Curious Wine (7 page)

Lane turned to Chris. “Thirty-two isn’t young—but it’s true you and Liz have more life experience than I. You can still make major decisions about your life up to the point of senility. People do that. There are all kinds of examples.”

“All I ever wanted to do was fuck my husband,” Liz said.

“Liz was always so sure of what she wanted,” Chris said, staring off toward the fire. “So blunt, so sure, so earthy about her needs. I was always more romantic. You know, I never even found a man who wanted to kiss me enough without, you know, wanting to do the other immediately. Men just don’t know things. What women want. Like how much we like to kiss.”

“Some women,” Liz said. “Not me. It’s not the pale moon that excites me.”

“A lot of women,” Lane said. “This woman. But not all men are like that, Chris. Some of them can’t be bothered finding out, but not all of them.”

Liz glared, and Diana said hastily, impelled to defend Chris and Lane, “This woman too.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Millie said. “Kissing is lovely. I think you can tell someone everything you think and feel with a kiss.”

Lane quoted softly,

“We talked with each other about each other

Though neither of us spoke.”

“Written by a deaf-mute,” Liz said scornfully.

The women laughed at Liz, except for Millie who lit a fresh joint and said unhappily, “Really, you can never tell what kind of a clod you’re going to find in bed. God, some of them are so crude.”

“True,” Lane said. “Too true.”

Millie continued in an aggrieved tone, “They think we’re nothing but two breasts and a vagina.”

Madge said, “Vaginas are out. Clitorises are in.”

“The hell you say,” Liz said. “My favorite song is ‘Great Balls of Fire.’ Just give me a good hard hot cock.”

“You see what I mean?” Chris said to Diana. “People talk about just incredible things today.”

“Some men don’t even know what a clitoris is,” Millie complained, “let alone where it is.”

“I should hang a sign on mine,” Madge said. “Do not fold, spindle or mutilate. Arthur pushes on mine like he’s ringing a doorbell. Arthur is my husband,” she explained to Diana, who was laughing helplessly.

“Why don’t you tell the dumb son of a bitch?” Liz said indifferently. She sipped her bourbon and took a quick puff from Millie’s joint.

“You know better than that. Tell a man anything about sex and it’s like stepping on a scorpion. And I have told him. Told him and told him. He still does it. I leap in the air with pain and he thinks it’s sexual frenzy.”

Chris said, ignoring the laughter of the women, “I think you live very dangerously, Millie. That singles bar of yours, you just take a terrible chance.”

“That’s silly, Chris. We’re not all looking for Mr. Goodbar.” Millie pushed at the blonde frizz around her face. “I used to think Mom and Daddy were funny because they always went to this beer bar all the time, but now I understand. They had friends there they cared about. Singles bars aren’t the awful places they’re made out to be. They’re like… clubs. You get to know people, you even care about some of them. Where it ends is up to you, just like anywhere else.” Her soft voice trailed off. “You can find sex anywhere…”

Madge said, “It’s in your script. Your parents went to a place like that and you think they’ve given you orders to do the same.”

“Jesus Christ,” Liz said, rolling her eyes upward. “Scripts. I need another drink.” She climbed to her feet. “Scripts scripts scripts,” she muttered, marching to the kitchen.

“It’s just not good to drift from one affair to another, Millie,” Chris said. “How would you know if the real thing came along?”

Lane said, “People often confuse the real thing with something that should have been an affair.”

“Lane’s right.” Millie nodded eagerly. “Look at all the divorces.”

“People should be able to handle butterfly interludes,” Lane said, smiling at Millie.

“But so many?” Chris said doubtfully.

“Butterfly interludes are very different from the real thing,” Lane said.

“But butterfly interludes are so superficial,” Diana said, disliking the term.

“They’re meant to be,” Lane said. “They shouldn’t be given any deeper significance.”

“Let’s go on,” Madge said. “It’s your turn, Chris. What would you like to see me change?”

“Well… nothing really. Well, maybe… it’s hard to get a real grip on you, that’s all. You’ve got opinions and ideas and lots of enthusiasm about what interests you, but I’m not sure I know who the real Madge is. Does that make any sense?”

Madge took a final puff from the tiny end of a joint and crushed it. She lit another as no one spoke. “Anybody agree with that? Did you hear, Liz?”

