Sophie

Sophie

Penthouse

I descend the staircase with Benoit trotting at my heels. As I pass the third floor I pause. I can feel her there behind the door, like something poisonous at the heart of this place.

It was the same with him. His presence upset the building’s equilibrium. I seemed to see him everywhere after that dinner on the terrace: in the stairwell, crossing the courtyard, talking to the concierge. We never talk to the concierge beyond issuing instructions. She is a member of staff, that sort of divide must be respected. Once I even saw him following her into her cabin. What could they be speaking about in there? What might she be telling him?

When the third note came, it wasn’t left in the letterbox. It was pushed beneath the door of the apartment, at a time when I suppose my blackmailer knew Jacques would be out. I had returned from the boulangerie with Jacques’ favorite quiche, which I have bought for him every Friday for as long as I can remember. When I saw the note I dropped the box I was holding. Pastry shattered across the floor. It sent a thrill through me that I knew had to be fear but for a moment felt almost like excitement. And that was just as disturbing.

I had been invisible for so long, any currency spent long ago. But these notes, even as they frightened me, felt like the first time in a very long while that I had been seen.

I knew I could not stay in the building for a moment longer.

Outside the streets were still white with heat, the air shimmering. At the cafés tourists clustered at pavement tables and sweated into their thé glacés and citron pressés and wondered why they didn’t feel refreshed. But in the restaurant it was dim and cool as some underwater grotto, as I had known it would be. Dark paneled walls, white tablecloths, huge paintings upon the walls. They had given me the best table, of course—Meunier SARL has supplied them with rare vintages over the years—and the air-conditioning sent an icy plume down the back of my silk shirt as I sipped my mineral water.

“Madame Meunier.” The waiter came over. “Bienvenue. The usual?”

Every time I have eaten there with Jacques I have ordered the same. The endive salad with walnuts and tiny dabs of Roquefort. An aging wife is one thing; a fat wife is another.

But Jacques was not there.

“L’entrecôte,” I said.

The waiter looked at me as though I had asked for a slab of human flesh. The steak has always been Jacques’ choice.

“But Madame,” he said, “it is so hot. Perhaps the oysters—we have some wonderful pousses en Claire—or a little salmon, cooked sous vide . . .”

“The steak,” I repeated. “Blue.”

The last time I ate steak was when a gynecologist, all those years ago, prescribed it for fertility; doctors here still recommend red meat and wine for many ailments. Months of eating like a caveman. When that didn’t work came the indignity of the treatments. The injections into my buttocks. Jacques’ glances of vague disgust. I had inherited two stepsons. What was this obsession with having a child? I could not explain that I simply wanted someone to love. Wholehearted, unreserved, requited. Of course, the treatments didn’t work. And Jacques refused to adopt. The paperwork, the scrutiny into his business affairs—he would not stand for it.

The steak came and I cut into it. Watched as the blood ran thin and palest pink from the incision. It was then that I looked up and saw him, Benjamin Daniels, in the corner of the restaurant. He had his back to me, though I could see his reflection in the mirror that ran along the wall. Something elegant about the line of his back: the way he sat, hands in his pockets. The posture of someone very comfortable in their own skin.

I felt my pulse quicken. What was he doing here?

He glanced up and “caught” me watching him in the mirror. But I suspected he knew I was there all along, had been waiting for me to notice him. His reflection raised the glass of beer.

I looked away. Sipped my mineral water.

A few seconds later, a shadow fell across the table. I looked up. That ingratiating smile. He wore a crumpled linen shirt and shorts, legs bare and brown. His clothes were entirely inappropriate for the restaurant’s formality. And yet he seemed so relaxed in the space. I hated him for it.

“Hello Sophie,” he said.

I bristled at the familiarity, then remembered I had asked him not to call me “Madame.” But the way he said my name: it felt like a transgression.

“May I?” He indicated the chair. To do anything other than agree would have been rude. I nodded, to show I didn’t care either way what he did.

It was the first time I had been so close to him. Now I saw that he wasn’t handsome, not in the traditional sense. His features were uneven. His confidence, charisma: that was what made him attractive.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I’m reviewing the place,” he said. “Jacques suggested it at dinner. I haven’t eaten yet but I’m already impressed by the space—the atmosphere, the art.”

I glanced at the painting he was looking at. A woman on her knees: powerfully built, almost masculine. Strong limbs, strong jaw. Nothing elegant about her, only a kind of feral strength. Her head thrown back, howling at the moon like a dog. The splayed legs, the skirt rucked . . . it was almost sexual. If you could get close enough to sniff it, I imagined it wouldn’t be paint you smelled but blood. I felt suddenly very aware of the sweat that might have soaked into the silk beneath my arms on the walk over here, hidden half-moons of damp in the fabric.

