Trick or Treat? by Ray Connolly

Author:Ray Connolly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2011-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

Kathy hardly remembered how she got home. Somehow it was a headlong dash away from that place, away from the half smile of amusement and then anger that had grotesquely disfigured Ille’s features, away from that hideously sweet smell of sweat and perfume that had ghosted the body of the black girl. As she ran, tripping, down Boulevard Raspail, a couple of boys made loud clicking noises as she passed Alliance Française, and she recognized a cheap and obscene American wisecrack from a group of summer students. And that too made her feel dirty. Reaching Rue de Dragon she began to feel in her pocket for her keys. And then she realized: Ille had the keys tonight. She was locked out. How long Ille might be she couldn’t imagine. Perhaps she would stay with the blonde. And when she did come how would she face her anyway? Standing, leaning and crying against the side of the doorway she began to vomit. Her mind was in a turmoil of confusion; her forehead swam with perspiration and her body shivered uncontrollably. Wiping her mouth on a handkerchief she looked around to see if anyone had seen her. What had begun as a joke had ended in a nightmarish spectacle. She felt reviled by herself: and even by Ille, too. What had happened to her she couldn’t begin to understand. Unconsciously her hand went out to the bell. Crying and sobbing through half-closed eyes she was blind to everything around her apart from her own self-disgust.

Suddenly the heavy glass doors swung open: ‘Vous êtes seule?’ Madame Diem was watching her from the slightly ajar door.

Kathy jumped with surprise: it was two in the morning, yet Madame Diem was still fully dressed. Kathy nodded.

‘I’m locked out,’ she gulped. ‘You have another key?’ She was frightened by the concierge. Yet she needed her.

As if she understood that some great emotional drama had taken place to which she was not to be privy, Madame Diem nodded and leading Kathy down the entrance passageway of the apartment house, invited her to enter her own apartment. An unknown terror gripped Kathy at the entrance and stammering for words she replied that she would wait by the door. Everything about Madame Diem and Ille and La Belle Mort disgusted her. There was so much of which she appeared to be unaware. Ille left so many questions unanswered. The concierge shrugged her shoulders coldly at Kathy’s refusal to enter her apartment and withdrawing inside for a moment returned with a set of keys. For a moment Kathy imagined she could smell the arid aroma of burning opium from inside the apartment.

‘Vous devriez allez bien maintenant,’ sniffed the concierge and without a further word closed the door in Kathy’s face.

Fighting back tears of loneliness and isolation Kathy climbed wearily up the stairs, occasionally taking backward glances to be sure that she wasn’t being followed in the dark shadows. The automatic lights had a nasty habit of going off before she had time to get from floor to floor.

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