“That's ‘cause of my deviated septum. I gotta sleep high and I also have a nasal drip.”
“Can't you get it operated on?”
“Why bother? I'm used to it. As long as I got pillows what do I need operations for? I had my share.” He pulled up a trouser leg, showing her a calf that could proudly be revealed on Muscle Beach and a kneecap with intersecting crisscrossed scars which looked like evidence from a Nazi torture camp. “Water on the knee, floating cartileges, torn ligaments. You name it, I had it. Joe Namath has a picnic compared with me. Don't forget, he don't run. Half the time when I carried I was past my blockers and the reception committee always was there to greet me.” A nylon sock was peeled off and a maroon lump the size of a plum was offered for her inspection. “My last year in Canada, I broke my ankle. That's why football's the number one spectator sport. Better than boxing, ‘cause you got a chance of seeing not one or two but twenty-two guys crippled ... and shit, I love it.”
She stooped down and kissed his foot.
“Hey, why'd you do that?”
“I just felt like it.”
He closed the door and set up a chair against it.
“Sometimes Junior busts in with a bad dream.”
He stared at her, puzzled, confused, and uncertain.
She sat down on the bed, then put her feet up and laid her head on the mound of pillows.
“Have you got any ambition, Sonny?”
“Naturally. Not to be broke.” He laughed with childish amusement.
“Seriously, I mean.”
“Sure I've got ambition. It ain't running a bar and grill either or a single joint. Hate them hours. Late nights. Smell of beer in my nose ... ambition, well, you wouldn't believe it. Ever since I've been out of football I want one thing...” He looked at the ceiling as though an otherworldly message was about to be projected. “Jane, I want to be a scout.”
“A what?”
“A scout. Cover high-school and college games and try to spot new talent. Bring a kid along till he's right for the pros. I got an eye for it. I know what natural ability is, and I know how to bring it out.” He sighed with frustration. “A good scout makes twenty, twenty-five grand a year, plus all expenses; then there's bonuses. Oh, Christ, if I could have a team again. Belong to an organization. Go to the lunches at Shor's and Mama Leone's; I'd be the happiest guy on the face of the earth.”
“Why can't you become a scout?”
“Nobody wants to hire me, that's why. Good reason?”
“Have you tried?”
“I been shut out everywhere. Can't even get an appointment to see anybody from a front office. I got ideas for varying an offense that nobody ever thought of. I wrote Lombardi a letter when he went over to the Redskins and suggested that he use a single wing and an A formation as well as the T. Could you imagine what the team on defense would do if suddenly outa the blue they had to face a single wing? They never played against one.”
“I don't know what you're talking about, but it sounds brilliant.”
“Brilliant!” He was in a frenzy of excitement. “I got a million ideas.”
“Is it expensive to buy a team?” she asked innocently.
“Very easy. Got ten million dollars or thereabouts? Then you gotta find somebody that wants to sell.” He reached for the bottle of bourbon and took a pull. “Buy a team. Listen, you're not on drugs or somethin'?”
“I smoke a little pot. Nothing dramatic.”
“Kills your wind.”
“It never crossed my mind.”
“Well, think about it the next time you turn on. One day you'll be running for a bus or a train and you won't make it.”
“You're beautiful, Sonny.”
“A lot of the kids around have crabs, so watch your step, Jane.”
She stretched out her arms and he fell into her embrace. His mouth was sweet from bourbon, and he pressed his tongue inside. He put his hands between her thighs and she gripped it tightly. The danger zone was bald, twitching excitedly, but still not ready for a customer.
“Hey, you're not turning me down?” Sonny asked incredulously.
“No, of course not. It's just the time of the month,” she replied, falling back on the honorable excuse women had used since Esther. Sonny sat there stunned, waiting for her to call a play.
“Jane, I thought—well, you comin’ up here—”
“I'm in your bed, do I have to say more?”
“That's right,” he reassured himself. She touched his hair and put up her face to be kissed. “Great situation. I'm hotter than a firecracker and you're sidelined with an injury.”
