(Lest They Leave - Chapter 10)

[madscenes]

CHAPTER INDEX

CHAPTER 10




When, not long after, but it felt like an eternity, Claire came knocking on the door, whispering in distress, “It has been an hour, mademoiselle,” Sylvie opened her eyes and studied Eloisa’s profile again, lazily, where she was lying on her back, her nose a proud rise, like the Alps, like some Sicilian mountaintop. They were both completely naked now, on the camp bed, shuffled together. Eloisa’s breasts were everything and nothing that her bandeau bra had ever been able to conceal. They, too, rose like mountains. Her nipples were a cute pink, Sylvie had felt them on her tongue, sucked on them with hunger, they were on the way, after all. On the way down her body, towards her inner world. The smooth softness of rose petals.

It was a feminine symbol for good reason. One day, she’d paint Eloisa on a background of thorned roses.

“Did you think of monsieur Dubois even once?” Eloisa asked, turning her head slowly towards her with a small smile. That was my gift, it meant. Sylvie shook her head, very sombrely.

“I don’t want to think of any men right now,” she replied, not Armand, not my brother, not anyone who sends you roses because they see the same thing I do.

“Then, you live in the wrong world, topolina.” With a contented sigh, Eloisa sat up and began pulling her fingers through her long, red curls, combing them effectively. It was such a nonchalant move, like nothing mattered, not this, not that. Not Sylvie, not Sylvie’s mouth tart with the taste of her sex. Maybe it didn’t. Tomorrow she’d go back to making Charles stay out past Sylvie’s bedtime.

“Isn’t there some way I’m able to contact you,” Sylvie asked, then, she was pleading, she was begging. She didn’t want to be given any more chances, to rely on someone else, anyone, including Charles. She’d heard Eloisa moan now, she wanted to take her chances for herself. This might be a man’s world, but it could be hers as well, theirs, if Eloisa would let her. Please, it meant.

Looking at her a long time, Eloisa’s features changed into something less sharp and less pointed, her mouth lost its sardonic curve, and her brow lost its shadowy furrow, she was smooth and soft like the insides of her, where Eloisa had been just now, the parts of her she’d felt. “All right, little Sylvie, make the operator connect you to Elisabetta Paolo, and we’ll be dandy. There’s only one of her in Paris, don’t worry.”

Beaming now at being shown favour again, preference, Sylvie sat up as well, meeting Eloisa’s searching gaze, as if she was looking for something in Sylvie’s smile that she knew had to be there, but which she couldn’t find. Licking her lips uneasily at the scrutiny, Sylvie pushed herself closer to the edge of the bed, placing her feet on the floor. Every inch of her was bared, like proof that she had been touched without layers. She thought, maybe Eloisa was the same, maybe she had let her guard down for once, whispering Sylvie’s name again and again.

Little Sylvie, little Sylvie.

Maybe even Eloisa was capable of shaking off her thorns. Maybe that was something to strive for, to have her do. To have done to herself, for Sylvie’s own sake. She was tired of bleeding. Of sacrificing the things that lived inside of her.

“Is Elisabetta your sister?” she asked, then, curiously. The fact remained, Sylvie knew nothing about Eloisa, really, she realised in that moment and as such, she was open to any information the other woman was willing to give her, along with her chances and her taste.

“Elisabetta is me,” Eloisa answered, sitting up on the other side of the bed, showing Sylvie nothing but smooth, pale back, a few beauty marks, a scar near her left shoulder blade that Sylvie felt an overwhelming urge to kiss, to know.

She knew nothing, yet she knew a little more now than she had this morning, didn’t she? A part of herself, a part of Eloisa. Elisabetta. No reason for any shock, many artists used pseudonyms, it wasn’t that strange or unusual.

Standing up, since Claire was knocking again, she called back to her this time, I’m coming in a moment, making Eloisa lewdly mutter, again? Wasn’t once enough? A blush, but Sylvie held on, insisted: “Do many people know? About your name.”

