The rhythm built and we moved faster and faster. At one point his penis slipped out and then he reached quickly to reinsert it. Isn’t that called “The Fastest Four-Handed Game in the World”?
He didn’t put his hands back up over his head but grasped my thighs as I surged up and down on him. He pressed them down as I sank to put more pressure on his penis. He was beginning to move involuntarily in me, pushing in and out with increasing rapidity. I couldn’t really move my fingers in him with the same rhythm. I just kept them locked deeply in place as his buttocks plunged up and down. He kept his legs spread so as to allow me full access.
He was sweating profusely, and under his lowered eyelids I could see him looking at me. There was a small smile on his narrow, curved lips. Something like the Attic smile. Maybe that smile you see on the early Greek kouros statues is of sexual origin. His expression was of the most genuine affection I had ever seen on his face. Then it contorted. Agony began to spread over his features. His hands were grasping my thighs as though he were drowning. I moved with great rapidity as he searched frantically inside me with his penis. He was looking for something, it was almost there, and then it was there.
He held his pelvis arced against me. His grimace was frozen in place; his hands clutched me. I leaned forward and kissed him, easing my hand out of his prostate ring, pressing my buttocks against his lifted body. He put his arms around me and held me tightly against his body, then slowly lowered his hips to the bed. His penis eased itself out of my body inch after inch. It felt very, very long. I lay down beside him, pressing one leg between his legs, feeling his still-swollen penis against my thigh. My cheek was against his cheek. He slowly relaxed the pressure of his arms about me, but still kept them in place. Here is a basically affectionate person who has learned to withhold affection, either to avoid complications or control situations, I thought. Perhaps this is true of everyone who seems to not be affectionate.
“You haven’t come,” he said in my ear. He reached down. My underpants were still twisted about my lower body, clutching my penis to me almost painfully. I lifted my legs and buttocks, and he pulled them off and started manipulating me. I was already soggy; there was no need to look for the Vaseline, now lost somewhere in the twisted bed sheets. “Hold me very tightly,” I said, and kissed him. He kept kissing me as he masturbated me. It didn’t take long. I was already hyperaroused. I came, as I can, twisting and shaking and shuddering all over the bed. He held me firmly, realizing I needed to be stabilized in my fall through space.
He pulled his mouth off mine. “That was fun,” he said. “I’m sorry you came. I’m almost ready to go again.” I realized that I had been hanging on tightly to his penis while he was masturbating me and it was engorging again in my hand.
I got up and went to the bathroom where I sat down on the toilet. Strings and clumps of his semen came out of my body and filled the bowl below me. I stared. It was quite a lot. Quite a lot.
Radomir was what I thought he would be sexually. I felt that I had really had sex and it would last me quite awhile. “I always told you that you would really enjoy fucking me,” I said when I went back into the bedroom. He had pulled the sheet up to his waist and was lying turned into the room on the far side of the bed.
“I always knew that,” he said. “Come here.”
~18~
Radomir’s First Return
Nevis knew that Radomir was returning to Paris for a short visit in July to fulfill a plan made with his friend Savannah from California. They had long ago planned to meet in front of Notre Dame at noon on the Fourth of July.
Nevis guessed Radomir would arrive on a Monday, as he knew the rendezvous with Savannah was Tuesday the fourth. He told this to Minerva when she called on Saturday, asking when Radomir was expected.
On Sunday, in the middle of preparing brunch for Anthony Stuart and his wife, the phone rang. It was Radomir. He was in Paris. Had in fact arrived the previous day and was staying with Minerva. He sounded particularly sulky but was coming over and, yes, would have some brunch.
While Nevis was waiting for Radomir, several things happened. He let the scrambled eggs stay over the flame too long and they become too hard. As he served the eggs an acrid odor filled the apartment. Immediately his large gray Persian cat, Nada, jumped onto a dining room chair and exhibited little curlicue white-singed whiskers. Nevis snatched Nada up and found singed hair all over his body and concluded Nada had jumped onto the stove to investigate the smell of bacon and had found a gas ring still flaming that Nevis had forgotten to turn off. Anthony and his French wife, Alexandra, chatted amiably through the nervousness of the hard eggs and the singed cat. As they were finishing brunch Radomir arrived.
