"Not much. She would just tell me that you called, back during the time when you were calling her regularly."
"And what has she said about me lately?" Jeff felt tense now, but he had to remain cautious. Bonnie had started this, and he wanted to get something out of it.
"Nothing," Bonnie replied. "She hasn't mentioned you in some time. Why did you stop calling her?"
Jeff ignored this by crossing the room to pour a little more Scotch into his glass. It was deeply upsetting to hear that Georgianne had not spoken of him at all since February. I'm nothing to her, he thought bitterly. I'm an object. A thing. When it turns up now and then you call it friend and act nice to it until it goes away again. A couple of drops of whiskey splashed on his thumb.
"Know what I think?" Bonnie asked.
"What?"
"The same thing I thought when I first met you last year. That you have a thing for my mother."
"A thing." Jeff laughed at the word, then shook his head dismissively. "No, Bonnie, you-"
"Don't you?" she interrupted coolly.
"Bonnie, listen." He returned to the armchair. "Your mother means a great deal to me. We're old friends, we went through school together. Of course I care about her, very much. Very much."
Bonnie nodded her head patiently, as if she were waiting for him to put his official version of things on record before they proceeded with the truth of the matter.
"Well, that's about all there is to it," he concluded weakly. It was too early to tell how far he could trust the girl, and he thought it was time to change the subject. "Has she made any decision about the house?"
"It's on the market now."
"Really," he said, absorbing the news. So things were definitely moving along. He was glad to hear it, but at the same time he felt a new sense of urgency. "What's she going to do?"
"She's coming here around the end of June to look for an apartment. That's a good time to look, because thousands of students have gone home for the summer and there are a lot of places available to choose from."
"Right."
It was all going the way he had foreseen, but, ironically, he had less ability to influence the course of events now than he'd had at any time in the previous twelve months. He felt he wasn't even on the periphery of Georgianne's life any more. It was a freezing, shattering sensation. This trip was not merely a good idea; it was crucial. He hadn't come to Boston a day too soon.
"Do you think she's doing the right thing?" Bonnie asked.
"Oh, sure. I tried to encourage her to do something like this. Not right away, but when she was ready. That town was bound to get to her sooner or later. Limited contacts, not much to do, living alone. Boston will be great for her."
His tone sounded hollow, perfunctory. When he thought about all the time, effort, and money he had invested in Georgianne, the enormous risks he'd taken on her behalf, it all seemed to add up to this: he had succeeded in moving her to Boston, a couple of hundred miles farther away from him. Absurdly, the thought came to him that if he redoubled his efforts, poured all his resources and energy into the task, Georgianne might end up in London. Still the same question haunted him: What do l do now?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
"Do you think I look a lot like my mother?"
This came two drinks later. Jeff hadn't intended to let Bonnie get drunk, but now he thought it would help if he did. He wanted her to talk uninhibitedly. He wanted to find out all she knew. Bonnie would sleep it off and probably wake up the next day not remembering much of what she'd said. Jeff didn't regard this as the underhanded, base manipulation of an inexperienced youth, but as just one more necessary step along the rocky road to Georgianne. Besides, having a few drinks had been Bonnie's idea in the first place.
"Yes, you do," he told her. "Your hair is darker and you're a little taller, but those are the only differences of any significance. You have the same eyes, the same face, and the same general bone structure."
He took their glasses for refilling, turning the volume down on the television as he passed it. He liked leaving the whiskey bottle on the bureau across the room. It gave him something to do when he needed a moment to think. This time Bonnie followed him like a cat.
"I mean,' she said, "I know I do look like her. Everybody has been saying so for years, and I've seen all those high-school snapshots of her and you guys, but..."
You look like your mother, Bonnie," he said patiently. "Take my word for it."
"What I mean is, do I look now just like she did when she was my age? When the two of you were in your senior year of high school."
Bonnie had a look of heightened interest, and her words suddenly seemed heavy with meaning. Jeff handed her a fresh drink and sipped his own.