“Was I supposed to report to you before I came up?” she asked irritably.
“No, I guess not. But I'm not—” He faltered awkwardly, his mouth open.
“You're not what?”
“How can I put it, so it sounds nice?” He ransacked his mind for a delicate phrase but came up with air bubbles. No fault of his, there was no genteel way of putting it. “My ice-cold shower days are over, Jane. Like forget that number. Firstly I hate cold water, big as I am.”
“I'm not sold on it, either.”
“Now you're talking.” He glared at the lamp. “Too much light in here for you?”
“No, I like looking at you.”
“We really got a lot in common. Wesley Junior isn't crazy about darkness, either. Let's see, where was I? Right, lights. So you like them, too.” He let his loafers drop off his feet.
“Don't you worry about the people under you?”
“Couple of business girls. Up all night with pills and johns.” She unbuttoned his shirt. “Welcome to Sherwood Forest. Hey, what're you doing? Lookit, I got a solution, ‘cause this ain't getting us nowhere. Why don't I run downstairs, have a little visit with my neighbors, then we can have coffee or somethin'?”
“Is that what you want?” she asked.
“Don't be crazy, you know I don'. But ... I got to get my rocks off.”
She reached out and touched the small mound building outside his fly.
“I don't like to ask personal things. Better when they just happen. Anyone ever tell you, Jane, you got a beautiful body?”
“A few people,” she admitted.
“It's sensational in fact. Had my eye on you at that cocktail party, but overtures I don't make if I want to work again. Got to be cool. Pour them scotches and dish out those cheese puffs and keep my mind clear of pussy or else I'm dropping trays all over the place. Immediate shit list if that's an occurrence.”
She reached over to him and snuggled against his hard tense body.
“I feel something for you.”
“Me, too,” he said with a chortled breath. “I'm not like cold-blooded that I grab everything that walks. I'm fussy. What're you thinkin', Jane?” he asked, setting his chin on her lap.
“You make me feel good.”
“Wait'll I start, if this is just openers.”
The warm animal next to her gave her a sense of security that she'd missed, she thought, for most of her life. She was touched by his confusion and encouraged by his simplicity. She'd have to remember that the best way to find something was not to look for it. Sonny had happened to her, an event, a fact, recorded immutably in her mind. Well, maybe it was her time to get lucky.
“If everything works out and you get yourself set, maybe we can live together,” be suggested.
“Let's see.”
“God, Jane, you really puzzle me, and I'm not a man it's easy to puzzle.”
“I don't want to talk.”
“That's what I mean about puzzlin'. Keepin’ me off balance.”
“Okay, what do you want me to say?”
“Well, think about a relationship like more than a one-night stand with me.”
“I will.”
“Do you mean it?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Jane, I think you got a lot to say for yourself and maybe someday you'll open up to me.”
Devoid of treachery
and earnest, he had one of those faces that resist time. She was looking at the same expressions that she'd seen in the photographs a short time ago: the perennial teen-ager, the sweet, big, soft neighborhood boy who'd carry boxes, refuse tips, defend ideals he didn't understand, and of course fail in an adult's world. Another man would have given her a hard time, made a grab for her, and ultimately forced her to yield. She'd inherited her father's reluctance to fight and her mother's inclination to retreat into herself. Defense for the Siddleys had become a vestigial emotion. They ran from what they couldn't sidestep. Sonny believed her, trusted her, accepted the fact that she wanted to go to bed with him but for the intrusion of her period. His eyes remained fixed on her hands, waiting for a clue to her mood.
He switched on the radio to an all-night FM station, something in New Jersey that played theme music from tear-jerking movies. The TV, soundless, was providing the one-o'clock news for nighthawks, and she got up to turn it off. She lit a cigarette and stood over him, dreamily happy.
“Jane, could I ask you a personal favor? Now you can say no, if it bugs you.”
“How can I refuse you?” She kissed the bridge of his nose, flat and hard as a ski slope.
“Jane, could I undress you? I'd really like that.”