Pulling on her dressing gown, Eloisa moved around the bed towards the table in front of the large mirror, catching Sylvie’s eyes in the reflective surface. From the chair on the right, she watched with interest as Sylvie started to dress once more, put on her layers, be a little more shielded, the armour necessary in this world of men. “Only the whole Gallard household,” she finally replied. Meaning, Sylvie and her brother. They could both call her on the telephone, it meant.

Direct line.

Sylvie swallowed. Eloisa saw and sighed, deeper this time. “He paid my car, topolina, giving him my number was the least I could do,” she said, waving one hand dismissively. They were very alike, Charles and her. All that business. “Don’t think I lick his fanny the way I do yours.”

At those words, Sylvie halted mid-motion, otherwise busy slipping the headband on that she’d arrived with, large pearls hanging to one side, cream on gold. She hadn’t bothered with finger waves tonight, and good riddance. They would’ve been a mess after this.

You better believe, everything was a mess after this.

“I didn’t know he had one,” she managed to mutter, averting her gaze. He had other things, though, she was sure, and this she knew, if nothing else. How women and men hugged and did more than hug. The improper things that boarding schoolgirls would gossip about, right?

“There are many things you don’t know,” Eloisa said even so, turning in her chair and looking right back at her, head cocked, eyes tender but teasing at the same time.

Completely without shame, the smell of sex in the room and the memory too prominent, of Eloisa seeking her nearness with a violent passion, to start a debate about something like that, right, Sylvie was back to begging, “Will you teach me?”

Pointing at the door, showing her out very rudely, or maybe she knew that unless she gave her the boot, Sylvie would never be able to leave this room, since it would be one more room she couldn’t truly return to; it wouldn’t even be the same next time she came, Eloisa laughed.

“We’ve already started, my good girl.”


~*~


The camp bed remained in Eloisa’s dressing room for the remainder of the run of Antony and Cleopatra, it saw many uses in those two weeks.

For every new performance, Armand’s chauffeur, his name was Teddy and Sylvie almost felt like she was cheating on Edgar by knowing this, picked her up and drove her home, but between those two points, the left and the right extreme, Sylvie spent her evenings with Eloisa on that squeaking camp bed, while Claire, more and more anxious-looking, kept watch. If anyone had disturbed them, what they had found would be anything from naked, entwined bodies, to dressing gown-clad Eloisa posing for Sylvie while she sketched her to the two women tending to each other’s makeup, their hairstyles, massages in front of the large mirror, things that would quickly lead back to naked, entwined bodies on the bed.

Eloisa’s dressing room wasn’t impressive in size but to Sylvie, it became larger than life, a world on its own. Going back into Armand’s modern, fancy automobile was waking up to another reality. With Claire seated next to her in the backseat, she never looked back at Théâtre Femina, but a part of her didn’t leave that building, and it was to that part she kept returning.

As much as it was to Antony and Cleopatra. As much as it was to the actress playing the tragic heroine over them all.

Inevitably, though, the run ended, they spent closing night, which incidentally fell on the day after the big Bastille Day celebrations, drinking leftover champagne, and Sylvie returned to the townhouse slightly tipsy and with her face wet from tears, and from where Eloisa had licked them clean off, murmuring: You’ll hear from me, I’m not done with you yet, little Sylvie. You’ll hear my voice, and you’ll come.

So, once more Sylvie was reduced to waiting, that old game.

Luckily, Eloisa didn’t make her wait very long.

Sylvie’s birthday fell at the peak of summer, a few days before the end of June, usually she’d be finishing exams at the academy around this time, receiving homemade gifts and eating eclairs and other baked goods from Marseille’s best baker along with Marguerite and Marceline, and for years she had associated her birthday closely with these things, these innocent things, passing grades and pains au chocolat.

This year she expected nothing but hoped for everything. Was that too strongly phrased?

It was one week after closing night. She hadn’t had either the courage or the opportunity to get Elisabetta Paolo on the line, because Charles had been home during the day, receiving visits from associates and business partners constantly, and during the night he was out, no doubt hugging Eloisa and worse. Sylvie would lie awake in her bed, trying not to imagine the other woman writhing beneath him, moaning his name, and yet that was all she could think about. She thought about it when she touched herself, too.

