April in Paris Read online

  “Goddamn, I love fucking your cock.” I imagined that we had shut out the world and raised a tricolor French flag of solidarity, a tribute our own little sovereign nation dedicated to an unalloyed fuck, a realm of pure sensation: Pierre grunted inarticulately as he thrust repeatedly into my pussy, plunging mechanically inwards. And as I eagerly watched his shaft plumb me, I imagined that my dream of liberation had come to life, a release from the shackles of Middle America and the sexual oppression of the past; I felt immaterial, immersed in a realm of unadulterated sensation.

  “Look in my eyes while you fuck me, dear.”

  He complied with my request and I threw my legs over his shoulders, raising my ass to augment the glorious rhythm of his cock. As we stared into each other’s eyes, that proverbial window into the soul, I smiled: I imagined that our union of the flesh had forged a delicious Franco-American alliance.

  “Fuck me, god, fill me up, deeper.”

  He clenched his eyes in desperation. “Mon dieu...I am getting, how do you say it...fatigued? Should I keep going?” Pierre gasped intensely; glancing at a mirror across the room, I relished the delicious vision of his first-rate ass tensing and expanding as he valiantly screwed me. I could hear a Dalida record through the wall, the relentless bass line shuddering in concert with the rhythm of Pierre’s fucking: Aime-moi, mon amour aime-moi...Ecoute ma prière.

  “You’re tired, Pierre? Am I not inspiration enough? Come on, ami. Make me come on your cock.” I squeezed my pussy around his shaft in a gesture of impatience, the motion releasing an unexpected sensation of comfort and arousal as I wrapped my legs tighter around his back as he began to impishly lick my neck, beginning a rapid bombardment of thrusts.

  “Shit, just feeling your tongue on my throat makes me want to come. That...feels...really...fucking...good...Pierre...” And in that fevered moment, I felt the sultry energies of the Parisian streets below embodied in his strokes as I embraced Pierre tightly, kissing him first on the cheek on then insistently on the lips as my pussy convulsed wildly in release. “Merde!” My ass puckered delectably for an intense moment before sublimely relaxing. “Damn, man. I had my first orgasm on a French cock.” I sighed as a delicious, sensation rippled through my torso as Pierre continued his strokes.

  “Bon...bon.” Pierre uttered another endearingly inarticulate moan of gratification as he continued to fuck unabated.

  I smiled, whispering into his ear to further insure his valiant efforts, “Keep going. Let’s see you what you’ve got inside that tight little scrotum.” He thrust with greater velocity, and the charged, frantic coda made me envision, fancifully, that I was being screwed by the Eiffel tower, filled by a virile and immense cock overflowing with brute fury, poised to discharge a colossal load. “I want you to have a fucking orgasm and shoot your French come all over me.”

  “Merde...merde.” Pierre’s moan suggested an untamed vocalization of Paris itself, compelling me to pinch swollen nipples as he threw back his head in a feral gesture as withdrew, his cock pulsing violently as come blasted onto my tits and midriff, the marvelously sloppy torrent spraying across my body with the vigor of an explosion.

  “Fabulous!” There is always something sublime in witnessing a man’s ejaculation, and I muttered filthy but obvious banalities as I observed the results of Pierre’s considerable orgasm: “God, your fucking come is dripping onto my pussy. You should be proud, dear.” Having anointed me in its delicious essence, his spunk cascaded down towards my snatch, descending victoriously onto the chaise below as I idly fingered the viscous flow. “I love playing with your spunk - you have very impressive reserves, darling.” The white, sticky cataract appeared mysterious and elegant, and I imagined it tracing a path across a mysterious map, suggesting new paths and destinations. Quivering, it glowed radiantly.

  I patted his cheek. “Merci pour le fuck.”

  “Oui. You are very good at this, Ms. Jones, I must say.”

  “Well, Henry Miller once wrote, ‘Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant.’ I would agree, except writing is maybe one of the eight. Speaking of which, we need to discuss the contract for my novel.”

  “Oui.” Pierre’s expression was half-incredulous, half-wounded. I licked his cock again and swallowed another globule of come in tribute as it began to regain its powers. “We will discuss.”

