Roger didn’t know what he had expected but his thoughts were so dominated by sexual imagery that he found it hard to believe no effort had begun in that direction. He wasn’t sure if he should take a more aggressive posture but she’d allowed no opportunity for that. Trust the plan, he thought. Trust the plan.
But this slow beginning kept him floating out over what by now he would have to confess was a frankly sexual hunger. To know they were intended make love ahead of time and to be delayed and feel distanced, created tension the shape of a slow, agitated crescendo. There was little to be done but comply. The rewards, he reckoned, would be well worth waiting.
“I hope you like lamb,” she said as they met for champagne in the reception hall outside the oversized dining room.
“Quite,” said Roger, aware that he was becoming a little too English with his choice of words.
She appeared ravishing, not at all like the girlish woman he had gone horseback riding with earlier the same day. He tried to figure out why the magnitude of change when he hit upon it. She was wearing the same dress she stunned him with years ago. How did she do it? Was she aware of this?
“My chef believes there is no perfect food, she said, only the idea of perfection. The pleasure comes in striving for it. I have always thought that is a good metaphor for music. I let him do what he wants. You will see, he does a good job.”
Somewhere around the Artichokes Barigoute, the third course which had followed the Cornets of Salmon Tartare with Sweet Red Onion Crème Friache, and then the Bilini with Toasted Sweet Peppers and Eggplant Caviar, she told him the chef was a disciple of The French Laundry and believed in the principle of diminishing returns, that is, that your first taste of an exciting new dish is its best. The second taste, slightly less exciting, the third... therefore, he serves small portions and many courses, taking away the plate when you still want more, bringing another surprise in a small package. We have had pleasure already, she said, yet we have not tasted the Salmon Chops with Celery and Black Truffles, the Double Rib Lamb Chops with Cassoulet of Summer Beans and Rosemary or the Poached Banana Crepe.
For some reason Roger’s love life flashed in his mind - limited, he thought, compared to the example set by this meal. The analogy made him tingle inside. More pleasure, he thought. Pleasure, in this case, within the parameter of loyalty. Then another image came to him, a surprising image: a shimmering ovum in a darkened ocean, cilia, like fronds of sea anemones reaching for it, a soft current beating along a succulent chamber. The fact that this was happening right now inside the soft chambers of this beautiful woman across from him made him quiver inside. Wasn’t it true that in a critically short time the ovum melted into the heart of the womb? Could it be this elaborate dance was all about anticipation and timing?
Stella had her mind on Beethoven, his deafness, how he tried to conceal it, conducting his own symphony, arriving at the finale cadence four measures too late. His courage, his genius, the tearful appreciation of the audience when they realized what they had witnessed.
The courses of beauty and taste and pleasure had passed. Dessert passed. Stella looked up. “Now a little music,” she said.
She took him by the hand and led him down a long hallway. This was the first time they had touched since the moment of the handshake at the portal.
She held on to him, leading a half-step ahead, almost pulling him until she came to a doorway and stopped. “Now we make music,” she said and opened the door.
Standing in the center of the room was a seven-foot Hamburg Steinway, shiny, jet-black, the lid half-open, in the appropriate position for accompaniment. Next to it a small rug, from the Caucasus, Roger judged, and on it a straight chair, classic 18th Century English. Leaning against the chair was an old cello with an antique, battered finish that told of many owners, many concerts. History leeched from the patina of its lacquer.
Roger was drawn to the piano where, on its rack, was a yellowed manuscript. Beethoven. Opus 69: Concerto for Piano and Cello in A Major. His best, thought Roger, written in his wonderful middle period, 1807-8, a time when he had just discovered he was rapidly going deaf. a solitary work, the first piano-cello concerto in which the cello assumed a balanced presence with Beethoven’s dominant piano.
Roger had heard her play this piece before at Cambridge with a visiting professor from Julliard. With his mop of blond hair and quick-flash smile he was very engaging but Roger thought the playing distinctly uninspired. Roger could do better. He practically lunged at the piano and began adjusting the piano stool, thumbing through the manuscript with the anticipation of a young boy.
Stella placed the cello between her legs. She hiked her skirt to the angular place where the legs meet the torso and rested her instrument there. She began tuning. Her legs fell naturally around her cello with a grace that happens only after long years of affection and strife.
Roger looked at Stella. Stella at Roger. Stella began the rare a’ capella solo that starts the first movement, establishing the independence of the cello right away, her shoes off, her heels digging in to the Caucasian carpet, her toes curled under as if in the cinch of ecstasy. She was five measures in now, flowing through the dipping part of the phrase that is the idea carried through the entire first movement, the part that reaches up from below to the long tonic tone. Roger was not counting. He didn’t have to. The music was so natural that entrances started themselves. He waited instinctively till the seventh beat of her sustenuto, began the singing quality of his own phrase, and they were off.
All thoughts outside the tight chamber of crafted notes were so far into forgetting they did not exist. An instantaneous concentration characteristic of great musicians prevailed, in which a conversation begins, one voice echoed by the other, lifted from their instruments by the gift of talent and will, floating through the room.
