Remittance Girl's Blog, page 6

The Dinner Party – 7

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The workweek started as it always did. Isabel came into her little office at about 8 AM with two plastic bags full of iced-coffee, tied up with rubber bands and with straws sticking out the tops. There were places that sold coffee to go in swankier containers, but the coffee lady on the street, outside her building, made the best coffee bar none.

Isabel had a single employee: a kid named Khanh who had just finished high school and begged her for a job. He took care of all the running around, delivering and collecting, and she was trying each day to teach him a little French and English, to improve his long-term employment prospects.

He was very tickled that she had given him his own desk, out in a tiny reception area. Most of the day, Isabel knew, he surfed the net. But she figured that he’d learn English that way, by way or curiosity and osmosis.

“Bonjour, Mlle Isabel,” he chirped as she came through the door.

“Good morning, Khanh. What’s new?”

“Same-o, same-o.”

“You mean, ‘Same old, same old’.”

“Toujours la meme chose.”

Isabel smiled and deposited a bag of coffee on his desk. “Now that’s excellent. Your pronunciation is coming along fine.”

The room was really a single one, divided in two by an old, frosted glass-panelled wall with a rickety door in it. She let herself into her office, dumped her workbag on the floor and switched on the noisy, ancient air-con unit before the room started to heat up.

“I forget,” called Khanh. “Someone telephone you.”

“Did you get the number?”

Khanh came into her office and deposited a ridiculously cute elephant shaped, floral decorated note on her desk. “Number, name, everything.”

Isabel picked up the note. “You know I bought you a message pad for a reason.”

“But it’s ugly. This much more beautiful.”

Isabel raised an eyebrow at him. “Have you met my friend David?”

Khanh made a face. “Mister David is bede,” he whispered with derision.

She laughed. “Well you have similar taste in note-paper. It makes me wonder,” she teased.

“Okay, okay!” Khanh called, stalking out of her office. “I write it again, on ugly paper.”

Isabel glanced down at the writing. “No…don’t bother,” she muttered.

Car-meng Ma-se. 090-495-5774

Isabel stared at the wall of her office for a moment, and then crumpled the paper into a ball and pitched it into the waste-paper basket. “Remember to ask people to spell out their names, Khanh.”

* * *

By eleven-thirty, the room was getting stuffy. Isabel kicked the air-con with her foot. It hiccupped and began to purr at a lower pitch than before. When she got paid for this last job, she promised herself, she would get a new machine.

She had finished the last of the Film Festival work, and was packing it up for Khanh to take over to the client. Outside her office, she heard him chatting away to someone. His English was still very bad, but his French was improving by leaps and bounds.

She looked up from her desk as he opened the door. “Co Isabel?”

“Yes?”

“There’s a lady here. She says important to see you, now.”

But even before he ushered her in, Isabel recognized Carmen Masse. She was wearing a pale lemon, linen sundress and Jackie-O sunglasses. Isabel closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Before she could stop herself, Isabel’s head flooded with images of Carmen – legs spread, at the pool’s edge. She felt her cheeks burn.

“Isabel, you are so naughty,” Carmen chided brushing past Khanh. She walked around the desk and pecked Isabel on each cheek. “You left without a word, and you don’t return my phone calls.”

“Phone calls?” echoed Isabel loudly, glaring at Khanh. “Go to lunch!”

The boy shrugged and pulled the door closed behind him.

“How sweet.” Carmen whipped off her sunglasses and grabbed the back of Isabel’s neck, pulling her into a kiss. She kissed her once, twice, and then sucked on Isabel’s lower lip.

Pushing her away, as gently as she could, Isabel stood up and stared at the woman. “Carmen, I can’t do this.”

“Don’t you like me?” Carmen took a step towards Isabel. “You didn’t seem to mind me the other night.”

“I…I do like you Carmen. But it’s not exactly a neat situation, is it? I’m not actually a lesbian,” Isabel said. It sounded horribly lame. The woman took another step towards her and Isabel realized she had backed-up against the wall.

The smile was ironic. “Oh, I know you’re not a lesbian, ma petite. Because I distinctly remember how you enjoyed my Maitre’s attentions.” Carmen reached up and stroked the side of Isabel’s face with her shiny, blood-red fingernails. “‘I love it’ you cried. ‘Gilles, I love your cock!’ you swore.”

“I…I didn’t say that. I did NOT say that!” The truth was, Isabel wasn’t sure what she had said. “I wouldn’t say that,” she added, weakly.

The hand that Carmen had raised to Isabel’s face traced a line down her neck and settled on her covered breast. “Perhaps not, but that is exactly what you were thinking. Especially the second time he made you release.” Fingers squeezed the nipple beneath.

“No… I can’t. Please, Carmen. You have to go.” Isabel pushed down a sick mixture of fear and lust.

“I can’t, Isabel,” Carmen cooed. She pressed herself against Isabel and kissed her again, sliding a pointed tongue across her lips. Then she stepped back and smiled. “I’m here to deliver a contract, for Gilles.”

Carmen pulled an envelope out of her purse and laid it on the desk. “It’s a lot of work,” she said, looking around the office. “I doubt you can afford to pass it up.”

Isabel narrowed her eyes. “Carmen? I’m not going to have an affair with you just for a translation job. You know that, don’t you?”

“Not for the job, no.”

“Then why do you think this will make any difference to me?”

“Maitre figured that you would need the contract as an excuse, to overcome your hesitations.”

Isabel shook her head, unable to follow the woman’s reasoning. Worse, she could feel the sticky wetness of panties as they clung to her pussy, beneath her skirt.

“I don’t need an excuse, Carmen. I’m not the kind of person you think I am. That’s all.” Even as she said it, a wave of self-revulsion swept over her. She wasn’t sure what she was anymore.

Carmen gave her a half-smile. “I know what kind of person you are, ma petite. We are very similar, I think. Come and have lunch with me.”

“I…I don’t think so.”

The woman laughed, turned, and walked out of her office. “Then I’ll see you at dinner, at eight,” she called behind her, leaving the outer door open in her wake.

Isabel sat down in her chair and covered her face with her hands. “I can’t, I can’t,” she whispered to herself.

But even as she said the words, her memory, brutal in its accuracy, replayed the night she’d spend at the plantation house – the sound, the tastes, the sensation – and showed her, in very detailed manner, that she could. No matter how much she wanted to deny it, no matter how ashamed it made her feel, the truth was that she could not forget who she had become that night and there was a part of her that craved to become it again.

* * *

Opening the manila envelope, Isabel drew out a thick sheaf of papers. On the top was a note.

Dear Ms Fletcher,

Enclosed please find a contract and examples of the translation work we require for the Indochine Designs Furniture Company. The terms of the contract are, of course, negotiable but I think you will find us a fair and generous client to all our suppliers.

In the interests of cementing this business relationship, it is our pleasure to invite you to dinner at The Mandarin Restaurant, 34 Cao Ba Quat street, this evening at 8 PM. We have a number of our own clients in town, and we are taking this opportunity to celebrate our company’s new direction.

Yours sincerely,

Gilles Masse

General Director

Indochine Designs

p.s. I enjoyed your little visit with us so much, and I know that Carmen did as well. We must do it again, very soon.

The last part of the letter was written in a flowing, old-fashioned hand in pen.

She set the letter aside and paged through the contract. He was right; it was a very generous contract. The skinny of it was, if she took the work, she’d be earning about $8000 in the space of two months. That was more than she had earned from a single client in the whole time she’d worked in Saigon. There was a lot of work, but a good deal of it was repetitive stuff that would take her very little time once she’d set up her electronic glossaries. At the same time, Isabel had a nasty feeling that if she were to sign the contract, she’d be selling her soul to the devil.

Khanh returned, bearing a ham and cheese baguette for Isabel. “I met Bac Loc on the stairs. He said he can’t wait another week for the rent,” he said morosely, in Vietnamese.

“English, or French, Khanh. You won’t get better if you don’t practice all the time.” She smiled and took a bite of her sandwich.

“I like this job, Co Isabel. I don’t want to go somewhere else.”

“Don’t worry.” She patted his shoulder. “We’ll manage.”

Isabel sat back down at her desk, wiping crumbs off her lips with her thumb. She picked up a pen and signed the contract.

The Dinner Party – 6

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Isabel awoke at dawn feeling strange and unreal. She looked across the enormous bed to where Gilles and Carmen lay naked and spooned. There was very little she remembered about the previous night after she had come a second time. Snatches of sound and pictures flitted through her head: insidious erotic fragments, like a film no one would ever make. It was too real, too raw, too…

She slid off the bed, careful not to wake them. Outside in the courtyard, she heard someone watering the plants and birds bickering in the eaves of the house. Looking back at the lovers, she felt an odd repulsion rise in the pit of her stomach. She had never been with people like this. Their appetites frightened her, and so did the thing she became when she was with them. Monsters, she thought. Beautiful monsters.

Suddenly, she felt a desperate need to get away from them – as far and as fast as she could go. Isabel searched the room, looking for her dress. She cringed inwardly at the memory that she’d left it somewhere near the pool. Perhaps it was still there, or perhaps someone had taken it in.

Peeking out the door of the bedroom, making sure there was no one around, Isabel scurried to the next closed door down the hallway, hoping it was a bathroom. There had to be a towel, a robe, something she could throw on in order to find someone and ask about her dress.

It was a bathroom, and there were towels, and robes hanging on the back of the door. She considered having a shower. No, she thought, irrationally, just get out – quickly, now, before they wake up. She slipped one of the robes on, and went in search of her dress.