"Yes and no," he replied deliberately. "The similarities are there, but so are the differences. The hair, for instance. Not just the color, but the style. And the clothes too."
"Is that all?"
"No. There's something else, but I'm not sure what it is. Probably just the fact that you're a separate person, not a clone."
"I'm too thin," Bonnie said.
"Your mother was never plump."
"Yeah, but you can see in the pictures that she was always kind of voluptuous."
"Well proportioned," he said as a matter of accuracy.
"Voluptuous is back."
"For some of us, it was never gone."
"You can't tell with this, but ..." Bonnie set her drink on top of the television and, in one swift move ment, took off her sweater. All she had on above the jeans was a Harvard T-shirt and the Liberty scarf. She put her hands on her hips. "There was a little more to Mom, right?"
Jeff shrugged, wondering how he could change the direction in which the conversation seemed to be moving. He wanted information, not narcissism from her.
"Do you think I'm too small? I mean, compared with the way my Mom looked when she was my age."
Bonnie smoothed the T-shirt down over her breasts, cupping them in her fingers. She had the wide-eyed provocativeness that only a teen-age girl can carry off, the flaunting of a recently discovered sexuality and freedom. Jeff tried to look unimpressed. He wouldn't hurt his chances with Georgianne by resisting Bonnie, but he might well destroy them if he made a foolish move. It could be just what she wanted him to do, reach for her, so that she could back away at the last minute in a show of anger and righteousness. Then he would be in the shit, but good.
"You're fine, Bonnie," he said paternally. "You've got the usual equipment, but I really don't remember your mother's high-school figure that well. She wasn't my girlfriend."
That last sentence scraped its way out of his throat, but it had been necessary. He started to walk past Bonnie to the armchair, but she put a hand on his chest to stop him.
"Jeff, you wouldn't try to hit on me when I was falling-down drunk, would you?"
"Of course not. I wouldn't-"
"I didn't think so. You'd feel bad about it later, like you'd taken advantage of me. That's why I'm asking now, when I'm standing up, feeling fine and tingly."
Jeff smiled. "I'm glad to hear you're feeling fine and tingly, but-" He gently removed her hand from his chest. Before he could say any more, Bonnie whipped off her T-shirt and tossed it aside, leaving only the bracelets on her wrist and the Liberty scarf, which trailed down between her firm young breasts. Jeff gave a little sigh, as if he thought this act merely childish, and he kept his eyes on hers by sheer will power.
"Do you think your mother would be proud of this?"
"Come on, Jeff," Bonnie said, moving closer to him, her arms reaching around his neck. "I thought this was just between the two of us. Why are you playing hard to get? You know you want to do it. You came three thousand miles for it, man...." Then she kissed him, a long, hot, wet, open-mouthed, tonguefilled kiss, and she moved him back easily until they fell onto the bed. Jeffs drink splashed, and he barely managed to set the glass down on the bedside table. Bonnie was pulling his shirt out, unbuckling his belt,
and continuing to kiss him energetically.
"Bonnie ... this isn't ... a good idea ..."
"Oh yes, it is," she whispered urgently. "I'm eighteen, Jeff. The drink's illegal; I'm not."
"Yeah, but..."
She smothered his mouth again with hers. At least one part of Jeffs body, far from resisting, was ready for action, and within a few moments he no longer wanted to avoid this situation. Aside from the obvi ous sexual arousal, strange feelings were sweeping through him. His eyes locked on Bonnie's perfect face while they wrestled each other out of their clothes but he didn't see her. He was in bed with Georgianne. The situation that had never occurred except in his dreams was now about to become real. He lost the ability to distinguish between Bonnie and her mother. The dream took hold of him, seized him, enthralled him, and he surrendered to it gratefully.
"Jesus, you're big." Her voice was a gasping exclamation.
Bonnie was tight, but moist. Jeff's body was beyond control, and he came convulsively as soon as he entered her. He didn't stop then, but continued moving back and forth in her, at a slower pace. He remained more or less erect, and Bonnie kept responding to his movements. A while later, a second, more powerful orgasm rocked him, and finally they lay still, resting.
