At her note, he had come running. There was still that much left.
She moved above him in a slow and sinuous way that nibbled his control down to nothing. Her hair, in a brisk chop, made bangs, framed her face, and hid her eyes. He hauled in a deep breath as tremors bucked him, and grasped her rolling hips. The last thing he saw before he shut his own eyes was her smile, the lower lip nibbed between her teeth. Maddening sounds started somewhere deep inside her; furry little noises of pleasure issuing from the core of the diaphragm and flowing up and out like dark wine. They were as unique as her scent, her taste, her movements. She knew what she was doing. And she knew just how to do Peter Deutsch.
They had only argued once. It had been a disagreement manufactured by Peter (who had been known to defend the faulty side of a question merely to gratify his debate Imp - more fallout from the competitive mind-set). The topic was long lost; what Peter would always remember was the way it had concluded. When it had become hopeless and repetitive, she had said, "Peter, you're wrong, you know it, and I am going to crown you with an ashtray ... if you don't start making love to me in the next sixty seconds."
That had knocked his pins out, all right. If he could train a film crew to perform with the unerring sense of timing Alea exploited so casually in her speech, he would be in the cockpit of the smoothest-running, most envied machine in the industry.
Alea had manifested shortly after the shipwreck of Peter's marriage. Mrs. Kathryn Deutsch had moved on to become a power broker in Malibu real estate. Dissolution was the mere breaking of a contract; SOP in Hollywood. You broke one pact to ink another, better one. Peter walled himself up behind twenty-hour workdays, not sleeping so much as lapsing into an exhausted coma close to predawn. One day he jolted awake, sheened in panic sweat, as though surfacing from an unsavory nightmare. His eyes opened and he found himself surrounded by acquaintances instead of friends, manipulators in the chairs of allies, and vampires leering from behind the lies that had admitted them into his bed, his Day Timer, his life.
The albatrosses pecked at his eyes. There was no one to cling to and no place to flee.
Then, Alea. Timing. Clichés had never applied to his life before.
Being with her now brought a lunatic sensation of effervescent optimism. The moguls in their steel boxes became a straw threat, insubstantial, unreal. Fatigue ran away and was supplanted, by vigor. Being inside of her solved his problems, made him feel… safe.
He gasped when he felt her muscles lock him up down there, almost as an expression of his very thoughts. He was staying.
It was against logic, of course, but he had penetrated her in a way that surpassed the physical juxtapositions of mere fucking. Sunk into her, impossibly secure, his limbs and brain charged themselves with psychic strength from the lode she offered. Until it was his turn.
He pushed himself up and kept hold of her hips, pulling her aboard his lap. She grabbed his shoulders to lift herself, and began to drive herself onto him, the gradual increase in sensitivity to friction making her cry out, as though fighting against the new climax. He felt every contraction along with the lush pulse of her blood. She fell back without resistance, one of her throaty, quiet laughs expelling from her lips, and he stayed with her. One more thrust into that loving grip was all it took to completely divorce him from rational thought.
The shorter candle stubs began to wink out in the way dead suns, far away, extinguish themselves and become nonexistent in a second.
The dwarf selected a spatulate blade and carefully planed blood-colored clay from the monster's right shoulder.
Strewn about the litter of the studio were current issues of Cosmopolitan, Self Working Woman, Mademoiselle and more, all open to advertisements featuring male models. Here were the lions that women-conscious sponsors chose to sell their products to the feminine half of the population. Studly-yet-sensitive. Wild-but-secure. Artistic-yet-upwardly mobile. To the monster, the dwarf gave the nose of one, the cruel-but-kissable lips of another, the brush cut of a third. He paged from one glossy spread to another until he located perfect toes. He needed muscular-but-not-steroidal pecs and triceps. The easiest item to scare up was a great butt.