There was clattering and voices coming from the kitchen, and Isabel pushed the door open to find two older Vietnamese women in neat white uniforms preparing food. They turned around, their conversation quelled by her arrival.

“Mangerez-vous quelque chose pour le déjeuner, Mademoiselle?”

Isabel drew the robe around herself, self-conscious. “Non, merci. Avez-vous trouvé ma robe?”

The more slender of the two women, nodded, unsmiling. “Vous attendez ici, je le chercherez.”

The woman left, and a moment later returned with it, neatly folded, her sandals and her handbag also.

Isabel thanked the women, took her belongings and retreated to the bathroom where she dressed quickly. The act of putting the high, strappy sandals back on made her feel strange, queasy, and she decided to forego them. Instead she washed her face, dried it, and pulled out her mobile phone to ring for a taxi.

Her overhanging fear was that either Gilles or Carmen would wake up. Inexplicably, the thought terrified her. She walked to the front of the house, listening to her mobile phone connect the call.

“Alo?”

Suddenly, Isabel realized she had no idea how to describe the obscure address of the place. She hung up.

She decided to walk down to the dirt road by the rubber plantation, and see if perhaps she could find a taxi there. Beyond the gates of the house, the ground was dusty beneath her feet. It was father than she remembered to the plantation road, and every time she stepped on a sharp stone, she winced and looked down at the sandals dangling from her hand. Somehow, she just couldn’t bear the thought of putting them on.

As she walked, Isabel replayed the fantastic scenes of the night before through her mind: the spanking at the dinner table; Gilles’ hand between her legs in the toilet; the swimming pool and the taste of Carmen’s cunt. The opium, the nausea, and the keen, painful waves of desire. She shook her head to clear it, and the images retreated, leaving nothing but an unfamiliar sense of shame behind.

At the crossroads, she realized how stupid she’d been. The long straight road running alongside the plantation was virtually deserted. Here and there, a few lonely souls walked or cycled, but there wasn’t a car to be seen.

Isabel resigned herself to a long walk, and headed in the direction of the highway. At least it was early, and the day was still cool. The air felt fresh and clean against her skin. She imagined it purging her of the excesses of the night before. Was that possible? She wondered if it was possible to ever, truly, erase an experience. It took the sound of a very noisy motorcycle to pull her from her rumination.

“Where you go?”

The scruffy man on the bike gave her a smile. He was missing various teeth, and those he had were in need of dental care. His gaze flitted down to her bare feet, and up to her face.

“The highway,” Isabel said, indicating the road ahead. “Will you take me?”

“Okay! Five thousand Dong.”

Isabel nodded and perched herself side-saddle on the back of his bike. The driver started up with a lurch and they were off down the bumpy road. When they got to the end, where it met the highway, Isabel hopped off and gave him his fare.

“You friend of Ong Massé?” asked the driver. “Nguoi Phap?”

“No. I’m not.”

Isabel walked away on the verge of the highway, and flagged down a cab.

* * *

When she arrived home, Isabel bathed for a long time and redressed in a comfortable pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Very soon it became clear that, every time she had a moment of quiet, her thoughts drifted back to the plantation house, so she busied herself with small domestic chores until the evening, and then worked on translations until she was too tired to think.

On Sunday, she met a friend and fellow translator for brunch. Although she had planned to meet David at Le Jardin, she couldn’t bear the thought of running into anyone who had been at the Masse’s dinner party, and Le Jardin was popular with French expats. She called David and suggested a new location: a shabby place called Mogambo’s where the American breakfast was good, and the only patrons around were Vietnam Vets who were revisiting the country they’d left their youth in.

The restaurant was almost deserted when she arrived. CNN was blaring on a TV over the bar, and the waitresses were milling around pretending to be busy. The owner, Lani, a large and loud Vietnamese woman waved at Isabel absently and went back to her news and her early-morning beer.

Moments later, David arrived, looking preppy and earnest. He was one of her best friends in Saigon and he was due to leave soon to take up residence with the Thai boy who’d become the love of his life. She would be very sad to see him go.

When he sat down, he gave Isabel the once over. “I’d like to say you’re looking good, girl. But you’re not. You look pretty run over, actually.”

“Thank you, David. It’s always such a pleasure to see you,” Isabel quipped. But it was true and she knew it; although she had slept for nine hours, she woke looking and feeling as if she’d stayed up all night.

“Out on the tiles?” he asked, taking a careful sip of coffee.

“Last night? No. I worked. I’m finishing off a big job for Cineteque. They’re making all their posters tri-lingual.”

David groaned, tucking into the huge plated breakfast that had just arrived in front of him. “Nice work if you can get it. The Korean underwear factory job is driving me crazy. I knew I should have studied French, damn it.” He nibbled on a piece of toast for a bit and then broke into a huge grin. “Oh…oh…oh! You big fat liar!”

‘What?” exclaimed Isabel. She prodded the egg yolks with a sliver of toast and found them disappointingly overdone.

“Don’t ‘what’ me, girl. You went to that swanky French par-tay on Friday night, didn’t you?”

Isabel raised her eyebrows.

“The invite? The one you were so exited about? Furniture guy? Did you go?”

“Masse. Yes, I went.”

“And?” He pursed his lips. “No, no. Don’t tell me. You met some delicious young Francophone wolf who ate you right up!” He nodded smugly, agreeing with himself. “That’s why you look like shit.”

“Ah…no.”

“Liar!”

“Leave it, David,” Isabel pleaded.

David sniggered. “You go out and get some booty and you aren’t going to tell your dearest and most trusted friend about it? You, girl, are a party pooper.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

David’s face changed to something like concern. “Did bad boy do bad things to little Isabel? Did he love you and leave you, Izzie?”

“It wasn’t anything like that. Well…not really.”

David moved around to the other side of the booth and put a friendly arm around her. “You know you’re going to tell me, honey. Sooner or later.” He gave her shoulder a rather brutal squeeze. “Make it sooner, please? My life is a unending bore and any drama will brighten it up.”

Despite her best intentions, Isabel found herself telling David about Friday night. Not everything, but enough to paint the picture. Though Isabel knew that, for David, this was just a juicy little piece of gossip, she felt better for having told someone. As if, in telling it, she’d purged it from her system.

“I’m really not so interested in the Carmen bitch, but do tell about Gilles. What’s his cock like?”

“David! Behave!”

“Big?” he grinned and looked at her with puppy-dog eyes. “Come on, you can tell uncle David.”

Isabel couldn’t help herself; she burst into giggles. “Big.”

“How big?” David held is hands apart and moved then in what looked to be precisely staggered increments.

“Big, David. Too big for you, baby.”

Smirking, he wagged a finger in front of her face. “Don’t say that, sweetie. I can be very accommodating.”

“Okay then. Just your size.”

“No…don’t say that either. A boy likes to fantasize about something just a little too big.”

“Fine. Whatever!”

“Was he cut?” David asked in feigned innocence.

Suddenly the stupidity of the conversation hit Isabel like a slap. And, instead of laughing about it, she surprised herself by tearing up.

David looked at her, a little shocked. “Um…was it something I said?”

That opened the floodgates. Isabel grabbed her napkin and burst into tears on David’s shoulder. And David, being the consummate gay friend, just patted her on the arm and sat quietly until she sniffed and hiccupped her way to a stop.

“I’m sorry, Izzie. I just don’t get it. You had the kind of night most people would shoot their own dicks off to have and you’re crying about it.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Clearly. Care to explain?”

“I feel…somehow… changed. Tainted. Dirty. I’ve never felt like that before.”

David pushed her gently off his shoulder. “I did, once.”

“Yeah?” Isabel sniffled and dabbed at her eyes.

“Yeah. I was about thirteen. But it passed, honey. It passed real quick.”

The Dinner Party – 5

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Isabel had no idea how long they lay silent, drifting through layers of dream. Images would flood into her mind, swallowing her up and then release her with the taste of them lingering on her tongue. She was a child looking up at a grey sky, gentle snowflakes falling on her face. And then she was in water as thick as honey, pushing through velvet caves, with glinting, gold-flecked walls, like a mermaid. Vermillion anemones extended their fingers and caressed her as she swam by. When she stretched out, she was a pale luna moth breaking out of its cocoon into the midnight air. She let her wings dry in the cool breeze.

When Carmen kissed her, Isabel still thought she was dreaming. Flowers grew from her tongue as she pushed it into Carmen’s mouth. Tendrils of pleasure sprouted from her cheeks, growing upwards to embrace the woman in curling, sentient filaments of bliss. It was only when she reached to cup Carmen’s face that she knew it was real. Isabel moaned, pushing wave after wave of desire between Carmen’s lips.

Something touched her breasts and the sensation made her arch her back and twist. The mouth that covered one of them was scalding. It couldn’t be Carmen’s – she was feeding on Carmen’s mouth. Each delectable kiss made her hungrier. She could never, ever have enough.

She reached blindly for Carmen’s breasts and cradled them in her hands. Above her, Carmen’s breasts settled like delicate, trembling deserts into her palms. Isabel had to taste them. Her mouth flooded with saliva in anticipation; she left off kissing and wriggled across the bed until she could take the berry-like nipple between her lips.

