Apprenticed to Venus

by Tristine Rainer

  “Big Sur is majestic. High cliffs and crashing waves.”

  She noted he did not seem to know—or perhaps care—who Henry Miller, the sexually explicit banned novelist, was.

  Gazing into Rupert’s blue eyes, a child’s clear eyes, she decided the danger of his being another unformed child-man who would disappoint her in bed was too great. So when Bernard, a man she had casually slept with, came up and asked if he could give her a ride home, she accepted.

  As Bernard was helping her with her coat, though, Rupert approached and said directly, “I’d like to see you again.”

  Despite Bernard’s impatience, she pulled pen and paper from her purse, wrote down her number, and handed it to Rupert with an inviting smile.

  Although she had rigorous sex with Bernard that night, it was Rupert’s sensitive face she held in her mind.

  The next day, she did not leave the apartment in the hope that Rupert would call. He did not, but when she phoned Hazel to thank her for the party, Hazel said, “You have an admirer, that handsome young actor. After you left he went on and on about the beautiful, intriguing Anaïs Nin.”

  Then why doesn’t he call? Anaïs tormented herself. Had Hazel told him she was married?

  Rupert phoned her the next day. Since Hugo was still out of town, she invited him to dinner at her place. She had Millie prepare the ingredients for her to whip up medallions of veal with sliced eggplant. She made a stack of the 78s she wanted to play, lit candles, and prepared herself for Rupert to be late. He was punctual to the minute.

  He strode into the apartment, throwing his white leather coat over a chair, and as she fixed him a gin and tonic, he began to sort through her records. He put on Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. The fact that the opera was about adulterous love between a young knight and the very married Isolde did not pass by her.

  As she handed him his drink, he set it on a table and pulled her into a forceful embrace, a wave that towed her under. When they finally surfaced, she remembered dinner. As she sizzled the veal in the skillet, he wrapped his arms around her from behind and kissed her neck. When, weak with relief and joy, she forgot what she was doing, he took over preparing the meal. He changed the records on the player. He uncorked the wine. And all the while he found new spots on her arms and face and décolletage to cover with kisses.

  Through dinner he kept the play of touch alive, intermittently taking her hand, keeping a knee next to hers under the table.

  “Do you live here alone?” he asked.

  She knew that he might see evidence of Hugo’s things. She heard herself say, “My husband and I have been using the apartment alternately until I move to France and the divorce is final.” It wasn’t really a lie. She wanted a divorce from Hugo; it had been on her mind repeatedly.

  “What about you?” she asked. “There must be a special person in your life. Do you live with anyone?”

  “I have a girlfriend.”

  The bite of veal on her fork turned to lint in her mouth. She pulled herself away, erect in her chair. “Oh, I’m surprised. Actually, you surprise me altogether. I had assumed you were homosexual.”

  “Why would you assume that?”

  “Maybe it was the long, dramatic leather coat.”

  He laughed. “It belonged to my stepfather’s father, Frank Lloyd Wright. I thought it might improve my acting prospects. It didn’t.”

  That he was related to the famous architect made him even more alluring, but she decided not to pursue it; she needed to know if his love for another, younger woman meant he’d inevitably reject her. “So you’re returning to Los Angeles to be with your girl.”

  “No, to study at UCLA. I’ll live at my mother’s place.”

  Stop it, Anaïs, she warned herself. Don’t clutch. Don’t scare him off. But she had to know.

  “Is it serious with your girl?”

  “I love her, but she’s religious. We’ve never made love because she’s waiting for marriage. I think she wants someone who can offer more security than I can.”

  She saw the pain and confusion on his face and felt relieved. “Does that mean you haven’t had sexual experiences with women?”

  He laughed. “I was married. I just got divorced.”

  “You do surprise me. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  She quickly calculated. He was sixteen years younger than she. As she waited for him to ask her age, she deliberated what to say. But he didn’t ask. He sprang up from his chair to change the record.

