Mendocino Coast

Then I saw my name on one of the ubiquitous white cards—Mms. Pilch. Yes, that was the name I had inherited when I had married Howard. Why I hadn't changed it to something reasonable, like Smith or Jones, or even just back to my maiden name, Childs, I had no idea. But I had never taken the time. That was me—Danielle Pilch. I hated that name.

The man holding the card was short and rotund, wearing a dark blue suit, a bit rumpled, and a skinny black neck tie. His hair, what there was left of it was plastered down over his balding pate in a bad combover. His eyes bulged a bit so the overall effect was of a badly aged Peter Lorrie or perhaps Danny DeVito. Could this be Gerard, I wondered? Perhaps a driver. Standing behind him was a tall black woman, but I gave her only a quick glance, not even sure that they were together. She was likely waiting for someone else.

I dragged my case through the crowd, a bit like trying to make a 90 degree crossing on the Bayshore Freeway at 4:30 in the afternoon, but I made it. When I reached them I said, slightly embarrassed as I always was by my last name, "Hello, I'm Danielle Pilch."

Gerard erupted in a fountain of rapid fire French. He looked pleased to see me, perhaps overjoyed, but I hadn't a clue what he was saying. I suppose I simply looked tired and bewildered. His greeting was rapidly cut off by something forceful the tall black woman standing behind him said. I assume it was, "Gerard, Andre told us she doesn't speak French," or words to that effect.

"Oh Oui, Oui. Mademoiselle, I am Gerard Rosseau and this is my colleague Claudine Parkland, launching from there into a rapid speech in heavily accented English that I probably only followed about half of—in part because of his accent and the speed of his speech, and in more significant part because I was stunned by Claudine's beauty.

Claudine was tall, at least 5'10" plus another three or four inches for the spiky black heels she was wearing. She wore a pair of carefully tailored black trousers that fit snugly at her hips and upper thighs and then draped cleanly to her shoe tops. They had a knife sharp crease. The pants displayed well-muscled thighs and hips that fit to her upper body with almost a shelf above her derriere. She was what women call short waisted, which to me simply means all legs, and had what men call a bubble butt, which means a butt that extends well beyond the curve of the woman's back, but mostly means a butt they want to fuck. Her upper body was encased in a lacy black camisole that hung loosely from straps, covering, but not disguising, small breasts placed high on her chest. Her skin was a lovely light shade of light chocolate and was flawless. I knew women who would die to have skin like that. She had the face of a fashion model with high cheeks and puffy lips which broke into a broad smile, disclosing uniform, glistening white teeth when Gerard introduced her. Her make-up was understated but emphasized her classic high cheek bones and her round brown eyes. Her hair was trimmed with what would, on a white person, been a buzz cut, but on her, left a soft covering of black hair just long enough to begin to adopt the classic African kink. I felt a need to stroke it. In a word, she was stunning.

I am not usually distracted by a beautiful woman, but this time I was. Plus the airport was a noisy place, and Gerard's heavily accented rapid-fire English would have been hard to follow under any circumstances. I must still have been looking bewildered because after a moment or two Claudine shook her head, smiled, and spoke up over the top of her boss, speaking in clipped upper class British English, "Welcome to Paris mademoiselle. We have a car waiting. Please come around the end of the barrier and we will go downtown to the gallery. Your paintings have arrived and been unpacked. We all think they are stunning."

Gerard kept talking all the way to the car, mostly about the paintings, I think. When we got to the car, Claudine intervened and explained that only she and I would be going downtown to the gallery, as Gerard had another engagement he had to attend to. He made a great fuss of kissing my hand before he waddled off to another waiting black car. The man's energy was unlimited, but neither he nor his walk were things of beauty. No matter to me. Andre said he could sell and that was what I needed at the moment—someone who would get a good price for my paintings.

It was only about 1:30 but the drive downtown took a solid hour or a bit more. Paris like every major city in the industrialized world has terrible traffic. The scenery was nothing to write home about—a scattering of remaining pieces of agricultural land with a few lost looking cows, and a lot of commercial facilities ranging from light industrial plants and warehouses to a big soccer stadium. Once we got into the old part of the city, my face was pressed against the glass looking for the major sights of Paris I had seen only in books, movies, TV, and the Web.

