Mercy (65 page)

Grant was looking at her when he stopped, and just for a moment he seemed to look at her, really see her, for the first time. It was as if she could feel his eyes like a blind man’s fingers feathering lightly over her features, feeling the planes and slopes, the curves and texture of her face. Then he stopped, and his eyes went back to her eyes.

“One more glass,” he said, leaning forward to the small table and pouring nearly a full glass of the white wine. He held the bottle up and looked at it against the lamp light. “There’s a couple of more glasses in there. How about it?”

She nodded, and against her better judgment extended her glass for Grant to fill.

Leaning back against the sofa, he let a smile slip past his mustache. “It was good of you to ask the questions,” he said.

51

H
e began the process as if it were a tantric rite. And in a very real way it was in fact a re-enactment of those exercises before the image of the lingam-yoni in the secret sect of the Vratyas, the sacred harlots. Recognizing woman’s superior spiritual energy, men knew that they could achieve realization of the divinity only through sexual and emotional union with the Vratyas. That was very much what it was like, what he was doing. Certainly the lingam-yoni was never more perfectly embodied.

But that was only a fancy fantasy, a pedantic extrapolation of his own feelings. With his training, there was hardly anything he could say or see or do that did not somehow echo a mythological meaning. And certainly this act was a perfect example of the historicity of ideas. Carl Gustav Jung had said of the anima, “Every mother and every beloved is forced to become the carrier and embodiment of this omnipresent and ageless image, which corresponds to the deepest reality in a man. It belongs to him, this perilous image of Woman; she stands for the loyalty which in the interests of life he must sometimes forgo; she is the much needed compensation for the risks, struggles, sacrifices that all end in disappointment; she is the solace for all the bitterness of life.”

The whole thing was, really, too perfect.

He reached for the squatty little pot of concealer, dipped his finger into the cream, and began rubbing the smooth emollient under the eyes. The eyes were very important, maybe the most important. Of the Great Goddess Shakti, it was said that whole universes appeared and disappeared with the opening and shutting of her eyes; and in Syria the eyes of the Goddess Mari were her means of searching into the innermost reaches of men’s souls. The power of the eyes. He worked the cream lightly, gently. The eyes were delicate.

Then the foundation mousse. He had spent a lot of time locating the right kind of foundation, something delicate enough to match the subtle color of the skin and yet dense enough to conceal the contrasting dark lines. They had made improvements in foundations over the years, whether cream or liquid or mousse, but for his purposes the mousse, this particular mousse, was best. It also took time, but not for the same reasons. He had to apply it down the neckline, unable to stop along the chin and underside of the jaw as so many women preferred, because of the darkness. He was careful on the forehead and around the temples, lightly feathering it in around the hairline.

Eye-shadow base, to hold the true color of the shadow.

Loose powder. Translucent. A dusting of it to set the makeup, the mink brush dancing around the eyes, the cheeks, the angles of the nose, the chin, tickling the corners of the mouth. It seemed like such a little thing, but it made a difference.

Powder blush. His favorite moment, returning blood to the new face, making the transformation breathe again, giving life. A delicate step, a real blush was what was wanted, not the harsh, feverish look of a whore. Too many women turned themselves into whores at this point. They think that if a little is good, a lot is better. No, it wanted a light touch.

Eye shadow. The subtleties of hue and tint and shade and tone. Again, what was wanted was pastel, the hazy effect of an old movie, a suggestion of something, not the thing itself. If an observer’s attention was attracted to the shadow first, it had been misapplied.

Eyeliner. He had shopped a long time before he found the right one, a tiny soft brush, a roundish thing that could be rotated in the fingers to a fine point. The bristles, so fine and delicate they moved as one, laying down a smooth umber line next to the eyeball.

Mascara. Nothing elaborate here either. Only a shallow, graceful curve to the lashes and one or two strokes with the cylindrical brush.

