The Other Adonis

by Frank Deford

  In the lobby, Nina started toward the revolving door onto Fifth Avenue that would take her back into that cauldron of…no, she thought: not cauldron. Cauldrons were 1635. Who knew cauldrons any longer? So, let’s see now. Wok. Yes, wok. She was about to walk out into the wok of a city. But, so what? Nina’s whole body was a slop of perspiration from what she’d gone through upstairs; besides, she was steaming even more because that rotten preacher hadn’t called her back. But then she heard: “Dr. Winston…”

  She looked back. It was the concierge. Nina nodded. “Your cab is waiting.”

  “My cab?”

  He gestured that she precede him out into the ghastly heat onto 60th. “Your cab, madam.” And it was. Only it was not a regular yellow cab, but a hansom cab, the perspiring driver dozing aloft, as the poor horse sipped at a water bucket. “Juanito,” the concierge shouted, “this is Dr. Winston.”

  Juanito stirred, picked up his top hat, then clambered down, bowing with a flourish. Nina took her seat under the little roof that blocked out some of the sun. But it didn’t matter. The heat didn’t matter. All the fear and wonder of Bucky and Constance were instantly gone, because—obviously, indisputably—this chariot had been ordered by Hugh Venable, erstwhile common creep, now putative sweetest man in the world.

  “Lead on, Juanito, driver of the gods and goddesses,” Nina cried out gaily, luxuriating in her own lovely sweat as the horse clopped along. All the years she’d lived in New York, a lifetime, all the horse cabs she’d seen, all the tourists going in them to the Tavern On The Green, never had Nina even considered taking one. Never. Ah, but now it was different, for somewhere—momentarily—Hugh would emerge from off a blistering sidewalk to sit by her side.

  Onward. Then just before the cab turned onto Central Park South, suddenly, a young man emerged from by the hot-dog stand, running toward Nina. From behind his back, he pulled out a large bouquet of white roses, presenting it to her with a grand flourish. “From a devoted admirer,” he proclaimed.

  Clutching the roses, Nina replied, “Tell my devoted admirer that I admire both his flowers and his exquisite taste.”

  Nina did not even notice any longer that it was blazing hot and that she had wilted, her hair a perfect mess. She did not even think of Bucky and Constance, their bodies locked in time and space, making air-conditioned love for the ages. Nina only smelled roses, and Nina only thought of Hugh.

  At Seventh Avenue, where Juanito turned the cab into the park, another young man materialized. In a waiter’s apron and bow tie, he carried a silver tray—upon it a lovely glass shaker and a single martini glass. As soon as the carriage halted, he stepped up, stirred the drink before Nina, then handed it to her. “From someone who wishes you to be as refreshed as a sylvan glade,” he announced.

  Nina held the glass high. “Inform that someone,” she replied, “that even as I am cooled by his gracious concern, my lips remain hot for his.” She sipped, then, tingling from the gin and the knowledge that somewhere ahead, at one of these romantic stations of the cross, Hugh himself surely awaited.

  Perhaps now? Perhaps right here, where the road bent? No, it was only a young woman who arose from a bench there. She carried a beautiful old silver mirror, and when she climbed aboard the carriage, she brushed Nina’s hair, and then held the mirror up, so that she could apply her own lipstick and blush. Then, from the pocket of her maid’s Provençal apron, the lady-in-waiting removed a perfume bottle, placing a drop at Nina’s wrist, behind her ears, and most decorously, in the cleft of her breasts. “Envy, from Gucci,” she announced. “Your admirer finds your beauty can only be enhanced by a scent as light and floral as this summer’s evening.”

  “Tell the admirer that my beauty is evanescent, for it appears only to his eyes, and is revealed to no other but he.”

  The great chariot proceeded along, around another bend. And there—yes, there sat Hugh. He was wearing cream trousers and a short-sleeved white shirt trimmed in green and blue. He looked handsome and young and debonair—very much the sex object. As Juanito slowed the carriage, Hugh rose languidly and lifting his own martini glass, he inquired, “May I join you?”

  “You may, sir.”

  “You look absolutely gorgeous,” he said, climbing in beside her.