Now, she was sitting on a sunchair in the garden, studying her hurried dressing room sketches, drawing Eloisa from memory on papers spread out in front of her, and the great Eloisa Paolo always looked kinder in those pictures, when Sylvie was done with them, less hurriedly these days, because here Claire wasn’t keeping watch, she was keeping house.

Imagination was like that, it softened people.

Beyond how Sylvie knew Eloisa to be, with her petals and her thorns.

Charles, on the other hand, her imagination erased completely, he didn’t even feature. She saw enough of him on the daily to take him out of the equation that was his under any circumstances, and he still hadn’t as much as asked her for any birthday wishes. No, he hadn’t given her the chance to say, I want your squeeze. I want Eloisa.

The butler came out, searching the premises with a practised efficiency, finding her in the sun and coming over. Sylvie did the same thing she did whenever someone was approaching, she collected her sketches and slid the heavy folder that held her full portfolio on top, pinning the sheets of paper to the small garden table made of wrought iron, floral motif.

His name was Léon, their butler, and he waited patiently for her attention before saying, “Telephone for you, mademoiselle.”

Frowning, Sylvie shook her head. For once, it did mean no. It meant, no one called her, a fair few people wanted to talk to her brother and were disappointed, when she answered instead but as of yet, not a single call had been for her personally, in all the time she’d lived in Paris, in his house. Their parents’ house. She was of no importance to the big cheeses here. Charles wasn’t around enough to rub off on her properly, to put her in demand by proximity alone. “Who is it?”

“An Elisabetta Paolo, mademoiselle,” Léon responded readily.

With a wide-eyed stare, Sylvie got up fast, so fast her folder slid off the table and her papers flew everywhere, Léon gasping, oh, and beginning to collect everything within reach. Sylvie panicked, grabbing for the same papers as him, thinking, she called me first, she wants me that much, she wants me back, while at the same time commanding the butler, “Collect these papers, but don’t look at them, don’t dare!” It made her sound like her brother, barking out orders and she wanted to apologise, but she also wanted to get to the telephone as quickly as possible. In the end, she managed some kind of middle ground, saying, “Léon, please” and “excuse me” more or less in one breath, before hurrying off, inside the house and down the main hallway to the small nook where the phone had been placed in imitation of discretion, right at the heart of the home. Its beating, bleeding heart, she thought.

“Hello, yes, I’m listening,” she said eagerly, words stumbling over each other as she held the receiver to her ear, mouth, whole side of her face.

“Topolina,” replied Eloisa’s voice and Sylvie slumped against the wall for a moment, head falling back, her short hair tickling her cheek, her bangs tickling her brow. Her insides were clenching, unclenching, loosening up, letting go of an old fear that au revoir meant goodbye in the definitive sense. “I know a secret about you, and you mustn’t ask me how I found it out.”

“Can I ask what secret it is?” Sylvie asked instead.

A laugh at the other end. In the hallway, Claire passed the nook by, carrying a tray of cleaning supplies. She did her best not to glance towards Sylvie too curiously, but still couldn’t quite help herself. Sylvie met her gaze, smiling, because she had made Eloisa laugh, and it was dry and hoarse, and the other woman had no doubt just smoked a ciggy. “That you may ask, chérie.”

“Then, I ask that,” Sylvie said. Claire was out of sight once more, how swiftly things changed around here.

“The secret is that on Saturday, something very special is happening,” Eloisa teased. The upcoming Saturday was Sylvie’s birthday. Her heart started beating hard in her chest, thud, thud, thud. How had Eloisa found that out? Definitely, Charles wouldn’t have mentioned it, she wasn’t even certain he could remember the date. Well, the date, yes, he read the newspapers, and he carried a calendar, but not the significance of it.

“What’s happening, Eloisa? On Saturday,” she whispered, realising maybe the connection would eat the words and she would have to repeat, so she made ready.

