Suzanne

There was no sofa, so we used the bed. It was noon, east coast time, so our stomachs appreciated the meal.

I munched and changed the subject slightly. "Does it affect your approach when you know you are working on something for sale?"

With a very dark sidewise look, she said, "Andrew, everything is for sale at some point, is it not?"

"Ouch! That's cruel. You know what I meant."

She started unbuttoning the blouse under her dress. "I can't get food on these clothes. Help me out of them."

She put a pillow on my lap and put her head back, finishing the sandwich. "You are supposed to check out my expensive French lingerie."

"Very nice. Will get you pinched almost anywhere." My hand slipped under a bra cup and rested on what it found.

"I'm back to being horny around you. I suppose that is a good sign."

"Artist's lives don't have to be sexless, do they?"

She laughed. "Artist's lives are basically all fucked up. Look at the mess I was when you were kind enough to take me in."

I cleared off the food mess and lay beside her. "I've never thought of it exactly that way."

"I know. I think we have mostly reformed each other. But we need to up the ante on making a living."

"So what's the answer to my question?'

"Wrong question, really. Every starving artist wants someone to buy her out. What you were trying to ask is what are the sources of my inspiration. The answer is all of the above. A specific commission. A thought walking along the beach. A eureka moment in your car in a traffic jam. A traitorous thought while your lover is blasting into you!"

I sealed that with a long kiss and lay back, saying, "Here's the thing, though. There is inspiration and there is result. You finish a painting. I finish a manuscript. Neither of us knows whether someone, anyone, will decide it is worth buying."

While I was saying that, she had slithered out of the fancy underwear and pulled the cover over us. She whispered, hotly, "What matters is that we are buying each other. Make love to me."

I started slow but she was on a faster, wilder wavelength. And she didn't settle for one time. The coupling was rough, her language vile. She held back until I was coming and added hers on top, both of us letting go in noisy wails and moans. I was still in her when she turned us and sat up.

From an altitude, she ordered, "More."

I changed gears and added more rough. The derriere did get spanked. I took her from the rear and she howled. I put a big thumb on her hole and she screamed in climax. I thought of Brando and 'Last Tango' and decided that would wait for later. Perhaps much later.

After an hour, my lover was worn down and asleep before I knew it. I was confused about a lot of things. But it didn't matter as long as I had Suzanne.

It was light and her head poked out of the bathroom door. "Come, the shower water is hot."

We fell into a routine. She would paint and I would write intensely for two or three days. For the next couple of days, we were tourists, taking in museums, going to shows, eating at allegedly undiscovered one star Michelin restaurants, browsing bookstores. Once or twice, she hired a cab and told the driver to take us to a down at the heels part of town. Over protests, they did, making Madam promise to call them on their cells if we ran into trouble.

It worked. Two more street scenes leaped off the canvases at me, filled with dark and enigmatic figures. I did a short story about a naive American college student who went to college from foster care and was dumped in Paris by his classmates on a tour. No money, no family, nothing until a Parisienne took him in tow. I poured it all in. Angst, sex, drugs, a street fight to protect the woman.

Suzanne read it and said it would sell in five minutes at home. I got two chapters into a new novel, but distracted by another story. It was about a British officer fleeing London and the breakup of his engagement to the too beautiful girl who didn't really love him. A French officer acquaintance introduces him to his sister. It is love at first sight, but of course the obstacles are insuperable. He must return to his regiment. And so on.

Suzanne read it and got teary. "Andrew, it is so tragic! The poor guy. The poor girl. And it doesn't even have a proper end."

"Will it sell?"

"Yes, damn you. There better not be anything like that in our relationship!"

The relationship wasn't stormy, but it had ups and downs. I was grumping one morning to myself, when I should have been writing, and said, "What do you expect, for god's sake? Two talented artists in a foreign city, with ambiguous prospects and silly talk about babies?"

I said to her that evening, "Where are we?"

"You are unhappy?"

"No. Not at all. I have a talented artist who loves me..."

"But more Euros are going out than coming in?"

"We've wished our way into a dream existence, and sooner or later must fall to earth."

She snuggled tighter in my arms, "I've been waiting for you to say that. Like a letter from home announcing there will be no more checks."

I nibbled on her ear. "You are well read. There must be dozens of young Americans who have been reeled back across the ocean after exhausting themselves in Paris without finding fame and fortune and love."

"And wrote tragic short stories about it at home."

I found her lips for a long kiss. "We are not tragic. What about baby making?"

She wiggled in her usual provocative way. "One day, I am hoping you have already done it, and the next, I am wondering if we are being foolish."

"Let's go home in a week. Grow the baby in our own house. We can always come back."

She lay quietly against me. "Yes. Your artist girlfriend has absorbed as much Paris as she is capable of. At least for now."

She went on. "You know, I haven't come to grips with my dark side. Those paintings you described aren't there yet. The street scenes are fine, but I need a dose of genuine anger to go further."

"If you are pregnant, anger must be banished."

"Yes. A contradiction, isn't it? The kind life is full of. We need to go home."

Days later, as we were packing for the plane, she said, "I've missed my period."