The Casanova Embrace (26 page)

"We are simply different," she said. He felt her
glance move over him, a rare feeling. He had never even felt that she had
noticed he was alive. I will resist her as always, he pledged to himself. Her
onslaught was too obvious, surely a ploy.

"Everyone has a cross to bear," he said, sensing
the power of his self-pity.

"I have given you nothing," she said.

"That is true." He had tried to disguise his
bitterness.

"You have every right to be.... "She seemed to
have lost the word.

"Humiliated. Hurt. Unhappy. Foolish. Choose it."

"I know," she sighed.

He moved away from her, poured himself another cognac, and
sat down on the chair. She continued to look out the window, her back toward
him. He could not draw his eyes away from the delicious curve of her body, the
straight back reaching downward into the curve of her tight buttocks. His
hardened penis quivered in expectation. It is unbearable, he told himself.

When she turned to face him, he knew how fragile was the
extent of his resolve.

"I can't remake myself," she said, lowering her
head. A single lamp lit the room. She moved and it was behind her, the light
passing through the flimsy dressing gown.

"It is cruel," he said. But she seemed to be
perplexed by his meaning, hesitant in her answer.

"I suppose," she said. She seemed to be holding
herself in a pose, ever the narcissist. Despite his resolve, he could not
contain the onrush of pleasure, the sharp tingling down his spine. Logic
receded. His energy seemed concentrated in his manhood. He was taut, ready to
burst. He undid his robe. His hard, quivering penis stuck out of the fly of his
pajamas. He looked at it, stupidly, his face flushing.

"You see."

He wanted to cry. His body shook as he stifled a sob. I
hate myself, he shouted inside. He knew she could not bear it, watching as her
eyes looked away. Yet she came toward him. You mustn't, he told himself, his
will gone now, reaching out for her, touching her, lifting her dressing gown,
feeling her flesh, kissing the soft thatch of hair at the edge of her flat
belly. His tongue lapped at her, like a dog. His head pounded.

"Feel something, dammit!" he shouted, moving her
body over his, plunging his hardness inside of her, feeling immediately the
surging wonder of his body's pleasure, a suffusion from his head downward, from
his toes upward, as if his entire body had reached into her womanness,
devouring, begging for her mercy as he gorged himself on her.

Even after, his hardness would not dissipate and he carried
her into the bedroom and moved inside of her again, holding her tightly,
engulfing her with his legs and arms, his lips pressed against hers until they
hurt, his nostrils breathing in the scent of her, his eyelashes fluttering
against her cheeks. His mind seemed vacated, his intelligence gone. Only his
oneness with her mattered. Later, when some rational sense returned, he
realized that she held him clutched between her legs, her arms locked over his
back. Was it happening, he wondered, daring not to delude himself. It was the
only sign of response, the holding.

He would remember this moment as the high point of his life
and the high tide of his self-delusion. He did not leave the next morning. They
made love throughout the day. She brought him food on a tray and they talked
little since he was afraid that what was happening would disappear in words. It
was too fragile to disturb, and each time he moved over her and she held him,
it was balm to a weathered soul, an elixir to still his self-pity. He was ready
to forgive her anything, to reverse his own betrayal of what had seemed a
perverse bargain up till then.

"I love you," he told her again and again. She
said nothing. He refused to be clinical. Had he moved her? He dared not ask.
When he was not loving her, he was watching her, a feast for his eyes, her
face, her hair, the upward curve of her full breasts, the gentle sweep of her
hips, the tight flesh of her stomach. He kissed her navel, the beginning of
her, moving downward and upward, hungry for every part of her. It was dangerous
to know such happiness.

Is it happening to her? It was the one question for which
he might have given his life for an affirmation.

Toward evening of the next day, he saw her pass into sleep,
the fading light inhibiting his view of her. He got up to light a lamp that sat
on a table across the room. Pulling the chain, he saw the puddle of yellow light
illumine a book, somehow oddly placed. Later he would wonder why his eye had
caught it, some preordained, demon-inspired movement. It was actually the
Bible, and it made little sense being where it was. Miranda was, he knew, a
devoted Catholic, but she had never brought the Bible into their bedroom. Or he
simply had not noticed. Picking it up, a paper slipped from its pages, a kind
of chart. It fluttered to the floor and he stooped to pick it up, putting it
into the puddle of light to read it.

