The Casanova Embrace

by Warren Adler

  "They woulda give me unshirted," he said. "I ain't no good at spellin'."

  Her heart was pounding. He let himself ease into the sailboat. She could smell the musk of him now. This must be the way a man smells, she thought. His bare arm brushed against her shoulder. Sliding across the seat, he completely enveloped her, his hard bicep pressed against her back as he jiggled the tiller. She felt paralyzed. She would never know whether it was from fear or from pleasure, but she sat rooted as he stretched one leg over the rail and pushed the hull of the cabin cruiser. The little sailboat shot free and into the wind.

  "There," he said, not bragging, genuinely helpful, even humble. "You done me good. I didn' mean you were a lousy sailor."

  The boat moved swiftly now and, as if in deference to her seamanship, he gave her the tiller and the rope.

  Her hands were barely able to keep their grip as his huge arm still buttressed her. He was not shy. Natural. That was the way she would always see him in her mind.

  "I'm Biff Maloney," he said.

  "I'm Penny McCarthy." Anne had not yet found her identity.

  "Penny!" He slapped his thigh. Had her name struck him as funny? She looked at him now, trying to be analytical despite his overwhelming physical presence. She had a difficult time keeping her eyes from the tight pouch of his crotch. She had never seen a male organ except in anatomy books in a doctor's office, and, somehow, the curiosity had always seemed unclean and she'd been able to subdue it.

  "Better get me back to work. They'll can me," he said, showing no anxiety. In three tacks she got him back near the rope ladder. He grabbed it, then stood for a moment, looking up and squinting at his error.

  "I'm no darn speller," he said, smiling. He is beautiful, she decided. Dumb, but beautiful.

  Thinking about him made her happy. She was not immune to the idea of class distinction programmed into her from infancy. And she knew he was stupid. But that didn't stop her from wanting to see him again.

  She had all the leisure in the world and could easily conform to his nonworking hours. After that first day, she took to sailing close to the boatyard docks as part of her regular course. He would wave to her and she would wave back. She was, of course, deliberately calculating, contriving to meet him at every opportunity. On his part, he was so thickheaded and easily manipulated that he was soon sailing with her every day after he got off from work. She preferred that. On the water, they could easily escape the notice of people by heading into one of the many coves that lined the shore.

  Biff didn't talk much, but he was gentle, and she found it gave her pleasure to touch him. They'd stretch out, pulling in the sail and letting the boat drift, watching the changing colors of the sun as it dipped slowly in the west.

  "You are one big teddy bear," she told him.

  "Yeah."

  "You like being with me, Biff?"

  "Yeah."

  She did learn some rudimentary facts about him. He was born in Camden. His mother had died. He had only gone to school till the fifth grade. She was surprised to learn that he was sixteen, a year younger than she, but that hardly mattered. The image of the teddy bear that had popped into her mind was very close to the truth.

  "Where do you go every day?" her mother would ask.

  "Sailing."

  "All day? You come home so late. I worry sometimes."

  Perhaps because Biff was inarticulate and there was little conversation between them, she found herself actually withdrawing in communicating with others, especially her parents.

  "You okay, Penny?" her father said to her one night.

  "Yes."

  "You look strange."

  "I'm okay."

  She sensed that they had begun to watch her with increasing interest, although she did not pay them much attention. Biff was her life now. He absorbed her completely. When she was not with him, she thought about him. Was she secretly wishing that her mind might become as simple as his? He was never unhappy. He could stare for hours at the sky and never say a word. She felt like his mother. I can make him do anything, she mused.

  "What are you thinking about, Biff?" she asked him one evening on the boat.

  "Nuthin."

  "Do you like watching the sunset?"

  "Yeah."

  She knew that when she touched him, she gave him pleasure. Sometimes she scratched his back and arms. He seemed to purr like a kitten.

  "You like that, Biff?"

  "Yeah."

  As for her own pleasure, she knew that something profound was happening in her body, but she could not define it. Those were days of sexual ignorance. No one talked about it, and there was not a single book in the Camden Public Library that referred, even clinically, to sexuality.

  Sometimes they would pull the boat to the shore and lie on the grass, holding each other, not saying a word. She nestled in his arms like a baby. She loved to smell him and feel his tight, smooth flesh. When they had known each other two weeks, she lay against him with bare breasts, feeling the ends of her nipples tingle. There is an instinct about these things and soon he was sucking them and she was loving it. She wanted more to happen, but she wasn't sure exactly what.

  An only child, she had always been introspective, living within herself, fantasizing. And even though she knew that Biff had little mental capacity, she believed that there was something mysterious blocking his intelligence and that she could find the key to unlock his mind.

  When she was away from him, she missed him. He was never out of her thoughts. She wrote him little poems and read them to him, although she knew that they made no impression.

  She knew he was reacting physically. She had felt his hardness against her body, but had not had the courage to touch him there. It was not fear of him. Rather, fear for herself. She had a rudimentary knowledge of how pregnancy occurred.

