Where the Truth Lies (46 page)

His hands slid my dress off the slopes of my body. Why had I worn panties to the luncheon? Foolish me, they were all in the way now. Vince explained, “We agreed that we would sleep together when we finished the book, but not before. And I think we both knew that ‘sleeping together’ meant ‘intercourse.’ But there’s lots we can do other than that.”

I yielded to the drug again, allowing it to take control of time in a way that would have pleased Einstein to no end. There were more electrons in my brain than stars in a planetarium, and each was pulsing its own ecstatic message semaphorically. I wasn’t sure what Vince had in mind or where he was going to draw the line and if he had the self-control to resist being drawn into me when my hands pulled at him. It was hard to think specifics as another wave of the drug swept over me. I couldn’t take just kissing, necking—I was far too aroused, it would demolish me to stop at that.

We were on the bed now. I pulled him onto me, I ground my hips slowly into his groin like the most obscene of strippers, trying to put pressure against myself and against him, and this went on for months and yet his pants were not even off yet. I was about to beg him please, out of compassion if nothing else, to just bend me across the end of the bed and fill me when there was a light knocking sound at the door.

I couldn’t remember whose house we were in. I remembered I had a vibrator in my house. I wanted to get it now, because if I didn’t find some release I was going to die. Vince could be so mean sometimes. Oh, there he was, getting up off our bed. I remembered we were still at the Disneyland Hotel. We had come here after we’d been to that stately English home in the mountains of Mississippi. “Is that the ginger ale?” I asked. I think I was almost ready for room service to do me if Vince would at least hold me while it happened. I was naked across the bed, my hair disheveled, my face and breasts and belly beaded with sweat. I would have to let room service see me this way because I’d forgotten how to move. Vince gently pulled a sheet to cover me from the shoulders down, kissing me tenderly and stroking my face. He could be so thoughtful sometimes, except when he wouldn’t put his cock in me.

Vince opened the door. A young woman stepped into the room. Was she from room service? They had very strange uniforms. A shiny white plastic raincoat down to her knees. She stepped over to the side of the bed.

“Oh, I remember you,” she said. “We met in Disneyland.”

Everything I do takes place in Disneyland. She was lovely. Her hair was long and fine and blond.

Vince asked her, “Are you wearing it?” The girl nodded and unfastened the raincoat, tossing it onto a chair. I remembered her now. She was Alice in Wonderland, in the blue dress and white pinafore and white stockings.

“You like?” she asked Vince. “It wasn’t hard sneaking it out, because they didn’t know I’m not coming back.”

“Lie down,” said Vince to her. She lay down beside me. Her face was exquisite.

Vince lit another joint and offered it to her. She laughed. “I don’t know. I’m really a little stoned out of my head already. Is it good?” She took a hit. “Oh Jesus, wow.” She offered me the joint, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to hold it and I certainly didn’t want to set fire to the bed. “You’re really attractive,” she said to me. She drew a line with her finger along my face. “I love faces with character.” She took another hit on the joint and giggled. “Oh, this is like monster grass, Vince, do you get this all the time?”

Vince just smiled. He could be very modest.Bing-bing-bing went the medicine in my brain. I wished Vince would explain more to me, but for the moment I was willing to let the afternoon slip by, keeping such pleasant company. I knew it was the afternoon because her hair was so golden.

“You’re Alice,” I said.

She nodded and looked slyly at Vince. “Want to see what every guy in Fantasyland wants to see? It’s an F coupon.”

She slowly raised the hem of her blue dress, riding it up along her slender, white-stockinged legs. She revealed white thighs, of a slimness she would have for only another year or two. And then she revealed a golden mound, curved like the gentlest slope of a riverbank, covered in a small, soft coat of golden down as strokable as the fur of a white rabbit. The lightest and palest of pink lips were sweetly puckered as if for a kiss. She wriggled out of the rest of the outfit and started to peel off her stockings.

“She’s so beautiful, Vince,” I said.

“She’s ours, honey,” said Vince. “Isn’t that so, Alice?”

Alice nodded slowly, her blue eyes wide and honest and true. “I’m yours,” she said to me. She looked at Vince for approval. He nodded and she assured him, “I’m mainly straight, you know, but I love doing scenes.”

Vince slowly pulled the sheet that covered me away from my body. It felt like a cool, huge hand stroking me. I was shy of my nudity. “Vince, no, I’m naked.”

Alice soothed, “Oh, it’s okay, I’m a girl.”

I took note of this and Vince reassured me, “It’s all right, honey, she’s over eighteen—aren’t you, Alice?”

