Bittersweet Dreams (19 page)

“See? We have a great deal in common,” he said. “Now all I need is fifty more points on my IQ.”

“Believe me, you're better off not having them,” I said.

“You feel that way now, but . . .” He looked at me. “And you won't change your mind later,” he said, and we both laughed. I felt my body soften and defrost from the icy numbness that had overcome it most of the day.

He made some turns and headed west. As we drove along, he began to tell me more about himself. He was brought up in San Francisco, went to college in the Midwest and then took his first teaching position in a public school in Los Angeles. When the opportunity arose to teach in our private school, he jumped at it.

“I'm not making as much money, but I'm a lot happier with the class size, despite how I sound when I talk about it. At least the parents are involved. Maybe too much,” he added, obviously thinking about my day.

When we reached the Pacific Coast Highway, he pulled into the parking lot at the Will Rogers State Beach.

“You ever just walk on the beach?” he asked me.

“Rarely.”

“You up for it now?”

“Yes,” I said.

I really hadn't done it since my mother had died. Julie hated the beach, because the sun gave her wrinkles and the sand got into everything, including her hair. Consequently, my father never took us. Allison went with her friends occasionally, but, like her mother, she was too finicky to enjoy it and always came home complaining.

We got out of his car. There was a soft, cool breeze coming from the southwest. In the distance, I could see what looked like a cargo ship sliding along the horizon. Off to the north toward Malibu were two small sailboats. We're attracted to the sea because it takes us out of this world, I thought, off the land and far from our troubles and worries. I envied the ones on the sailboats.

“It is beautiful out there,” he said, seeing how I gazed longingly at the soft blue in the distance.

“Yes.”

“Ever sail?”

“No.”

“I have a friend with a boat. I go out with him once or twice a month. Maybe I'll take you along sometime.”

I looked at him as if he were promising to run off with me or something.

He laughed. “I will,” he insisted.

We walked on.

“So, have you thought much about what you want to do? What you'll major in when you go to college? I bet you want to be a doctor, huh?” he asked as he walked.

“No, I don't think so. Maybe I'll go into bio research. I'm not sure yet.”

“No hurry, I guess. I'm sure you're interested in many things. You just have to find the one that holds the most passion for you.”

“Is that what you did?”

“Me? I thought I would write the great American novel but woke up days later looking at the same blank page. I enjoy teaching, though, when I have good students. At least at our school, we don't have the sort of discipline problems they have in public schools, and I don't have to spend so much time just getting the class civilized.”

I laughed.

“Feeling a little better?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You know, it's better if we take off our shoes and socks.” He paused to do it, and so did I.

We went close enough to the water to get our feet wet.

“Yow, that's cold!” he cried, and retreated. I stayed with it a bit longer. “Aren't your ankles getting numb?”

“Maybe,” I said. “I can't feel them. Does that have anything to do with it?”

He laughed, and I joined him on the softer sand.

For a while, neither of us spoke, and then I asked, “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“A couple,” he said, smiling. “No one I consider serious. I'm in no rush.”

“Don't any of them consider
you
seriously?”

“Maybe.”

“That doesn't matter?”

He told me about a romance he had in college and how it had gone sour when his girlfriend went out secretly with a friend of his. “I guess that's made me gun-shy,” he said.

His apparent honesty and willingness to talk about himself put me at ease, maybe too much at ease. When we were back at his car, he took out a towel he had in his trunk so we could wipe the sand off our feet and out from between our toes. He insisted that I sit so he could do my feet.

“Better rub them and get the circulation back since you spent all that time in the cold ocean.”

“It's not that bad,” I said, but he insisted.

“Nice feet,” he told me. “You forgot to paint your toenails.”

“I didn't forget.”

He smiled, did his own feet, and got back into the car. “Still feeling better?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you.”

“The magic of the sea,” he said. “As long as you don't put your naked feet in it at this time of the year. Actually, the Pacific is never warm enough for me unless I'm down in Mexico, way down.”

