“With an instructor like you, I have no doubt,” I said.
“You’ve come along nicely,” she said. “Your rhythm dances are nearly perfect.”
We stopped. She walked to a Bose sound system on a table next to the wall and changed the song.
“What’s this?” I said about the music.
“It’s called Bossa Nova. A slow Samba, remember?”
“I’ll try.”
She took my hand and positioned us in a close frame. “On eight,” she said. “Five, six, seven, eight....”
We danced.
“Shoulders still, only hips move. Remember the hand, only raise it slightly, a comfortable gesture.”
Our well-trained gyrations sashayed through the balmy air a duet of Samba journeys. Sheens of perspiration began glazing our arms and faces.
“This music is so you, Jay. Easy, indifferent, a tepid stroll on a warm beach, not serious about anything except the only thing.”
Her breath, along with her baiting remark, was sourly sweet and cattishly sanguine. And deep within my loin was that forbidden urge I’ve battled every time I was within tasting distance of her. She twirled smoothly, as if a dream spun before me. I drew her close and advanced, leading through each step, each phrase. I forgot about the calendar, the coming weekend, and an appointment this afternoon. Nothing was important now except clasping my paws around Angela and caressing her graceful carriage across this floor.
“The studio is quiet this morning,” I remarked.
“Dead is more like it. I don’t like the bright sun coming through the windows.” She stopped short and said, “There’s something magical about warm, artificial light when combined with dance, isn’t there?” She walked to a nearby table and lifted from her handbag a towel, then wiped the perspiration from her face. She began folding the towel into a hand-sized square. She scanned the large room, searching, it seemed, its emptiness until she turned and brought the towel to my face and gently wiped my brow and cheeks. Her lovely mink eyes studied mine. She turned and put the towel in her bag.
“I need a shower,” she said, not looking at me.
“Yeah...same here.” A white-hot stillness engulfed the studio, declaring an opening, blaring out the question—which way are you going on this, Jack?
“I always hate the drive home,” she said. “I live on the other side of town.” She looked at me the way she always does before we dance, but the door was open now, and she wasn’t hiding. “Are you going home now?” she asked.
“Yea...I live across the canal on the island.”
“I know.”
I had two choices, remain sinking into this abyss of white-hot desire or scale the high road toward a benign, moral reason.
“I’d like to answer that question, Jack. The baiting and gratuitous question you asked me on the stairs a few days ago.”
I thought about the filthy futon in the back room, then said, “My house in ten minutes.”
33
My gaze traveled a wanderer’s journey along the contour of Angela’s firm breasts, flat stomach, and stretch-mark free hips. Ah, youth. Her eyes were closed, closed the way a savvy player bluffs inside a game…the way a spy lies in wait. I rose from the bed and saw her watching me.
“I think this is what happens when you dance the tango with a man for a long time,” she said.
We had showered together earlier, after which our lathery foreplay made haste to my bed. Her moist, dark hair and unmade face had an unlike maturity. A tender youth was there, though, lending deception to the shape of a beautiful woman.
She began to move from the bed. I carried a bathrobe toward her. She paused, glared at me, and took the robe and put it on. Her damp hair lay on the white terry bathrobe like ink-black tentacles, ready to latch onto the man who’d just dipped his wick inside this forbidden well.
She cinched the robe closed and turned to face me. Her shoulders were hunched and tight; her face tilted down, contemplating something spontaneous. She opened the bathrobe, exposing herself, and then straight armed me, causing me to stumble back. “What the hell, Jack? You think I’m cold or something? We were just bonking, and now you can’t even look at me?”
“I’m sorry.”
She laughed. “I’m the one who’s sorry.”
I began to dress, keeping my eyes away from her. I knew she was sorry, orgasmically relieved, and pissed: she used my real name.
“Are we finished?” she asked.
“I have an appointment this afternoon.”
“Of course you do.”
I turned and saw a young woman resembling someone’s daughter. My stomach began to churn.
“Why, Jay? Why did we do this?”
“Don’t ask me that.”
“Can we meet again?”
“No.” I tossed her clothes to her.
She stood and dropped the bathrobe, striking a goddess pose. She began to dress.
I decided to cover my red ass with a show of paternal conduct and asked her somewhat curtly, “Why did you shave your pubic hair?”
“Is this the question and answer time now, when we exhume our naked secrets?”
“You first.”
“Genitalia are powerful weapons, and should always be clean and on the ready.”
The churning bile impelled higher up my esophagus.
“You intrigue me, Jack. You’re a gentleman who’s attractive and wealthy and you seem honorable and beyond reproach, yet you’re not, and that intrigues me.” She slipped on her panties, then stretched her tight-fitting jeans along her lean legs and nicely rounded hips, finishing with a final snap and zip. “Every girl’s dream is to find a man who can see her true brilliance. You seem to know how to do that, yet you fall short, as if a part of you was destroyed somewhere in your life. You don’t know how to have a real relationship, do you?”
I groaned out a laugh and bent down to lace my shoes and mumbled, “Women fake orgasms, men fake relationships. It’s a tied game.”