Alice nodded. “Twenty last month. Oh, I like your body,” she said to me, now that I was totally uncovered.

“Thank you,” I said. Pinpoint explosions in my brain this time.

Vince slowly rubbed my thighs and my stomach and he teased a little, brushing the back of his hand against me. As long as his hand was somewhere on my body, I guess I wasn’t completely uncovered.

Alice said admiringly, “I like your breasts.” She looked at Vince. “Let’s have fun.”

Vince took me in his arms. “Oh, Vince,” I whimpered, and his mouth and tongue met my mouth and stayed there, as simultaneously there transpired a searing explosion of spring at the epicenter of my grateful groin. Vince ravaged my lips as a second tongue, playful and industrious, made gleeful pirouettes against my clitoris, while girlish fingers entered me, swirling busy circles within. But surely Vince had only one mouth and one tongue and they were still pressed warmly against my lips. He was staring into my eyes, watching me react. He seemed to be richly enjoying this, especially as he could see my realization that it was Alice’s mouth and tongue that were having their mad little tea party with me … but Vince approved, and this was all for him, wasn’t it? I could give this to him and that would be loving of me. As long as I kept my eyes fixed only on his face. This was Vince making me feel this, and I was feeling this for him. For him.

I was building to the strangest orgasm. I raced up and down the corridors of our haunted mansion, trying to avoid the wave of water that was sweeping toward me. If I could get to the tunnel, if I could get smaller, if I could— The tunnel was blocked. I turned and saw the tidal wave coming at me, blue as Alice’s dress, foamed with froth as white as her pinafore, the same blue and white as her eyes, but then I saw Vince’s eyes, brown and dark and immense. My orgasm was going to be so powerful that I now laughed at the drug I’d taken, scoffed at its pallid euphorias as I approached the outskirts of cataclysm.

And then the feeling stopped. Vince had pulled Alice away from me. I screamed in torment.

“Not yet, honey,” he said. There was no way to measure my desolation.

Alice laid her head down on the pillow beside me. Her face was glossy but still angelic. “Hi,” she said to me. “I like you.”

“Let’s kiss her, honey,” Vince said to me. He kissed Alice’s cheek tenderly.

Alice scrunched her face close to mine. “You’re so pretty.”

“No, you’re the beauty,” I said.

“Show me how you love him,” Alice said. “Show me what you can do to him.”

Vince had backed into the shadows, away from the bed. “Show her,” he counseled. “Show her what you’ll do to me.”

I’d never been with a girl in my life, other than silly sex games at slumber parties and in college.

But it wasn’t hard at all. She was fair and downy and pink and pretty.

“It’s okay,” said Vince, now behind me. His hands were on my shoulders, massaging me warmly but also moving me closer into her. “Show me,” he urged.

I touched Alice lightly with my tongue where I knew I liked to be touched. She gasped a light, girlish gasp, instantly responsive.

“Yes,” said Vince as I felt his hands leave me. It was so very important that I show him how I would make him feel, so I gave her more of the same, tenderly, steadily. If I did well for her, maybe Vince would hold me again and make me feel the same way, too.

I heard her breathing deeper, in that way I’ve heard in myself, when things are changing, when I’ve reached a new plateau from which I know my orgasm will inexorably launch.

I heard Vince behind me saying, “Good. That’s good.” I kept hearing a repeated clicking and whirring noise behind me, and there were flashes of light in the room that weren’t emanating from my brain, but I was focused on my work.

Alice in Wonderland was speaking only to me now, encouraging me.

“Eat me,” she urged in a whisper that lay somewhere between a sob and a sigh. “Drink me.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

When I woke late the next morning in a room at the Disneyland Hotel, I regretted to discover that, unlike Lanny, Vince hadnot abandoned me.

The girl was gone. But Vince was seated comfortably in a corner of the room, a tray at his side upon which was a thermos of coffee, the remnants of scrambled eggs and bacon, a few rounds of cinnamon toast, and pink grapefruit juice. He was smoking a cigarette and enjoying his coffee.

“Morning,” he said brightly enough.

I looked at him hatefully. “That was never a quaalude you gave me. I’vehad quaaludes.”

He smiled. “I said it waslike a quaalude.”

“And you didn’t take one yourself. You palmed the fucking pill.”

He shrugged. “Somebody had to drive. What’s the matter, morning-after recriminations? Don’t worry, you won’t get pregnant. Not from Alice. And certainly not from me. I never took off my pants, as you may or may not remember.”

