“I coasted the last half block and into the driveway with the lights and motor off.”
“That was very clever, dear.”
“Nobody said anything about it today.”
After a silence she leaned her forehead against his shoulder and said in a small voice, “Do you know what you do when something keeps on seeming so unreal? You find out just as soon as you can if it was really real.”
She walked her fingers up his broad hard chest and, starting at the throat, undid the first three brass buttons.
“Right n-now?” he asked hoarsely.
She straightened and looked at him. He had gone pale enough to make his tan look odd. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.
“My darling, we’ll try to get along without any rules at all, but there should be one rule. Whenever we want each other as desperately as we do right now, we’ll never let anything stand in the way. Be a dear and go pull those draperies. The cords are over at the right.”
She turned her head and looked at the clock radio near the bed and saw that it was three thirty in the afternoon. She rolled her head back on the pillow and saw that the boy would soon be fast asleep. She bit her lip and debated changing the schedule she had planned for him. He was adapting more swiftly than she had estimated.
Funny, she thought, how often Phil Kerna kept coming back into her mind. All tenderness and cajolerie and sweet words until he had slipped the collar around your neck so deftly you hardly noticed it. Then he could risk the flat hateful stare, give the harsh commands, knowing a humble obedience was your only choice.
“Oliver!”
“Uh?” he said, and opened his eyes, focused on the face so close to his.
She hitched herself up, resting her weight on her elbows so she could look down into his eyes in the half light of the draperied bedroom. She studied him with a flat, bright, questing stare, unsmiling, until he asked her if something was wrong.
“I was wondering about something, Oliver.”
“Wondering what?”
“Perhaps I was wondering if you think this is some sort of a game. A little diversion.”
His eyes widened. “Honest, Crissy, I...”
“You must understand that I am a very intense person, darling. As soon as I’m certain that you mean as much to me as — I think you mean right now, there aren’t going to be any half measures for me. For me it is going to be a hundred and ten percent. Or nothing at all.”
“But...”
“Let me tell you the whole thing, dear. I told you we would be dreadful sneaks until I am sure. And that gives you an opportunity to have your cake and eat it too, you know. I was wondering if that is the kind of man you are.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Have you forgotten the long talk we had in the middle of the night? I guess you could call it the confession hour. As I understand it, if you weren’t lying, I’m the second woman in your life, and Betty was the first. Did I say ‘was’? Excuse me. We’re keeping us a secret from the world, for a little while. And from Betty. That gives you quite an interesting life, doesn’t it? Two women saying yes to you. Does it give you a sense of power, Oliver?”
“Crissy, believe me, that wasn’t anything like...”
“Correct me if I read you wrong, dear. You said that you and your dear little Betty have been going steady for three years, and two years ago you — ah — slipped. Wasn’t that the word you used? And you vowed, both of you, it would never happen again, but it did. And you finally, after you’d slipped enough times, decided that as you were to be married eventually anyway, you might as well enjoy each other.”
“But it isn’t...”
“Perhaps I’m jealous, darling. Do you mind terribly? When you aren’t here with me, there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t be lifting her little skirts. She’s probably very attractive. And quite a lot younger than I am.”
“It was just kid stuff. I know that now, Crissy. It didn’t mean anything.”
“And you’ll never touch her again?”
“Never. Honest. I swear I won’t.”
“Thank you, dear. But I do think you should put temptation out of your path.”
“What do you mean?”
“Break it up, dear. End it. I don’t care how you manage it, but I think it should be all over within — three days. If you are going to get a hundred and ten percent of me, I demand a hundred and ten percent of you. I don’t share, dear. I don’t believe in sharing. You might be tempted to — find out if she is just the way you remember.”
“That’s — awful fast. What will I say to her?”
“My God, haven’t you two ever quarreled at all? Don’t you know by now what she gets mad at? Get into a brawl with her and walk out. Or just tell her very coldly you’ve out-grown her. There must be dozens of ways.”
“It’s going to hit her pretty hard.”
She thought, picked her words carefully. “I love your gentleness, and your kindness. But I want my man to be strong. If I can’t ask you to do such a small thing as that, how do you think it makes me feel? Secure? Loved? Perhaps — you’re not really ready for the big leagues, dear, where the grown-ups are. Maybe you’d be better off with your little Betty person after all.”
“No! Listen. I’ll do it. I just said it’s going to be hard on her. She thinks we’re — you know. All set. There — there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.”
She lowered herself, dug her face into his throat, sighed comfortably and said, “We have to be strong, dear. Both of us. Strong and selfish. We have to remember that there isn’t anybody or anything else in the world that means a damn, not really. We’re all that counts. You and I. Oliver and Cristen. Hold me, darling.”
Soon, in an automatic and almost absent-minded way she began the little trickeries of arousing him, thinking as she did so that he would get rid of Betty just as he had promised. It was the first small test of how strong his infatuation was becoming. It was astonishing how compulsive the flesh could become when it was their first affair with a mature woman, rich, ripe and skilled, and so startlingly without shame or reserve, so unexpectedly frank in the giving and taking of pleasure, so impatient when her cues were misunderstood or overlooked. Then, as their clumsiness and timidity diminished, they were made ever more blind by sensation until, finally, it was such a necessary thing for them to keep experiencing, they would sacrifice everything else in the world to sustain it, and, finally, would reach that stage wherein all of life outside the bedroom walls was a vagueness, a dream-walking hallucination, a place of those shifting shadows which had once been real people, real objects, real goals and ambitions.
The practices demanded only a portion of her attention, and her thoughts ranged far as she pleasured the boy. There was one daydream that was becoming more real to her each time she experienced it. It happened a long time from now. It happened after everything had gone just as she had planned it, and after she was safe, and far away. There would be the years of heats and wanting, and at long last that too would be all burned away, and peace would come to her.
It will be a faraway place, she thought, a house above a lagoon, and I shall be old. I shall be wise. I will have young servants, brown and beautiful and smiling people who love me. There will be legends about me, none of them true. When the fires are burned out, then what is left will be goodness and kindness, and I will be able to forgive them all...
The boy slid into the heaviness of spent sleep, and she got up and freshened herself, went back and set her alarm for six thirty and was soon napping comfortably beside him.