  “Discuss? Will this encourage you?” As I took his cock back into my mouth I could still taste Pierre’s essence, the salty residue of his spunk; a delicious mark of liquid conquest was still piquant upon my tongue. I imagined that I was ingesting his sublime inner nature, sucking the contours of his head as I swallowed the remainder of his delicious ejaculation. “Mon Dieu, you taste like crème anglaise.”

  He sighed. “Oui, we will discuss your novel in time. Keep in mind that the better you hunt, the greater the rewards...Bon chat, bon rat...or as we say in France: ‘Good cat, good rat.’”

  “Yes, I intend to be quite the huntress, Monsieur Fournier.” I smiled inwardly. “Quite the huntress.”

  But I was too sated, too physically tired from our athletic screw to continue the discussion and fell into a rapturous sleep until a sliver of gray light, the Parisian dawn, awoke me. I was curled up on the divan, wrapped in my scattered clothes, and awakened from a delicious post-coital slumber. But the room around me was vacant and I quickly dressed and surveyed the rest of the apartment, which was also empty of life. Bottles, Johnny Halliday LPs, and scattered ashes covered the shag carpet. The Dalida record still skipped on the turntable, repeating its crackling mantra: Aime-moi, mon amour aime-moi...Ecoute ma prière...

  But where was my precious manuscript? Scanning the library, seeking the table where it had last appeared, the sheaf of papers was gone. In its place I saw a forlorn note:

  Dear April,

  To quote Giacomo Casanova: “As to the deceit perpetrated upon women, let it pass, for men and women as a general rule dupe each other.”

  -- Pierre Fournier

  A Pursuit and An Invitation

  Only Paris’ tranquil morning aura could calm me as I walked home, contemplating my stolen manuscript and Fournier’s roguish, enigmatic message. But I felt a compensating spirit of emancipation in the air; my freedoms would offset my obstacles. I excitedly inhaled the surrounding air. Paris has an odor that defies description; its scent is unmistakably ancient and modern, a commingling of the contemporary and something ineffably ancient and erotic, as if the primeval swamp once conquered by the Romans has refused to lie subdued beneath its regal buildings.

  And I remained in flight from America, the now-distant land where my independent strength of character could not be molded to the narrow expectations of my college and family: all of my girlfriends had dutifully entered into marriage, embracing the banalities of stoves and kitchen sinks, exercising the trite skills they had learned as Home Economics majors, united in holy matrimony with the only cocks they had every enjoyed. All Peter Swenson, my college boyfriend, had ever given me was a book of Keats’ poems. Well, maybe that was almost as precious as any carnal offering.

  What were Fournier’s intentions with this manuscript? The unresolved questions tortured my mind, but another impulse arrived as I contemplated my new volume of confessions: How would I write about the evening? For all his villainy, Fournier had been a superb fuck and I craved recording the event in prose and enshrining him in my iniquitous Confessions, imagining that I could recapture the intensity of my rabid screw in the hours after its consummation.

  I felt a profound exhaustion as I ascended the steps to my apartment, just off of the steep and winding Rue Mouffetard in the 5th arrondissement. After I arrived, I opened my notebook and wrote with quiet ferocity, recounting every sweltering peak and valley of the previous evening in wicked detail.

  My kitchen table was strewn with the many articles I’d been writing for Fran
co-American Magazine. All were “special interest” pieces, or light entertainments that defied tight deadlines: A profile of Boris Vian, a friendly and brief interview with a drunken William Faulkner at Le Bar Vert, and a profile of the visiting Miles Davis. Unable to capture an interview with the diffident jazzman, I wrote an ethereal prose poem to accompany a photo taken at dusk in the Luxembourg Gardens.

  My career was not the transglobal journalistic adventure I had imaged, and only two weeks before I’d submitted an application to the Brasileiro Magazine, another English-language rag in Rio de Janeiro, imagining that at least tropical heat would augment the excitement of my work life. I was impelled by Simone de Beauvoir’s maxim, “Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”

  My eyes turned to a bookshelf, which featured my recent reading: Anaïs Nin’s Delta of Venus and Three Little Birds, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, and Pauline Réage’s Story of O.

