4:07 p.m....2003-01-18
First of Lent: La ciel bleu.
I lost Bahorel in the darkness not long into the first of Lent, not that I minded too much. The awkwardness of parting-- truly parting-- face to face was not something I wanted particularly to deal with.
Neither, in fact, did I want to go home just then. Or, not /I/ rather. Truth be told, it was Dominique, more then anything, I felt loath to leave behind, and she was entirely a denizen of the evening and the streets. Therefore, it seemed logical to me, amid the quiet shapes drifting towards their homes and the coming fast, to seek out Grantaire-or-Blanchette. Or, more directly, their pretty friend, who I had some idea of employing in her purely professional capacity.
Of course, you may think it base of me, or at the least unappreciative. But I am a young man, after all, and my appetite for the evening had merely been stoked, not stated. And while aware of dear Eliese's natural proclivities, given her profession I felt sure she'd make an aesthetic exception for a friend in need. Particularly one who was inclined to buy breakfast. Depending, of course, on exactly how devout a Catholic the girl was, of course.
Nevertheless, in all my disheveled finery, I slipped summarily into Eliese's home and place of employment, a little brothel in the Rue D'esperisons called La Ciel Bleu. The door was not locked, but the interior was somewhat dimmer than usual. A couple of the girls, coming home from their own schedules, grinned at me as I entered. One told me that the house was closed for Lent, but her sister winked and said,
"She just wants a place to bunk up, love. Come on in." She smiled at me, my costume not fooling her or her friend in the slightest. The permission made me feel slightly guilty for my intention, but between us Grantaire and I had paid to free Eliese's time well into Wednesday.
The two Ladies of the Evening went up the stairs, laughing together over the creaking wood, and leaving me in the common room. This place was empty, save a frothy figure at the far table, shaped like a woman but drinking like a man. Closer examination proved her to be, as I had I confess suspected, Grantaire. And/or Blanchette, if you like.
"Bonsoir." I addressed them, in my affected alto. They looked up at me, and I marveled at the enduring perfection of their regal appearance. It occurred to me, by the slight curl of that ice queen's immaculately painted lip, that I must look a fright. Lip color smeared to god knows where, eye-makeup and rouge rubbed off by dear Gervais's stubble... well, not to dither too long in thinking of that.
"Bonsoir, Dominique." a two-sided smile flashed back at me, Arture's wavering drunkenness spliced with Blanchette's steadfast hauteur.
"Bonsoir. Or Good-Morning, rather. And how dost thou, my dear, in this dark dawn?"
"Well enough," I sighed, slumping beside them. I must confess mixed emotions of camaraderie and envy both. How on earth had they managed to keep their makeup so... damned pristine? The faint tinge of Grantaireian wistfulness in Blanchette's narrowed eyes, perhaps, enlightened me. It had been a lonely evening for the two of them, poor dears. Which reminded me. "And, ah, where be our charming young gentleman, the now? Surely the cad hasn't abandoned you, sweet sister?"
Amused, I think, at my play acting, they favored me with a small smile.
"Ha! Never. I am afraid, Cherie, I wore the poor gentleman out. He is resting upstairs the now."
"Ah, but in what company?" I muttered, allowing my very masculine predisposition to show.
"Prince Oneiros, Lord Morpheus-- Sleep and Dreams." They murmured back, kindly but firmly. "It has been a long evening."
"Has it?" Ha! An eyeblink, if that, I thought, though I did not say so. "Where did you go, in the midst of it all?"
"Hither and yon. Avalon, at last." It was Grantaire now who smiled, sheepishly, over his glass still tinged with green. The bottle, I saw, sat precociously half full, and the bowl open before them held inviting lumps of sugar. "I have been teaching Blanchette about Absinthe. In return, you know. Would you care to join us?"
"Why not?" I smiled, and swiped the little vixen's spoon and glass. I hadn't managed so much as a sip of anything more intoxicating than... well, I hadn't had any thing alcoholic, anyway. I was more than ready to remedy this, and quickly. Companionable silence ensued for some moments while the liquid louched, and Dominique and I imbibed.
The door opened, and another of Elise's co-workers sidled through the door, tossed us a knowing wink, and trouped up the stairs. I imagine she took us for 'sisters' of hers, so to speak, but I couldn't be too terribly bothered over that, to-night. More immediately arresting was the face of my friend, oscillating between haughtily bemused and some sheepish, guilty sadness. I gazed curiously at his beautiful-woman/Ugly-boy's face, and tried to make mine look sympathetic, like a true sister, as it were.
"What troubles you, ma cherie? Don't let's be sad! It has been a magnificent festival."