"You've never been to Paris before, Mademoiselle?" Claudine asked—a question pretty much stating the obvious.

"No. I have not. It's very exciting. Oh, and please call me Danielle."

"Of course, and we will make sure you see the City while you are here. But first we must go to the Gallery so you can be assured your paintings have arrived in good order, and then I will get you to your hotel, where perhaps you would like to catch a nap before we dine. Gerard has instructed me to take you out to dinner. We have the boss' credit card tonight so we shall dine well."

I pulled my face from the glass and looked at her. She had a subdued smile that said, "While the cat's away the mice shall play."

The paintings were there, unpacked and leaning against walls in the back room of the Gerard's gallery in the Marais district. Other members of Gerard's staff all crowded into the back room and gushed compliments about my art. Their English was much better than that of their boss. After giving them a few minutes to gush and me enough time to verify that the paintings had not been damaged in shipment, Claudine hustled me out of the gallery and to a small luxury hotel on the left bank. She made sure I was checked in and then left, telling me to sleep, and that she would be back for me at 8:00 pm for dinner.

We had dinner at a small bistro that was modern in appearance and traditional in its menu. The food was delicious and Claudine did not spare the boss' card on the wine. One of the beauties of a traditional French Bistro is that they don't seek to turn tables. It was our table and we had it for the evening. And unlike some Parisian restaurants, the tables were not jammed cheek to jowl, so Claudine and I could have a peaceful, reasonably private conversation. By the time we left the restaurant around 11:00 we both pretty much knew the other's life story.

Claudine was 28, the daughter of an American diplomat (hence the name Parkland) and an Algerian fashion model born and raised in France. As a result she had French and US dual citizenship. Her English accent came from spending much of her youth in London, with frequent trips to Paris to see her mother's relatives. She had obtained a degree in art from a British university, but had turned to modeling to make a living soon after she graduated. Today she lived in Paris and spread her time between modeling gigs and part time work in Gerard's gallery.

At some point in the evening she asked me about the theory of my art. Was there a particular school I was following, she wanted to know? She told me that the rest of the staff would ask the same question tomorrow as it was a part of their approach to selling art.

I paused for a moment thinking, oh oh, this is where my discussions with gallery owners in Northern California always ran into difficulties.

"Have you and Gerard talked to Andre about this?" I asked.

"No. Well, Gerard may have. He and Andre have a lot of conversations I am not privy to."

So I dived in. "Claudine," I told her. "I have studied art at the California College of Arts and at UC Berkeley. I have a BA and an MFA in art, and I have to tell you that while that educational background gave me a pretty comprehensive grounding in classical and modern theories of art, my paintings don't represent an effort to track any school that I learned about."

She was staring directly at me and I noticed her eyes widen just a bit.

Before she could ask again, I dove into an explanation of my skills as a synesthesiate and how my paintings were an attempt to express on canvas what was going on in my head.

"So you actually saw those wild colors that are on the canvas?"

"'Saw' is not exactly the right word," I explained. The synesthesia creates a canvas of colors somewhere in my mind that I experience simultaneously with the sounds, but it is not visual. I can close my eyes and it is still there. I can be seeing something entirely different through my eyes and still experiencing the synesthesiastic colors somewhere else in my head."

I also told her about how forces like the wind and the fog translated themselves into colors in my head. I didn't tell her about the effect of sex with Andre.

"But you remember them? Right? At least long enough to recreate them on canvas?"

I paused for a moment. This was a sensitive point for me. "They do fade, like any memory. Sometimes quite quickly, almost like a dream. I was always disappointed with my efforts to get the colors on canvas until I painted this series. Before these, the canvases didn't have the intensity and pop I wanted."

"What happened with these?"

Again I paused. I had never told anyone, not even Andrei, this.

I licked a lip and said, "Acid."

"Acid?"

