The Girl On The Half Shell

by Susan Ward

  “Can’t you ever just be nice?”

  “I am being nice.”

  His fingers snake through my hair. In the blink of an eye, everything about him, the way he looks at me, the way he touches can switch into a total turn-on.

  “Do you want me to help you, Chrissie?”

  I nod.

  He looks at the page I’m on. He leans into me. “I suppose I am dreadfully guilty, but my thoughts are muddled, my soul is in the grip of a kind of apathy, and I am no longer able to understand myself. I don’t understand myself or other people...I should like to tell you everything from the beginning, but it’s a long story, and such a complicated one that if I talked till morning I couldn’t finish it...”

  I let out a ragged breath. All that just to quote to me Chekhov. His theatrics are really starting to wear on me and I can tell he knows how effective they are. I’m certain it’s just a game he plays with girls, though I don’t know why he’s playing it with me. He could have had me last night, no effort, if he had wanted another notch for his bed.

  I push him out of my lap. “Ha, ha, ha. And you got it wrong. You skipped a bunch.”

  He sits up, with an adorable half-smile on his face. “I can quote it line by line. And I skipped for theatrical affect.”

  “I’m yellow carding you. You can’t quote Chekhov line by line.”

  “Pick another page.”

  I do. And he begins to quote that damn book line by line, word for word, in that exquisite voice that could draw me into bed with him if he ever used it to do so.

  I make a face when he’s done. “No, that was wrong. You missed a whole bunch of words.”

  He holds out a hand. “I did not. I can quote line by line an eclectic collection of classic literature. It is what we did as a family instead of having conversation.”

  For a moment, I stop to wonder if that’s true. I know nothing about his upbringing, where he is from beyond what his accent tells me. Strange, but there is never anything in print about Alan from before he was famous, his family or his history.

  I shake my head. “You did it wrong.”

  In a second, he’s wrestling me for the book and I’m doing a darn good job of keeping it away. What is this? A point of pride for him? And then, very quickly, without the slightest idea how it has happened, I’m lying beneath him on the blanket, and we are laughing.

  It all happens so fast—one minute we’re laughing, and the next he is kissing me, from only mildly aware of me into completely into me. His lips are knowing and slow, the sweet gentleness so potent that it’s painful, and I feel my muscles inside clench violently. I moan into his mouth and he takes full advantage of the slight parting of my lips. The tongue that touches mine is dancing and erotic, all about sensation and drawing me into him.

  Without breaking the kiss, he turns until he’s lying back on the blanket with me on top of him. His fingers move in a feather-like touch, up my neck, my jaw, my chin. I don’t care that we are in Central Park. I don’t care if people are watching. He’s pulling me into him and I am desperate to go there.

  It all stops. He pushes away from me in the blink of an eye, leaving me hanging with my heart rate through the roof. Other than the aggravated hand he jerks through his black shoulder length hair, he looks calm, disinterested, and suddenly focused on something other than me.

  He stands up and holds out his hand for me. “I’m tired of the park, Chrissie. We’re leaving.”

  We are, are we? I sit up and hug my legs with my arms. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” I say, shaking my head in absolute frustration. I pick up my book and I struggle to keep my eyes from him.

  “We’re not staying here,” he says and oddly his voice sounds mildly urgent. I glance up at him. Those burning back eyes lock on me and he lowers until we’re at eye level. “Let’s go to bed and be good to each other.”

  My eyes flutter wide as I look at him, wondering if this is more theatrics, and hating that it doesn’t feel like a game in my flesh. Is he serious? I thought it would be different the first time a guy asked me to bed. Something clear, something in focus, something I knew what to do with.

  I don’t even know if he’s really asking me to bed, yet there is an alarming sense that that is exactly what he’s intending.

  He holds out his hand.

  “Nope, as tempting as you make it sound, I think my answer is no,” I say petulantly to cover my confusion. “I don’t want to go to bed with you. You’re too much of a weirdo. ”

  “Yes, you do. It’s why you can’t stop thinking about me,” he says softly. His voice is hypnotic.

