Cradle (19 page)

Nick told her that he was in his junior year at Harvard, majoring in English and French
to get a good liberal arts education and prepare himself for either law school or
graduate school. As soon as she found out that he was in his third year of French,
she switched and spoke to him in her native language. Her name became Monique. He
missed some of what she said, but it didn’t matter. He understood the gist of it.
And her dramatic voice plus the sound of the foreign language only increased the power
of the spell already cast by the wine and her beauty.

Nick also tried to speak French from time to time. Whatever self-consciousness he
might ordinarily have felt was swept away by the magic of the setting and their growing
rapport. They laughed together easily at his mistakes. She was gracious and charming
when she corrected him, always adding ‘mais vous parlez français très bien’ in the
early part of the evening. Later, as their conversation became more personal (Nick
talked about his problems with his father; Monique wondered if there was anything
a mother could do with a teenage daughter except hope that some basic values had been
learned), Monique changed to the more personal ‘tu’ form in talking to him. This established
an additional intimacy between them that deepened in the small hours of the morning.

Monique talked about Paris, about the romance of the streets, the bistros, the museums,
the history. Nick visualized it all and felt transported with her to the city of lights.
She told about her dreams when she was growing up, about walking in the sixteenth
arrondissement among the wealthy and promising herself that someday… He listened closely,
enraptured, an almost beatific smile upon his face. In the end, Monique had to tell
him that it was time to go because she had an early tennis lesson in the morning.
It was after three o’clock. He apologized as they walked together to the door. She
laughed and said that it had been fun. At the door she reached up and kissed him on
the cheek. His heart soared out of his body at the touch of her lips. ‘Call me sometime,’
she said with a playful smile, as she closed the door behind him.

For over thirty hours Nick thought of nothing but Monique. He talked to her in his
mind during the day; she was his lover in dreams at night. He called her once, twice,
three times, each time talking to her answering machine. The third time he left her
his phone number and address and suggested that she try to get in touch with him when
her schedule would permit.

By noon on the second day after his evening at the Silvers’ Palm Beach mansion, he
started to calm down, to realize that there was no sense in his continuing to worship
the image of a woman he had met for a single evening. Especially a woman who was married
to someone else. In the late afternoon he went out on the beach to play volleyball
with some of the other college students he had met during his first days in Florida.
He had just served an ace when he thought he heard his name being called by a husky,
accented voice that was absolutely unmistakable.

Standing in the sand not ten yards away was Monique. She was wearing a bright red
and white striped bikini and her long black hair hung down her back to just above
her waist. The volleyball game stopped. His friends whistled. He walked over to her,
his heart pounding in his temples and his breath struggling to find its way out of
his constricted chest. Monique smiled and slid her arm through his. She explained
that she had brought Teresa into Lauderdale for a small high school party and since
it was so hot….

They walked along the beach and talked as the sun set behind the flats. They were
oblivious of the young people all around them. The gentle waves washed their feet
with warm water as they walked. Monique insisted that they eat in Nick’s condo, so
they stopped for tuna fish, tomatoes, onions, and mayonnaise to put on their sandwiches.
Cold beer, crisps, and sandwiches on a bare formica table was the dinner. Lovemaking
was the dessert. Nick almost had an orgasm on their first kiss and his passion made
him clumsy in trying to remove her bikini. Monique slowed him down, smiled softly,
neatly folded her bikini and his bathing suit (while he of course was going wild),
and then came to join him on the bed. After two kisses naked on the bed, Nick was
seized by a paroxysm of lust. He rolled roughly on top of Monique and began gyrating
with his hips. At first a little alarmed, Monique slowed him just a bit and guided
him gently into her.

Monique’s body was nearly perfect. Nice, full, upright breasts (they had been reconstructed
of course after she had nursed Teresa, but how could Nick have known or cared?); slim
waist; rounded, feminine buttocks; taut muscled legs kept in shape with lots of exercise.
But it was her skin, that magnificent ivory skin, that sent Nick into ecstasy. It
was so soft and easy to the touch.

