Puttin' on the Ritz

Von Kaube was lying on his back when Paul returned. The captain was magnificently naked in comparison to the vision Paul had just left. His back was propped up by pillows, and he was smoking a cigarette, his trembling hand betraying his worry.

Paul sat down on the edge of the bed, took the cigarette out of Garren's mouth, inhaled three deep drags on it, and returned it to Garren. There was no way he'd tell the captain, though, that he'd done so to take the taste of the Reichsmarschall's cum out of his mouth.

"What—?" Von Kaube asked in a quiet voice and an expression of concern.

"It was just a dance," Paul said, putting on the best smile he could. "He just wanted to dance."

He rubbed his cheeks on Garren's inner thighs and he placed his head between them and took the captain's cock in his mouth, working it up, and then sitting on it and riding it to a mutual ejaculation.

Göring was in Paris and at the Ritz for five more days. Twice more he summoned Paul to his suite to "dance" with him.

Garren could choose to believe that Paul would be gone for an hour and a half at a time just to dance, but General Bosch became a challenge that Paul couldn't keep from Garren.

While the captain was away in Berlin the next time, Bosch tracked Paul down, took him to the room in the basement of the Ritz that the SS had equipped for interrogations and beat him. And when Paul was completely cowed, Bosch put him on all fours on the stone floor and mounted and fucked him hard. He then stretched Paul on a rack on his belly and stood over him, smoking a cigarette and leering, until he was hard again. Then he mounted Paul's ass and fucked him again.

When he'd gone to another room to take a piss, Antoine stole in, released Paul, and carried the moaning young man to the staff floors. Entering this floor, Paul thought he was hallucinating when he thought he saw a bookcase move and the actor Bres Moulin start to come out and then pull back, with the bookcase going flush against the wall again. Antoine took Paul to his own room and tended to this bruises. Luckily he hadn't been stretched to the point of breaking any bones—yet.

The next morning, still in Antoine's room, Paul asked about what he had seen the previous night.

"I can't help that you saw that," Antoine said. "But if you whisper a word of it, it will be known by all sides of the spying that's going on in the building. I won't be able to help you, and no one will be able to help the hotel or its staff—or even your precious captain. No one will believe he doesn't know whatever you know."

"I'll say nothing. I've no interest in political affairs," Paul said. "But was that Bres Moulin? He's been missing for weeks."

"He's a Jew. Increasingly, you can't be known to be Jewish in Paris and live. Ask your precious captain. No, don't. We all will go down—including you and Von Kaube—if you do. There's a whole level of servants' rooms between floors here. Every Jew who is associated with the hotel—and some others—are being hidden here. And God help you if you ever reveal that."

It was never mentioned again between the two of them and never came out until after the war—which led Antoine to be more open and trusting of Paul. And protective of him. He kept Paul hidden from Bosch in his room until Captain Von Kaube returned.

Paul didn't say anything to Garren about the tank corp general, and he had no idea whether Antoine told the captain or not. But two nights after Captain Von Kaube was in residence in the Ritz again, he went out of the hotel one evening. So did Jürgen Bosch, to a favorite restaurant of his.

Bosch was shot dead coming out of the restaurant, an act that was claimed by and thus credited to the French Resistance.

Göring returned to Paris to consult with Karl Haberstock on artwork in September of 1941. He summoned Paul to dance with him three times during that visit.

Each time Paul told Garren it had just been a dance, each time Garren had chosen to believe him, and each time the two had made wild and cleansing love afterward. Their bond had become complete.

Paul didn't willingly lay with anyone after that beyond the "dancing" with the Reichsmarschall when he chose to visit Paris—not with Antoine and not with Michel Paquet or Jan Bukowski.

Paul applied himself to painting in his studio while Garren was away in Berlin, although Garren was finding excuses to be in Paris—and with Paul—more and more of the time.

It was while Paul was painting in his studio one day that he discovered that the delivery of art work for Karl Haberstock to assess for Göring's acquisition was being made to a basement room next to his studio. He went out in the hallway and observed that it was regular German soldiers who were hauling it into the room from canvas-covered trucks. Neither Haberstock nor a German official seemed to be there cataloging what came in. When they left, he entered the storeroom and surveyed what was there. There were works by some of the greatest artists Paul knew of. He picked up canvases and turned them over and found Jewish-sounding names on the backs of most of them.

