Curio Vignettes 04 Confession by Cara McKenna

Chapter One
     
    I beat the rain, if barely. The sky went from silver to
pewter between the Métro station and number sixteen Rue des Toits Rouges, but
I’m spared, dodging a headful of frizzy curls and a ruined silk skirt.
    I trot up the stone steps and into the elegant old foyer and
press the brass button for flat 5C. Smoothing my top and hair, I wait for the
buzz—for Didier to unlock the foyer’s inside door. Normally it takes a matter
of seconds, but not this evening. After a minute I ring the bell again and
check his mailbox. Empty.
    A smile overtakes my lips.
    It blossoms to a grin when I spot him through the glass
door, appearing at the end of the hall from the stairwell. He waves, striding
to let me in.
    “Hello,” I say. “Well done.” Perhaps one visit in five he’ll
come down to meet me. Sometimes he has food on the stove, a ready excuse, but
in truth it’s his agoraphobia that keeps him upstairs. But not tonight, it
would seem.
    “Caroly. Good evening.” He kisses my cheeks and takes the
overnight bag from my hand. We head for the stairs and I save the chitchat,
knowing he’ll be edgy and distracted until the deadbolt’s snapped shut behind
us, four flights up in his garret sanctuary.
    Ah, blessed Saturdays. Nowhere to be in the morning and my
lover all to myself for the evening. Usually I get him both Fridays and
Saturdays, but yesterday I had a friend’s engagement party to attend, a
girls-only affair.
    Other days of the week…
    On weekend nights Didier is all mine, but he’s anyone else’s
for the right price come Sunday evening. I used to pay it myself, but not since
March, nearly five months ago. Now the price I pay is having to settle for
whatever leftover weekdays haven’t been booked by his clients.
    Sometimes it’s a pittance. Other times, not such an easy
pill to swallow. But he’s my lover, not my boyfriend. I’m a total lost
cause—drowning in terminal love-lust for him, though I haven’t told him in so
many words. In gifts? Yes. In heated glances and physical gestures and
emotional support—loud and clear.
    I watch his back as we climb the stairs, wondering if he
knows exactly how bad I have it. He’s the best-looking man I’ve ever seen, as
if you shook a copy of Vogue and a swarthy, elegant model from a Brioni spread
magically tumbled out. Add to that the fact that he’s so good in bed, women pay
for the experience? Yeah, wobbly-kneed infatuation probably isn’t a noteworthy
reaction to him.
    What does make me special—aside from my being the only woman
I’m aware of who doesn’t have to shell out to enjoy his company—is that I’m the
only one who makes him leave his flat. Every time I visit, I drag him out with
me, down the street for a coffee, occasionally to dinner. It’s the equivalent
of taking someone who’s deathly afraid of the ocean and pushing them overboard
into a choppy sea, so I must be special for him to keep letting me torture him
so.
    We reach his flat and when the door shuts behind us, I smile
up at him. “Good job.”
    “Thank you.”
    “And your mailbox was empty.”
    “Yes. It was a good day.” He pushes off his shoes. He hadn’t
bothered with socks, and he’s just as I prefer, barefoot in slacks and a tee
shirt. A shirt I bought him, a cotton-merino blend as soft as a baby’s cheek
and the dark green-blue of the Seine, with a price tag that would make any sane
person snort with derision.
    I lean my umbrella against the wall and breathe in deeply.
“I smell potatoes. And chicken. And something else.”
    “ Romarin .” Rosemary.
    “Yum.”
    The living room feels already set for seduction, a single
lamp switched on in the corner, its soft glow all but swallowed up by the deep
red walls. The curtains are drawn back, but the clouds offer little more than a
view of birds the roosting on the ledge, gray as the fog. Except for one.
    “The white pigeon is back,” I say, excited. He showed up
last week, and has a mottled black-and-gray