  But, beyond that fear, another anxiety began to plague her. Her parents' curiosity was getting more blatant. They pressed her for answers.

  "There is something you're not telling me, Penny," her mother would say.

  "No."

  "Where do you go? What do you do?"

  "Nothing. I go sailing."

  "Where?"

  "Around the harbor."

  But she was arriving home later and later. She began to miss dinner and her parents' suspicions became an obsession. Finally, her father found one of her unfinished poems.

  "What is this?"

  "A poem."

  "It's a love poem."

  She had blushed. "It's a secret poem."

  Her father would not confront the subject further, but sent her mother instead.

  "Is there a boy?"

  "No," she lied.

  "Are you telling me the truth?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes."

  "Can you explain the poem?"

  "I write poems."

  Still, the suspicion was not strong enough to interfere with her relationship with Biff. In the few weeks that she had known him, the weather had been perfect and she had been able to sail every day. Then one day it rained.

  "Where are you going?" her mother asked.

  "Sailing."

  "In the rain?"

  "Yes."

  She was no longer thinking in logical terms. Her world was Biff now. Nothing else mattered. She was happy, but did not tell herself that, for fear it would go away.

  They did sail that day, but moved quickly to a nearby cove, pulled the boat ashore, and used the sail to make a shelter for them. They lay together on the grass. It was damp, but the warmth of their bodies dispelled the chill.

  "I love you, Biff," she whispered, pressing his hand to her bare breast. "If only.... "She paused and looked at him, his expression, as always, sunny and vague, his smile glistening in the soft light filtering through the white sail over their heads.

  "Yeah," he said.

  "Do I make you feel good?"

  "I always feel good with you, Penny," he said.

  "We'
ll always be together, won't we, Biff?"

  "Yeah."

  "Do you like to touch me here?" She cupped her small breasts

  "Yeah."

  "And would you like to see me naked?"

  "Yeah."

  She unbuttoned her slacks and rolled her panties down. His eyes watched her nakedness. Lifting his hand, she brought it to her belly and downward to the patch between her legs. Her body lurched. What is happening?

  She asked, "Am I beautiful?"

  "Yeah."

  He is mine, she thought. I can make him do anything. She started to unbutton his pants.

  "That's bad," he said, but he did not stop her. She wondered where she found the courage, and when the long, hard piece of flesh flopped free, she gasped. Biff also looked confused as he watched its throbbing, glistening head. At first she turned her eyes away. But there was something in its strangeness that magnetized her. Finally she touched it. Biff gasped, his eyes half-closed, as the thing seemed to lurch and a white substance came out. Something terrible has happened, she thought, turning away.

  "Are you all right, Biff?"

  "Yeah."

  "What was that?"

  He didn't answer, and when she turned to him again he was dressed. She put her clothes back on.

  "I didn't hurt you?"

  "Na."

  "I love you. I would never hurt you."

  "Yeah."

  She lay down next to him again and hugged him close.

  But the death knell of parting was already ringing in her ears. She lay in his arms a long time that afternoon. When she came home, her parents were waiting. They wore anxious expressions, as if someone had died.

  "We know," her mother said.

  "What?" She looked at her parents with the same blankness that she had learned from Biff.

  "We followed you in the skiff. We saw you sail into the cove," her father said.

  "We know about Biff Maloney," her mother said.

  She swallowed hard and lowered her eyes.

  "He's retarded," her mother said. "Did you know that?"

  "I suppose so." I will not cry, she told herself.

  "Has anything happened?" her mother asked gently. She could only vaguely sense her meaning. A great deal had happened. How could she bear to lose him? He was the only thing in her world worth loving.

  She moved her head from side to side, that sure of her answer.

  "Well, that's a relief."

  "Tomorrow you're going to your grandmother's house in the Adirondacks," her father said. She felt trapped, the sense of loss overwhelming.

  "Thank God, the other people don't know," he sighed.

  "What people?"

  "Our friends," her mother replied. "You would be the laughing stock."

  He's beautiful, she wanted to say, and natural, and I love him. She would never, ever, love anyone again.

  The next day she went away. She did not cry, but the loss was to plague her for most of her life. Nor did she ever go to Camden again. What she felt for Biff was buried deep inside her. She hadn't felt it for years, not until now.

  Perhaps it was the fear of acknowledging that same happiness that made her want to fully possess Eduardo Palmero. She could not bear for him to leave her. Where did he go? What did he do? She wanted to ask, but always fell short of finding the courage. She wondered, too, if it was the money she had offered that made the essential difference in their relationship, but she had wanted to show him how much he meant to her. If necessary, she would have gladly given him her life.

  Although she had offered him the use of the money, he had said little about it. He would sometimes disappear for days, causing her deep anxiety. She no longer went to the library, no longer exercised, no longer ate sparingly. She began to neglect the house and would spend hours in front of the window, waiting for him to come. Always when he arrived, she was reborn.