  “Oh, it’s just something I threw together for the global warming.”

  More seriously. “Everything go okay?”

  Nina shrugged. “About what I expected. I’m fine, but I’d also just as soon not talk about it.”

  “All right with me. So, can I just tell you that I love you?”

  “Of course you can. You can kiss me, too.” He did, tenderly. He might have kissed her more fervently, but there were the martinis to worry about.

  “I love you, too, Hugh.” Appropriately then the carriage slowed, and a young man with a mandolin—yes, a mandolin—fetched up aside Juanito, where he began playing soft and lovely mandolin favorites. Nina grabbed Hugh’s arm and pulled him closer. “I didn’t know you could be so romantic.”

  “I guess I never had the chance before. Back then, circumstances lent themselves more just to lust.”

  Nina drew away. “Goodness gracious, I hope that hasn’t been eliminated from the new model.”

  “Oh, no, no. The new model is romance and lust. Package deal.”

  Nina drew her forefinger across her forehead, then flicked away real sweat. “Whew,” she sighed, as a new song began. It sounded very much like “Greensleeves.” But then, many of the songs sounded like “Greensleeves.” In truth, Nina decided the fellow probably wasn’t a very good mandolin player—even though she had very little experience in rating mandolin players. So, she just said, “I am impressed, Hugh.”

  “Well, even seminary students are crass enough to suck up to their professor. But I must say, even I hadn’t counted on a mandolin player surfacing.”

  Nina just cooed, kissed him on the cheek, and patted his thigh a little. The cab slowed then, Juanito steering it to the side of the road. Hugh stepped down, offered his arm to Nina, and together they strolled to a little grove of trees. They were still in the midst of New York City in the midst of a heat wave, but suddenly now, Nina felt cool and altogether at peace. It was an ideal way to be, for when Hugh turned to face her, he said this without any warning whatsoever: “Nina, will you marry me?”

  And she did not miss a beat, replying straightaway, “Why yes, Hugh, it would be my happiness and my honor.” With that, she raised up her pretty face to his and gently kissed him upon his lips, falling into his arms. Then Nina began to cry for joy, which she had done often in the past, but not for quite a while.

  The mandolin began to play again, a sweet song. Yet another young woman appeared, she holding high a fancy cushion that was velvety and tasseled. Nina saw right away that there was a ring upon it. As Hugh snatched it up and placed it upon her finger, she could see that it had one magnificent diamond in the middle, set off by other smaller ones, with a ruby placed at both ends of the arrangement.

  “It was my mother’s,” Hugh said. “My sister always imagined that she’d get it, but I traded her a necklace and the sideboard and some china for it.”

  “You knew you would marry again?”

  “No, Nina. I knew I would marry you.”

  The ring bearer threw paper flower petals at them as they laughed and returned to the carriage. They went to Nina’s apartment house. As she alighted there, she held up her left hand one more time, watching the sun play off the diamonds. “So,” she said, “you will make an honest woman of me.”

  “No,” said Hugh, stepping down beside her. “I am making an honest man of me.”

  26

  Nina had assumed they would make love right away. Instead, they danced. They waltzed. All over the apartment. Nina and Hugh waltzed to Strauss and they waltzed to “The Tennessee Waltz,” and they waltzed to every walt
z between the Danube and the Mississippi. It was what Hugh had planned; he’d brought a CD of waltzes with him.

  “I always wanted to dance with you,” he said, “but we could never do anything in public.” They swirled all around the furniture, Hugh twirling her, moving her in that magic way that men who can dance well can. Why, Nina thought, such is love itself, isn’t it? That which holds you tight within its embrace while setting you free to soar. To Hugh, she only called out gaily, “My God, you do this so well, too!”

  He stopped right in the middle of “Tales From The Vienna Woods,” but holding her still in the tableaux of the dance. “I do this well with you,” he replied.

  He swept Nina off her feet then, literally, and carried her into the bedroom.

  As Bucky lay near sleep upon her bed, Constance drew her fingers down his back. At first, she did not consciously realize what she was tracing, but then it occurred to her. She was making, diagonally, from the left of his neck to the right of his buttocks that zig-zag pattern of the red and black diamonds. It did not surprise Constance, though, for so often this evening as she and Bucky made love, the silver would be so bright, but then it would fade before the vision of the red and black.

