“Holy cow, Dru. You’re kidding.”
“No. No, I’m not. And don’t you laugh.”
“I’m not, and I sympathize with an enlightened form of socialism where perhaps life could be like that. But maybe we could have a little Stravinsky in the chimes.”
“Well, I’m not kidding.”
“Okay. Sweetie pie.”
“And let me finish. You’d arrive for our date at seven o’clock. And then sitting with my dad, telling him you made first-string quarterback on the high school football team, while I, upstairs, brushed my hair for the final umpteenth time. Then as I came slowly down the stairs into the drawing room, you saw me and smiled.”
“Dru, I think it might be called the living room.”
“Okay, living room. So who cares about architecture at such a beautifully romantic point. And then we go out under the maple trees down the street, holding hands on our second date because you got to like me so much on the first, when we went together to the movies, that this night we maybe would even have our first kiss. And I’d give you my sorority pin to wear. And you’d give me your fraternity pin. Isn’t that what they do in high school.”
“Gee, Dru, I ain’t never been in a fraternity.”
“Oh, who cares. I’ve never been in a sorority. But we’d then be having strawberry sodas at the local candy store on Main Street. Or should that be pineapple. And you’d suck on your straw and make noise at the bottom of the glass and I’d suck on mine and wouldn’t make noise because I was a little lady well brought up and then you’d look at me, a pretty ribbon in my hair and say, ‘Sweetie pie.’ Oh God, that gets me so horny and I do have, don’t I, such simple wants. To want only you to call me that. Now I shall blow you. Know you. Taste you who tastes so good. And know you will always, when I want you to, always call me sweetie pie.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Slowly touch me softly. Touch me gently, sweetly. Touch my skin with yours.”
“Surely I will, ma’am. Sweetie pie.”
“Now sink your magnificent Irish cock into me, dear boy. And fire your big gun.”
Under the great canopy of this bed. Stare up into an infinity of darkness as one does into the infinity of the rest of one’s life. Lying embraced with these strong long slender limbs. Her lips pressed lusciously on my neck. Her teeth closed on my skin. In the amazingly exciting wonderful world of music as it has been down through the ages, sexual deviations have always been the norm, if not the rage but Dru has presented something new. Provided one hadn’t already jumped into a coffin with her, one would walk by her picket fence. Saunter up her front path. Hold hands and maybe even kiss in the movies. Scoff back my favorite pineapple soda. But I’d be the rude one making noise at the bottom of my glass. She did say once her childhood was painfully lonely. Incarcerated.Always with a governess. Her mother away traveling, so she became a sad little creature. Such a rich little girl upon whom few could look with any fond pity. Led by the hand along long corridors of big houses. Taken everywhere couched in the soft upholstery of big cars. In Paris, the chauffeur would briefly stop along the Chemin de Ceinture du Lac so that she could watch other children play in the park and sail their little sailboats and she could try to pat their little dogs. And warned not to because they might bite and have rabies. Then going back to Avenue Foch, she would count the dandruff flakes fallen on the chauffeur’s back. And now I feel the tips of the diamonds of her bracelet pressed on my back, enough gems to support me for the rest of my life. Aided and abetted by the twenty-five cents I still have left. This the sweet depth into which one sinks. Seeing her again as I first ever saw her. Smiling. Her lips just parted. That I kiss. One eye opened just that little bit more than the other. Candlelight gleam on the soft waves of her hair fallen to her shoulders. A twist of her soft, pliant body. Huskily she whispers, “I madly desire you dear boy. Can you feel my hardened nipples now against your chest.” Yes. As I commit this betrayal of a mother to her adopted daughter. And my own betrayal to a wife. This woman, who now it seems can with just a flicker of an eye, send me running out to my own death. Vulnerable to anything. Threatening my integrity. Maybe making it possible to conduct my own symphony. Have my own orchestra. Plenty of violins, oboes and percussion. Forty for a start in the brass. Fifty in the wind. Seventy-five in the strings. Five on drums. Two on xylophone, or maybe three. There are not enough xylophones these days. Two concert grand Steinways. A whole chorus of great contraltos.