"Has it? I hadn't noticed. Too many loud noises and bright colors."
Grantaire smiled, but it didn't reach Blanchette's eyes. I drank some more, and wondered at my friend's uncharacteristic melancholy-- whether it was something anomalous of Grantaire's or natural to Blanchette. But Grantaire, far more naturally, had not finished speaking.
"Don't you find it curious, friend femme, that with or without the domino, no one questions Dominique? Nor Blanchette. I found this to be true all evening, paper masks or plain, painted faces, no one knows who any one else is, and sees only what we give them to see. A curse upon all eyes! They ought to be put out at a baby's birth, though why stop there? but the blindness that allows holy wedlock and the birthing of babes has nothing to do with me. Fancy that! I drink myself blind and see far too clearly. What good have eyes ever done anyone? Bossuet can see without glasses, and never a tile misses his head, domed as the Xanadu of Kublai Khan; Combeferre cannot see without them and he exists in a mild state of unruffled bliss. Medusa had eyes that molded men into marble statues, and marble, as you and I both know, is unseeing stone. Lucky statues! Unhappy Galatea, marred by rough, brutish hands egotistical enough to conjure, for their slavish devotions sluttish goddesses; a celestial doxy bearing the curse of sight. No, it is better to stay stone, and live forever behind velvet ropes in some dusty museum. Venus de Milo loses two arms, and is she perturbed? Not a jot of it. I drink-- you drink too, sweet friend-- to blind all eyes, to the durability of stone, and the funny joke of the mask."
And they drank, and so did we. I do not know at what point I noticed, but watching Blanchette's poise beneath Grantaire's loquacious cynicism, it seemed to me a posture modeled after that of Enjolras, a little-- to follow Grand-R's analogy, as if the two were statues carved by the same sculptor, the female in the style of the male, not unlike Eve after Adam by the hand of our creator. Well, to present an attitude of haughty disdain and lofty bearing, there be far worse models than our mutual acquaintance. Of course, Enjolras hadn't noticed, I knew. He'd been far too busy being... aghast, is all I can say, at my own costume. But my friend knows me too well to be over surprised at my antics. How could he have seen Grantaire under all of that Blanchette? Why, I hardly knew him, thus!
A very good point, it suddenly occurred to me, and I looked again more closely at my friend and sister.
"My dear, dear friend. I gather it was not myself, nor Bahorel, nor the main of our ready acquaintances you wished to impress tonight. It isn't your fault he didn't see-- your costume is far better than mine. And besides, when have you ever known Enjolras to see a woman?" I grinned at Grantaire, and won a small reciprocal grin for my efforts.
"Blindness of stone." He raised his glass, and let his feminine Doppelganger drink. Perhaps it was this liquid intoxication on top of my many-layered drunkenness tonight, but I found myself admiring more thoroughly the darkly beautiful damsel before me. Her throat seemed wonderfully smooth and pale as she had thrown it back to drink, dark curls tumbling most fetchingly to her gauze-draped shoulders. My own shoulders felt suddenly cold, and I realized that I must have lost (among other things) my wings somewhere between dancing and my earlier adventure in the alleyway. Which thought made my cheeks heat, a bit in memory. I may have spent the rest of the night in such absent reverie-- until, of course, I fell face down drunk on the table-- had not my friend spoke, in a voice soft as heartbreak,
"Blessed, misbegotten blindness, I tell you. I am glad that no-one noticed." Then Blanchette drew herself up, masterful effort defeating drunkenness, "I care not."
"Oh, my poor, dear sister." I took her hands in mine, my own eyes, quite suddenly, having been opened. Grantaire had never made any secret of his nature to me, but I must confess that I, until now, had not noticed at all. Even when he introduced me to his Dear Friend, the pute lesbienne, even when he suggested this wild escapade. I think, to tell the truth, it was Bahorel who provided the final clue to the puzzle. Grantaire looked frightened a moment, but saw in me only deepest sympathy, and relaxed into his more confident, feminine persona. But they still said nothing, and I continued.
"How should I judge you? Rather, I curse myself for not realizing sooner. Except that our mutual friend is notoriously oblivious to matters of the heart, I should at this moment revile him for his blindness, much as I do myself when I am-- inadvertently, I assure you-- responsible for the melancholy of a woman. There is no greater crime, than to make a woman sad!"
