“They’re beautiful.”
“Merci.”
“Are they part of your collage? You said you’d show me.”
Anouk smiled. “I did. But let’s get you cleaned up first, yes?”
Cecilia followed her over to the wet bar, where Anouk laid out her supplies. Gauze pads, Band-Aids, an array of travel-sized gadgets, two kinds of antibiotic ointments. Anouk was a regular French pharmacy.
She proceeded to unwrap and wash Cecilia’s hand. Her manner gentle, soothing.
“It doesn’t look too bad. Not wide, not too deep. You’ll live,” she said after a moment. “No stitches, but we should look if there is more glass.”
Cecilia nodded in agreement. She’d been watching the way Anouk’s mouth moved when she spoke. The way her upper lip protruded and glided over her teeth. Like a dance. The choreography decidedly un-American. She was so transfixed, she almost missed Anouk procuring a pair of tweezers from her tool kit. Almost.
“Waitwaitwait.”
“I have alcohol in the minibar.”
“I’ve had enough to drink, just give me a second. Do you have music?”
“I do.” Anouk slipped back into the bedroom and returned with a travel case of CDs. She plucked one, seemingly randomly, and inserted it in the stereo on the far side of the room.
A riotous guitar riff rang out, strident and familiar. Cecilia smiled: the Edge. Like a shot of adrenaline. By the time Bono’s hissing vocals came in, she was in a good place. A safe place. The tequila working its magic. “The Fly.”
“All right,” she said, edging up onto the bar, leaning back against the wall and closing her eyes. She allowed the music to move through her for a moment more before proffering her open palm. “I’m ready.”
For the minute or so that Anouk picked through her flesh, Cecilia was transported. Some place light and happy where nothing could touch her. Not the discomfort of the tweezer. Not the throbbing pain. Not the di Varenna drama. Not her tension with Lorry.
“Okay,” Anouk announced when she was done. “You’re glass-free.”
She rinsed Cecilia’s hand once more, and then dressed the wound, wrapping it expertly with a small bandage. When she was done, she stood directly across from her, her hips parallel to Cecilia’s knees.
For a second Anouk was still. The song had stopped, then started again. And without speaking, she lifted Cecilia’s bandaged hand to her face and kissed the palm, slow. Once. Twice. “All better?”
At another time, in another place, Cecilia might have analyzed the gesture. Dissected Anouk’s intentions, calculated the proper response, drawn a mental spreadsheet of all the things that could go wrong. But tonight, she was not listening to reason. She was listening to U2. Larry’s drums and Adam’s bass pounding in her chest. Bono’s words. And so when she had the impulse to twist her hand around Anouk’s wrist and pull her further into her, she followed it. “All better.”
Anouk smiled.
Cecilia edged forward on the bar, her legs parting, her thighs encircling the girl’s hips. She waited a half minute for Anouk to recoil, resist, and when she didn’t, Cecilia leaned all the way in and kissed her. Tentatively, at first. And then a second time. Her lips brushing gently over Anouk’s plump ones. How soft they were, ripe. So different from Lorry’s.
It was Anouk who moved in for the third kiss, lips parted, an invitation. Cecilia accepted. The unexpected thrill of her tongue, the sweet saltiness of strawberry margarita, the soft wetness of her mouth. Her beautiful mouth.
Cecilia had never kissed a girl and was surprised at how pleasant she found it. The tenderness, the lack of stubble and hard angles, the way it felt like velvet. The warm amber smell of Anouk’s skin, her hair tickling the side of Cecilia’s face. All of it was new. Intoxicating.
It’s no secret that a conscience can sometimes be a pest, Bono lulled.
The meaning was not lost on Cecilia. But for the moment, she held it at bay.
Anouk had freed her hands from Cecilia’s grasp and moved both to her thighs. Casual at first, and then deliberate, easing beneath Cecilia’s dress, pressing against her flesh.
Cecilia flinched.
So this is how the French do it, she thought, in her alcohol- and injury-induced haze. No unnecessary conversations, no second-guessing, no wasting time. No denying pleasure. Anouk saw what she wanted and went for it. Come up and see my etchings, indeed.
Her hands had moved to the insides of Cecilia’s legs, and Cecilia could feel herself responding. For fuck’s sake, who was this girl?
And then it dawned on her. That Anouk was the talent, and she, Cecilia, was working on behalf of the client, and in the hierarchy of things what she was doing was decidedly wrong. “I should, um…” She pulled away. “I should go.”