"I guess you like me," Bonnie said.
Jeff found this kind of talk embarrassing, and it spoiled the illusion. He tried to ignore it, burying his face in her neck.
"Well, it-"
He put his hand over her mouth to shut her up. It worked, but not the way he expected. She began to suck his fingers. He tried to think. What now? He hadn't come to Boston to hop into bed with Bonnie Corcoran. He wanted information from her, and he hoped to win the girl's help with Georgianne. To make friends with her, so that she wouldn't develop a negative attitude to his intended relationship with her mother.
He had certainly befriended Bonnie, and then some. But he wasn't sure how it would change things. I guess she likes me, he thought, echoing her peculiar phraseology, but how will she react now to the possibility of having me for a stepfather? It seemed shocking to him-he wanted Georgianne, but he'd just screwed her daughter. Could the three of them ever get along together as a family, in the normal sense, after this? Would Bonnie be able to keep this a secret from her mother? Would she hold it over him indefinitely, threatening catastrophe at any time? Or would she find it simply too much to contain? I hate to tell you this, Mom, I feel ashamed of myself, but I went to bed with your friend.....Georgianne would be horrified, that was certain. Bonnie was only eighteen, which made her completely unreliable in Jeffs eyes. Why had he given in to her?
Perhaps he should have expected something like this, but he hadn't. Far from it. He'd thought Bonnie would be polite, moderately friendly, and busy studying for her finals. He'd hoped to spend a few hours with her, impressing her with dinner at a classy restaurant. Instead, she had taken the initiative. She hadn't been surprised to see him. She'd jumped him in his hotel room. In a short period of time all his plans had become irrelevant. He needed time to think. There was no way he could get out of this now. The damage was done. He might as well make a long weekend of it. Enjoy Bonnie. Enjoy the dream. It might be the best he could hope for, and it might have to last him the rest of his life.
Bonnie wasn't quite her mother. Lying there in bed with her, Jeff felt more acutely aware of his age and the difference in years between them. Bonnie's body was taut and firm, but supple, the skin so silky, her breasts still approaching their time of ripe perfection, her face so girlish. Jeff's heart ached at all the time he'd lost. He was thirty-nine, a year away from the start of his fifth decade. His body was slackening everywhere, it seemed. A softness in the upper arms, the sides, and the buttocks. Lines appearing on his face. Steel-gray stubble when he didn't shave for a day or two. Jeff had longed for Georgianne twenty years ago, and he still did, but in all that time he'd never accomplished anything with her. Now he had reached this strange point where, effortlessly, he'd fallen into bed with her grown daughter. There was something perverse and disturbing about it. No matter how exquisitely pleasing it was, it only seemed to underline his failure.
Bonnie got out of bed, shook her long hair vigorously, and went toward the bathroom. She glanced back at Jeff, who smiled. He liked the way she walked in the nude, obviously proud of her fine young body. Bonnie was bolder than her mother had ever seemed, more aggressive, more adventurous, and much more willing. Wasn't that how he'd always wanted Georgianne to be? He'd never been able to find or arouse those qualities in Georgianne. He knew that he liked a certain measure of assertiveness in a woman, the ability to take the lead when necessary. That's what he had needed so long ago: for Georgianne to make the first move. He had simply turned up in Harvard Square, and Bonnie had taken charge immediately. That was fine. But Georgianne had never given the slightest signal, and as a result Jeff had remained emotionally paralyzed. When he thought about it like this, he found it impossible to avoid the conclusion that Georgianne was as much to blame as he was. It was sad. It hurt.
When Bonnie came out of the bathroom, she retrieved her drink from the television set and sat at the foot of the bed. She crossed her legs Indian-style, letting her full fluffy hair hang forward.
"Let's talk," she said.
"Okay..
Jeff sat up against the headboard. The bedcovers were a rumpled mess, but he kept the sheet over the lower half of his body. He thought that a woman's body was beautiful, meant to be looked at, but that a man's, with its ugly dangling genitals, was not, and he always felt uncomfortable with his own nakedness.
