Chapter 17: The Boys-Own Boarder

By the end of January, it was clear that only a boarder could save them.

"But I don't want someone else living with us," Maggie complained.

"We could always call your mother," Olney offered.

"You'll do the talking, will you?"

"Me? But I don't know her. I can't just ask a perfect stranger for money."

"Liar. You've been a panhandler all your life. Crusty told me you have no scruples in that department."

"Hey, why don't we call him?"

"Because Belle would rip your head off."

"She would, at that."

"Well, no one's calling anyone then." Maggie wanted to scream. "Why can't you ever come up with some money?"

"I will. I'll make up a sign right now. We'll rent the storage room."

Subji's former workroom, now their junk room, would have to be opened to a paying customer. Room for rent with Canadian couple, 15e, 800 francs a month, female preferred, read the sign Olney intended to put up all over Paris. The last bit caused two nights of arguing. Maggie wanted any reference to gender left out. Olney refused. "I can't live with other men. Another predator in the house? What an absurd idea." He spent two days putting up signs at the American Center, the American Church, Shakespeare & Co., the British Library, and most European embassies.

As karma would have it, the first call came from a young man from Connecticut. He was attending the Cordon Bleu school for chefs. He realised the ad called for a female, but assured Olney that he was quiet and studious and desperately in need of decent accommodation. "Sorry," Olney said unflinchingly, "but the room is rented."

The next caller was a woman from Holland. She and her teenage daughter were having trouble finding a place to live. But there was a problem, she said, hastening to assure Olney that the problem was not her daughter, who was extremely well behaved. "N-n-no problem," he echoed with full-blown compassion, "we can c-cope with anything." Unfortunately, the woman told him, they would not be able to rent until March. "Are you sure?" Olney asked, a life-sentence-no-parole of happiness fading from his frankly disappointed voice. She was. Her husband worked in Algeria. The climate and culture had been too much for her and the child, but now they were joining him in Marseille during his last two week break for six months. Olney hung up sadly, muttering to himself about the bad news that always came after people's assurances.

Maggie took the next two calls, both from American girls. She sensed immediate trouble in their youthful voices, but Olney was standing next to her and she had to let them make appointments.

It was he who opened the door both times. "Hi," said the first girl, "my name is Veronica." Olney was immediately at sea in the lakes of her eyes. Maggie said hello with a louring resignation. He showed Veronica the room, barely able to keep his hands off her. She was a long-legged, willowy brunette from Memphis, Tennessee, in Paris to strike it rich as an instructress in aerobics. "I'm going to start a course at the American Church," she announced, her big brown eyes swallowing him whole. Olney imagined her southern, honey-coloured skin wrapped in rose-tinted lurex.

"You'll have half of Paris contorted at your feet," he said, not-quite-rightly. Her broad smile went on hold for a moment while her brain examined the so-called compliment.

"I like the room," she said. "S'pose I could get it for seven hundred?"

"It's negotiable," Olney lied. "I'll have to let you know. We have a few other people coming to look." He escorted her to the door while scanning the graceful strength of her calves: a quotidien pleasure surely worth the loss of francs 100 per month!

An hour later the doorbell rang again. Olney briefly glimpsed the rosy glow of a pretty face before his eyes tumbled head over heels to the ankles of his dreams. His breath caught in his scrotum at their slender babysoft disappearance into cuffed, fluffy white socks and a pair of Reeboks. "Hi. My name is Rhonda. I called earlier..." Olney's loins turned to hot halvah, still in its taffy state, as she spoke. He knew immediately that here was the girl to help him get Veronica out of his mind. Maggie waved hello with a wan smile.