Her mouth seemed to fit his perfectly. Nick had been with two women before: a high-priced
girl given to him as a Christmas present after the Harvard swimming team had discovered
he was still a virgin at the end of his freshman year, and Jennifer Barnes from Radcliffe,
his sometimes steady date during most of his sophomore year. Jennifer’s teeth always
clanged against his when they kissed. But that had not been the only difficulty in
their relationship. She was a physicist and her approach to sex had been almost clinical.
She measured sizes and durations and frequencies and even quantities of ejaculant.
After three ‘scheduled performances’ with Jenny, Nick had decided it wasn’t worth
it.

Nick gasped as he slid into Monique. Both of them knew it would be over soon. Ten
seconds later Nick finished his climax and started to withdraw. But Monique held his
rear firmly in her hands, keeping him in place, and deftly (how did she do it?) rolled
over so that she was on top. Nick was now out of his element. In his limited experience,
withdrawal was the next step after orgasm. He didn’t know what Monique was doing.
Ever so slowly, her eyes half closed as she hummed a piece of classical music to herself,
Monique rocked back and forth on top of him, her vaginal walls holding tightly to
his now flaccid penis. After a couple of minutes she began to grind her pelvis forward
as she rocked and, much to Nick’s amazement, as her breath shortened he found himself
becoming aroused again. Now her eyes closed altogether and her rhythm became stronger,
the thrusts of her forward motion grinding with a little pain into his bones. Nick
was now definitely erect and he started following her motion, lightly gyrating in
pattern with her.

Monique leaned forward, concentrating but smiling with her eyes closed, preparing
for her own orgasm. Timing her own progress perfectly (and in complete control of
the situation), she adroitly and softly reached down and began titillating Nick’s
nipples in rhythm with her forward thrusts. Nick had never had his breasts touched
in lovemaking before and was shocked. But the raw excitement was overwhelming. She
increased her play, even pinching him when she saw (and felt) his response. As wave
after wave of delightful release coursed through her body, Nick uttered a loud, wailing
cry and had his second orgasm in fifteen minutes. At the end of the climax he was
completely given over to pleasure and made animal sounds and shook involuntarily from
exhausted satiety.

Nick was a little embarrassed by his noisy and uncontrolled response, but Monique’s
playful and friendly afterplay assured him that everything was all right. She went
to his closet, pulled out one of his three dress shirts, and put it on. The tails
came almost down to her knees (Monique was only five feet five, and Nick was a shade
less than six feet two) and she looked positively gamine with her pixie smile, long
hair, and man’s shirt. Nick began to declare his love but Monique came forward and
put her finger to his lips. Then she kissed him lovingly, told him that she needed
to pick up Teresa, jumped in the shower for what could not have been more than a minute,
dressed, kissed him again, and walked out the door. Nick did not move during this
entire time. After she left he fell asleep contentedly. He did not dream.

For the next eight days Nick was on top of the world. He saw Monique every day, most
of the time at her Palm Beach mansion, but sometimes at his uncle’s flat. They made
love at every opportunity and it was always different. Monique was full of surprises.
The second time Nick went to her house, for example, he found her in the back, swimming
naked in the pool. She told him that she had given all the servants the day off. Within
minutes they were frolicking and laughing on the grass between the garden and the
pool.

Their affair was conducted in French. Monique taught him about food and wine; they
shared their knowledge of French literature. One passionate night they argued about
Andre Gide’s
La Symphonie Pastorale
both before and after lovemaking. Monique defended the pastor and laughed at Nick’s
insistence that the blind Gertrude was ‘an innocent’. Another evening, when Monique
demanded that Nick wear a black Halloween mask and a pair of white leotards throughout
their long French dinner, they read Jean Genet’s
Le Balcon
together as a prelude to sex.

