Cognac Conspiracies Read Online Free PDF Page A

beautiful blonde hair, and your French was not great, but you sure could draw. Even the drawing professor was a bit in love with you.”
    “I remember that tiny, top-floor closet your father rented for you in that chic neighborhood: the Avenue Raphaël in the sixteenth arrondissement. You were already living like a king with all that cash you were getting from London. The bohemian life wasn’t for you. And there I was, modeling for magazines. I had to bare my chest to make ends meet!”
    “You used to tell me you enjoyed that,” Benjamin replied, his eyes full of mischief as he tried to relight his cigar, which had gone out during the burst of memories.
    “Just as naughty as ever, my Ben! I’ll bet your wife doesn’t get bored with you.”
    “You’d have to ask Elisabeth yourself. In any case, if she were, I’m sure she wouldn’t let on,” Benjamin quipped, confident of the charm he still exercised over this love of days gone by. The two English compatriots had met in Paris under the glass roofs of the École des Beaux-Arts. Both of them yearned to express themselves in more than their artwork. Their common language, their youthful and vigorous bodies, their shared passion for the Impressionists, and a sweltering September had transformed the room on the Avenue Raphaël into a licentious suite for lovers. The once-proper Brits remembered their upbringing well enough to cry out “God!” at every opportunity in their couplings and even managed to arouse their landlady, a hardened spinster doomed to solitary pleasures.
    “Blasting Kiss and Aerosmith on your cassette player wasn’t enough to drown out our noise!” Sheila said, motioning to the waiter. “Two glasses of Champagne, please.” Benjamin noticed that her milky skin was already turning pink in the sun.
    “Fortunately, my love affair with heavy metal didn’t last.” He turned to the waiter and asked in the tone of a customer who could not be fooled, “What do you suggest?”
    “Uh, we have Mumm, Moët, and Gosset.”
    “Gosset will be perfect,” Benjamin said. He had thrown off the poor young man, bestowed by nature with a cleft lip.
    “Honestly, you haven’t changed a bit. You leave nothing to chance.”
    “That’s not true. Otherwise, we would never have met again!” Benjamin joked. He took a puff of his Dominican cigar. “May I ask what you’re doing in Cognac?”
    “I’ve been living here for almost ten years now. That is, not exactly in Cognac—in Migron. It’s a little village twelve miles from here. I restored an old water mill. I love it there.”
    “Excuse me if I’m prying, but do you live alone?”
    “After Styron died, I decided not to have another man in my life.”
    “You were married?”
    “As good as. I can assure you, he left me everything. Even now I’m living on his royalties. It’s enough to get by. I would so love for you to come to Samson’s Mill. That’s the name of my place.”
    “So that you can be my Delilah for a night?” Benjamin immediately regretted his words. Charming was one thing—suggestive was quite another. He squirmed in his seat.
    “Some embers are better left unstirred.” Sheila sighed as she slid a hand into the neck of her cashmere sweater to adjust a bra strap.
    The waiter placed the two glasses of Champagne on the table. A brown birthmark ran down his neck, and he hunched his shoulders as if to conceal this other congenital affront. Although Benjamin detested pity, he would shell out a generous tip.
    “Is it cold enough?” ventured the young man.
    “It’s perfect,” Sheila said with a lovely smile.
    The two friends raised a toast, exhumed buried memories, and roared with laughter at the childish antics of their late teens and early twenties.
    It had turned out to be a beautiful afternoon, after all. Benjamin promised to visit Sheila at teatime the following day. The recollection of these tender years had made him happy and even aroused guilty feelings regarding his