“What do you think?” he asked. “I love Paula Rego.”

“I’m not sure I agree,” I said.

He pointed to my lip. “You have a little—just there.”

I put the corner of the napkin up to my mouth and dabbed. Took it away and saw that the thick white linen was stained with blood. I stared at it.

He coughed. “I sense—look, I just wanted to say that I hope we haven’t got off on the wrong foot. The other day—when I commented on your accent. I hope I didn’t seem rude.”

“Mais non,” I said. “What would make you think that?”

“Look, I took French studies at Cambridge, you see, I’m just fascinated by such things.”

“I was not offended,” I told him. “Pas du tout.” Not at all.

He grinned. “That’s a relief. And I enjoyed the dinner on the roof terrace so much. It was kind of you to invite me.”

“I didn’t invite you,” I said. “That dinner was all Jacques’ idea.” Perhaps it sounded rude. But it was also true. No invitation would be offered without Jacques’ say-so.

“Poor Jacques, then,” he said, with a rueful smile. “The weather that night! I’ve never seen anyone so furious. I actually thought he was going to try and take the storm on, like Lear. The look on his face!”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I should have been appalled, offended. No one made a joke at my husband’s expense. But it was the surprise of it. And he’d pulled such an accurate impression of Jacques’ outraged expression.

Trying to regain my composure I reached for my water, took a sip. But I felt lighter than I had in a very long time.

“Tell me,” he said, “what is it like being married to a man like Jacques Meunier?”

The sip caught in my throat. Now I was coughing, my eyes watering. One of the waiters ran forward to offer assistance: I waved him away with a hand. All I could think was: what did Ben know? What could Nicolas have told him?

“Sorry.” He gave a quick smile. “I don’t think my question came out quite right. Sometimes I can be so clumsy in French. What I meant was: being married to such a successful businessman. What’s it like?”

I didn’t answer. The look I gave him by way of reply said: you don’t frighten me. Except I was frightened. He was the sender of the notes, I was certain of it now. He was the one collecting those envelopes of cash I left beneath the loose step.

“I just meant,” he said, “that should you ever want to give an interview, I’d be so interested to talk to you. You could talk about what it is to run such a successful business—”

“It’s not my business.”

“Oh, I’m sure that isn’t true. I’m sure you must—”

“No.” I leaned across the table to emphasize the point, tapped out each word with a fingernail on the tablecloth. “The business is nothing to do with me. Comprenez-vous?” Do you understand?

“OK. Well.” He looked at his watch. “The offer still stands. It could be . . . more of a lifestyle piece. On you as the quintessential Parisienne, something like that. You know where I am.” He smiled.

I just looked at him. Perhaps you don’t understand who you’re dealing with, here. There are things I have had to do to get to where I am. Sacrifices I have had to make. People I have had to climb over. You are nothing compared to all that.

“Anyway,” he stood. “I better be going. I have a meeting with my editor. I’ll see you around.”

When I was sure he had gone I called the waiter over. “The 1998.”

His eyes widened. He looked as though he was about to offer an alternative to such a heavy red in that heat. Then he saw my expression. He nodded, scurried away, returned with the bottle.

As I drank I remembered a night early in my marriage. The Opéra Garnier, where we watched Madame Butterfly beneath Chagall’s painted ceiling and sipped chilled champagne in the bar in the interval and I hoped Jacques might show me the famous reliefs of the moon and the sun painted in pure gold on the domed ceilings of the little chambers at each end. But he was more interested in pointing out people, clients of his. Ministers for certain governmental departments, businessmen, significant figures from the French media. Some of them even I recognized, though they didn’t know me. But they all knew Jacques. Returning his nod with tight little nods of their own.

I knew exactly what sort of man I was marrying. I went into the whole thing clear-eyed. I knew what I’d be getting out of it. No, our marriage would not always be perfect. But what marriage is? And he gave me my daughter, in the end. I could forgive anything for that.

Now, I pause for a moment on the landing outside the third-floor apartment. Stare at the brass number 3. Remember standing in this exact spot all those weeks ago. I’d spent the rest of the afternoon at the restaurant, drinking my way through the 1998 vintage as all the waiters no doubt watched, appalled. Madame Meunier has gone mad. As I drank I thought about Benjamin Daniels and his impertinence, about the notes, the horrible power they had over me. My rage blossomed. For the first time in a long time I felt truly alive. As though I might be capable of anything.

I came back to the apartment as dusk was falling, climbed the stairs, stood on this same spot and knocked on his door.

Benjamin answered it quickly, before I had a chance to change my mind.

“Sophie,” he said. “What a pleasant surprise.”

