Chapter 14
Winter days along the Cote d'Azur could be extremely bleak, as Monica Blakesley was rapidly realizing. She shivered and wrapped her thin cardigan sweater around her low-cut lace blouse as she hurried along Nice's windswept Promenade des Anglais, remembering how the wide seaside walkway had looked on a summer day. Sailboats and elegant pleasure cruisers anchored out in the brilliant blue water .. . sun-bronzed bodies packed like sardines in a tin on the stony beach . . . hundreds of interested male eyes appraising her svelte, shapely body and responding to the invitation in her eyes ...
Yes, she thought as she turned into a cafe to warm up, I know a hell of a lot about men now... I guess I never thought I'd know so much. "Un cafe-cognac," she said to the waiter, who knew her and flashed a lewd wink as he plopped down the glass and cup.
Sabina . .. how lucky she'd been to run into the Swedish girl that awful summer day after Dubois had fired her and she'd been wandering around Nice trying to find a job to earn her fare back to the States. Not to Orchardburg, Illinois, of course-she could never go back there!-but to some big anonymous city like New York or Chicago or Detroit where she could try to put her life back into some semblance of respectability. She'd figured that her college degree in French literature would make it easy to get work as a translator or something, but all the job bureaus she'd visited had either told her that there was no work till after the holiday season, or that she needed an apparently in-obtainable working permit. By late afternoon, when she ran into platinum-blonde Sabina in a cafe, she'd been ready to drown herself in the deep blue sea.
What a silly little fool I was then! she smiled into her second cognac, then automatically straightened her posture to emphasize her breasts in the décolleté pink lace blouse as two well-fed conventioneers entered, ogled her, and headed for a nearby table. Thank goodness I had Sabina to teach me what the score is! She called for a third cognac, consciously keeping her voice soft and husky for the benefit of the Germans.
The Swedish girl, whose real name was Else Aaronsson, was thirty-one although she didn't look nearly that old when she had her make-up and wig on. She'd introduced Monica to some of her men-friends, and given her lots of pointers about meeting her own financially lucrative males. The best thing, Sabina said, was to find a stupid "sugar-daddy"-but that would have to wait till next summer, probably. In the meantime they had their flat with its butane heater, and by May when the big-spenders descended on the Riviera again, Monica was sure she'd have put on weight again so she didn't look so wan and drawn, and that she'd meet the perfect man.
At least my breasts are still nice and full, Monica reflected, and she shifted her weight again so that an inch of cleavage would meet the Germans' eyes when they glanced her way again. It seemed that she'd be able to turn a trick this afternoon, after all, and make enough for the sexy fur coat she needed so badly.
Everything was fine! Couldn't be better!