Fools die

by Mario Puzo

  Janelle patted her dark hair and said, “ Alice, what is it?” in a very concerned voice. Yet at the moment both knew they were acting a play that would enable them to do what they both wanted to do.

  Alice said, sobbing, “I don’t have anyone to love. I don’t have anyone to love me.”

  There was just one moment when Janelle someplace in her mind kept an ironic distance. This was a scene she had played with male lovers. But her warm gratitude to Alice for the past month, the moment of lust that had been sparked by her heavy breasts were far more promising than the rewards of irony. And she too loved to play scenes. She pulled the covers down from Alice and touched her breasts and curiously watched the nipples rise. Then she bent her golden head and covered a nipple with her mouth. The effect on her was extraordinary.

  She felt an enormous liquid peace flow through her body as she sucked on the nipple of Alice ’s breast. She felt almost like a child. The breast was so warm, it tasted so richly sweet to her mouth. She slipped her body next to Alice now, but she refused to give up the nipple, though Alice’s hands began a steadily increasing pressure on her neck to force her down lower. Finally Alice let her stay on the breast. Janelle was murmuring as she sucked, the murmurs of an erotic child, and Alice caressed the golden head, only stopping for a moment to put out the light beside her bed so that they could be in darkness. Finally, a long time later, with a soft sigh of satisfied pleasure Janelle stopped sucking on Alice’s breast and let her head fall between the other woman’s legs. A long time later she fell into an exhausted sleep. When she woke up, she found that she had been undressed and was now naked in the bed beside Alice. They were sleeping in each other’s arms with complete trust, like two innocent infants, and with the same peace.

  So started what was to Janelle the most satisfying sexual partnership she had experienced up to then. Not that she was in love, she was not. Alice was in love with her. That was partly the reason it was so satisfying. Also, quite simply she loved sucking a full breast, it was a blazing new discovery. And she was completely uninhibited with Alice, and her complete lord and master. Which was great. She didn’t have to play her Southern belle role.

  The curious part of the relationship was that Janelle, sweet and soft and feminine, was the butch, the sexual aggressor. Alice, who looked a little dykey in a very sweet way, was really the woman of the pair. It was Alice who turned their bedroom (they now shared the same bed) into a frilly woman’s chamber with dolls hanging on walls, specially made shutters on the windows and all other kinds of knickknacks. Janelle’s bedroom, which they kept up for the sake of appearance, was untidy and messy as a child’s.

  Part of the thrill of the relationship for Janelle was that she could act the role of a man. Not only sexually but in everyday life, the small details of routine day-to-day living. Around the house she was sloppy in a masculine way. A slob, in fact, while Alice always took care to look attractive to Janelle. Janelle would even do the lustful groping of the male, grabbing Alice by the crotch as she went by in the kitchen, squeezing her breasts. Janelle loved acting the role of the man. She would force Alice to make love. At those times she felt more lust than she could ever feel with a man. Then, although they still both had dates with men, inevitable in their professions where social and business obligations intermingled, it was only Janelle who sill enjoyed spending an evening with a male, It was only Janelle who still occasionally stayed out all night. To come back the next morning to find Alice literally sick with jealousy. In fact, so ill that Janelle became frightened and considered moving out. Alice never stayed away all night. And when she was out late, Janelle never worried about whether she was shacking up with a guy. She didn’t care. To her mind one thing had nothing to do with another.

  But gradually it came to be understood that Janelle was a free agent. That she could do what she pleased. That she was not accountable. Partly because Janelle was so beautiful that it was difficult to avoid attentions and phone calls from all the men she came into contact with: actors, assistant directors, agents, producers, directors. But gradually, during the year they were living together, Janelle lost interest in having sex with men. It became unsatisfying. Not so much physically but because the power relationship was different. She could sense, or imagined she sensed, how they felt they had something on her after they had gotten her to bed. They became too sure of themselves, too sleek with satisfaction. They expected too many attentions. Attentions she did not feel like giving. Also, she found in Alice something she had never felt in any man. An absolute trust. She never felt that Alice gossiped about her or held her cheap. Or that Alice would betray her with another woman or man. Or that Alice would cheat her out of material possessions or break a promise. Many of the men she met were lavish with promises that they never kept. She was truly happy with Alice, who took care to keep her happy in every way.