But the connection didn’t eat anything. “I’m taking you out, little Sylvie,” Eloisa replied and there was a smile to her voice, a not too-sharp, not too-sardonic smile. Soft. Rose petals, no thorns. No bleeding. No sacrifices. Sylvie wanted to cry, but beamed instead, although the other woman couldn’t see it. She hoped it would translate.

“How? Where?”

“You’ll see. I simply need you to have your chauffeur take you to some theatre in town, no matter which one, buy a ticket for a show, the longest performance you can find. I’ll pick you up at that venue.” All of these details, all this information was so offhandedly provided that Sylvie had to fight to even keep up with the flow, but she tried her best, and she thought, I will really need Edgar’s confidence now, as well as Claire’s continued friendship, right? She clung to the implications by her teeth, by the tips of her fingernails. She was going somewhere that was supposed to act as a front for another undisclosed, surprising place, somewhere she had to pretend not to be going, and Sylvie didn’t have a face or the skills for that kind of drama, but Charles wouldn’t care enough to look for the signs. If he was home at all. Speaking of which, Eloisa continued after a rhetorical pause, and there was a certain triumph to it, “I have a new car, after all. And I can drive it, I’ve been taught well.”

They both knew by whom. Sylvie hated it.

“Take me anywhere,” she told the actress, the redheaded Italian, rare as a dinosaur, though she had yet to disappear from the face of the Earth. She was still a living reality.

“You’re so sweet, topolina,” she said. “How did I know you’d say that?”

“I can’t say over the telephone,” Sylvie whispered, breathlessly. It was followed by a pause on the other end, then a slightly airy, slightly hoarse chuckle.

“Say it anyway.”

“You know my flavour, Eloisa,” Sylvie concluded, without a sliver of hesitation in her voice, strong, proud. Pure, open want. Countered by the static of the connection, with the underlying hint of heavy, uneven inhalations, until the line cut unexpectedly, and although Sylvie said Eloisa’s name, both of them, many times, it didn’t reconnect, she didn’t come back. After five minutes, she understood, maybe it hadn’t been accidental, maybe someone was playing, or someone was being played with, or both at once.

Maybe this was always going to be the game. Waiting.


~*~


When Charles came home the following evening, because it was evening, not night, the clock struck seven as he stepped into the dining room where Sylvie was sitting by herself, finishing supper, he was carrying a crudely opened letter in one hand and a bouquet of roses in the other. Red. Eloisa’s colour. Sylvie expected this had to be a stopover, he was on his way out again, to see her, to give her flowers, to do everything that Sylvie couldn’t, but he didn’t seem in a hurry, leaving the flowers on the table’s opposite end from her. They were beautiful, long-stemmed with large thorns and held together by a silk ribbon in baby blue.

Frowning, Sylvie put her fork and knife down, wiping her lips with the large napkin that Claire always laid out for her, asking in a way that betrayed she was more interested than she wanted to show, and she hated it: “Who’s the lucky recipient?”

She wanted him to say any name but Eloisa’s, preferably her own, they’re for one Sylvie Gallard, at the same time as she thought a part of her would die, if he really did.

He didn’t, though.

“You,” he said, simple as that. Sylvie stared at him. Her? In front of her, the dinner plate with pigeon Rossini had suddenly lost all interest. What did he mean, her? At her flabbergasted expression, he sighed deeply, like Eloisa would have done, for sure, and waved the letter at her once. “Mail from Armand. There’s a message for you at the bottom. And a request that I buy you flowers.” A nonchalant gesture towards the bouquet. “If you don’t like them, throw them out, but don’t tell him I didn’t try.”

Her mouth felt completely dry, parched, and she looked from Armand’s letter with a note for her, apparently, to Charles’ face, slightly withdrawn, his eyes deep and dark and withholding things she might never truly be offered. Maybe that was just the distance between them, how the years had grown and settled and fossilised. You couldn’t tell her that wasn’t a terrible process of nature, like the dinosaurs, like the iceberg that sank the Titanic. Sylvie swallowed hard.

“I like roses,” she said, totally truthful, and stood up, pushing her chair back, facing him in her nice tea gown and her slightly ruffled hair, because she’d been sitting around the garden all day and it had been a windy one. “I’m not Eloisa.”

