She slipped away, went around the room turning out lights until only one was left burning; she stripped off her clothes as she moved. He caught her by the bed. She stood taut in tawny underwear, panties and a strapless little half-cup bra that supported her breasts from underneath, almost exposing the dark nipples. A fine pale down was faint along her lovely back by the spinal furrow. She unfastened the bra and held it against her breasts with one hand. He unbuttoned his shirt, all the while staring, as if his vision were tactile, at the soft, curved lines of her big body. She was turned half away; he drew her back, her buttocks hard against him, nibbled at her neck, rubbed his palms along her lithe waist until she shuddered and lifted her hands to the back of his head, tipping her head back and around for his kiss. The bra fell away; he shaped his hands over the soft-sheathed hipbones, the flat strong belly, up over the rib cage and the rubbery-resilient breasts. She turned within the circle of his arms, writhing, and gasped against his mouth, her hungry tongue questing the roof of his mouth, her hands plucking at his belt and zipper, tugging his trousers and underwear away until his penis sprang into her hand, pulsed, stretched, grew, swiveled upward hard and shiny, burning with sensation. She pushed him back onto the bed and sat astride him and played with him until he pulled her down, feeling the resilient weight of her breast in his hand. They did not speak; it was as if it were the most natural thing in the world, wholly right, requiring no reasoning. He probed her mouth with his tongue until her teeth opened and her breath came fast; felt her breasts against him, the hardened nipples coming moist. Her face was close, so that her two eyes blurred into one, and a pleasant warmth flowed through him; he became quietly attentive to the gentle searching touch of his own hands, the heat of her pulse-driven breath in his mouth, the hardness of her teeth against his flicking tongue. He cupped her buttocks and rolled her against him, his penis sliding hard and slow into her snug sheath; he massaged her back with long lazy strokes of his fingernails. A fire came leaping in him; they lunged and surged with driving abandon, flesh blending tight, until their pounding pulsebeats seemed to thunder together in a single roar: they became a single creature of ecstatic wheeling frenzy, fused and thrashing, flesh tingling in sensuous delirium, possessed by lusty animal joy that climbed with humid moans to the helpless, strained agonized cry of climax.
And then she was curled up with fists together against his chest, one knee hooked over his waist, snuggling close, soft and content; she yawned luxuriously and nuzzled his throat. He could faintly see the soft whiteness of her breasts, caught between her arms; he felt the light touch of her fingers against his chest, and he didn’t want to think beyond this bed, this moment, her. He felt tranquil and at ease.
But soon she stirred and rolled away from him and stood up beside the bed.
He said, “Stay the night.”
“No, dahling. I must hurry home before it turns into a pumpkin.”
“Why?”
“Because, dearest Russ, we mustn’t let this mean more than it should, and if I slept the night in your bed it would put thoughts in your head. I bear you fond affection, dahling, and you are superb in the sack, but I’m afraid I am not strong enough to encourage things I have no intention of carrying through to a finish. Strong, that is, in the sense that a skunk is a strong animal. I couldn’t do that to you, and I won’t let you do it to me. I know both of us too well. So let’s leave it at the cliche of two ships passing in the night, shall we? The message has been exchanged to our mutual delight, and now we both go on to sail our own courses. Oh, shit, what a poet I’d make! Wouldn’t I have made a hell of a truck driver, though?”
She leaned over him, pecked him on the cheek, and trailed her fingers along his ribs, and said, “Chalk it up to education, dahling. Initiation rites. Feel free henceforth to join the hit-and-run fraternity of swinging singles. No, don’t say anything-we simply inhabit different worlds, my deah. From time to time when I happen to be passing through yours, maybe I’ll drop by. Between times, be thankful I didn’t decide to stay.”
And so he watched her leave, before he slept.
25. Howard Claiborne
Howard Claiborne walked down Wall Street without hurry; these great monolithic buildings gave him comfort-there was in them certainty, permanence, solidity. The old man had a keen appreciation of his life. He enjoyed the tight-knit efficient organization of his financial empire in the fuzzy world of modern bureaucracy. He enjoyed the daily luncheons in plush private dining clubs with pre-Castro Havana cigars and silverware crested with coats of arms. He enjoyed his exclusive multifold membership in the highest-priced club in the world, the New York Stock Exchange, each of whose 1,366 seats was worth more than half a million dollars.
The big bullpen on the eighth floor was half-empty when he strode across it; he had arrived, as always, ten minutes ahead of time. His secretary was in place behind the wooden railing: “Good morning, Mr. Claiborne!” Miss Goralski chirped. He nodded his head once, smiling with reserve, and touched the flower in his buttonhole as he entered his baroquely ornamented office and tore off the page of the desk calendar to expose today’s, Thursday’s, date. His big corner office was dominated by a huge walnut desk, behind which he settled in a chair which had been occupied by his father before him.
Howard Claiborne’s parents had wanted a polite, neat, unintrusive child. He had grown up in the requisite prep school (Exeter) and summer camp, trained not to display emotion; even love, to a Claiborne, was polite.
On a chain across his conservative waistcoat he carried his Phi Beta Kappa key and his Skull and Bones doodad. He had the requisite membership cards in his wallet-the Union League, the Links. He lived, during the summer months, in a turreted gingerbread Victorian estate on Fishers Island, from which he commuted each day by helicopter. During the winter, while his wife-often with one or another grandchild-went to Florida or the Bahamas, he occupied a plush townhouse with spiral staircase, another legacy of his father. Howard Claiborne’s great grandfather had been a buccaneering magnate who had used the bodies of workmen for railroad ties. His son, Howard Claiborne’s grandfather, had used his inherited wealth to establish himself on Wall Street and in the best drawing rooms. It was said that if a family started with money, it would take at least three generations to get into the best society. Howard Claiborne was the fourth generation: a bulwark, a patriarch, a Brahmin. There were perhaps a dozen Claibornes in the New York telephone directories, but only one family was meant when the phrase was uttered, “the Claibornes, of New York and Fishers Island.”
This Thursday morning, Howard Claiborne occupied the first half-hour of his working day by reading the correspondence that had accumulated overnight. He was near the bottom of the stack when the phone buzzed and he lifted it to his ear.
“Mr. Arthur Rademacher, of Melbard Chemical.”
“Fine, Miss Goralski. Put him on.”
There followed a fifteen-minute conversation, during which the expression on Howard Claiborne’s patrician face, and the intonations of his voice, underwent far vaster changes than was his usual wont. Afterward he sat back in the old chair with his eyes shut and his fingers drumming on the desk-a sign, with Howard Claiborne, of spectacular disturbance.
He went into the file room and unlocked the Wakeman Fund drawer and spent half an hour there; he could have had Miss Goralski bring the files to him, but somehow it seemed necessary to do this privately, with no one’s outside knowledge. And finally, when he returned to his desk, he buzzed Miss Goralski and said, “Is Mr. Wyatt at his desk?”