An Infinity of Mirrors Read Online Free PDF

wool. Bernheim’s thoughts were on his daughter, but his companion stared eagerly into the other car. The fat man stared back at her without expression while the other woman stared wearily ahead.
    â€œKeep going,” the woman said to Bernheim. He moved the car smoothly along the road. “We had him two weeks ago,” the woman said. “He should be kept out of partouses . He never brings his own woman. He picks up whores at the Porte Maillot and everybody else runs the risk of picking up the peste.”
    â€œShocking,” Bernheim said. Around a turn another illuminated car, a Hotchkiss, was parked, and he pulled in beside them. The interior lights went on and all four occupants stared at each other. “My God,” the woman in the other car said, “that’s Paul Bernheim, the actor.”
    Bernheim’s passenger wet her lips as she looked at the other driver. “I like him,” she said, and then addressed the other driver with roguish impatience. “Well?”
    â€œTake her, take her,” the other woman said. “Ai! Paul-Alain Bernheim! No one will believe me.”
    Both women opened their car doors at the same time. The blond woman walked around the front of the parked car and Paul’s passenger walked around its rear. Each sat down in the other’s car and closed the door. The woman with the diamond-covered hands said, “Are you nervous, baby? Don’t be nervous.” Bernheim leaned across to ask if it was to be a three- or four-car partouse . The other man still could not speak, but both women repeated the word four several times.
    Bernheim sent his car forward and the other car followed him, its driver breathing shallowly because his trousers were covered with short fingers and large diamonds. The procession turned right into the Route de Neuilly. “I am crazy about you on the stage, Monsieur Bernheim,” the blond woman said.
    â€œAh, there we are,” Bernheim answered. A large Renault Reina Stella, its lights on, was parked near the Route de Madrid in cozy solitude. Bernheim pulled up alongside and leaned across the blond woman, both of them straining to look into the lighted car. The driver, a blue-skinned Senegalese wearing a floppy straw hat and a light-gray suit, was either extremely tall or prodigiously long-waisted. The white woman beside him was inordinately handsome, one of the most beautifully decadent, dissipated women Bernheim had ever seen. The Hotchkiss moved ahead and stopped, but neither occupant got out.
    â€œThree cars?” the Negro asked.
    â€œThere was talk of trying for four,” Bernheim said.
    â€œGod, look at him,” the woman next to Bernheim said intensely. “What a piece of man.” Her hand, as though on an independent mission of its own, dug its fingers into Bernheim’s upper thigh. The Senegalese and the wonderfully destroyed woman talked to each other in what seemed to be a dialect, and then the Negro said, “Four would be fine but three is fine, too, and we have three. It’s late. My lady says we make it with three cars.”
    â€œOh, Jesus, yes,” the blond woman said. Bernheim tapped his horn lightly and the nervous man in the car ahead leaned out and looked back at them. “We have a vote to keep it to three cars,” Bernheim called out to him. The head ducked in for a conference: the head of the other woman could not be seen. The blond woman next to Bernheim said, “Oh, honey, let me ride with this black one. I’ll make it up to you later. Let me ride with that one.” The man ahead of them leaned out again and said in a loud quavering voice, “Three will be fine.”
    â€œYou want to change cars?” the Senegalese called over to the excited blond.
    â€œI want to change, darling,” she said. “This one wants to change.” Bernheim wanted to thank her; he could not stop staring at the ravaged-looking woman in the other