Beethoven was perfect for this dark space, its lone fireplace glowing in the distance, two music lights illuminating the musicians with isolated intensity, their circles touching at the perimeter where light and music flowed into each other. There was fury in the passionate interplay of the voices returning again and again to the dark mystery of the primary theme.
In the brief silence before the second movement, they each made a few gestures to recover from the physical expenditure of the first and repair for the technical runs and arpeggios they knew would follow. No words but those of their bodies were spoken. In this sacred place they could be lost in each other far away from the circle of language.
Syncopation now. A lurching feeling that moves their torsos into and out of their instruments as they attack the afterbeats. Now a droning bass line and staccato voices in parallel thirds above. Trills in the cello offsetting the thunder of the piano. Double stops. Stella accompanying herself over the falling waters of Roger’s bass line. Each listening for the other to sing as they knew the music would make them, their faces contorted in pain and pleasure. Recapitulation now. A little dance. And again fury. Changes in mood so familiar, no explanation need be offered. Ending downward. Ending soft.
Roger felt himself heated from within, the moisture of his brow but one of the many manifestations to go unnoticed under the cloak of passion and performance.
Slow movement now. Adagio. Singing in that Germanic way that embraces both sorrow and desire. Now straight into the sprightly finale. Flashback to earlier melodic lines, interwoven. Now presto. The fingers flying over keys and fingerboard. Bodies bent over their labor with an unselfconscious loss of inhibition in which they weaved and swayed and grimaced and smiled and between phrases lifted their arms in gestures of articulation... lips puckered, tongues nipping at the open air, head jerking, breath escaping on the down beats. False climax. A return back a few measures and charge again, as if wanting to end but not wanting to be over, stretching the pleasure as long as the soul can bear it without crashing. And at the last moment, downbeat, downbeat, cadence.
They were exhausted. Sweaty. Muscles delighting in deep fatigue, their bodies trembling with pleasure and repose.
They sat where they landed and breathed deeply for what seemed like a long time with no need nor desire for words.
Stella held up her hand, as if hearing his thoughts before they materialized. “I have to do something first,” she said. “Please bear with me.”
Slowly she lay her cello down and stood up, straightening her clothing. Roger watched her hands pull down her hemline, caressing her waist and hips to smooth the wrinkles. She stood and faced him, then walked deliberately near to him, so close he was conscious of her breathing. “Follow me,” she said.
She took him to a small room he guessed must have been a parlor. In the center was a glass-top table with bottles and glassware. It seemed there was no light in the room but for the light rising from the table.
“I love Katrina,” Stella said. “And what she has done makes me love her more. This is very hard for me. I hope you understand. But in order to do this I have to be completely drunk.”
This was an unexpected turn. He wasn’t sure how this was going to work.
Stella was pouring Sliebowitz into delicate glasses shaped like diminutive Martini glasses except that they had thicker stems and smaller flares at the top. I know exactly how much, she said. It takes two and a half of these to wipe me completely out.
They sat at the table. “Don’t be offended,” she said. “I’ll probably do better after the first time. And I want this to be a pleasant experience for you. Once I’m out, you have my permission to do anything you like with me. I mean that. Anything.”
Roger shivered.
Stella paid no attention.
There was a water glass and two white pills to one side. “To avoid the hangover,” she said. “Aspirin and water.” She downed them and turned to the Sliebovitz.
Before Roger could get adjusted to what was happening she had downed the first one and was pouring herself a second.
“My advice to you,” she said. “Is that you stop at one. Only one of us should be under the influence and you’ve got a job to do.” She was barely able to hold back a smile which she covered immediately with a serious face.
That was the second time he’d heard this referred to as a job.
Her fingers, which a moment before were flying over the neck of the cello, now trembled. She held her glass with two hands and sipped it half-way.
She was smiling unreservedly now. Relaxed. “It’s not that I don’t find you attractive,” she said. “I do. You probably know that already.” She seemed to be struggling with her words, not for articulation but accuracy of meaning.
Half a glass more.
“I think I always have,” she said with her eyes modestly drifted down to the glass she was holding. “Found you attractive, I mean. If it hadn’t been for Katrina I might have made a play for you right away.” Suddenly she was embarrassed. She wiped her mouth and raised her eyebrows. “Funny how things turn out.”
She was done with the second now. “All that remains is the half glass,” she said, and poured out her measure.
She looked at it. She looked at Roger over the top of the glass. She waited a few beats as if to gather courage and downed it all at once. And in the same motion, dropped her head to the table.
Roger looked at her for a long moment, taking in her form, her words, her music, her silly drunken attempts to ready herself for this adulterous interlude. This charming, desirable, sexy lady had, at great cost, thrown herself to him.
At last he picked her up and carried her to her bedroom. He was aware how her pliant body was, molding to his, her waist arcing to the curve of his ribs, her breast pressing unreservedly against him.
Her bed had been turned back in that angular manner which exposes one pillow and the length of sheets three quarters down one side. He laid her in the open fold, knees bent gracefully to one side, her shoulders turned the opposite direction, opening her to the intimate space narrowing between them, her delicate body slipping into the seam of bedclothes with a sigh.