As Isabel fed, the borders between what she was doing and what was being done to her blurred, for her own breasts throbbed with pleasure beneath an unseen mouth’s ministrations. She reached upwards, sliding her hand over the woman’s undulating belly and delving into Carmen’s flooded cunt. Stroking and circling between the wet folds of the woman’s sex, she coaxed sublime puppy sounds from Carmen’s throat. She licked and chewed and bit before changing breasts and pushing two fingers deep into Carmen’s passage. Catching a nipple again between her teeth, Isabel felt Carmen start to move. Isabel bit down, trapping the erect nub even as Carmen began slowly, deliciously to impale herself on Isabel’s fingers. The sounds that Carmen made told Isabel of exquisite pain and pleasure.

Gradually, Isabel became aware of a sensation between her legs. A warm tongue slid between her nether lips and probed her clit, circling it and dabbing at it, first gently and then more insistently. Each contact sent a Morse code signal to her brain. She spread her thighs eagerly, wantonly. She could not help but roll her hips in the warmth of this sweetest of sensations.

Then it was gone. And Carmen stopped moving. Isabel looked down her body to see Gilles kneeling between her spread legs. His dark hair was disheveled, his lips – wet with her juices – glinted in the light, and between his thighs stood his very large, very erect cock. He leaned forward and pulled Isabel’s hips, sliding them up onto his thighs so that only her shoulders were on the bed. His eyes were almost closed. He took his cock in his hand and began to tease her slit with it, stroking the tip lazily, back and forth over her clit and then down to her opening. Anticipation robbed Isabel of her breath.

She looked up at Carmen, who was smiling. The woman bent forward, until their lips were almost touching and she whispered to Isabel: “Now you understand, yes? How can I not let him rule me? With a cock like that…”

Isabel whimpered in reply.

Even as she pushed another finger into Carmen, even as Gilles grasped her hips and entered her, Isabel listened to the woman’s fevered whispers.

“Can you feel him? Can you feel him destroy all your barriers?”

Isabel gasped and nodded her head. Warm tears trickled along the curve of her cheek. She didn’t know if they were hers. Her body shifted as filled he her. He settled his hand on her lower belly and pressed his thumb to her clit. Her walls contracted almost painfully around his cock.

“No!” panted Isabel.

“This is what he does. He decimates everything that stands between you and pleasure, and then he owns you.”

Carmen pressed her lips to Isabel’s. They quivered as she worked herself on Isabel’s fingers. She did it in the same slow, determined way that her husband fucked.

Isabel was not a loud lover, but now it felt as if she would explode if she did not cry out. She sobbed into Carmen’s mouth. The pleasure would drown her, she was sure.

“Beg for it…scream it, ma petite,” stuttered Carmen. “There’s… nothing better…in the world…”

Even as Isabel melted, she felt Carmen’s cunt constrict around her fingers in sharp waves. The woman moaned and kissed her. She felt the shudders ebb away, through Carmen’s lips.

“Hold her, Carmen.”

“Yes, Maitre.”

Isabel felt Carmen’s hands on her shoulders, pinning her down onto the bed. She could hardly bear the intensity of the pleasure being visited upon her. When Carmen began to kiss her again, it was like the woman was someone else. The lips felt softer, bigger. The tongue that filled her mouth was insistent; it fucked her mouth.

A wave, a terrifying wave began to move up her body. Isabel went rigid at its approach. She didn’t have control of it any more, it didn’t belong to her.

Carmen stopped kissing her and pressed her cheek against Isabel’s, cradling Isabel’s head in her arms.

“You’re going to come, aren’t you?” Carmen whispered.

“Ah-h..”

“Tell him so. Tell him you love it. It pleases him so much.”

Isabel fought to verbalize. It felt like she had lost control of her voice too. She groaned, and closed her eyes, tight. The next thrust exploded in deep russets behind her eyes.

“Coming. God, I’m coming. Gilles… I love it.” Her words began to tumble out in a whispered torrent. “I love…”

“Tell him!”

But she couldn’t. She arched her back instead. Ecstasy shot through her body, rushing up her spine and erupting from her mouth as a wordless primal scream.

Just as she did, she felt him double over her, take the flesh of her belly between his teeth, and flood into her.

Isabel twitched over and over. Little shocks raced through her torso and, at first, she they were aftershocks. Gilles, still buried in her, stroked her sides and bit hard into the flesh of her abdomen.

“No…” she whispered, shocked.

She clenched around his cock. “No…no…”

Gilles groaned and bit her harder.

Isabel was a doll, boneless and unnamed. She shuddered until the spasms ended.

“Now you know,” said Carmen, looking into her face. “Now you understand?”

Isabel nodded.

The Dinner Party – 4

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“Carmen, go inside and prepare the necessaries.”

Carmen lazily drew her legs together and stood up. “Perhaps you should ask her first, Mâitre?”

Gilles laughed and looked at Isabel. “It did not occur to me that our guest is…” He traced the tips of his fingers around the swell of one of her breasts, just at the waterline. “A little shy perhaps, but not unwilling. Ne c’est pas?”

Before Isabel could answer, Carmen pressed the point. “Ask her, Gilles.” And, beautiful and lithe in blue glow of the pool, she turns on her heels and disappeared into the darkness of the house’s overhang.

“Come,” he said, leading Isabel by the hand, out of the water. “We have work to do also.”

“Ask me what?” said Isabel, allowing herself to be led. She followed him, dripping water as she went, across the cool tiles of the courtyard, towards the kitchen.

The room was now, to Isabel’s relief, empty of staff. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, hugging her arms to her chest. “What should you ask me, Gilles?”

He stood with his back to her, preparing something on a tray. Turning with a lychee fruit in his hand, he peeled it and held it up to her. “Do you like lychees?”

“Yes. I do. I’m always happy when the season for lychees begins.” Isabel made to take the peeled fruit from his hand, but he pulled it away, teasing her.

“Carmen says they feel like the head of a cock.”

Gilles touched the round, firm fruit against her lips, sliding it back and forth, painting her with its juice. He nodded encouragingly when she opened her mouth, clasping the dripping white fruit with her lips. A trickle of juice escaped the side of her mouth, ran over her chin and down her neck. Putting a hand to her face, he covered her mouth with the palm, crushing the fruit against her teeth and pressing it inwards. His warm mouth went to her neck, where the single dribble had become a stream of sticky juice as the fruit exploded.

Isabel moaned, almost choking as the juice flooded her mouth. The sensation of his tongue on her throat made her cunt flood in response.

Gilles stood back, wiping the juice off his face with the back of his hand. “Chassez-vous le dragon, Isabel ?”

Isabel took her time answering, swallowing the rest of the lychee flesh, and spitting the round black pit out into her hand. “Chase the what?”

“Have you ever smoked opium?”

“No. I’ve smoked weed, but not opium.”

“It’s very different.” He turned back to face her, carrying a tray with all sorts of things on it: a carafe of water, fruit, a bowl of ice, a small, silver knife. “Would you like to try?” He left the kitchen, heading through the darkened house.

Everyone who lived in Vietnam had read something about opium. It had been the scourge of the Mandarin class under the French. Some people said the French colonial authorities sold it to them cheap, on purpose, erode away their power in the government.

“What’s it like?” Isabel called after him, following him through the semi-darkness.

“It’s like heaven.”

“But… isn’t it addictive?”

His laugh echoed off the dark walls as he led the way down a dimly lit hallway. “Of course it is, if you overindulge. But then…” He stopped before a pair of large oak doors. Turning, he pushed them open with his shoulder, careful not to upset the tray. “… so is Carmen.”

The bedroom was cavernous. One wall was lined with French doors, open and overlooking the courtyard. But what dominated the room was the bed, a huge low piece of furniture – an old fashioned Vietnamese sleeping platform big enough for a whole family. The bed had been covered with a mattress and each corner was posted with a towering polished wooded post. Gauzy white netting cascaded down from each one.

Carmen lay stretched out on her side. She looked up from what she was doing as they came in. “Are you alright with this, Isabel?”

Nearing the bed, Isabel could see that Carmen was playing the end a long, thin needle through the flame of a small burner. There was a marble-sized glob of something dark and viscose on the end of the skewer.

Isabel watched, fascinated. “I… I’m not sure. I think I am.”

“Did Gilles tell you about it?” Carmen asked, patting an empty spot on the huge white bed.

Hesitating a little, Isabel took a seat at the very edge of the bed. Suddenly, she felt a little out of place, like an interloper in this intimate setting. It seemed ridiculous, considering that her lips, beneath the taste of lychee, still held the ghost of Carmen’s flavour. But still, she was feeling a little tentative. “He said it was like heaven.”

“Bête!” teased Carmen, poking a polished toe into Gilles side. “You did not tell her everything.” She sat up and transferred her attention back to her preparations. The blob of opium was now less solid. She picked up a pipe that lay beside her and skillfully deposited the dollop into the saucer-like ceramic bowl of the pipe.

“The first time you smoke it, it can make you a little queasy. But it soon passes.” Gilles took the pipe from Carmen and stretched out on his side. His deep brown skin looked almost African against the whiteness of the sheets. Holding the pipe with both hands – one at the mouthpiece and one almost at the end, he inhaled deeply as Carmen held the burner at the pipe’s bowl, waving the flame back and forth. He took short, deep sips of the pipe without exhaling, blowing out in a long, thick stream of smoke. Then he drew on it again, this time deeply, causing the pipe to bubble. He held the smoke in his lungs and nodded, smiling.

After what seemed like a very long time to Isabel, he exhaled. Almost nothing emerged, but the room had begun to smell sweet and acrid, like over-ripe fruit and smoldering pinewood.

