Chapter 10
Later that same night, dressed now in a smart suit, Raimond made a tour of the bars on the sloping streets running south from Pigalle.
The streets were crawling with American servicemen, some on foot, some creeping around in enormous cars, all looking for women. And women were there in plenty-French, negresses, Arab women, all sorts-standing on the street corners, peering from bars, disappearing into hotel doorways with a catch, climbing into cars to make whoopee with four men together. The bars were named with every invitation-likely to appeal to a woman hunter: "Sexy Club."
"Strip Club."
"Le Trou Mademoiselle." From them all came the sound of music and occasional dancing. It was a gaudy, garish glitter which to anybody who preferred home comforts was almost frightening, Raimond thought as he walked slowly from bar to bar, peering in at the doors, being immediately accosted by several painted women who "invited" him in for a drink. Some looked as if they might have entertainment at some time, others looked hopeless. He made a note to return to some if he didn't find what he was looking for. He didn't want to ask any questions unless he absolutely had to.
At last he found what he was looking for. It was rather quieter, more luxurious-looking than most. Somehow the cheap effect of the other bars which surrounded it didn't touch this one. You could tell as you approached that you needed to have even more money than a GI on leave to be able to hang around in its plush interior.
There were, however, some score of people inside, sitting at tables and on stools against the bar. They were drinking, but not, at the moment, talking. They were listening to the soft, sexy voice of a woman who was sitting informally at the far end of the bar, singing into a little microphone. Her voice, was quite something. It seemed to curl into the corners of the room, feeling for anybody who might be trying to escape its effect, and then to turn lazily back and whisper amongst its captives.
Raimond went to a table from which he could see the woman clearly. A first glance had shown him the long, blonde-silver streak running back from her forehead. He asked for Scotch and the white-smocked waiter brought it and slipped away. Raimond hoped his expense account would hold good.
He surveyed the woman and mentally raised his eyebrows. She really was some dish. There was about her an unashamed air of a willing playgirl who managed to extract the utmost enjoyment out of living dangerously on the edge of vice, and managed to keep her own special sexy vitality without getting'jaded.
She was wearing an amber-colored dress which was cut very low on her full breasts, revealing them as she leaned forward almost to the nipples. The dress was caught up in the front in a couple of long folds which stretched over her thighs just below the point where they ran into her hips, and attached in a bow on either hip. She wore very high-heeled, pointed, gold shoes which made her long, slender legs appear even more slender and her arms were covered in silver bracelets, matching the sequins all over the dress. She really seemed to be worth somebody's discovering.
Raimond had no doubt this was the girl he was looking for: the description fitted. He wondered just how easy it would be to get to know her and then how difficult it would be to get the information he needed from her. He was prepared to go to any lengths to get it, in fact he rather fancied going to any lengths. There were some aspects of this job it would be better not to tell his wife about.
He pulled his gaze off the girl and glanced discreetly around the club. Most of the people in there seemed just to be visitors enjoying the night life, mostly French, although there were one or two American tourists dressed in pale suits and having the air of successful business men on the one trip of their lives to faraway Europe. After two days in Paris they'd rush to Berlin for two days and then down to Rome for two days and then Nice for three and then perhaps Spain for a non-stop week's tour and then back to Paris and then on to London for a day. At the moment they looked a little drunk, so they might find themselves staying for more days than they'd anticipated in Paris.
At a corner table were two rich-looking Algerians. They were sipping iced whiskies and generally taking in the scene with pleasant, patronizing expressions. They obviously belonged. But neither of them fitted any of the descriptions he'd been given.
The room was very dim-just, a few wall lights-and it was some time before he realized that the music was coming from a little trio set back in an alcove at the far end of the room opposite where the girl was sitting at the bar. It was quite a slick setup. He wondered why people who owned or ran such a business needed to go around frightening the daylights out of down-and-out brethren for a few thousand francs of their public assistance.
The girl came to the end of her song and there was a reaction of untensing, as if everybody had been hypnotized up till that point.
A restrained but appreciative clapping followed and then, as the trio took up another number, the girl slipped off her stool and began to dance an exotic and somewhat erotic little business in front of the tables, between them and the bar.
She slid out of her dress as if it was part of the dance, as smooth as poking out a tongue.
Underneath, she was dressed in a tiny pair of gold, matching pants, and, to the general astonishment, as she'd appeared to be naked in that area, a couple of little circles of gold cloth which just covered her nipples, resting on them like coolie hats on a head, hiding nothing of the finely-shaped teat behind.
She really was something, Raimond decided once and for all ... Her body was sinuous and yet not lacking in flesh in the right places. She looked quite athletic as if she'd be a superbly active companion in bed. Her buttocks as she moved in a slow circle, were not too large, but compact and very firm-looking, her legs slender and flawless under their brown makeup. Her hips, swaying to the music, were long and well-moulded, with hints of hollows just above the thighs showing through the gold cloth. When she stretched her slender, firm arms, there were faint bevel-' lings of her ribs marking the flesh of her body and her breasts, reached up below a slender, unlined neck, seemed to fight against being lifted and then remained stretched and swaying heavily as she moved.
She didn't take off anything else-at least she didn't take off the one real garment that was left-and that was part of her superb attraction. Just that something that they weren't going to sec, that something hidden which heightened her sexiness threefold.
Her body as she danced seemed to respond with exact, controlled rhythm to her slightest thought. It was like a long, slender instrument in perfect coordination, a fine, sleek piece of material with nothing superfluous about it, resolving and dissolving in a series of sexy movements which emphasized breasts and then buttocks and then her hips and then the whole of her body merging and submerging into an instrument of love and offering.
The audience watched spellbound as the lights moved over her extremities, rotundities, sensuousness, voluptuousness. It was excruciating, they found, that they couldn't run their hands over that live, moving, inviting flesh; it was a pain which became almost unbearable.