The woman was almost there; he had almost re-created her, and with every tiny movement came a sense of increasing well-being, a deep peacefulness that he no longer tried to understand. He simply welcomed it, was grateful for it, and accepted it as a peculiar gift of the psyche. It was no longer the curse that it had been for so many years. The emerging woman was some part of himself that lay in the deep regions of his anima. Once he had fought with her chaos. He had struggled and agonized; he had suffered trying to understand. But now the curse had turned.

He took a silver hair pick and touched up the bouffant blond hair, lightened it around the face. It was an especially fine job, he thought. He liked what he saw. He almost smiled at what he saw.

Standing slowly, he looked at the new
point d’esprit
stretch teddy with elaborate lace insets. He had gotten a small cup and his nipples showed through the dusky lace. It had been an experiment, this body-clinging spandex, a successful experiment, he told himself, as he turned sideways and regarded his buttocks, the way his beefy chest actually filled the tiny cups of the bra. He cocked one leg forward, bent the knee with a practiced coyness. Jesus, he was pleased. Watching himself, he bent down to the corner of the bed and picked up the garter belt, a mink-colored affair that he had looked for forever. He spread it open, flattening the lace, and, again watching himself in the mirror, stepped into it with pointed toes, his hair falling across the corner of his face with a springy, sexy bounce. He tossed it back with a flip of his head—a gesture he loved—and then stepped into the garter belt with the other leg. With his thumbs inside the elastic, he pulled the belt up over his stomach and flattened it around his waist.

Sitting in front of the dresser, he faced the mirror and watched himself slip the toe of one raised leg into the gathered stocking. He watched himself pull and smooth the stocking over his foot, over the ankle, tightening it from behind with a caressing gesture of his cupped hand, slowly stretching it up his calf, the dark silk playing out of his hand in a sheer envelope as sweet as liquid, over the knee and up to the dark top of the stocking. Never moving his eyes off the mirror, he used both hands to smooth and tighten the stocking one last time and then stretched down the elastic straps and hooked the stocking, first in front and then, reaching behind his thigh, in back.

The second leg followed quickly; after all, he had had years of experience. He had only taken his time with the first one because it pleased him so much to watch the natural grace of his fluid movements, and because he would never, never tire of the feel of fine silk embracing his straightened leg.

He got up quickly and went over to the side of the bed and took the dress off the padded hanger. For this evening he had chosen a Victor Costa straight skirt of rayon crepe and matching surplice jacket with slightly padded shoulders. It was a leaf print, tropical leaves, white on black with black trim on the surplice and hem of the jacket. He stepped into the skirt and slipped on the jacket, and while he was still fastening the jacket he walked over to the dresser mirror. He had already picked double-twisted strands of black and white pearls as a choker, which he quickly fastened. Tilting his head to one side and then to the other, he screwed on two large pearl earrings bordered with tiny chips of onyx. Finally, he stepped into black Amalfi low-heeled calfskin pumps. He snatched a soft kid purse off the edge of the dresser, struck a last pose for the mirror, and saw a woman who pleased him enormously. Feeling totally at ease, free of anxieties and tensions for the first time that day, Dr. Dominick Broussard allowed himself a smile for the mirror, and then turned and stepped out onto the mezzanine and started downstairs. He would take a drive, have a couple of cocktails in a dimly lit club somewhere, enjoy the incomparable pleasure of simply being himself. Then he would come home and have dinner.

He ate alone, of course, a dinner that Alice always prepared for him on Saturday mornings before she took off at noon for the rest of the weekend. He heated the meal in the microwave—it was always a complete dinner, tonight veal Basquaise with lightly sauteed vegetables—and put it on a table also set by Alice that morning. Tonight he felt very glamorous and opened the terrace doors and ate by candlelight, overlooking the lawn that sloped to the bayou and beyond which the lights of the city rose up on the other side above the black trees. The air was heavy after the rains, but not too hot, just warm enough to enhance the tropical mood of the evening. He put on several albums of Brazilian music, the varied feminine voices and favored rhythms of Alcione, Gal Costa, Elis Regina.

