Sophie
Penthouse
I’m setting up the apartment for drinks. The last Sunday of every month, Jacques and I host everyone in our penthouse apartment. We open some of the finest vintages from the store in the cellar. But this evening will be different. We have a great deal to discuss.
I pour the wine into its decanter, arrange the glasses. We could afford staff to do this. But Jacques never wanted strangers in this apartment capable of nosing around through his private affairs. It has suited me well enough. Though I suppose if we did have staff I might have been less alone here, over the years. As I place the decanter on the low table in the sitting area, I can see him there in the armchair opposite me: Benjamin Daniels, exactly as he sat nearly three months ago. One leg crossed over the knee at the ankle. A glass of wine dangling from one hand. So at ease in the space.
I watched him. Saw him sizing the place up, the wealth of it. Or perhaps trying to find a flaw in the furnishings I had chosen as carefully as the clothes I wear: the mid-century Florence Knoll armchair, the Ghom silk rug beneath his feet. To signify class, good taste, the kind of breeding that cannot be bought.
He turned and caught me watching. Grinned. That smile of his: a fox entering the hen coop. I smiled back, coolly. I would not be wrong-footed. I would be the perfect hostess.
He asked Jacques about his collection of antique rifles.
“I’ll show you.” Jacques lifted one down—a rare honor. “Feel that bayonet? You could run a man straight through with it.”
Ben said all the right things. Noticed the condition, the detailing on the brass. My husband: a man not easily charmed. But he was. I could see it.
“What do you do, Ben?” he asked, pouring him a glass. A hot, late summer night: white would have been better. But Jacques wanted to show off the vintage.
“I’m a writer,” Ben said.
“He’s a journalist,” Nick said, at the same time.
I watched Jacques’ face closely. “What sort of journalist?” He asked it so lightly.
Ben shrugged. “Mainly restaurant reviews, new exhibitions, that sort of thing.”
“Ah,” Jacques said. He sat back in his chair. King of all he surveyed. “Well, I’m happy to suggest some restaurants for you to review.”
Ben smiled: that easy, charismatic smile. “That would be very helpful. Thank you.”
“I like you, Ben,” Jacques told him, pointing. “You remind me a little of myself at your age. Fire in the belly. Hunger. I had it too, that drive. It’s more than can be said for some young men, these days.”
Antoine and his wife Dominique arrived then, from the first-floor apartment. Antoine’s shirt was missing a button: it gaped open, the soft flesh pushing through. Dominique, however, had made what could be described as an effort. She wore a dress made of a knit so fine that it clung to every ripe curve of her body. Mon Dieu, you could see her nipples. There was something Bardot-like about her: the sullen moue of her mouth, those dark, bovine eyes. I found myself thinking all that ripeness would fade, run to fat （just look at Bardot, poor cow）， anathema to so many French men. Fat in this country is seen as a sign of weakness, even of stupidity. The thought gave me a nasty sort of pleasure.
I watched her look at Ben. Look up and down and all over him. I suppose she thought she was subtle; to me she resembled a cheap whore, touting for a fare. I saw him gaze back. Two attractive people noticing one another. That frisson. She turned back to Antoine. I watched her mouth curve into a smile while she talked to him. But the smile was not for her husband. It was for Ben. A carefully calculated display.
Antoine was drinking too much. He drained his glass and held it out for a refill. His breath, even from a couple of feet away, smelled sour. He was embarrassing himself.
“Does anyone smoke?” Ben asked. “I’m going to go for a cigarette. Terrible habit, I know. I wondered if I might use the roof terrace?”
“It’s that way,” I told him. “Past the bookcase there and to the left, out of the doorway: you’ll see the steps.”
“Thanks.” He smiled at me, that charming smile.
I waited for the sensor lights to come on, which would be the sign that he had found his way to the roof terrace. They did not. It should have only taken him a minute or so to climb the steps.
As the others talked I got up to investigate. There was no sign of him out on the terrace, or in the other half of the room beyond the bookcase. I had that cold, creeping feeling again. The sense that a fox had entered the henhouse. I walked along the shadowed corridor that leads to the other rooms in the apartment.