Read Online Rake by Scott Phillips - Free Book Online Page A

laid?”
    “A year ago.”
    “You haven’t been laid in a year? What kind of Frenchman are you?” He looked like he was about to cry, so I dropped that particular line of argument. “How’d it happen the last time?”
    “I was married to her.” His expression got a notch sadder.
    “So that’s it. You were married for a while and forgot how to pick up women. It happens. I guarantee I’m going to get you laid before we get any further with this project.”
    “It doesn’t matter.”
    I shook my head. “It does matter. At the risk of opening up a wound, why’d you get divorced?”
    He stared at the bare wooden floor, its ancient varnish mostly worn away. “Because I found out she was fucking my best friend, that’s why.”
    “Ah. Listen, here’s what we’re going to do. You know that little blond assistant of Marie-Laure’s?”
    “Not exactly, apart from having been at that meeting today.”
    “Good enough. She’s coming along tonight, and I’ve got five euros that says she’s going to take you back to her place at the end of the night.”
    “I don’t even know her. And she’s young.”
    “Young is good, Fred, not bad.”
    “I mean she’s probably into all kinds of terrible youth culture. And she’ll probably hate my book. Who knows if she even reads, working in television?”
    “Fred,” I said, straining to keep the exasperation out of my voice, “you’re not marrying her tonight. You’re going to attempt to insert your penis into her vagina and then remove it again, repeating the process until such time as you achieve a reasonably satisfying orgasm. I will attempt to encourage her to allow you to do this. After that if you’re both of a mind to do so, you can try it again. If not, you’ll fuck some other woman. Okay?”
    He answered with a joyless, resigned shrug. “Let’s go.”
    Heading for the stairs, I was terrified to hear the door to the old ladies’ apartment open. I turned to face a pair of sweetly smiling old biddies, one considerably older than the other.
    “Good evening, M. LaForge,” they said in unison. The older one squinted at me and said, “You look just like that doctor on the television.”
    The younger pointed at Fred and informed me that M. LaForge was a celebrated writer. “Author of a novel.”
    Both of them had those sweet, high-pitched voices that older French ladies get. Fred bid them good evening with what seemed genuine fondness, and we descended at a great clip as they made their way down, step by grueling step. I wondered where they were going at nine in the evening; off to feed strychnine to the pigeons, perhaps, or to some poor trusting clochard sleeping under a bridge. In any case I felt certain that they were safer than anyone having the misfortune of running across them under cover of darkness.
    •       •       •
    We took a cab to a Chinese place near Les Halles where Fred used to eat with his wife. There were the usual cheap wall hangings and paper lanterns, Chinese pop music playing quietly over the PA, and waitresses in slit silk dresses, one of whom was a tall, slender thing with very nice legs. She found it impossible to address me directly and looked at Fred while I gave my order. When she left I watched her walk away, an impossibly slinky gait that gave me a little boner there under the table.
    “So your best friend banged your old lady,” I said, breaking my own spell, not really intending to say anything mean. It just came out that way.
    He nodded. “He was a friend of mine, and a colleague. He was at the wedding, even. And I came home one day and heard my wife having a big, loud orgasm.”
    “You heard it?”
    “She’s a screamer.”
    “So how did you know she wasn’t masturbating?”
    “I snuck upstairs and stood by the door and I heard the bedsprings creaking, heard him calling her a dirty slut, heard her coming louder than I’d ever heard before.”
    “Jeez. I hope you broke his fucking legs.”
    He was