And so we met. And we made love. She was just as bold in bed as she was before the camera, very passionate and open; her energy was astonishing. A month later, I left Brooklyn and moved into her second-floor apartment on Cornelia Street. Things happened fast around Mora.
We lived together for a year, more happily than I’d thought possible. Business went so well in the studio, I hired a part-time assistant; Mora didn’t have to work because her father owned a shopping mall and sent her a monthly allowance. When she decided she had no acting talent, she got into politics for a while, and then she just started spending all her time at home cooking exotic meals; she told her friends she was too happy to concentrate on anything more.
What happened was that we got cocky. All the traditional signals had gone off at the right times, and we started thinking we were different, that we could nail our feelings to the wall where they would never change. One thing led to another and, before we knew it, we were standing in City Hall, saying our vows. Afterwards, we threw a party for our friends, and then when the shock wore off and we realized what we’d done, we stayed drunk for two days and had a terrific fight so we could squeeze the last ounce of passion out of making up.
Why did we do it? Talk to anyone: marriage is like getting a diploma in living as an adult. The licence certifies a certain wilful madness for, as we found out, everyone lies about marriage, especially its kinkier aspects: the manacles of words at each wrist and ankle, the eager vows that become expectations. The endless expectations.
We were on our third round of drinks and Mora was snapping her foot back and forth restlessly and staring off into space. I looked around for a waiter so we could order dinner, when I saw Charles Venturi sit down at a table near us. He was the last person I expected to see. He’d been off in Europe for years – since the early seventies, when we had served time together on the same slick magazines. We were never close, but I had sought him out and spent time with him because he fascinated me.
Sitting across from him was a tall blonde woman in her late twenties who had lovely cheekbones, hollow cheeks, and long delicate wrists, the supple carriage of a dancer, the long neck and waist of a model. She was beautiful in the wiredrawn way that well-bred New England daughters who sing Bach on Sundays can be.
“Look over there,” I said to Mora. “That’s Charles Venturi.”
“They’re a handsome couple,” she admitted. “They look interesting.”
She followed me over to their table.
“Charles! How long have you been back?”
We shook hands and I introduced Mora. The woman with him was Vy Cameron. In the years I’d known Charles, I hadn’t seen him with a woman who looked so capable of keeping up. I liked the determination I saw in her pale grey-blue eyes, and the demure way she shook my hand, fingers wrapped lightly around fingers. A lady, with an agenda.
The two of us exchanged the usual inane comments that pass for casual conversation in the Hamptons, but we kept our eyes on our mates. Mora and Charles were hitting it off. While he talked, she was giving him what I think of as the Treatment. The Treatment consists of her undivided attention, of long, smouldering looks, and sudden, surprising smiles that promise a lot more than understanding. It’s flattering, and nearly always effective.
After a while, I interrupted them. I saw a chance to change the weather between Mora and I, the possibility of sun behind the clouds.
“Let’s get together. Where are you staying?”
“With the man Vy lives with, Maurice.”
I raised my eyebrows, and he looked unexpectedly sheepish for a minute.
“It’s a long story. I’ll save it for later.” He winked.
He suggested that we meet on the beach next day. We talked about time and place – he knew a beach where it was possible to go without bathing suits – and returned to our table.
In bed later, Mora asked me to tell her more about him. I was suspicious of her interest and reluctant at first, but she cuddled up to me and I starting stroking her and talking. In the dark, her emerald eyes glowed like a cat’s. A cat in heat.
TWO
When it comes to women, Charles has a gift. He hears what they’re saying between the lines. They find him inordinately seductive, although there isn’t much about his appearance other than his provocative black eyes that would suggest such powers of attraction. But he’s solid and dark and intense.
