The Other Side of Midnight

"Go on," Noelle said.

Barbet shrugged. "There's a list of girls he is sleeping with. I didn't know whether you wanted--"

"I told you--everything."

There was a strange note in her voice that baffled him. There was something not quite normal here, something that did not ring true. Christian Barbet was a third-rate investigator handling third-rate clients, but because of that he had developed a feral instinct for truth, a nose for smelling out facts. The beautiful girl standing in his office disturbed him. At first Barbet had thought she might be trying to involve him in some kind of espionage. Then he decided that she was a deserted wife seeking evidence against her husband. He had been wrong about that, he admitted, and now he was at a loss to figure out what his client wanted or why. He handed Noelle the list of Larry Douglas' girl friends and watched her face as she read it. She might have been reading a laundry list.

She finished and looked up. Christian Barbet was totally unprepared for her next words. "I'm very pleased," Noelle said.

He looked at her and blinked rapidly.

"Please call me when you have something more to report."

Long after Noelle Page had gone, Barbet sat in his office staring out the window, trying to puzzle out what his client was really after.

The theaters of Paris were beginning to boom again. The Germans attended to celebrate the glory of their victories and to show off the beautiful Frenchwomen they wore on their arms like trophies. The French attended to forget for a few hours that they were an unhappy, defeated people.

Noelle had attended the theater in Marseille a few times, but she had seen sleazy amateur plays acted out by fourth-rate performers for indifferent audiences. The theater in Paris was something else again. It was alive and sparkling and filled with the wit and grace of Moliere, Racine and Colette. The incomparable Sacha Guitry had opened his theater and Noelle went to see him perform. She attended a revival of Buchner's La Morte de Danton and a play called Asmodee by a promising new young writer named Francois Mauriac. She went to the Comedie Francaise to see Pirandello's Chacun La Verite and Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. Noelle always went alone, oblivious of the admiring stares of those around her, completely lost in the drama taking place on the stage. Something in the magic that went on behind the footlights struck a responsive chord in her. She was playing a part just like the actors on stage, pretending to be something that she wasn't, hiding behind a mask.

One play in particular, Huis Clos by Jean Paul Sartre, affected her deeply. It starred Philippe Sorel, one of the idols of Europe. Sorel was ugly, short and beefy, with a broken nose and the face of a boxer. But the moment he spoke, a magic took place. He was transformed into a sensitive handsome man. It's like the story of the Prince and the Frog, Noelle thought, watching him perform. Only he is both. She went back to watch him again and again, sitting in the front row studying his performance, trying to learn the secret of his magnetism.

One evening during intermission an usher handed Noelle a note. It read, "I have seen you in the audience night after night. Please come backstage this evening and let me meet you. P.S." Noelle read it over, savoring it. Not because she gave a damn about Philippe Sorel, but because she knew that this was the beginning she had been looking for.

She went backstage after the performance. An old man at the stage door ushered her into Sorel's dressing room. He was seated before a makeup mirror, wearing only shorts, wiping off his makeup. He studied Noelle in the mirror. "It's unbelievable," he said finally. "You're even more beautiful up close."

"Thank you, Monsieur Sorel."

"Where are you from?"

"Marseille."

Sorel swung around to look at her more closely. His eyes moved to her feet and slowly worked their way up to the top of her head, missing nothing. Noelle stood there under his scrutiny, not moving. "Looking for a job?" he asked.

"No."

"I never pay for it," Sorel said. "All you'll get from me is a pass to my play. If you want money, fuck a banker."

Noelle stood there quietly watching him. Finally Sorel said, "What are you looking for?"

"I think I'm looking for you."

They had supper and afterward went back to Sorel's apartment in the beautiful rue Maurice-Barres, overlooking the corner where it became the Bois de Boulogne. Philippe Sorel was a skillful lover, surprisingly considerate and unselfish. Sorel had expected nothing from Noelle but her beauty, and he was astonished by her versatility in bed.

"Christ!" he said. "You're fantastic. Where did you learn all that?"

Noelle thought about it a moment. It was really not a question of learning. It was a matter of feeling. To her a man's body was an instrument to be played on, to explore to its innermost depths, finding the responsive chords and building upon them, using her own body to help create exquisite harmonies.

"I was born with it," she said simply.

Her fingertips began to lightly play around his lips, quick little butterfly touches, and then moved down to his chest and stomach. She saw him starting to grow hard and erect again. She arose and went into the bathroom and returned a moment later and slid his hard penis into her mouth. Her mouth was hot, filled with warm water.

"Oh, Christ," he said.

They spent the entire night making love, and in the morning, Sorel invited Noelle to move in with him.

Noelle lived with Philippe Sorel for six months. She was neither happy nor unhappy. She knew that her being there made Sorel ecstatically happy, but this did not matter in the slightest to Noelle. She regarded herself as simply a student, determined to learn something new every day. He was a school that she was attending, a small part in her large plan. To Noelle there was nothing personal in their relationship, for she gave nothing of herself. She had made that mistake twice, and she would never make it again. There was ro

om for only one man in Noelle's thoughts and that was Larry Douglas. Noelle would pass the place des Victoires or a park or restaurant where Larry had taken her, and she would feel the hatred well up within her, choking her, so it became difficult to breathe, and there was something else mixed in with the hatred, something Noelle could not put a name to.