Free Opium by Colin Falconer Page A

hates. Maybe you are in love with me because I am crazy and I fly planes and I break the law. You are in love with the man who took your virginity in a crumbling temple ruin.
    You should not have done all this for a man you don't know.
    Now what am I going to do? You stole me out of prison and now I am trapped.
    For the first time in his life Baptiste Crocé wondered if it was possible for him to love someone beside himself.
     
    ***
     
    They lay on the bed, their limbs intertwined. Her head was on his chest, listening to the pounding rhythms of his heart. Should I feel ashamed or proud? she thought. I have run away from my father, bought my lover out of prison, been used by one man, loved by another. All of this in the space of one day; am I a whore or a heroine?
    “Did they hurt you?' she whispered.
    Baptiste reached for the Gitanes beside the bed and lit one. “I couldn't smoke a cigarette whenever I wanted to. Wasn't that torture enough?'
    “You're thinner.”
    “All they ever fed us was rice and now and then they slopped some sort of meat on top. Funnily enough it was always the day after one of the inmates died.”
    She thought he was serious but when she looked up he was grinning at her. She slapped him. “Don't joke about it.”
    “Why not? Everything's funny once it's over.”
    She wondered if he knew about her bargain with Colonel Ky. That was over, and that still wasn't funny. “Don't you want to know how I got you out?'
    “The colonel said you bribed him.”
    “Yes, a bribe,” she said. She ran her fingers through the short, dark curls on his chest. “I dreamed about you every night for the last seventeen months.”
    He kissed her again, her eyes, her face, her lips, her shoulders, her throat. She grabbed his hair and pulled his head down to her breasts. There was not time enough in the rest of her life to drink her fill of him.
     
     
     

Chapter 14
     
    K EROSENE lamps glowed from the hawker's stalls in the side streets. On the Tu Do, the East and the West met without touching; a noodle seller fanned a charcoal stove at the roadside, surrounded by his Vietnamese customers; behind him, sprawled on bentwood chairs in front of the cafés, Corsicans of the milieu drank pastis and played dice, and laughing American engineers drank cognac and sodas.
    The bells in the basilica summoned the faithful to Mass.
    Noelle and Baptiste found a table at the Café Verlain and ordered Pernods. He lit a Gitanes.
    “You smoke too much, Baptiste.”
    “I can't help it. I'm addicted. Like I'm addicted to you.” He grinned and kissed her on the neck. Two Americans in loud shirts looked over, their faces were hard with envy.
    “I can't keep up with you,” she said.
    He slouched in his chair, saw the Americans staring. He winked at them, and they turned away, scowling.
    So handsome, she thought. A smile that could melt butter, eyes like a Gypsy, a face like the devil. She could hear her father's voice: I hope you know what you're doing, Noelle .
    She could not believe they had only been together again for a few hours. It could have been a lifetime. They had made love all afternoon; then, while he slept, she had bought him new clothes from the Indian tailor on the street corner - a white linen suit, a navy blue silk shirt, and a broad black leather belt.
    A few hours before, he had looked as hollow as a shadow, but already the shout at the devil set of the shoulders had returned.
    A white jacketed waiter brought the Pernods. Baptiste tipped him outrageously. Why not? Noelle thought. It's not his money. It's my father's.
    “What are you going to do, Baptiste?'
    “I am going to make this day last forever.”
    “But it will. Tomorrow is tomorrow.”
    “Then I want tomorrow to be like today. I want to spend the rest of my life making love to you.” He grinned again and ran the tip of a finger lightly along her bare shoulder. Suddenly there was gooseflesh all along her arms.
    “I'm serious, Baptiste. I don't have much