"Let's talk about us."
"Okay. "
"You really came all this way to see me, didn't you?"
Bonnie smiled slyly as she said this, and Jeff could see that she was enjoying the sense of importance it gave her. But he wasn't ready to indulge it.
"As I said," he explained calmly, "I had to come to Boston on business. When I finished my business, I decided to see if I could find you. That's all there is to it."
"Uh-huh, yeah, right," Bonnie said, laughing briefly, as if she saw a joke that Jeff didn't. "I don't know why I find that hard to believe ... but I do."
He shrugged. "If you'd gone to Yale, you'd be in New Haven now, and I'd still be here. Actually, I'd be out at Logan, getting on a plane for L.A."
"Yeah, well ..." Bonnie's expression changed, indicating that she was back in her naughty-kids-together mood. "So, what are we going to do?"
"What do you want to do?" Keep tossing it back to her.
"Okay. I think that you and I should have a nice, torrid little three-day affair, you know? Today, tomorrow, Sunday, and then on Monday morning we say good-bye, you go back to L.A., and I go back to my books. What do you say?"
He smiled. She was too much, but he liked it. "I'd say we're already well on the way."
"Right, right. Just between the two of us. We'll make it very torrid, outrageous, and special. Right?"
Jeff found this almost endearing. It might have amused him coming from some other woman, but Bonnie's honesty and openness transformed it into something else-something indeed special. It was hard to think of someone so sexually alive as innocent, but that was the word that came to his mind.
"All right. But listen to me," he said. "It will be just between the two of us. I want you with me all the time, from now until Monday morning. I don't want anyone to know-not your roommates or friends, and, most of all, not your mother. You have to promise me that."
"I do."
Those two words gave Jeff a sudden, queer thrill. "And you have to keep that promise. We're adults. This is not a kids' game."
"I know. I will." Bonnie was wide-eyed with enthusiasm. "Are we going to stay in here all weekend?"
"No. We'll go out. Why?"
"Well, I should go back to my room for a change of clothes at some point."
"That's not necessary," he said firmly. "I'll buy you something to wear. Something suitable for a restaurant or night club, and ... s
omething else, suitable for wearing here ... for a minute or two ... until I tear it off."
"All right." Bonnie laughed. "Are you rich?"
"I have some money."
"A lot?"
"Enough."
"And we're going to spend some? Terrific. Oh, this is going to be fun, I just know it is. Our very own torrid weekend together. Uh ... but there is one thing. I will have to call my roommate and my mother; otherwise they'll have the cops out looking for me."
"Of course. I understand. Tell them anything you want, but nothing about where you are and what you're doing. And nothing, not a word, about me."
"No problem," Bonnie said. "I can call them later."
"Good. Now ..." Jeff lit a cigarette. "Go stand by the window ... I want to look at you in the light of the sunset. I want to watch you there.... I want you to forget about me, forget I'm even in the same room with you. Good, good. Now close your eyes ... I want you to feel how beautiful you are. Dip your finger in the whiskey, touch your nipples with it ..."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Now that she had set him free by taking the first step, Jeff knew how to act. It came naturally. Everything worked, everything was right. He told her what to do, and she did it, never once giving him so much as a questioning glance. When she had pleased him, composing herself into a hundred pictures and poses, doing things to herself, he called her back to bed and made love to her with no thought for his own pleasure. He worshiped her body with his fingers and mouth. He took her through thrashing energetic responses that seemed somehow superficial, as if this was how her inexperience told her to react, and then to a deeper level where ecstasy was wide, roaring, and irresistible. When she was hardly aware of him any more, and was caught up in a series of thundering orgasms, a feeling of great joy filled him. Bonnie had a genuinely rejuvenating effect on him. With her, he had rediscovered the wonder and delight there can be in making a woman feel that good. It was a high in itself, the power to give such pleasure. He couldn't remember the last time he had done this to a woman. It was a godlike sensation, and he wondered if he could go on all night or if she would pass out first. She was helpless at his touch, and that made everything right with him. He was in a clearing, free of the past and the future.
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