Sebastian:
Coming up over the last hill, the view to Annette's country house looks exactly like paradise to my exhausted eyes. The Main Street of the nearby town displays an extravaganza of twinkling Christmas lights. The house itself is a small Tudor-style cottage in the middle of Connecticut horse country. I'm staying here, not just for Christmas as originally planned, but for the next week. I'm staying here because Annette needs me here, because Annette needs the love and comfort I can give...
Because if you come back home again, you won't be able to resist her.
Earlier, I paced randomly through Central Park while talking to Annette on my cell phone, feeding her one lie after another. I was doing my homework when you called. The phone got disconnected. Yeah, that phone's been having problems. She believed every word of it, because she wanted to.
She greets me at the door with a big hug and kiss, her father with a firm handshake. Her mother comes in, says hello and apologizes for not being able to touch me because her hands are greasy from dinner preparations. Her father says he heard about what happened in Kansas—I shoot Annette a look, but the smile she gives me in return is open and guileless—and is glad that I could come down early. They're accepting me, I realize, not grudgingly, with reservations, but wholeheartedly, because they want Annette to be happy and this is what will make her happy. We sit together in an overstuffed easy chair by the fireplace, Annette on my lap. It's all very cozy. The picture of domestic bliss. Her little brother comes in and proclaims loudly that we should "Get a room!" but by my standards, we're doing nothing. Annette tells me that her friend called and said she was sorry for kicking her out, that it was (her words) "un-Christlike" behavior. She wants her to pledge something called "Secondary Virginity", which, if I understand Annette's explanation, means that she would be accepted into the pure-virgin fold again despite having had sex, as long as she never does it again and agrees in principle that sex before marriage is still a Very Bad Thing. I ask her if she regrets doing it with me.
"No. Well, sometimes. But not really. I mean, I said I'd wait for love, and we love each other, right? And we're happy together now. I don't regret it."
So there it is. As long as I love her, it's okay. Too weak-minded to enjoy sex for its own sake without regrets, she needs me around to validate she's done the right thing. I thought at first she was strong-minded and independent, back when I was first seducing her and she stuck fast to her unpopular beliefs while taking pleasure in calling me on my bullshit. Now I see that she was merely a conformist to a different set of social mores, and without them, she's adrift. She looks at me adoringly, expecting to see the look of love which I in fact give her. But if she knew me, actually knew who I was, she'd know that I despise weakness in women.
I reach around and cup her breasts in my hands, feeling them large and heavy under her fuzzy sweater, pushing away the other thoughts of silk dresses, silk hair, silk skin always elusive, always slipping away from me. And me following like a dog, and hating her, wanting to throw her down on the floor and tell her: Enough with those stupid jock boyfriends. They'll never deserve you like I do. Know you like I do. Fuck you like I do.
I remember her coming into my room and closing the door behind her, and what she said: "You're in love with her, you don't love me anymore." She looked like she'd aged ten years. I didn't feel guilty, the way I do when I hurt Annette. I just felt like I'd also aged ten years.
Time for dinner now. Roast beef and polite conversation. Annette's parents ask me how I'm doing in school, what I've been up to lately. I am expected, regardless of the truth, to regale them with wholesome anecdotes and soundbites about my fascinating (yet wholesome!) life. This is the deal, then: it's okay for me to take Annette's virginity, to do whatever I want to her in the bedroom, as long as outside of it I am the perfect boyfriend she can show off to her family and friends. I tell them everything they want to hear.
Annette, the nominal love of my life, tells me to pass the potatoes. She's beaming at me. She's eating this shit up, as much as her parents are.
My mind keeps drifting away to perversion, to danger, to her. But I manage a passably decent perfect boyfriend act: attentive, caring, loving. My stomach turns. I remember what she said:
"I'm the Marcia fucking Brady of the Upper East Side, and sometimes I want to kill myself."
I have to go.
"I have to go," I say. They think I mean to the bathroom. Instead I grab my coat and suitcase and walk to the car. A few minutes into my drive, Annette calls. She's distraught.