His restless energy is the source of his charisma. His hunger for the varieties of experience. He grew up fast on the Italian Catholic streets of East Harlem, where he learned to see the world as a stage, and his part in it as an infinitely adaptable player. He was attracted to both the smell of incense and the smell of sex, the sharp aroma of men and the secret fragrance of women. By the age of forty his résumé read like eight lives had been crammed into one. He’d been a translator, a student of Gurdjieffian teachings, a psychotherapist, a librarian, an editor of men’s magazines – even a novice with shaved head in a Zen monastery. His appetite for biography was prodigious.
All this time, he was writing furiously; when he published the books that established his reputation, his radical ideas about sexuality were treated respectfully by slick national magazines, a few maverick critics, and even one incautious Nobel Laureate. It didn’t hurt that he was called a pornographer by a few midwestern district attorneys who had no idea what he was talking about.
He became a cult figure in the sexual underground. When he stepped out of the shadows into the spotlight, he represented the forces of Eros to the media. There was applause. He titillated people. Amused them. Sometimes even succeeded in outraging them. Then, one week, he was on the cover of Life magazine wearing eye shadow and mascara and grinning about the confusion of sex roles he embodied. It seems improbable, but it was the sixties. The pot boiled, and he was there to take his turn stirring it, along with student radicals, Black Panthers, Yippies, Weather People, and self-destructive rock stars. The seventies were a let-down for him. I think he went off to Europe primarily because he was bored and he wanted to see if he’d been missing anything there.
When we met him on the beach, next day, the sky was cobalt blue, and the ocean was calm as bathwater. Mora smiled at the sun. She was happy again. We found Charles sitting cross-legged on an orange beach towel at the foot of a golden dune, brown arms on his knees, gazing out over the rippling water. A lone sailboat patrolled the line of the horizon. I was disappointed when I didn’t see Vy.
“Thank God for the sun,” I said.
“That’s a big ocean. I’m glad to be on this side of it.”
I unfurled our blue chintz beach spread and Mora helped me to anchor it with our sandals. We took off our jeans and sprawled next to Charles. Mora began rubbing lotion into her legs.
“Where’s Vy?”
“She had to play hostess for a while.”
“For Maurice?”
He nodded. “She won’t be long.”
“You share her with him?”
He shrugged. “That’s how it is.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“He loves her in his own way, I guess.” A faint smile played on his lips as he studied Mora. Her tight smooth flesh overwhelmed the white terrycloth bikini she wore.
“You’re so casual,” she said. “Have you known her long?”
“I met her when I got back from Europe. Some friends threw a welcome home party, and she was there. As soon as I saw her, I knew I was in trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“I was turned on, and I knew we wouldn’t be any good for each other – but I had to have her. I met my match.”
“I want to hear more. All about her,” Mora said. Erotic style fascinated her, and any woman who could live with two men deserved a great deal of study.
“What does she do?”
“She’s a dancer. But she has many talents.”
“You can tell us more than that.”
“Well, you can ask her yourself,” Charles said, po
inting to a tall, erect figure walking down the beach towards us. Vy wore a Japanese kimono and clogs, and her blonde hair was piled on top of her head. We could hear her singing in a high, lilting voice when she got closer, but the words were lost in the muffled slap of the surf on the beach.
Her first words were breathless, almost hoarse. “I’m so fucking dry I’m going to have to do a little deep throat to get my voice in the right register. I’m a tenor in the heat.” She patted her chest. Her palpitating heart.
Mora and I looked at each other. What heat?
“It’s my colouring,” Vy said. “I’m more susceptible than most people. I don’t like the sun. It causes cancer and it dries up the skin.”
“I worship the sun,” Mora said.
“Well, nothing could have seduced me down to this beach but the thought of you three doing something delicious without me.” She was overwhelming, regal. In supplication I opened the bottle of cold Retsina we’d brought, filled four paper cups, and handed one to her. Charles lit a joint and passed it around.
She settled herself on our blue spread. Mora watched her with narrowed, admiring eyes. “Now tell me what I’ve missed. Have you been talking about me? I hope so – it would make me feel so good. All Maurice talks about any more is deals. Buy that, sell this. Sometimes when he refers to me it’s in the same tone of voice, and I feel like a jewel he’s tucked into his safety deposit box.”