  It’s the truth, and worse, I can see in his eyes that he knows it’s the truth. Crap! I have no idea what to do. Right or left. I haven’t the faintest clue how to deal with him, but the prospect of returning back to Jack’s apartment alone with my internal mess growing only more insistent is not a wise thing.

  I shove my stuff jerkily into my bag and take his hand. Alan doesn’t say anything and I’m glad he doesn’t. He is impossible to read and I don’t need even one more ounce of confusion.

  I’m filled with trepidation as we walk back toward the apartment. Does leaving with him mean I’ve said yes? And a part of me is a little disappointed in how this is unfolding. I always thought it would happen the first time in one of those heated, From Here to Eternity type moments, or in the least with me drunk so I could stay out of my own way until it was over.

  Butterflies fill my stomach. Maybe we are just leaving the park, nothing more. It might have all been drama. His actions are impossible to process logically.

  I slant a look at him and some of my anxiousness wanes. He doesn’t seem the slightest bit aware of me. Even walking side by side, anyone who looked at us would probably think we’re not even together.

  The doorman has the lobby doors open and Alan’s hand stops me.

  “No, not here. I want to go to my apartment.”

  His apartment? I flush.

  “I want you to spend the night with me at my place.” His gaze is intense.

  “Oh.” The world has ceased to be beneath my feet. That was direct enough. We aren’t just leaving the park. Alan is taking me to bed.

  Once in the car, I realize there is no turning back. I remind myself that I’ve been obsessing about him for days. I don’t know why this is so difficult.

  It is a short drive to Alan’s apartment. In only a few minutes we’re slowing down. Jeez, why did it have to be so short, so quick? I need time to think. Time to calm myself.

  His residence is in Central Park West. As the car rolls to a stop, I realize that I am only a few blocks from Jack’s apartment, and I can make a run for home should anything happen that I don’t feel completely comfortable with. That last thought makes me even more frustrated with myself.

  Once through the building doors there is an impeccably dressed attendant waiting to serve him. Inside the elevator, Alan leans back against the polished, mirrored wall and studies me, while the attendant remains carefully invisible.

  “Are you hungry? Would you like to go out to dinner or would you prefer I cook for you? Or are you full on Cheez-Its, Oreos and Diet Coke?”

  He gives me that friendly sort of nothing smile, but its effect is the opposite. I am quaking like a leaf now. How does the attendant manage to look like he doesn’t hear us? And why is it embarrassing to me that he’s listening to us discussing dinner? Really, Chrissie, that is too lame. We are talking about dinner.

  I shake my head.

  Alan frowns. “Is that shake: I’m not hungry or I don’t want to go out or I don’t want you to cook for me?”

  The shake is I don’t want to talk about food. I am here. I can do this. Dammit, can’t we just get it done and out of the way so I can feel comfortable again?

  I stare up at him. “Whatever you want so long as it’s not Chinese takeout delivered would be fine with me.”

  He laughs. “I think I can do better than that.”

  Oh my. He’s put
just enough in his laughter to make me tremble. I look at the attendant. Is he smirking? It’s hard to tell in the split mirror tiles.

  The doors open. “Come.” He has my hand again. It is warm inside, dimly lit, a giant open space with glass on the far wall, overlooking a terrace and the New York skyline.

  I can feel my eyes widening and I don’t want them to. Music’s most self-destructive bad-boy has an apartment that is elegant and one of the most magnificent homes I’ve ever seen, with its tastefully decorated rooms before a stunning expanse of the city. Alan knows art and Alan has style. I wander into the open space living room, with its lustrous hardwood floors, where there is a remarkable collection of pre-Columbian pottery that I only recognized because I’d studied some similar pieces in an art book last semester. On a far wall, an eclectic collection of art: A Picasso, a Warhol, a Monet and a Salvador Dali, all original, somehow arranged with a collection of Americana that pulls the pieces together and gives them a sense of cohesion.

