But to her surprise, and her mixed joy and consternation, she did become emotionally involved, and far more quickly than she would have believed possible. I now know that it was not some uniqueness in me — it was her vulnerable condition.
Her marriage had turned so bad she could not be sure John Pinelli cared whether she lived or died. She had fought the ravages of age to a precarious draw for several years, but now the other side was growing dangerously strong. She had let herself slip into an emotional pattern dangerous to any woman — telling herself she did not need anyone and did not want to be needed by anyone.
She had sought a quick, dirty little revenge, not sensing the depth of her own vulnerability, and suddenly found in the circle of her arms a young man who adored her. There had been too many men who had tried to use her to their own advantage. Here was one whose only humble desire was to be close to her, serve her, love her.
There was, in addition, a physical aspect to her vulnerability. She was a woman with a strong sexual drive, and except for those rare times in her past when she had not been working at her profession, she had sublimated that drive, used the force of it to refine her actress art. She was not working. John had not touched her — she said — since we had left New York. She was strongly ready to be used. And I had a youthful vigor she was soon able to surpass.
It was the small and dubious miracle of my life to watch such a woman slowly, and then more rapidly, turn all her clocks back to eighteen. It must be remembered, and understood, that in all my life I had never given of myself. I knew nothing of the pattern of giving. Those six weeks are as close as I ever came to love. I felt both humble and exultant. I believe that for those six weeks I was a good man. I struck no poses. I had no devious ideas of gain. I wanted only to love her and watch the continuous blossoming of her, a special gift that intrigued us both.
A warm spell in autumn will trick a flower into bloom. It was that way with my Kathy. Her harshness and her coldness went away. Her eyes were soft for me. The textures of her body changed with the flowering of her heart, silky, scented, poised always for acceptance.
We became fools, as do all true lovers. We had our own language, invented our own ceremonies, created our own jokes — and in this way made our own shining wall against the world. I had never heard her laugh aloud until those six weeks of our love. I learned the meanings of all her kinds of laughter, from paean of joy to bawdy guffaw, to velvety chuckle of pleasure. We bought absurd presents for each other down in the city. She was an actress, and a dozen women, and I knew that should I ever learn all aspects of that dozen, I would find a whole second series beyond that, like those clothing store mirrors, where images stretch off at an angle to infinity.
We swam, and we baked in the sun, and we went to the big hotels and sat at their bars and danced to their music, and we made five hundred plans to go away together, all of them necessary and impractical, and we knew we would not go away together, but it was a reality you could not mention.
She knew how much I enjoyed doing small things for her, and so she helped me think of things I could do. One special time was when I would brush that shining hair, a hundred strokes of the brush while she sat erect at the dressing table like an obedient child, her eyes watching me in the mirror. After the hundred strokes, I would wrap the brush in a nylon stocking and brush her hair thirty times more to bring out a special gloss, and then take the crackling electricity out of it with a tortoise shell comb. I was permitted to paint her toenails with the silver lacquer she used, while she looked down at me. She sent me to the city on personal errands. She was a small precious possession, and I cared for her, and her obvious sparkling happiness made me gloat.
We had one game we played often, and I imagine it is a game played by all lovers with but minor variations. She would announce primly, but with a glint of mischief, that on this day we were going to be “good.” And so we would tantalize ourselves with this false pose of noble self-denial as long as possible. But there would come a moment, inevitably, when our eyes would catch and lock, and I would see her mouth soften and see the pulse in her throat become more prominent, and see her head sag just a little as it would seem to become too heavy for her slender neck to support. And wherever we were then, on the beach, in town, at the table, we would pick the quickest route to the inevitable bed. “We’re horrible types,” she would whisper. “No character at all, my darling. No restraint at all, lover. Thank God.”
In the beginning we made a few weak efforts to hide our infatuation from the servants. But soon we ceased to give a damn what they thought. The institution of the lovely wife with a fat old husband and a muscular young lover is a cliché of the Latin world. John Pinelli had been brusque and rude to all three of them. Their approval of us was expressed in small ways that delighted us. Flowers from Armando on the table where we dined. Very special dishes prepared by Rosalinda. Giggles and blushings from Nadina. They all seemed part of a delicious conspiracy.
The intense affair suffered four interruptions during the six weeks. Perhaps the fourth one cannot legitimately be called an interruption. John flew down four times, once alone, once with Sonninger, twice with Sonninger and Race. On the second visit, he took Kathy back to Mexico City with him for two days. While she was gone I roamed my empty world like an abandoned dog. She flew back alone. When I picked her up at the airport, the expression on her face wiped away those two days as though I had never lived them.
It worried me that John Pinelli would see the change in her and guess the reason for it. I did not see how he could help it. I did not see how he could be in the same room with the two of us and not sense what we had become to each other. But she was indignant at my fears, saying they were a slur on her professional ability. And when John was there, she could turn off all that vibrant joy — almost all of it — and become, in some frightening way, a stranger. His fourth short visit cannot be counted as an interruption to our affair. He came with Sonninger and Race, and they stayed but one night, stayed up late, drank heavily. At dawn she awakened me by coming violently into my bed, chuckling, nestling into my chest and throat, her breath hot, her hair clean-scented, her small body sheathed in whispering silk.
Let me say that this adventure did not have a flavor of evil. It was more like a mischievous conspiracy — like children raiding an orchard. In some way we had cleansed ourselves with love. True evil was the incident in the car on the way down into Mexico. Once she spoke of that and said she was sorry in a voice that broke, and wept and was comforted. She wept easily in our days of love.
Sometimes, usually when she was asleep in my arms, I would remember that I had seen this woman on the big screens of movie houses and drive-ins, and on the flat small world of television, and had felt as had all other men watching her, that little twitch of speculation, that recurrent, unavoidable, egocentric daydream of coupling with that electronic projection of desirability. And when the absurdity of your wish becomes apparent to you, the ego protects itself by saying Aw, she’s scrawnier than she looks, and those show biz types are too stuck on themselves to be any damn good in bed, and she’s probably lez anyway.
Then it would seem incredible that I could be so lucky as to hold this almost mythical creature in my arms. I would study her sleeping face, the intricacies of her ear, and of her lips softly parted, study the delicate structuring of nose and brow, the incredibly perfect texture of her skin, the tiny perfect hairs of brow and lashes, like little gilded wires. I would wait in love and patience for her eyes to open, knowing they would be blank, unfocused, uncomprehending as she came out of the private jungles of her sleep, knowing that as they focused upon me a gladness would come into them and the corners of her mouth would lift, knowing she would stretch in supple ways within my arms, give a yawn that would expose the up-curling tongue, and then bring her mouth strongly and greedily against mine, and I would then begin to pleasure her in every way she especially liked.