“Encore, Mâitre?” asked Carmen.

Gilles shook his head, offering the pipe to Isabel. “A full bowl is not easy to take. Have the rest of this one.”

Isabel took the pipe, and feeling a little silly, held it to her lips.

“Lie down, or you will fall down, ma petite.”

She nodded and moved back, leaning on her hip, with her head resting on the bolster at the end of the bed.

“When you draw, you will want to cough, but don’t,” whispered Carmen. The woman tilted the end of the pipe a bit and brought the flame to the bowl. “Now… inhale just like Mâitre did.”

Isabel took three quick puffs in succession. The smoke didn’t feel like a cigarette – it was infinitely thicker. Her lungs fought to hold the vapour and her eyes watered as she tried not to cough. When it was too much, she expelled huge gout of smoke, spluttering.

“Again, vite!” Carmen pressed the mouthpiece back against Isabel’s lips.

Obediently, Isabel drew on the pipe. This time, as soon as the smoke hit her lungs, she felt a creeping tingle that began in her feel and crept up the back of her thighs. It spread over her buttocks and pooled at the base of her spine.

“Oh, my god,” muttered Isabel, still struggling to keep the smoke inside. But her lungs burned and convulsed and the smoke came streaming out as she gave up the fight.

It felt as if a huge, heavy snake had coiled itself around her loins and began to squeeze. The embrace inched up her body, making her nipples stiffen and ache as it passed over them. Suddenly, in a rush, it raced up her neck and pushed into her head.

“My…my…oh…” Isabel closed her eyes.

A cold wet cube pressed against her lips. She mewed and felt the cold slip into her mouth.

“Suck the ice and breathe through your nose.” Carmen’s voice seemed a long way away.

Something awful and huge lurched in Isabel’s stomach. She opened her eyes and tried to speak around the ice-cube. Urgently, she spit it out into her hand.

“I’m… I’m going to be sick,” she said, panicked, trying to sit upright.

An arm surrounded her – Carmen’s – and cool wet fingers smoothed the hair away from her face. “No, no ma petite. It will pass. Just breathe deeply and…”

Carmen pressed the ice cube back into Isabel’s mouth. “It’s just the dragon fighting. It will pass.”

And it did. After a short time, Isabel began to feel better, sleepier, and the snake inside her pushed into her face and made her smile. She sighed. “Thank-you, Carmen.”

The woman smiled back and set about preparing the pipe for herself. Isabel watched through half-lidded eyes as Carmen smoked, and then Gilles, and then Carmen. Finally, in what seemed to Isabel like slow motion, Carmen pushed the tray of implements away and stretched herself out on the bed.

The Dinner Party – 3

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Isabel walked mutely back onto the dining veranda. It was irrational, but she was positive that they only had to take one look at her face to know what she’d just been doing. If they didn’t see it, they’d smell it – she was sure.

But Mr. and Mrs. d’Aubigne were on their feet, with Michél beside them, saying their goodnights. With what seemed like a little more reluctance, Mr. and Mrs. Fournier did the same. Carmen was being a perfect hostess, protesting that they were leaving far too early, but Isabel could hear the lack of conviction in her words.

“Must you go? Oh, how sad. Won’t you stay for a cognac?”

“No. It’s a long way back to town, my dear,” said Madame Fournier. “Next time, you must come to us.”

Michél stepped away from the crowd and cornered Isabel.

“It was such a pleasure to meet you. I’m sure we’ll meet again very soon,” he said with a sly grin.

“It was very nice. Yes, I’m sure we’ll run into each other. Saigon can be such a small place.” Isabel made a mental note that La Forchette was now strictly out of bounds.

“Well, you know where I am. You can find me any night of the week.”

“I certainly do,” replied Isabel.

Mr. d’Aubigne joined their group, smiling. “Would you like to ride with us back into town? We have a big car and lots of room. You aren’t going to find a taxi out here at this time of night.”

“Well,” hesitated Isabel. “It’s very kind of your to offer, but…”

A light hand fell on her shoulder. “But Isabel is staying with us for the weekend. She and Gilles have a mountain of translation work to do,” Carmen casually put her arm around Isabel’s shoulder and gave it a friendly squeeze. “Don’t you?”

Isabel blushed. “Oh…yes. Mountains,” she agreed, feeling slightly sheepish.

Michél and Monsieur d’Aubigne gave each other an enigmatic glance. Something that Isabel couldn’t discern passed between them.

“Well, that’s wonderful then. Everyone is set,” chirped Michél, grabbing Isabel’s hand and kissing her messily on both cheeks. Before he pulled away, he pressed his lips to her ear and hissed: “I’d love to see you two together, eating each other up.”

Isabel tugged her hand out of his grasp. She couldn’t think of anything more disgusting than performing for this repulsive slug of a man. The thought made her cringe.

Before she could get the words of disdain she was planning for him out of her mouth, Carmen slid her arm through Isabel’s and pulled her away, through the house and out onto the front steps of the entryway.

The guests were repeating their goodnights, the way all guests will. Carmen held Isabel’s arm possessively as she said her goodbyes and watched the guests get into their cars. Gilles was talking to the drivers, giving them directions to get back to the highway in rather bad Vietnamese.

“Smile and wave,” Carmen muttered. “Smile and wave.” Her fingers brushed discreetly against the side of Isabel’s breast as she watched them off.

Isabel, not knowing quite what else to do, did what she was told: she smiled and waved.

The minute the last of the cars had driven through the gates, Carmen turned to Isabel, wrapped her arms around her and kissed her hard on the mouth. The ferocity and intensity of the kiss startled Isabel. She’d never kissed a woman before and she hadn’t expected anything so forceful.

“Thank God. I thought they’d never leave,” murmured Carmen.

She kissed Isabel again, softer this time and Isabel found it impossible not to respond. The woman’s lips were so soft, so lush, and beneath the scent of her perfume, Isabel could smell the fragrance that had so overwhelmed her in the bathroom.

She relaxed in Carmen’s arms and drew her own around the woman, opening her mouth to Carmen’s questing, hungry tongue. It tasted of wine and strawberries; it was heady and addictive. Isabel sucked at it, as if she could consume and incorporate the very essence of Carmen that way.

“What a lovely picture you make.”

Isabel pulled away from the kiss. She was unsure of how something like this unfolded. Of course, she’d read all sorts of novels where three people were involved, but they were romantic and full of drama and jealousy. This was about skin and need and something quite indefinable. But something in the back of Isabel’s mind made her cautious.

“We’re hot, Gilles,” said Carmen, in a pouting, little girl’s voice. She pressed her warm cheek against Isabel’s. “We want to swim. Don’t we?”

Isabel giggled and nodded. She could feel the faint pulse in Carmen’s throat through the woman’s skin.

“Who am I to deny two beautiful women their desires?

Carmen laughed. “Will you watch, Mâitre?”

“Mais oui, naturellement . Let me grab a cognac.”

* * *

They shed their clothes as they walked through the courtyard. Isabel watched as Carmen unzipped her red dress and pulled it down, leaving it puddle on the tiles.

“You’re…” Isabel paused to find the words. For someone who had spent her whole life using words as tools, it was ironic that she was struggling to find the right ones now. Instead she reached out and laid a hesitant hand over one of Carmen’s breasts. “Very beautiful.”

Carmen laughed and shrugged, reaching up to unpin her hair. It tumbled down around her bare shoulders in dark cascades. Beneath her palm, Isabel felt the nipple stiffen.

“And what are you?” Carmen asked. She placed a hand on top of Isabel’s and squeezed. “Let’s see if you’re a mermaid. Come into the water.”

The pool shimmered electric blue as they waded in. The chill made Isabel suck in her breath. Cool eddies swirled around her thighs and, as she moved further in, her hips. She sighed.

“Come,” whispered Carmen, pulling her closer. She wrapped her arms around Isabel’s waist and pressed their bodies together.

Isabel looked down. There was something painfully erotic about seeing their breasts pressed together, their nipples touching. Drawing Carmen’s face to hers, she pressed her lips against the woman’s mouth. Inhaling her scent again. There was something magical about her skin. Once her lips were in contact with it, it was hard to break away. She trailed her mouth over Carmen’s cheek and down her neck. The body in her arms shuddered as she opened her mouth and sucked at the skin.

“Isabel,” Gilles voice called from beyond the pool. “You must kiss her breasts. They’re exquisitely sensitive.”

Nodding, Isabel wrapped her arms around Carmen’s waist, lifting her up in the water. She gazed at Carmen’s perfectly petite breast; the rosy nipple crinkled and stiffened in anticipation. Isabel pressed her mouth over it, sucking it gently and dragging her tongue over the hard bud. Carmen moaned and arched her back, pressing more of herself into Isabel’s mouth.

Splashing in the water made Isabel open her eyes. Gilles was wading into the pool, his shirt undone, but otherwise fully dressed. He stopped beside them, a balloon glass of brandy in one hand.

“Bite it. She loves it.”

Isabel grazed the nipple with her teeth, and then softly bit it. Carmen’s body stiffened and twitched in her arms. She bit again, a little harder this time and was rewarded with another sharper twitch and a low, guttural moan.

Gilles draped his arm around Isabel’s shoulders and brought his lips to her ear. The sensation of his breath on her skin turned it to gooseflesh.

“Harder,” he whispered and then kissed her ear. “Don’t be scared to hurt her.”

