As she was finishing her coffee he said, “The final curtain is at eleven seventeen tonight. By eleven thirty I’ll have my clothes changed and my makeup removed. I’ll be at the Barge Inn a few minutes after that to pay my respects to your worthy husband.”
“I don’t—”
“At midnight I’ll ring your doorbell.”
Her tongue teased her lip again. He decided that the gesture was indescribably sensuous. She said, “You must be thinking of someone else.”
“Au contraire. I’m thinking of you.”
“I don’t know what this is all about.”
“Don’t you?” He did a number with his eyes again, then broke it off with a wide smile. “We’ll go to the Inn in Carversville,” he said levelly. “I believe you’ve been there. A friend of mine plays piano there. I believe you’ve heard him play. He plays other things beside the piano.”
She watched him, waited him out.
“His name is Bert,” he went on. “He lives with me. We enjoy living together. We enjoy sharing things.”
She was nodding, taking it all in.
“Sometimes we share a meal, or an evening in New York, or a bed. Sometimes we share a person.”
“I don’t—”
“Of course you do.”
“What I mean is why me?”
“Why, there are several reasons,” he said. “One is that I’ve attained an erection just sitting across a table from you. A rather dramatic one, actually. If you’d care to put your foot in my lap you could reassure yourself on that point. For another thing, I — oh, my. I didn’t expect you to do that.”
“You suggested it.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?”
“Do you like this? Yes, you damn well like it. I could get you off with my toes.”
“You are full of surprises, aren’t you?”
“I have very limber toes.”
“You do.” He took hold of her foot and stroked it “I think we should stop this.”
“I think I’m getting as hot as you are. I thought you were supposed to be a faggot.”
“Nobody’s supposed to be a faggot. It’s not something you prepare for at a trade school. No, by George, that’s precisely what it is, come to think. I’ll come by at midnight.”
“No. I’ll meet you there.”
“The Carversville Inn.”
“Yes, I know. Warren? How did you know?”
“About you? Oh, intuition.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.”
“I’ll meet you there between twelve and twelve thirty. It will be his last set. We can have a drink and then you can come home with us.”
“What’s his name?”
“My piano player? Bert. Bert LeGrand.”
“He has nice hands.”
“Yes, I rather fancy them myself.”
“He has very nice hands,” Melanie said. “Yes, I remember his hands.”
After he had paid the check and carried her package to her car, Melanie got into the little Alfa and sagged behind the wheel. She was trembling uncontrollably with a mixture of excitement and fear. Both emotions had begun shortly after Warren took her to the Raparound, and she felt she had held them both nicely in check. Now, alone, she could give in to them, could hardly avoid giving in.
She started the car. Instead of driving home she headed west on 202, pushing the little red car hard, using it deliberately as an outlet for what she felt. She turned around just short of Doylestown, the greater portion of her anxiety spent in the act of driving. She felt the sun on her face and hands, the wind in her hair. At a stoplight she fished a cigarette out of her bag and pushed in the dashboard cigarette lighter. The light changed. She crossed the intersection. When the lighter popped out to announce its readiness she lit her cigarette, then shook the lighter absently like a match and flipped it over the side of the car.
She had gone almost a mile before she realized what she had done, and laughter immediately overwhelmed her. She had to pull off the road, she was laughing so hard.
When Sully came home for dinner she told him about it, and broke up again recounting the episode.
“You must of had your mind in the clouds,” he said. “I can just picture that. You didn’t go back and have a look around for it?”
“No chance. I don’t know exactly where it was, and it’s all high weeds at the side of the road.”
“Well, they don’t cost much to replace. You can tell him the heating element burned out.”
“Why not tell him I threw it away?”
“Because it’s bad enough I know you’re a nut, you don’t want the whole world to know. I heard of a guy doing that with a Zippo lighter. Borrowed the lighter off a friend and then threw it the hell out the window. I wasn’t there to see it but I can picture it in my mind clear enough. What were you doing up around Doylestown?”
“Just driving around.”
“That’s what the car’s for, I guess. Just driving?”
“What else?”
He looked at her, then looked away.
“I’ll be going out tonight,” she said.
“Oh?”
“For a drive.”
“For a drive,” he echoed. “You be home by the time I close the joint?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Oh, a late evening, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Just gonna see what you come up with, huh?”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh?”
“I have a date.”
“A date.”
“Yes.”
“Who’s the lucky—”
“I’ll tell you later.”
“Tell me now.”
“No.”
He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. Very softly he said, “You cunt.”
“Do you want to go upstairs?”
“Not now.”
“When I come home, then.”
“You fucking cunt.”
“Are you going? You didn’t have dessert.”
“I don’t want any.”
“Sully—”
He turned in the doorway. “I didn’t mean to call you that. It’s just — I’ll wait up for you, baby.”
“I like it when you call me a cunt.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
“Good.”
The evening crawled and she could not make it hurry. She washed the dinner dishes, then went upstairs and took a long soak in the tub. The hot water baked the tension out of her muscles but new tension had taken its place before she had toweled herself dry. She wrapped herself up in a terrycloth robe of Sully’s and sat in front of the television set without paying any attention to the program on the screen.
Cunt.
That was what she was. Perhaps it was what she had always been, although it did not seem to her that this was the case. It was true that she had always enjoyed sex. She could not remember when she had first become aware of the difference between little boys and little girls, but as long as she had been aware of this difference she had been enthusiastically in favor of it. An attractive girl, an outgoing and popular girl, she had been the frequent recipient of sexual overtures from an early age. She had found all aspects of this enjoyable, from kissing games at children’s parties to fumbling adolescent petting and beyond.
But it had always been an easy enjoyment, a carefree enjoyment. This compulsion that she had found within herself was new, and although it brought her great pleasure it also frightened her. She was afraid of both what she herself was becoming and what might happen to her.
Sully was hard to understand, so very hard for her to understand. Everything she did was ultimately for him, and he knew this, but his immediate reaction each time was one of loathing and bitter contempt. You fucking cunt. She sensed that he had to despise her for what she did, that this was a part of the magic that flowed between them. So far his rage was always quiet and smoldering, never harsh and violent, but how could she be sure it would never change its form? He was a big man, a powerful man. He had always been beautifully gentle with her. If he ever turned violent, she was certain he could kill her with a single blow of one of those heavy hands.