  "I can't bear it when you are gone," she said. It was the sense of parting that had triggered the memory of Biff Maloney. Could Eduardo know what kind of suffering that could bring? Parting was not sweet sorrow, she thought. It was agony. When he came to her after a few days' absence, she would devour him with a hunger which she could not have believed she was capable of. She wondered if he was merely submitting. Although he was physically effective, she had the feeling that his mind was elsewhere.

  "What is it?" she asked. He must have felt her observation, acknowledging his thoughts.

  "We are on the verge of great things, Anne," he said softly.

  "Great things?" She seemed puzzled by the reference, then remembered what he was working on in the library. "The manifesto."

  "That and other things. We are starting to fight back." She felt the pressure of his hand quicken on her head. "It will not be easy, but we will do it."

  It was confusing to her, still unclear. His presence was all that mattered. She moved her hand along his thigh, felt the lump between his legs, then the stirring in him and her own beginnings. She was Lazarus arising, she told herself, feeling the passion smolder and begin inside her, awakening her to all of life's possibilities and sensations, a rebirth of her womanness. Deftly, she undid his pants and watched his erection, a staff of power and strength, the sight of which gave her courage.

  "You're beautiful, my darling. Beautiful." She bent over him, kissing the long hardness, feeling the full delight of it and his reactions. I am a woman, she told herself, repeating it. "You have made me a woman, Eduardo, and brought me back to life again." She looked up at him, saw into his eyes, the circles of gray and the speckled silver, a flash of his internal sunlight. Remembering Biff, she wanted to see the mystery of it again. She brought his hand to her breast and he caressed the nipple while her body began to pulse. Caressing him rhythmically, she watched as his sexual energy gathered, gained momentum, shuddered, and his seed overflowed deliciously in front of her eyes and she erupted

  "How beautiful, Eduardo. My Eduardo. How beautiful."

  He said nothing, and it was his silence that interested her, since she wanted to know what he was thinking. She held him, peaceful now.

  "Everything is in place," Eduardo said suddenly. It seemed like an interruption between them. But she listened carefully. Somewhere he had this other life, she knew.

  "It has taken us months of planning." He lifted an index finger, as if he might be a professor making a point. "They will see how efficient we can be. You see, the main point has always ways been our inefficiency," he sneered. "The Allende people are inefficient. They are dreamers. Well, we will show them."

  "Of course, darling." She listened, but with little comprehension.

  She turned toward him and kissed him deeply. "Why can't we be together always?"

  He did not answer.

  "But why?" she pressed.

  "Later," he said, after a long pause. She was confused, but did not push for clarification.

  Yet there was the hint of promise in his words, or was it only in her reception of them? I must not press too hard, she vowed. In the end, I will possess him, she assured herself.

  "I understand, Eduardo. I truly understand." She did not, of course. She watched him looking upward, his eyes glazed, as if they were searching elsewhere.

  "Would you really, Anne?" he asked quietly.

  "Really what?"

  "The money."

  "Money?"

  "What you said the other day?"

  She hesitated, groping for the right answer. Did he have any doubts? She reined her elation. So money could be the key, after all. She had once been ashamed of her money, wondering how it continued to amass in odd places all over the world. She only guessed that she had three million, since she hadn't looked at the statements from her investment counselor for years.

  "Did you really mean it, Anne?"

  "Did you have any doubts?"

  "It seemed incredible," he said quickly. "Incredible. At first, it seemed like an insult. My pride...."

  "Eduardo"--she moved the palm of her hand over his bare
chest--"it is the point of the exercise." Could he believe that she could settle for anything less than total commitment of herself, of her life, of her fortune? What price can one put on one's life, she wondered.

  "I thought about it for a long time, Anne," he said. "I could not understand. I try to analyze myself." For the first time since she had seen him in the library, he looked different, as if she were viewing him through a gauze lens. His features had softened and he seemed like a boy. He lifted himself on one elbow and looked into her eyes. "What is it you see? I don't understand. Am I so different?"

  She had been trying to assemble her thoughts, gathering the bits and pieces of meaning to herself, hoping she might find some way to articulate the answer. She could sense that he wanted words now, that words were important.

  "I am forty-nine years old, Eduardo. Nothing." No, I must amend that, she thought. What I say must be pristine, in perfect pitch. "Little has ever moved me. I have had children. I have had a husband. I have seen my parents die. My husband die. I have had the best of wordly goods. But I have not felt a sense of life until I met you."

  "But you seemed content."

  "Controlled. I was under control. I had found a way to survive."

  "But why me?" He seemed troubled now. His eyes moved downward over his body. "What is so special about me?"

  It was the edge of the abyss, beyond words.

  "It is primarily.... "He paused.

  "That! And everything." They were the only words she could muster. She had never, although she admitted this to herself for the first time, wanted men. Not after Biff. She had welcomed Jack's impotence. Even her affairs had had little physical meaning, except, perhaps, for her own peace of mind in trying to prove her womanness, her desirability. But that, too, had been hollow, without substance. It is all so mysterious, she thought. Then she could see his features changing again, as if the lenses of her camera eye had been replaced.