He was pleasant as he talked with the Stuarts, eating the second round of eggs and bacon that Nevis prepared for him. He explained he was late because after he’d called Nevis he’d called another friend, Lo De Coy, and had coffee with her. Anthony and Alexandra excused themselves when the chitchat had dwindled to nothing.
In the living room Nevis said, “You sounded very angry when I called you last to see when you were coming.”
“I was and I still am,” Radomir answered. “Because of your letters.”
“But you said you’d written,” Nevis answered back, “and nothing has ever arrived. Tell me what’s bothering you.”
“No, I’ve written you a letter. You’ll get it tomorrow.” Radomir smiled unpleasantly. He looked hulky, humpy, and handsome, but almost a cliché of the unattainable boyfriend, the guy who instinctively knows his hold on you is that he is unattainable and doesn’t care.
Across the room Nevis sat on the settee and said, “The awful thing about this is that when you’re about thirty-five you’re going to realize what was happening here, and by that time it will all be too late.” He felt the tears running down his face as he added, “By then I’ll be old, old. Really old.” But he wasn’t sobbing, just sort of leaking out the overflow of his sadness at the inevitability of his situation.
Radomir didn’t seem particularly uncomfortable but said, “I’ve got to be going. I promised Lo I’d meet her again to go to the movies.” Nevis didn’t protest. He saw his love disappearing down the circular staircase and thought, This is a real tragedy. A hard, dry, inescapable tragedy. Because in earlier days I could feel terrible but under it all was the hope for someone else. But now it’s far too late. That is your last love you see going out of sight, round that bend.
During the week Nevis thought of Radomir meeting Savannah precisely at twelve in front of Notre Dame on Tuesday. He thought of going there. Whether just to watch them from a distance or to speak to them, he wasn’t sure. But he managed to contain himself and not go to Notre Dame when Tuesday noon came. Radomir was planning to bring her to the country. He would meet her there.
Savannah had written him a polite note from the south of France where she was touring with friends, and he rather imagined her as a large, tending-to-be-plump brunette in her mid-thirties with glasses, originally from somewhere in the South. Hungering for Radomir but unconsummated as she was too nice a Southern librarian type to really go after him. He would meet her when she came down to the country with Radomir for the weekend.
There was finishing-up work to be done on Fanette before Radomir and Savannah were to come down on Friday evening, so early in the morning Nevis was off to the country. He opened his house and put flowers in the separate bedrooms for Radomir and Savannah. He placed a large silver-framed photograph of Radomir on his dressing table, for Radomir and Savannah to see when they arrived at the house. Leaving a note on the front door saying he was at Fanette and suggesting they come over, he drove away.
All day he expected them to drive up, but nonetheless went on cleaning the garden and Windexing the windows. After scraping the last bits of paint off the sitting room tile floor he gave up and drove back home.
The note was gone. They had obviously been in the house, but there was no luggage. They were to have picked up keys
from neighbors, so Nevis went to ask if they’d seen Radomir and Savannah. The neighbors said, yes, Radomir and his friend had been there and gotten the key and had come back later for the key to Fritz’s house, as Radomir wanted to show it to Savannah. Fritz was out of town.
Nevis left them and walked down the street to Fritz’s house. He heard voices in the kitchen, so he wrapped on the window. Radomir opened it. His eyes were very clear and he looked very handsome. Nevis stared. Radomir said, “Yes, it’s me. Come on in.”
“You must be Savannah,” Nevis said to a woman with a dried-up little face and a mop of permanented Chore Girl blonde hair who was certainly his own age or more. A wave of relief passed over him as he concluded this certainly couldn’t be a sleeping partner. Radomir was distant but smoothly pleasant. No one mentioned that they were not going to stay with him and that they were taking up residence in a house they had not been given permission to stay in.