Paul didn't understand politics—nor did he want to—but he understood art and art preservation. Without thinking further, he culled through the artwork and pulled some aside on the basis of two criteria: The work must be of outstanding artistic value in comparison with everything else in the storeroom and it must have a name of ownership on the back of it. As much as he felt he could carefully carry and wouldn't be missed he shuttled back to his studio. He took canvases of his work off their frames and covered the treasured art works he had "liberated" with his own canvases.

"You what?" Antoine said when he next visited the studio.

"I just can't let them take these out of France. They must be returned to their owners," Paul said.

Antoine looked at Paul in surprise—and with some other sentiment that Paul wouldn't be able to understand but that almost brought tears to Antoine's eyes. Paul probably didn't even know the step out of self-absorption he'd taken or the trust that he had shown to Antoine.

"The owners of these paintings are probably dead," Antoine said as Paul showed him how he had hidden the canvases. "These would have belonged to Jews who have disappeared one night."

"They must have family somewhere. Regardless, this is the heritage of France. It should stay in France. I can't save them all, of course, but any saved are that many not lost. I just don't know what to do with them now."

"I do," Antoine said. "Leave it to me. I'll take them away. And paint more of your own canvases—many more—so there will be that many more that can cover the paintings you identify to save from the storeroom as they arrive. Let me know when you see a delivery and I'll make sure that Karl Haberstock is otherwise engaged until you have had time to examine what was brought in and can save the best."

* * * *

On December 7, 1941, Antoine appeared in Paul's art studio, where he was working on a painting.

"Where are your papers—your identity papers?"

"I don't know. Let me think. Why, I think my former lover last had them. Why are you asking?"

"Noell Giroux has them?" Antoine asked.

"Yes, I think so. I haven't had need to show them I've been here at the Ritz so long. But, you know Noell Giroux and that I lived with him before the captain?"

"Have you not heard the news. Japan has attacked the United States and war between them has been declared."

"So? No, I don't understand. Why are you so agitated, Antoine? This is bad news for the United States. But what does it have to do with France—or me, really?"

"Japan, Germany, and Italy are in a pact. Germany and Italy will declared war on the United States now. You won't be a neutral here. You'll be a belligerent. You haven't told the captain you're an American, have you?"

"It hasn't come up. I'm sure he thinks I'm French. My French isn't the greatest, but his is atrocious. He has no idea I speak it with an American accent. Nor do any of the other German military men here, I'm sure."

"Good. Then you must become French."

"I don't know how to do that," Paul said.

"I do. Come with me. We must see Frank Meier."

"The hotel's senior bartender?"

"Yes. Don't ask. Just come. Now."

"How the hell do you know all of these things?" Paul asked.

Antoine didn't answer that.

* * * *

Ten days before Christmas of 1942, Paul and Garren lay exhausted on the bed in Room 31 of the Ritz Paris. Paul had come back from a dance in the Imperial Suite, and Garren had made wild love to him. Paul's buttocks were glued to Garren's crotch, pinned there by Garren's buried cock. Paul's torso was otherwise twisted, his legs in the splits, with the ankle of his right leg lodged behind Garren's neck and the ankle of his left leg trapped between Garren's calves.

Garren released Paul from the demanding athletic position, pulled his body in to be stretched beside his own, and reaching over, opened the nightstand drawer and took out a packet covered by oilskin.

"Here. I want you to take this and use it when I leave for Berlin at the end of this visit. You can't fly back to Berlin with me, but this will get you safe conduct to Berlin. It's time. The war isn't going well. I fear we will lose Paris—that I may not be able to come back."

"What are you saying?" Paul asked.

"I'm saying I can't live without you. I may not be able to come back to Paris. I want you in Berlin with me."

Paul sucked in air. He was here with false papers now. He was an American, and the United States was at war with Germany. If Garren found out . . . if anyone else found out, the repercussions would be on Garren . . . his lover . . . his love.

"It can't be that bad."

* * * *

The book was all the rage in the summer of 1943—at least for underground reading. It had to be kept out of the reach of the Germans. Antoine volunteered to keep Paul's copy in his room, lest Garren see it, and Paul had readily agreed.