Raimond watched, too, experiencing the same sensations. He thought of his wife, who was really just as attractive as this girl. He remembered how he'd first watched her at the tennis club, her skirts swishing up as she served, revealing a lacy piece of panties covering buttocks which stretched hard against the tight, confining material; how, facing her, waiting for her service, he'd been fascinated, to the point of losing his concentration, on the way her breast rose darkly up against her blouse as her racquet arm swept up over her head. And then those first passionate moments, kissing, petting in the car and at dances until the summer and the car trips out to the country where he'd had her finally in a field in the long grass with cars going by on the road 200 metres away and they'd kept their clothes on with just her panties lying beside them as he waved his hips up and down above her and she held him tight and seemed dazedly lost by her own passion. He loved her just as much now, more, and she still filled him with desire, but now it was muted. One had to accept that it became muted and that one could sit here and watch this dark, sexy figure undulating and desire it with a sharp edge which one never felt any more with more familiar limbs and breasts ... To know that this sharp, excited, overpoweringly desireful sensation was never again to be fully experienced and satisfied was a crushing disappointment, which made one all the more joyful when, in the course of one's duty-necessitated even to fulfill one's duty-one had to try to take this new, exciting body to bed.
This number, too, came to a yearning end and the applause was mixed with some polite whistles of appreciation. The girl curtsied, took her dress from the bar and disappeared into a back room. Raimond sat on, waiting to see if she came back, keeping an eye on the two Algerians who had taken out cigars and begun to smoke.
The little orchestra began to play some soft dance music and a couple got up and started to dance, to be followed by several more. A couple more lights were doused and a low hum of animated chatter began with a fresh ordering of drinks. A few more people came in from the street and filled up the remaining tables and then, at last, the girl, in a dress like the last only emerald, came out from the back room and went to the bar.
Raimond reached her just as she finished arranging herself comfortably on the well-upholstered stool.
He congratulated her quietly on her voice and her dance and offered her a drink. She accepted and took a champagne cocktail. The barman maintained a suave, unmoved exterior. but he must have seen this so often that it was a wonder he could resist a smile.
The girl gave Raimond a quick, appraising glance as be gave the order and took another Scotch himself. It was a long time since she'd had an "adventure." Mahmoud had been rather jealous lately and so she'd eased off as she didn't want to offend him to the point where he might have her pushed under a train. But the desire was there. She liked variety, she liked excitement, she liked love and glamour and having a good time. And things had been getting just so stick-in-the-mud she felt she could go to bed with a smelly old clochard and get a kick out of it. Raimond was the best-looking man she'd seen in some time and he had an air about him of-difficult to define-well, just being a real man.
"A votre sante," he said, raising his glass towards her, "and may that dance get even sexier, in which case you'll have to have a grating between you and the audience."
"Is that how it made you feel?" she asked, smiling.
"Worse than that," he said.
Yes, all the description fitted: pouting lower lip, dark eyes and small nose and, above all, the hair.
"Some people seem to think it would be sexier if I took off the pants," she said. She smiled into his eyes. Her voice was a taunting suggestion. She wanted a risque conversation. Even if she couldn't have a risque relationship, she'd have a risque conversation, just to send a tickle of frustrated anticipation up her spine.
"I'd certainly like to see that," Raimond said, falling in with the game. "Normally, of course, concealment adds something to the attraction, but I'd say that with a figure like yours you'd look so hot without anything that nobody'd be able to stay in his seat."
"That wouldn't be a good idea," she said. "I can only take one at a time and I'm very, very selective."
"What sort of qualities pass the selection board?"
She raised her eyes from his, looking from the top of his head down his long, wiry frame with the coolest invitation he'd ever come across.
"I'd say about your build, probably, and good looking in a manly way, intelligent, a good lover, good company and preferably with enough money not to have to worry about which bars, as candidates, they drink in."
"Must take quite a time to decide who has all those qualities."
"Well, one can start with the obvious and then allow a bit of time to find out about the others."
"I'd like to offer myself as a candidate-and no bar is too expensive."
She smiled at him cat-like and for a moment he thought he'd been wrong and that she was now going to tell him where to get off, like the bitch she might be. But instead she said:
"On a superficial view you have the right qualities, but I don't know what the rest of the selection board would say." Still smiling, she glanced casually over at the two Algerians, who didn't seem to be taking the slightest interest in her activities.
"Perhaps they wouldn't have to know anything about it," Raimond said, "or do they sleep in your room?"
She grinned at him and behind the grin was the excited glimmer of readiness to take this farther than she thought wise.
'They might report to my boss," she said. "I'm not supposed to play with the other boys. On the other hand they're getting rather slack and they might not even care to mention that they don't know where I got to for a while."
"Your boss must be a real hard taskmaster. Though I don't blame him for being concerned about his merchandise."
"He's variable. But don't let's talk about him. I have another number to do in about half an hour. Then I'D meet you outside. Have you got a car?"
"A black Simca in the Rue La Bruyere."
"Go and sit in it after my next number and I'll join you within ten minutes."
"All right," he said. "What's the name of my fellow conspirator ? "
"Rolande," he said, "and yours?"
"Pierre."
She sipped the last of her cocktail and smiled at him, letting her eyes linger on his as if in promise of what was in store for him.
"Don't get mixed up with any other girls in the meantime," she said.
"I wouldn't miss the chance of seeing those pants off," he said, grinning.
She pursed her lips in a little mock reproach and slid off the stool to take up her perch at the end of the bar beside the microphone.
Raimond went on sipping his whisky, listening to that sexy voice which was soon going to be whispering in his ear, watching that athletic body which, he hoped, was soon going to be joined with his. He never glanced at the two Algerians again.