Never mind, at this point in the evening, that Grantaire was not normally a woman. His gentleness, his loving amiability, in spite of his rather biting-- but harmless!-- cynicism should have more than won him heartfelt sympathy from any of our number. How cruel, Enjolras! As much haughty reproach as that lordly cur had visited upon our hapless drunkard, he should have paid a touch more attention. Really, he made Grantaire his whipping boy of sorts, and-- brave soul!-- Grantaire not only took it, he seemed to welcome it, as one might welcome caresses.
Even now, as my outrage grew, my friend looked no more upset than a wistful kind of melancholy, touched by his-- her-- affected nobility. Really, I considered, had Enjolras dark hair, Blanchette could have been a sister. Such a pity that our friend had none... at that moment, I battled a wicked little daemon of deep, shamefaced guilt for the thought that crossed my mind. Really! I wished to help my slighted friend, not salt his wounds with licentious, absinthe-aided, selfish fantasies. I squeezed his hands more resolutely, and Blanchette smiled at me.
"We thank you, dear Courfeyrac, for your kindness."
Kindness nothing! They were yet in pain. I made a small pout.
"Dear Blanchette, I am yet Dominique. It is after midnight, but there are yet hours till dawn."
Her face formed a little 'o' of query, and I smiled at them, resolution tinged with wickedness. I saw Grantaire struggle with alarm to return to the surface, but Blanchette shoved him back, blinking demurely at me.
Here, Dominique remained to follow my lead, she having the will and I the knowledge, at least, of feminine pleasures. Of course, she needed no guidance from me to know how to kiss Blanche's sweet, red mouth, cold with loneliness and tasting of anise and dissolved sugar. Nor to march those kisses resolutely down the smooth swan's-neck we'd so admired earlier. Blanchette did not object to these convent sister's attentions, nor my more baldly masculine gathering of her skirts about her waist.
No man that I know with any heat in his blood can deny curiosity about the things two women may do to each other in the darkness, say, in a brothel or a private school, with either an overabundance or dearth of men to spend their passion upon. I am told that both circumstances are fuel to that strange, twilight affliction popularly called Sapphism. My own speculations on the subject plotted my course now. With no great ease, being hindered by bench, liquor, and far too much frothy skirt, I descended to my knees and, swift as you please, popped my head beneath Blanchette's petticoats. A blessedly small amount of fumbling revealed their secrets to me, and while these were not the fragrant jungles I must confess familiarity with in this particular office, Dominique knew what to do with them. I felt a very strange detachment as she took their undeniable manhood into her mouth, very like sitting in the back of a fiacre, but watching the driver with fascination. I had not felt this unreality while full of Bahorel, and I put it down to the kiss of the Green Fairy, and forgot about it.
Meanwhile, Blanchette produced those sounds that always delight me, when inspired by feminine ecstasy.
Emboldened by this, I applied my hands in the vicinity, much as Bahorel had earlier that evening, and was rewarded by the most enticing movements on the part of my pretty-- no, not conquest. I was, after all, only aiding a dear friend in dire-- quite dire, as evidenced by the growing depth of her sighs and exclamations and the mounting tension in her body-- need. Her slender hands dipped into my coiffeur, smoothed onto my shoulders, and gripped there, fierce red nails clenching and unclenching in passion. Of course, I could not from this vantage see Blanche's face, but I was sure that Grantaire was at least as absent from her as I from Dominique.
Nevertheless, the penultimate moment for Blanchette came with a swiftness that, in all my experience, I decided was most un-feminine. Nor, although I had some theoretical preparation for it, was I ready for the job of taking the consequences of that passion, filling my mouth as they were fast as I could breathe and somewhat faster than poor Dominique could swallow. I had not been aware of precisely how aroused I had become in the interim, although the passion of others had often proved a powerful aphrodisiac to me. So I was shortly forced to release their manhood entirely, so that I might necessarily gasp as I spent, myself, paying little enough attention to where. I do recall smooth, dear hands stroking my head, as we both gasped our last in that chilly little parlor. The darling girl permitted me a minute or two to catch my breath, cushioned on a smooth, recently-shaved thigh before I re-emerged into the dubious light.
If before I had been disheveled and Blanchette pristine, I was now a perfect wreck, kneeling before an ivory carving of the Madonna. The only evidence of her exertions being a tiny, satisfied smile on her lips and, to be perfectly crass, upon the neckline of my gown. Benevolently, she extended a hand to lift me from the floor, and even condescended to place a grateful kiss upon my much abused mouth.
"Merci," she said, "for the both of us. Come, there will be an empty room for us to sleep in, sweet sister."
I let her let me through velvet-papered halls into a tiny, blue painted but yellow-stained room with possibly the most comfortable bed I'd ever descended upon in my weak life. We lay there, sleeping sisters in arms till' well past dawn.
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