I tossed out tepid coffee. Then, re-making a fresh hot brew, I scanned the boxy kitchenette. The space was rundown with its cracked white tiles and ancient gas plates. The cupboards were poky and loose-hinged and painted a gummy pink. A pale tone; the original must have been insipid.
Cutting myself another slice from the breadstick, I coated it with strawberry jam. My mind strayed back to Ruby on the apartment stairwell—the racy brunette.
Later, I assumed her humping in a penthouse into the wee hours. I laughed as I visualised the naughty miss articulating her sexual wants. I pictured her doing so; in French, Italian and English, whatever words or language gained her anted action. These language skills helped in her work at the hostel. Did the job suit her for intimate reasons? Many young foreign male and female travellers were checking in, and Ruby perhaps checked them out!
Rather than snooping into the brunette's life, tidying up and sightseeing was easier. I relished a walk along the Seine and a tour of Notre Dame Cathedral, where I enjoyed its awe-inspiring scale and famous bell tower.
In the following days, I perceived Ruby felt no obligation to share Paris with me. She was absent from the apartment; I assumed she bustled to lectures at the Sorbonne, somewhere between work and her man. So, the apartment was mine alone on my second and third days. I enjoyed Montmartre, Sacré-Coeur and the Eiffel Tower. Though I wished I could have shared and compared how Ruby experienced these fun and superb locations in the evening.
I chose the Musée Rodin and Musée National Gustave Moreau on my third day. I tried hard to value and connect to Rodin's sculptural genius as I contemplated The Thinker. We all have intense thoughts. Rarely do they encompass every sinew and bone we are. Later, I grappled and mulled over The Burghers of Calais in the museum's garden. The group sculpture made me consider unbearable mental anguish on a monumental scale. These thoughts proved difficult to hold as I moved on to The Kiss. Rodin's famous pashing lovers secured my gaze. Musing on passionate moments past was easier than contemplating endured suffering.
After the museum, I sidled into a stand-up lunch rather than occupying a café table suitable for two or four.
In the afternoon, I enjoyed the Musée National, Gustave Moreau. Moreau's symbolic world engrossed me. His painting, Salome Dancing, intrigued me as the dancer's lace-like tattooed body spurred my loins by the minute. A curiosity concerning Ruby's tattoo as I visited the mysterious realm of, would I ever see it?
My eyes followed Moreau's ink work, starting at Salome's ear. Her head turned, eyes closed, and her sharp nose. Her lower neck bulbed in circles, mirroring the roundness of her balanced breasts. Next, I followed gorgeous lines swirling and twirling around her body. Tattoos danced over her skin.
I thought Salome knew her movements, body, and startling charms. And so did Ruby!
A pair of inked, wide-open eyes on the canvas stare at the viewer below the courtesan's breasts. I focused on the canvas in a lonely brood. These eyes made me picture Ruby's eyelashes fluttering when directed at me, forever a perpetual puppy boy tease.
My focus on the painting started a sensual riot. Animal motifs proliferated as the tattoos descended lower and lower. I conjectured the skin zone, where Ruby's hidden gem lay. Then, like all viewers of Moreau's Salome, I confronted stark female sexuality. The courtesan's sex is full-frontal; her tattooed vulva whorls alive.
My mind's eye outlined a nude Ruby, blurred with an out-of-focus tattoo. I instructed my mind to behave. The brunette, while hot, her interests in men lay beyond me.
After a day of museums, I returned to Ruby's apartment in the late afternoon. This led me past the small café close to the apartment block. I peered in, as you do, in a human-interest way. Ruby slumped unaccompanied, indifferent to the coffee cup before her. The pixie appeared lonely. An emotion never encountered in her as a teenager.
Surely not a break-up?
Her face etched its hallmarks, forlorn, taut withdrawal. She glanced, saw me peep at her, and her face embraced a warm smile. Ruby crooked her finger and invited me inside; a small wooden table separated us. Unsure, I sidled opposite her, my feet tucked under the chair, and I fidgeted, shifting my weight.
Ruby sipped her mocha like a sexually charged potion, sultry, slinky. Suddenly, she passed the cup to me, inviting me to copy her action—an impossible feat. Ruby batted her alluring lashes, a quick flirty flutter. Again, she beckoned for the cup, and this time, as she sipped mocha, she explored pieces of me through her sea-blue eyes. The brunette's eyes scouted, and her tongue over her lips let me know my brown eyes and two days of facial growth passed muster.
No touch, yet it generated an intoxicating, carnally charged moment. Suddenly, the brunette's life framework included me. I surmised a determined Ruby, hell-bent on rebound flirting.
So I entered her; Screw you, Monsieur Paris moment.
The wealthy flame, I supposed, guilt-tripped into drifting home to a wife and children. I could only infer Ruby's response to this new state of affairs.
You'll miss my body. I can screw whenever and whomever.
Then, in an instant, the pace became frenetic. The lightest touch of fingers on the same cup made the sipping a rite of flirting nonsense—the mocha charged by touch. Ruby's face torched with seduction. Our contact, whilst light, trilled raw sexual energy. Craving's impetus left the remnants of mocha to swirl in a cup.
No words were said. No control was required. Our rashest impulses matched. We blended skin to skin without clothes removed. The compelling choice dominated. Ruby and I burst out of the brasserie, rushed along the street, and dashed through the apartment building door. Then up, hand in hand. Up the blurred flights of stairs.
We plunged into each other's bodies as we careened through her apartment door.