He was wearing a T-shirt, jeans; his feet were bare. There was music playing on the record player behind him, a record spinning round lazily. An open beer in his hand. It occurred to me that he might have someone there with him, which I hadn’t even considered.

“Come in,” he said. I followed him into the apartment. I suddenly felt as though I was trespassing, which was absurd. This was my home, he was the intruder.

“Can I get you a drink?” he asked.

“No. Thank you.”

“Please—I have some wine open.” He gestured to his beer bottle. “It’s wrong—my drinking while you don’t.”

Somehow he had already managed to wrong-foot me, by being so gracious, so charming. I should have been prepared for it.

“No,” I said. “I don’t want any. This is not a social visit.” Besides, I could still feel my head swimming from the wine I had drunk in the restaurant.

He grimaced. “I apologize,” he said. “If this is about the restaurant—my questions—I know that was presumptuous of me. I realize I crossed a line.”

“It’s not that.” My heart was beating very fast. I had been carried here by my anger, but now I felt afraid. Voicing this thing would bring it into the light, would finally make it real. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

He frowned. “What?” He hadn’t expected this, I thought. Now it was his turn to be on the back foot. It gave me the confidence I needed to go on.

“The notes.”

He looked nonplussed. “Notes?”

“You know what I’m talking about. The notes—the demands for payment. I have come to tell you that you do not want to threaten me. There is little I will not do to protect myself. I will . . . I will stop at nothing.”

I can still hear his awkward, apologetic laugh. “Madame Meunier—Sophie—I’m so sorry but I have literally no idea what you’re talking about. What notes?”

“The ones you have been leaving for me,” I said. “In my letterbox. Under my door.”

I watched his face so carefully, but I saw only confusion. Either he was a consummate actor, which I wouldn’t have put past him, or what I was saying really didn’t mean anything to him. Could it be true? I looked at him, at his bemused expression, and I realized, in spite of myself, that I believed him. But it didn’t make sense. If not him, then who?

“I—” The room seemed to tilt a little: a combination of the wine I had drunk and this new realization.

“Would you like to sit down?” he asked.

And I did sit, because suddenly I wasn’t sure that I could stand.

He poured me a glass of wine without asking, this time. I needed it. I took the offered glass and tried not to hold the stem so tightly that it snapped.

He sat down next to me. I looked at him—this man who had been a thorn in my side since he arrived, who had occupied so much space in my thoughts. Who had made me feel seen—with all the discomfort that came with that—just when I thought I had become invisible for good. Invisible had been safe, if occasionally lonely. But I had forgotten how exciting it could feel to be seen.

I was in a kind of trance, perhaps. All the wine I had drunk before coming here to face him. The pressure that had been building in me for weeks as my blackmailer taunted me. The loneliness that had been growing for years in secrecy and silence.

I leaned over and I kissed him.

Almost immediately I pulled away. I could not believe what I had done. I put a hand up to my face, touched my hot cheek.

He smiled at me. I hadn’t seen this smile before. This was something new. Something intimate and secret. Something just for me.

“I—I need to leave.” I put my wine glass down and as I did I knocked his beer bottle to the ground. “Oh, mon Dieu. I’m sorry—”

“I don’t care about the beer.” And then he cradled my head in his hands and pulled me toward him and kissed me back.

The scent of him, the foreignness of it, the alien feel of his lips on mine, the loss of my self-control: these were all a surprise. But not the kiss itself, not really. In some part of myself I had known I wanted him.

“Ever since that first day,” he said, as though he were echoing my own thoughts, “when I saw you in the courtyard, I’ve wanted to know more about you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said, because it was. But what made it feel less so was the way he was looking at me.

“It’s not. I’ve been hoping to do that ever since that night at your drinks party. When it was just the two of us in your husband’s study—”

I thought of the outrage I had felt, finding him in there looking at that photograph. The fear. But fear and desire are so tangled up in one another, after all.

“That’s absurd,” I said. “What about Dominique?”

“Dominique?” He seemed genuinely confused.

“I saw you two together at the drinks.”

He laughed. “She could eye-fuck a statue. And it was convenient for me to be able to distract your husband from the fact that I was lusting after his wife.”

He reached out and pulled me toward him again.

“This can’t happen . . .”

But I think he heard my lack of conviction because he grinned. “I hate to say it. But it already is happening.”

“We have to be careful,” I whispered a few minutes later as I began unbuttoning my shirt. As I revealed the lingerie that had been bought at great expense but hardly ever seen by eyes other than my own. Revealed my body, denied so much pleasure, kept and kempt for a man who barely glanced at it.

He dropped to his knees in front of me, as though worshipping at my feet. Pushed down the tight wool of my trousers, finding the thin lace of my knickers with his lips, opening his mouth against me.