“I don’t think so. If they were smart you couldn’t get money out of them, and we wouldn’t be sitting here. If they weren’t dumbbells could any business man make a living? But as I was saying, the French Bourse gamblers will read any tip, good or bad, and any sheet, no matter how suspect and despite any rumors concerning it, because of a third fact … . the incredible venality of the parliamentarians and the judiciary … . they always assume that these little sheets can get information from high sources through sheer blackmail. And even if they are pool papers, the little speculator thinks he might as well lie in the pool. He reasons that the minister giving information may or may not be telling the truth … in either case the rumor will lead to a change in the market, and he may as well get in at the beginning and out again before the ripple dies out … .
the same with a ramp. It may be a canard, they think, but someone owns it and someone will pluck it … I’m smart enough to get some too. It’s a republican sentiment, you see…
Carl nods wisely. You’d think that he was an old market juggler … if you mentioned American Can to him he’d look around for the girl from the States … .
“The fourth point of my plan,” goes on Severin, “is based on the fact that the French press hates to pay for cables. They’ll print bad news, a week old … .
they’ll crib, steal, invent, anything to get out of paying cable service.”
“And Havas?” Sam asks.
“I’d pay Havas part of the boodle, that goes without saying. The point is I’d have New York backing from Wall Street pool workers.”
“Well, you’d need just one paper. You could buy some cheesy, bankrupt sheet, spread the rumor through the red light and Bourse cafes that the backer was Wall Street, and make a rip-roaring success overnight. You’ve only to start the fashion … the other papers will pick up your information and advertise it for you.”
“No. To sell the shares en masse we’ve got to have all the financial papers behind us. This thing has to be good, good enough to catch all the suckers, to draw all the good coins out of the famous country wool stockings, out of old maids’ cotton bosoms, out of funds held in trust by family lawyers. I don’t want only the smart alecs who take a flyer, the beachcombers who wait for a turn in the tide, the wise guy who cut a loss and cut a profit … . I want investment money… .”
In other words Severin’s idea is to pose as a private cable service while buying the cable service from one of the companies. Another of his ideas is that his gang will call themselves a Committee of Economic Survey or some shit like that, pack the advisory board with big names.
Carl is frowning at his cigar to keep from grinning. His face lights up at the mere thought of money, and this thing has him almost hysterical. Perhaps he expects Backer to rush immediately to the bank while Severin goes off to rent the offices, because he’s disappointed when the conference breaks up with nothing definite having been done.
Sam and Severin are to meet again, Severin shares a taxi with us as far as the Capucines. We drop Carl off a few blocks farther on. Then Sam and I are on our way to Alexandra’s… … . Snuggles is supposed to be there and it makes a good opportunity for Sam to meet Alexandra. He’s still worried about Tania.
“Do you think that there’s any chance that she might have become frightened and said something to her mother?” he asks again. “I don’t want to walk into any trouble, you know. You’ve known her mother a long time, haven’t you? Is she all right?”
I spend the rest of the ride in reassuring him, but he’s nervous when we stop at Alexandra’s. If there’s any trouble, he says, he’s going to leave everything to me… …
Snuggles isn’t there, and neither is Tania. They’ve already gone back to Backer’s hotel, and they’re probably out for the evening by now. Alexandra asks us to come in… . .
Sam beams at first sight of Alexandra. He hadn’t expected her to be such a good-looking cunt. He pouts up and begins to show off his feathers like a pigeon, and his efforts aren’t exactly wasted. Alexandra warms up to him right away.
“Say, she’s wonderful,” Sam exclaims as soon as we’re alone. “You never told me she was like this. She likes me, don’t you think? And she knows what it is about her that I like … watch how she shows it off! Tell me, what kind of a woman is she really? Is there a chance of going to bed with her?”
It’s no use for me to stay around in an atmosphere like that, but I want to be sure of how things stand before I leave Backer alone with her. After a lot of jockeying around I manage to get a few minutes alone with Alexandra. We stand in the hallway and she lets me feel her up … . even lets me take John Thursday out and rub his nose between her legs. But she doesn’t want me to put my cock all the way into her cunt.
“I wouldn’t want you to take it out again for a long time,” she says, pushing me away and putting my prick farther down on her thighs, where the juice is wetting her. “And I can’t be rude to my other company … . we’d better go back now.”
“He wouldn’t mind if you were rude to him for a while if you were rude to me too, later,” I tell her. “He wants to screw you.”
Oh what have I been up to now? Yes, what have I been telling the charming Mr. Backer about her? Does he know that I lived with her? And do I perhaps think now that I’m free to bring my friends and offer her to them … . as though she were my wife, perhaps? So I have to explain that Backer knows nothing at all about her except that she is Tania’s mother, and that all he knows about her is what he can see … . which is plenty to make a man want to fuck her.
Alexandra stands there and we play with each other while she thinks this over… Does Mr. Backer have a wife as well as his pretty daughter? Oh yes, she’s heard the girl mention her mother. Then, is his wife pretty, are men attracted to her? And lastly … how well do I know his wife?
I answer all but the last question … Alexandra pretends not to notice the omission … She’s very … . filled with yearnings, she tells me. Yes, she’d like a fucking tonight, and if I had come alone we should have had a wonderful evening. But since I have my friend with me it will have to be abandoned, for she does certainly not intend that the two of us should screw her. And something else she will tell me … if my friend had come alone … perhaps she would have allowed him to stay. Either one of us, do I see? Yes, that’s how badly she wants to go to bed with a man, to get a cock into her con… . But not two … no, never… . Since her experience with Canon Charenton she has seen that one must be discreet… .
.
Back I go to talk to Sam. It’s all right, I tell him. I’ve been sounding her out, and I think she’ll let him fuck her… She likes him, I tell him, and I make up a lot of pretty things that she didn’t say. So now it’s up to him … . all he has to do is remember that she really wants him to screw her and not be afraid to go after it.
As for myself, I have a date, and I will leave now. I don’t tell him that my date is with his wife… . .
Ann thinks that my apartment is very quaint and very cozy. Everything about it is so private, she says … she doesn’t know about the parades that troop in and out of here at the most inappropriate times. Such a place would be just the thing for a woman who wished to conduct an affair, wouldn’t it? And are there many such in the neighborhood? Of course she was merely wondering… . .
Ann wants to know Paris better, and she has a list of questions as long as your arm. Where is this? Where does one find that? Which is the best neighborhood for thus and so? And for this first half hour that she’s in my place she sits and scribbles into a notebook all the answers. She still has a lot of Paris to see before she goes home, she exclaims, and she wants to know the city from all angles. Now, Where does one buy those awful postcards?
I tell her where she can buy dirty pictures… . Although how she’s been here as long as she has and not met the hawkers I don’t know. Then