  He stopped at her chair on his way back to his seat. “Listen to Wagner’s harmonic suspension in the Liebestod. It’s been rising since the prelude.” He wrapped his arms around her just under her small breasts and spoke into her ear. “Hear how it creates desire and expectation? It teases you by taking you right to the brink, expecting the musical climax, and then withholds it, building your desire, your need for resolution even higher so that when the climax of Isolde’s death finally comes, it is shattering, explosive. There is nothing like it.”

  Anaïs rose from her seat into Rupert’s arms, her passion rising with the repeated harmonic chord, with increased intensity, again and again, mouth on mouth, his hands moving hungrily on her back, pulling her into him.

  He picked her up like an actor in a Western. It was corny, but she laughed as he carried her into the master bedroom, pulled off the satin bedcover, and released her gently on the bed. Urgently he pulled off her clothes and his own, tossing them to the floor. She saw his body in the half-light: his lean, muscled physique; his compact, alert member.

  He thrust into her with the speed and agility of an athlete. In a blast of energy, he took her to the brink repeatedly, challenging her strength, and only when she was wild with readiness did he satisfy her with a long, long orgasm.

  She was delirious with joy. She had found a man who could meet her passion with his own!

  He held her through the night, reaching out for her when she rolled over. She did not want to fall asleep, aware of the touch of his slender thighs next to hers, his sinewy arms enfolding her. In the morning, he took her again in another tidal wave of pleasure and left only after covering her with kisses. She was sure he would call her that afternoon, want to see her again that night. Her body throbbed, remembering: him throwing his coat on the couch, gently lowering the phonograph arm onto the record, carrying her laughing into the bedroom, leaning over her, his penis sprung hard in the half light.

  She was mad to be with him again that night. She circled the phone. She let herself look up the number in the phonebook for the printer where he worked. She opened the cigarette box to keep her hands from dialing the number.

  The phone rang. She put a smile on her face before answering so that her voice wouldn’t betray her anxiety. She heard Gore Vidal’s young, Brahmin voice. “I have some good news for you, my dear, but don’t get too excited; nothing is ever for sure.”

  “Did Dutton say yes?”

  “Have you finished Children of the Albatross?”

  “No, but I’m close.”

  “If you can have a final manuscript in two weeks, they’ve tentatively agreed to put it on the spring list.”

  “Oh Gore, that’s wonderful. I know this is only because of you.”

  “I’ll sign off now. You don’t have time to talk.”

  She hung up, dazed. Her body was still crying out for Rupert, but now she simply could not listen. She had worked a lifetime for this opportunity with a real publisher. She snapped her fingers to wake herself. Get to work, Anaïs. It’s just as well Rupert hasn’t called.

  The spindly arms of her Bauhaus Olivetti typewriter drummed. She typed one last sentence and swung the carriage with satisfaction. She still had to proof the entire book but tonight she wanted to celebrate. Tonight she wanted Rupert.

  Ten days had passed and he had not phoned. She could not understand it. How could this man forget her when their rhythms had been so perfectly in sync?

  The hell with it! She had to kno
w what had happened. Hugo would be back in two days for the weekend, then off again on another business trip. She had to phone Rupert, she rationalized, so he didn’t end up calling when Hugo was home. As the phone at the printer’s rang, she tried to ignore the sickening anxiety in her stomach. She needed to sound light, casual when she announced herself.

  He sounded nonchalant when he responded, “Oh, hello, darling.” He started making excuses: he’d cut his finger in the press, and it had gotten infected.

  She expressed sympathy and then let it drop that she would be out of town for several days so if he’d like to get together, it would have to be immediately or not until Tuesday.

  There was a long pause before he said, “Why don’t I call you on Tuesday then? Would you like to have dinner?”

  “I’d love that.”

  “Good then.”

  She hung up, confused and aching. He was not in love with her.

  She was at her Olivetti, retyping her manuscript, when she heard Hugo’s trudging gait. He moves like an old man, she thought. He’s only fifty but everything he does is slow and deliberate like an eighty-five-year-old.