Then Nevis realized with a thump there was only one three-quarter bed in Fritz’s house that they were obviously planning to share.
He asked Savannah where she was staying in Paris. She looked surprised and said, “With Radomir at his hotel, of course.”
He then asked Radomir where the hotel was. He said, “I think it’s in the Eleventh Arrondissement.”
“You don’t remember the street?”
Radomir answered, “No, we just wandered around and found it. I know where it’s at.”
“Well, how do you tell a taxi driver where to go when he takes you there?” Nevis demanded.
“We don’t take taxis,” the answer came back. “We always go on the Metro.”
With that Nevis realized he was being lied to, and they were undoubtedly staying right down the street at the Hotel des Croisé near his apartment, where he put his visiting overflow, and had been within yards of him all week.
Nevis then started telling about all the work that had been done at Fanette. Savannah interrupted bitterly, “You poor woman. How you work!” Nevis realized her attack was pre-programmed by Radomir, sitting smugly across the table smiling mysteriously. He then forced them to accept a dinner invitation at a small restaurant in a nearby town and left.
The thought of Radomir clambering over Savannah’s slack flesh made him feel creepy. But then, he thought, probably no more than my own and she is a woman.
That evening, despite Savannah’s continuing hostility, their dinner at the bistro in nearby Montfaucon wasn’t too awful. As soon as they seated themselves Savannah had shaken her mop of Bedlington terrier curls and protested that she ate only vegetables, so a large salad and a plate of vegetables had been obtained for her. Like most Americans, she obviously found it hard to imagine that every restaurant in France would not have a health-food platter. Her air of a patronizing sheep became more pronounced as dinner progressed and she drank more wine. She spoke at length about “sharing,” “projecting,” and “being involved,” and also admitted that she had become an analyst because no matter how old she got her patients wouldn’t leave her. Radomir sat across the table and said little. He seemed satisfied to let Savannah display enough insulting behavior for the two of them. When Nevis tried to involve him in the conversation he was cool and noncommittal.
After the meal they returned home and Nevis suggested they stroll in the night in the grounds of the abbey. They did so but were determined not to express any pleasure or admiration for the great eighteenth-century facade glistening in the moonlight over its stone terrace and the formal gardens that descended to the river, gurgling darkly below.
Before the evening ended Nevis wanted to surprise Radomir with a gift. He had bought a large Puss-in-Boots marionette, dressed as a cavalier, with sweeping-feathered hat and sword for Radomir. Radomir had a passion for marionettes and had often admired the large cat figure standing in a toy shop window near the Pigalle apartment. He invited Radomir and Savannah in before they went to the other house and gave Radomir the large box. As he handed it to him he wondered if he was making a mistake, but he plunged ahead anyway. Radomir hadn’t divined what was in the box and was taken aback when he extricated the large gray cat in its hat. He moved it about and stammered, “I, I just don’t know what to say.” Nevis was sure if Savannah hadn’t been present he would have let down his guard. She had undoubtedly counseled Radomir all week on how to deal with Nevis and was staying within reach so he wouldn’t slip off the track she had neatly laid out with her phoney-baloney, jargon-chattering pseudo-psychology. Nevis could easily have punched her.
Radomir placed Puss back in his box on the lavender plaid settee and said he wished to leave him there. Then they departed, saying they would come to Fanette the next day.
Saturday morning Nevis got up, dressed, and left for Fanette to finish his work. There was no sign of life at Fritz’s house as he passed it in his old black Peugeot.
During the day, expecting Radomir and Savannah at any time, Nevis finished odds and ends. The small table he had scraped of its red enamel he placed in the middle of the blue-and-white kitchen. The oiled chairs were placed at the table, and others were put in the bedroom above and the sitting room below. A set of pitchers with brick-red edges he put in the kitchen on a shelf. A small wire dish with wooden fruit and a pair of brass candlesticks festooned with metal grapes and wire tendrils he placed on the living room fireplace. He had at first decided against putting the ornaments in place, but there was little else to do waiting for them to arrive.