Biting her lip, she could’ve kicked herself for running her mouth like that, speaking so freely, so carelessly. Charles stared at her, wordlessly, a long moment, then shrugged.

“Keep them, then.” He didn’t follow up on her mention of Eloisa. Rather, he turned around as if to leave, only after having dropped the letter on the table as well, next to the roses Armand wanted him to buy for her, and Sylvie wanted to scream at him, why didn’t he bring her anything of his own, why didn’t he remember the day she was born, why, why, why?

Let me matter to you! Or stop mattering so much to me!

“Charles,” she called his name, wanting to use something condescending, Big Cheese or Your Highness, but finding herself unable to even take those words in her mouth. It had to be his name. That was what she called him, what she had always called him, who he had always been to her. He stopped, turning his head slightly but nothing more than just that slight inclination towards her. “I’m going to the opera tomorrow night, they’re showing Don Carlos.”

There was hesitation in his shoulders, a moment’s faltering where her older brother who owned the world, whose business spanned continents, whose friends were many and his enemies counted even more, seemed momentarily uncertain. He looked hesitant and she had made him look like that. Sylvie wanted to apologise immediately, but didn’t get to, before he replied: “Good.”

And nothing else than that, good. He looked back towards the main hallway, taking the first few steps in that direction, before adding in a voice that was loud enough, she could hear it, clearly, across the room, across the dinner table, across her stupid pigeon Rossini. It was a gift all on its own. “Happy birthday, Sylvie.”

Like that, he was gone.

Sylvie stared at the spot where he’d stood. After a breathless second, however, she moved around the table to where the bouquet was lying and the letter next to it, and she picked up the small square of cream-coloured paper, reading quickly over the short message from Armand that was held within, mostly updates on distribution routes and coffee prices. At the bottom, Armand had also written, in just a few words: Enjoy your birthday, Sylvie. Not as if I was there, but as if I weren’t. His handwriting was neat and very precise. Twice, three times she read over the contents of the letter, making sure she’d gathered all of it, nothing forgotten, nothing overlooked.

Nowhere in the letter, it finally dawned on her, had he told Charles to buy flowers for her.

Lost in thought, in some quiet sense of disbelief, she almost didn’t notice Claire enter the room, she only halfway heard her ask whether the bouquet needed a vase, mademoiselle, and her response was a contemplative, “Whatever you do, don’t throw it out.”

Unlike Eloisa, Sylvie’s nose was only stuffy because she felt like crying.


~*~


She sought out Edgar before they were scheduled to leave the following evening, at half past six; as always, she found him in the garage where he was busying himself cleaning the car, rubbing at the bonnet with a big, once-white cloth. The car, however, was shining. She took a moment to admire it, standing back a little, since she had just changed into her evening wear and wouldn’t like to get it all dirtied, please. Eloisa was taking her someplace, she didn’t know where and it was something for which she had no way of preparing, so she’d ended up in the pale pink flapper-style dress she’d worn that first night with Armand – to honour his instruction, with or without him, right?

In this dress, besides, she knew, she’d both be able to dance and look pretty, she could both run and hide. Whatever Eloisa’s secrets required of her.

“Mademoiselle,” Edgar greeted her, also keeping his distance, once he was done polishing the paintwork adequately, to his own standards which, when it came to Charles’ car, were very high. “Are you ready for the Palais Garnier? Another sight to see in Paris, I’d say.”

He was still playing their game.

Sylvie’s stomach clenched in a guilty kind of regret about what she was going to ask him now. Edgar had never wanted anything more than to drive Charles’ automobile, to take her anywhere she’d like to go, and she was making him an accomplice just by proximity. Just by being in the parking lot tonight, able to see who came and who went, he’d indirectly get in trouble. No, she had to prevent that.

“Will you do me a big favour tonight, Edgar?” she asked him, voice quiet but firm. She imagined herself suddenly another person, someone who could stand up to her brother, first and foremost, and secondly to less tangible things – to the storms that raged, to the rain of fear and to the roses of love. To the eyes of the public, and to their too often unkind verdicts. Opinion is the only valuable thing about the rich, her father would sometimes say, she remembered, even their money was deception, he’d claim, Charles disagreeing, but Sylvie remembered, she imagined, because it wasn’t wrong. She was sure of it.

