A Nearly Perfect Copy - By Allison Amend Page 0,23
and so he ate slowly, excruciatingly slowly, as if he could somehow stall time and extend the moment.
He watched as she put down her fork to light another cigarette. She waved the smoke away from their table. Maybe it was the wine, but now he didn’t find the silence uncomfortable. He wondered if she did. Should he say something? No, he decided. He was not going to make conversation for conversation’s sake. That was what bobos did. Artists didn’t have to conform to those conventions. It was one of the few perks.
She tapped her ash in the clever ashtray.
“I’m done,” she announced, and pushed the half-full plate closer toward Gabriel. “Too much food for me!”
Gabriel finished his plate. Then he ate the rest of hers. No sense in letting it go to waste, and he was hungry. In fact, he felt empty.
When he finally set down his fork, she stubbed out her cigarette and, by lifting her head, summoned the waiter.
She demanded the check in the typical French way, which had the trappings of politesse—the conditional verb, the s’il vous plaît, the honorific monsieur that dripped of condescension. There were parts of French culture that he would never master. Spaniards asked for the check in full recognition that the waiter’s job was to bring it, which implied neither servitude nor gratitude. No class wars were played out in restaurants.
Gabriel counted out the bills slowly, attempting to hide them under the table. It was easily the most expensive meal he’d ever eaten. Colette didn’t offer to split it.
“We’ll have coffee at my place,” she said. “I don’t live far.”
They walked back along the Avenue de New York. When Colette slipped on a stone, tottering on her heels, Gabriel grabbed her arm and felt the give of her flesh. When you touched someone you were attracted to, why was it different from touching a stranger on the street? Was the difference in the touch itself, the pheromones that the other person gave off? Or was the excitement all in the mind—did the brain send signals to the arm hairs to tingle, the webs of the fingers to itch, the toes to curl?
They turned down a street he didn’t know. She unlocked the front door, and without a word, without turning on the stairway light, she walked in front of him up the stairs.
Her apartment was an efficiency, tidy and compact. On her walls she had framed vintage Tinsley’s catalog covers. There was a red velvet love seat and a bed. He sat on the love seat.
Colette turned on the electric kettle. Then she sat down next to him and turned her face to his. When her lips met his, Gabriel let her take the lead, keeping his hands on her hips.
The kettle clicked off and Colette pulled away. She spoke for the first time in minutes. “How do you take it?”
“With sugar.”
As she was making the coffee, her phone rang. She answered it and began to chat, using so much slang and speaking so quickly that Gabriel had trouble understanding what she was saying. She was talking to a good friend, that much he knew, because she called the person pote, an old-fashioned word that meant “mate” or “buddy.”
Still talking, she set a tray with coffee and biscotti down on the love seat and then went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. Gabriel sipped at the coffee. Her voice went quiet. What was she talking about in there? Hadn’t they come back to her place to screw? Gabriel felt suddenly confused by the evening. Had he completely misinterpreted her signals? He decided to wait until she came back, and then say a quick good-bye.
He’d finished his coffee by the time she emerged from the bathroom, wearing a black boned corset and high-cut lace panties. Gabriel was surprised at her aggression. Pleasantly surprised, and immediately aroused. He stood up and she steered them toward the bed, undressing him quickly, biting his nipples. Her silence was exciting. Once he was inside her he looked down and smoothed her hair back from her head. The intensity of his feeling surprised him. She didn’t even blink, not for hours, it seemed like, and then he closed his eyes. Because he was embarrassed. Because that’s what you were supposed to do when fucking. Because he was afraid.
The next day, after Gabriel had gone to work and put in a couple of hours at the studio, he stopped by Colette’s. She was home, and dressed in