  “Very naughty,” I muttered to myself as I picked up the copy of Nin’s Little Birds and idly scanned the pages, absorbing its charged aura of pure sexual abandon, imagining the pleasure that she had derived from its pages; admittedly, the words summoned powerful fantasies, and a reflexive quiver awoke between my thighs. Then Edith Piaf’s “Je Ne Regrette Rien” played dolefully on Radio France and my frustrated sensation of melancholy returned.

  I made myself a cup of coffee and observed a vibrant street scene below the apartment on the Rue Orlotan, watching a mass of pedestrians bound for the Universite de Paris or idyllic Jardin des Plantes, imagining them navigating steep trails through manicured woods, seeking the companionship of new lovers, their restless movement filling me with a brief sensation of loss.

  Impatient and restless, I abandoned my coffee and greeted the Parisian streets, wandering towards the unexpected solace of the Place Monge. And in this improbable setting, across from a homely Laundromat and a Japanese tearoom, I was startled to see Pierre Fournier walking down the street, as if the fates had demanded his entrance.

  “Pierre! Hey, wait!” At the sound of my voice, he accelerated his step and reversed course, the silhouette of his brown jacket retreating into the distance, traveling the length of the alley in the opposite direction as I bounded into the street, winding insistently through the increasing traffic and mounting disarray of cars and pedestrians, the jacket remaining a distant signal.

  Dashing down the rue Mouffetard, I followed him down a quaint and dilapidated passageway before turning left, tracing a confused path down another passageway before descending a steep cobblestone street past a quaint array cheese shops and a Polish pierogi shop before he vanished into a café.

  “Pierre! Arrêt! Arrêt!” A succession of motorcycles roared across my path, delaying my arrival at the café entrance. The wait felt infinite, and I entered the building violently, nearly staggering into the room. Perspiring, grasping the doorframe, I surveyed the tables, all empty with the exception of a solitary woman.

  I approached her. “I thought I saw someone enter here, a man in a brown jacket. Have you seen him?”

  “Yes, he arrived briefly before departing out the back and into a car. To where, only the gods know.”

  “Damn.” I glanced about the room aimlessly, my frustration abundantly clear.

  “My dear, are you well?” She moved a seat away from the table and I sat down in abject fatigue. “Or are you seeking the solace of an elixir?” Dressed enigmatically in an open black blouse and gray trousers, she leaned backwards as one leg crossed the other in idle affectation, smoking a cigarette through a long holder. She then rolled her sleeves and straightened a pair of dark eyeglasses cresting severe cheekbones. “The sun is hot, its only natural condition. Come join me.” As the woman straightened herself, her long black hair cascaded backwards, tresses landing with the force of a gesture. She spoke with an unidentifiable accent.

  “Are you a companion of Pierre Fournier?”

  I looked downwards, trembling. “Do you know him?”

  “Yes. I know him a little. He is a publisher, non?” She inhaled her cigarette diffidently.

  “Yes and he has a manuscript of mine, I believe.”

  She extended her hand, lowering the cigarette, releasing a single column of smoke. “My name is Adrianna Pompiliu and my own art is written on air, or perhaps more responsive bodily surfaces.” I laughed briefly at her fearless pretensions as I shook her hand.

  “I’m pleased to meet you. I’m April Jones. I’m American.”

  “A lovely name!” She inhaled deeply on the cigarette. “And you sound American in the most praiseworthy sense: the open face, the cleanliness, and the exquisite politeness.” Adrianna raised her hand, as if signaling a confession. “I’m from Romania, but now squander all my time in France.” Writing purposely onto a napkin, she handed it to me. “Here is my address, dear. Come in a couple of hours. I have a guest to entertain, but I should be ready.” She raised her cigarette and inhaled diffidently, but her expression had lost its imperious, mannered air.

  “Maybe I can help you find this manuscript.”

  Flesh and Absinthe

  I took the metro to Adrianna’s apartment, located on the rue Madame between the Boulevard St. Germain and the Jardin du Luxembourg. I could see the bell tower of the Palais du Luxembourg from a distance, and reflexively scanned the scaffolding of the Eglise St.-Sulpice; in my anxious state I imagined the Delacroix painting in the church, the unmistakable image of Jacob wrestling with the Angel. I was prepared to wrestle an angel of my own, or perhaps something more demonic; I had unconsciously worn a red scarf, which seemed to reflect my state of flushed agitation.