Isabel mewed and pressed her teeth into Carmen’s flesh until she was worried that she’d break the skin. The effect was immediate: the woman in her arms bucked her hips and whimpered. She wrapped her legs tight around Isabel’s hips and began to rub herself sensuously against Isabel’s pelvic bone. What would it be like to have a cock and fuck her this way, Isabel wondered. She dropped her gaze to watch Carmen’s hips roll against her in the water.

Gilles finished off his brandy, waded to the side of the pool, and left the glass. When he returned, he put his arms around both of them.

“Carmen loves sex. Don’t you my little salope ? She’ll rub herself raw against anything if you’re not careful.” Gilles grabbed Carmen by the waist and lifted her onto the side of the pool. “Show Isabel your hungry little cunt.”

Carmen smiled, brushed her hair off her face and spread her legs wide. Isabel waded over to them, fascinated. She’d never seen any woman’s pussy but her own, in the mirror. Carmen was shaved, and her outer lips were plump and blood-engorged. Her clit peeked out from between her inner folds, dark red, like a beacon, the same size as her erect nipples.

Gilles reached between her legs and stroked it with his fingertips. His wife reacted by splaying her legs wider still and leaning back on her hands, letting her head drop back. She let out a moan like an animal in heat.

“Want to taste?”

Nodding, Isabel moved between Carmen’s legs stroking her thighs until her face was level with Carmen’s pussy. She’d never done this before, but she knew very well how good it could feel. She lowered her mouth onto Carmen’s vulva and stoked her tongue along the length of her slit. She began to tease the hard, erect bud with the tip of her tongue, unhooding it, giving it attention and then returning to long, languid laps.

Gilles moved behind her and wrapped his arms around her, cupping her tits, teasing the nipples. Isabel moaned into Carmen’s pussy and began to suck rhythmically at her clit, dragging her tongue over the nub every so often, until she heard Carmen start to beg. Then, with one swift movement, she pushed two fingers deep into Carmen’s cunt. The slick, wet walls fluttered and contracted around her fingers. Isabel sucked harder, and pushed her fingers deeper, fucking as she feasted.

“Ah, Mâitre. Permettre-moi, je vous prie!” Carmen shouted.

Behind her, Gilles laughed. “She wants to come. Should we let her?”

Isabel nodded. “Yes,” she whispered against Carmen’s clit.

Carmen was coming. Her hips, perfectly still until now, bucked beneath Isabel’s mouth, fucking herself with Isabel’s fingers. A flood of juices seeped from her slit, drenching Isabel’s mouth and hand. It was just like she remembered, when she tasted Gilles’ fingers – sweet, musky and tangy.

Carmen roared and convulsed. Her legs shook with the strength of her orgasm. Then, as it abated, she lay backwards on the edge of the pool and sighed into the night sky. Isabel thought it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever witnessed.

“Kiss me,” said Gilles, pulling Isabel back into the centre of the pool. He turned her around in the water. “Kiss me.”

Isabel put her arms around his shoulders and kissed him, her face and lips slick with Carmen’s juices. He sucked her tongue into his mouth and fed off it, holding her head in his hands, as if she were piece of fruit for him to devour. When he pulled away, he looked at her and smiled.

“Nothing tastes as good as my wife, on another woman’s lips.”

The Dinner Party – 2

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Isabel ate her strawberries in silence. The table had completely returned to normal. It had been cleared by one of the Mase’s many staff, and even the wine stain was gone. The conversation had reverted back to gossip and rumour: whose business was doing well, who was leaving for the home country, which school was best for international schooling. Isabel pretended to listen, but her mind was still trapped at the moment when Carmen’s face grew still and her body slumped, stated, against the white cloth.

Moreover, Isabel couldn’t get over the fact that each of these seemingly conservative, middle-class couples had sat and silently watched what Isabel considered to be, at the very least, an intimate moment between a husband and wife. Now they were acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Worst yet, the uncomfortable twinges between Isabel’s legs hadn’t abated at all. She could still feel herself oozing all over the back of her dress. She decided that now – while everyone was busy with desert and coffee – was a good time to find a bathroom and see what could be done about it.

“Could you tell me where your bathroom is?” she asked Carmen.

“Oh, it’s back into the house, though the salon and to your right. Shall I come with you?”

“No…no. It’s fine. I’m sure I’ll find it on my own.”

“Are you sure?” Carmen asked, standing up.

Isabel felt a moment of panic. She had absolutely no desire for company or for having to discuss her state of disarray. “No,” she said, rather too loudly. “No. I’m absolutely certain I’ll be just fine. Thanks anyway.”

She stood up, backed away from the table as gracefully as she could and made a rather awkward sideways exit into the darkened living room. It wasn’t hard to find the bathroom; it was through a door in the small hallway that connected the living room to the kitchen.

Once inside, she switched on the light and turned to lock the door, but there was no lock, so she closed it firmly and stood with her back to the mirror above the sink, trying to survey the damage. It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. If she kept standing up, and let it dry, the stain would not be noticeable. Her panties, however, were another matter. They felt sticky and horrible between her legs.

Isabel reached beneath her dress and stepped out of them. They were very brief, and silk. She filled the sink with water and began to rinse them out. If she rolled them in a towel to get the excess dampness out of them, they’d dry very quickly.

As she washed them, her mind kept creeping back to the earlier scene at the table. She shook her head and tried to think of day-to-day things, but the sound of the slaps against bare skin and Carmen moaning her way to orgasm kept echoing in her head. When she looked up at herself in the sink’s mirror, she was sweating and flushed. The need to touch herself, to be rid of this overwhelming urge was so great, it was almost impossible to bear. Perhaps if she just gave herself an orgasm, she’d feel less trapped, less disassociated. It wouldn’t take her long.

Pulling up the hem of her skirt, she thrust a hand between her legs, bracing herself against the wall with the other. Her fingers were cool and wet and the shock of them against her burning pussy made her shiver. She bit her lip so as not to make a noise and began to work with serious concentration. The images of the evening flooded back into her mind, and this time she didn’t stop them. Isabel closed her eyes and pushed her fingers between the slick lips of her cunt, grazing her clit over and over with her fingertips and teasing them into her hole with every pass.

She imagined herself on that table, in Carmen’s place. It wasn’t the audience that excited her; it was the sensation, the vulnerability, the sting and the hot flush. She was halfway there.

“May I be of some assistance?”

The voice made her jump and her eyes flashed open. She’d half expected Carmen to come knocking at the door to see if she was okay, but she hadn’t expected Gilles.

He closed the door behind him before she had a chance object. He stepped behind her quickly and engulfed her, pushing her hand out of the way, replacing it with his own.

“My God,” Isabel stuttered. “This…this…this isn’t right.” But even as she said it, she felt a new flood of juice seeping out around his thick, rough fingers.

The hand that was not busy pushing its way into her swollen cunt covered her mouth. “Can you smell her on my hand,” he whispered. “Do you like it? Just her smell alone is enough to make me come.”

Isabel whimpered and inhaled deep. She could indeed smell the cloying, sweet scent of another woman on his fingers. Moaning, she parted her lips and tasted the skin of his hand, revelling in the rich, musky taste.

“She likes you,” he panted into her ear as he began to fuck her with two fingers. “She wants you to stay. And I want what she wants, always.”

She let her head fall back against his chest and felt the faint spasms begin.

“Stay. Will you stay?” He thrust another finger inside her and pushed her over the edge.

“Yes,” Isabel moaned. Her voice muffled by his hand, by Carmen’s scent, by her own lust.

She twitched against him, repeatedly, like marionette with tangled strings. His hips were pressed against her ass, his hard cock upright and nestled in the cleft. She couldn’t stop coming. His fingers curled forward, brushing her g-spot and she convulsed, the muscles of her passage walls clamped down hard, like an iris shutting, and ached around his fingers.

“Do you want my cock?”

Isabel shook her head. “No…please…enough,” she gasped.

“Later, then,” he said.

He slowly pulled his fingers out of her. In the mirror, she saw him raise them to his mouth and suck them clean. Isabel stood trembling as the blood flooded back into her muscles, twitching as the little aftershocks raced through her body. It was all she could do not to collapse in a puddle on the floor.

Gilles looked down into the sink at the white silk panties floating in the water. “Don’t bother with those. You won’t need them around here.”

The Dinner Party – 1

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The invitation to dinner was unexpected. It came in the form of an email.

It was very nice to meet you at the Consulate party on Tuesday night. Carmen and I are having a little dinner party on Friday and would be happy if you could join us.

We realize that our villa is a little bit out of the way, and getting back to the city might be a problem. Please feel free to use one of our guest rooms.

Drinks at seven p.m. Dinner at nine. Map attached. Please RSVP.

Gilles and Carmen Masé

Isabel opened the map. “A little bit out of the way” was something of an understatement. It was in the middle of nowhere, almost forty kilometres north of Saigon, past the old rubber plantation area around Bien Hoa.

It wasn’t just the distance that made Isabel hesitate. She didn’t know these people. They were part of a cliquish French ex-patriot community that rarely socialized beyond their own kind. The French still mourned for the days when they’d been colonial masters here and regularly got together to complain about how everything had turned to shit since they got kicked out.

Still, the invitation intrigued her. Gilles Masé was the owner of a huge lacquer ware export company, and Isabel had been bidding for a contract to provide translation services to his company for the last three weeks. It would be stupid not to accept the invitation. So she did.