“Which is why you only fuck women and not make love to them; you just can’t seem to untie the bloody game, can you, sport?” A smug, all knowing grin shaped her face, one that was far too perceptive for someone her age. “But love’s quickie pleasures do fit the bill, do they not, Mr. Kidd? And what’s more, I never fake it.”
A flashback of our white-hot romp filled my head: me on my back, Angela on top; her baby-soft curves and perky breasts; her virtuous face locked in contorted, twisted pleasure; our sweaty loins clapping between gasps and moans... Okay, she didn’t fake it. Notch one up for little Jack.
She chicken-winged her arms to the middle of her back and hooked her bra, then slipped on her blouse.
“I think you need to be on your way,” I said.
“There’s no need to push me out, I’m gladly on my way.”
After she had smoothed out my paw prints on her blouse, she reached inside her handbag and pulled out one of my business cards. “I don’t care for this dapper photo of you as a polished real estate salesman,” she said. “You look too clean and disingenuous. And after being with you, I know that’s not the case at all. Pious people are forever deceitful.”
“If you say so.” The nausea in my stomach began to morph into heartburn.
“All the wealthy perfection in this harbor, this affluent side of the world. It’s annoying, and I hate it.”
“Then why live here, or anywhere affluent, for that matter?”
“I live here because I’m studying abroad, a temporary residency of sorts.”
“You’ll be successful in whatever you do, Angel. You’re very bright.” My fatherly words caused my stomach to churn even more.
“I’m French and Lebanese,” she said, as if it were important. “I was born in London.” She slipped on her shoes.
“What about your parents, your family? Do they live in London?” I needed to hear an innocent voice, a young woman tethered to earth who lived a normal, decent life. God, I felt like a shit.
“My f
ather lives in London. He’s a wealthy currency trader. Trades the Euro and the American dollar the way a card shark cons a poker game. I hardly see him or my mother who lives in Paris. I left home months ago.”
“What are your studies here?” A tight seam had loosened from her fervent ego, and as bad as my chagrin felt at the moment, I still needed from her innocence more information: her lies.
“My studies are people and politics. The world must change. Greed and envy must perish.”
“Fat chance on that.”
“The rich and the powerful, the elite and the bourgeoisie, need to be cut down so that they can no longer rape the meek.”
“And you’re the one to do it?”
“Do you believe, Jack?”
“Believe in what?”
“In a cause, a purpose...in yourself?”
The crux of any plot demonstrates a turning point, a moment of illumination. And so here I stood emasculated in front of this misguided, fanatical young woman who goosed dead on that unbelieving spot I hide pathetically up my ass.
“I believe in you,” I said.
“Believe in me what, that I’m the daughter you’ll never have, or is it the Lolita you crave? Don’t look that way, Jaywalk. You and I both know the cat’s out of the bag.”
“So what’s your take on the other two cats, Catherine and Lena?” The heartburn joined in with the squishy sounds in my gut.
“They’re useful for what needs to be done, and so I fashion myself with them. But I do hate them. They’re one and the same, too beautiful and too wicked and both without a soul, the same way the world is wicked and will be changed.”
“Changed by whom?”
“Don’t ask me any more questions. I came to feel something from you, not to hear all this, and besides, I answered the question you asked me on the stairs that day. It was pitifully sheepish of you, really, asking me if I would have an older man like you in bed.”
“I didn’t really say it that way.”
“Yes, you did. You referred to the French painter Gauguin living on a tropical island with scores of half-naked, young Polynesian girls, and also some Ernest Hemingway type fishing for gold-digging Brazilian beauties.”
“Half-naked muses with passionate aspirations is what I think I said.”
“You wanted to know if I thought such a life to be scandalous and immoral. Well, to answer your question, I actually prefer older men. Did I fulfill your fantasy of having a sweet, young virgin lying coyly on a bed of palm fronds and banana-tree leaves, spreading her legs in submission to a Bohemian father figure?”
“Shut up.”
She laughed. “I’m sorry, Jack, but I’m not a virgin, and furthermore, I’m only seventeen years old.”
Both nausea and heartburn had full possession of my stomach now; but my lower intestines...that was a different story, one that caused me to estimate how many steps there were to the bathroom.
She said, “It looks as though you’ve committed a crime of debauchery this afternoon, doesn’t it?”
I paced the room, wondering why I seemed always to box myself into shit like this, no matter the female’s age. Did it even matter, a few months, a statute of limitations applicable to an under-aged girl who appeared by all rights and purposes to be a sensually mature woman, fully capable of fornicating with a virile, immature man? I turned toward her in a stalwart pose. “You’ll have a wonderful future, Angela.” I motioned the both of us toward the door.
“You think so? I’ve always thought of myself as a martyr.”
I shot a hard glance toward her.
“Please don’t sell your orange trees to them, Jay.”
“I won’t. How do you know about them?”
“We know everything about you.”
My eyebrows arched; my guts sloshed.
She said, “They won’t stop until their manifest destiny is complete. They want to rape everything that’s lovely and pure, and there are some of us who stand in their way, your beautiful orange trees included.” She stopped before exiting the door, aiming her never to be the same again eyes at me. “We’re all together in this now, Jaywalk.”
