A Kiss Before Loving Read online

  “Paraffin?”

  “We Americans call it kerosene,” Shell told her. “The French won’t smoke or drink strong liquor before meals. They figure it kills the palate. They’re right, of course.”

  “I like a few drinks before eating,” Sissy said. It was the first objection she’d made thus far. She’d been like a four-year-old in a candy shop.

  Making idle conversation, Shell said, “You people known each other very long?”

  Brett-James stared at him coldly, as though he’d pulled a faux pas. Shell ignored him and looked at Sissy.

  “Oh, no. I landed at Gibraltar, oh, a week or two ago. I had some friends of friends, like, up the coast in Torremolinos. Do you know Torremolinos?”

  “Heard of it,” Shell murmured. “Some of the gang go down in August to escape the heat here.”

  “Well, it’s quite a spot. The new art colony. Parties day and night. Anyway, I met Mike there at — whose party was it, Mike?”

  “Princess Bourbon-Palma,” Mike said stiffly.

  “That’s right. A real princess. It was lots of fun, but I’ve wanted to see Paris for ever so long and, well, Torremolinos isn’t much different from Florida.”

  The soup and the Chablis arrived and Sissy gushed some more.

  She could evidently knock it back, Shell Halliday decided wryly. They went through two bottles before the fish was finished.

  By the time the champagne arrived and had been well sampled, none of them were feeling any strain. Even Mike had loosened up a bit, although he still obviously viewed Shell as an intruder on his evening. Finally, Sissy remembered that they were to do a round of the chansonniers, caves, and the more intimate bistros, and called rather loudly for the check.

  Robert himself came and presented it to Shell.

  Sissy said, indignantly, “No, no, this is my party,” and took it out of Shell’s hand.

  “Monsieur Halliday,” Robert said. “Pierre, the chef, would be disconsolate if you left without saying a word.”

  Shell came to his feet and excused himself for a moment. “I wanted to congratulate him anyway,” he told Robert. “The boeuf bourguignon was as good as any I’ve ever tasted.”

  Back in the passageway that led to the kitchen, Shell waited until Robert came up. The headwaiter put a hand in his pocket and came out with a sheaf of bills. “It came to three hundred and twenty francs,” Robert said in businesslike tone. “Ten per cent gives you thirty-two francs.”

  Shell pocketed the money. “Look, they’ll probably be coming back on their own,” he said.

  Robert made with a Gallic shrug. “If so, I’ll remember and perhaps give you a bonus,” he said. “The agreement is that you get your percentage only when you accompany a party. If they return on their own, that’s another matter.”

  Shell grumbled, “At Vezelay’s they give me a cut on every meal a customer buys, if I introduce him in the first place.”

  Robert said evenly, “Vezelay’s is a pigsty. Here one dines well. Our cuisine is such that the bill cannot be padded to make up your percentage.”

  Shell grunted a response and returned to the table.

  He shook his head wryly. “That Pierre is a character. I’ve been half kiddingly trying to talk him into going over to the States. He’d make a fortune there. He’s horrified at the idea. He’s heard about such things as catsup and putting fruit in salad.”

  Sissy came to her feet, slightly wobbly. Brett-James frowned at her but was obviously feeling no pain himself.

  • • •

  They did the town up brown.

  Violins by the dozen at the Monseigneur, on Rue d’Amsterdam. Sissy’s eyes shone with champagne and reflected glamour, as two score White Russians surrounded their tables and drowned all possible conversation. When the musicians had drifted on, she caught her breath. “Why, this place is like a jewel box.”

  Shell chuckled. “And it’ll take a fistful of jewels to pay the bill, too. One of the most expensive spots in town.”

  “Oh, the money isn’t anything. Good Heavens, this is fabulous.”

  Strip-teasers by the dozen at the Drap d’Or, complete with audience participation. Sissy giggled gleefully as the red-faced Mike Brett-James did his best to undress the pert little brunette who perched on his knees, rumpled his hair, nibbled his ear, as he worked away at buttons and snaps, to the hilarity of the clientele. He had obviously been picked as the most strait-laced-looking man present.