  One day Alice said, “You know, we could have Richard live with us permanently.”

  “Oh, God, I wish I could,” Janelle said. “We just haven’t got the time to take care of him.”

  “Sure we do,” Alice said. “Look, we rarely work at the same time. He’ll be in school. On vacations he can go to camp. If there’s a pinch, we can hire a woman. I think you’d be much happier if you had Richard with you.”

  Janelle was tempted. She realized that their menage would become more permanent with Richard living with them. But that didn’t seem a bad idea. She was getting enough movie work now to live well. They could even get a larger apartment and really fixit up. “OK”, she said. “I’ll write Richard and see how he feels about it.”

  She never did. She knew her ex-husband would reject her. And also she did not want Alice to become too important to her.

  Chapter 38

  When I knew for sure that Janelle went both ways, that Alice was also her lover, I was relieved. What the hell. Two women making love together was like two women knitting together. I told that to Janelle to make her angry. Then too, her arrangement was a bailout for me. I was in the position of a guy with a married mistress whose husband was understanding and female, a great combination.

  But nothing is simple. Gradually I came to realize that Janelle loved Alice at least as much as she did me. What was worse, I came to realize that Alice loved Janelle better than I did; in a way that was less selfish and much less damaging to Janelle. Because I knew by this time that I wasn’t doing Janelle much good emotionally. Never mind that it was a hopeless trap. That no guy would ever solve her problems. But I was using her as an instrument of my pleasure. OK again. But I expected her to accept a strictly subordinate place in my life. After all, I had my wife and kids and my writing. Yet I expected her to place me in a primary position.

  Everything is a bargain to some degree. And I was getting a better bargain than she was. It was that simple.

  But here’s where the gravy came in, having a bisexual girlfriend. Janelle became sick on one of my visits. She had to go to the hospital to get a cyst removed from her ovary. What with that and some complications she was in the hospital for ten days. Sure, I sent flowers, tons and tons of flowers, the usual bullshit that women love and so let men get away with murder. Sure, I went to see her every night for about an hour. But Alice ran all her errands, stayed with her all day. Sometimes Alice was there when I came, and she always left the room a little while so Janelle and I could be alone. Maybe she knew that Janelle would want me to hold her bare breasts when I was talking to her. Not sexy but because that was comforting to her. Jesus, how much of sex is just comforting, like a hot bath, a great dinner, good wine. And if only you could come at sex just that way without love and other complications.

  Anyway, just this one time Alice stayed in the room with us. I was always struck by how sweet a face Alice had. In fact, the two women looked like sisters, two very sweet-looking women, soft and feminine. Alice had a small, almost thin mouth, which rarely looks generous, but hers did. I liked her enormously. And why the hell shouldn’t I? She was doing all the dirty work
I should have been doing. But I was a busy guy. I was married. I had to leave for New York the next day. Maybe if Alice weren’t there, I would have done all the things she had done, but I don’t think so.

  I had sneaked in a bottle of champagne to celebrate our last night together. But I didn’t mind sharing it with Alice. Janelle had three glasses stashed. Alice opened the bottle. She was very capable.

  Janelle had on a pretty filled lace nightgown, and as always, she looked somehow dramatic lying there on the bed. I knew that she had deliberately not used makeup for my visit so as to look the part. Wan, pale, another Camille. Except that she really was in great shape and bursting with vitality. Her eyes were dancing with pleasure as she sipped the champagne. She had trapped in this room the two people she loved best. They were not allowed to be mean to her in any way, or hurt her feelings in any way, not even stop her from being mean to them. And maybe it was this that made her reach out and take my hand in hers as Alice sat there watching.