  She sprang up to greet him and carry his bag into the bedroom. “You must be exhausted,” she offered as she drew him a bath. He flopped on the bed and slowly recounted his visit with her relatives, his delay at the Havana airport, his negotiations with his clients. The steam from the hot water she’d left running suffused the room, making her think of the heavy atmosphere Hugo brought with him. It descended on her like a low, gray cloud, suffocating her until he would leave and she could breathe freely again.

  At midnight she gave up typing and slipped into their king bed as she’d learned to do, so smoothly that Hugo registered no change. At 4 a.m. she was awakened by the glare of light in her face. Since he went to bed at 8 p.m., he awoke at dawn and read with the light on. They were completely out of sync. She fumed silently, pulling her pillow over her head.

  Because he hadn’t slept through the night, he dozed most of the day, and when he finally roused himself, he bore down on her. “We need to go over the budget.”

  We need to get a divorce, she thought. But out of habit and duty she sat by his side at the kitchen table. He’d point to a number in one of the columns recorded in his banker’s ledger. “What cost $86.79 on February fourth? Where is the check stub for it, Anaïs? You forgot again!”

  It was bad enough that he spent all his time poring over columns of numbers, but he wanted her to waste her life the same way.

  On Sunday she was in her study working when Hugo shambled in and muttered, “What did I come in here for?”

  Inside she snapped, You zombie! I can’t wait until Monday for you to leave! After he shuffled out, she lay her head on her folded arms in misery. Life was passing her by while she was buried in this tomb of a marriage.

  Tuesday evening, Hugo having departed, she clipped the price tag off her single spring purchase—a Christian Dior evening suit with a bustier jacket that emphasized her small waist and a long full skirt that complemented her narrow ankles. She heard the buzzer and checked her watch. She liked that Rupert was punctual like herself. She ducked into a mist of Chanel 22 before answering the door.

  He was wearing a heavy Pendleton shirt and blue jeans, holding bags of groceries in his arms. Her heart sank. He didn’t want to spend the money to take her to a restaurant.

  He put the groceries down, pulled her to him, and kissed her breasts, which were lifted by the bustier. His shining, thick hair held the aroma of his pipe tobacco.

  Dinner forgotten, she led him into the bedroom and undressed herself as he shed his heavy work clothes. When she turned her back to reach for a hanger, he said, “You have the body of a young girl.” She turned her head to smile; with him she felt like one.

  With his rapid, forceful movements, he took her to climax, and without leaving her, he took her again, and later again, until they were both exhausted and satiated.

  “I want to make love to you in the ocean,” he said. “I want to make love to you in the desert.”

  She warned herself: Don’t let him take your heart; he’s leaving. Take this for what it is now. And she was happy, overjoyed to have this beautiful young lover.

  Her pleasure coursed through the following weeks. She was flowing in her life again, moving with the tide, not grasping, not anticipating. It had been so long since she had felt this fluidity, this rightness, this excitement of being in life. Even when Hugo returned, this time without plans to leave any time soon, her happiness extended to him. Her gaiety lifted his spirits. He attributed it to her having handed in Children of the Albatross to Dutton. To celebrate he surprised her with opening night tickets to Martha Graham’s new ballet Night Journey.

  Excited that she would be seeing in person one of her artistic idols, Anaïs pulled her new Dior evening suit out of her closet, where she’d carefully hung it, safe from Rupert’s tearing. She asked Hugo to zip up the snug bustier that she had struggled with alone the night she’d worn it for Rupert. Hugo touched her small breasts raised in it, and she was aroused recalling Rupert’s frenzied kisses there.

  “You have to be seen in that dress tonight,” Hugo said. He called up the maître d’ at 21 Club and got them a table for after the ballet.

  Feeling a grateful tenderness for him as he refilled her champagne glass after their expensive evening, she toasted, “To my husband, who works so hard to give me our wonderful life. Who saved my whole family by marrying me against his father’s wishes. Dear Hugo, my savior.”

  He grasped her hand. “And to Anaïs, who makes my life worth living.”

  That night she tried to enjoy him mounting her in his absent, hurried way.

