The Rake by William F. Buckley Page B

Justin present. JP was pressing Henri hard, and she sensed that she would have to make a strategic decision tonight. She sensed it and so did he, and when he emerged from his car, in a perfectly tailored herringbone overcoat, she watched him from the window. She thought she could discern a special bounce in his step, but maybe it was the bounce in her own spirits that she was feeling.
    She had chilled champagne for him.
    â€œShow me a picture of Justin,” he said.
    That was easy for Henri to do. She pulled over an album. JP could examine Justin at age three, playing in the Parc Monceau; at age six, entering the Ecole Belles Feuilles; and so on. There were random snapshots with his grandfather and Nadine at the apartment on Avenue Foch, and one with Nadine setting out a cake for his twelfth birthday. The photo at the airport when they were leaving for Colorado was marked in a childish hand, “Juin, 1985. On part pour l’Amérique.”
    â€œHe is a very handsome boy.”
    â€œHe is my love.”
    â€œI too am your love. Isn’t that so?”
    She took his hand, pressed it, and refilled his glass. “I’ll relieve you of Justin,” she said, withdrawing the album.
    â€œHenri, Justin is away until you pick him up for the service. May I take you to bed? Express the love I feel for you?”
    Henri drew breath. She looked down at her champagne glass. “Well,” she said. “Yes, JP, if you…want.”
    â€œI must, Henri, I must.”
    She got up and pointed to the room on her left. “That’s Justin’s room. You can undress there. I’ll wait for you in my room.” She signaled to the right.
    In Boulder in December it is dark outside at six-thirty. It had been dark in the duck blind too that night, but there had been the little candle that showed her the whole of Reuben as he slid into the bedroll beside her.
    She went to her dressing table, loosened two of the bulbs,left the third one lighted, and started to disrobe. Still too much light. She dimmed the little bulb by draping her slip over it.
    Then she opened her bedroom door and left it open. Through the opening she called out, “Viens, Jean-Paul.”
    She covered herself with a single bedsheet, and closed her eyes. He made his way onto the bed, and told her how beautiful she was, and how happy she was making him. “I will try all my life to make you happy, like me.”
    â€œYou sound like Daumier.”
    That brought a salvific laugh, and a deep and earnest kiss.

CHAPTER 21
    Boulder, December 1987
    At the country club there was much festivity, including three live Santa Clauses. The first two hours were given over to pleasing the children. At approximately eight-thirty the kids left, and the adults were seated in the dining room. Used as a ballroom in the club’s richer days, the large hall had now been partitioned into two smaller spaces. Jean-Paul and Henri’s table was far from the incongruous wall, which stood out bare and obvious alongside the crown moldings and rich baseboards of the others. Electric sconces dotted the papered walls, and the floor, once polished crisp wood for dancing, was now carpeted. Two dozen round tables were arranged in what remained of the grand old room; they were draped in white—spare, but elegantly set. The club was no richer than its patrons, who, mostly hailing from the university, were pleased simply to have someplace to relax in a little style.
    Henri wondered whether she herself looked as starry-eyed as Jean-Paul did. She enjoyed probing her memory on the act of love, in which she had just now, with surprising pleasure, engaged. She had read that men, mostly younger men to be sure, exchanged information—when meeting in locker rooms or clubs or around the bar—on whom they had bedded, and how. Shethought such conversations vulgar and certainly intrusive…. But what kind of thing might be said in these exchanges interested