On it was a graph, neatly drawn, with little number
notations on intersecting lines. Some of the numbers were consecutive, others
changing, providing a rising, steady curve upward as the lines intersected the
rising points. His heart lurched. She was recording her temperature levels, the
present date coinciding with the beginning of the rise in the curve. He felt
the blood rush to his head as he moved quickly to the bedside, shaking her
awake. Her eyes opened in fear. When she saw the paper in his hand, her fear vanished,
giving way to the old recognized contempt.

"You bitch!" he said, waving the paper in front
of her. Then he crumpled it and threw it across the room. He felt victimized,
unclean, betrayed. "I was a fool!"

She shrugged, remaining silent, turning her eyes away. She
had sat up. Now she reclined, watching him.

"You felt nothing." It was not a question. His
anger had quieted and his sense of futility seized him again.

"I am what I am," she said, gently now. "It
is not in me." Then she smiled, an odd, owlish grin, as if the entire
episode had been an amusement, an entertainment.

"Hopefully, some good will come of it," she said.
"The temperature was at its highest."

"But it meant nothing!" he sputtered, reaching
for words that would not come.

"It doesn't have to."

"I thought, perhaps.... "he began. His words
trailed off. He did not want to reveal his humiliation any further.

"You didn't seem to mind," she said. She had,
after all, witnessed his one-sided ecstasy.

"You are like ice," he said, a salve to himself,
since he had not stirred her, and could not.

He dressed silently, quickly, thinking only of how fast he
must get out of this room, away from her. He did not wash. Perhaps it was
deliberate, he thought, an unconscious desire to carry away the smell of her.

"If we have a child, you will have to love a piece of
me," he said, a tiny note of triumph seeping into his tone. He did not
look back. Nor did she respond.

There had been one other time in her life when Anne had
been afraid to admit her happiness to herself, afraid that the admission would
make it disappear. She was seventeen and it was summer. Her parents had that
big old place in Camden, Maine, overlooking the postcard harbor. They had come
there each summer since she could remember and her days had been filled with
sailing her tiny sloop around the harbor, haunting the wonderful public library
on the edge of town, and trying to understand the changes that were happening
in her body and mind.

It was no mystery to her that, of all the summers she had
spent in Camden, the one that had burned itself into her memory was the brief
four weeks she had spent with Biff Maloney.

It was a preposterous name. He was a preposterous person,
the son of a local yacht mechanic. Muscled, tan, tall, he had blond curly hair
and deep dimples which framed a big white toothy smile. There was, of course, a
deep class distinction between the locals and the summer people. It was not
uncommon. The locals scratched out a living from the summer folks, resented
them, but relied on their coming to replenish the coffers for the lean winters.
It was the rhythm of life in Camden. Everyone accepted it. And when the line
was breached, there were always those who rallied round before the breach had
scandalized the community.

She had never noticed him before, although she had passed
the boatyard hundreds of times, tacking around the harbor. An errant gust of
wind had bounced her tiny sailboat against the hull of a cabin cruiser at the
end of the boatyard dock, where Biff was hanging from a harness over the stern
painstakingly painting the letters of the boat's name. She was called Paradise
Found, which struck Anne as silly and pretentious. To make it worse, Biff had
transposed the last two letters in the word "Paradise" so that it
read "Paradies." He had looked down at her from his vantage in the
harness, shaking his head with feigned contempt as she struggled to find the
wind again. He stuck a finger in his mouth, held it up to find the breeze, then
pointed in the wind's direction. She knew, of course, where it was, but she was
stuck in the lee of the Paradise Found's bulk.

"The tiller to starboard," he called, smiling
now, since she had lost all control and was bobbing helplessly.

"I didn't ask you," she cried, annoyed at what
she perceived as his arrogance. She squinted up at him. His vacuous grin was
broad and his dimples deepened. She noticed the dimples immediately. Simpleton,
she thought. Embedded in the class distinction was the unspoken belief in the
genetic decay of the locals. They were simply born dumb, her father had once
told her, and she had believed him.

"Get a motor," he hooted. Looking up in
exasperation, she discovered the spelling error and felt the onrushing joy of
impending revenge.

"Get a brain," she cried, watching his confused
expression. He looked up at the sky. "'Brain', you idiot, not
'rain,'" she murmured inaudibly. He shrugged and cocked an ear. He thinks
I'm the dumb one, she thought.

She pointed to the letters on the hull and finally he saw
what she was referring to, although it made little difference in his
understanding.