  Ever since I had known about them, I had been careful not to act like a lover in front of Alice. And Alice never betrayed her sexual relationship with Janelle. Watching them, you would swear that they were two sisters or two comrades. They were absolutely casual with one another. Their relationship was indicated only by Janelle, who sometimes bossed Alice around like a domineering husband.

  Now Alice moved her chair back so that it tilted her against the far wall, away from Janelle’s bed, away from us. As if she were giving us the official status of lovers. For some reason this gesture of hers affected me painfully, it was so generous.

  I guess I envied them both. They were so comfortable with each other that they could afford to indulge me, my privileged position as an official lover. Janelle played with the fingers on my hand. And now I realized it was not perversity on her part but a genuine desire to make me happy, so I smiled at her. In the next hour we would finish the champagne and I would leave and catch my plane to New York and they would be alone and Janelle would make it up to Alice. And Alice knew that. As she knew that Janelle must have this moment with me. I resisted the impulse to pull my hand away. That would be ungenerous, and the male mystique has it that men are basically more generous than women. But I knew that my generosity was forced. I couldn’t wait to leave.

  Finally I could kiss Janelle good-bye. I promised to call her the next day. We hugged each other as Alice discreetly left the room. But Alice was waiting outside for me and kept me company down to the car. She gave me another of her soft kisses on the mouth.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll spend the night with her.” Janelle had told me that after her operation Alice spent the whole night curled up on the armchair in her room, so I was not surprised.

  I just said, “Take care of yourself, thanks,” and got into my car and drove to the airport.

  It was dark before the plane started its journey east. I could never sleep on a plane.

  And so I could think of Alice and Janelle comfortable with each other in the hospital bedroom, and I was glad Janelle was not alone. And I was glad that early in the dawn I would be having breakfast with my family.

  Chapter 39

  One of the things I never admitted to Janelle was that my jealousy was not merely romantic, but pragmatic. I searched the literature of romantic novels, but in no novel could I find the admission that one of the reasons a married man wants his mistress to be faithful is that he fears catching the clap or worse and then transmitting it to his wife. I guess one of the reasons this couldn’t be admitted to the mistress at least is that the married man usually lied and said he was no longer sleeping with his wife. And since he was already lying to his wife and since if he did infect her, if he was human at all, he’d have to tell both. He was caught in the double horn of guilt.

  So one night I told Janelle about that and she looked at me grimly and said, “How about if you caught it from your wife and gave it to me? Or don’t you think that’s possible?”

  We were playing our usual game of fighting but not really fighting, really a duel of wits in which humor and truth were allowed and even some cruelty but no brutality.

  “Sure,” I said, “But the odds are less. My wife is a pretty strict Catholic. She’s virtuous.” I held up my hand to stop Janelle’s protest. “And she’s older and not as beautiful as you are and has less opportunity.”

  Janelle relaxed a bit. Any compliment to her beauty could soften her up.

  Then I said, grinning a little, “But you’re right. If my wife gave it to me and I gave it to you, I wouldn’t feel guilty. That would be OK. That would be a kind of justice since you and I are both criminals together.”

  Janelle couldn’t resist any longer. She was almost jumping up and down. “I can’t believe you said something like that. I just can’t believe it. I may be a criminal,” she said, “but you’re just a coward.”

  Another night in the early-morning hours, when as usual we couldn’t sleep because we were so excited by each other after we had made love a couple of times and drunk a bottle of wine, she was finally so persistent that I told her about when I was a kid in the asylum.