* * *

The traffic out of the city was light. The taxi driver was chatty and he assured her that he knew were he was going, but as soon as they turned off the highway, and onto a poorly lit dirt-track that ran alongside a never-ending row of towering rubber trees, Isabel began to have her doubts. There was nothing out here but run-down shacks that served as housing for the rubber tappers.

“Are you sure you know where the place is?” asked Isabel.

“No problem. The map is good. Just five kilometres up this road and then turn left.”

Another five kilometres of this pot-holed, bumpy road, and Isabel was sure she’d be sick. She wound down the window and let in the warm, humid night air. She could only imagine how hard it would be to get down this track in the rainy season. Why on earth did they choose to live all the way out here?

After close calls with a three-legged dog, a trio of drunken boys, staggering arm in arm, and a clutch of chickens, they reached the end of the main road and turned left. Isabel could hardly believe her eyes. The gates to the house were over ten feet high, and beyond it, rows of flaming torches picked out a long, straight path to a sprawling white plantation villa.

The gate was open, and Isabel could see a number of cars, parked in a row along the drive. Their drivers were playing cards on the hoods of their vehicles or dozing in the front seats.

Isabel paid the taxi driver. “Can you come back for me at eleven o’clock? I don’t think I’ll be able to find a taxi out here.”

The taxi driver looked unenthusiastic. “I don’t know. It’s a long way to come again.”

“I’ll pay you double. Please. Otherwise, how will I get home?”

“I’ll try to come. Depends on how busy I am. It’s Friday, you know.”

Isabel shrugged and smiled. “Well, please try,” she said, and stepped out of the car.

The grounds and the house were so grand, Isabel suddenly worried that she was woefully underdressed in her plain white linen shift. She’d pulled her hair back in a braid and donned a pair of strappy bronze sandals. Her intention had been to dress sensibly and conservatively. After all, who hires a flamboyant translator? But now, as she walked up the path, she felt she should have made more of an effort. It was a dinner party, after all.

As she walked up the terracotta steps to the broad entrance, Gilles Masé stood waiting, in a plain white shirt and linen trousers. Isabel breathed a sigh of relief.

“Isabel! So nice of you to come.” He bent and kissed her on both cheeks in the French manner. “Did you have trouble finding us?”

The building was u-shaped, and he guided her through the entrance that that led, not to any interior room, but out into a huge courtyard, flanked by the walls of the house, filled with potted plants of every variety and ending at the foot of an wide, aquamarine swimming pool. Isabel was virtually speechless. She’d never seen anything like this in all her years in Saigon. Now she understood why they chose to live here, so far from the city.

“Mr. Masé, what a marvellous house you have.”

He smiled at her, looking genuinely pleased by the compliment, even though he must have heard it a thousand times. “Gilles, please. And thank you, it was my grandfather’s house. Je l’ai reprise .”

Isabel was tempted to ask how he managed to persuade the communist government to give it back to him, but she thought perhaps the question was impolitic.

A group of six people stood around, chatting, glasses in their hands. Gilles made the introductions, but the only person Isabel recognized was his wife, Carmen, who looked cool and elegant and beautiful with her black hair in a tight chignon and a blood-red strapless dress. She was a consummate Parisian woman: svelte, willowy, and always turned out to perfection. Isabel suspected she was Gilles’ second wife; she was much younger than he was, and had all the signs of being someone’s trophy.

Her bracelets jangled as she transferred her drink from one hand to the other and air-kissed Isabel’s cheeks. “So nice to see you, my dear.” She bent and whispered in my ear, “It’s good to have some new blood in our midst. All these boring old colons – I’ve had enough of them.”

The remark surprised Isabel, but it also made her feel less like an interloper in this tightly-knit group of people who had known each other for years, perhaps generations.

The other guests were all older than Isabel: Mr. and Mrs. Charles Fournier were almost in their sixties and looked like they had been married so long they had begun to look like each other. Sophie and Marcel d’Aubigne were about the same age as Gilles, perhaps early fifties.

The only other single member of the party was Michel Godard. Although she’d never met him, Isabel had seen him around town. He ran a French bar down in the centre of town. He was in his forties and rather short and stout and had a pinkish complexion. He grinned at Isabel and offered his hand. “I’ve met you before, I’m sure.”

“Not formally. But I’ve seen you. You run La Forchette, don’t you?”

Michel grinned and then pursed his lips. “I do! But I cannot believe that I would have allowed a woman as beautiful as you to come into my establishment without wanting to know her name.” He took Isabel’s hand and clutched it, covering it with the other. His palms were sweaty and hot.

Isabel did her best not to recoil. “You were playing dominos at the bar,” she said dryly.

He seemed unwilling to let her go, even as Carmen came over bearing a cocktail glass with something suspiciously pink in it. Isabel took the opportunity and freed herself, reaching for the glass.

“Thank you so much,” she chirped, a little more gratefully than was strictly necessary.

Carmen smiled enigmatically. “Would you like to help me in the kitchen?”

“Of course. I’d love to.”

Carmen took her hand and led her up the stairs into the house and through to an big, old fashioned kitchen where three elderly Vietnamese ladies were hard at work preparing what looked like a banquet. It was obvious Carmen was in no need of help.

“I must apologize for Michel. His wife left him a year ago and went back to France. He’s been unbearably predatory every since.”

Isabel laughed. “Well, thank you for the rescue. He’s very friendly but a little…as you say.”

“It’s your white dress,” said Carmen, stepping closer and running a red-tipped finger along the line of Isabel’s shoulder. “He has a thing for virgins.”

It was a strangely intimate gesture, and Isabel wasn’t certain how to read it. She shrugged and laughed it off. “Well, I’m absolutely safe then.”

Carmen giggled and withdrew her hand. “I need to check the dining room, will you come with me?”

“Of course.”

Isabel followed her through a pair of mammoth wooden doors, past a darkened salon and out onto a wide wooden veranda. A table was set in the middle. It glowed in dim light; its white tablecloth and gleaming silverware reflected the flames from a pair of lit candelabras.

“Your house is just gorgeous, Carmen.”

Carmen walked around the table, checking settings, moving a glass, refolding a napkin. “Yes,” she murmured distractedly, “but it is very lonely out here.”

“I’d imagine it is.”

The woman stopped and smiled, her face framed on either side by the flickering candles. “My husband, he likes you.”

God, the French were weird, thought Isabel. It was a simple statement but Isabel had no idea how to read this woman. She decided that face value was best. “I’m very glad to hear it. I was hoping to get his translation work.”

Carmen smiled again and shrugged her elegant, angular shoulders. Her tanned skin shone in the candlelight. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll have it,” she said, lightly.

* * *

Seated around the table, the conversation was animated and in French. Although Isabel was fluent, it was not her first language and she listened to the banter feeling somewhat like a voyeur. She was being afforded a glimpse into this closed and cliquish world of people who dreamt of the past and regretted the present.

Gilles Masé sat at the head of the table, playing the magnanimous host. He lounged back, one arm carelessly flung over the back of his chair. In his other hand he held a half-empty glass of Beaujolais. He was a bigger man than she remembered, and his hair was shot through with silver strands. He had a strong neck, a very square jaw and rather intense brown eyes. He was handsome in an arrogant, paternal sort of way. From time to time, his eyes rested on Isabel, as if assessing her. It made her uncomfortable, and she took refuge in the chatty Michel who was sitting opposite.

Carmen was on Gilles’ left and showing the effects of having drunk a little too much. She brushed her glass with her hand and knocked it over, spilling deep red liquid onto the pristine tablecloth. It spread out like blood.

“Oh, how clumsy!” she giggled, trying to staunch the spread with her napkin.

“You did it on purpose, Carmen.”

It was Gilles voice, hard and cold, totally unlike the bonhomie of his earlier conversations. The change was so abrupt and so out of place; Isabel felt a small chill run down her spine. The whole table had fallen silent.

“I…I didn’t!” Carmen pleaded, unable to keep the laughter out of her voice.

“Don’t argue with me, Carmen. Stand up,” Gilles said, getting up himself. The legs of his chair scraped against the wooden flooring.

Carmen stopped twittering. “No…no, Gilles. I’ll get the maids to change the cloth. Just wait a moment… I can make it all…”

“Stand. Up.” The voice was clipped and cruel. It was a voice that would not tolerate dissention.

Isabel sat paralysed. In all her life, she’d never heard a man talk to his wife that way in front of other people. Suddenly, she felt terribly protective of Carmen. “Gilles,” she said quietly, but firmly, “It’s just a little spilled wine. I’ll help clean it up.” She started to rise, but the almost murderous look in Gilles eyes stopped her.

Across the table, Michel reached out and took her hand, pinning it to the cloth. “Don’t interfere, Isabel. They do this all the time.”

Down, at the end of the table, Carmen rose slowly to her feet, and began to move the place setting away from in front of her. She did it in a kind of slow motion, and like an automaton, until the table in front of her was entirely clear of everything but the dark, red stain.

“Bend over.”

Isabel’s jaw dropped open as she watched this beautiful, sophisticated woman bend over the table until her upper body was resting on it.

“This kind of undisciplined behaviour is unacceptable,” said Gilles quietly.

“Yes, Maître,” Carmen said.

Isabel watched the woman’s face lying on its side against the wine stain. Her lips were almost exactly the same colour. They moved, but her eyes were glazed over and dead.

“You have no right to embarrass me in front of my guests. Apologize this instant.”

“Yes, Maître. I apologize for my behaviour.” Carmen’s voice was toneless and as dead as her eyes. Then, slowly she closed them.