He marveled how beauty comes forth even in stupor. He could do nothing more than look at her a long moment. Then he ran a fingertip along the rising curve of her hips, down the slow undulating line of her legs to her ankles. Her long hair had fallen over her face. He brushed it away with the backs of his fingers and as he did so, allowed them to graze her cheek. The corner of her mouth drew down with a brief quiver in a manner reminiscent of an infant turning to feed. He wasn’t sure how to begin but decided her sleeping-not-sleeping body was going to tell him.
His eyes fell on the lone pearl dangling from her necklace and from there to the arch of her breasts on either side. He was unchecked, examining closely the rounded forms, the light brown nipples tenting the fabric. He watched them rise and fall with her shallow breathing, imagined they were breathing too. He began to unbutton her blouse, slowly, so as not to miss each new unveiling. She turned her head slightly to one side and spread her arm out on the pillow in a dream-like motion the body sometimes makes unselfconsciously in the trough of sleep.
He stopped mid way down the line of buttons and let his hand drift out to her breast, wrapping his fingers around its base, lifting gently so as to raise it closer to him, brushing its tip with his thumb. It seemed to nuzzle his hand with each arc of breathing. He watched her face, as, in symmetry, he put a hand on her other breast. She seemed to rise a little, as if reaching, her forehead furrowed and mouth fell open just the slightest amount as he massaged her through her clothing.
He returned to her buttons, now almost completely undone, and finished, drawing her blouse open like curtains on a new morning. She was naked to her waist. Her skin glowed in the amber light. He reached for the sunrise of her waist, trailing his fingertips up the curving horizon to the base of her breasts, then back to the flat abdomen, its little mound in the center, its delicate hole of a navel which he circled and probed. Then, continuing the thrusting motion of his hands around the arc of her belly, lifted his palms under her, raising her at the wing bones, bending her chest upward toward him where he buried his face on her, blowing hot breath, moistening her from neck to waist.
She was lying higher up on the pillow now, her head leaning back, her body outstretched below. He grasped the elastic band at the top of her skirt and stretched it over the rise of her hips until a low panty line emerged. He paused to study the rest of her, piecing together each new revelation.
Her hips were narrow, quickly falling off to her thighs, which were lithe as necks of swans. He drew the skirt down to her ankles and together with her slipper-like shoes, dropped them to the floor.
She was out cold. And gorgeous. It was a strange feeling to be so aroused and at the same time realize she was helpless, completely at his mercy. It was a measure of great trust, he thought, and at some level, great affection.
She was his. He no longer questioned how. He let the will of the body take over.
Naked but for the filmy panties, cut low and tight across her sex where it bulged from within with a furious darkness, he could not resist reaching out to touch her - in one place only - a fingertip against the membrane of silk spreading before her unseen cleft, and there, rubbed gently. She moaned and looked for a moment as if she would awaken. But she fell back into her chosen halcyon. He could feel her wetness through the silken membrane. He became aware he, himself, was half hard under his clothing, moist at his tip.
Keeping his finger in its slippery valley he undressed, removing it briefly to slip his shirt over his hand. His penis rose and bobbed over her, not hard enough yet to penetrate her, because, he reasoned, of the little trace of guilt undissolved in him from the conflicting triangle of relationships. Didn’t he have permission to be hard, permission to take her? The women had set it up so.
Anything you want, she had s
aid. The remembrance of that promise caused him to exhale sharply in that involuntary, contractile rush of the breath when excitement takes over the body. He brought himself above her, dancing over her closed eyes for a moment and then placed his tip on her parted lips. She made no resistance as he pressed in, separating her teeth gently with his swelling head. The sharpness of unwithdrawn teeth gave a little pain which thrilled the excited skin as he halted then moved in and out of her a few times, quickly fully erect.
He moved around to the foot of the bed and with both hands, hooked the wings of her panties, bringing them down in one smooth motion. He looked up into her, her body open to him. He knelt between her legs and pressed his cock in the mouth of her opening. She was tight. Must not have had sex for a long time. But very wet inside, as if, even in stupor, ignited with desire.
She moaned a little as he pressed halfway in, her face turning to one side, her arms making an abbreviated fluttering motion. He let himself down on her, sweeping her under his arms and legs as if containing her within the cocoon of him and pumped her gently.
The bed flowed as water under them, she, like a leaf, pliant on the surface, curving as the curve of the waves moved her. He, the maker of rhythms, like sunlight on water, as if together they assumed the wave form of a single note, an harmonic high above the treble cleft in which they could ride and ride with the resonance of the universe.
He felt come surging in the wedge of his pelvis and as it did, he thought of her words: anything, anything... it gave him license to pump hard, to penetrate as deeply as he could, his silvery liquid flowing into her, to shine in her darkness, making love to her a million million times from within.
At that thought he seized uncontrollably and turned loose everything. There was nothing he could withhold from her.
He stayed in her a while savoring the long diminishments of motion, pumping less frequent, as if ringing her from within with small echoes, diminuendos of romance in the deepening darkness.
Secret in the Open Page 2