She leaned back on her elbows, her gaze fixed on my face, the slender joint stuck in the corner of her mouth.
“I don’t own a safety deposit box,” Charles said.
“I don’t own a bathing suit,” she purred in a cool, milky voice, removing her kimono with ladylike panache. Her plump, berry-tipped breasts, flat white belly and wide hips were exquisite. Her skin blushed that faint pinkish hue found in the centre of certain roses. In the cool salt breeze, she trembled almost imperceptibly, like a rabbit in a field of shotgun fire. I felt a sudden stabbing urge to take her in the crook of my arm and press my fingers gently in the wet hollows of her throat, her elbows, her knees; my groin was beating like a second heart.
Mora wasn’t to be upstaged. She untied her bikini top with what was meant to be a casual gesture, but I knew that she was tense. Her normally puffy copper nipples were tight and hopeful.
Charles grinned happily at the women. “We are fortunate men, Richard.” Then he told us a story that set the mood for what happened later as much as the hot sun or the empty beach.
“I was walking on the beach this morning. I didn’t know where I was going, just walking and thinking and looking for driftwood. There were no people around, so I took off my trunks. It was about ten o’clock when I realized I was walking through a gay beach. I almost stepped on a man who was lying in the surf, masturbating. Something in his face made me stop – whether it was pleasure or invitation, I don’t know. I went down on him, and for five minutes, maybe ten – it seemed like hours – we were as close as any two bodies can get. Such an absolute passion – and it happened with a total stranger! Afterwards we didn’t say anything, but neither of us were looking for romance.”
“I love it,” Mora exclaimed excitedly, clapping her hands. Her cat eyes flashed. “Anonymous sex, no attachments. It’s too bad heterosexuals can’t be so honest. I see so many people I’m turned on to, yet I don’t want to talk to them. I want to take them. Just make love. Between men, it’s better. You both know what you want, without any illusions . . .” She was breathless.
Vy crossed her arms and cupped her hands over her breasts protectively, as if guarding her heart. She closed her eyes and sat quite straight and still. “All there is is romance. The rest is technique,” she said, without opening her eyes. “I’ve had expert lovers who couldn’t get me wet because they didn’t know any of the magic words.”
She opened her eyes and focused on Charles. He stretched out casually next to her, propped on his elbows, looking out to sea. Something seemed to draw him: he started crawling crablike on his belly out to the water, leaving a broad, wrinkled trail in the tawny sand.
We all stared after him. Mora sighed wistfully. “I should have been a man. You just don’t know how much I fantasize about certain . . . situations.”
“Well, my dear,” Vy said coldly. “We all have to learn the hard way.”
“I guess it’s something I want to learn,” Mora replied, unwilling to give Vy the last word. “Anyway, Charles says you’re a part of the world I want to learn about.”
The sharks might have envied Vy’s smile. “I keep myself entertained.”
The static between them made me decide to follow Charles into the surf. I crawled for a bit, felt silly, and walked the rest of the way. He was lying on his back, letting the sudsy foam wash over his body, decorating his hirsute chest and legs with green seaweed and fragments of sea shells. Looking at him lying there, I thought of the man in his story.
“Let the two of them work it out,” he said. “We’re just in the way.”
“I’m grateful that Mora’s found someone to talk to. She’s been in a funk.”
“Tell me about her.”
“What you see is Mora. She hides nothing. She’s an all-or-nothing type. Black or white, no greys.”
“Get out of her way when she decides what she wants.”
“Exactly. She wants my soul. She gets jealous if I talk with a bank clerk too long. I try to tell her that I’m not interested in anyone but her, but she sees what she wants to see. Marriage has done us in, I think.”
He shook his head sympathetically. “But before you got married – how were things?”
“God was in his heaven and all was right with the world . . . You know what it’s like.”
“So why did you do it?”