We rode along quietly for a while, and then he slowed down.

“You have to get home?”

“I told you. I have no curfews, day or night.”

“Right. I live right up here,” he said. He looked at his watch. “What do you say to our getting a pizza and eating it at my apartment? I have a patio that looks out at the ocean. Of course,” he said when I didn't respond immediately, “if that makes you uncomfortable . . .”

“No, it doesn't.”

“Great.”

He took that to mean yes, and I didn't say otherwise. He asked me what I wanted on the pizza and then called his favorite takeout place and ordered it with some salads. His car had Bluetooth, so I heard the conversation and understood that they knew him well at this restaurant.

“As you can tell,” he said, “I'm not much for cooking. My best recipe is takeout. What about you?”

“I toy with it sometimes, but we have a maid who does most of our cooking and baking. We've had a few, actually. Julie, my father's new wife, as you know I like to call her, is hard on servants. She wears them down the way a driver who keeps his foot on the brake pedal wears down brake pads.”

He laughed. “You sure come up with surprising comparisons.”

“Not that surprising to me,” I said.

“I bet. You really do fascinate me, Mayfair.”

Normally, when someone said that to me, I shrugged it off. I had gotten used to hearing it, but the way he said it reached deeper inside me and stirred me sexually.

Our pizza was almost ready when we arrived. I waited in the car while he went in to get it. I had to admit it smelled delicious when he returned with it. Minutes later, we pulled into his apartment building's underground garage. He told me to leave my books in the car.

“That way, you won't forget anything when I take you home,” he said.

“I never forget anything,” I said, but I left them.

We went to the elevator and up to the eighth floor. He had a very nice marble-floored apartment with a living room that had a patio facing the ocean. I looked around. He didn't have any family photos up or photos of any women. The artwork was the sort you could pick up in a department store to work into your decor. I did see that he had his college diploma framed. While I was gazing about, he put on a Three Tenors—Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and José Carreras—CD.

“Is that all right?” he asked. “It's not rap or rock.”

“I listen to it often,” I said. “I enjoy many operas.”

“Figured you might.”

Was I that easy to read and predict? Was that because I wasn't as impulsive and reckless as most girls my chronological age?

He got our pizza ready and called me into his dining room, which, aside from the china cabinet and one small table with a miniature grandfather clock on it, was also spartan. I saw a bottle of Chianti on the table.

“I'd rather have wine than beer with my pizza. Do you drink wine?”

“Occasionally,” I said. I really hadn't drunk much wine. “Julie, my father's new wife, fancies herself a wine connoisseur, but she doesn't know the difference between a syrah and a pinot noir.”

“You know about wine, too?” he asked.

“There are five basic types: red, white, and rosé; what is called fortified wine or dessert wine, which has extra alcohol; and sparkling wine and champagne. She buys sparkling wine and calls it champagne. Real champagne has to come from the Champagne province in France. I believe it's a trademarked name.”

He stood with the opened bottle of Chianti in his hand, his mouth slightly open.

“And you know all this without drinking much of it?”

“I know about nuclear energy, too, but I've never created it or built a bomb,” I replied.

He laughed, shrugged, and poured two glasses. “Well, I've gone this far. I might as well corrupt the morals of a minor who knows more about it than I do and give you some wine.”

Maybe because he said that more than anything else, I eagerly drank the wine. I drank it too quickly, emptying my glass before his was a quarter empty. He poured me another. While we ate, he asked me more about my family life. “So tell me, why do you keep calling Julie your father's new wife? It sounds as if they just got married, but from what you're telling me, it's been years.”

“She'll never be anything more to me,” I said. “I don't care how many years they stay married.”

He nodded. After we ate, he poured another glass for each of us, and we went out onto his patio to watch the sun setting.

“If you want to call home and let them know anything, go ahead,” he told me.