  Carroll’s, where the sexes are three — at least. And where you have to flip a coin to decide if the waitress is a waitress or a waiter. And Madame Arthur’s, where the waiters are waiters more or less, but are dressed like waitresses.

  At Le Monocle, where there was dancing, with ultra-masculine-appearing women paired off with ultra-feminine bits of fluff. Sissy watched wide-eyed, while Brett-James sat stiffly in dignified protest and Shell yawned.

  She said, “You know, I’ve heard about these places but — well, I never really believed …” Her sentence dribbled away.

  Shell grinned at her. “Never believed what?”

  Sissy said, “Well, good Heavens, look at the pretty little thing over there. The one with the red hair. She’s looking up at that partner of hers with a swooning look like … well, like it was a man.”

  “It damn near is,” Shell chuckled.

  Sissy said suddenly, “It makes me feel … funny. Mike, let’s dance.”

  The Britisher protested. “Here? With all those, ah, women? I’d feel conspicuous, my dear. Why don’t we leave?”

  Sissy’s eyes turned to Shell. “You’ll dance with me. I suddenly feel like I want a man’s arms around me.”

  Shell was on his feet. He bowed sweepingly. “A privilege, and thanks for the compliment.”

  Mike Brett-James looked as though he wanted to say something, but couldn’t quite think of it.

  Evidently, looking at the Sapphic clientele of Le Monocle had brought something out in Sissy Patterson — a need to emphasize her own obvious femininity. On the dance floor, she pressed close to him. Her full breasts were obvious, through her dress, her warm and full hips obviously those of a live, vibrant woman. The thought touched Shell’s mind that in this warm weather, the girl was probably wearing the barest minimum beneath her dress. They danced close on the crowded floor, and Shell wondered if she was so far gone in the drinking and excitement of the evening that she failed to recognize his own masculine reaction to the closeness of her body.

  He said into her ear, “Realize that possibly we’re the only two normal people on this floor?”

  She looked up at him, coyly, enticingly, and murmured, “Well, there’s no denying you come under that category.”

  He decided Sissy Patterson was an exciting woman, and that it might pay to get better acquainted.

  Tiring of the depressing queerness of the homo joints, they left for the Pigalle section.

  Les Naturistes. The Sphinx. L’Indifférent. Chez Eve.

  After one of the frankest dance-team acts that any of the three of them had ever seen performed, Shell said dryly, “That wraps its up. There is only one thing left they could do as an encore.”

  Sissy dissolved in laughter.

  Sissy was having herself a time. It was no longer champagne. She’d switched to Scotch and she ordered it by the bottle. Shell Halliday estimated she’d go about a hundred and twenty, dripping wet, but brother she could knock it back. She was certainly putting away as much as either he or Brett-James, and not showing as much effect. Face it, she was drinking twice as much as the Britisher, and Mike was reeling.

  She had lost all track of the money she was spending. Certainly she’d dropped several hundred dollars. In one of the Pigalle joints alone, the manager had slipped Shell fifty francs — ten bucks. It was a clip joint, and Shell got twenty per cent there, which meant that she’d spent fifty dollars, and it had been only a brief stop.

  Shell shook his head. She was really something. You had to keep your eye on her. When she’d sa
id, earlier, that she had no idea about money, she wasn’t just whistling Dixie. She’d given one waiter a hundred-franc tip, mistaking the bill for a ten. In joints where the service charge was already twenty per cent, she’d tip another ten or twenty. Twice she left her bag behind. Cleanly forgot it. If Shell hadn’t been there and as well known as he was, she’d never have seen it again. He shuddered at the thought of the routine you have to go through to get a new passport and to try and collect on lost travelers’ checks.

  Sissy impressed Shell. She was as good-natured a tourist as he’d run into in the past three years. She was loving every moment of it and was obviously as hot as a firecracker. As Brett-James, her supposed escort, fell further and further into an alcoholic daze, she diverted her attention to Shell. A touch of a toe tip against his leg beneath the table, more of the close dancing they’d had at Le Monocle, an occasional pressure of the hand, a provocative glance now and then.