On no page could the dwarf find worthwhile eyes. All were metallic, dead, detached. Billboard entrepreneurs favored that uncaring look. The dwarf's artistic sensibilities were abraded; he gazed into the robot eyes of these thoroughbred fashion plates and felt all men objectified.
As be carved, he hummed, taking his time, spacing out his snifters of Napoleon brandy to make the last bottle stretch to the conclusion of this current commission. His specially mixed medium was cool and pliable, receptive to the even strokes of the blade. He smoothed rough patches with spit and a gentle finger. Each caress nudged the monster closer to his visualization; each touch of those cigar-stub fingers brimmed not only with schooled sculpting talent, but with genuine love. Soft curlicues of clay rimmed the worktable and stuck to the leather soles of the dwarf's shoes. More than once he leapt onto the table to loom over his creation, rubbing flaws to sleekness, his touch leaving heat trails. The living molding the inanimate, delighting in the friction of contouring the common into something extraordinary. He gave the mouth a succulent downward turn. He made both nostrils exactly the same size and shape - that was a detail you never found in real people, one even the most perceptive would fail to notice.
M. Rogoff would notice, and applaud his audacity.
The dwarf scooped a handful of fresh clay from the pail and added it to the monster's penis, kneading it to the proper proportion. On a whim he spit some brandy into it. He decided against omitting the foreskin.
When the brandy flask was down to the depth of a finger, there remained the riddle of what to do about the monster's eyes. All options seemed cold and predictable. The diminutive sculptor laid down his tools before he attempted too much, and messed up what perfection he had already wrought.
He blew his nose loudly on his denim apron and rinsed his hands in a tub sink installed low to the floor. The arrangement of the studio, with its body on the slab, held the ghostly overtones of an autopsy theatre.
He used a potter's cut-off needle to pry clay from beneath his nails, and felt a perverse urge to snap a few Polaroids of his new work. The terms of his verbal contract forbade a visual record. M. Rogoff's instructions were as precise as ever, and from experience the dwarf knew them to be well-founded. Contracts such as these were best honored.
Perhaps more brandy might lubricate the artistic faculties, he thought with a sly grin. But when he fished into one capacious trouser pocket, all he brought up was a noisy bunch of small change.
At first his eyes dismissed the pair of bright, newly minted copper pennies. Then his attention shot back to target them. They were pristine, lacking scratches or tarnish; they released a musical jingle when he tossed them about in his small palm, contemplating. His heartbeat sped up, and he wondered if the great genius M. Toulouse-Lautrec had ever felt similarly flushed with joy at such a lightning stroke of inspiration!
Humming once more, he dashed the last of the brandy into his glass, and returned to the worktable. He would be able to finish tonight. Then he could contact M. Rogoff.
This was shaping into grand sport indeed.
Peter wanted to hold her hair in his teeth. He embraced her with his arms, his legs, tactile evidence of how long he had starved, how badly he needed someone. He clung. Alea slept.
It had not been an endurance run or point-scoring session. Peter was well-versed in the dance steps of the sexual-politic superstructure of this town, and if need belie could play that in-and-out game with the best. This wasn't that. The points emphasized by their lovemaking struck him as healthy ones.
He remembered what he had labeled her when he first saw her.
The theme of the classic Hollywood party is Business Is Pleasure. The talented and monied are shoved into elbow-rubbing distance; the mechanism is greased with expensive eats, lots of free alcohol, controlled substan
ces, and the usual catalog of incentives. Peter thought of a chess match with all the players in seedy rented tuxes; the pawns in the game were the hookers, the coke, the prurient come-on to sign one's name. Self-important introductions were made between future bedfellows ... amid future bedmates.
Peter had reported for duty at Damon Fletcher's insistence. Slap on your happy mask, Damon repeated all the time. It never hurts to meet the execs. He relished thrusting, parrying, coercing. The lies he ran past producer-types slid right off his carapace. Peter had felt conscripted; his visibility would buttress Damon's huckstering. Tonight Peter did not feel like a player. He knew he would suffer this soiree and probably not even get to hang out with Damon all that much. Damon never let his own moves dirty his psyche - to him, it was lying to liars, stealing from thieves. Peter always wanted to bathe afterward. But he let himself be badgered into attending. That was how badly he wanted to make Objet d'Art with his fast friend.