In the room, Olney could barely keep his hands off her; they moved incessantly. The Indian style trousers he usually wore at home (bequeathed by Gaston) had no pockets to hide their fidgeting; he was forced to let them ring one another en plein air. At length he entwined their fingers behind his back. They were not made glad by this manoeuvre and soon appeared once again to dance before him. Olney begged them to behave since, for God's sake, the girl wore a cashmere sweater under her now unbuttoned coat and he was sore afraid they would lose all restraint and leap to her hips and there inch yearningly up her small waist to those captive hillocks so tautly rising from suckle-honeyed terrains of warmth and fragrance O Lord we beseech thee not to lead us into--

"...Paul Claudel," she was saying, "and I hope to write my master's thesis on him."

"Uh..." Olney released his writhing appendages to wipe a symbolic dollop of saliva from his chin. "Well," he said, valiantly spurning the darker side of instant gratification, "I'm working on a book, myself. This might be just the place for you."

"I'd like to take it," she said. There was something about Rhonda's voice ... it sounded as if she had just been making love and now lay calmly and quietly in the arms of her lover. Olney was sure the little nook of her upper lip held minute beads of sweat, if only he looked very, very closely. Perhaps the moisture was tickling her, and he should lick it off. Instead, he reached the apex of a lifetime's business acumen by sagely suggesting that he would call her tomorrow.

"A few more people are coming to see the room," he crooned, face waxen, body fruity with song, "but I think it's yours." In his febrile mind a lone satyr whooped and whinnied.

Back in the living room, Maggie rose to the occasion and chatted with Rhonda for a few minutes before she left. "Until tomorrow, bon soirée à tous," said the lovely rentee as she whirled out the door à là Loretta Young cum Christine Ockrent.

§§§

Olney puttered around the apartment until he thought enough time had elapsed. Then he grabbed Maggie and made love to her until the fervid vision of speleological futures with Rhonda left him through the aperture of his soul. Maggie's concern over his lust for other sex objects was momentarily appeased--by way of her own response to the spelunker's art--and they lay together in several wet spots, discussing the situation.

"I think we should let a few more people take a look," she said practically.

"Nah, I'm tired of showing the room. Let's settle on Veronica or Rhonda."

"But you've only shown the room twice! I can show it too, you know."

"Poot, we need the money now. Tomorrow. Why fart around? Now then, Veronica has the most be-yootiful eyes, but I don't--"

"What've her eyes got to do with it? Are we renting the room to your new concubine, or what?"

"As I was saying," Olney harumphed, "I don't think we want one of those exercise freaks living with us. Seemed a bit of a featherhead. Besides she wanted to gyp us out of a hundred francs."

"She wants to get rich. Lucky thing."

"Right," he said uncomprehendingly. "And besides, she's too bloody American. Those gorgeous eyes shine like spotlights, but I'll bet she doesn't want to light up anything but money."

"We certainly don't want her sort to influence us!"

"So," he squeaked, "that leaves Rhonda." His fingers slipped into Maggie's drowned world. "She's intelligent, wants to do something with her life. Must study a lot, be a good influence on my book. Yep, looks like she's the one. Lovely ankles, too."

Maggie popped his hand out with a robust cough. "Maybe we should rent to an old woman. I don't trust you."

"Don't tell me you're a latent gerontophile dyke," he exclaimed.

"Listen, bozo, we're renting this room to get some money and don't forget it. I don't want you making passes at the tenant and ruining our stay in Paris."

"Look, if we have to admit another person into our home, I want her to be beautiful. What other criteria can there possibly be?"

"A nice quiet man would cause less trouble."

"Oh, yeah? What if he made passes at you? I refuse to murder the hand that's feeding me. Better to handle the--"

"Don't you dare try to seduce the tenant."

"We could seduce her together."

"No!"

"Pootita-mia, you've got it all wrong. I'm not going to ruin anything. To me it's a matter of surrounding ourselves--"

"Leave me out of that statement. I don't subscribe to your philosophies."

"--of surrounding myself then, with loveliness. It's an aesthetic ideal I'm talking about. Actually screwing her would be in bad taste. Trust me." Olney kept on for several minutes with his rooster banter until Maggie finally gave in.

