Allison gunned the Caddy away from the station and waved at a few people in Port Washington’s sleepy streets. We climbed a hill and Allison watched me while I watched the scenery. We made a right turn at the top of the hill and headed east along the edge of the Sound on a two-lane blacktop road.
Allison removed her right hand from the steering wheel and took my hand and placed it down on her thigh. I lifted it up and began to feel foolish and let it rest there again. Her flesh was warm with the sun and rippled with hidden muscle every time she took her foot off the gas pedal to apply the brake on the curving road.
“I missed you, Gideon. You didn’t write, not once.”
“What the hell,” I said. “You got married.”
“That has nothing to do with it. I’ll tell you right now so you make no mistakes: if ever I had to choose between Gregory and you, I’d take Gregory, but that doesn’t mean we can’t…”
“Chrissake,” I said. “We’ve seen each other only once in three years.” I’d begun raising my voice. Allison always did that to me, made me feel confused and angry with myself. She knew it and it made her smile and lick the moisture from the hardly-seen blond fuzz on her upper lip.
“I just want you to understand, that’s all. Gregory tells me my collection of jewelry is worth a quarter of a million dollars. I’ve got everything I want, Gideon. Almost everything. I wouldn’t give it up for anything. Not anything.”
“You already told me that.”
“I said almost everything. I’m going to be perfectly frank with you and if you get nasty about it that won’t matter because Gregory won’t believe you if you decide to tell him.”
“You ought to know me better than that.”
“I do, but just in case. You… think I’m not normal, Gideon. Maybe I’m not, but I’m me and I like to live for what I feel. Some people feel things and try to hide them or suppress them, but they’re stupid. They’re only going to live once and every day they don’t do what they want to do is one day less of life without living. Does that sound logical to you?”
“Sure.”
“Then, I live the way I want. If I’m not normal I don’t care. I make no comparisons. I… Gideon, I missed you.”
“You said that, too. I’m sorry if I sound like a wet blanket, Allison, but we can’t just take up where we left off three years ago.”
She ignored that. She said, “I miss a man’s eyes. You couldn’t dream what it was like. A man can caress you with his eyes, a man can make your limbs turn to water with his eyes. Remember the way you used to look at me, Gideon?”
“Me and everyone else. Stop making it personal, Allison.”
“Why do you make me… admit things? I never liked a man as much as I liked you, Gideon.”
“Fine,” I said. My hand on Allison’s tawny thigh had begun to sweat.
“I simply wasn’t made for one man. I don’t think any woman really is content with one man all her life, whether she admits it or not. But what Gregory represents is more important than anything else.”
“I’ll remember,” I said. She had this quirk, and she assumed it was part of all women, overt or otherwise. It had chased me into the Army and played hob with my male ego now. But the as-Allison-goes-so-goes-the-world attitude made me smile wryly. She probably thought all happily married women were hypocrites.
“Here we are,” said Allison.
You could tell it stood for millions. A fieldstone wall bordered the black-top road for several hundred yards, dipping away from the road and down a grassy hill toward the beach the blue waters of the Sound. A massive grillwork gate with, of all things, cupids perched atop it, stood ajar. We rolled through and the Caddy must have disconnected an electric eye circuit, for the gates swung ponderously shut behind us. Our tires churned a wake of dust and pebbles as we drove along a winding gravel path to Blind Man’s Bluff.
It stood on the edge of a cliff, all right. The house, a rambling many-winged structure of fieldstone and wrought-iron framed bay windows, nestled in a grove of shaggy, great-boughed oaks dappling the blue-green lawn with patchwork sunlight.
“You see what I mean?” Allison demanded. “I wouldn’t give that up for anything, but I’m beginning to think I can’ have my cake and eat it too. Here comes Gregory.”
Gregory Tolliver had heard the car approach and now walked out across the lawn toward us. In his right hand he carried a tall, frosted glass. His left hand held Shamus’ harness, the boxer growling and snuffling when he saw us.
“Did you find Mr. Frey, my dear?”
“Yes.”
“He certainly picked a fine day to join us out in the country, then. I hope you brought along swimming apparel, Mr. Frey.”
“Nope,” I said. “I can always go wading.”
“Then perhaps mine will fit.”
“Gideon is bigger than you, dear,” Allison said. Tolliver was a sturdily-built man in tennis shorts, with a thin, muscular body far better preserved than his gaunt face.
“Allison will work something out, I am sure, Mr. Frey.”
I was in for a memorable day and started to realize it when Allison worked something out. She worked herself out of the criss-crossed halter. She draped the white strips of cloth over the seat of the Caddy and looked at me and raised a finger to her lips for silence. Right then as far as I was concerned she could have her cake and eat it, at least for today. And I was right: Allison sunbathed, at least from the waist up, in exactly nothing. Tawny flesh and pink-brown of her nipples were almost the same color.
Allison smiled at Tolliver and said something about Tom Collins for all of us. I stared at her and while my tongue wasn’t exactly hanging out my eyes must have said they liked what they saw and there was her husband, standing there and not seeing. Damn.
Tolliver disappeared inside to get some drinks, but Shamus looked back at us and growled. I thought that dog was going to cause trouble. Shamus, a snooper all right.
We walked around behind the house where the trees were fewer and the sun stronger. Allison led me by the hand right up to the edge of the cliff and perched herself there precariously, dangling her feet over. A sturdy metal fence marred the view but you could still see the beach directly below and the pier which jutted out into the blue waters of Long Island Sound for about fifty yards and the large blue and white cabin cruiser moored at the pier’s end.
“The fence is for Gregory,” Allison explained. “If he wanders back here he won’t fall off. The electric eye which shut the gate as we went through is also Gregory’s idea.”
Leaving her tanned legs dangling out of sight, Allison stretched out, her bare back on the carpet-cropped grass, her arms lifted over her head. She squirmed herself into the sun’s direct rays and smiled with childlike contentment. She purred. Muscle rippled faintly where the flesh of her breasts jutted out from the smooth line formed by throat and chest.
I did some purring too, but I said, “Gregory will be out here in a minute.”
“So what? He’s blind, remember? It’s a hot day, Gideon. The least you can do is remove your shirt.”
There she went again, making me feel foolish. Men lolled around on beaches from here to Lower Slobovia with their shirts off. I slipped the blue and rust Basque shirt over my head and dropped it on the grass.
Then Tolliver came from the rear of the house. I still couldn’t grow accustomed to his blindness. I saw Allison, lying beside me and wearing nothing but a good suntan from the waist up and tossed her my shirt. She brushed it away and laughed and called, “Here we are, Gregory.” I Tolliver’s steps carried him to us unerringly. He wasn’t even led by Shamus although Shamus followed behind him, then growled, then leaped forward and snapped his ugly jaws over my Basque shirt and trotted it over to Tolliver. “Hey!” I said. “Don’t rip that.” Tolliver fingered the shirt, then held it out for me. “Warm?” he said. “Hot.”