"Yes. Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. LSD. The Timothy Leary drug of the Sixties. I got into it when I was getting my MFA and living in Mill Valley, but I quit when I left there. A few months later I was feeling dissatisfied with my painting, so I dug around in a box of things I had brought from Mill valley and found I was still well supplied with acid. Thinking what the hell, it can't hurt, I dropped a tab and waited a couple of hours until the initial rush, the oneness with the universe part, had passed. Then I sat before a big canvas and listened to the sounds I was hearing and started putting paint on the canvas, rapidly. When I came down, the canvas in the corner of my cottage was something I really liked. That was Sounds of Mendocino 1. I spent the next two weeks dropping acid and painting in one two week long drug induced haze that produced all 18 paintings in the series."

"And then you stopped?"

"You can't keep that stuff up forever," I said. "I've known a few people who did, and it's not good for you. So I quit and spent a couple of weeks eating good food and climbing the ridges behind my cottage. Once my head was clear I tried to find a gallery owner to hang my new paintings, but Andre is the first person ever to buy one and no one, before Gerard, has ever been willing to give me gallery space."

"Wow." Her eyes were even wider now.

"Can you sell them?"

"We will see what Gerard has to say. He sets the tone," she responded.

Then she laughed, "It's actually my legs that do most of the selling for me. For Audrey, it's her tits."

"Hmm. Perhaps I should see them."

"Audrey's tits or my legs?"

" Mmmm," I said, as I looked at her over the top of my coffee cup. "Your legs. All of them."

"This evening?"

"Yes."

We took a cab to her flat, which was nearby. When we got in she gave the cabby the address and then said something further in French that I couldn't follow. I think she told him to take the slow route.

As soon as we were moving she put her hand on my knee, pushing my skirt aside. "Have you been with a woman before?"

"Yes."

"Are you a lesbian?"

"No. I like men too."

She smiled. "So do I." she chuckled. "I would not want to get by without a cock, now and then."

Her hand slid up the inside of my thigh, pushing my dress farther aside. The sensation was delicious. I leaned back and let the feeling take me. I had been thinking about having sex with her for at least an hour or so, and I was sure I was quite wet by now.

We rode in silence through the streets. I was paying no attention to where we were going—only to the steady progress of her soft finger tips up the inside of my thigh. I came to sell paintings, but this was a nice side benefit.

When her fingers reached my panties, she spoke up. "You're very wet. You've been thinking about this for quite a while, haven't you?"

"Yes." I slid my butt forward on the seat and spread my legs. My skirt was around my hips now and she was massaging my pussy lips through the thin cloth of my panties. I groaned.

"Take your panties off. You can leave them as a tip for the cabby."

I complied in silence, arching my back to raise my hips off the seat, and then using my thumbs to drag my panties down off my hips. The skirt was around my waist now. She pulled my panties off my legs and feet and tossed them in the corner of the seat. I was sitting in the back of a Parisian cab, my skirt around my waist so I was naked from the waist down. My legs were spread as wide as I could get them without putting my feet up on the seat before me, and Claudine had inserted two fingers into my dripping cunt. We bounced along over cobblestoned streets for several blocks with Claudine aggressively finger fucking me while she used her other hand to rub my engorged clit. Her ministrations to my cunt and my clit were generating a mild synesthesiastic show in my head, but nothing like the light show I had experienced with Andre.

"Oh god, that feels so good," I said.

"Shhhh. Just enjoy it, but do it in silence. We don't want him to know. We only have about five blocks to go. Are you close?"

I nodded yes. Close? Oh fuck yes, I'm close, I thought. I had been hanging on the ragged edge of a screaming climax for the last several blocks, and now she tells me to be quiet.

Claudine increased the pace of her finger fucking and then, as we ran a red light, she pinched my clit. Oh fuck! That set me off. I put my hand over my mouth trying my best to muffle the sounds of ecstasy that were escaping from me, and let my eyes roll back so all I could see was the ceiling of the cab periodically illuminated by the passing lights. There were lightning bolts of color firing off through my head as I climaxed.

A minute or two later, my climax finally ended, I felt the cab pull to a stop. I was still wiped out, but I did manage to get my skirt back in a reasonable place (mid-thigh) while Claudine was paying the cabby. I picked my head up to look for my panties just in time to see Claudine hand them to the cabby along with a few bills. She hadn't been kidding about the tip. I guess I should have been embarrassed, but what the hell, I didn't know him and would never see him again. He smiled at me and said, "Bonsoir, Mademoiselle." I smiled and laughed. As the cab drove off. I looked at Claudine and said, "That was an interesting cab ride. Where are we?"

