Women with Men

Acclaim for RICHARD FORD

“An enormously versatile writer, a perfect ventriloquist who achieves his end in voices that vary from swamp-deep to mirror-flat.”

—Village Voice

“Ford is a genuine American artist.”

—Wall Street Journal

“One of his generation's most eloquent voices.”

—The New York Times

“Ford is a master at evoking life's messiness…. His characters make their way tentatively … they are vividly and poignantly recognizable.”

—Baltimore Sun

“Few writers are as skilled as Richard Ford at depicting the causes and consequences of human inertia…. A stunning new collection.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“Brutal, disturbing, and emotionally dead-on, [Women with Men] is all muscle and sinew—Ford at his best.”

—People

Books by RICHARD FORD

A Piece of My Heart

The Ultimate Good Luck

The Sportswriter

Rock Springs

Wildlife

Independence Day

Women with Men

RICHARD FORD
Women with Men

Richard Ford is the author of two collections of stories, Rock Springs and Women with Men, and five novels: A Piece of My Heart, The Ultimate Good Luck, The Sportswriter, Wildlife, and Independence Day.

Kristina

I wish to thank my friends Bill Buford, Charles McGrath and most especially Gary Fisketjon, who read these stories and gave me indispensable editorial advice. I wish also to thank my friends Michel Fabre and Suzanne Mayoux for their unique counsel. And finally, I wish to record my debt of gratitude to the stories and novels of Richard Yates, a writer too little appreciated.

CONTENTS

The Womanizer

Jealous

Occidentals

The Womanizer

1

Martin Austin turned up the tiny street—rue Sarrazin—at the head of which he hoped he would come to a larger one he knew, rue de Vaugirard, possibly, a street he could take all the way to Joséphine Belliard's apartment by the Jardin du Luxembourg. He was on his way to sit with Joséphine's son, Léo, while Joséphine visited her lawyers to sign papers divorcing her husband. Later in the evening, he was taking her for a romantic dinner. Joséphine's husband, Bernard, was a cheap novelist who'd published a scandalous book in which Joséphine figured prominently; her name used, her parts indelicately described, her infidelity put on display in salacious detail. The book had recently reached the stores. Everybody she knew was reading it.

“Okay. Maybe it is not so bad to write such a book,” Joséphine had said the first night Austin had met her, only the week before, when he had also taken her to dinner. “It is his choice to write it. I cause him unhappiness. But to publish this? In Paris? No.” She had shaken her head absolutely. “I'm sorry. This is too much. My husband—he is a shit. What can I do? I say goodbye to him.”

Austin was from Chicago. He was married, with no children, and worked as a sales representative for an old family-owned company that sold expensive specially treated paper to foreign textbook publishers. He was forty-four and had worked for the same company, the Lilienthal Company of Winnetka, for fifteen years. He'd met Joséphine Belliard at a cocktail party given by a publisher he regularly called on, for one of its important authors. He'd been invited only as a courtesy, since his company's paper had not been used for the author's book, a sociological text that calculated the suburban loneliness of immigrant Arabs by the use of sophisticated differential equations. Austin's French was lacking—he'd always been able to speak much more than he could understand—and as a consequence he'd stood by himself at the edge of the party, drinking champagne, smiling pleasantly and hoping he'd hear English spoken and find someone he could talk to instead of someone who would hear him speak a few words of French and then start a conversation he could never make sense of.

Joséphine Belliard was a sub-editor at the publishing house. She was a small, slender dark-haired Frenchwoman in her thirties and of an odd beauty—a mouth slightly too wide and too thin; her chin soft, almost receding; but with a smooth caramel skin and dark eyes and dark eyebrows that Austin found appealing. He had caught a glimpse of her earlier in the day when he'd visited the publisher's offices in the rue de Lille. She was sitting at her desk in a small, shadowy office, rapidly and animatedly speaking English into the telephone. He'd peered in as he passed but had forgotten about her until she came up to him at the party and smiled and asked in English how he liked Paris. Later that night they had gone to dinner, and at the end of the evening he'd taken her home in a taxi, then returned to his hotel alone and gone to sleep.

The next day, though, he'd called her. He had nothing special in mind, just an aimless, angling call. Maybe he could sleep with her—not that he even thought that.