Little Birds

The illuminated skyscrapers shine like Christmas trees. I've been invited to the Plaza to meet with some rich friends. The luxury lulls me, but I'm lying in a soft bed, sick with boredom, like a flower in a greenhouse. My feet rest on soft carpets. New York makes me feverish, a great Babylonian city.
I see Lillian. I no longer love her. There are those who dance and those who tangle themselves in knots. I love those who sway and dance. I'll see Mary again. Maybe this time I won't be shy. I remember when she arrived in Saint-Tropez one day and we met by chance in a café. That evening she invited me up to her room.
My lover, Marcel, had to go home that night; he lived far away. I was free. I left him at eleven and went to see Mary. I was wearing a ruffled Spanish calico dress and a flower in my hair, I was tanned from the sun and felt beautiful.
When I arrived, Mary was lying on the bed, rubbing emollient cream on her face, legs, and shoulders because she had been on the beach all day. She was putting cream on her neck and throat. She was covered in it.
This bothered me. I sat at the foot of the bed and we talked. I no longer wanted to kiss her. She was running away from her husband. She had married him only to feel protected. She had never really loved men, but women. At the beginning of their marriage, she had told him a whole series of stories about herself that she shouldn't have told him: how she had been a dancer on Broadway and how she had slept with men when she was broke; how she had also gone to a brothel to earn money; how she had met a man who had fallen in love with her and who had stayed by her side for several years. Her husband had never recovered from these affairs. They had awakened doubts and jealousies in him, and their life together had become intolerable.
The day after we met, she left Saint-Tropez, and I regretted not having paid attention to her. Now I was about to see her again.
In New York, I let my wings of vanity and coquetry fly. Mary is more lovable than ever and seems very interested in me. She's all curves, soft. Her eyes are wide and languid; her cheeks are luminous. Her lips are full; her hair is blond, thick. She's slow, passive, lethargic. We go to the movies together. In the darkness, she takes my hand.
She's been analyzed and discovered what I'd noticed so long ago: she's never had a real orgasm, at thirty-four, after a sex life only an expert accountant could keep track of. I'm discovering her demands. She's always smiling, happy, but inside she feels unreal, remote, detached from experience. She acts as if she were asleep. She tries to react to the ease with which she sleeps with anyone who asks.
Mary says, "It's very difficult to talk about sex; I'm ashamed." She's not ashamed of anything, but she can't bring herself to talk about it. She can talk to me. We sit for hours in scented places with music. She likes places frequented by actors.
There's a current of attraction between us, purely physical. We're always on the verge of sleeping together. But she's never free in the evenings. She'll never let me meet her husband. She's afraid I'll seduce him.
She fascinates me because her sensuality spills out of her. At eight, she had already had a homosexual experience with an older cousin.
We share a love of elegance, perfume, and luxury. She's so lazy, languid, just like a plant. I've never seen a more docile woman. She says she's always waiting to find the man who will excite her. She needs to live in a sexual atmosphere even when she feels nothing. It's her mood. Her favorite quote: "At that time, I was out sleeping with everyone."
If we talk about Paris and someone we know there, she always says: "I don't know him. I've never slept with him." Or: "Oh, yes, he was wonderful in bed."
I'd never heard of her resisting anyone, despite her frigidity! She disappoints everyone, including herself. She's always so wet and open that men think she's constantly on the verge of orgasm. But that's not true. The actress in her appears cheerful and calm, but inside she's falling apart. She drinks, and only sleeps on drugs. She always comes to me eating candied fruit, like a schoolgirl. She looks twenty. Her coat is open, her hat in her hand. Her hair
is loose.
One day she falls onto my bed and takes off her shoes. She looks at her legs and says: "They're too big. They're like Renoir's legs, I was told that once in Paris."
"I like them," I replied, "I love them."
"Do you like my new stockings?" She hikes up her skirt and shows them to me.
She asks me for a whiskey. Then she decides to take a bath. I lend her my kimono. I know she's trying to tempt me. She comes out of the bathroom still damp, her kimono open. Her legs are still slightly apart.

She looks like she's about to have an orgasm that no one can help her: just a little caress would drive her crazy. As she sits on the edge of the bed to put on her stockings, I realize I can't resist any longer. I kneel in front of her and run my hand through her pubic hair. I massage her slowly, slowly, and say, "The little silver fox, the little silver fox. So soft and beautiful. Oh, Mary, I can't believe you don't feel anything in here."
She looks like she's about to feel me, judging by the way her flesh is open like a flower, by the way her legs are stretched out. Her mouth is so wet, so inviting, I imagine the lips of sex are the same. She spreads her legs and lets me watch. I touch her gently, parting her lips to see if they're moist. She reacts when I touch her clit, but I want her to reach the peak of orgasm.
I kiss her clit, still damp from the bath, her pubic hair, still wet like seaweed. Her sex tastes like a seashell, a wonderful, fresh, salty seashell. Oh, Mary! My fingers work faster, she falls backward onto the bed, offering me her entire sex, open and wet, like a camellia, like rose petals, like velvet, like satin. It's pink and fresh, as if no one had ever touched it. It's like a little girl's sex.
Her legs stick out from the bed. Her sex is open. I can bite it, kiss it, slip my tongue inside. She doesn't move. Her little clit hardens like a nipple. My head between her legs is lost in a delicious vice of soft, salty flesh.
My hands travel to her heavy breasts, caressing them. She begins to moan. Now her hands descend and join mine in caressing her sex. She likes to be touched on the lips of her pussy, just below her clit. We touch them together. That's where I'd like to push a penis and move it until she screams with pleasure. I put my tongue into her opening and push it as deep as I can. I take her ass between my two hands, like a watermelon, and push it up. As my tongue plays on the lips of her pussy, my fingers press the flesh of her ass, exploring its texture, its curves, and my index finger feels the small opening of her anus and gently pushes it in.
Suddenly, Mary lights up, as if I'd inserted an electrical contact. She moves as if to suck my finger. I push it deeper, moving my tongue inside her sex. She begins to moan, to writhe.
As she pushes down, she feels the strokes of my finger, rising to the strokes of my tongue. Every movement makes her feel my accelerated rhythm, until she has a long spasm and begins to moan like a pigeon. With my finger, I feel the throb of pleasure, once, twice, three times, pulsing with ecstasy.
She collapses onto the bed, panting. "Oh, Mandra, what have you done to me, what have you done to me!" She kisses me, drinking the salty mixture from my mouth. Her breasts press against mine as she holds me, repeating, "Oh, Mandra, what have you done to me..."