stupid to give Jessie one more chance. But she was a woman; a small part of me was still hoping she’d prove me wrong.
“Oh, it’s not so bad, is it?” he replied, his tone urging me to look at him. I did. He put out his cigarette, then leaned forward and rubbed his hands over the girl’s back and down over her large, hanging breasts. “Lovely,” he said. “I’m sure you’d enjoy them, too, Marcelle. How did the newspaper describe a night here again? As a ‘Sardanapalesque orgy,’ I think it was.”
I rolled my eyes and tried to ignore what was happening between his thighs, where that poor girl’s head was bobbing faster. “How you haven’t died of venereal disease yet is beyond me.”
“The big boy’s immune,” he said, looking down at his erection.
“So long, Red,” I said, stepping into the hall.
“So long, Marcelle. We’ll always have Paris!” he called after me.
I froze, then turned on my heel and marched back into the room. “We never had Paris,” I hissed.
“But we did,” he said, all humor gone from his expression. “I had you in Paris, Marcelle de Fabry. Many, many times, I had you. They really don’t make them any prettier than you, do they? I still remember every inch of that gorgeous body. I could probably draw a map of your freckles if I had enough to drink.”
“As I said, I’m never coming here again,” I said, feeling sick to my stomach.
“Marcelle,” he said, his expression softening.
“What.”
“One day, they’ll be free,” he said, nodding his head to the window, to the life on the street. “But until then, we might as well enjoy ourselves.”
I slammed the door behind me and flew down two flights of stairs. As I navigated the iron steps outside, I passed a Frenchman who said something leeringly in Russian.
“I’m not a valaque,” I barked, using the word the Frenchmen threw around for the white whores in Indochine. “So try to keep your zipper up.”
I hurried down the street, crowded with locals, and found the same pousse-pousse driver I’d just had, all too happy to earn another fare. Red had maneuvered Jessie to the plantation, as I’d wanted. And I knew he’d done more than just that. Feel free to shake her, I’d said. I knew how well Red could shake. But now I wished I’d used someone other than him to do so. I’d only chosen him because he had a handsome face and no moral scruples and thus was perfect for such tasks.
Of course, he had to bring up Paris. I should have snatched the money right then and there.
Paris.
It was late January 1924, when I was only nineteen, and during an unusually warm winter. I’d been modeling in the Patou salon, a special presentation for our best clients, and Red had been there as a guest of a rich married woman he was sleeping with. But two days later, he was sleeping with me instead. We’d had a wild two-week love affair, but then he left for London, followed by Burma, and I never heard from him again. I realized what he really was when I started hearing stories about him in Burma. Years later, I heard that he’d made his way to Indochine. He would not be avoidable, that much I knew, but what I needed him to be was silent. I did not keep much from Khoi, but that, I would always have to.
TWENTY-THREE
Jessie
November 3, 1933
“Thank you again for your kindness,” I said smoothly to Jacques, the Dau Tieng overseer, as he saw me to my seat on the train back north. “Victor is lucky to have you working for him,” I added, trying to sound genuine.
I knew I had to smile at Jacques. I had to be the polite woman, Victor’s perfect, helpful wife. But I was shattered. I had no idea how to be that woman anymore. My mind didn’t feel connected to my body at all. They were two separate entities, somehow traveling together.
“Innocent men used to die on these plantations in very high numbers, due to disease or negligent overseers,” Victor had said during the days I’d been with him. “I’m trying my best to see that that happens much less. But men who are trying to incite revolution, especially violent revolution, we can’t stand for that. We can’t have a repeat of 1927 or 1930.”
“Or 1932,” I’d added.
“Exactly.” He’d nodded as we walked up the stairs of the Phu Rieng plantation manager’s house for cocktails, both