Finally she had to spell it out for him and he pulled on
the rope so that the harness could ascend to the deck. He was lost from sight
for a moment. Then she saw his head over the rim of the rail.

"Darn right," he called, showing her a note pad
on which the words were spelled right. Dropping a rope ladder, he descended.
She watched him climb downward, holding the rope ladder to keep the boat from
drifting. His tanned legs were lightly haired and he wore tight shorts which
packed in his well developed buttocks. Above his waist he was bare, tan,
muscles rippling under golden skin. In the harness he had been hardly
formidable, merely dumb. Now as he got closer he was awesome, big and
beautiful. It was her first jolt of awakening sexuality, the beginning of
womanhood, and she could reckon the moment exactly.

"They woulda give me unshirted," he said. "I
ain't no good at spellin'."

Her heart was pounding. He let himself ease into the
sailboat. She could smell the musk of him now. This must be the way a man
smells, she thought. His bare arm brushed against her shoulder. Sliding across
the seat, he completely enveloped her, his hard bicep pressed against her back
as he jiggled the tiller. She felt paralyzed. She would never know whether it
was from fear or from pleasure, but she sat rooted as he stretched one leg over
the rail and pushed the hull of the cabin cruiser. The little sailboat shot
free and into the wind.

"There," he said, not bragging, genuinely helpful,
even humble. "You done me good. I didn' mean you were a lousy
sailor."

The boat moved swiftly now and, as if in deference to her
seamanship, he gave her the tiller and the rope.

Her hands were barely able to keep their grip as his huge
arm still buttressed her. He was not shy. Natural. That was the way she would
always see him in her mind.

"I'm Biff Maloney," he said.

"I'm Penny McCarthy." Anne had not yet found her
identity.

"Penny!" He slapped his thigh. Had her name
struck him as funny? She looked at him now, trying to be analytical despite his
overwhelming physical presence. She had a difficult time keeping her eyes from
the tight pouch of his crotch. She had never seen a male organ except in
anatomy books in a doctor's office, and, somehow, the curiosity had always
seemed unclean and she'd been able to subdue it.

"Better get me back to work. They'll can me," he
said, showing no anxiety. In three tacks she got him back near the rope ladder.
He grabbed it, then stood for a moment, looking up and squinting at his error.

"I'm no darn speller," he said, smiling. He is
beautiful, she decided. Dumb, but beautiful.

Thinking about him made her happy. She was not immune to
the idea of class distinction programmed into her from infancy. And she knew he
was stupid. But that didn't stop her from wanting to see him again.

She had all the leisure in the world and could easily
conform to his nonworking hours. After that first day, she took to sailing
close to the boatyard docks as part of her regular course. He would wave to her
and she would wave back. She was, of course, deliberately calculating,
contriving to meet him at every opportunity. On his part, he was so thickheaded
and easily manipulated that he was soon sailing with her every day after he got
off from work. She preferred that. On the water, they could easily escape the
notice of people by heading into one of the many coves that lined the shore.

Biff didn't talk much, but he was gentle, and she found it
gave her pleasure to touch him. They'd stretch out, pulling in the sail and
letting the boat drift, watching the changing colors of the sun as it dipped
slowly in the west.

"You are one big teddy bear," she told him.

"Yeah."

"You like being with me, Biff?"

"Yeah."

She did learn some rudimentary facts about him. He was born
in Camden. His mother had died. He had only gone to school till the fifth
grade. She was surprised to learn that he was sixteen, a year younger than she,
but that hardly mattered. The image of the teddy bear that had popped into her
mind was very close to the truth.

"Where do you go every day?" her mother would
ask.

"Sailing."

"All day? You come home so late. I worry
sometimes."

Perhaps because Biff was inarticulate and there was little
conversation between them, she found herself actually withdrawing in
communicating with others, especially her parents.

"You okay, Penny?" her father said to her one
night.

"Yes."

"You look strange."

"I'm okay."

She sensed that they had begun to watch her with increasing
interest, although she did not pay them much attention. Biff was her life now.
He absorbed her completely. When she was not with him, she thought about him.
Was she secretly wishing that her mind might become as simple as his? He was
never unhappy. He could stare for hours at the sky and never say a word. She
felt like his mother. I can make him do anything, she mused.

"What are you thinking about, Biff?" she asked
him one evening on the boat.

"Nuthin."

"Do you like watching the sunset?"

"Yeah."