  She drew another line of reds down over his spine. “We must go to Antwerp together, darling.”

  Bucky only murmured, “ummmm,” for he was barely awake.

  “How wonderful that would be! We’ll go to Rubens’s house and to the one on Hopland Street and to all the other places where we were in love before. Ollie and Margareta, you and me.”

  Bucky stirred. “Do you think?” he asked, rolling on his side to face her.

  “Think?”

  “Think that would be wise?”

  “Of course! To be back where first we loved—together! Again! Did anyone else ever experience that before? Anyone? Ever?” She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. Then gently, she pushed Bucky onto his back and kneeled above him, placing him within her. Sweetly, easily, Constance began to rock herself back and forth, pausing only to lean down and kiss his nipples. “Ah, my Margareta,” she sighed, moving her lips up, closer to his. “And I am your Ollie.” She kissed him. “The way we were in Antwerp. Man and woman, woman and man.”

  Bucky swallowed, a little disturbed, a little baffled. It was so strange. But Constance was right. There was a oneness to them, a seamless circle joined, so that as she rose up again on her knees, riding him, tossing her hair, in their joy it all blurred, and he was unsure of who it was he was looking at or where they might be.

  Still, when they fell off to sleep, both felt more in Antwerp in Rubens’s time than in New York now, and Constance knew she had to go to Antwerp—must go to Antwerp—as soon as she possibly could.

  Nina lay there with her head upon Hugh’s great chest. She could feel his hair tickling her. The fact is, she’d never liked a man with a hairy chest until she’d fallen in love with Hugh. Then she’d decided that he had just the proper amount of foliage there. It was like the way Christopher Robin had defined the dimensions of his little friend: “My favorite size, about the size of Piglet.” So, she thought of Hugh’s chest hair as “Piglet’s Patch.” Her favorite size.

  And lying there, nestled into Piglet’s Patch, Nina’s whole being glistened—not only that she had Hugh back, but this time, without guilt or sin. They even began to talk, fluttery, about getting married—maybe at Nina’s daughter’s summerhouse on the beach in Delaware. Hugh liked that idea, so she drew herself away from Piglet’s Patch, kissed him, and they made love again, quite gloriously.

  Afterwards, as Nina lay beside him, she said idly (and she thought, quite humorously), “My, my, a lot of people are fornicating in New York tonight.”

  Hugh found that neither idle nor humorous. She could even feel him stiffen next to her, before he snapped, “So, even as we make love, you’re thinking of them.”

  “Oh come on, darling, I wasn’t thinking of them while we were making love.”

  “I merely diverted you for a moment, did I?” He was surprisingly snappish; he withdrew his arm from underneath her, and instead, placed both his hands behind his head, staring up to the dark ceiling.

  “Really now, Hugh, if we’re going to have our first spat as fiancés, let’s pick a better subject.” He only grunted. “I mean, their whole story is so incredible that it’s difficult for me to—”

  “That’s exactly what I mean, thank you. This thing simply isn’t healthy for you, Nina.” He paused, considering whether he should say something. Then he went ahead. “I’d like you to promise me something.”

  “Is this a quid pro quo?”

  “Well, more of a quid pro semi-pro. I want you to stop seeing them.”

  Nina was taken aback. “I don’t meddle in your professional life.”

  “If something in my professional life was upsetting the rest of my life—and upsetting you—I would expect you to meddle…if you loved me and cared for my well-being.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Isn’t it? This crazy wild goose chase through the ages—excuse me: alleged through the ages—has discombobulated you, Nina.” What light there was coming into the room crossed his face, so she could see how serious he really was. “In fact, you probably have no idea to the extent it has discombobulated you.”

  “No, I do know.”

  “Good. Then you know it’s certainly not any typical doctor-patient relationship. You’re not along for the ride anymore. This guy Bucky is driving the train. And I want you to get off.”