Liz took her place in the circle holding a tumblerful of bourbon in which a single ice cube floated. “I heard. And yes, since you ask. There are times I’d like to shake you till your teeth rattle and the real Madge comes out.” She swallowed some bourbon. “You jump from one crackpot idea to another and every time you say this one’s the right one, this one’s eternal truth. Then a week or a month later you’ve gone on to the next eternal truth.”

“I think every time it might be,” Madge said in a low voice. She stared at the floor. “There might be… answers.”

Diana gazed at her, stricken with pity.

“There’s a lot to you, I’m sure,” Millie said, “but sometimes you remind me of those terribly superficial women from Southern California. No offense,” she added to Diana.

“We have them,” Diana said, thinking tartly that this woman had little room to talk, this Northern California woman who drifted from one liaison to another.

Madge said, “I can’t change my—” She saw the expression on Liz’s face and amended her words, “I’m not sure how. I don’t know how to change.”

“Live your life instead of observing and analyzing it all the time.” Abruptly, Liz asked, “Where’s Arthur tonight?”

Madge blinked in surprise. “I suppose home or playing cards with his friends.”

“Why did he let you come up here for a week by yourself?”

“Liz,” Madge said, pulling at her hair, “Liz, you know very well we allow each other room to breathe.”

“Sure. Sure, Madge. You play around?”

“Of course not. You know I don’t.”

“Does Arthur?”

“I don’t have to have him at my side every minute. We agreed we both need room to breathe, to be more interesting to each other. I trust him.” Madge’s fingernails raked her hair.

“Horseshit,” Liz said, “pure horseshit. You couldn’t even trust any of us to catch you.”

“How long have you been married, Madge?” Lane asked in a quiet voice.

“Twelve years,” Madge answered in a whisper.

“I don’t see any problems with an agreement like that between people with a good long-term marriage.”

“Don’t you,” Liz said with heavy sarcasm. “How long is the longest you’ve been with a man, Miss Christiansen?”

“Two years.”

“So that makes you an expert.” She turned to Madge. “I don’t know whose idea it was, this room to breathe shit, but when you love somebody you want to share all the important things, and everything’s important. How may years do you have, for chrissake, to spread yourself around a bunch of nitwit fad freaks? They just don’t have anybody themselves, that’s their problem. Room to breathe, my ass. I’d tell Arthur I don’t need any more room to breathe, I’ve done all the breathing I want.”

Madge said, almost inaudibly, “I don’t know… how Arthur would react.”

“Ah. And that’s the trouble, isn’t it, Madge.” Liz took a deep swallow of bourbon. “But you’d find
out
, wouldn’t you? And you’ll never find that answer in astrology or eastern religions. I’d tell him no more free and easy breathing, you’d better be enough for him or you’ll break both his balls.”

“That’s your style, not my style.”

It could never be my style either, Diana thought.

“You have to
fight
for what you love, for what’s yours.”

I’ve never fought for anything, Diana thought.

Madge said slowly, deliberately, “You lost.”

“At least I
fought
, goddammit!”

“You might have won without fighting. George might never have left if you’d turned your back for a while.”

“Maybe. Maybe. And maybe he’d have just broken my back too, like—” She broke off, staring at Madge with glittering dark eyes.

Then she continued in a soft cruel voice, “What’s it like, Madge, when he waves it right under your nose? How can you let him put his cock in you when he’s putting it in everybody else?”

“When you love somebody enough — ”

I could never love anybody enough, Diana thought.

“Shit, Madge.” Liz’s voice was suddenly heavy, tired. “If what you give him isn’t enough let him go fuck himself. It isn’t worth it.”

“I’ve got Arthur. It doesn’t matter about the terms. And one of these days he’ll be old. And with me.”

Dear God, Diana thought, her stomach wrenching.

“Let’s go on,” Madge said softly. “Let me make my statement about Millie.”

“Should we really go on with this,” Lane said quietly.

Liz said truculently, “Why not? It’s not for you to say this isn’t helping some of us.”

Diana could no longer smell the fresh sharpness of the fire; the cabin reeked of the sweetish smell of marijuana.

“Once we work through the negatives, all the positives will come out,” Madge said. Her voice was tired; her face was pale and lined with fatigue. “Millie,” she said, turning to her, “I’d like to see you be less naive about people. You think they’re all so good and honest, and they’re not. I’d like to see you approach your relationships with some skepticism, for your own good.”