If it hadn’t been for the fact that she was stuck in the middle of nowhere, with her hand pinned to the table in Michel’s sweaty grip, Isabel would have walked out. The whole scene was surreal. These people were all, surely, mad, and this was like watching a car crash in slow motion. Isabel didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to be a witness to this – whatever it was.

Finally, she got up the nerve to speak again. “Gilles, please stop this. There is no need for an apology. It was just a glass of wine, for God’s sake!”

But Gilles wasn’t listening. He reached down and pulled the hem of Carmen’s red dress over her hips. Beneath, the woman wore nothing. Her bare buttocks gleamed in the candlelight.

“Be quiet, Isabel,” hissed Michel. “Don’t spoil the fun. This is the only reason I bother coming out to the god-forsaken place!”

“You’re all insane,” Isabel hissed back. “This is barbarous!”

Mrs. Fournier, who had said nothing up until now, looked over at Isabel and giggled. “It’s nothing more than she deserves, my dear.”

The sound of flesh hitting flesh made Isabel jump and lock her eyes on the source of the noise. The first slap moved Carmen’s body further onto the table and set the glasses and dishes tinkling. The woman herself was completely silent.

Gilles drew his hand back, to hit smack her again, and Isabel heard someone inhale sharply. The second slap made Carmen yelp. Isabel saw the pain of the blow flash through her face before leaving it, somehow, utterly impassive.

She felt Michel let go of her hand. He drew it beneath the table and she heard the distinct sound of a fly being unzipped.

The whole thing was beyond description. As the spanking continued, Carmen’s cries became louder and louder. But the woman didn’t struggle or try to get away. In fact, despite the noise she was making, she was clearly enjoying this. She’d pulled her hands beneath her chest, and was squeezing her own breasts as the castigation went on.

Gilles, on the other hand, was completely unreadable. He dealt out the punishment with studied impassivity. Over and over, he hit the lovely upturned buttocks with the broad palm of his hand, leaving visible prints on his wife’s flesh.

A little worm of excitement curled and twisted in Isabel’s stomach. She knew she should get up and leave; what she was witnessing defied all appropriate behaviour. She fought the strange feeling, willing herself to turn her eyes away from the terrible, fascinating spectacle in front of her. Then, just as she thought she’d overcome her unaccountable reluctance to move, the spanking stopped.

It was impossible to ignore the groans and sighs and quick breathing that filled the silence around the table. At the head of it, Gilles smoothed a possessive hand over Carmen’s red bottom.

“Eh bien, ma petite. C’est tout .”

Mr. d’Aubigne made a disappointed sound. “You can’t leave her like that, Gilles. It’s unkind. You have to finish her off.”

Isabel’s back went rigid. She scanned the faces round the table in disbelief. “Finish her off? Are you all out of your mind?” she demanded.

Gilles chuckled, his hand still rubbing his wife’s rump. “I suppose it doesn’t sound very appealing in translation,” he said in English. And, without taking his eyes off Isabel’s face, he slid his hand between his wife’s buttocks and began to caress her. Even at a distance of ten feet, Isabel could hear his fingers slipping through the wet flesh of his wife’s cunt. Carmen moaned and arched her back, beginning to pant. And, even from her vantage point, Isabel knew when he’d pushed his fingers inside her, because the posture of Carmen’s body changed and she began to push backwards, riding his fingers.

Despite her best intentions, Isabel’s own body responded to what she was witnessing. Between her legs, her panties were damp, and as she moved, uncomfortably, in her chair, her inner thighs were slick with her own juices. Carmen’s moans and grunts only added to the bizarre eroticism of it all. And, around the table, people cleared their throats, and fidgeted in their seats. Mr. and Mrs. d’Aubigne began to kiss deeply, passionately.

Isabel tried to look anywhere but at Gilles Masé, but every time her gaze drifted back to him, he was staring at her, even as his wife impaled herself on his fingers. Isabel felt her face turn red and she forced herself to stare down at the empty plate in front of her, until Carmen moaned and began to shudder so hard the whole table shook.

“Ah! Je jouis. Je jouis!(4) ” whimpered Carmen. Her body relaxed, and her eyes closed.

Then it was over. It seemed as if everyone let out a sigh. Carmen pushed herself up off the table, smoothed a couple of stray wisps of hair from her face and primly pulled down her dress.

Isabel considered the problem of getting up from the table. How was she going to hide what felt like an massive damp spot on the seat of her dress? Why couldn’t she have worn black?

“We have strawberries and creme fraiche for desert. Does everyone want some?” asked Carmen.

Isabel smiled inanely and nodded her head.

If In Some Distant Place – Part 3

[image error]Robert and Nuria walked back towards Lam Son Square, down the night-time chaos of Dong Khoi street.

“Thanks for that,” Robert said, after a considerable silence.  “Madam Dai is one hell of a character. If she were ten years younger, I would have been tempted to seduce her.”

“I’m pretty sure she’d still be interested.”

“I don’t think I could get past the dusty wig. I don’t even want to imagine what those breasts look like.”

Robert was doing exactly that, Nuria suspected. There was a small, private cinema in his head, with a reel of silent film featuring Madam Dai: wig askew and ancient breasts swaying, seamed lips frozen in an ecstatic o, grey-haired cunt plundered by a headless cock in some jerky clip of impossible pornography.

Nuria shrugged. Forty years from now, perhaps she’d be one of those women. Women who retained some sad ghost of desirability. Women who time had placed beyond the reach of casual objectification. A woman who would hold allure only for someone with a penchant for the eroticism of disgust.

Eppur si muove.

That was the true horror, wasn’t it? That a woman might yearn to be desired once desire was impossible? Exiled to some imaginary table in the always-open restaurant of well-past-their-due-date women who were once beautiful, once desireable, once fuckable, but now not. Waiting at a table, cluttered with organic snake-wine viagra, for someone to overlook, or forgive, or even take delight in what time had done to her.

Is anyone aroused by what time does? Nuria suspected there were. Maybe there was a secret society of them who occasionally got together and partied with the small but fanatic amputee fetish club. Perhaps they traded photographs: I’ll trade you two wattles for a thigh stump?

“Can you take me to that club I’ve heard about? Apocalypse Now?” he asked.

“So now I’m your city guide?”

Robert smirked. “My dear young lady,” he quoted, “we’ve already established what you are, now…”

“We’re establishing your price. Yes, very funny. Sure I’ll take you. But it doesn’t open until 11. Want a coffee?”

“Sure. Coffee on the terrace at the Continental? That’d bring back memories.”

“Long gone, I’m afraid. The Saigon Tourist took over the hotel and enclosed the terrace. It’s a sub-standard Italian tratoria now.”

He nodded like a man grown used to the disappointment of the irretrievable.

Instead, Nuria chose Brodard’s – a cafe overlooking the same square. They sat by windows open wide to the scant night breeze, the petrol fumes, and the cacophony of the evening traffic. Overloaded motorcycles, three and even four astride crossed the square, avoiding collisions in strange, looping trajectories. At the Opera House, a localized version of Macbeth was over and primly dressed members of Saigon’s self-identified intelligentsia poured out onto its broad, colonial steps. Bicycle-based enterprizes, selling balloons and dried squid had strategically staked their territories, with the expectation of custom.

Their iced coffees arrived in tall, sweating glasses with long-handled ice-cream spoons and garish neon straws. For a while, they sipped and watched the mayhem.

“Oh, look. It’s my favourite man,” said Nuria.  “We’re about to catch his eight o’clock show.”

In the middle of square, amidst the milling bikes, a man of about fifty was starting to dance. Terribly thin and barefoot, he had a close-cropped brush of dark hair. His clothes were torn, stained and faded khaki. The shirt came off first. He swung it over his head in a stripper’s parody, revealing a hollow chest, burnt almost chocolate by the sun. Then, after a little fiddling at the waist, off came his ragged, oil-soaked pants, slipping down over the swell of his pale and boyish buttocks and puddling around his shuffling feet.

“Holy shit. What’s he doing?” whispered Robert. “I have an urge to cover your eyes and tell you not to look.”

Nuria glanced at Robert. “I’ve seen it before.”

Motorcycles swerved around the naked man, giving him a wider and wider berth as he reached for his groin, clasped his semi-tumescent cock at its hair-thatched base and began masturbating.

“He does this often?” asked Robert. “Right in the center of the square?”

“Usually on Friday or Saturday nights. But sometimes on weekdays.” Nuria didn’t take her eyes of the small figure.

His sun-striped skin was an obscene contrast to the human-driven, metal and rubber machines that wove around him. He turned in slow, full circles as he wanked, like one of those plastic ballerinas in a jewelry box. Instead of a quaint and tinny music, he revolved to the experimental song of many beeping horns. Some like quacking ducks, broken-throated from overuse, some like tuneful gunshots.

“Don’t the police come?”

“Eventually.”

The figure in the centre of the square had stopped gyrating his hips. Intent now on completion, he stroked himself violently, ass-cheeks flexing as he delivered his cock into the cave of his fist. It was a race, but one in which the runner was fully aware of the spectators.

“He’s insane.”

“I think it’s kind of a game for him. To see if he can make himself come before the cops arrive and bundle him off.”

On the steps of the Opera house, faces painted with disgust, parents firmly turned their children away from the spectacle. Pedestrians shouted curses. Young women giggled, their doll-like, perfectly manicured hands screening their mouths. But everyone who could look did look. Like Nuria, fingers on both hands crossed, silently willing the public masturbator to reach orgasm soon.