  Interesting, Nina thought. Constance wasn’t part of Hugh’s complaint sheet. Just: this guy Bucky. My, my, my. Surely, Jocelyn had sung Bucky’s praises to Hugh. Might the good parson be just a wee bit jealous? But, she knew this was no time for teasing. Instead, Nina said, “Okay, you’ll be relieved to know that I told them both that they might be advised just to let things go, not to pursue the matter further.”

  Surprised, Hugh smiled and said, “Good.”

  “But, whatever you think of my involvement, I am the doctor, these people trust me, and I can’t abandon them if they don’t want me to. Now, you may think it’s a whole lotta nonsense—”

  “Hokum. Humbug. Just the best excuse for hanky-panky I’ve ever heard. Oh, sweet lady, it’s okay to drop your drawers now because we were rolling in the hay a few centuries ago, so we can screw to our hearts’ content for old times’ sake.”

  “You’re entirely too cynical, Hugh. That’s not their game at all. In fact, they put off any sex for months just to be sure. They seem to genuinely love each other.”

  “Fine. All the more reason for you to stop being the seventeenth-century Dear Abby.”

  That irritated Nina. She sat up, pausing to grab a pillow and hold it firmly before her chest in some manner of symbolic statement. “Now, listen to me. Whatever has happened to Bucky and Constance, they sincerely believe they lived back in—”

  “Do you?” He spoke that so sharply it shocked Nina. He repeated, “Do you?”

  “I don’t know. It’s very confusing, Hugh. It’s very compelling stuff.”

  “Good God!” He shot up. “Nina, are you actually telling me you’ve bought into reincarnation?”

  “Cheap shot,” she replied, poking a finger into Piglet’s Patch. “How’d you like it if some Hindu said to you: ‘Oh, you’ve bought into Jesus, have you?’”

  Hugh took that fairly, sort of. “All right,” he said. “Bad form. I apologize…to the Hindus.”

  Nina said, “Reincarnation. It does scare you, doesn’t it?”

  And Hugh said back, “You believe in all that Double Ones stuff too?”

  “Maybe.”

  He sighed in studied amazement when she said that, and changed the subject. Like a lot of preachers who can bounce around to chapter and verse, Hugh was very good at changing th
e subject. “Look, Nina, I just got engaged—for the last time in my life—and I know this, uh, thing upsets the woman I’m engaged to, and I don’t like to see her upset.” Sweetly, now, he touched her cheek. “So okay, I understand your responsibilities. But I just want you to promise me that you will not, under any circumstances, initiate anything more with either one of them. Now, that squares with Dr. Hippocrates, doesn’t it? You can promise me that?”

  Nina took awhile to respond, but she did nod and she did say, “Yes.” Then, to make sure the subject was closed, she threw aside the pillow and shuffled her body across to him. For a long time, they simply held each other tight, and then they pledged their love again, kissed goodnight, and closed their eyes in happiness. Even then, though, even as Nina began to fall asleep beside the man she adored, even then, on this most joyous night, she could not stop thinking about Bucky and Constance on their most joyous night.

  It made her mad, too, that they so enthralled her that they could distract her from her dearest exhilaration. Why, on this very evening that she had pledged her life and love to this most magnificent of men, she knew that she had lied to him. But Nina believed in Ollie and Margareta, and she could never permit Hugh to force her to give up her quest, to stop her from trying to understand this mystery that overpowered her more than her own greatest love.

  Bucky awoke in the middle of the night. Constance lay sound asleep next to him, with a sliver of light that came through a crack in the curtains cutting across her in the way a great master like, well…like Rubens would have painted in a picture. The light. The dark. The shadows. The beauty.

  Gently, so as not to disturb her, Bucky raised up to look upon Constance. She had the sheet over her, pulled tight across her chest from how she had rolled over to face him, so that her form was perfectly outlined for him. He marveled at her whole appearance. First, her face. He remembered it as so intense, but now in repose, it was soft and sweet. From her ears dropped the two Venus earrings that Nina had given him, which he, in turn, had given Constance a few hours earlier. He touched the one, and he thought it brought the hint of a smile to her lips—dull as they were in the dark and from all the lipstick that had left them for his own lips. Anyway, Bucky smiled back at Constance, certain that whatever dreams played in her mind were of him now—or of whom he’d been in 1635.