Esclave - Pt. 02

The Metro intimidated me.

I could probably figure it out, but not now. Not if I wanted to be on time. I was standing at the gaping mouth of one of it's many elaborate entrances, then turned against the flow of those who knew where they were going and made for the first cab I could find.

"Louvre, s'il vous plaît."

I was an hour early, wanting to get a sense of how busy it was going to be over there and where I might want to hang out to see and be seen. Pamplona's endless flow of bullfight tourists had me spooked and that was probably nothing compared to what I could expect outside a world-famous museum with the Mona Lisa and all.

As I got closer to the Louvre, I found a big construction site in the middle of the huge stone courtyard. An artist's rendering plastered on plywood showed everyone what was underway. A smaller picture of the architect was there too. Pei was his name and he was making a pyramid out of windows and steel, but now it was just large, rusty red steel beams positioned at it's furthest corners, braced at odd angles. Given all the heavy equipment, sand, and barricades, this pyramid was going to be huge. It also fucked things up. A lot of people were milling about, but now they are spread out on all four sides of the fenced-off site. Do I post myself in front of this pyramid or the main entry of the museum? What exactly is the front of a pyramid? Which exactly was the main entry to the museum? I could not risk missing her.

Maybe it was this sudden turn of events, but Paris was starting to look good to me, not the cold, manipulative tourist trap I had felt the night before. Now the sky was crystal blue, and the sun was warm and bright. It had actually turned out to be an absolutely glorious day. The thought that she wouldn't show up crossed my mind from the moment I woke up but this trip was built on the foundation of going for the experience and asking questions later.

I made for what I took to be the front of the museum, far to the right of rows and rows of people queueing up for tickets. Loud and anxious tour groups positioned themselves apart from others to stay organized, as entry was now going to be a bit more complicated. Big public spaces now have extra security because of problems with the Basque guerillas in the north. The nice weather made things hot and bright and so there were probably more people coming to the museum than usual.

I still had twenty minutes, but I scanned the crowd anyway, looking for the elegant, buxom redhead who made a point of secretly reaching out. She was like a spy.

I dressed the same as last night, hoping it would make it easier for Pascale to find me. The same dark blue jeans and a white cotton shirt opened a bit generously at the top to show a tuft of chest hair and a new tan, curtesy of my wandering around Pamplona, looking for a place to stay. I shaved, my hair was brushed back and my teeth were brushed to the point of a bit of blood in the sink. I'd brought three pairs of contacts with me on this trip and today I'd go with a fresh pair. My eyes were red enough from the night before and this just felt like an important enough date to warrant the new set.

By 2 p.m., my eyes were sore from staring in every direction, including into the sun, no longer directly above. The faces and bodies began to blur. She was only an hour late and I was afraid to move from where I was in case we would miss each other. That's how things worked. I focused on every woman. I was now beginning to question my own memory of just how beautiful she really was. There had been three splints of champagne after all.

She was either held up or maybe wandering about trying to find me. At 2:30, I began to think about the train back to Spain. Maybe this was just another impulsive mistake and once again, I'd acted like a teenager in heat, which was kind of what I was. I'd been with women in college and had my share of girlfriends over time, but this was a real woman. A very hot, sexy French woman who worked at a live sex club. I could wait.

At 3 p.m., I moved higher up the stairs, pushed upward by a group of German tourists taking my spot for a group photo. I moved around a tiny woman with a shopping bag to get a better vantage point but she awkwardly moved the wrong way and nearly knocked me backward. I muttered an apology in Spanish, since I'd been studying the language pretty intensely before the trip. It came instinctively.

"De nada," the woman replied, also in Spanish, moving out of the way.

I nodded and resumed my vigil. I was going to give this another hour. She said not to be late and I'd now been standing outside the Louvre for close to 3 and a half hours. My legs were getting stiff but sitting down was not going to help. There was an endless sea of people and many seemed to be in the process of finding others too. How fucking ridiculous this was! Meet me at the Louvre, scribbled on toilet paper. I could be looking for a nice tapas bar in Madrid by now.

The Spanish lady was positioned below me, but I quickly realized she was looking upward at me.

I looked at her again, not sure if I was in her way. She smiled and I nearly jumped backwards. It was Pascale!

But was it really? My god, is this the woman from last night?