Yes, someone who could stand up to opinion; she pictured herself that way for the first time ever.

It was thrilling.

“Anything, mademoiselle,” he smiled, like he’d smile to a dear friend’s daughter. Don’t say that, she wanted to scold him but didn’t. You don’t know what it is yet.

“When we arrive at the Palais Garnier, an automobile will be waiting to pick me up. Please don’t question it, don’t follow us and most importantly, you mustn’t tell Charles. For all Charles knows, I was at the opera until long past midnight, all right?”

Edgar gaped. Like a fish caught out of water, just the same expression, fighting to breathe, to shout for help, wordlessly. Sylvie wanted most of all to hug him but couldn’t, because he was all grimy and she was going out tonight in this dress; she wanted to look her best, if not being on her best behaviour. “You’ll get me in trouble, mademoiselle,” he finally whispered in response.

She took his hand, deciding to run that risk. “When have I ever? I’ll take the blame myself, you don’t have to worry.”

“And you’re not getting yourself in trouble?” he asked then, which was a much more difficult sentiment to dismiss. Sylvie laughed, a light, chiming laughter. Nervous.

“I don’t know; that’s the exciting part, isn’t it?”

His features twisted slightly, but not in anger, as she might have expected, it was in worry. Care, she thought and the knot in her stomach melted, softened into nothing but warmth and affection, these people in this household who were standing in for the family she didn’t have anymore. The parents she’d lost to the bottom of the sea. The distant hurricane brother who put flowers down before her without explanation. All the things she didn’t understand, they were making up for that.

A moment passed in which they were just looking at each other, Sylvie awaiting his verdict and Edgar out, like the jury, his green eyes boring into hers while he weighed the pros and cons, the risks and the gains, though she imagined the gains were mostly hers and didn’t matter much to him in the end. Finally, he said:

“You have my word, mademoiselle Gallard,” which made her beam and him, sigh. Sylvie released his hand after squeezing it and Edgar gave her the stained cloth that he was holding in his other hand to wipe both hers in. She did it only superficially. If she got his dirt on her dress now, well, she’d carry it with her all night, the same way he would carry hers, and she thought that was only fair, really. If it were an eye for an eye, like the aunties always told each other, to justify their gossiping, it could be a secret for a secret. She owed him that much.

They left half an hour later, and Sylvie’s dress wasn’t heavier to wear than it had been when she put it on.


~*~


There was a wait, of course there was.

Once Edgar had dropped her off at the opera house, driving to the far end of the parking lot, as if staying there would lower the risk of him blabbering about it to the master of the house, Sylvie remained outside in the mild weather of midsummer while all around her, everyone else in their conservative, old-fashioned clothes wandered inside. She waited ten minutes, fifteen, then began fearing she hadn’t informed Eloisa of the place through the right channels, though she’d called her up in Elisabetta Paolo’s name and told her, Palais Garnier at eight. On the other end, someone had hung up, but only after humming fine in a low voice.

Finally, twenty-five minutes past performance-start, one of the attendants had been down to usher her in, an elegant car swung in onto the parking lot and pulled up in front of her, Eloisa leaning over to open the door on the passenger side. “Come,” she said simply, always with her demands.

Sylvie came, climbing inside, after catching Edgar’s gaze across the roof of the elegant automobile, a 5CV. He averted his, pretending not to see. Sylvie had no words to express her gratitude. None that could travel such a distance, none at all.

As soon as the door closed behind her and she’d slipped into her seat, Eloisa leaned over and kissed her, buon compleanno, topolina, right on the lips, in front of the world, and Sylvie realised in that moment, that was all she had wanted for her birthday. The power to be that free, that unrestrained. Wherever the actress took her from here, it was merely the cherry on top of a very large cake.