All they needed was ... well, it was obvious, or Peter never would have rung the doorbell.
The clockwork ground into motion and by one a.m. was clanking purposefully along like a wind-up Godzilla toy. Peter smiled at strangers and powered down straight bourbon, instantly gaining an axe-murder of a headache. At Damon's bidding he bared his teeth and shook the proper hands. When Damon was swallowed by the hurly-burly of happy-hour negotiations, Peter stayed behind, a marionette with clipped strings. It was for the best. His bullshit allergy was raging tonight, and he knew he would only muddy whatever pond he stepped into.
He retreated to the far end of a vast flagstone patio, where he could be alone with the rainbow brilliance of Los Angeles spread out below him. He felt pleased with himself in that fatalistic, brink-hovering way that comes from overwork, plus seeing the kitchen help pour dishwater scotch into Chivas jugs. He sat down. Tonight, he just did not have the energy to do it.
Alea shifted in his grasp with a groan, twisting halfway around in the bed. He held the palm of her hand to his lips. Kissed. The hand caressed his face, dropped to his chest, and snaked the rest of the way down. He stiffened instantly at her touch.
And so he stared sourly into his glass. No answers there. He abandoned it on the low brick wall without sipping further. Letting the faraway light defocus before him was more comforting.
Nobody introduced her. She was just there.
"Drink this."
He looked up at her voice but did not really see her. He passively accepted a delicate glass of what looked like sauterne, because it was extended toward him.
Oh christ, I've been made. He could not keep the hostile resignation from his voice. "Start anytime, honey." He tossed a mocking toast in her direction with the wineglass.
"No. You're wrong." She let silence hang for a few moments. Peter was surprised that she did not launch immediately into a spiel. She sat near him on the brick wall, and watched him, until he spoke.
"You'll forgive my vast repertoire of social gaffes," he said gruffly, not caring if she did. He still had not seen her. He kept his eyes on the tree line below the patio. "I am engaged in the only pastimes that give me any pleasure right now. That is to say, getting squiffed and pissing on total strangers."
Another pause of what could have been a minute. Then: "Self-pity is a deadly kind of luxury. You're slopping it all over the place. It's coming off you in waves, you know."
"Mm. I'm overdoing it. It's like all the dope in town - not what it's cracked up to be." The yellow wine was crisp, and very cold, and not a sauterne at all. Peter's palate was at a loss for identification.
"You can talk," she encouraged.
He thought he also heard you've been wanting to talk for a long time, but it did not come out of her mouth. The comeback that shot up from his mental shuck file ran: Oh, a hooker psychiatrist; that's a new twist, you should pardon the pun. His gut cancelled it. The back of his throat suddenly ached with the need to put the payload of acid in his mind somewhere else. She was a stranger. She had asked for it. If puke got on her when it erupted it was her own damned fault. That's what it came down to: emotional vomit.