“There’s power in numbers.” I tried a smile, but it was a lousy show for how I really felt.
“I’m glad I came to answer your question,” she said. “Our temptations have been thoroughly played out now and from this day forward I think we’ll dance exceptionably well.”
34
Later that day I sped my coupe along PCH, then toward a turnout off the highway atop a bluff that towered over the ocean. No matter the time of day here, there would be faint silhouettes of beautiful things far out on the sea: an outline of Catalina Island or a distant ship steaming in to shore, the perfect remedy for decompressing the mind and calming the bowels.
I parked and walked to the guardrail. I was dressed and ready for a six o’clock showing, a widow from Arizona, a young one, looking for a beachfront home and a complimentary lay.
The prints of Angela’s wet bare footsteps from my bathroom floor matched my etch-a-sketch template of another set of dainty prints found in my kitchen. Her feet were the exact same size and shape as Catherine’s and Lena’s feet. It was as if all three of these prima-ballerinas were dye cast from the same mold. So it could have been Angela entering my backdoors and slipping past my useless, overpriced home-security system. But I doubted it. I now had a hands-on feel that Angela had no control in any of this.
I thought about the email I’d received from Emily this morning. The tumors in her breast were terminal, and a specialist in London had given her only six months to a year to live. The damn cancer had metastasized throughout her body. Her message was short and her words terse and I had no choice but to understand it as nothing more than a faraway news story about a famous person living to die. Hell, I knew someone or something would eventually take her out and with the poetic justice of a worn-out story line. “Cancer strikes a rich and famous icon—News at Eleven.”
The poor woman just wanted what she couldn’t have. It looks as though I won the game.
35
Day twenty-one. I stood in Brenda Murphy’s bedroom with my cell phone to my ear. My maestra stepped from the bathroom, followed by a misty cloud of cigarette smoke and steam. She had just showered after our afternoon romp.
“Will you stay for lunch?” she said. Her rinse-and-shine, it seemed, had doused her afterglow.
“Sure.”
She moved past me toward the kitchen. I followed and sat at a countertop.
“Sandwich, salad—what do you prefer for your midday buffet?”
“Just coffee.”
“How long has it been since you’ve heard from Roger?”
“Three days.”
“Your Catherine Fleming has been at the studio, but you knew that, didn’t you?” Brenda smacked a frying pan on the stove, startling me. She started the burner, heating the pan. “Pardon me while I cook. I skipped breakfast this morning, and I’ve been craving two soft yokes full of protein and fertility for some time. My husband used to have two fertile yokes suspended somewhere inside his gabardine slacks. But now it’s just me, alone and hungry.”
The hot pan popped as she laid two eggs and several pork links in the skillet. She scooped coffee grounds into the coffee maker and set the machine to brew. She said, “My guess is Mr. Roger is somewhere south of the border having a Kama Sutra delight with a blue-eyed femme fatale. He’ll come home and brag about how majestic she was in bed. You’ll give him the usual accolade and be glad he’s home and not sliced and diced.” She glanced at me. You seem so sheepish when you worry, tomcat.”
“How do you know Roger is in Mexico with Lena?”
“Eavesdropping. The walls of my studio have ears.”
“You have no idea. So what do you know about her?”
“Which her?”
“All three, I guess.”
“You guess?” Brenda began to laugh, the old silly laugh she cackled at her studio, yet her eyes no
w were unfriendly and clinical. She opened the fridge and pulled out a box of donuts. “Would you like one?” she asked, lofting the box toward me.
I shook my head. She lifted one of the powdered confectionares from the box and began eating it. She then pulled out a long knife from a rack and started bouncing the blade repeatedly on the countertop in front of me while the eggs and pork links snap, crackled, and popped in the nearby skillet. What’s wrong with this picture?
“Is this why you came to my home today and made my loin quiver, so that I would reveal more deleterious truths about Catherine? Oh, I keep forgetting you’re a gigolo on a mission, but you’re being ultra clandestine about it now, aren’t you?”
Brenda turned off the stove and served herself the eggs and sausage. She poured two cups of coffee and handed me mine. She sat at the other side of the counter and began woofing down her short-order breakfast. “I’m so famished,” she said between hard swallows and gulps of air. She made an awkward grin with her mouth half full of food and said, “You think me eating this way is unbecoming of a seasoned psychiatrist, don’t you?”
I didn’t say anything, just stared. Truth be told, the shine of pork grease mixed with powdered sugar smeared all over her lips was not just unbecoming but damn frightening.
“My husband’s never around. A research doctor with a big medical university, zooming off to perform lectures about what he specializes in, whatever the hell that is. He’s usually impotent anyway.” She halted her assault on the remaining soft yokes and pork links to slurp down a hearty gulp of coffee. “You’d think that after menopause and all the flaccidness I’ve received from men most of my life, I wouldn’t be so damn horny.”
“There’s always Victor Knight.” I took a drink of coffee, trying to keep my attention away from one of the smartest women I’ve ever known shove food down her throat like a starving dog.
“Ah yes, the well-hung Jamaican who drives the flashy car.”
“I’ve heard he’s good.”
The Irresistible Muse of Jack Kidd Page 21