“Jesus Christ, Dru, did you hear that rattle. I just thought the goddamn rattler moved.”
“An electric button in the bed we must have just touched. Just a little joke my friend has to scare the shit out of boyfriends who she feels need the stimulus.”
“Thanks a bunch for telling me after my heart failure.”
“Nothing honeybunch is failing. Nothing. Aim. Fire.”
“Dru. Holy cow. Dru.”
“Squeeze your cock tight in my cunt. So you can’t get away. My honeybun sailor boy in his turret. Boom, boom.”
An echoing hoot of a boat out passing on the river. And the lives that make not a sound in this city anymore. The world assaults you with tragedy and anguish when least you have anger to fight back. “Excuse me, sir. Do you know when the next bus is to Suffern.” Still see her stopping, turning to look her last look. One so handsomely healthy beautiful, desiring death. “Excuse me, sir. Do you know when the next bus is to Suffern.” Thought she said I’m suffering until I found Suffern on the map. Across the Hudson River. Through it the Erie Railroad runs. North to Sloatsburg and Tuxedo Park. The adagio from Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 in E Minor sounds slow, like all freight trains that go by lumbering click clack on the rails of the tracks, whistles blowing in D Major.
“Oh honeybunch, Stephen, fuck me, fuck me into the beyonds of the eons.”
“Doing my best, ma’am.”
“And you are dearest, even doing better than that. As I take, if I do say myself, a singularly selfish interest in screwing.”
The rattler rattles again. Sending a shiver of the sharp fear of death up the old roosel. The black mambas coming alive in the other room. Said to be a snake that with its head held as high as a man’s face, attacks without provocation. Maybe just what this lady who lives here entertains in her imagination and enjoys for a frisson. But that other death. That destroyed face. Her eyes still open, staring as she lay on the bus station floor. Left there nameless and lost in the passing swarm. To whom does one go to get the right information from Princeton. Or to find her grave. To put a flower there. Will my music ever be heard before I die. Brahms with his second piano concerto, was hissed at by the Viennese people. Who so shabbily treated so many of the great composers who lived there struggling in their midst. Shake my fist at them. When Brahms died in Vienna, at least all the ships in the harbor of Hamburg where he was born, lowered their flags to half-mast. Oh my God, Dru. You’re surely the cat’s pajamas. I’m standing on your front porch, my hair washed and combed, my fraternity pin shined, to take you for a Saturday-night soda. I must play for you Brahms’s heroic orchestral sounds. The piano erupting forth to intercede in passages such as does a brook babbling through the silence of a forest. Then the piano notes thundering. Oh fuck me lover boy, Stephen. Kiss my tits. Kiss yours. Give me all that you’ve got. I’ll give you everything that I’ve got to give you. That Max suggested came from the profit of oil, tobacco, soapsuds, coffee, chocolate, soda pop, and renting out electricity. Do I dream her voice can be heard singing. Darling, your music is going to be heard. It’s wonderful. I love it. I’ll buy the goddamn orchestra for you. They’ll be glad to have a job. Get a whole warehouse and fill it up with instruments. And you can conduct. And the dirty bastards who have kept you down will shrink sneakily back into their feeble shells. No one is ever going to be able to ignore you again. Not in this town, they ain’t. And I know you’re wondering. Of what I said was unspeakable. It’s other’s carnal knowledge of corpses. Watch the living fuck the dead. A form of necromancy as you might say which puts one into erotic turmoil. And to hell with all the hubris, Zeitgeist and the ditsy eponymous. Sorry about those nutty words. They make as much sense as saying that it is good to be rich. And your own goddamn parents’ fault if you’re poor. But boy, if you think it over, can anything be more true than that. And that only women with money can afford not to be whores. But can be whores anyway if they want. Call me ma’am again. You gorgeous man. And let me call you angel.