  A few days later, she phoned Rupert without fear, with faith in what their bodies had shared. Since Hugo was home for a stretch now, she offered to come to the print shop and take Rupert to dinner at a little Spanish cantina she knew.

  Once they’d settled in a corner booth, the dark brick walls and paintings of Flamenco dancers and bullfighters stirred the courage of Anaïs’s Spanish blood. She came right out and asked him, “When are you leaving for California?”

  “In three weeks. I have to take Cleo for a checkup and then I’m off.”

  “Cleo?”

  “Cleopatra.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s been very lethargic.”

  “I suppose you will miss her.”

  “Oh, no, I’m taking her with me.”

  “What about your girl in California?”

  “Anaïs, Cleo is my car.”

  “Oh.” She laughed. “I never know the makes of cars.”

  “No, Cleo’s just my name for her. She’s a Ford. Sometimes I can’t tell when you are teasing me.”

  “Do you think I’m teasing you if I say I’ll miss you?”

  “No, because I know I’ll miss you.”

  “Well, we can write to each other.” She suddenly felt the happiness of the past weeks drain out of her. She lowered her eyes to the shrimp shells in the bowl between their half-eaten plates of paella. She would be left as hollow as those discarded, brittle carapaces. Empty without the sweet pungency of desire.

  “Come with me,” Rupert said.

  She looked up into his steady blue gaze. “To California?”

  “Keep me company on the drive. We can make an adventure of it.”

  “Yes,” she said without thinking. She had no idea how she would manage it, what she would tell Hugo. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind, though; she was going to run away with this beautiful man.

  That night he drove her to his tiny apartment in Cleo, which turned out to be a ramshackle 1931 Model-A roadster. The convertible top was down in the middle of March and the heater didn’t work. Not wanting to seem old and fussy, she didn’t say a thing. Nor did it matter to her that his room was that of a messy boy. He played the guitar for her and then his viola. Full of assurance, he leapt up and pushed her down on the lumpy
mattress, his kisses strong and skillful, the caresses of a musician, electric; his hands on her backside kneading in a frenzy that awakened her nerves. Fire and nerves and rhythm building to an assured crescendo. There was, she realized with joy, nothing passive about Rupert’s desire for her.

  After he drove her home in Cleo, she slipped undetected into bed with Hugo and lay awake, drunk from her passion with Rupert. Until dawn, she auditioned possible stories to tell Hugo so that she could run away in three weeks with her exuberant, young lover.

  At breakfast she said casually to Hugo, “You know my friend Thurema Sokol?”

  “The harpist.”

  “She’s giving a concert in Los Angeles but she’s afraid of flying. She asked me to keep her company on her drive across the country to California.”

  Hugo objected about the money the trip would cost, as she knew he would, but in the end he handed her a stack of bills, insisting that she pay her share of gas and lodging. She threw her arms around his neck and thanked him as a jagged stab of guilt pierced her.

  With her guilt came worries: What if Hugo ran into Thurema? What if Rupert didn’t show up on their set departure date? What if she got sick from exhaustion on the long drive? Her age would show and scare Rupert away.

  She handled her anxiety by keeping busy. She packed and re-packed her suitcase, hiding it with her diaries in the secret closet she’d had a carpenter install in the apartment without Hugo’s knowledge.

  The morning Rupert was to pick her up at 8:30 a.m., Hugo dawdled over breakfast. “I can be a little late to the office this morning.” He gave her a reptilian smile. “I’ll wait for Thurema and see you both off.”

  “Oh, you’d better not. Thurema said she might be late.”

  Anaïs jumped up and dialed the phone. Turning her back, unseen by Hugo, she disconnected the call. “Oh Thurema, how are you coming?” she said into the dead receiver. “No, that’s okay. Eleven would be fine. Hugo wanted to see you, but I’ll explain.”

  Putting down the receiver, she put her arms around Hugo. “I’m sorry, darling. You better get going.” She fussed over him, buttoning his coat, repeating how much she would miss him. It was 8:25. If he were coming, Rupert would be there in five minutes. What if Hugo were still in the apartment?