I glanced at him. Was he testing me? Did he really mean I could tell them I was at his apartment having dinner and wine with him? The small smile on his face told me that he knew I wouldn't.

“It's not necessary,” I said.

It really was necessary, but I wanted my father to worry. I wanted him to know how unhappy I was about what Julie had let Dr. Richards do to me. Let them believe for a while that I might have run off in a rage.

We finished the bottle of wine. It seemed to me that I had drunk most of it, because I drank faster than he did, and he kept filling my glass. He brought the empty bottle and the glasses in, and then I stood up, expecting he would now take me home. I remember feeling so relaxed. It was as if my whole body had turned into a down pillow. He met me in the living room, and for a moment, he just stood there looking at me. Maybe I really heard him say it, or maybe I was imagining it from the look in his eyes, but I walked up to him after I heard, “You have no idea how pretty you are, Mayfair, especially with a little flush in your cheeks. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.”

I'll always regret not doing this if I don't
, I thought,
so I think I will
.

I kissed him. When I leaned back, I saw his look of surprise.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't mean—”

“No,” he said, putting his finger gently on my lips. “You meant it. It's all right.”

Then he kissed me, but not like I had kissed him, not a quick snap of my lips against his.

I closed my eyes and still had them closed when he stopped. He didn't let go of my shoulders but brought my lips to his again, this time pressing a little harder. I felt his tongue press into my mouth. For a moment, only a moment, I thought I would tear myself out of his hands and rush to the door, but when his right hand went to my waist and his lips moved down to the side of my neck, I heard myself moan and felt my body soften even further.

“You're so beautiful,” he kept whispering. “So beautiful.”

He put his left arm around my waist and then his right arm under my legs and lifted me as if I were a little girl. I didn't protest. I had no doubts about what he was doing, but I didn't resist. Instead, I rested my head against his chest, and I could feel how that excited him, quickened his heartbeat. He carried me to his bed and lowered me gently.

My thoughts were spinning and tumbling over one another in my head. He stood there looking down at me.

“Do you want it to stop?” he asked.

I shook my head. Then I watched him slowly undress, his eyes never leaving mine. It was as if his hands belonged to someone else. He loosened and took off his tie, dropping it to the floor, where he dropped his shirt, his pants, and then his underwear. He stood completely naked, enjoying the way I looked him over and reacted.

“Should I?” he asked, kneeling beside the bed and fingering the buttons of my blouse.

“Yes,” I whispered. I hadn't had someone else undress me since I was three, and my mother would stand aside and watch how carefully I took off my clothes, folding them neatly.

I watched his face, the movements in his lips and his eyes, as he slowly, almost as if he wanted to tease himself, slipped my bra off me. He stared down at me so intensely.

“It's not a pot of gold,” I said, and he laughed.

“To me, it is.”

With continued surgical skill, he finished undressing me, taking his time to make little discoveries about my body, a dimple here, a birthmark there, the smoothness of my skin, and the soft rise of my breasts as my own breath quickened.

The wine kept me just a little confused, but I was thinking like someone who was observing and not participating. It was almost as if I were watching a medical procedure. I was fascinated with his every move, how he continued stroking, kissing, and exciting me, and then how he stopped, remembered his protection, which was just as much my protection, and returned to me, again feasting on me with his eyes first.

“You're like a Greek goddess,” he said, and took his time kissing every part of me, moving down to my toes and then up again, pressing between my thighs, moving over the rise of my stomach and nudging my breasts ever so gently with his lips.

I felt as if I were sinking into the mattress, oozing out of my body. Any thought of restraint was crushed to bits the moment it raised its head or began to voice itself. Every picture, every description of this moment that I had read and seen, did it no justice. How foolish I was to believe I knew anything about my own body when it came to what was now happening to me. I thought this was why sex education in school was such a weak fortress against passion and desire. The teacher shouldn't be using textbooks. He or she should be reading from great novels that aroused their readers. Sex education should bring students real-life scenes and then describe what should or should not be done.