  When I reached the elegant pair of carved double doors leading to her apartment, they were ajar and a note was taped to the center:

  April. Please come in. Seat yourself and I shall appear shortly.

  --Adrianna

  Pushing the doors dramatically inwards, I saw a world of extraordinary luxury, a symphonic array of exquisite furniture and decorations, sequestered from the city and the larger world, and as I sat down on a divan I immediately heard the faint sound of Adrianna’s voice in the distance. Adjacent to the living room, a door remained conspicuously open, and I could see Adrianna’s black blouse, trousers and glasses discarded on a bureau. Looking closer, I saw her figure: She kneeled, fully nude, her abundant ass brazenly facing me, gazing upwards towards a man massaging her shoulders, visibly unaware of my entrance.

  He began to speak, and Adrianna raised her forefinger to her lips. “Don’t talk ami. I’ll guide you. First remove your silly tie - you look so uptight, dear. “ On command, he attempted to extract the offending garment, but it remained trapped in his collar. “You need a strong girl, mon cheri...” Reaching up, Adrianna yanked it free forcibly before beginning to unbutton his shirt.

  I shuffled nervously in my seat as I watched the extraordinary exhibit, knocking a copy of Paris Match to the floor, startling Adrianna as she turned to her comrade. “Did you hear something dear? I was expecting a guest, but she should not be here yet.” Her consort wearily shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps it’s only the apartment registering its approval of our little frolic, darling.” Adrianna leaned downwards to unfasten his trousers, first gingerly and then completing the act in a sudden crescendo of vigorous movement, opening the waist and crotch, extracting his cock, its girth slowly enlarging.

  “If you want this body, you need to achieve the prize, like the cavalier you are.” She sat up higher, mischievously arching her back. “I want to observe your assets to see if I approve.” He nodded as she stroked his cock, which responded rapidly as she massaged the enlarging shaft. “Dear, you’re hard as Baudelaire’s headstone!” He merely grunted at her literary riposte and Adrianna proceeded to shake her head mischievously. “But you’re pulsing, dearest one! My mere touch almost makes you come! Relax! Unless you want to shoot all
your spunk before you get your precious cock into my pussy.” She modulated her rhythm as she jacked him off, smiling wickedly during the effortless act as I approached closer to observe unseen, startled by the vision: I had never seen a woman so imperiously in control, so assured of her own pleasure - I could see no anxiety, no elaborate rituals, just the unabashed embrace of her primeval sexuality.

  “Mmm. I have always felt ineffable pleasure in simply playing with a cock. So uncomplicated, yet so gratifying for both parties.” Adrianna stroked her clit with the hand not engaged with her companion’s cock, the surface visibly moist and swollen from a distance, sporadically slapping her entire pussy. I could see his buttocks contract which each stroke of her manual attentions, a series of fine rivulets of perspiration descending his back.

  “Now, darling.” She pushed him backwards with a delicate application of her palm upon his abdomen. “As we say in Bucharest, ‘Hai sã ne futem.’ Fuck me with your cock. I’m wetter than the Seine.” She reclined on the bed, gently whispering, “I’m ready ami,” lowering her authoritative pitch as she spread her legs and teased her clit. Leaning closer, I rubbed my crotch impulsively though my skirt as I watched, feeling an infusion of moisture in my pussy.

  “Oh, bloody hell, that’s amazing. Merde!” Holding his cock at the base, its length tremulous and pulsing, he penetrated her pussy in a single deep stroke before commencing to fuck her with extraordinary vigor, alternating deep, slower strokes with a series of rapid intrusions, gripping her waist as he propelled his cock inwards. She tensed her ripe ass and thrust upwards, their combined propulsion merging into a single, feverish motion as Adrianna leaned back muttering, “That is quite wondrous...good...so stupendous...continue...so fantastic.” I smiled a little at her anachronistic English, delivered with aspirated gusto, but the sights and sounds of moment were something of wonder, and more carnal than her flowery phrasing suggested: I could hear a fierce slapping of flesh on flesh as his ferocious strokes continued, his shaft retreating and then burrowing into the dark hair of her crotch.