What I Did for Love (6 page)

But here was Rand, perfect for my great experiment. He was not circumcised, which surprised me, but I would find out why some other time. Now, I took his penis in my hand, slipping the foreskin back, the inner shaft viscous and hot as I passed it into my cupped palm, then running its tip on the horizontal line across the palm, and I could hear him gasp.

“What are you doing?” he managed to ask, consumed. But I
only gazed up at the ceiling with a little smile, hotter than ever at his ecstasy. Mrs. Sanjay had explained that this action would not make him come. He would have to do “the work of that final wondrous completion” himself, as she explained it, but he would find the sex act, as she called it, wildly more pleasurable.

It worked. He was hot as a lion, breathing like some combination of dragon and engine, and I was shivering as he got ready to enter me. I began snaking my arms around him, we were kissing so hotly, he was nibbling my lips and then flitting his tongue over them, so that the world was invisible through a cloud of scent and heat and the sweet downy hair of his chest and around his sex. I held my breath, preparing for what I knew would be a more serious thrust than I had known, and he was against me, about to press into me, and then…

Oh no, oh God, a sound from his jacket, and his blind shock at hearing it, a groan of his pain and frustration, a struggle not to hear it, and almost a small scream at its insistence. Rand kissed my lips and then my neck and pulled his trousers up as he slid away to get the signaling cellphone.

Practically shaking with anger and the aftermath of frustrated passion, he clicked and listened, saying nothing, but as I watched, his eyes changed to a harder focus. I knew that look. We were done.

He clicked off and came to hold me. “I’m so sorry,” he said, half panting the words, anger and resignation on his face, seeing my sorrowful and shocked face, my own resignation matching his. I knew he had a major role in his family’s high-powered financial dealings, and had seen enough of this world to know what was calling him away. I also recognized how unusual the ringtone had been. Bredon and I had a special emergency ringtone between us. Obviously, something major had occurred, the ringtone signaling an urgent situation, urgent enough even to stop a passion that was making us blind with desire. This was the world we both lived in. To remain rich in a world of high risk and
high gain, one had to be vigilant. And that required choices, especially in a world of shifting economies in different time zones. Between love’s demands and maintaining one’s fortune, the choices were seen as obvious, because it was also assumed but oh-so-politely unsaid, that where fortunes faded away, so did love.

“I must go, Dray, I am so sorry.” He said it anxiously, hoping I would not be furious with him. “I’ll be back tomorrow night, or I hope by Wednesday. Say we can see each other then.”

“Yes,” I managed to say; there was nothing for it. He quickly reached for me again, his fingers finding me, his hand working me quickly, so that I climaxed in a hot rush, and he kept his hand hard against me as I throbbed, a pain and pleasure that would have to do for now, though it made me want more.

I didn’t even think of his satisfaction, I didn’t think to look at him as he did his trousers up and straightened himself out. Only later I realized that I didn’t know enough to ask or look. And anyway, I wouldn’t have known what I was looking for, whether he would still have his erection, whether it had gone away. I knew the textbooks, but he had the “hands on” experience, my thoughts said wryly. My own real experience was still lacking. He didn’t seem to mind. He was so concerned for me, so tender, and so exasperated with fate, I wanted to cling to him and keep him from going anywhere.

As we put our clothes into some presentable semblance of their original neatness, he entered another set of numbers into his phone. I realized that these numbers signaled Tom, for as we left the park, hearing the gate close behind us, we could see him standing by the car, holding the door open.

“I wish I could see you home,” Rand whispered, “but you’ll be safe with Tom.” Rand practically lowered me bodily onto the seat, his last quick kiss on my lips leaving my knees even more shaky, and grateful for his incredible tenderness.

The car took me home in silent luxury, and though I wanted
to cry, I felt drained, wanting the sleep that we should have shared after he had built me up to that crashing pleasure. When I got to my bed, I barely got my clothes off, got under the coverlet, crawled to the center of the bed, and fell into the deepest sleep I had ever known.

When I woke, for the first time in my life I was a creature rumpled from lovemaking, yesterday’s clothing all askew around my body.

