Chapter 7 – Chapter 7

On December 7, 1941, Antoine appeared in Paul's art studio, where he was working on a painting.

"Where are your papers—your identity papers?"

"I don't know. Let me think. Why, I think my former lover last had them. Why are you asking?"

"Noell Giroux has them?" Antoine asked.

"Yes, I think so. I haven't had need to show them I've been here at the Ritz so long. But, you know Noell Giroux and that I lived with him before the captain?"

"Have you not heard the news. Japan has attacked the United States and war between them has been declared."

"So? No, I don't understand. Why are you so agitated, Antoine? This is bad news for the United States. But what does it have to do with France—or me, really?"

"Japan, Germany, and Italy are in a pact. Germany and Italy will declared war on the United States now. You won't be a neutral here. You'll be a belligerent. You haven't told the captain you're an American, have you?"

"It hasn't come up. I'm sure he thinks I'm French. My French isn't the greatest, but his is atrocious. He has no idea I speak it with an American accent. Nor do any of the other German military men here, I'm sure."

"Good. Then you must become French."

"I don't know how to do that," Paul said.

"I do. Come with me. We must see Frank Meier."

"The hotel's senior bartender?"

"Yes. Don't ask. Just come. Now."

"How the hell do you know all of these things?" Paul asked.

Antoine didn't answer that.

* * * *

Ten days before Christmas of 1942, Paul and Garren lay exhausted on the bed in Room 31 of the Ritz Paris. Paul had come back from a dance in the Imperial Suite, and Garren had made wild love to him. Paul's buttocks were glued to Garren's crotch, pinned there by Garren's buried cock. Paul's torso was otherwise twisted, his legs in the splits, with the ankle of his right leg lodged behind Garren's neck and the ankle of his left leg trapped between Garren's calves.

Garren released Paul from the demanding athletic position, pulled his body in to be stretched beside his own, and reaching over, opened the nightstand drawer and took out a packet covered by oilskin.

"Here. I want you to take this and use it when I leave for Berlin at the end of this visit. You can't fly back to Berlin with me, but this will get you safe conduct to Berlin. It's time. The war isn't going well. I fear we will lose Paris—that I may not be able to come back."

"What are you saying?" Paul asked.

"I'm saying I can't live without you. I may not be able to come back to Paris. I want you in Berlin with me."

Paul sucked in air. He was here with false papers now. He was an American, and the United States was at war with Germany. If Garren found out . . . if anyone else found out, the repercussions would be on Garren . . . his lover . . . his love.

"It can't be that bad."

* * * *

The book was all the rage in the summer of 1943—at least for underground reading. It had to be kept out of the reach of the Germans. Antoine volunteered to keep Paul's copy in his room, lest Garren see it, and Paul had readily agreed.

Antoine had seen it immediately, but then so had Paul. It was entitled The Collaborator and was set in Brussels' Hotel Metropole, the Belgian equivalent of the Ritz Paris. The previously unknown author was Hugh Lemaire. It was about a young American trapped in Belgium by the war and forced to go into prostitution, where he winds up living in the Hotel Metropole with a Gestapo lieutenant. The Americans contact him to spy on the Germans, but he is so lost to his officer that he spies for the Germans instead.

Neither Paul nor Antoine were fooled. They knew the book was about Paul and had been written in revenge by Michel Paquet because Paul had stopped letting Paquet fuck him. Paul had come a long way in understanding the danger of his liaison with Von Kaube, especially in the Ritz, as riddled with spies as it was. But now he was lost in the relationship. He wouldn't escape from it even if he could. He knew enough about the war to know that the Germans would lose, but he was a fatalist. He didn't care as long as he could be with Garren for as long as possible.

The book would be devastating to Paul if read by the wrong people. Both Paul and Antoine walked around as if treading on glass into the fall of 1943, but it didn't appear that anything would become of the book.

It certainly didn't encourage Paul to sleep with Paquet again, though, and Paquet became confused, quiet, and morose when Count Jan Bukowski's body was found floating in the Seine. More than once he asked Paul what he'd had to do with Bukowski's death, which, of course, was nothing.