“Get married? I guess I’d have to plead insanity. I knew better, and I did it anyway.”
He snorted in recognition. “I’m sorry, but I think you’re taking it all too seriously, Richard. Loosen up.”
“How do I do that?”
“Stop arguing. Stop anticipating.”
“Is that what you learned in Europe?”
He laughed this time. His eyes lit up with mirth. There was a patch of wet sand on his cheek. “What do you know about me, Richard?”
“Not much. But I always thought you knew about women.”
“Then let me tell you something: Mora wants more than marriage can offer her right now. She wants to play, it’s as simple as that.”
“Simple?” I couldn’t swallow that.
“Look, you’re on vacation. Try something different.”
He winked amiably, walked into the water to clean the sand off, and sprinted up the beach. I knew what he meant because the idea had been lurking in the back of my mind since we’d met at Peaches; but I knew that I didn’t want anyone but me making love to Mora.
I knew she’d had lovers in the past, but they were shadows framed by shadows. Charles was sharp and immediate. Yet I had to admit to myself that the image of the four of us together on a bed heated my imagination – that perhaps my curiosity was stronger than my apprehension.
I wanted Vy, but I tried to shake my head clear of her as I walked back up the beach to our blue chintz island in the sand. Sleeping with other people when you’re married leads to trouble, I told myself.
I should have listened, but of course I didn’t.
Indelible image: Charles was standing in a half crouch, swimming briefs kicked aside, feet planted heavily in the sand, calves bulging, body glistening, while Vy’s blonde head bobbed vigorously between his thighs. Mora was leaning back, breasts free, snapping pictures with my Pentax. In her hands it was almost a sexual instrument. I threw up my hands in surprise and she swung around to take my picture. Far down the empty beach, a boy was throwing rocks into the surf, but he was a speck in the distance.
Snap. There are glimpses, in a late afternoon sun, of the future. They come unbidden, and they enter the heart and lodge there. The dark fuzz on Charles’s thighs; the shudde
ring in Vy’s back as she pulled him into her; Mora’s obvious arousal as she clicked the shutter. There was an excitement in the air – of people about to experiment with their lives – that wasn’t to be dissipated by the salt breeze.
“It feels right,” Mora said brightly when she handed me the camera.
“Does it?” I was doubtful. I had fists at the ends of my arms, fingers closed tightly into my palms. My tongue fluttered helplessly, like the tail of an animal I’d got stuck in my throat.
Vy leaned back from Charles, licked her lips delicately, and lighted a black Sobranie cigarette. She winked at me. Charles sat in the sand, looking seductive. I thought I could hear the wheels turning in his head.
“Why don’t we have dinner together? We can whip up something easy at Maurice’s, and let the evening take care of itself.”
THREE
Vy drove off in a blue Mercedes. She blew a kiss through the window and scrunched gravel as she left the beach parking lot. The gesture seemed to enlarge her: fingertips to her lips, the wide unexpected smile, the pressure of her foot on the gas pedal. We followed in Charles’s Clunker Deluxe. “ ‘The station car’,” he joked. “That’s what they call vintage Detroit iron out here. It’s what I can afford. Maurice watches that Mercedes like a hawk. I think he has the soul of a chauffeur.”
I shrugged. “Shoulders were made for burdens.”
I sat on the outside and Mora was squeezed between us. We dripped sand on the floor of the car and the hot vinyl seats stuck to our thighs. Despite the heat, Mora’s skin was cool and moist.
“You’re a Scorpio sandwich,” Charles said to her, reminding me that we shared our birthdays. Then he touched her.
We were heading down the Montauk Highway and had slowed on the outskirts of Amagansett, where a train had derailed. The road swarmed with police, gawkers, and dazed passengers. Charles lifted his hand from the steering wheel and pressed the back of it against Mora’s breasts. Lightly. It was the simplest, most casual of gestures, so natural I felt like I was stealing something from them because I stared. I looked quickly out the window, feeling embarrassed – and angry at myself for feeling that way.
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