Antoine had seen it immediately, but then so had Paul. It was entitled The Collaborator and was set in Brussels' Hotel Metropole, the Belgian equivalent of the Ritz Paris. The previously unknown author was Hugh Lemaire. It was about a young American trapped in Belgium by the war and forced to go into prostitution, where he winds up living in the Hotel Metropole with a Gestapo lieutenant. The Americans contact him to spy on the Germans, but he is so lost to his officer that he spies for the Germans instead.

Neither Paul nor Antoine were fooled. They knew the book was about Paul and had been written in revenge by Michel Paquet because Paul had stopped letting Paquet fuck him. Paul had come a long way in understanding the danger of his liaison with Von Kaube, especially in the Ritz, as riddled with spies as it was. But now he was lost in the relationship. He wouldn't escape from it even if he could. He knew enough about the war to know that the Germans would lose, but he was a fatalist. He didn't care as long as he could be with Garren for as long as possible.

The book would be devastating to Paul if read by the wrong people. Both Paul and Antoine walked around as if treading on glass into the fall of 1943, but it didn't appear that anything would become of the book.

It certainly didn't encourage Paul to sleep with Paquet again, though, and Paquet became confused, quiet, and morose when Count Jan Bukowski's body was found floating in the Seine. More than once he asked Paul what he'd had to do with Bukowski's death, which, of course, was nothing.

* * * *

December 15, 1943

Paul had come down from the Imperial Suite as quickly as he could get away. Garren, naked, drew the young man into his body, stripped away his clothes, and covered his face and nipples with kisses, pushing Paul's shoulder blades on to the floor by the bed, with Paul's back rising up the side of the bed. Garren grabbed Paul's legs, split them wide from his body, placed his feet beside Paul's torso, and pile-drive fucked, in reverse down into Paul's hole.

Cleansing. Fucking Göring out of Paul; fucking Göring out of Paul. Neither could verbalize this. Both knew what this wild fucking was about, though. Before he came, Garren pulled Paul's body up his chest, set his legs in a crouch, and brought the young man's passage back down on his cock. Throwing his arms behind him and arching his back to counterbalance Garren's crouch, Paul opened his mouth and murmured, "Yes, yes, fuck him out of me," as, arms under the small of Paul's back, Garren slammed him up and down on the cock to a mutual ejaculation.

There, at last, it had been said. But neither of them would admit it.

Holding him close on the bed afterward, Garren whispered, "The end is coming. I can't speak of it louder, but we won't be able to hold Paris. This is his last trip to Paris. He's said as much. You must use the safe passage documents and come to me in Berlin. I won't be able to come back. I'll leave you what money I can, but you must come. Promise me you'll come."

"I promise," Paul answered, having no idea how he could honor that promise—not being able to tell Garren what danger he himself could be in if Paul came to him and was discovered to be an American. "But there is something you need to know," he said, swallowing hard.

"All I need to know is that the two of us need to be together at the end."

"Will it come to that? In Berlin?" Paul asked. "Will it be the end?"

"When and if it is the end, I can promise you that you won't suffer." Instinctively Garren was holding Paul by the throat with both hands. He was a strong man, trained in such arts. One snap and it would be over.

Paul halfway wished he would do it now, with Garren's cock still hard, inside him. While they were still where they'd been happy—at the Ritz Paris.

* * * *

July 21, 1944

Men from the SS were swarming through the entrance of the Ritz Paris into the cavernous lobby, with small teams of men peeling off in several different directions. An SS captain marched up to the reception desk.

"Are the German residents General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the military commander of Paris, and his liaison, Colonel Caesar von Hofacker, still registered here and on the premises?" the officer demanded in a booming voice.

Paul, who was coming down the stairs at the time, with Antoine behind him, froze. The SS officer was Captain Garren von Kaube. He hadn't told Paul he was coming back to Paris. In fact, he'd told Paul he wasn't coming back to Paris. And Paul had believed him this time. When Garren had left for Berlin the last time, he'd taken the sketch of Paul with him.

"Come back up the stairs and across to the rue Cambon side of the hotel," Antoine whispered insistently in Paul's ear. "Go to the bar and tell Frank Valkyrie has been compromised."

