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Afternoon and outside silvery clouds glide through the sky as a soft rain keeps drifting over a steel-gray Paris. There were two shows today-one at the Conciergerie, one in the gardens of the Musee Rodin-and she was being paid a zillion francs, naysayers abounded, the catwalks seemed longer, the paparazzi were both more and less frantic, girls were wearing bones, bird skulls, human teeth, bloody smocks, they held fluorescent water pistols, there was serious buzz, there was zero buzz, it was the epitome of hype, it was wildly trivial.Advertisement

From room service we order a pot of coffee that she doesn't drink, a bottle of red wine of which she has only half a glass, a pack of cigarettes but she's not smoking. An hour passes, then another. Flowers sent by various designers fill the suite, arc of colors and shapes conspicuous enough so that we can easily concentrate on them when we're not talking to each other. A pigeon sits nestled on the ledge outside the window, humming. At first we keep saying "What does it matter?" to each other, ad-libbing like we have secrets we don't care about revealing, but then we have to stick to the script and I'm sucking on her pu**y causing her to climax repeatedly and we arrange ourselves into a position where I'm lying on my side, my c**k slowly pumping in and out of her mouth, arching my back with each movement, her hands on my ass, and I don't relax until I come twice, my face pressed against her vagina, and later she's crying, she can't trust me, it's all impossible and I'm pacing the suite looking for another box of tissues to hand her and she keeps getting up and washing her face and then we attempt to have sex again. Her head leans against a pillow. "Tell me," she's saying. "Possibly," she's saying. "It's not beyond you," she's saying. We're watching MTV with the sound off and then she tells me I need to shave and I tell her that I want to grow a beard and then, while forcing a smile, that I need a disguise and she thinks I'm serious and when she says "No, don't" something gets mended, hope rises up in me and I can envision a future.

After trying to sleep but kept awake by remembering how I got here I reposition myself on the bed next to Chloe, trying to hold her face in my bands.

"I thought it would solve everything if I... just left," I tell her. "I was just... directionless, y'know, baby?"

She smiles unhappily.

"I had to get my priorities straightened out," I'm whispering. "I needed to clear my head."

"Because?"

A sigh. "Because where I was going..." I stop, my throat tightens.

"Yeah?" she whispers. "Because where you were going...," she coaxes.

I breathe in and then I'm reduced.

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"There was no one there," I whisper back.

"You needed to clear your head?"

"Yeah."

"So you came to Paris?"

"Yeah."

"Victor, there are parks in New York she says. "You could have gone to a library. You could have taken a walk." Casually she reveals more than she intended. I wake up a little.

"The impression I got before I left was that you and Baxter-"

"No," she says, cutting me off.

But that's all she says.

"You could be lying to me, right?" I ask shakily.

"Why would I bother?" She reaches toward the nightstand for a copy of the script.

"It's okay, though," I'm saying. "It's okay."

"Victor," she sighs.

"I was so afraid for you, Chloe."

"Why?"

"I thought you'd gotten back on drugs," I say. "I thought I saw something in your bathroom, back in New York... and then I saw that guy Tristan-that dealer?-in your lobby and oh Jesus... I just lost it."

"Victor-"

"No, really, that morning, baby, after the opening-"

"It was just that night, Victor," she says, stroking the side of my face.

"Really."

"Baby, I freaked-"

"No, no, shhh," she says. "It was just some dope I got for the weekend. It was just for that weekend. I bought it. I did a little of it. I threw the rest away."

"Put that down-please, baby," I tell her, motioning at the script she's holding, curled in her other hand.

Later.

"There were so many relatively simple things you couldn't do, Victor," she says. "I always felt like you were playing jokes on me. Even though I knew you weren't. It just felt that way. I always felt like a guest in your life. Like I was someone on a list." pqdm.com