  This Brett-James was another kettle of fish. As they traveled up a one-way street Shell tried to figure him. Obviously, old school tie type of Englishman, the kind who was more British than Churchill. But there was something off key. Shell couldn’t put his finger on it. The Britisher had started off the evening resenting Shell rather openly, but as he got increasingly stoned, the antagonism dropped away, although it must have been obvious that Shell and Sissy were reacting to each other.

  They were back on the Left Bank again, in the early hours, sitting at a miniature table in Gordon Payant’s little cave. The American Negro was singing folksongs in a half dozen different languages. He was currently the most popular entertainer in the St. Germain des Prés section and Shell got no rake-off here. Which was all right with him. He’d already made enough tonight to last him a week or more and he and Payant knew and liked each other.

  A German peasant song ended and the clients, jam-packed in the little room, began snapping their fingers by way of applause.

  Sissy said, “What’s that?”

  “The snapping-fingers bit?” Shell said. “It started down on the Riviera. Gordon had a place there in a residential section of town and the neighbors complained about the noise at night. So they established the custom of snapping fingers instead of clapping hands in the way of applause. When Gordon moved up here he brought the custom along.”

  Somebody came bustling up to their table, frisking cocker spaniel style. It was Dave Shepherd.

  “Why Shell, dear boy. Haven’t seen you for ages.”

  “Hi. Sit down for a minute,” he suggested.

  “Hello, Mike,” Dave simpered. “Dear boy, I didn’t know you were in Gay Paree!” He turned back to Shell. “Well, just for a moment. I’m with the baroness and her party.”

  Shell didn’t ask what baroness. If he had, Dave probably would have told them in lengthy detail, going back through the family titles to the fifteenth generation. Dave Shepherd was the only person Shell had ever met who read Burke’s Peerage as though it were current literature.

  Mike Brett-James had flinched slightly when Dave greeted him but he said, “How are you, David?”

  “David Shepherd, this is Miss Felicity Patterson,” Shell made the introduction. “Dave is the town crier, Sissy. Knows everything that happens in Paris and tells all to all.”

  Dave made a limp motion of his left hand as though to slap Shell. “Oh, you,” he said. He looked at Sissy.

  “Have a drink,” Sissy invited.

  “Why, I don’t really have time, my dear,” Dave said. “Patterson? Of the Rhode Island Pattersons, of course.”

  “No,” Sissy said briefly, the sides of her mouth turning down. “Florida.”

  “So you know Mike, eh? Small world, the international set,” Shell said.

  “Oh dear, yes. For ever so many years. Where was it we first met, dear boy?”

  Mike Brett-James said uncomfortably, “At the pension the Contessa Clara Rossi had near Nice. You were staying there at the time. I stopped for a weekend.”

  “What a lovely memory you have.”

  Shell laughed. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that adjective applied to memory,” he said.

  Dave came to his feet. “I simply must go,” he gushed. “I’ll see all you charming people later. ‘Bye-’bye.” He frisked off.

  Shell thought, an Alan Ladd type, if Ladd had a part playing a queer. But it’d be a hard role to put over. Almost a caricature.

  “Is he … well … you know, that way?” Sissy asked.

  Shell laughed. “Dave is as far that way as he can go without falling off the edge.”

  She looked after him. “Good Heavens, he’d be a handsome man if — ”

  “ — if he was a man,” Shell finished. “Look, children, the time has come to finish it all off with a visit to Les Halles.”

  Sissy was all for it. “Where’s that?” she said. “More fun than here?”

  Mike rallied enough to say. “It’s the big market. It just gets under full swing this time of morning. I haven’t been there for a donkey’s years, but it’s fascinating. Call it the Belly of Paris.”

  Sissy was surprised. “But what would we want to go to a market for?”

  “For onion soup,” Shell told her.

  “Yes, that’s true,” Brett-James nodded solemnly. “Tradition, you know. Onion soup at Les Halles after a night on Paris.” Mike looked as though he could use something to counter the load he was carrying.

  “Sounds horrible,” Sissy said gaily, “but let’s go.”

  Their taxi zoomed across the Seine at the Pont Neuf and headed for the Halles markets. To their left loomed the Louvre, a massive shadow in the darkness of the night. Like all Parisian cabbies, the driver careened through the streets as though a posse was after them.