"You're going back to her, aren't you? Don't do it, Sebastian. She's evil. She'll destroy you." Yes she is and yes she will. Like I care. She goes on like this for a bit and then chokes back a sob and says quietly, "It's because she's more beautiful than me, isn't it?"
And that's when I decide I've had enough stupidity for one day and hang up. Because she isn't beautiful. When I first met her, I thought I was seeing a vision of perfection walking towards me. But that was years ago. Now I barely notice the charms others praise her for, and when I look at her, all I see is her inner ugliness. Annette is beautiful. Kathryn is decay and rot and filth and corruption and everything I want.
I take the ramp onto the highway and drive fast as I possibly can away from paradise, away from redemption, towards the townhouse on East 79th Street where the truth is waiting for me.
…
Her bedroom door is open just a crack. I push it open further and step in, and then my mind stops. Because there is:
Kathryn,
hunched over the the table,
dressed in layers of coats and shawls,
tear streaks on her face,
my journal lying open in front of her,
packed suitcase on the bed,
on the stereo: "Ne Me Quitte Pas".
And when she sees I've come in she offers neither phony sarcastic quips nor phony romantic promises, neither phony insults nor phony rational justifications, but just looks at me, looks all the way into me with those brilliant emerald-green eyes. And I realize I've been wanting her to look at me just this way for almost a decade.
I turn off the stereo,
gather her into my arms,
slip off her shawls and coats,
til she's standing there wearing nothing at all,
how beautiful you are like this Kathryn.
And frantically she rips off my clothes,
pulling me to the bed,
grabbing on to me so tight it causes pain,
not because she wants to hurt me,
but because she wants me inside her so much,
a desire left years unfulfilled.
And when I do enter her,
even though it's for the first time,
it feels natural,
familiar,
as if we've been together forever,
as if I've never fucked anyone but her.
Her hands run over me everywhere like fire, pulling me down again and again. When I come it's still not enough for her, she licks it off and then kisses me and strokes my cock and soon we're back at it, her moaning and screaming but still never saying a word, me saying her name over and over, Kathryn Kathryn Kathryn there is nothing else I can say all other words have left my mouth.
We fall down finally, after flying so high. We lie there in a sweaty heap for a long time. Occasionally she strokes my face. Her slight weight on top of me feels like the shelter I never had, and I think I could fall asleep every night of my life like this. Still neither of us says anything for a while, we just lie there and look at each other in perfect understanding. Kathryn speaks first.
"You came home early..." she says.
"I couldn't stand to spend one more second with her." She waits. "It was all so fake...I was supposed to be the reformed player, the perfect boyfriend. But all I could think about was you. And that's when I realized I didn't care anymore. I had to see you again, even though I was sure you hated me. Because you're the only one." I hesitate for a second, and then say it. "You always were."
"I know, baby. I read the journal, remember?" I remember, it seems like a lifetime ago, the rumor mill telling me Kathryn "cried like a baby" when she got her copy of the journal and realized her reputation was ruined. I didn't believe it—I'd never seen her cry anything but crocodile tears since Victor Merteuil died.
"I remember," I say. "Kathryn...I just want us to be together. I'll do anything. I swear it."
"Promises don't mean anything."
"I know. But will you believe it when you see it?"
"Yes."
I let out a sigh of relief, and take her hand. "Kathryn...please say my name."
"Sebastian."
"Kathryn."
"Sebastian. Seb." She smirks. "Brother."
"Sick fuck."
"You like it."
"I do."
She pulls me in closer.
"Oh fuck, I do."
A/N: This (the above sex scene) is where they should have put the song "Colorblind" in the movie. That song just does not fit Annette. I mean, okay, she's a virgin, she hasn't had a dick inside her, big whoop. She hasn't spent half her life emotionally closed off the way Kathryn has.
"Ne Me Quitte Pas" means "don't leave me" and is one of the saddest songs ever written. The best versions I've found are the Jacques Brel original and Mireille Mathieu's cover. The best English translation I've found is that of Dodiad on lyricstranslate [dot] com. (Stupid site won't let me put the links)