She knew that when she touched him, she gave him pleasure.
Sometimes she scratched his back and arms. He seemed to purr like a kitten.

"You like that, Biff?"

"Yeah."

As for her own pleasure, she knew that something profound
was happening in her body, but she could not define it. Those were days of
sexual ignorance. No one talked about it, and there was not a single book in
the Camden Public Library that referred, even clinically, to sexuality.

Sometimes they would pull the boat to the shore and lie on
the grass, holding each other, not saying a word. She nestled in his arms like
a baby. She loved to smell him and feel his tight, smooth flesh. When they had
known each other two weeks, she lay against him with bare breasts, feeling the
ends of her nipples tingle. There is an instinct about these things and soon he
was sucking them and she was loving it. She wanted more to happen, but she
wasn't sure exactly what.

An only child, she had always been introspective, living
within herself, fantasizing. And even though she knew that Biff had little
mental capacity, she believed that there was something mysterious blocking his
intelligence and that she could find the key to unlock his mind.

When she was away from him, she missed him. He was never
out of her thoughts. She wrote him little poems and read them to him, although
she knew that they made no impression.

She knew he was reacting physically. She had felt his
hardness against her body, but had not had the courage to touch him there. It
was not fear of him. Rather, fear for herself. She had a rudimentary knowledge
of how pregnancy occurred.

But, beyond that fear, another anxiety began to plague her.
Her parents' curiosity was getting more blatant. They pressed her for answers.

"There is something you're not telling me,
Penny," her mother would say.

"No."

"Where do you go? What do you do?"

"Nothing. I go sailing."

"Where?"

"Around the harbor."

But she was arriving home later and later. She began to
miss dinner and her parents' suspicions became an obsession. Finally, her
father found one of her unfinished poems.

"What is this?"

"A poem."

"It's a love poem."

She had blushed. "It's a secret poem."

Her father would not confront the subject further, but sent
her mother instead.

"Is there a boy?"

"No," she lied.

"Are you telling me the truth?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Can you explain the poem?"

"I write poems."

Still, the suspicion was not strong enough to interfere
with her relationship with Biff. In the few weeks that she had known him, the
weather had been perfect and she had been able to sail every day. Then one day
it rained.

"Where are you going?" her mother asked.

"Sailing."

"In the rain?"

"Yes."

She was no longer thinking in logical terms. Her world was
Biff now. Nothing else mattered. She was happy, but did not tell herself that,
for fear it would go away.

They did sail that day, but moved quickly to a nearby cove,
pulled the boat ashore, and used the sail to make a shelter for them. They lay
together on the grass. It was damp, but the warmth of their bodies dispelled
the chill.

"I love you, Biff," she whispered, pressing his
hand to her bare breast. "If only.... "She paused and looked at him,
his expression, as always, sunny and vague, his smile glistening in the soft
light filtering through the white sail over their heads.

"Yeah," he said.

"Do I make you feel good?"

"I always feel good with you, Penny," he said.

"We'll always be together, won't we, Biff?"

"Yeah."

"Do you like to touch me here?" She cupped her
small breasts

"Yeah."

"And would you like to see me naked?"

"Yeah."

She unbuttoned her slacks and rolled her panties down. His
eyes watched her nakedness. Lifting his hand, she brought it to her belly and
downward to the patch between her legs. Her body lurched. What is happening?

She asked, "Am I beautiful?"

"Yeah."

He is mine, she thought. I can make him do anything. She
started to unbutton his pants.

"That's bad," he said, but he did not stop her.
She wondered where she found the courage, and when the long, hard piece of
flesh flopped free, she gasped. Biff also looked confused as he watched its
throbbing, glistening head. At first she turned her eyes away. But there was
something in its strangeness that magnetized her. Finally she touched it. Biff
gasped, his eyes half-closed, as the thing seemed to lurch and a white
substance came out. Something terrible has happened, she thought, turning away.

"Are you all right, Biff?"

"Yeah."

"What was that?"

He didn't answer, and when she turned to him again he was
dressed. She put her clothes back on.

"I didn't hurt you?"

"Na."

"I love you. I would never hurt you."

"Yeah."

She lay down next to him again and hugged him close.

But the death knell of parting was already ringing in her
ears. She lay in his arms a long time that afternoon. When she came home, her
parents were waiting. They wore anxious expressions, as if someone had died.

"We know," her mother said.

"What?" She looked at her parents with the same
blankness that she had learned from Biff.