"What? Valkyrie?" Paul asked, dumbly, not able to take his eyes off Garren. He was within two days of leaving Paris to use the passes Garren had given him to go to him to Berlin. But Garren was here. As an SS officer. Evidently to arrest other German officers both he and Paul had socialized with here at the Ritz.

"I'll tell you later, if there's a later," Antoine hissed. "I can't go. They can't find Frank and me together. Now go. Do this to prove I can trust you."

Not taking his eyes off Garren until he had turned in the curve the staircase, Paul moved quickly through the labyrinth of halls of the old hotel that he had come to know so well and to the more modern wing off the street behind the Place Vendôme.

"Thank you," Frank said calmly when Paul passed on the message from Antoine at the rue Cambon bar. He continued polishing the glass he was holding, but Paul could see his hand tremble a bit and the muscles of his neck tense up.

"You'd best go to your room now. Stay out of this," Meier said.

Garren was in the room when Paul got there. "I didn't know you were coming," Paul said, trying to contain his mix of concern and joy.

"There's been an attempt on the Führer's life," Garren said. "We are after the conspirators in Paris—here, at the Ritz. I can only stay an hour while my men search for them." He was stripping off his uniform.

He fucked Paul in hard, strong strokes, with the two facing each other on the bed, Garren's knees pushed under Paul's buttocks and Paul's legs wrapped around Garren's hips. Paul's torso was arched back, his face toward the ceiling, his arms dangling from his side in supplication, moaning and crying out in pained ecstasy, as, arms embracing Paul under the small of his back, Garren slammed his cock hard and deep up into Paul's passage, again and again and again. He fucked Paul in anger at the crumbling of his world. An SS Gestapo captain at war, taking no prisoners. Continuing to piston hard and deep long after Paul had come and totally surrendered.

After the SS captain had come in a hot flow, he let Paul's body fall back on the bed in a heap. Paul watched through mournful eyes, not bothering to move his limbs from where they had fallen, while, without a word, Garren quickly dressed back in his uniform and walked out of the room.

Two days later, Paul received an abject apology in terse words in a telegram from Berlin from Garren. Not from the SS Gestapo captain this time, but from the Garren Paul was in love with. Garren had been overwrought with the situation he wrote in a form of code—not just with the assassination attempt on Hitler but also with the number of high-ranking military men, many of whom were known and had been respected by Garren, who were implicated in the plot—including here at the Ritz. And he'd had to arrest some who had been friends of his. And who knew whether he would be implicated at some time as well? He had known nothing about the plot, but he had been here. He was just sorry that he had taken his anger and frustration out on Paul. He never would do that again, he declared. The telegram ended in the words that had come increasingly easy to Von Kaube: "Ich liebe dich."

Paul couldn't bring himself to believe that Garren would never be violent like that again—and on some level, Paul melted to the violence in Garren. Paul gloried in being fucked roughly. He couldn't deny that Garren was two very different men, however. The intensity and brutality with which Garren had taken him two days previously had been no different in anger, force, and control than the double-penetration fuck of the two soldiers at Claude's brothel Garren had shot.

It didn't make a bit of difference that Paul had loved it. He was confused. He put his trip east on hold.

* * * *

August 25, 1944, 4:00 p.m.

Paul had been napping. Antoine had told him to stay in his room all day. The Americans and British were set to enter the city from the north and the Free French from the south. The Ritz was holding its collective breath. He was awakened by the bells starting up all across the city. He started to rise from the bed, when the door burst open and what looked like a madman in fatigues, his shirt open to reveal a hairy chest bounded into the room. He was carrying a British submarine gun slung under one arm, and two champagne bottles under the other. A gun holster drooped off a thick black belt around an also thick stomach. He was so rumpled that Paul doubted the man had slept in days.

"This is my room. You got ten minutes to move your shit out of it," the man barked and then he was gone.

Antoine appeared in the doorway in the wake of the wild man.

"Who the hell was that?" Paul asked.

"That was Ernest Hemingway. He's liberating the Ritz. And this is his room. I think I told you that. You'd best clear out as directed. We have other rooms. I hear he's a dangerous shot when he's drunk."

"He's liberated the Ritz?" Paul said. "The Germans all left yesterday and the staff put up the tricolor right after they were gone—and there were British soldiers in here already before this guy showed up."