Breathlessly, she asked the question once more, “How did you find out it was my birthday?” It wasn’t from Sylvie, it wouldn’t be from Charles, even if he did know the date and brought her flowers, then from whom? Eloisa leaned back in her seat, grabbed the steering wheel once more and pulled the car out into the middle of the road, driving quite elegantly, less temper than Sylvie would have expected of her.

She drove like Edgar did. With deliberation.

“I have my sources, my secret spies,” she replied, glancing sideways at Sylvie with a sharp-winged smile while she steered the car down the main boulevard, the Boulevard des Capucines, in the direction of the Église de la Madeleine. Away from Montreuil, away from that whole neighbourhood, that whole part of the city. She drove west. Towards the budding sunset, the hues of amber and gold, same colour as their hair, respectively, Eloisa’s and Sylvie’s. Sylvie liked that a lot, turning her back on the Gallard Manor, her quarters there, her brother. Who was only ever there intermittently, the rest was empty space that resonated with nothing but her steps from one end of the house to the other. Her conversations with family she had found on her own, on her way.

“Can I ask who?” she enquired. They drove past large townhouses and apartment complexes, luxurious facades that the grime still touched, because there was only one world, Sylvie had learned. The same.

“That would be a silly question,” Eloisa dismissed her, like Charles would have done, although not in those words. He could’ve done it with a single glance. The words, at least, sounded like something. “It doesn’t matter. Ask me the other question.”

Orders, again.

Sylvie smiled a bit, despite herself. “Where are we going?”

“We’re going to see Giovannina Roux,” Eloisa replied, so effortlessly, so easily, as if expecting Sylvie to recognise the name, to know who that woman was. An Italian, judging by the given name, and how Eloisa said it, but she hadn’t seen her mentioned in the papers or heard about her on the radio, Charles had never introduced them. Was she a big cheese? Was she one of the darbs?

Was she one of Eloisa’s patrons? Had she sent her roses? Sylvie’s gut clenched.

“Who is that?” she managed, although her tongue felt thick and uncooperative.

“She has money and power from her dead husband, that’s all you need to know. Because most importantly, little Sylvie, she has founded her girls’ club, have you heard of such a thing before?”

Shaking her head, Sylvie looked over at Eloisa. Eloisa who was watching the traffic, sparse at this hour, taking them down a sideroad in that very moment. Unsure if the other woman had seen her headshake, she was about to open her mouth and repeat it out loud, when Eloisa remarked:

“They’re like gentlemen’s clubs, but for a particular type of girl. Guess which type.” She was smiling now, amused, looking out the window on Sylvie’s side to see to which house they were going from here. Counting numbers. The automobile was wheeling along slowly.

“I don’t know, silly and pretty girls?” She felt stupid. “Flappers?”

“You have to be silly and pretty to get in, sure, and flappers are very welcome, but that’s not the type, topolina.” Eloisa parked the car at a perfect angle and turned towards Sylvie, leaning forward to hold her face between her hands, cupping both her cheeks, stroking her cheekbone with her thumb. Sylvie stared into her face, wanting to kiss her, not caring about the type, about the politics, she had never taken any interest in that. Cocking her head, Eloisa pursed her lips, as if considering it, letting herself be kissed, but deciding against it after a moment. “Girls like us, chérie, who like our fannies licked by other girls.”

This time, Sylvie didn’t blush, but the surge of heat in her abdomen made her cover the distance between them on her own and kiss her, in the middle of the street, everyone could see, and she wanted that, she wanted them to.

Eloisa laughed and returned her kiss, before pushing her off and pointing towards the large townhouse on the other side of the road. There it was. The girls’ club.

Remembering Edgar’s question, Sylvie suddenly wasn’t so sure. Was she getting herself in trouble? Was it trouble she’d be able to get herself out of again, on the other side of it?

Was it thrilling? Was it exciting?

Under any circumstances, she had decided to be the strong Sylvie today, and strong Sylvie took a deep breath, got out of the car that was bought with her brother’s money anyway, and followed Eloisa across the quiet, deserted road towards the house with the golden windows and the stained, streaked façade.