My normal waking time, when my body roused itself with no alarm, was generally at dawn, even before dawn in winter months. My mother had laughed that I was the only adolescent who naturally rose early. The other side of this was that I also tended to get sleepy early, which did not help my patchy social life. When galas were held, opera openings, ballet festivals, anything lasting into the night, when I attended with my family and was expected to be part of the social display, it was a challenge for me. I would drink several cups of coffee over the course of the day, to charge my body awake at least until midnight. It helped that I was so young, able to coax myself to later hours. I often was going home, or already home, while my peers were madly partying in their after-hours times together. It must have been some sort of relief for my parents, but they did not make a great deal out of it, perhaps afraid to jinx it. They liked what one of my friends called my “lady monk” ways. I was never at a late party. My peers often teased that I was a sleepyhead, but gave up trying to change my stubbornly daylight-oriented body clock. They named me “Cinderella,” and called to me that my midnight hour was fast approaching. This would start around ten PM, which was about how late I could hold out before getting into the family car to be driven home. Our driver was the envy of the other drivers, who had to wait all hours for their young charges to make their raucous ways back to their cars.

One time, when I was talking about my friends’ exasperation with my inability to stay up late, my mother had said that as I got older, “when you are as old as I am,” she had laughed, early
nights would be a delicious blessing. Her eyes had been filled with mischief, sympathy for my childish sleeping hours, happiness that I was safely home when others my age were who-knew-where. My mother’s eyes shone that way now in my memory. How I missed her, the familiar involuntary sob at the memory of her face, the tears gathering and burning my eyelids, oh, my mother.

I waited to gather myself to some calmer state, and turned to look at the clock. It said eight AM. I was stunned. How late had I returned? And why was I so slow in getting out of bed? Generally, I was totally awake the minute my eyes opened. What had last night done to me? I smiled to myself at my question, suddenly aware of the most gorgeous scent of roses wafting about me. On my desk in the alcove beyond my bed was a vase of red roses, so heavily, headily wonderful, they were like the roses I had seen and adored in India. I had not smelled such roses since, though I always tried to recapture their beauty with my rose perfumes.

A knock at the door, and a little bell. It was Marilisa, the “upstairs concierge” as we called her, the organizer for a cluster of apartments, getting cleaners in and out, accepting deliveries, sending out orders, smoothing life in ways too numerous to list. I managed to say “Come in,” and ran into my closet-dressing room, trying to get out of my rumpled clothes and into a robe.

“Good morning,” she said cheerily after letting herself in. “The roses smell wonderful.”

“Did you…?” Of course she had, her merriment saying yes, she had brought the roses here while I slept.

“They arrived before dawn,” Marilisa said. “The concierge couldn’t get over their fragrance.” She looked at me questioningly. “Where did he buy them?”

“You know it’s a ‘he,’” I said with a smile.

“Of
course
it’s a ‘he.’ It’s traditional to send roses…” She stopped, and now it was her turn to blush.

“I don’t know where,” I said, but I suspected he had done some extraordinary magic with the international flower marketers. These roses were the essence of India.

“If you find out, I must know,” she said. “They are so incredible.” And then she looked at me, suppressing a wider smile. “Can I do anything for you?”

“No, thanks Marilisa.” I realized that she had seen me asleep in my clothes, and I left her to her imaginings.

“Okay, call if you need me,” she trilled on her way out. Her work here was her dream job in many ways, and she was very well paid. The man who had arranged all this for her was, yes, Bredon. She was in love with him and in awe of him, so clear from her reactions the few times I had seen them in the same room. Thus I was her special charge. Bredon had picked well. She was wonderful.

I went and enclosed the vase in my arms, inhaling the fragrance of the roses. The traditional small white envelope sat amid the stems, which had been stripped of their thorns. Highend florists did this routinely, as I had seen, with a small stem-hugging collar that clamped under the blossom; pulling the collar straight down, the thorns came off in a shower. The art was to take the thorns but leave the stems looking green and untouched. There is an art to everything, I thought. Especially love.

Rand’s note in the envelope said, “Soon, my Darling. R.” And I marveled again at how he had managed to send these, wondering if he had flown to India. I would ask him when he got back, when I thanked him with words and kisses and my body…I was growing heated just imagining it.

