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Phoebe concealed her relief. She hadn't done that kind of math for years, and she didn't remember a thing. "Don't judge a book by its cover, Mol. For example, if people judged you only by appearances they might decide you were unfriendly and a little bit snobbish. Both of us know that's not so, don't we?" She wanted to make Molly think, not to antagonize her, and she tried to take some of the sting out of her words with a smile. It didn't work.
"I'm not a snob! I'm a perfectly nice person with dozens of friends, and—" She gasped.
Phoebe followed the direction of her stricken gaze and saw Pooh pulling a bedraggled stuffed monkey from under Molly's bed. She quickly disengaged the animal from the poodle's mouth. "It's all right. Pooh didn't hurt your toy. See."
Molly's face was scarlet. "I don't ever want that dog in my bedroom again! Never! And it's not mine. I don't play with toys. I don't know how it got there. It's stupid! Throw it away!"
Phoebe had always been a sucker for lost souls, and her sister's rejection of the obviously well-loved stuffed monkey touched her in a way nothing else could have. At that moment, nothing could have made her send this confused, frightened young girl away.
She casually tossed the stuffed animal to the foot of the bed. "I've decided I'm not sending you back to Crayton. I'm going to keep you here in a public school for the fall semester."
"What! You can't do that!"
"I'm your guardian, and I certainly can." Scooping up Pooh, she walked to the door. "We move into the condo next week. If school doesn't work out, you can go back to Crayton for second semester."
"Why are you doing this? Why are you being so hateful?"
She knew the child would never believe the truth, so she shrugged. "Misery loves company? I have to stay here. Why shouldn't you?"
It wasn't until she reached the bottom of the staircase that the full implications of what she'd done hit her. She was already buried under problems she didn't know how to solve, and she had just added another one. When was she going to learn not to be so impulsive?
Trying to escape her troubled thoughts, she made her way to the French doors at the rear of the house and stepped outside. The night was quiet and fragrant with the scent of pine and roses. The floodlights on the back of the house illuminated the fringe of deeper woods at the edge of the yard, including the old maple tree that had been her refuge when she was a child. She found herself heading there. When she reached the tree, she saw that its bottom branches were too high to reach. Leaning back against the trunk, she stared toward the house.
Despite the peacefulness of the night, she couldn't shake off her worries. She didn't know anything about raising a teenager. How was she supposed to overcome Molly's hostility? She slipped her fingertips into the pockets of her slacks. Her problems with her sister weren't all that was bothering her. She missed Viktor and her friends. She felt like a freak when she walked in the door of the Stars complex. And she spent far too much time thinking about Dan Calebow. Why did he have to be so adamant in his refusal to let her rehire Ron?
She sighed. It was more than his attitude toward Ron that kept him in her thoughts. She was much too aware of him. Sometimes when he was nearby, she experienced an emotion that was very close to panic. Her heartbeat accelerated, her pulses quickened, and she had the unsettling sensation that her body was coming awake after a very long hibernation. It was a ridiculous notion. She knew too well that she was permanently damaged when it came to men.
Even though the night was warm, she removed her hands from her pockets and rubbed her arms against a sudden chill. Memories flooded her, and as the night sounds enveloped her, she could feel herself being drawn back to those early months in Paris.
When she'd arrived, she'd located a friend from Crayton and had moved into her tiny, third floor flat in Montparnasse, not far from the gaudy, bustling intersection where the Boulevard du Montparnasse meets the Boulevard Raspail. For weeks, she had seldom left her bed. Instead, she stared at the ceiling while she gradually convinced herself that she had somehow been responsible for her own rape. No one had forced her to dance with Craig. No one had forced her to laugh at his jokes and flirt with him. She had done everything she could to make him like her.
Slowly she grew to believe that what had happened was her own fault. Her roommate, alarmed at her withdrawal, begged her to get out, and eventually it became easier to go along than to resist. She began spending her evenings drinking cheap wine and smoking pot with the ragtag band of students who frequented the sidewalks and brasseries of Montparnasse. Her misery had destroyed her appetite, and the last of her baby fat melted away, slimming her legs and emphasizing the hollows beneath her cheekbones. But her breasts remained as full as ever, and despite her shapeless clothing, the boys noticed. Their attentiveness deepened her self-hatred. They knew what kind of girl she was. That's why they wouldn't leave her alone.
Without quite knowing how it happened, she punished herself by sleeping with one of them, a young German soldier who had come to Paris to train with UNESCO. Then she let a bearded Swedish art student into her bed, and after him, a long-haired photographer from Liverpool. Lying motionless beneath them, she let them do what they wanted because she knew in her heart that she deserved nothing better. More than their sweating bodies and invasive hands, she hated herself.
Only gradually did she come to her senses. Appalled at what she had allowed to happen, she grew desperate to find a way to protect herself. Men were her enemies. To forget that was to put herself in peril.
She began to observe the pretty young French women who spent their evenings strolling the Boulevard du Montparnasse. She sat in the brasseries and watched them tilt their faces toward their lovers, luring them with bold, knowing eyes. She saw the confident way they walked in their tight blue jeans with hips swaying and breasts thrust forward. One night as she observed a sultry-faced young beauty part her lips so her smitten lover could tip the sweet meat of a mussel shell between them, it all became clear to her. These young French women used sex to control men, and the men were helpless to defend themselves.
That was when she began her own transformation.
By the time Arturo Flores found her working in an art supply store near the Madeleine, her baggy, figure-concealing clothes had given way to tight French jeans and tiny, clingy camisoles that displayed her breasts. Platinum streaks drew men's gazes to the silky long hair that curled over her shoulders. With bold eyes, she issued her sultry, silent assessment of each one of them.
You can look, chère, but you're not quite man enough to touch.
The sense of relief she experienced as they flirted with her, only to tuck their tails between their legs when she rejected them, left her dizzy with relief. She had finally found a way to keep herself safe.
Arturo Flores wasn't like the rest. He was much older, a gentle, brilliant, and lonely man who only wanted her friendship. When he asked if he could paint her, she agreed without hesitation, never dreaming that she would find seven years respite with him.
Arturo was part of a close-knit circle of wealthy and prominent European men who were secretly homosexual, and his carefully selected friends became her friends. They were witty, cultured, frequently waspish, generally kind, and the demands they placed on her were not physi
cal. They wanted her attention, her sympathy, and her affection. In exchange, they taught her about art and music, history and politics. She received a finer education from Arturo's friends than her old boarding school classmates were receiving at college.
But they couldn't make her forget. Her trauma was too deeply rooted to be easily conquered, and so she continued to punish the heterosexual men she met with small cruelties: an enticing smile, provocative clothing, a wicked flirtatiousness. She learned she could control all of them by letting her body make promises she would never allow it to keep.
So sorry, Monsieur, Herr, Señor, but you're not quite man enough to touch.
As she walked away from all of them, her hips swayed in the rhythm of the French girls who ruled the Boulevard du Montparnasse.