~*~


Although Sylvie wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, the woman who led them inside her house to the small ballroom turned socialising space for types of girls she had never imagined existed before certainly wasn’t it. Giovannina Roux was fat and tall, taller than Eloisa, taller than Armand, almost as tall as Charles and she waved her hands aggressively when talking, chatting in a fast Italian with Eloisa from the moment she stepped over her threshold.

Sylvie simply followed, astonished, looking around as she went.

The girls in Madame Roux’s girls’ club were a varied bunch, but there were flappers, as promised. In the corner, two short-haired girls clad in a full men’s suits, complete with top hats, were lounging with drinks by the fireplace, embers shining among the ashes, and in the middle of a small group of older women, some of them with wedding bands on their fingers, others veiled in black, a girl dressed as a convent novice stood, a heavy crucifix around her neck. She was speaking with a lively air about her.

Her own attempts not to stare became harder and harder for Sylvie to suppress.

“And this is my friend, Sylvie Gallard,” Eloisa said next to her, switching with the utmost naturality from Italian to French and grabbing Sylvie by the elbow, pulling her in against her side. Sylvie looked directly up into Giovannina Roux’ sceptic face and felt herself shudder beneath the heavy yoke of judgement placed upon her shoulders just then.

“Is she a good friend?” the tall woman wanted to know, her black hair with irregular, white stripes in it tumbling in a natural waterfall over one shoulder. There was something very enticing about it.

“Oh, she’s a good girl,” Eloisa answered, turning towards Sylvie at that point and demanding of her, “Be a good girl for Giovannina now, topolina. It’ll serve as your access ticket.”

Madame Roux smiled at the name. Little female mouse, right? Sylvie wanted to look down but even so, didn’t do it, instead licking her lips anxiously and, with a slight raise of her chin, said:

“I’d like to paint your hair, madame, it reminds me of silver lodes in an oil spill.”

The words escaped her very much against her will; if she’d had her say, she would have been slinking away and disappeared into the shadows of the back wall, fading into obscurity and only returning when all these women were gone, and it was just Eloisa and her once more. Preferably in the automobile. On their way somewhere else. Another birthday surprise, but kinder, less terrifying.

The compliment, however, was well received and the taller woman smiled, widely, waving her hand towards a sofa near the window, with a good view of the whole room. “An artist, this time, Eloisa? How marvellous! Good thing we’ve saved the squeezes couch for you, I’d say.”

This statement was followed by some laughter across the room at large. Eloisa laughed, too, taking Sylvie’s hand and dragging her along, over to the sofa, where she waited for Sylvie to seat herself first, only then claiming her own, like a queen, like a goddess, always looking down on everyone else. Sylvie sat, stiff as a marble column next to her. Was that reverence? This kind of fear? She didn’t even dare to look around, to meet any gazes.

Taking her hand, Eloisa leaned forward and grabbed her chin between her thumb and her index finger, like she had done before, as she liked to do, turning Sylvie’s face gently towards herself. She looked sharp-edged and maybe just a little bit cruel, a little bit selfish as she bridged the final distance between them and brushed her lips softly over Sylvie’s. Not pressing in, not opening her up, just a light touch. Sylvie thought, but they will see.

Eloisa drew back enough to say, “This is your birthday present, little Sylvie, the freedom to be everything and anything you want, in full view of everyone.” And she leaned in and kissed her, hard, deep, on the mouth.

Thinking, they will see, Sylvie could feel her own hot, moist, scared exhalations be swallowed up by the other woman. After a long minute of that, she thought, well, let them.

It was a pivotal moment, a moment of utter abandon.

Who would have believed, who would have foreseen that letting go of the world would completely change the world that you let go of? It seemed, Eloisa had known, and she had passed that knowledge on to Sylvie now. As a present. An offering.

Did goddesses make those? Maybe to the people whom they were watching over. To those they had chosen to guard. The thought awakened her, like she’d been slumbering all along.

Therefore, Sylvie kissed her harder, and someone at the other end of the ballroom whistled piercingly. Another clapped. It was a right ruckus. Applesauce! Acceptance had never sounded so loud in her whole life.

No one could stay asleep to the noise of that.