A message light blinked; Robin’s voice. “Dray, I’m in town passing through, quick lunch? Call me if you can meet me.”

I hit the return-redial. “Yes, yes,” I said, still half crumpled, my robe not fully on; I was so happy she was back, even for a day.

She laughed at my eagerness. “I can’t wait to see you either. First we visited my mother’s family. Now we fly out to visit my father’s family. Then I can return to the city and live a normal life. I think.” Her dry, resigned recitation of her duties had me giggling. But then she grew serious. “I shouldn’t be so cavalier,” she said. “I
hope
I’m coming back here in two weeks or so. It’s open-ended.”

“Are you worried? What’s happening?” I asked.

“The health of the oldest members of both families is iffy,” she replied. “I’m hoping they hang in there. But I don’t want to be too definite about it. You know the old saying, if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans for the future.”

“Or you can tell
Her.
Maybe She’ll be more understanding,” which got an appreciative chuckle from Robin.

“I’ll pick you up and we can eat near your place, okay? We’ll have maybe an hour, and then I’m off to the airport.”

“Yes, come up,” I urged, wanting to share the glorious roses and news of Rand with her.

She knew immediately that something was afoot. “You want me to come to your
apartment
to get you?” she enunciated, and at my giggle she said, “Oooh, now I really can’t wait. Noon. See you then,” to my laughing, “yes, yes,” and I felt that happiness of a best friend coming to share news and heart secrets.

I finally got myself into the shower, and into another set of clothes, rushing now so that if Robin did have more time, we could sit here while I told her about Rand. I turned on my computer, did a cursory scan of my e-mails, nothing pressing, and closed down. I also buzzed down to Marilisa, whose cleaning policy for my apartment and a couple of others, were based on shipboard practices: continual attention, and cleanup whenever needed. I was neat and tidy, but nothing could hide the mess I had made of my bed, the sheets and the coverlet, and she had the changes of bedding for me in her storage closet. All I had to say was, “Marilisa, my bed…” and she said, “I’ll be right up.”

She and I, on either side of the bed, quickly put on new sheets and a new coverlet. She did the pillowcases, and I retrieved my Watch Bear, a ridiculously menacing stuffed animal over a foot high, that was my appointed sleep guardian. I had brought him to the Blessing of the Animals last year, finding many people with their own little accumulations of toy critters. The priests at Saint Mary’s smiled a lot, but never said a word, blessing all the pets, and blessing pictures of beloved animal companions who had died. I was determined to find a special medal for my Bear, to pin it on him, his own talisman, as he was mine.

Marilisa did a quick sweep of the bathroom, gathering towels against my protests, “They’re still clean,” looking at me with a sly smile, I think not trusting that post-lovemaking towels could be used again. With quick efficiency fresh towels went onto the racks, and she was out the door with a wave at my thanks.

As I had hoped, Robin did arrive a little bit early – maybe fifteen minutes – a bonus of time for us. We hugged briefly as we murmured our hellos, and I stood back to admire her very high heels.

“Five inches!” I exclaimed. “I can’t wear them! Are they comfortable?” I was amazed that she had bought such shoes.

“Yes, I bought them for our outings!” she announced solemnly. “I am so tired of neck strain when we walk together.”

“Robin, for heaven’s sake, I’m just a bit taller than average.”

“And I’m a bit shorter, and you’re not just a ‘bit’ taller. In my next life, please God let me be tall!” She sat in one of the small upholstered chairs in my bedroom, inhaling deeply, “And please, God, let someone send me roses like that! Who is it? Who?” She was practically bouncing on the seat as she asked me.

“Rand….” I began.

“Grenville
Rand? Oh, my God!” She was excited and eager. “Tell me, what happened, did you, did he….”

“It was wonderful.” I sat across from her; we were bending toward each other in our excitement. “We went to the Balthus
exhibit, and he’s going to be a museum trustee, and then we went to dinner, and then to his place, not his apartment…” The words tumbled one on top of the other, yet she and I could hear each other’s thoughts as well as our words, and she understood everything.