Then I went to the drama school, looked for Petra, and asked him for money. He gave it to me in return for a blow job in the bathroom. He said he would like to see me in the evening sometimes. He was married but we could go to a hotel, and I said, sure, whatever you like, as long as you pay me. I gave him my cell phone number, returned home and called Joel, Kay’s dealer. I asked how much a gram of heroin cost and he said, for you a hundred and twenty euros. Bring me a gram and a half, I said.
Four days later, I called Petra on his cell phone. I told him I urgently needed five hundred euros and he said, look, I’m just a university teacher. I told him he could save on a hotel if he came to my apartment. I opened the windows and took out the garbage, which was already reeking. In the refrigerator the tomatoes were growing fungus and there was some margarine that had turned green. I threw everything in a plastic bag and took it down to the trash. I looked for clean sheets and as there weren’t any I ironed one I’d been using for a while. I cleaned the bathroom.
An hour later Petra arrived, gave me the five hundred euros and said, I don’t have much time today, promise me that for the same money I’ll be able to come here twice more. I said yes and lay down on the bed. I took out his penis and sucked it. Then I said: I’m your slave, do with me as you please. He sucked my clitoris and my anus and my tits, sodomized me, and finally came in my mouth. He went away well satisfied. As soon as I heard him go out, I called Joel and said, bring me two grams, and on the way drop by a supermarket and buy ham, bread, and a Coke.
Kay was still in a coma.
I went to see him every two or three days, sat down beside him, and thought about the miserable life we had and how much I loved him. Being by his side, I remembered an old movie and decided to tell him the story of it, which I did to ease my guilt about the drugs and everything else.
Time passed, and one day Petra approached me with rather an unusual proposition. A job for which I’d be paid a thousand euros, but I wouldn’t be told what I would have to do until I got there, and I thought, a thousand euros? who would pay a thousand euros for a fuck? what will it be? a gang rape, a lesbian scene, sex with a donkey or a chimpanzee? Anything was possible, but by now nothing fazed me anymore, so we went to a building in the sixteenth arrondissement, climbed the stairs, and Petra greeted an elderly lady in Romanian, but didn’t introduce me to her.
We walked along a dark corridor and I started to notice strange things. Although the building was respectable enough, the apartment itself was old, with peeling walls; I wondered who the lady was and why we were there, but as I was about to ask, Petra looked at me and lifted a finger to his lips, quiet! he said, we mustn’t talk too much, you’ll see, it’ll be over very soon. We walked through a hall and reached a bedroom in which there was an adjustable bed, the kind you find in hospitals, and Petra said, if you don’t want to do it we’ll leave immediately, it’s something quite simple, a forty-year-old man suffering from Down’s syndrome, the lady is his mother, don’t make that face, there’s no danger, it’s only a mental condition. Like anyone who has a penis between his legs, he needs to find an outlet for his sexual impulses, and that’s why you’re here, if you accept the mission and the thousand euros.
So I said, O.K., you want me to have sex with a mentally retarded man, is that right? Yes, said Petra. Alright, I said, but for a thousand euros I could only give him a blow job, it’s all a bit awkward, I’m young and it might affect me psychologically, so it’s going to cost more, and Petra said, O.K., wait, and he went to talk to the old lady. After a while they both came and asked me how much I wanted and I said, two thousand euros, not a cent less. All right, I’ll go and fetch him, said the lady. The thirty seconds it took for them to bring him were the longest in my life; at last he arrived and I saw him: a mongol with gray hair and squinty eyes. They had undressed him, and a nurse was nudging him forward. He was making these desperate sounds, and it was quite a while before I realized they were words and not just noise. He was also waving his arms and trying to hide his face in his mother’s breast. You can get undressed now, mademoiselle, we’re ready, said the nurse; as I started to take my clothes off, with my back to the group, I thought of Kay and of the scribbled note and I told myself that this was a punishment, and that after it I would feel clean again.
A cry from the man brought me back to reality: I had taken off my panties and he had seen my ass. His mother and the nurse were struggling to subdue him. His penis was already erect, so I kneeled on the mattress, with my back to him, and said, I’m ready, but his mother whispered in my ear, wait a minute, young lady, I’m paying you two thousand euros, so you’ll have to do more than that, and she pointed at his penis. I understood what she wanted and moved my mouth closer to his body, which was hairless, like a giant baby’s, and started sucking, closing my eyes and repeating in my mind, I’m not here, I’m not here, but the man’s cries were fierce, as were his gestures. The mother and the nurse were finding it hard to restrain him. After a moment, the nurse touched my shoulder and said, mademoiselle, you can change position now, turn your back to him again. It would have been worse face to face, this way it was easier. They moved him closer, the nurse guided him, and they helped him put it in. Mother Nature did her job, since no sooner did he feel that he was inside than he began to rock backwards and forwards. It must be an instinctive reflex of the species, like sucking your mother’s breast, and so he went on for a while until his cries grew in intensity and he ejaculated outside of me with the help of the nurse, who had taken his member out first to avoid problems. Then he collapsed on the mattress, as if his muscles had deflated; within a few seconds he was fast asleep and snoring.
They took me to another room with a bath, and said, please have a wash. If you want to take a shower there’s no hurry, take your time, when you’re finished come into the living room. By the time I was dressed, Petra was waiting for me with the money. Before we left, the old lady said, thank you, mademoiselle, if you like I can ask for you again in a month, and I said, ask for me, and I’ll tell you if it’s possible at the time. The woman handed over ten two-hundred euro bills and squeezed my arm saying in a low voice, I know this can’t be easy for a young woman, but you have to understand, they’re human beings, too. . I understand, I said, I’ll wait for your call, and went back down to the street with Petra.
The next day was Saturday so I went to the hospital, I had a tremendous desire to be with Kay. I told him everything in his ear, whispered to him that I had had sex with a mentally retarded man for money, although I didn’t tell him it was for drugs; I said it was to arrange our apartment, to fill the vases with roses and the closet with wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy and fill the refrigerator with vegetable, and fruit, which was what the doctor had said he would have to eat when he woke up, and I said, I’m preparing for your return, my love, I feel you close to me, I know you’re there, you just have to break one thin membrane, I can feel it, you come and I’ll be ready, and so Saturday went by with me lying beside him, I had managed to sneak in some of the drug, so I snorted it in small doses, just to keep calm, and I felt happy, I swear, very happy in that room with a view of a parking lot and the overhead section of the metro line that goes from Charles de Gaulle to Nation. Through the window I could see the train passing in the distance, surrounded by smoke from the chimneys, and I imagined anxious women traveling in those carriages, longing to get home and have sex with the men they loved and cry out with joy between four dirty, peeling walls; and I also imagined disillusioned young girls looking for some kind of direction in their lives, girls who might have been raped, and might be thinking and thinking and feeling abused and guilty, the poor things, some of them might well be savoring the idea of sticking a needle in their veins to escape this den of iniquity; some might be looking up at the sky in the hope of seeing an igneous ball that would destroy everything once and for all, devour the city in a hurricane of fire, the colossal towers leaning and falling in clouds of dust and terrified people running through the rubble, choked by the smoke and the waves of heat, pushed toward nothingness by the winds of destruction, yes, a few lost young girls must be thinking all that, and things even worse that that, which the mind did not dare imagine, let alone say; I imagined them coming and going in the metro trains I could see from the window, with Kay breathing artificially beside me, and I felt protected, as if the world and its miseries could not enter this little room that smelled of disinfectant, this room where death prowled.