  The furnishings are plush and graceful, every surface spotless to the point that it looks as if no one lives here. I think of his plane, the traveling trashcan. So many contradictions. Most definitely not what I expected. Not this symmetry. This precision. This tasteful luxury that screams of old money.

  I turn to find him still in the foyer, standing beside a polished table with a high-neck crystal vase filled with the stems of daylilies. I missed that before. I smile.

  “Who changes the daylilies?”

  Alan smiles. “I don’t know. If you get up early in the morning you can watch her.”

  In the morning. I tense. “Do you have a phone?”

  Alan laughs. What a stupid question, Chrissie. You couldn’t have phrased it more stupidly.

  He steps into the living room and sinks on a sofa. The room is so perfect I’m afraid to step into it. “Unfortunately, in every room,” Alan says. “I hate the telephone. I don’t know why I have one in every room.”

  “Really? Why do you hate the phone?”

  “I never want to talk to who’s on the other end. Usually the press, even though it seems like they change my number every week or so.”

  “Really? What a pain. I’ve had the same number since I was five.” I make a little face. “May I use one of your too many phones?”

  “Why?”

  “I haven’t checked my messages today.”

  He gestures with an arm toward a stunning mahogany table. I can feel him watching as I dial the number to the answering service. Shit, there are ten messages from Rene. All day I waited for her to call, and once I left for the park she called ten times. Good one, Rene. Where were you when I really needed you?

  I click down the receiver without calling her back.

  “Everything OK?” Alan asks.

  I nod. “Rene. Ten calls. She doesn’t want to wear fuchsia to her dad’s wedding, but number thirty-seven insists.”

  “Thirty-seven?”

  “That’s what Rene calls her soon-to-be stepmother. Thirty-seven. She counts her father’s girlfriends. This one is number thirty-seven. So that’s what we call her.”

  Jeez, why did I tell him such a childish thing? Please laugh, Alan. I’m nervous as hell.

  I move to the far corner of the room and the full-size shiny grand piano. I lift the lid. I touch the keys lightly with my finger so they don’t make sound.

  “How many girls have you been with? I bet it is more than thirty-seven.”

  I turn from the piano to find his eyes on me, his expression enigmatic. I can hear the sharp sound of my own breathing in the intense quiet of the room.

  It seems like neither of us talk, neither of us move, forever. I can’t tell if he’s angry, insulted or amused by the question.

  “I don’t keep count,” he says finally.

  “Ah, probably not. Why would you? Did you care about any of them?”

  Those black eyes burn into me. “No,” he says, slowly, softly. “It doesn’t mean that I haven’t kept some of them around for a while. But did I care about any of them? No, Chrissie. I didn’t. Is that the answer you were looking for?”

  Heck, no. I wish I’d never asked it. “If you didn’t care for them, why did you keep them around?”

  “I meet lots of girls. Some of them later become friends. Some of them I still sleep with. Some of them are just sex. Lots of girls, Chrissie.”

  “So what kind of girl am I?”

  “I thought we were already friends.” He gives me a smile that makes me suck in air.

  “Why am I here?”

  “I want you here.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “I know.”

  He rises. He crosses the room to me. He leans into me and kisses my nose, the gesture silly and unthreatening, deliberately so, I think. He doesn’t kiss my mouth, but I am tense from head to toe and my heartbeat is soaring anyway.

  Alan smiles. His eyes are stunningly bright. “I want you to stay with me here while you’re in New York. Do what you want. As much or as little as you want. Let’s keep this simple. Stay here and do what you want.”

  Simple? Nothing could be further from simple. I don’t know how to do any of this.

  I need time. Time to process this new, more confusing wrinkle. He just asked me to stay with him the rest of my spring break. It’s crazy. Why would he ask me such a thing?

  I move from the piano into a small sitting area with a full wall entertainment system. On a table is a neatly stacked tower of tapes, and as I sort through them I realize that they are all first run movies currently in theaters or soon to be released. Some of them have handwritten notes on them from studios, directors, or actors.

