go over to the dark side and lose the good girl image they love.
He insists I’m not Ninette anymore and the sooner I accept that the better off I am.
This is the first of many rows we have: some in public at his favorite table at the Hôtel Ritz, him looking across at me, arms folded, pouting while the waiter pours me another glass of sweet Anjou – my third in an hour – and others in private in my small apartment. It’s always the same. I come across on the screen as a child dressing up in her mother’s clothes, I don’t carry myself like a woman who knows how to seduce a man (I wish Miss Brimwell had been instructive in that department). And I don’t know how to kiss. He insists the way for me to make the transition from child actress to femme fatale is to lose my virginity.
I let out a screech that rips through me down to my toes and causes more than one head to turn in the famous Ritz dining salon. ‘How dare you suggest I – that you—’
‘Don’t look at me like that, Sylvie. I may be a lot of things – and no, don’t name them – but I’m not like that with my stable of stars.’
I furrow my brow. ‘Is that what you call your clients? A stable? What are we… goats… dairy cows to be farmed out at your whim?’ My voice sounds scratchy from my outburst. ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me? Everyone in Paris knows the great Emil-Hugo de Ville keeps a special apartment on the Left Bank for his party girls.’
He doesn’t deny it as he signals the waiter for another bottle of brandy. ‘Every one of them beautiful… and willing.’ He straightens his bowtie and slicks back his deep ebony hair with the finesse of a bullfighter about to enter the ring. ‘I’ve already made the arrangements for your… shall we call it, evening of pleasure. A young actor I have my eye on. Jean-Claude Remy is in need of seasoning before I sign him.’
‘You mean you want to see if he’ll jump through your hoops.’ A simple statement, but true. ‘And keep his mouth shut afterward.’
He smiles. ‘I’ve reserved a suite for you overlooking the Place Vendôme. You’ll have caviar, champagne… and the smoothest satin sheets so as not to mar your delicate skin.’
‘You’re insane, Emil… mad. I won’t do it.’
He leans closer, takes my hand – yes, I’m trembling – and holds it tight. ‘In certain cultures, it’s the duty of the father to choose his daughter’s first lover. Have I not been like a father to you, Sylvie?’
‘Yes…’ I’m reluctant to admit Emil has guided my career to a place I never dreamed. My name in lights on the theater marquee like he promised, adoring fans, pretty clothes. ‘But to think you’d sell my body so you can get your twenty-five per cent out of my hide…’
‘It’s for your own good, ma chère. Go out with Jean-Claude, go dancing at the Moulin Rouge, the theater, have fun… all expenses on me.’ He tips the waiter when he brings the brandy then shoos him away. He pours himself a drink, downs it quickly, and then smacks his lips. ‘From what the mamselles tell me, Jean-Claude is a stud in the sack.’
Jean-Claude is a drunk with sloppy lips, smelly hairy armpits, and a starfish birthmark on his right buttock I’m sure half the women in Paris have seen. The arrangement is far from memorable – I will spare you the requisite details to save us both embarrassment. He downs a bottle of champagne and it’s a miracle he can perform. When the evening reaches its climax (his, not mine), I know how that mother cat Sister Vincent and I found felt after giving birth to her litter and then being tossed out into the rain.
I’m drenched. His sweat, my sweat, and a myriad of milky fluids that make me wish I had no sense of smell. I’m grateful no one in this hotel room uses the bidet to wash clothes in and I make speedy use of it afterward. I refuse to check the sheets for any physical signs of my womanhood (I rang for the maid to change the bedding as soon as Jean-Claude grabbed his trousers and took off for parts unknown) and rest in the adjoining dressing room on a gold-satin méridienne while she tidies up the room. Then, wrapped in a fluffy, clean-smelling white robe with a big ‘R’ embroidered on the back, I crawl into the white canopied bed and curl up into a ball, moaning in pain and crying.
I’ll never forget how Jean-Claude looked at me with naked lust before diving into me. In spite of the heated hotel room, I shiver. I was merely a vessel to him, a vase to be broken. I prayed it would be quick.
It wasn’t.
I clench my thighs together tight to protect what’s left of my girlhood… no, there’s nothing left but a searing tear in my body that will heal, but will my soul? I feel lost, humiliated, used… and broken.
Like that poor, lonely vase.
I refuse to report to Emil the specifics of the evening except to deliver a dramatic Elizabethan moment with four simple words. The deed is done. I can’t speak about it and he respects that. He does, however, reflect on the sheen on my cheeks, the glint in my eye, the sway of my hips. Things I don’t notice. I hide from him what I am feeling, which not only surprises me, but pleases the female urges I’ve ignored for so long.
I shall explain…
First, I tell Emil, I need to close the door to my public life. I need to think, rest, drink tea instead of coffee to find my footing. This is the perfect time to send scripts my way. I ask for privacy and promise him he will never again be disappointed in my performance.
Then I sleep for two days, allowing my body to heal, my soul filling up with a new understanding that the pleasant tingling between my thighs that makes me tremble, my knees weak, is not something to be denied. That in spite of the pain, the anguish, the humiliation of being bought and sold like a bolt of silk, something wonderful and mysterious happened to me when Jean-Claude forced my legs apart. Before I could protest, I felt his warm breath on my face, hovering there, waiting to see if I was ready for him…
The odd yet pleasurable note is, I wasn’t ready then… I am now.
Why is my body betraying me? My belly full and aching, a burning within me that is forbidden. This can’t be happening to me, it can’t!
A week, then two… I spend sleepless nights wishing I had another chance to be with a man. A good man who would kiss me, hug me… hold me… then I slow down my breathing, relax my body, and let it react in a most natural way as I close my eyes and imagine in my mind I’m with a gorgeous man as he runs his hands over my breasts, cupping my soft flesh. Not like I did with Jean-Claude. I pushed him away and told him to hurry up. Foolish words. Whatever deep desires I possess, they’re getting stronger every day, a growing pleasure between my legs that won’t go away. An intense hunger that becomes so deliciously painful, I can’t deny it any longer. I need a release.
I rummage through my trunk for pieces of costumes I’ve collected from my films. Wigs, gaudy jewelry, lace-up boots, princess satin slippers. I don a fetching outfit dripping with fringe, a black wig, red satin wedge heels with tie-around straps that wind up my calves… and my lace veil.
No… not my veil.
I run my fingers over the veil. Tiny, static shocks prick my fingers as if a sacred aura clings to the only link to my past, a holiness I dare not violate. I return the lace veil to its secret place. It’s not my past I wish to embrace tonight, but the moment of becoming a woman on my own terms denied to me.
No one recognizes me as Sylvie Martone when I haunt the cabarets in the Place Pigalle. I heard the makeup girl whispering to the wardrobe attendant about the decadent fun found here. This is the first chance I’ve had to see it up close. I brace myself when I slip through a door with etched glass, the smoked-filled building drawing me in, my feelings intensifying when I glance over the crowd of nubile