The Casanova Embrace Read Online Free Page A

lavishly and it was at one of
their soirees that she had met Claude, a rising young diplomat with the foreign
office in Paris. Even then he was intense, totally immersed in political
matters, but in those days she had been attracted by that and, of course, he
had, by every standard of class and position, the impeccable credentials for a
perfect match.
    They had been married in the Cathedral of Notre Dame and
spent their honeymoon in Marrakesh. Quickly, she rationalized the trauma of her
sexual indifference. Her mother had hinted of it. Satisfy your man, she had
confided. What more was there? Actually, she enjoyed being the wife of a
diplomat, enjoyed living in foreign places, enjoyed her children. She enjoyed a
happy marriage, she told herself. Claude was not indifferent and she sensed he
was faithful and honorable.
    If there were secrets they were those special ones that
mates normally kept from each other, glossed over, sometimes forgotten, rarely
violated. Sensible people forgave them silently. Nor had she ever dared confess
them to the priests when she was still religious. She could not tell him, for
example, that her cousin Michel, thick-witted and dull, was the first male she
had seen in full sexual excitement. To this day, Michel might have felt that he
had seduced her, but she knew that it had been she who had been the aggressor,
her curiosity that had gotten him into that state. She had even let him put it
part way into her and had watched; his eyes were closed when he had his climax
and she was fascinated by the sight. Nor would she dare to tell him about the
other young men at school whom she had learned to satisfy by masturbation and
sometimes orally. In those days, the guilt had been deep, although the pleasure
to herself illusive. Actually, her hymen had been ruptured by Pierre Damon, an intern
who worked for her father, in the back seat of his car, but it had--like all
the other experiences--been relegated to secrecy. Looking back, as she
sometimes did, she concluded it was nothing, hardly worth the expense of
energy. Actually, as time passed, the secret memories took on an unreality,
events that had never really happened, and she hardly thought about them, going
for years without consciously remembering.
    Now she was remembering every detail and it annoyed her.
This is not being me, she told herself. But what, after all, was "being
me." Is this all, she wondered, reviewing her life with Claude and her
children. And yet, it seemed so pedestrian a position to be in, a stereotype of
the yearning, dissatisfied women in those American magazines geared to attract
readers from those searching for "fulfillment." Am I like them? she
wondered. A Frenchwoman was supposed to be different. She refused to let
herself be depressed by such thoughts. Then why was she longing for another
glimpse of Eduardo Palmero, and why was she experiencing physical signs of such
longing? She would nervously survey the crowd at social events, at
supermarkets, at restaurants. And when she walked the streets her eyes were
always fastened on the people on both sides of the street, looking for him. She
had even looked up his name in the telephone books of the District of Columbia,
Virginia and Maryland. It was not listed.
    But she did enjoy fantasizing about him, picturing him with
his arms around her. Kissing her face. There was something terribly exotic
about her imagining that he was kissing her face, little pecks at her eyelids,
her nose, her cheeks, her ears, then a long lingering kiss on her lips.
Occasionally, she had caught herself staring into her mirror, mouth open, the image
in front of her blurred, feeling wonderful.
    "You seem so preoccupied, darling," Claude said
to her one evening when they were having dinner at home--a rare occasion. She
felt it odd that he had noticed. It must really be showing, she thought,
determined to be more guarded.
    "Not really," she said, feeling her sudden need
for secrecy. "Perhaps I am coming down