  He notices my preoccupation with the tapes. “Do you want to watch a movie?”

  A movie. Yes. A little bit of normal. Perhaps that will take the tension and premeditation out of this.

  I pick up one. “This looks interesting. It has John Candy in it.”

  I turn it over. Uncle Buck. The promotional cover makes me laugh.

  “There are two dramas in there that are supposed to be good. One with Robin Williams and another with Daniel Day-Lewis. Have you seen them?”

  “First run movies not released? Of course not. That would violate Jack’s commitment to proletarian normalcy. I go to the theater when they are released like everyone else. I’d like to watch a movie. Do you want to watch this? Even though I’m sure it’s lame, I bet it’s funny. John Candy can be so funny.”

  He takes the movie and reads the jacket. “Americans have no taste in cinema.”

  I laugh. “Cinema? My, we are so British proper when we are in our fancy penthouse where the world can’t see.”

  It was meant to be a silly joke, but those black eyes sharpen on me.

  “Yes, I’m so proper I’m standing here imagining what it would be like to boff during the opening credits.”

  I blink twice and stare at him. There was an angry edge to his voice that I didn’t expect, certainly didn’t like, and definitely didn’t want. That pissed him off and I haven’t the first clue why.

  I shrug and search for something funny to say. “Then let’s fast forward through the opening credits. I haven’t at all decided what I want to do just yet.”

  The oh-so-British sitting room has a Picasso that magically drops down to reveal a full screen for movie viewing. I settle on a comfy couch and clutch a throw pillow. I laugh. Striped pillows with small flowers. Who would have taken Alan for a stripes with small flowers kind of guy?

  I look up to see him watching me quizzically. “You laugh during the credits?” he asks.

  I blush, remembering the boff comment. “No, it’s your pillows. So dainty and proper.”

  He shakes his head and the expression on his face relaxes as he stretches out on the sofa, back against the armrest. I try to focus on the movie and I can’t, which is a disappointment because I can tell from the little I absorb that it is funny. He is watching me and not the movie. I don’t know why he’s doing
that or what’s up with this strange sort of play date we’re having. And that’s what it feels like. As odd as that sounds, it feels like those silly dates I used to have in eighth grade when I let a guy come over to watch a movie at Jack’s.

  It wasn’t what I expected when Alan brought me here. I chance a look at him out of the corner of my eye. “You don’t like the movie?”

  “Not particularly.”

  I lean back into my armrest until I’m facing him. “So is this what you do in your down time? Invite strange girls home and then watch them watch movies you don’t particularly like?”

  Alan’s smile is potent and sexy. “No, this is a new experience for me. I’ve not been alone with a girl who’s selected the movie option.”

  I lift my chin and smile and sidestep the last part of that comment. “Really?”

  “I’ve not really done the date thing before.” His tone is one of wry amusement. “How do you think its going?”

  “Date?” My voice hitches up from mezzo-soprano to soprano. “Is that what we’re doing? I thought we were watching a movie so I could pretend you didn’t bring me here to boff.”

  Alan rolls forward on the couch until he is very, very close to me. “Only if that’s what you want to do,” he whispers, and then kisses me lightly.

  I smile. “I can never tell if you’re being serious or making fun of me.”

  His eyes are earnest. “I would never make fun of you.”

  He reaches for a cigarette and lights it. After a puff, he holds it up. “Do you mind?”

  I shrug. “Of course not. It’s your house. Jack used to smoke until he thought it was ruining his voice.”

  With my eyes, I trace up one wall across the ceiling and then down another. “Are you all alone here, all the time, in this horrible quiet?”

  “No. Not usually. I have people who work for me. They come in and out. I don’t know their schedule. Most of them I don’t know what they do. I prefer the quiet. It’s hardly ever quiet. And I’m not alone. I’m with you.”

  I look at the priceless collection of art on the wall. “Are you as rich as they say you are?”