He had done more drinking than eating, but when he had finally had enough of the veal Basquaise, he took his glass and the bottle of Santa Sofia Valpolicella and drifted out on the terrace, where he placed the wine bottle on a marble-topped iron table and sat beside it in one of the chairs. Crossing his legs at the knee, he pulled the liquid hem of his dress up over his knee, and felt the warm air wash over his thighs, felt it touch his bare flesh between the top of the stocking and the bottom of his panties. He was heady with the wine, thrilled at the thought of himself sitting in the dark, but covered in the luxuriant white tendrils and small fingers of the tropical flora of his dress, the voices of the dusky Brazilian women purling and soaring, floating and sinking and wafting, maybe even reaching to the distant glitter on the far, black margin of the night.

“Dominick!”

His eyes popped open, and at the same time he almost lost consciousness, the effect of the woman’s voice calling his name stunning him as effectively as if he had been hit over the head with a mallet.

“Dominick?” It was a hoarse, questioning whisper.

He forced himself to come around. It was real. Jesus. The dress. The glass slipped from his hand and shattered on the terrace floor. He froze. The Brazilian voices had stopped and nothing was audible but his own heart and the sea of crickets that flowed in the bayou. Did she think he was Dominick? Or that he was there with Dominick, and Dominick was somewhere on the terrace?

“This is Mary,” she said. She was still out of his sight in the shrubbery next to the terrace. Why didn’t she come around? Did she think she was interrupting something? He was stone, not even turning his head her way, only knowing where she was because of her voice. Jesus God. Did he try to get out of this?

Broussard lowered his crossed leg and felt the glass grind under the Amalfi pump. He desperately wished he hadn’t drunk so much wine because the way he was he couldn’t be sure of any of his movements, if they were too slow, too brittle. He couldn’t even be sure if he was doing the right thing, whatever it was he was doing. Did he appear drunk to her from her vantage point in the shrubbery? What did he look like? What was she thinking?

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I knew Alice was gone…I saw the lights, and I just came around by the wall, around to here. I thought I might see you from here…”

He simply couldn’t move. His thinking on this was…blank.

“I…I don’t care…if…you’re dressed up,” she said.

Christ Almighty! What a strange thing to say. He wondered how long she had been there.

“Not in the least,” she said.

And what a strange reaction to what she was seeing. He imagined what she was seeing; he got out of his body and walked down to where she was and looked back at himself, sitting there bolt upright, gripping the arms of the wrought-iron chair, his blond wig, perhaps, phosphorescing in the darkness.

“Is it all right if I come up?” she asked.

Not even Bernadine had seen him “in dress.” Not after all the years of kinky sex, not even after Bernadine came to him in a man’s suit with a dildo tied between her legs. Not even then, and not even after…

“I’m coming up,” she said tentatively. He couldn’t even get his throat to work to protest. Besides, he didn’t know what kind of voice to use. His heart was hammering so hard he thought his ears would explode and shoot out a stream of blood.

Then it was too late, and in the corner of his right eye he saw her move around the end of the steps below him. Ever so slightly, he adjusted his head and turned his eyes to meet hers. She was wearing a calf-length dress, light-colored, probably a summer beige, that buttoned down the front from neck to hem, allowing her to adjust the amount of bust and leg she wanted to show. Right now, with one foot on the bottom step, it seemed to him she was showing quite a bit of both. And then as he looked at her he became slowly aware of a vague air of disorientation about her and, even, he thought, an intimation of something uncanny. Her hair was in slight disarray, a definite feel of wild uncertainty about her.

“I don’t care…I don’t care about the dress,” she said, one lovely pale hand on the limestone banister of the terrace steps as she raised her other leg and mounted the first step. “I had to talk to you…a drastic, a drastic thing, I know. But this afternoon I wasn’t through…We had to stop…the interruption.”

If Broussard lived through all the lives of Tiresias, from sex to sex and back again, he would never forget this moment.

“I went to meet someone tonight,” she said, mounting another step. “I should have told…should have told you…more about the little girl, you know, me, and…even, now, how it is. I lied, or it was like a lie because it never came out…really came out.”

She was up another step now and moving with less hesitation and more quickly. He was still frozen in the chair beside the bottle of Valpolicella. He had yet to make a sound.