The wineglass was in his hands. He gazed at some infinity point beyond, in the darkness. He spoke not to the woman but to her voice. He was stark sober now, and his own voice was a deadly monotone. The forces etching his life emerged with a succinct kind of violence, like the confession of an utterly relaxed serial killer: You see I thought the solution to all my problems was to use myself up faster and when that failed I decided a slow lingering death was better than a short, sharp shock, and so commenced the erosion that kills everyone here, when your sanity dribbles away a dram at a time until you're empty, babe, you can't get a hard-on at thirty-five, or groceries without three pieces of ID, and the traffic cops aren't kidding when they pull you over, and the stench of petrochemicals and madness permeates your clothes, and you have to keep your fingernails manicure-clean because otherwise you'll see the dead tissue hiding there, the residue of all the faceless people you fucked over to get ahead, and you think of all the claws that have YOUR blood dried beneath them, and you dwell on this psychotic paranoid craziness until everything even the rag-pickers and shopping-cart ladies haunting the Boulevard, reminds you of how berserk this lunatic hostel is, they call this living, and your brain builds its own padded cell, hurling up high walls to trap you inside and keep you apart from the predators who suck at your life, your needs, until you become a brain-dead paycheck junkie, until you can't care anymore, until you spend an entire year in court because your soon-to-be ex-wife wants to impress her new sex toy, the attorney, until you gladly grind out bilge designed to anesthetize hausfraus and their blue-collar hubbies out there in Television Land, until you walk like a robot to stupid social jousts like this one, slapping on a death-mask grin for the neo-bohos and airheads and thrill addicts and people who've become walking ghosts, dead without realizing it, because
Because.
She finished for him once he was tapped out. "Because you can't run anywhere else. Because with all the options available to someone like you, there is still no place to run. Except in circles."
"Social circles," he said with a bitter little smile. She brought him another glass of yellow wine. A very peculiar sort of buzz was coming on; he felt weak, drained, yet purged and somehow more clearheaded than before. He was suddenly in debt to this woman he had not acknowledged with his eyes. He was embarrassed. With Kathryn, he could never find words like these, or get past his chagrin at actually voicing them. It wasn't part of the deal, the contract. If you ever talked of such things, the razors came out. People rolled their eyes and pointed and never caught wind; before you knew it you were shunned, ostracized, worse than dead.
When he accepted the second glass, he looked up and began, a trifle too offhandedly, "Look, uh ... I usually don't..."
He saw her, for the first time truly saw her, and his heart and stomach seemed to swap positions with a thud.
"Don't apologize" she said. "Don't back off. You've just been as honest with yourself as you have with me. How does it feel? Better than pity?"
His head swam. Had all the booze slid home at once? With a silly kind of awe he asked, "Are you a - what do they call it - an empath?"
"No?" Even her voice was hypnotic.
Peter's arm still hung in midair, holding the glass. She was so...
"My name is Alea. Now you relax and I'll talk awhile?"
Peter always remembered that, too.
Both bottles of champagne lay dead on the floor, the two fingerprinty glasses shot down alongside them. Alea did not awaken so much as trade some of her sleepiness for some of Peter's consciousness. This time it was she who imprisoned him in her arms and legs, grinding with an almost desperate fervor. A wholly unanticipated orgasm picked him up and shook him. She could bring him back as many times as she wanted. And as they fell exhaustedly horizontal, she spoke to him in that low and musical whisper his mind knew so well.
"Welcome home."
In a sense P
eter was the one who had gone away. It did not need to be said.
That was how it all began, or rather, resumed. Over the next two weeks Peter Deutsch gradually realized that the alien landscape he explored with Alea was a place he had heard so much propaganda about in his lifetime. He'd thought it a myth and never taken it seriously. Myths were inapplicable to his life. Like clichés.
"Love? I haven't the dimmest notion of what love is," he told her. "Everybody talks about it but nobody does anything..."
"You're wrong. You know a lot about it."
"Yes?"
"You know what it's not, from experience." Her eyes were a tawny fulvous color, with black-ringed irises shot through with mellow flecks of amber, much like the aptly-named tigereye. They always met his directly. "From what I've seen, you've got a good grasp of the theory."
"What are you talking about?" He shook his head with a little-boy grin. Twice he had tried to defuse the subject by being funny; twice she had deflected him.
"You love rather than saying you love. Beware of people who need to hear the words all the time. You love me with your speech, with the things you do, with the way your eyes love me, all the time. You make love to me even when you're not making love to me."
"Gee, thanks. Subtlety was always my strong suit." He felt a faint irritation at being so obviously exposed. But it was true - he thought about her while working, while driving, upon waking, constantly, pleasantly ... perhaps a bit obsessively?
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