Read Online Coq au Vin by Charlotte Carter - Free Book Online Page B

or…whatever.
    â€œEither that, or she came back here to the hotel once and found somebody or something waiting for her, and she was too spooked to even come up and get her stuff.”
    I waited a few seconds, and when he didn’t reply, I asked, “Doesn’t that sound logical to you?”
    This time it was Andre who made a sudden move. All at once he was clearing up the debris from our breakfast and opening the armoire where I kept my things and flinging open the drawers.
    â€œWhat are you doing that for?”
    â€œGet your stuff,” he said. “We’re getting out of here. You’re leaving this hotel.”
    â€œAnd going where?”
    â€œTo my place.”
    â€œWhy?”
    He didn’t answer.
    â€œWhy?” I asked again. “You think something’s going to happen to me here. Is that what you’re saying?”
    â€œI don’t know. But I think you should leave. You could save the money, in any case.”
    â€œYou believe somebody was here last night now—is that it?”
    â€œNo—I mean, I don’t know—it’s possible. But aside from all that, I want you to come. I want you to stay with me.”
    I called downstairs and told them I would be checking out and that I’d need to retrieve the envelope I’d stashed in the safe.
    â€œYou know, Andre,” I said when I had finished packing, “I bonded like this—with a strange man—once before. Only once.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œNot good. Not good. It ended up terrible.”

CHAPTER 5
    Straight Street
    I sprang from the cab.
    â€œHoly shit. You live on the rue Christine?!”
    â€œYeah,” he said. “Didn’t I mention it?”
    â€œYou most certainly did not, Andre.”
    â€œYou’re tripping because you know Baldwin once lived on this street. Is that it?”
    â€œNo, fool. I’m ‘tripping’ because I love this goddamn street like a schoolboy loves his cherry pie. When you said you got the ham in the market, you meant the market at rue de Buci, didn’t you?”
    He answered, but I wasn’t even listening.
    I was running up the stairs ahead of him.
    â€œWhat floor?” I called down to him while he struggled with Viv’s suitcase.
    â€œTop.”
    Holy shit!
    The tea shop across the street, with the madeleines to die for. The blind man in the fountain pen shop. The fifty-seat cinema at the end of the block. There was a time when I’d have become a common prostitute to live on this block, sold my grandmother, given away my soul. I had been walking on the street perpendicular to this one, rue de Seine, one summer afternoon—I was nineteen years old—and I’d turned down this street and opened my arms to it. I couldn’t even have told you why; there were far more beautiful places to live right in this neighborhood. But I had returned to this street again and again, walked it at all times of the day and night, observing the life that went on, pretending I lived in the apartment over the lingerie store. I used to see this street in my dreams after I’d returned to school that fall.
    And now Andre was turning the key in the lock and letting me into—holy shit! A skylight. The apartment was tiny, but so beautiful. Was this really happening? I was flying around that room, touching everything—the lamp, the kitchen sink, the stereo.
    I turned to face Andre, who was regarding me as if I were insane. I suddenly began to laugh helplessly. No wonder he thought I was nuts. I was acting like—like a schoolgirl version of Andre, when he had some Negro arcana in his teeth.
    By the time my fit of laughter was over, his expression had changed. I knew that face: desire. Wrong word. Desire was the least of it. His face read, as clearly as the headline in the morning paper, You are going to be fucked. No preliminaries. No talk. For better or worse. Fucked.
    I didn’t