  Traffic had fallen off and for a brief few blocks the streets were quiet and gray. And then, suddenly, they were in a bedlam, a madhouse, a noisy, confused, chaotic asylum of pushcarts, trucks, horse-drawn wagons and yelling, shouting, sometimes screaming, men and women. Crates of fruit, vegetables, poultry; sides of beef, sheep, pigs, goats. Barrels of wine, cases of beer, rounds of cheese, endless links of a thousand varieties of sausage.

  “Good Heavens,” Sissy said.

  “Les Halles,” Shell said. He leaned forward to the driver, A la Au Pied de Cochon, s’il vous plaît.”

  They pulled up before the market restaurant, paid off the taxi and wove their way in. The place was jam-packed with market workers standing at the bar, overflowing the tables. Shell led them to the stairs and to the second floor where they managed to find a table. Here, incongruously, was the atmosphere of a first-class restaurant, fine linen, excellent lighting, waiters as well turned out as those in the deluxe establishments.

  “The specialties are onion soup and grilled pigs’ feet, and wonderful for sobering-up purposes.” Shell told Sissy.

  “I’m not sure I want to sober up,” she said petulantly. She looked at Brett-James, “And I’m sure Mike doesn’t.”

  “Wha . .?” was Mike’s only comment.

  “You’ll bless me in the morning,” Shell told them. He was conscious of her foot, under the table, touching his and rubbing.

  By the time they left, the first dirty streaks of dawn were beginning to gray the skies. Shell bundled them into another cab. “Where to?” he asked Sissy.

  “Wherever you say,” she said. “I’m game.”

  He laughed at her. “I meant, where’s your hotel? Onion soup at Les Halles marks the end of a night on the town in Paris.”

  There was disappointment in her voice. “Well, the Ritz,” she said.

  “Mike?” Shell asked.

  But Mike was asleep.

  “He’s at the Lancaster, I think,” Sissy said. “He said his family always stays there.”

  “I know where it is,” Shell said. “We’ll deliver you first, and then I’ll see he gets back to his place.”

  He left Mike snoring in the cab and saw her to the door of her suite. She looked up into his face and her mouth
was slack, her eyes almost closed.

  Shell swallowed and licked his lower lip. “Look,” he said. “I’ll have to get Mike back to his hotel.”

  “Of course. Good night, Shell. I’ve never had such fun.” Aside from a slight slur, you’d never know the girl had the better part of a fifth of Scotch in her, not to speak of the dinner wines and liqueurs. She looked at him invitingly and said, looking him in the eye, “Up to this point, this is exactly the way I’ve always dreamed Paris would be.”

  Suddenly, she leaned against him, raised her arms, placed them around his neck and put her mouth to his, her hot tongue darting quickly in and out. The next moment she had released him and was gone, closing the door behind her. Shell stared hard at the door before he left abruptly.

  • • •

  At the curb, before the open door of the cab, Shell turned and looked back at the ornate entrance of the Ritz with its marble and woodwork. He ran his tongue over his lower lip again, then climbed in and told the driver, “Le Lancaster, 7 Rue de Berri, s’il vous plaît.”

  The doorman at the Lancaster helped him with Mike Brett-James and then a bellhop and an elevator operator did their bit toward getting his charge to his room. Someone, along the line, had accumulated the Englishman’s door key.

  Mike woke briefly and in a blur while Shell was undressing him, preparatory to putting him into bed. He leered at Shell slyly. Good grief, the man wore long underwear. Shell couldn’t remember having seen the garment for twenty years. His grandfather, back in Ohio, was the last American he’d ever seen in “long-handled underwear” as the old boy used to call it.

  The Englishman awoke only long enough to tell Shell it was a long way to Tipperary and to demand to be kissed good night. When Shell didn’t comply he went on back to sleep. To hell with finding his pajamas, Shell decided. Let him sleep in his woolen longies.

  He had told the cab to wait. Now he took it and retraced his route. There had been invitation in Sissy’s kiss and he had every intention of taking her up on it.

  He paid the driver off, hesitated only momentarily and then entered the hotel. He spoke briefly at the desk, then took the elevator.