Only one step below, she looked to be all of 5 feet tall. That woman last night was much taller, almost a foot taller, and looked deeply into my eyes from the moment she introduced herself at Papillion. She was wearing a pink, fluffy sweater that looked itchy and hid that lovely chest I thought about all night. She wore the big sweater at an angle, giving one incredibly pale shoulder a chance at some sun. Very French.

She was pretty, but a different kind of pretty. Her makeup was gone and it still wasn't clear that this was the same woman from the night before. Those lips were now thin and soft pink on a petite, freshly scrubbed face with lots of freckles about her pointy nose and heavy, dark red eyebrows that had that big, high arch that now seemed familiar. Now, in the bright light of day, it was apparent that they were drawn on, like Groucho's mustache.

Her jeans were worn, tight, and frayed at the knees, but not in an intentional way. This was nothing like the seductive vamp I'd drank champagne with the night before. There was no way she had deftly toyed with the tip of my cock through my pants with razor-sharp talons while we watched a pair of underwear models fuck, some twenty feet away from our table. I'd been scanning the courtyard for that tall pile of red hair all afternoon and now discovered it was a rust-red color not found in nature, hidden under a dark green babushka. It's no wonder I didn't see her. She's twenty years older than she was last night. Definitely not as pretty. She came as if in disguise, but in fact, I was now seeing the real Pascale.

She watched closely as I came to realize who she was. Her big, toothy smile had remnants of last night's blood-red lipstick. I was going to tell her how glad I was to see her, but she handed me her bag and said to follow.

She made her way for the far right bank of front doors. Gliding between the rows of those standing in line, she seemed oblivious to the comments and looks that followed in our wake. I didn't need to know the language to understand that this wasn't cool with both rows of people behind us. At the cashier's window, Pascale took a spot to the side of a visitor and her four pre-teen children in the course of getting her tickets. Both the cashier and mother stopped what they were doing when they became aware of the two of us standing to the side and waiting. Once Pascale had been able to make eye contact, she began to rapidly speak in French, waving off an older couple behind us who protested our move.

I have no idea what was being said, but the mom with the antsy kids grimaced and the cashier nodded, though he was not registering a reaction one way or another. I stayed quiet and stood dutifully behind Pascale.

That neck. I watched her move to the cashier's window and could see that this was indeed the same woman I lusted over last night. The elegant, long lines of her neck were not easily found on random women. She was like one of those expensive Spanish figurines at the airport in Madrid. Lladros.

I held her shopping bag with two hands, up against my belly. My body language tried to convey that I was an innocent bystander in all of this, though not really.

Pascale paid and directed me to follow with her eyes and a shrug of her head. I'd not thought to reach for my wallet. We moved so quickly to the front of the line that it seemed like we weren't going to be paying at all.

What followed was perhaps the quickest tour of the world's greatest museum. Pascale was no tourist. She knew the enormous floor plan and location of her forty or so favorite exhibits; she made a point of pointing out a hall where we could find Di Vinci's Mona Lisa were we to be looking for it. She clearly wasn't a fan.

We sat only once and it was on a bench she knew well. We were positioned in front of an enormous painting with an elaborate gold frame. It was obviously a very old painting with a lot going on. There were six or seven naked, voluptuous women draped haphazardly in white sheets, celebrating in a dance of abandon around a naked man tied to some heavenly or Roman gate. There were farm animals and heavenly clouds and horns in the upper right corner. Pascale was not giving me background on this one. Not like the others. She sat and looked intently at me while I took everything in.

Side by side, I'd really hoped when we sat down that I'd feel her thighs against mine again, but that was hoping for too much. This wasn't the basement at Papillion. I looked at her, looking at me, and smiled. She did that thing again. That smirk and then directed my attention off her and on this favorite painting.

"Tell me what you see here," she said. That voice. Unmistakable

As I returned my gaze to the breasts of the swirling nymphs, I felt a hand at my back, near my belt. Then suddenly her cold, tiny hands slid down the back of my pants and fished out my shirt, untucking it in the back. Her hand was terribly cold and it moved quickly under the cover of my white shirt, moving to my belly and then up to my chest.

She took hold of my nipple and gave it a very firm squeeze. My body began to lift from the bench in pain, but Pascale brought me back down by pulling my nipple downward. I again turned to her in agony and she told me quite clearly to turn back around and tell her what I saw.

