“Tell me” he said.
“If you’re sure.”
“Tell me.”
She licked her lips. Anticipation glowed in her eyes. This, he knew, was what she lived for. She would go out and enjoy her adventures, but they themselves were spiced by her expectations of returning home to tell him her story. She would come home with her dirty little stories and she would tell him everything in as tantalizing a manner as possible. And then he would take her, and that part of it was what she lived for. What they both lived for.
“I went to the Lambertville House,” she said. “I took a corner booth and just waited for somebody to come in.”
“Who was it?”
“I had quite a wait. There were a lot of men who gave me the eye, but I wanted just the right one.”
“Who was it?”
“Hugh Markarian.”
“Christ.”
“I remembered you pointing him out to me. He comes to the Barge a lot, doesn’t he?”
“Christ.”
“I groped him right there at the table. He was very cool about it. It got to him in a big way but he was very cool about it.”
She went on, giving him the story an inch at a time. The words did not excite him now. That wasn’t how it worked. He would listen all the way through, feeling nothing but a slight sense of nausea, his whole being deadened by the flow of words. That was the pattern they had established. And then, as she neared the end of the story, something would happen within him that he did not begin to understand.
“Talk about cool,” she was saying. “His daughter walked in then, see, and she’s hanging on the arm of a big black nigger.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“And she takes him upstairs. And he tells me she’s free to bring friends home if she wants. Right? And he says why should it bother him if it’s a nigger. Just as cool as ice he said that, but he didn’t know I saw his face when he first caught sight of the nigger. He went white, Sully. He went absolutely white. But just for that instant, and the kid never saw it, and from then on he’s Mister Cool again.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I thought it would throw him off, you know? Not being able to get it out of his head. I mean, we went upstairs to his bedroom. And a couple doors down the hall is her bedroom, and she’s in there with the black, and he’s her father and how can he get this out of his head? But I guess I took his mind off it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“See, I really got him hot necking. With our clothes on and everything like kids in a drive-in. And by the time we were upstairs we were so hot for each other that nothing else mattered. Do you want to know what we did?”
“You know what I want.”
“Yeah. And I know what I want, too.”
“Tell me about it.”
His expression did not change while she spoke. Her eyes on him, she constructed her description of what had taken place at Hugh Markarian’s house, constructed it skillfully and deliberately. From time to time she was purposely vague, forcing him to ask questions. She never invented, never exaggerated, but stayed strictly with the exact truth as she perceived it.
After about a quarter of an hour she had finished. She thought there would be more questions from him, he seemed on the point of asking something, but he remained silent, and they sat together for several minutes without talking.
Then he said, “I guess I’ll get some sleep.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Uh-huh.”
He got heavily to his feet. She followed him up the stairs. Her hands were trembling, she noticed, and her mouth was dry. She recognized both anticipation and fear within herself, anticipation of his lovemaking, fear that what had worked before might by now have lost its magic. She had read nothing in his face but defeat and exhaustion, both of them now echoed the slump of his shoulders as he mounted the stairs.
It might not work this time. Worse, it might provoke not lust but loathing. And that could be very dangerous for her. She looked at the size of him and remembered his strength. He had never struck her, but if he ever did— God, he was strong. It would be so easy for him to kill her with his hands.
She shivered at that thought. And wondered, fleetingly, whether there was more than fear in what she felt. The possibility was a shade more frightening than the fear which had occasioned it, and she made herself stop thinking about it.
In bed beside him, both fear and anticipation mounted while she waited to see if it would work. She wanted to reach for him but knew not to. It would be he who would reach for her. Or not reach for her.
When his hand settled on her thigh, her entire body sighed. Breath drained from her lungs and tension from her muscles. She had not realized that she had been holding her breath, nor had she been aware of the taut knots in her calves and forearms. She closed her eyes against the glow of false dawn and surrendered to the hand upon her thigh. Her mind filled with a picture of that hand. She could see it so clearly, the hairs on its back, the fading scar on the index finger. The hand moved to touch between her legs, and she gasped. Her arousal was instant and total.
He played with her for a long time. Idly, undemandingly, using only his hands. Once, as he reached for her breasts, she felt his cock press like a bar of hot iron against her leg. She wanted it in her. She felt it against her leg and saw it in her mind and ached with her own emptiness. But her hand did not reach for him. She waited.
And when he took her — and who knew how long it was, seconds or minutes or hours, who knew, who cared? — When he took her it was with strength and fury and power that took her completely out of herself. It was frightening to be fucked like this. And more frightening to think of living without it. All the women he had had, and none of them had ever been possessed as he possessed her. Oh, it was worth it. It was worth anything she had to do, anything at all.
She woke around noon, showered, dressed, put up a pot of coffee. While it was perking she heard him upstairs in the bathroom. She set two places at the breakfast room table, broke eggs into a frying pan. Then she remembered how he liked pancakes. She hadn’t made them for him in ages. In fact they rarely had breakfast together anymore. She would fry eggs for him and sit with a cup of coffee while he ate, then make herself something after he left. It wasn’t that much trouble to make a real breakfast. She’d just grown out of the habit.
She had to hunt to find the box of pancake mix. It had been in the cupboard half-empty for more than a year but it seemed to be all right. No worms in it. The chemicals kept it from spoiling and rendered it unfit for insect consumption. Only human beings could eat it.
Apple pancakes — he loved apple pancakes. She found apples in the refrigerator and sliced them into the batter. By the time he came downstairs she had a stack of pancakes on both their plates and two mugs of coffee poured.
He said, “Well, what do you know? What’s the occasion?”
“Just breakfast.”
“You picked the right day for it. I got an appetite like I don’t know what. What’s the expression? ‘My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.’ What did you put, apples in the coffee? I’m tasting apples from the pancakes. You put applejack in the coffee.”
“Well, I figured what wine goes with apple pancakes and I figured why not. If it’s no good, I’ll get you another cup.”
“When I finish this one you can get me another cup exactly the same. What got into you?”
“You did.”
“Yeah.” He grinned, then let the grin fade. “I guess we got things to, I don’t know, talk about. But—”
“Oh, let’s just enjoy breakfast for the time being.”
“Let’s do that.”
The day went quickly. She found things to do around the house, did some marketing, watched television. She was watching an Errol Flynn movie when he returned home. She turned off the set and went downstairs to meet him.