“Judd,” she said.
“Yes?” he said.
“I don’t know you.”
“You know me.”
“No, really, listen,” she said, but her hand, her hand was unbiddenly touching him, gliding along his shaft, she could feel him pulsing under her fingers, she thought Jesus and she said, “Judd, listen,” and his mouth found hers again. She thought Jesus, this is crazy while his mouth, while his hand, her mouth, her hand...
“Judd...”
“Shhh,” he said.
“Listen, I’m, you know...”
“Shhh,” he said, and rolled on top of her.
She felt him inside her, enormous inside her, felt a sharp momentary pain, and gasped, and urgently whispered, “Listen, I’m a virgin,” recognizing the lie at once, whatever she’d been she no longer was, the hugeness of him swelling inside her own swollen, her own, “Listen,” she said, “I wish you’d,” his mouth stopping the words, sealing her lips while below he began a steady fierce rhythm. “Listen,” she said, pulling her mouth from his, incessantly probing, Oh, Jesus, she thought, “Listen,” she said, “Shhh,” he said, and shoved himself deeper inside her, “They’ll hear us,” she said, “Shhh,” he said, his massive, his, Jesus, she thought and his lips found hers again, his mouth more demanding now, biting her lips, thrusting his tongue into her, searching the walls of her mouth while below she began moving with a fierce rhythm of her own, searching for, rubbing against, moving it against him, getting it there against him, pushing it there against him, swollen and wet, Jesus, she thought, Jesus, I, “That’s the girl,” he whispered, “that’s it, Lissie, that’s it, honey,” impaled beneath him, her body moving without conscious will, the roof of the tent, the ground beneath her, My father’ll kill me, she thought, and said aloud, sharply, “Oh! Oh, Jesus!” and felt his hand clamping onto her mouth, and suddenly lost all sense of time or place or being or self or anything but, anything else, anything.
5
He called her the next time he was in the city.
“Hello?” she said.
“Joanna?”
“Yes?”
“Jamie,” he said. “Jamie Croft.”
“Oh. Hi.”
“I said I might call.” He hesitated. “I’m in the city.”
“How are you?” she said.
“Fine, thanks.” He hesitated again. “I thought you might like to have lunch.”
He waited.
“Why don’t you come here instead?” she said.
“Well... sure,” he said.
“It’s on East Sixty-fifth,” she said, and gave him the address.
When she opened the door, she was wearing blue jeans and a man’s shirt, the tails hanging loose. Her hair was pulled into a pony tail; Jamie thought it looked rather too young for her. She was wearing no makeup; she looked a bit wan, he thought.
“Well, hello,” she said.
“Sorry it took so long,” he said. “I had trouble getting a cab.”
“Wednesday,” she said. “Matinee day.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Come in,” she said.
The apartment was a three-story brownstone, the living room on the first floor, the kitchen, dining room and guest room on the second floor, the master bedroom and a library on the third floor. The living room — Jamie had not yet seen the rest of the house — was furnished with antiques she told him she had purchased at a shop in Brewster. He figured they must have cost her a fortune, but she told him at once that the prices there were very good, he should drop in sometime. She asked him if he would like a drink. He said he thought not. They sat opposite each other in easy chairs covered in red plush velvet. It was close to noon. The light was flat.
“No rehearsal today?” he asked.
“No.”
“Do you have a performance tonight?”
“Yes?” There was a slight inflection at the tail end of the single word, as if she still could not believe he was really interested in what she did or when she did it.
“Which opera?”
“Roberto d’Evereux,” she said. “Donizetti.” She looked at him and smiled. “You don’t know it.”
“No.”
“So,” she said. “What are you working on?”
“An architectural thing for the Times Magazine section.”
“New York architecture?”
“Yes. Landmark buildings.”
“Are you enjoying it?”
“I haven’t begun shooting yet. I only got the list yesterday.”
“Of buildings?”
“Yes, the buildings they want me to photograph. Twelve in all.”
“Sounds exhausting,” she said.
“It may turn out to be,” he said, and smiled.
There was a long silence.
“Must be twenty to,” Joanna said.
“What?”
“Or twenty after.”
“I’m sorry, I...”
“Long pause in the conversation.”
“Oh.”
“That’s what they say, isn’t it?”
“I thought it was ten to and ten after.”
“No, twenty to.” She crossed her legs. “You seem nervous,” she said. “Have you changed your mind?”
“About what?”
“About making love to me. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure why I’m here.”
“That’s why you’re here,” she said. “Shall we go upstairs?”
“If you want to.”
“Yes, I want to.”
“All right then,” he said.
Her third-floor bedroom was entered through a library that served as a sort of cloistered anteroom lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves of leatherbound books. A tiled Franklin stove was set into one wall, under the bookshelves. There were two wingback chairs, each upholstered in red leather, flanking the fireplace. A brass coal scuttle rested on the slate hearth. There were brass andirons, a brass-handled poker, brass-handled fire tongs. An antique bellows, in faded green and red leather, hung just to the left of the fireplace opening.
A metal music stand with an open manuscript on it was standing near the hearth. On the dark, richly stained floor, a flute lay nestled in its open leather case, silvery bright against the green plush lining. The floor was scattered with Oriental rugs: a Bokhara like the one in the Rutledge living room, an Abadeh, and a smaller Isfahan. He could imagine her sitting in this room practicing her flute, or perhaps reading before she went to bed, the coals of a dwindling fire glowing in the grate, a brandy snifter on the inlaid table beside one of the wingback chairs. The door leading to her bedroom was made of heavy oak, with a massive brass doorknob. He followed her into the room.
She undressed without ceremony or artifice, as if she had taken off her clothes for him a hundred times before. Naked, she was more spectacularly beautiful than he imagined she could possibly be; he caught his breath as she came toward him, her long blond hair falling loosely over her shoulders to mantle the sloping tops of her young breasts, so young, the erect pink nipples circled with wider roseate aureoles. Her waist was narrower than it appeared when she was clothed, her hips flaring below it, the triangle of her pubic hair arrowing downward toward her rounded thighs and long legs.