  As a child I used books as magic. In the dormitory late at night, separate and alone, a greater loneliness than I have ever felt since, I could spirit myself away and escape by reading and then weave my own fantasies. The books I loved best at that early age of ten, eleven or twelve were the romantic legends of Roland, Charlemagne, the American West, but especially of King Arthur and his Round Table and his brave knights Lancelot and Galahad. But most of all, I loved Merlin because I thought myself like him. And then I would weave my fantasies, my brother, Artie, was King Arthur and that was right too, and that was because Artie had all the nobility and fairness of King Arthur, the honesty and true purpose, the forgiving lovingness which I did not have. As a child I fantasized myself as cunning and far-seeing and was firmly convinced that I would rule my own life by some sort of magic. And so I came to love King Arthur’s magician, Merlin, who had lived through the past, could foresee the future, who was immortal and all-wise.

  It was then I developed the trick of actually transferring myself from the present into the future. I used it all my life. As a child in the asylum I would make myself into a young man with clever bookish friends. I could make myself live in a luxurious apartment and on the sofa of that apartment make love to a passionate, beautiful woman.

  During the war on tedious guard or patrol duty I would project myself into the future when I would be on leave to Paris, eating great food and bedding down with luscious whores. Under shellfire I could magically disappear and find myself resting in the woods by a gentle brook, reading a favorite book.

  It worked, it really worked. I magically disappeared. And I would remember in later actual time, when I was really doing those great things, I remembered these terrible times and it would seem as if I had escaped them altogether, that I had never suffered. That they were only dreams.

  I remember my shock and astonishment when Merlin tells King Arthur to rule without his help because he, Merlin, will be imprisoned in a cave by a young enchantress to whom he has taught all his secrets. Like King Arthur, I asked why. Why would Merlin teach a young girl all his magic simply so he could become her prisoner and why was he so cheerful about sleeping in a cave for a thousand years, knowing the tragic ending of his king? I couldn’t understand it. And yet, as I grew older, I felt that I too might do the same thing. Every great hero, I had learned, must have a weakness, and that would be mine.

  I had read many different versions of the King Arthur legend, and in one I had seen a picture of Merlin as a man with a long gray beard wearing a conical dunce like cap spangled with stars and signs of the zodiac. In the shop class of the asylum school I made myself such a hat and wore it around the grounds. I loved that hat. Until one day one of the boys stole it and I never saw it again and I never made another one. I had used that hat to spin magic spells around myself, of the hero that I would become; the adventures I would ha
ve, the good deeds I would perform and the happiness I would find. But the hat really wasn’t necessary. The fantasies wove themselves anyway. My life in that asylum seems a dream. I never was there. I was really Merlin as a child of ten. I was a magician, and nothing could ever harm

  Janelle was looking at me with a little smile. “You really think you’re Merlin, don’t you?” she said.

  “A little bit,” I said.

  She smiled again and didn’t say anything. We drank a little wine, and then she said suddenly, “You know, sometimes I’m a little kinky and I'm afraid, really, to be that way with you. Do you know what’s a lot of fun? One of us ties the other up and then makes love to whoever is tied up. How about it? Let me tie you up and then I’ll make love to you and you’ll be helpless. It’s really a great kick.”

  I was surprised because we had tried to be kinky before and failed. One thing I knew: Nobody would ever tie me up. So I told her, “OK, I’ll tie you up, but you’re not tying me up.’,

  “That’s not fair,” Janelle said. “That’s not fair play.”

  “I don’t give a shit,” I said. “Nobody’s tying me up. How do I know when you have me tied up you won’t light matches under my feet or stick a pin in my eye? You’ll be sorry afterward, but that won’t help me.”

  “No, you dope. It would be a symbolic bond. I’ll just get a scarf and tie you up. You can break loose anytime you want. It can be like a thread. You’re a writer, you know what ‘symbolic’ means.”

  “No,” I said.

  She leaned back on the bed, smiling at me very coolly, “And you think you’re Merlin,” she said. “You thought I’d be sympathetic about poor you in the orphanage imagining yourself as Merlin. You’re the toughest son of a bitch I ever met and I just proved it to you. You’d never let any woman put you under a spell or put you in a cave or tie a scarf around your arms. You’re no Merlin, Merlyn.”