“You said the magic words.”
“I'll leave Central America for another day.”
“It's my loss,” she said.
He was incredibly delicate for such a big man, displaying his broken-field grace with snaps, zippers, and buttons.
“This doesn't unbutton anything,” she explained as he explored the front of her print blouse.
“I don't understand why the hell they put them there if they don't work. Is it for display?”
“Just to fake you out. There's a zipper under the seam in the back.”
“Well, well, I'm really enjoying this. Like being on a treasure hunt.”
She lifted her arms up and he tugged the blouse off, careful of sudden rips from such a flimsy fabric. She had on a white lace bra with small swirled designs of fussy translucent mesh. He turned her around, stared down the deep gully, and wondered if he could hear his voice echo. For a moment he lost his initiative and sat there silently.
“Christ, Jane. I've never seen a pair like them,” he observed reverently. “No wonder you keep them under lock and key.”
“Rub the outside of my bra.”
“Anything you say.”
“The nipples are getting hard and I want you to see them when I'm excited.”
“I don't even mind when you're not excited. I wish I had two heads. That's what you rate. I take back what I said about Joy-Sue. She was like forget it compared to you. I feel like I landed on the moon. Man, I must've stepped into horse-shit, which is lucky, the day I met you.”
Her skirt had no deceptive buttons, simply a snap on the side. Sonny felt constrained to think of something else to prevent himself from popping off precipitately.
“You're the best thing that happened to me since I was a bonus baby.” He disconnected the bra catch, then peeked around the side to gauge the depth of the field. “Would you believe it? Coming right out at you.” He slipped his hand under her arm and began to nuzzle the firm belly of her breast.
“Easy, they're sensitive now.”
“I'm gonna put them in a box and keep them at Carrier's in the safe. I want you to know that I'm not a mark or easily moved, but let me tell you somethin', this year I don't need any Christmas presents.”
“Sonny ... I'm going to fall in love with you.”
He jumped up, stood in front of the mirror and beat his chest with childish delight.
“How did it happen,” he said addressing his image, “that you got so lucky, you mother-fucker?”
A belching death rattle emerged from the dusty radiator, like a Wagnerian leitmotiv, indicating that central heating was now available.
“How's that for romance?” asked a buoyant Sonny.
“As long as it gets warm. I'm freezing.”
He returned to the bed, pulled back the seventy-five percent dacron baby-blue blanket and offered her a sack as tightly made as a two-week recruit's at Parris Island, complete with hospital corners. A Fig Newton appeared from the pillow cover, and Sonny explained that Junior must've been watching TV earlier in the evening. The sheets were cold and Jane recoiled from the touch on her bare back. Sonny surveyed the situation—she had taken his favorite side—twin pyramids pointed to heaven and high purpose. In the lottery of human affairs, he had fared poorly and he embraced his new destiny with both hands, despite a dreamlike contradiction that this was not happening. He peeled her panty hose like an onion, leaving in place pale white bikini panties waywardly fringed, which called for an unusual degree of self-control. Eighteen years in training camps with Sparta-like conditions had not been in vain—he could run with the best of them, push out of his mind the half-remembered, tingling, teasing scent of conquered girls and concentrate on memorizing his playbook. Brown eleven on two drifted through his mind, a formidable trap play. He dropped his trousers and she wrapped her fingers around his hard prick.
A small telltale gasp when he touched the sheets revealed agreement with her earlier complaint. He slipped her head on his shoulder and kissed each ear lobe, then forehead, neck, and underneck. He moved down to her navel, skipping the breasts for the moment, which indicated a canny change of game plan. Never was flesh so sweet in his mouth. He lingered on the flat stomach. Microscopic inspection showed a small but fine growth of blond hair which fanned up into the shape of a fern. Invisible at a distance. She was now breathing with a noticeable lack of regularity. As for him, he felt punch-drunk. The hands that failed to hold the elusive pigskin for more than a few seconds were now not to be denied. He fondled the outside of her panties and Jane said: “Oh, yeah, don't stop,” and with this kind of approval his thick fingers burrowed further, deeper, locating a throbbing delta. Momentarily beached by his fear of disturbing her cycle, he left the exploration of the mouth for future probes. She pressed tightly against his chest and he moved his search to her breasts. In his mouth her nipples blossomed into flowers.