My head hurt terribly. The slightest movement sent pain all around my brain like a steel skullcap two sizes too small. I got up out of bed and realized I was naked. “Look the other way,” I snapped.

He obliged and commented, “That’s okay. From now on, whenever I want to see you naked, I can.”

I got into my stupid dress from the Scotty luncheon. I would buy myself a Daisy Duck sweatshirt and Goofy sweatpants in the lobby of the hotel and burn the frigging dress in the parking lot. “There are laws against drugging people.”

“Oh, please. You took it voluntarily. I didn’t slip it into your drink. You chased it with a glass of the most expensive dessert wine in the world. You’re just all in a dither because you discovered you can swing both ways.”

I had no problem with anyone’s sexual persuasion, including my own. “I’ve been straight until now, Vince, but if I keep meeting a few more men like you and Lanny, I may go over to the other side full-time. What galls me—” I paused. I thought I might throw up from the migrainelike pain, but I overrode the feeling.

I saw another tray of food on the dresser. He had thoughtfully ordered me something, but I wanted none of it. I did pour myself some coffee. “What angers me and frightens me is not the girl. It’s you. You planned all this. You already had the room, you had the girl waiting to join us, you got me susceptibly drunk and tricked me into taking whatever the hell that pill was. You’re a devious little prick.”

He smiled. “I think I resent the word ‘little.’ Especially since you haven’t seen me with my pants off. Have some cinnamon toast.” He offered me a plate from my own breakfast tray.

I waved the toast away. “What is this all about, Vince?” I asked. “It can’t just have been about the scene we had here last night. You don’t need me for that. There must be a thousand would-be starlets who would gladly make it with you, a llama, and the front four of the Oakland Raiders. Did you even have an orgasm last night?”

He said in a shy way, “The girl—her name’s Jennifer, by the way—she was kind enough to give me head. You had passed out, so I didn’t think you’d object. I like getting it from young women, especially if they’re relatively new to the experience. Jennifer is a little more knowledgeable than I prefer, but watching you on her aroused me to the extreme.”

I wanted to attack him, and I definitely planned to, but first I needed information. “Vince, are you crazy? We had work to do together.”

“Yes, well, as it happens, last night was largely about the work. Sit down. I need to explain.”

I did so. He waxed expansive: “Look, I admit I enjoyed the ‘scene,’ as Jennifer would put it. I especially liked that, stoned or not, you went along with it, not because you were into it or because you thought it would advance your career but because you cared for me. I thought that was really charming. You remained sweet in my eyes, and you were meanwhile doing all these nasty things and having them done to you. All for my sake. I felt like I had been captured by an ancient Oriental army, and you were my adoring betrothed, and the only way my life would be spared was if you gave yourself sexually to the beautiful daughter of the enemy’s leader. And in chains, I was forced to watch this. Pretty hot stuff.”

I went to the window and opened the curtains. I needed sunlight and reality to be let into the room. This was what you got when a self-absorbed performer had been catered to all his life and thought there was nothing odd about that.

He went on, “But the other reason for the scene was: I wanted to get something on you. Of course, I hadn’t known about your behavior with Lanny when I planned this. The stuff with Lanny, that’s even better. But I’d gone to so much trouble setting things up with Jennifer and the restaurant … I thought, what the hell, I can always use the extra ammunition. Plus I was dying to see the two of you together.”

He took out a cigarette and lit it with pleasure. “Your behavior on this project has been really shocking, Miss O’Connor. You offer to sleep with me if I complete the book with you. My ex-partner refuses to be a part of our work, so you introduce yourself to him, lying about who and what you are, and sleep with him.” He was warming to the subject. “And to top off your misconduct, you come with me on a pleasant social evening to an innocuous place like Disneyland and pop pills in the ladies’ room until you’re nearly incoherent. You’re such a mess that I decide to let you sleep it off in the room of my new singing discovery, Jennifer Howell, whom I’ve put up at this very hotel. This room is registered in her name. There are two beds and she’s fine about letting you have one of them. After I’ve left the two of you, you offer Jenn a mild sedative, since she’s such a light sleeper and you snore. Turns out the pill is a powerful variation on MDMA with additional hallucinogenic properties. You take advantage of Jennifer and have sex with her, because you’re that way. You have a friend come by and photograph the two of you. The next day I get a letter in the mail saying that the career of a promising young singer who I plan to manage will be ruined if I don’t cooperate … in essence, extortion. Because in the envelope are a few Polaroids of you and poor, innocent Jenn.”