That's when I saw that one of the women had actually reached forward and was literally twisting this bearded, naked guy's nipple. He seemed near to kneeling as she seemed to be pulling him downward in what I first took to be how he was tied. Pascale's hand moved to my other nipple and she continued to pinch and then release, pinch and then release. I wondered how this could be happening in front of everyone, but then realized that we were just another couple of French lovers who couldn't keep their hands off each other. One couple strolling arm in arm could probably tell that Pascale was holding me still by the tit and smiled at us like they were apologizing for intruding.

"That woman in the background is controlling the man in the same way you're controlling me," I said quickly through gritted teeth. "She's got him by the nipple. He's ready to scream."

"He is, or you are?" she asked. "Breath."

Pascale seemed pleased that her hint helped, and her hand continued to roll my nipple tightly between two unrelenting fingertips. The long nails from last night were gone, but this was an intimate grip. She moved closer and settled in to hold on longer. After a few minutes, the sharp ache became warm. She smelled like roses. Roses, rope, and that sweater felt incredibly soft against his bare arm.

"Did you eat?" she asked. Her hand relented and slid out from under my shirt.

"No, I really wasn't hungry earlier. But I could eat."

"Good, I brought us a picnic. I have sandwiches and beer. Do you eat meat?"

We left the Louvre through a door that didn't feel like it was part of the general public's permitted venue, but I was following and we moved about without anyone raising an alarm. Outside, back in the courtyard, Pascale shared her opinion of the pyramid with a spit in it's general direction.

The sun was coming down. This picnic would have been better in the sunshine of a few hours ago, but it was still quite lovely and the sunset wasn't for another couple of hours. We walked for close to forty minutes to a park with a view of Montmarte. Another famous district, or so she told me. She lived in an area called "The Arab Quarter.". It was not a great neighborhood, she said, but it's the only place in the city she would consider living. I had a feeling I understood what she meant and nodded in agreement, without any clue as to what "not a great neighborhood" meant.

The sun was in my eyes and so I pulled out a pair of sunglasses. They were favorites and I admittedly thought I looked pretty good in them. They were like the ones Richard Gere wore in "American Gigilo.". Pascale settled on a bench and only after sitting and reaching for the bag in my arms did she notice my shades.

"Take them off," she ordered.

"The sunglasses?"

"Yes," she said flatly. "You look ridiculous."

I paused, which made her tiny nostril flare, but once the sunglasses were off, she seemed more focused on passing out the long bagguett sandwiches of ham, cheese, and some really tasty, pickled spread. The beer was no longer cold, but I'd been carrying it all through the day, so I didn't care.

The more I looked at her, really looked at her, the more I began to recognize the woman from last night, but gone was the noir edge that she carried atop some pretty tall heels. Without the evening gown and in this casual, comfortable look, Pascale was once again looking beautiful, but now more naturally elegant.

The sun had now crept lower, above her shoulder. That lovely, porceling white shoulder dappled with soft red freckles that now have come out like early stars. I wanted to reach out and softly caress her neck. I wanted to be closer and smell that rose smell again. Was that really rope that I smelled? Like a big, coiled-up length of itchy rope. It had a good, fresh smell, and I wondered if it was my imagination. I wasn't going to ask.

I was now squinting into the sun as Pascale told me about her family, who lived two hours away in the south. Okay, maybe I don't look like Richard Gere, but these were the only sunglasses that I ever got compliments on for how they looked. I reached for them again and before putting them on, I noticed how Pascale stopped talking midsentence and pursed her thin pink lips. The big, dramatic eyebrows arched a bit higher in surprise.

I realized this was perhaps not a good move, but I asked.

"Do you mind?" I held them up. Under the circumstances, she had to see that I was having trouble with the sun, though my eyes were also wandering to her chest. The sweater could not hide Pascale's body.

Pascale smiled. "I'm happy you asked first," she said, taking them out of my hand. She said something else in French and then she bent them over, snapping them into two at the nose piece.

"No," she said. "I told you you looked ridiculous. If I look on you, I want to enjoy it. I can't look on you trying to look like Robert Gere."

"Richard," I said. She put the broken sunglasses in the shopping bag, which was now full of our trash.

"Don't correct me," she said with that smirk. "Especially when I'm not wrong. Finish your beer. We have to go to your hotel and check you out before they stick you with another day." She then leaned forward and gave me a long kiss. It was a surprise, so I didn't open my mouth to her invading tongue until it was obvious what she wanted.

I gave the bottle a final swig and said nothing, which both surprised and pleased her. Pascale took my arm as we headed for the Metro. We looked like typical Parisian lovers out for a walk. We were headed for a Metro station. She knew where we were going.

(To be continued)