“I wish I knew what to do next,” the NFL's fumble king said hoarsely.
“Anything you want.”
Given this kind of license and with the end zone in sight, Sonny was not a man to tarry. He sat astride her, placed his prick securely between her breasts, then pressed them together in a heavenly bondage. She held her hands under his balls, so that the range between her mouth and him required no acrobatic skills. She touched the tip of his member with her tongue, and Sonny yielded his position between her breasts, and held both palms flat against the wall for support.
“Blue on twelve,” he heard the quarterback calling an audible because of a Red Dog defense.
It didn't help, getting his mind off Jane. Her head was down to sea level, and he was in so deep that he was concerned about damaging her vocal cords. Suddenly he felt himself hit—two linebackers and plummeted over the center and he blinked with disbelief and anguish as the white spunk seared from him. She didn't let up, and he groaned in agony of pleasure, his body hiccuping spastically.
She returned his member—clean, limp, still jerking involuntarily—and rested her apple-red cheek on his shoulder. It had to be for love, he thought, not simply a Baltimore malted, with something that worked like a Hamilton-Beach machine.
“I came with you,” she said.
He didn't doubt her and kissed her nose and silently counted his millions, an unexpected inheritance. He had expected at most a reluctant hand job, not this miraculous frenching session. But he turned sullen, unable to restrain sudden murderous impulses.
“What's wrong?” she asked.
“I'm not gonna ask you how you got so good at this.”
The sentence echoed through the air as though whispered in a record-studio sound chamber.
“Maybe you better not,” Jane replied. The aftermath of lovemaking was always too volatile
to control when she felt something.
In frustration he put his hands menacingly around her windpipe, locked the thumbs, then realizing what he was doing he stopped, caught a nascent tear with his index finger and said:
“If I catch you with anyone ... it'll be lights out.”
“You've got me, Sonny,” she replied calmly.
“Bet your sweet ass I do. This, nobody's gonna cheat me out of. Shit, Jane, this is ridiculous, but you make me want to cry and I haven't in years. The last time was when Wesley Junior had his appendix out, now twice in one night.”
“You feel something, and you don't know why you should.”
He thought for a few minutes, then opened the side-table drawer.
“Jane, I got a confession to make.” He lifted a small rectangular box. “I'm the one who eats the Fig Newtons in bed.”
* * * *
Toward the end of the week, on a blustery day when the sky was pregnant with slate-gray snow clouds, two suitcases from Saranac arrived for Jane and a letter from Conlon.
Dearest Jane:
I do miss you. My life is really in New York and I'm thinking of clearing out myself, and coming down. Room for one? I can't get over how happy you sounded the other night on the phone. I'm stuck right in the middle of a crappy political-science paper and it seems awfully remote from real life. Can you give Mel a ring, and if possible do a bed check? Don't touch him, though, will you, please.
We've had some of the most fucking awful weather known to man. Eleven inches of snow yesterday. I was so bundled up, walking to class, that I looked like I belonged on a dog sled. All I needed was a harness. It's impossible to drive, or even go out for a sandwich. The Dingle Man is delivering right to the dorm, so pardon the grease stains on this, but it's his inimitable pastrami. My father dropped me a note the other day and told me to eat lots of raw onion to keep from getting colds. What's wrong with the Irish? Are they just plain crazy?
I'll say one thing for your absence—I'm studying.
Alan invited me to the movies. I was tempted to go—he's got snow chains on his car—just to relieve the awful tedium. I guess he's horny. Turned him down of course. Faithful to my married Hebe, who's probably banging everything that walks, not to mention his wife, who just got back from Miami and Mel is hooked on white boobs against a brown body.
Making Love Page 13