They still weren’t there at lunchtime, so he walked down into the town and bought a small quiche and some orange juice, which made his lunch at the wicker table in the garden.
After lunch he finished cleaning windows, which took appreciably longer than he had anticipated. By the time he had hung a Marie Laurencin print in the bedroom (another expensive gift, the print being one Radomir had often admired in a shop on the Rue de Rivoli), and placed a painting of cherries in a twist of blue paper in the sitting room over the Provincial settee, the day had almost ended. He was tired and decided to smoke a cigarette sitting in the doorway and then would go home, defeated by the deliberate aloofness and hostility.
Just as he pushed the cigarette butt into the geranium plant on the stoop, their car pulled up in the street below. They entered the gate and came up the turning curve of the steps, past the geranium pots Nevis had placed on each step. Radomir’s gray eyes were clear in his brown face and he looked particularly handsome. Nevis said to them, “I’ll stay here and let you look over the house.” He had imagined how the visit would go and had decided it best to let them see things by themselves. He wanted to imagine Radomir gasping with surprise and pleasure, although he knew now this was not going to be the case.
He lit another cigarette and sat down on the stoop again. He heard nothing from within the house. When they returned to the sitting room he went with them into the garden. He wondered if the house didn’t seem transformed to Radomir, or if he was frustrated at the work being already so advanced, or if he was impressed but determined not to say so.
Savannah wandered away with her camera and he saw her in the street below photographing the house. He stepped away from the wall so as not to be in her picture. Finally he said to Radomir, who was looking uncomfortably at the eaves, “Would you like to express an opinion?”
Radomir turned and said, “Well, it’s really your house, isn’t it?”
Nevis said, “I thought you’d be very excited to have your house so far along.”
“I hate all the little touches. Nobody asked you to get the pictures, or the ornaments, or the stuff in the kitchen. I want you to take them out of here,” Radomir flared.
“That’s easily done. There’s just a couple of baskets of things. But why so angry?” Nevis said, trying to keep his voice calm.
“Because I wanted to do this,” Radomir replied.
The thought passed through Nevis’s mind that spending the summer lying on a beach wasn’t the most convincing demonstration of interest, but he answered, “
I was so worried about you I had to let my energy out somewhere. I didn’t know where you were, I didn’t know what was happening, and I thought perhaps you were sick and alone.”
“Sick and alone?” Radomir demanded.
“You know, with your friend in California being positive for AIDS, I thought you could be sick somewhere, with no one to help you,” Nevis said.
“You would bring that up,” Radomir said sulkily from the doorway and turned and went down the stairs. Nevis found he was clinging to the corner of the sideboard, semi-barricaded behind one end of it. He wasn’t sure how he had gotten there from the garden where the conversation had started. He walked to the door and looked down as Radomir got into the driver’s seat. The Bedlington terrier in the beige raincoat was already inside. After they had pulled away Nevis went about the house. He packed the wooden fruit and the wire dish, the gilded three-prong candlesticks, the matching pitchers, and the blue flowered sugar bowl into a large basket. He put the painting of the cherries in a large plastic bag and prepared to leave. The Marie Laurencin he left on the bedroom wall. He didn’t particularly like it and was damned if he was going to take it away.
He stowed the things in the old Peugeot, locked up the house and drove away, winding back across the countryside through the late sun. He sang as he drove, “You go along, never knowing I care, loving somebody somewhere.” He sang and found when the spire of his village came into view he could hardly see it he was crying so hard.
That evening he didn’t even look to see if Radomir and Savannah were at home. He closed his blinds, steamed his vegetables, ate, and went to bed. The Musketeer cat puppet still sprawled in its nest of cerise tissue paper on the lavender settee in the sitting room as he slept.
The Millionaire of Love Page 12