Read Online French Lessons by Ellen Sussman - Free Book Online Page B

long clumps.
    “Everyone wants to look like a movie star.”
    “Which movie star?” Josie says weakly. She’s feeling nauseated again and this time it has nothing to do with the pregnancy.
    “Where are you from?” the woman asks.
    “The United States.”
    “You speak French. Americans don’t speak French.”
    “Some of us do.”
    “There is an American movie star filming in Paris today. On the Pont des Arts in about an hour. We’re closing the shop soon. My receptionist already left to get a good spot.”
    “Who is it?” Josie asks.
    “Dana Hurley. She is incredibly sexy, no?”
    “You’re cutting too much hair,” Nico tells the stylist.
    “Who are you? The boyfriend?”
    “No,” Josie says.
    “Yes,” Nico says.
    Josie glares at him.
    “Alors,” the stylist tells Josie.
    Josie closes her eyes and feels the young woman’s hands ruffle her hair. She feels light, weightless, as if she might float away.
    “Does Dana Hurley have short hair?” she asks, her eyes still closed.
    “Yes,” the stylist says. “Oh, I don’t know. They change their hair so often. In her last film she had a bob. It doesn’t matter what she does with her hair—she is someone I want to fuck.”
    “She’s old, isn’t she?” Nico asks.
    Josie hears them as if they’re far away. With her eyes closed and the snip of the scissors in her ear, the pounding of the techno-pop in her bones, the sensation of air on her neck, she feels transported somehow. Maybe she’s on her way to becoming someone else.
    “Oh, she must be forty-five or so, but she is the woman we all want to be. She is sexy and passionate and good in her skin. You know what I mean?”
    Bien dans sa peau . Good in her skin, Josie thinks. I haven’t been good in my skin since the last night I spent with Simon.
    “I don’t know,” Nico says. “I’ve never gone for the older woman thing.”
    “That’s because most older women lose something,” the stylist says. “They lose their fuckability. They stop thinking about sex all the time and they think about jobs and country houses.”
    Josie opens her eyes. She sees someone else in the mirror. Her hair frames her face and her eyes look wide, her mouth looks full. She looks older and younger—she looks wild and she doesn’t look scared.
    “Oui, chérie?” the stylist says, leaning close. “See what I mean? You are a movie star, no?”
    She was grading papers in her cottage late at night when the doorbell rang. She opened the door and saw Simon standing there in the porch light, his hair tousled, his dress shirt untucked from his pants. He looked at her, his expression dark and unfamiliar.
    “What’s wrong?” she said.
    He stepped in and pulled the door closed behind him. He pushed her up against the wall and pressed his mouth on hers.
    His kiss was hard and insistent. He pushed his leg between her legs and she could feel the weight of him against her.
    When his mouth moved away from hers he made a noise, something low and guttural.
    He took both her hands in one of his and held them above her head, pressed hard against the wall. She heard her own voice say his name. His other hand slid under the band of her pajama bottoms and rubbed against her, urgently, while his leg pushed her legs farther apart. She was wet, and when she started to say something only a noise escaped her mouth and again his mouth was on hers.
    He pushed her pajamas down and they tangled at her feet. She heard his hand pull at his belt, at the fly, and he lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around him and then he was inside her. He released her hands and she wrapped them around his back while he pressed her hard against the wall, each thrust pounding her back, pushing them closer. A painting on the wall rattled. She could feel him deep inside her and she wanted even more of him.
    “Don’t stop,” she managed to say when he started to come and his orgasm kept rolling and their bodies, now slick with sweat, kept pounding together