Nightwork

'What I'm getting at,' Fabian said, all patience and bonhomie, 'is that throughout our civilization artists have presented objects of sexual desire, in one form or another, sacred, profane, lowly, elevated - the stuff of sensual fantasy. For example, yesterday in the Jeu de Paume, I saw, with pleasure, for perhaps the tenth time, the large canvas by Manet, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe[12], the one with the two superb ladies lolling naked on the grass with their fully dressed gentlemen friends watching admiringly and...'

'I am familiar with the work,' Philippe said flatly. 'Continue.'

'Obviously,' Fabian said with relish, 'Monsieur Manet did not mean for the viewer to understand that nothing went before that moment and that nothing would happen after the moment. The impression / get, at least, is one of delicious familiarity, with all that that connotes.... Are you beginning to follow?'

'I understand.' Philippe was surly now. 'I do not follow.'

'Perhaps,' Fabian said, 'if Manet had had the time, he would have painted some scenes of what went on before that peaceful, suspended moment and what would go on after it. And they might not be so terribly different from some of the scenes that were screened for us tonight. Shall we admit that dear Nadine is perhaps not as great an artist as Manet and that sweet little Priscilla might not be as agelessly attractive as the ladies in the painting, but that in its modest way, Nadine's film springs from some of the same basic motives as Manet's oil...?'

'Bravo,' Nadine said. 'He's halways trying to get me to fuck him hout in the hopen hair. Don't deny hit, Philippe. Remember Brittany last summer? Hall that sand up my has-sole.'

'I deny nothing,' Philippe said unhappily.

'Sex, love, whatever you call it,' Fabian rolled on sonorously, 'is never just plain flesh. There is always an element of fantasy involved. Each age looks to its artists for the fantasies that deepen or improve or even make possible the actual act. Nadine, once again in her modest way - forgive me, dear...' He leaned over and patted Nadine's hand in a fatherly way. 'Nadine is trying to enrich the fantasies of her fellow men and women. In this dark, joyless, imaginatively stunted age, I would say that she should be saluted, not criticized.'

Talk the hind leg off a donkey,' Lily said, in full Cockney, 'that one would.'

'You can say that again, sister,' I said, remembering what Fabian had already talked me into in the space of one afternoon. It suddenly occurred to me that he must be a disbarred lawyer. Disbarred for a very good reason, no doubt.

'Someday, monsieur,' Philippe said, with dignity. 'I would like to have a discussion with you in my native language. I am at a disadvantage in English.' He stood up. 'I have to rise early in the morning. Pay the bill, Nadine, and let us find a taxi.'

'That's all right, Nadine,' Fabian said, waving his hand, although she had made no move toward her purse. "The refreshments are on us.' The plural did not escape me. 'And thank you for a jolly evening.'

We all stood up and Nadine kissed Fabian on both cheeks. She merely shook my hand. I was a little disappointed. The film had had its effect on me, blushes or no blushes. The touch of her lips would have been bracing. I wondered how the Moroccan boy, who had disported with her as her undeniably willing partner in at least two long scenes, could stand meekly aside and watch her go off with another man. Actors, I thought. They must divide themselves into compartments.

'Do you live near here?' Fabian asked Miss Dean.

'Not far.'

'Perhaps you'd like us to escort you home—'

'No, thanks, I'm not going home,' Priscilla said. 'I have a date with my fiancé[13].' She put out her hand to me and I shook it. 'G'bye, see you in church,' she said. I felt a small, rolled-up piece of paper in my palm. For the first time I looked directly at her. There was a little smudge of chocolate at the corner of her mouth, but her eyes were a deep sea blue, the tide coming in rapidly, bringing incalculable sunken treasure.

'See you,' I mumbled and closed my hand over the bit of paper as she stepped away.

* * *

Outside, on the avenue, in the soft wet air of the February Paris night, after we had parted with Priscilla and the Moroccan and the cameraman, I dug into my pocket, where I had dropped the piece of paper. I unrolled it and, by the light of a streetlamp, saw that it had a telephone number written on it. I put the piece of paper back in my pocket and hurried after Fabian and Lily, who were walking ahead of me.

'Glad you came to Paris, Douglas?' Fabian asked. 'It's been a lively day,' I said. 'Most educational.' 'It's only the beginning,' said Fabian. "There are vistas ahead of you, vistas.'

'Did you believe all that stuff you were spouting back there?' I asked. 'About Nadine and Manet and so on?'