"Well, if we have to choose between them, I guess Rhonda's the one."

"Right!" said he before she'd quite got the period, let alone quotation marks, in place. "Guess I'll call her tomorrow," he added breathlessly, as he lowered himself none too carefully into the warm vortex of his squishy naiad.

§§§

Rhonda was a graduate student in French literature at Nanterre University, doing her thesis on the controversial French dramatist and poet, Paul Claudel. She was twenty-three, the daughter of a wealthy brain surgeon from Maryland who was divorced from her mother, a wealthy equestrienne from Delaware. Rhonda's sister was in Paris too, attending the Sorbonne. Since they spent most of their free time together, Rhonda's landlords saw little of their well-heeled (and slim ankled) boarder. Indeed, Rhonda had so little concern for money that the outrageous sum of 800 francs for the tiny room that faced the noisy street soon ceased to worry Olney. Conscience-stricken Maggie thought the rent should have been as low as 300 francs and never got over her guilt.

In honour of Rhonda's welcome addition to the apartmenthold, Olney initiated and faithfully observed the very private ritual of regularly sneaking into her room when she and Maggie were both out. There, at the foot of her bed, next to the window, was the object of his tumescent worship: a little duffle bag containing her dirty laundry.

Yes, Olney Garkle shared with many great and noble men the lust for soiled panties and, in his day, the crotches of oft-worn jeans.

"Je me masturb au paradis," he chanted while rummaging through her sacred unmentionables. This incantation served the twofold purpose of 1) increasing his expertise in French pronunciation, and 2) repriming his nose after each exquisite inhalation as he searched for the knickers with that special bouquet. To think, thought he, as his cock twitched, even wagged, that the delicate cunny cuddler he now held so lovingly to his face had had its face sat on for an entire day! And sometimes--owing to Rhonda's incessant squirming on chairs while studious and intent, or wandering off on erotic horse paths in her minds-eye of home--it wriggled up and into her glistening, petalled font!

Having selected the most fragrant pair, which he donned o'er his head like a surgeon gone mad, he thrust his cock in a delicate sock and coited a Reebok from under the bed. A moment before emission complete, he was careful to pull out of the sexual shoe and doff the soft-girl sock before coming sublimely on a feuille of Miss Helen.

As he got to know Rhonda better, Olney tried to discover which panties she'd been wearing during the rare moments they were together at the kitchen table, when he was sure the sex magick he was working on her was moistening them with oceanic secretions. Rhonda's underwear had the voluptuous scent of a woman whose body loved responding to secret ardour. He imagined her chatting with some handsome fellow student on the R.E.R to Nanterre, all the while rocking back and forth ever so slightly so that her panties, tightening as she inched forward, would force a downward, face-flushing pressure on her swelling clitoris. He fantasised her riding all over Paris, gasping modestly from self-induced orgasms, while in the quiet of her innocent room he fed rudely on their harvest: the salt-bitter gleet of her most private retreat.

Rhonda more than once mentioned the men who exposed themselves on the trains and how they disgusted her. Olney had in fact considered the practice a few times, but found it potentially unfair to the exposee. She would be forced by social custom to act against the culprit, even if she found the sight of his feverish genital titillating. Olney supposed that most exposure artists were indeed disgusting types. But what if some good looking and dashing gentleman suddenly then whipped it out? Like most men, Olney had no real idea about female sexuality, about what they did in their fantasies to make those little doxy ducts open up. But, like most men, he would happily accept a sinecure with tenure for a detailed, hands-on study of the subject. Indeed, a research centre hidden in the forest would suit him to a tee. Especially were it fitted with a helicopter pad for shuttling in hand-picked subjects, the entire luxurious retreat surrounded by a twelve foot concrete wall, itself surrounded by a moat crawling with man-eating crocodiles, and beyond that an electrified fence to insure that no one interfered with his rigorous and scientific investigation of feminine physiology.

§§§

Chapter 18: Brekkie with the Lord-Gagger

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