In the distance, above the song of the traffic, came the nee-naw-nee-naw of a police siren.

“They’re coming,” said Robert. But his eyes were also glued to the wanking man.

But the figure’s thrusts were tighter, more precise; his fist was pumping with the even automation of an assured and incipient outcome.

“They’ll be too late,” said Nuria with a smile. “He’s going to make it this time.”

Before the last words had left her lips, the naked man in the middle of the square, bronzed with the blush of the sodium street lamps and lashed with the headlamps of passing motorcycles, stiffened like an upright corpse and ejaculated.

A few people on the sidewalks clapped. More shouted obscenities. The spry, naked figure bent down to pick up his discarded clothes and bolted in the direction of gardens that ran alongside the Opera House.

Nuria released her held breath and beamed. “Bravo,” she whispered. “Bravo.”

Leaning back in his rattan seat, Robert shook his head in wonder. “I feel…I feel dirty.”

“You are. We are,” she said, still unable to dislodge the grin.

“Like I just had sex.”

“Well, in a way, we did.”

If In Some Distant Place – 2

[image error]The food Madam Dai had ordered without consultation arrived. On the table cluttered with greasy glasses, snake specimen jars and overflowing ashtrays, there were small plastic plates, each with a shoddy sample of Vietnamese cuisine. Wise enough not to partake herself, she replenished her glass in the murky jar.

Like a portentous Greek chorus, Robert thought he heard the dead snakes in the jar whisper: “Don’t eat the springrolls.”

“I was the first woman to sit in the senate,” said the old woman. “Back in the old days, when we were pretending to be a democracy. Me, with my law degree from Paris, and my beautiful stylish shoes.”

Her black eyes glinted, the liner around them had run into the creases of her skin and her false eyelashes sat curled and dusty black on her heavy lids, like dead spiders on cupboard shelves.

“Those men,” she said. “Those fucking men. They just couldn’t help themselves. And the Americans only made them worse. The corruption was…” she shook her head and the her wig, delayed, agreed. “The corruption was so thick. So thick. I can’t even find words for it. It was like the whole of Saigon had lost its mind. It was something past greed, you know? Ridiculous cherry red Cadillac’s being flown in on a moments notice. Whole crates of refrigerated lobsters left to rot on the dock in the sun. No one did their job. Everyone was too busy squirreling away what they could skim off the Americans. No, skim is the wrong word. I was a spoiled woman, you know? I had been born into a rich family, brought up in a big French house, sent to the Lycee. I thought I’d seen corruption all my life. But it was nothing to this. Nothing. I couldn’t stand the sight of the excess. Perhaps you can’t even comprehend it.”

She looked at Robert, blinking. A black trail of moisture had wormed its way into the puffy hollow under her eye.

“I think I do,” he said.

“Maybe I have something to thank the Americans for.” Her old eyes settled back down on the half-empty glass on the sticky plastic tablecloth. “Maybe they made me patriotic. Maybe they turned Saigon into a bathtub full of money and all the shits floated to the top. That’s when I met my Colonel. That’s when I fell in love.”

“He was Viet Cong?”

“Viet Cong?” she cackled. “You Westerners, you have labels for everything. You think once you put names to things you can control the world. Like Adam in the Garden of Eden.”

Robert decided to ignore the snakes and bit into a spring roll. Without something to soak up the rice alcohol, he wasn’t sure he’d make it through the evening. It was a tough, greasy little thing. Like a fishy tootsie roll.

“So, what was he like, this Colonel of yours?”

Madam Dai closed her eyes and her stained, wrinkled lips spread smooth across her mouth, and displaced all her sags and lines onto the sides of her face. “He was so handsome. He was a teacher, you know? Or that’s what he was pretending to be. I met him on a tour out to see one of the newly invented strategic hamlets out near the Cambodian border.”

“Near Tay Ninh?”

“That’s right. God that place was poor. Poor and filthy.” She shook her head again. “He showed me the school they’d built for the village children. And there was a little clinic. Oh, he was so soft-spoken. He was from Central Vietnam, you know. The peasants there are almost unintelligible. But he was from Hue. I could tell. He was courtly. I knew right away he wasn’t a teacher.”

“But you didn’t say anything?”

“I didn’t care. That slim young man, in his neat, belted trousers and his bright white shirt. You should have seen his hands. He had elegant hands. After all the greedy, fat pigs in Saigon, he seemed to me like a god of the rice fields. With his soft voice and his ravenous eyes.” She grinned again and took a sip from her glass.

“So, how did you two get together? I mean, in those days, it couldn’t have been easy.”

“About three months later, he came to my office in Saigon. Ostensibly to organize funds for some pre-natal program the Americans were using to try and win ‘hearts and minds’ with.”

Madam Dai put down her glass and looked at Robert. “I have always been a clever woman. Believe me, I knew exactly what he was doing, trying to recruit me. At first, I’m sure it was all about doing his duty. I knew that. I just didn’t care. I knew what he was, and I was willing – no, no, I was hungry – to be swept up with his cause. And I wanted those elegant hands on me. I wanted them to lead me to something else, somewhere else.”

“So what did he want you to do?”

“Oh, he didn’t tell me any of that at first. That first visit to Saigon, I took him back to my house and let him fuck me in my marriage bed. It was the best sex I ever had.” She chuckled and looked over to the dusty shelves and the stained plaster. “Not that he was such a great lover. No. The pleasure came from knowing that, with every thrust, I was letting go of all that filth and all that corruption. We screwed until all the French in me came off on the sheets. Until there was nothing left but a Vietnamese girl. He purified me. He fucked me red. Literally.”

If In Some Distant Place – 1

[image error]“The irony was, I’d imagined the Revolution would be exciting and romantic,” said Madam Dai, fiddling with the gaudy jade ring on her fat middle finger, “But it turned out to be drab and incredibly boring.”

Robert pursed his lips to stifle his smile. He couldn’t recall a time in his life when irony hadn’t tasted sweet on his tongue. It was, he thought, chiefly a journalist’s disease, this delight in witnessing the miserable consequences of ill-considered decisions. And far from making him dislike Madam Dai for her embittered confession, it made her all the more likeable. So few people saw their mistakes with such honesty or clarity.

“I was a spy, you know,” she said with a giggle. Yes, it was exactly a giggle, kittenish and flirtatious. Incongruous in an 80-year old woman.

But everything about Madam Dai was incongruous, from her considerable bulk – elderly Vietnamese ladies tended, usually, to be tiny and birdlike – to her startlingly jet-black hair. At first, Robert had assumed it was the result of a home dye job, but realized, after she tugged it sideways in a moment of pique, it was a poorly made wig.

The ‘Thư Viện’ restaurant had been, she explained, her law library in earlier days, before the fall – or the liberation, depending on your political affiliation – of Saigon. The shelves were no longer filled with books. Instead they bowed under the burden of dozens of massive jars containing the corpses of poisonous snakes floating in clear rice-brandy. But every so often, the rows of glass were interrupted with dusty photographs in ornate and tarnished silver frames: the Madam with Mitterand, the Madam with Breshnev, the Madam with Pierre Trudeau.

“I see you like my drinks cabinet,” she purred. “Snake wine is very beneficial for men, you know. Men like you, of a certain age. It helps with…” she trailed off and, raising her eyes to the high, water stained ceiling, shrugged mutely. As if erectile dysfunction were a matter of which she knew much, but was reluctant to say.

“I’ve heard that,” said Robert.

Without asking, Madam Dai motioned the thinner of her two her elderly helpers over. What emerged from Madam Dai’s mouth was a scalding stream of verbal urine. Ten years of covering the war in Indochina had not accustomed Robert to the way in which the Vietnamese spoke to those they considered their inferiors. Clearly, Communism hadn’t cured them of the habit. For her part, the ancient, skeletal maid was not to be bullied. She responded with an equal measure of screeching venom. And this time, he did catch enough of the words to understand them.

“We’re trying to run a business here, you stupid old bitch.”

This time Robert couldn’t help the smile. The maid relented, hefted one of the enormous jars off the shelf and thumped it down onto their table, seemingly unconcerned with breaking the thing. Inside the glass, the violence both physical and verbal brought the entangled mass of dead cobras momentarily to life. They gyred lazily in the jar. Their opaque eyes bleached white in the alcohol, their scales sloughing off into the liquid as they slid over each other like sinuous, reptilian zombies.

The old maid came back with three small, thick glasses, so old and scratched they had lost their transparency. She banged each of them onto the table so hard it sounded like gunshots in the small, high-vaulted, bare walled room.

Madam Dai smiled serenely, revealing dental work that accessorized her jewelry,  and unscrewed the large, rusted metal lid. “Have a drink with me, Mister Robert. We shall toast the old days.”

Only then did Robert recall the third member of their party. He turned to the quiet woman who sat at a little distance from the table, chain-smoking. The woman who had caught his eye at the Caravelle’s rooftop bar. The one who had brought him here, promising him amusement.  At first, he’d thought she was one of the younger cadre of reporters here to cover the Anniversary celebrations. Then he’d guessed a Russian bar girl on a night off. But now he wasn’t sure. Too young for him, of course, but a visually pleasing enigma nonetheless.

“Are you up for drinking some of this?” he asked.

Nuria stubbed out her cigarette and pulled her chair back to the table. She spread her hands, palms down on the sticky plastic tablecloth. “Of course I’m up for it. I’ve always wanted an erection.”