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Chapter 20: Rhonda's bonne idée! Rhonda entered the kitchen of foul moods. "Interested in making two hundred francs each?" Her question, asked cheerfully enough, fell -- slumped actually -- on the sleepy ears of her landlords. "Oh?" mumbled Olney, ramfeezled from a long night of twitching insomnia. He was spreading confiture de coings -- his favourite alternative to apricot jam -- on a buttered hunk of baguette. The thing trembled in his hand. Maggie stared into the usual space. "Some company is making a commercial," Rhonda explained with rosy morning cheer. "They need a bunch of North American types as extras; it's supposed to take place in New York. You have to sign up at the American Centre." "Probably a commercial on toilet paper," Maggie muttered from her bridge-gapping trance. "When?" Olney asked without a skerrick of interest as he plunged the quince laden tartine into a tepid bowl of coffee. He was torn between sluggishness, his normal zest for breakfast (tempered as it was by such a large audience), and his lust for Rhonda. He gulped some coffee in the desperate attempt to wake up enough to ogle her with his bloodshot eyes. Rhonda's genteel beauty, daintily hidden behind a pale blue nightie, came into focus just as the over-dunked bread squirted from his grasp. Maggie's eyes followed its descent with groggy indifference as it fell in the bowl, slopping coffee on the table. Olney ate several pre-cigarette oaths while fishing it out. "A week from Wednesday," Rhonda answered, ignoring the scene. "But we have to sign up today at the latest. Sorry I didn't tell you sooner, but I just heard about it." "Today!" he yawped, coming to life with a dripping handful of bread. "That's impossible. I'll be busy all afternoon. Where's my list? There must be at least eight items on it." The drenched bread-thing dangled ominously near the exposed sugar bowl. "How on earth can I be expected to cope with intrusions like these on such short notice?" "By being flexible," advised Maggie. "You'd think you were a corporate executive, busy morning, noon and night. There's plenty of time, we never do anything." She handed him a towel. "Speak for your motiveless self, Miss Stareabout." He wiped up most of the mess and tossed the towel back to Maggie. "You happen to be talking to the busiest man-of-leisure in Paris. Besides, Wednesday is British Library day and I have research to do. How am I ever going to write this book with so many interruptions?" Indignant and flustered, he put the oozing mess in his mouth. Muffled idiot sounds replaced his obnoxious whining. Unable to chew and complain at the same time, Olney fell silent. Maggie handed him the towel again. She reached for a cigarette, but remembered their pact not to smoke in front of Rhonda in the kitchen. "Incidentally," she said, "not that it matters or anything, but that Wednesday also happens to be my birthday." Olney forced the glutenous pulp down his throat so fast he nearly choked. "Oh, yeah! I almost forgot," came his strangled acknowledgment. "By the way," Maggie continued, "how come you're always doing 'research' on Wednesdays?" She knew why, of course. "Just happens to be the day school is out, doesn't it? All those studious young -- " " -- I happen to find that day a perfect break in the week's routine, if you please." Damn that Maggie, trying to make him look like an old lecher in front of Rhonda. He wasn't yet ready to introduce the subject to their tenant, but oh, one day he would. Olney loved to talk about his fantasy of tongue-bathing girls on the brink of adolescence to the naked woman beside him. His lovers often resisted such verbal foreplay, but when they didn't, it was moaning low in Cream City. And Olney did go to the British Library on Wednesdays because school was out. By the standards of any other country, the French school week was bizarre: children all over the country took Wednesday off. To partly make up for the free day, they attended classes on Saturday morning. It seemed an overly complicated system guaranteed to confuse children and parents alike. If both parents worked, their children were allowed to run rampant through the house on Wednesdays without supervision; a horrifying thought. But then, in compensation, mère and père got to sleep in on Saturday mornings and probably make love in peace; at worst they were saved from the irritating sounds of animated automata coming from the TV. During his sojourn with Xavier and Frédérique and their two sons a few years back, Olney had come to dread Wednesdays. It seemed downright harmful to a smooth running universe for school children to be unleashed on the peaceful weekday world. Instead -- quelle bonne idée! -- why not keep them in school every day of the year? With an hour off on Sunday to enjoy a nice lunch with their parents and the resident American friend who certainly wouldn't begrudge the intrusion. In reality, French children never seemed to go to school. The threat of bratty Philippe and noisy René staying home all day every day to fight and whine and get into his things was ever present. There were so many holidays and two week gaps in their education, it was a wonder they knew anything. And yet, to Olney's surprise, even the dumbest French child seemed more articulate than the best of his fellow Umeruhc'ns, particularly the traditional oaf-sounding inarticulateness of presidential press secretaries. In Paris he discovered that many junior scholastics (in particular, the demoiselles with their faces in perfect thirds) availed themselves of local libraries for a few hours on their day off. He could have painted them, so absorbed were they in their studies. But Olney was no painter. He was a writer. And he kept his pencil busy on Wednesdays. "Well, I have to get ready," Rhonda said over-brightly. Shifting in her chair, the nightie opened a little to reveal a satiny white landscape above her breasts. Olney stared at the minute blue veins cavorting like tiny ski trails beneath her skin. He gasped with admiration while his adoring cock saw auras. Maggie didn't notice, but Rhonda had to look away. She knew men only too well; where they were concerned, two plus two equalled sex. She kind of liked Olney, though. In fact, she'd never met a man quite like him: eccentric and entertaining. He wanted to add sums with her, it was plain. But what sort of carry-overs would she have to contend with? What kind of a lover could such a strange man be? She'd have to see about that. And his girlfriend was sure a strange duck. Did she want to add sums too? In Rhonda's experience, they often came in pairs. But how did Maggie put up with his awful eating habits? A model of good manners, Rhonda's eyes kept sliding away from Olney's resolute gluttony. She stood up. "Well, I hope we can all be stars together. I'm going to sign up now, before classes. See ya." And she fled to her room. Maggie lit a cigarette. She looked at Olney with that empty, steady gaze that drove him crazy. "You look like pure thought in its sheerest form," he said. Once, in Right Sock, at the end of his rope over the absurd options life was giving him, he'd suddenly yelled: "If something hopeful and sane doesn't soon appear on my dreadful horizon, I'm going to commit suicide!" She had stared at him then in the same way, totally unruffled and noncommittal, as if his imminent demise were of no concern. "Well, would you like to commit suicide?" she'd asked. The query was impartially voiced, her mind evidently on more important matters. "You unfeeling bitch!" he'd yelled, throwing his favourite cognac glass to the floor, where it broke in a million tragic pieces. "You're such a pig at breakfast." Maggie yawned. "It's really strange. With everything else you're prissily fastidious." "I know," he agreed, glad to see the vacancy taken, "but it tastes so good this way." Maggie inhaled deeply. "We'd better do it, eh? Four hundred francs is nothing to sneeze at. Speaking of which...." The first cigarette of the day often sent her into a fit of sneezing. As a rule, Olney found her sneezes cute: little i-chings and ah-shits daintily loosed on earth's loving airs: sneezing women turned him on. But this morning's news, extra money or no, had lashed Olney to the foul side of himself. "Oh, God!" he bleated, reaching for the cold coffee. Maggie took her errhine frenzy to the bedroom, leaving him to devour another foot of baguette in slovenly peace. §§§ Chapter 21: The Gerbil Wheel of Life |