But the miracle was just beginning for Lanchon. After he had spent himself making
love to Noelle for the second time, she spoke and said, “Lie still.” She began to
experiment on him with her tongue and her mouth and her hands, trying new things,
finding the soft, sensitive areas of his body and working on them until Lanchon cried
aloud with pleasure. It was like pressing a series of buttons. When Noelle did this, he
moaned and when she did this, he writhed in ecstasy. It was so easy. This was her school,
this was her education. This was the beginning of power.
They spent three days there and never once went to Le Pyramide, and during those
days and nights, Lanchon taught her the little that he knew about sex, and Noelle
discovered a great deal more.
When they drove back to Marseille, Lanchon was the happiest man in all France. In
the past he had had quick affairs with shopgirls in a cabinet particuliers, a restaurant that
had a private dining room with a couch; he had haggled with prostitutes, been niggardly
with presents for his mistresses, and notoriously penurious with his wife and children.
Now he found himself saying magnanimously, “I’m going to set you up in an apartment,
Noelle. Can you cook?”
“Yes,” Noelle replied.
“Good. I will come for lunch every day and we will make love. And two or three
nights a week, I will come for dinner.” He put his hand on her knee and patted it. “How
does that sound?”
“It sounds wonderful,” Noelle said.
“I will even give you an allowance. Not a large one,” he added quickly, “but enough
so you can go out and buy pretty things from time to time. All I ask is that you see no one
but me. You belong to me now.”
“As you wish, Auguste,” she said.
Lanchon sighed contentedly, and when he spoke, his voice was soft. “I’ve never felt
this way about anyone before. And do you know why?”
“No, Auguste.”
“Because you make me feel young. You and I are going to have a wonderful life
together.”
They reached Marseille late that evening, driving in silence, Lanchon with his
dreams, Noelle with hers.
“I will see you in the shop tomorrow at nine o’clock,” Lanchon said. He thought it
over. “If you are tired in the morning, sleep a little longer. Come in at nine-thirty.”
“Thank you, Auguste.”
He pulled out a fistful of francs and held them out.
“Here. Tomorrow afternoon you will look for an apartment. This will be a deposit to
hold it until I can see it.”