“What Madge means,” Liz said heavily, “is you ought to take off that sign that says fuck me and then kick me.” She lurched slightly and caught herself; Diana saw that she was drunk.

“You’re wrong, both of you,” Millie said. “I’m very skeptical. When you’ve been hurt as much as me— But every time I meet somebody who seems nice I’m like you, Madge. I think this is the time it’ll be different. And for a while it’s always really good. And then it changes, and I can’t keep it from becoming. awful.”

“It always changes,” Liz said, “that’s what you don’t understand. The romance always fades, he stops sending flowers and carrying you into the bedroom. That’s when you’ve got to be your own person, be attractive as a person, be more than just a pretty body he enjoys screwing. You can’t hold anybody by turning into a nag and a whining baby, Millie. Men want a woman, not a baby.”

“I’m not a baby,” Millie said with a pout. “Just because I don’t wear hobnailed boots like you doesn’t mean I don’t want to be accepted for what I am, not what somebody else wants.”

“Jesus Christ,” Liz hissed. “I can understand why men stomp all over you. I’ve got an almost irresistible urge right now to kick you in the teeth.”

“You’re just a miserable unhappy old hag.”

“Well, well.” Liz’s smile was wide. “I finally got a little nastiness out of our sweet quiet innocent baby Millie. Is this the first time, Millie? Did I bust your cherry?”

“You hateful bitch!”

“Keep working on it. Maybe someday one man too many’ll play you for a doormat and get his feet bitten off.”

“Stop this, Liz,” Chris slurred. “Stop this right now.”

“I’m not a doormat!” Millie glared at Liz. “You’d think that about any woman who just tries to be nice and please men.”

Liz shrugged contemptuously. “Have it your way. Maybe you like to be fucked and kicked. I’ve seen stranger things. Who’s next?”

Madge sighed heavily. “You are. This isn’t going at all the way it should, but if we just get through it— You make a statement now about Lane.”

“What an interesting opportunity.” Liz looked speculatively at Lane. “Is there any rule that says I can’t skip my turn? I want to think about this.”

Madge looked at Liz, alarmed and uncertain. Liz said, “Besides, I’d like to hear what negative Miss Mar-lane-a Christiansen has to offer about perfect Diana.”

Diana did not look up. Anguished, torn, battered by what she had heard, she sat waiting for another blow to fall, this time from Lane. She stared at the carpet, a deep coldness in her.

“I have nothing negative to say about Diana,” Lane said.

“How noble,” Liz said scornfully. “Come on,” she goaded, “there must be something. Some little thing. How she files her fingernails. Some small thing.”

“There’s nothing. Everything I know about Diana so far I like. There isn’t anything about her I want to see changed.” “Sweet, perfect Diana. How wonderful it must be—to be so sweet and perfect. And attractive along with it. It’s so high- minded of you to watch over her. Very high-minded indeed. Dear Diana is down right now about her friend Jack, but Mar-lane-a isn’t going to kick her.”

Speechless, paralyzed with shock at having her pain exposed in this roomful of strangers, Diana stared helplessly at Liz.

“That’s enough,” Lane said coldly.

“Vivian told me about you, Diana dear. Or at least what she guessed. We have something in common, dear. You walked out on him just like I did, you know just how it feels. You don’t talk about how he hurt you, but the footprints are all over you. You’re much too honest, that’s your trouble, my dear.” Liz’s voice was low and harsh. “You need a little more deceit in you when it comes to men. You need that for survival. Men are such bastards. All we want to do is love them and they’re such bastards. How could he do any better than you? A little younger maybe, but that’s all. Maybe he found somebody who looked like your friend Lane here, all blonde and pretty.”

“I said that’s enough.” Lane’s voice was glacial. “And I mean that’s enough.”

The two women stared in silence. Diana could not see Lane’s face; Liz, eyes fixed burningly on Lane, nostrils flared, wide thick lips twisted in hate, said with quiet malevolence, “All right, let’s talk about you. I’ll take my turn now, Madge. What you need to change is your thinking you’re so bloody superior. Woman with a mission, our fair-haired dedicated young lawyer out to save the world with people like Diana sitting at your feet. Shit,” she spat, “who needs you?”

“Shut up!” Diana’s voice broke from her. She was rigid with fury. “Shut up!”