me full on the mouth, hungrily.

“I’ll be back for more, Monsieur Parisian. You don’t have to suck your tummy in like that. You’re hot enough as it is.”

The door clicks. She is gone. I try to get myself together. I still feel wiped out, as if a tidal wave has hit me. I cannot help chuckling as I shower, recalling her boldness. But behind the audacity, there is something incredibly appealing about her, a warmth, an irresistible charm. She has achieved something excellent, I decide as I change into a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. She made me feel good about myself, and this has not happened for ages. I catch myself humming and nearly laugh out loud.

I look at myself straight on in the mirror. I haven’t done that for a long time. My longish face. Thick eyebrows. Lean limbs apart from the big belly. I grin. The man facing me no longer looks like Droopy. No, he’s even rather sexy, I think, with his ruffled salt-and-pepper hair and a devilish glint in his chestnut eyes.

If only Astrid could see me now, I think. If only Astrid could want me as much as Angèle Rouvatier-who-is-coming-back-for-more did. I groan. When am I going to stop pining for my ex-wife? When am I going to be able to turn that page and move on?

I think of Angèle’s work. I have no idea what morticians do, exactly. Do I want to know? It fascinates me in some obscure way I do not want to delve into. I remember a TV documentary about what was done to bodies after death. Serums being pumped into them, crumpled-up faces smoothed out, wounds stitched together, limbs rearranged, special makeup applied. A grim job, I had remarked to Astrid, who was watching it with me. Here in this provincial hospital, what kind of deaths does Angèle Rouvatier get every day? Old people passing away. Car accidents. Cancer. Heart attacks. I wonder all of a sudden if a mortician tended to my mother’s body all those years ago. I remember the day we were taken to the hospital. I had closed my eyes. I wonder if Mélanie had too. The funeral took place at Saint-Pierre de Chaillot church, ten minutes away from the avenue Kléber. My mother was buried in the nearby Passy cemetery, at the Trocadéro. In the Rey family grave. I had taken the children there years ago to show them her grave, the grave of a grandmother they never knew. How is it that I have such little recollection of her funeral? Only short flashes of the dark church, few people, whispers, white lilies and their overpowering perfume, strangers hugging us over and over. I need to talk to my sister about this, to see what she remembers, if she remembers our mother’s dead face, but I know this is not the moment.