"We are at my flat in Pigale."

"Pigale. That's a rough neighborhood isn't it?"

"It is, as Americans would say, gentrifying. The whores and their pimps can't afford it anymore."

Claudine had a beautiful flat. It was spacious, decorated with expensive looking contemporary furniture, and had a marvelous art collection. I wandered around the main room looking at the art on the wall.

"Where did you get all these? This is a marvelous collection."

"Most of it I got from a late uncle's collection that I inherited. Some of it I bought with the proceeds of other parts of his collection I sold. I was a customer of Gerard before I began working for him. She gave me a tour of the whole flat and then asked me to open a bottle of wine while she stepped away for a moment. I opened the wine, and poured two glasses carrying them into the living room. I had just sat down when Claudine returned to the room, naked from the waist down, having shed her black trousers and whatever it was she was wearing beneath them, if anything. The tall spiked heels and the black camisole top remained. She was stunning. Her legs went on forever, the muscled thighs blending into the strong muscles of her ass which curved to a meeting with her lower back. Her legs and ass had the same soft, milk chocolate, brown color I had so admired on her upper body earlier in the day.

She walked past me and picked up the glass of wine I had poured for her and then sauntered to a chair on the other side of the room where she sat, with one leg spread over the arm of the chair. Her pubes were completely shaved so her dark pussy lips, wet from our entertainment in the cab, gleamed in the light. I completely forgot about her art collection.

"Have you recovered yet?" she asked.

"What?"

"From our play in the cab. You seemed to enjoy it."

I laughed. "Your very perceptive" I said, "And yes, I enjoyed it. I'm recovered and I would like to return the favor."

"Oh you would, would you?" she said, a shoe dangling from the tip of the foot on the leg spread over the arm of the chair. She began slowly stroking her pussy as she stared at me.

I pulled my skirt up around my hips for the second time tonight and slid forward in the chair spreading my legs to expose myself. Unlike Claudine, my sex was covered with a thick bush, which I carefully spread with my fingers so she could see my gleaming pussy lips.

"You seem to have lost your panties?" she said.

"Yes. Someone gave them to a cab driver as a tip."

"Really. That seems an unlikely story."

I shrugged my shoulders and took a sip of the wine, feeling totally decadent as I exposed myself to the dark beauty opposite me.

"You have a beautiful thick bush," she said. "I have to stay shaved. Some of the clothes I model cover very little."

"I like it." I said. I unbuttoned my blouse and peeled it off. I had not bothered with a bra for the evening.

"You have nice breasts," she said.

"These," I said, holding my breast out towards her. "I always wished they could be a bit larger." I was massaging each nipple with a thumb.

"Most women do. It's a mistake. Clothes fit so much better when you have small tits." She sucked in air as she slid two fingers into her cunt. "And most of the time we seduce men with our clothes on. Once we are naked, the contest is over. They are going to fuck us no matter what size tits we have."

"And women?"

"It's the same. You have been lusting after me since you first saw me at the airport."

"I did notice your long legs, but it was the way you took charge from Gerard when I couldn't understand him that really got my attention."

"Ahh, so you're one of those." She took a sip from the wine glass and then used the hand that had been on the glass to begin lightly massaging her clit. Her eyes were big.

"I'm not really a submissive," I said. "You can't practice law and be a submissive. Not really."

"Oh," she said, her voice tinged with skepticism. She spread her remaining leg over the other padded chair leg. "Is that so?" She looked slutty, so, so, slutty. I loved it.

I stood and released the catch on my skirt letting it fall as I walked across the room towards her. I was naked now and enjoying it. Upon reaching her I dropped to my knees between her legs and stared at her gaping cunt. She pulled her hands away and used them to pull the camisole over her head so she was as naked as I.

"You have a beautiful pussy," I said.

"Are you going to eat it?"

"Yes." I slid my hands under and around her thighs and pulled her towards me so she lay open before me like a dinner platter. Then I began to slowly lick her sex, with long, slow strokes running from her perineum to her clit. She tasted delicious.