The days raced by relentlessly, clothed in the magic of love and intimacy. Once Nick
showed up at the mansion and Monique greeted him dressed in an incredible coat, a
full-length Alaskan seal fur with indigo fox trim around the collars as well as down
the lapels and framing the sleeves from the shoulders to the wrists. The coat was
the softest thing Nick had ever touched, even softer than her tantalizing skin. His
playful paramour had turned the air conditioning up as high as it would go so that
she could wear her favourite coat. She was wearing nothing underneath it. After love
that evening she dressed Nick’s naked body in one of her husband’s beaver coats, explaining
the presence of half a dozen fur coats in Palm Beach with a simple, ‘It’s our business
and we like to have some things to show our friends and acquaintances in case they
are interested.’

Nick professed his love with increasing zeal each time they met anew. Monique responded
with her usual ‘je t’aime’, but would not reply to Nick’s insistent questions about
the future. She avoided all questions about her relationship with Mr. Silver, except
to say that he was a workaholic and that he stayed in Montreal most of the year. He
had bought the place in Palm Beach primarily because Monique did not like the cold
and wanted a more active social life than the one they had in Montreal. Monique usually
spent the period from Christmas to Easter in Palm Beach; Teresa, who had just finished
her spring break from her exclusive private school and had returned to Canada, came
down as often as possible so that she could be with her mother.

Monique gave terse answers about her present life. But she waxed rhapsodic about her
childhood in Paris. She never criticized her husband or complained about her married
life. Yet she did tell Nick that her days with him had been the happiest time of her
life. She also talked about some of her friends, but Nick never met any of them. They
were always alone.

One day she picked him up in her Cadillac and they headed toward Key Largo so that
he could do some diving at the Pennekamp Recreation Area. As always, she was wearing
her wedding ring. On this particular day Nick had vowed to himself that he would get
some answers about the future, and the constant presence of her wedding ring pissed
him off. He asked her to remove it. She politely refused, then grew angry when he
pressed her. She pulled the car off the highway in the marshland north of the Keys
and stopped the engine.

‘It is a fact that I am married,’ she said resolutely, ‘and taking the ring off is
not going to change anything. I am in love with you, without doubt, but you have understood
my situation from the beginning. If you cannot deal with it any more, then perhaps
we should just call it quits.’

Nick was shocked by her response. The thought of being without her terrified him.
He apologized and professed his love. He began kissing her passionately and then jumped
in the back seat. He told her that he needed her right then, that moment. She somewhat
reluctantly joined him and they had intercourse on the back seat of her Cadillac.
Monique was quiet and pensive for most of the rest of the day.

On Friday, exactly a week after they had met, Monique took Nick to a tuxedo shop to
have him fitted for a black tie dinner with some friends that she was having on Saturday
night in her home. So finally he was going to be seen with her.
And
, Nick thought,
she will talk about our future
. Nick was supposed to be in Boston on Monday morning and his parents were expecting
him on Saturday night in Falls Church, but he assured himself that he could drive
all day (and all night if necessary, so pumped up with adrenaline was he in his love
for Monique) to get to classes on Monday morning.

Nick was full of hope and dreams when he showed up at the Silver mansion on Saturday
night. He looked elegant in his rented summer tuxedo, and the smile with which he
greeted Monique at the door could have won a prize. Even with the doorman standing
by, he handed her a dozen red roses, gave her a kiss, and told her that he loved her.
‘Of course you do,’ she said lightly, ‘doesn’t everybody?’ She took him inside and
introduced him to the four other people who had also come early as the ‘young man
who saved our Teresa one day in Lauderdale’. Then Monique excused herself. It was
her fashion, Nick later learned, to ask a few select friends to come early to a party,
to greet them in casual attire, and then to return an hour or so later, when everyone
had arrived, with a grand entrance. As Monique gracefully walked up the stairs of
the mansion, Nick’s eyes followed her with an unmistakable look of adoration.

‘Isn’t she magnificent?’ Nick was asked by a relaxed tanned man of about fifty who
offered him a martini. His name was Clayton. ‘Once I was with her all weekend on their
yacht, while Aaron was in Montreal. I thought she had invited me for a little diversion.’
He laughed. ‘But I was wrong. She just wanted some company and I could talk about
France and Europe. Come with me’ (he slipped his arm through Nick’s) ‘and I’ll introduce
you to the select group that was invited early today.’