“Don’t be shocked, Stephen. I often swig from the bottle.”
Chew down my grapes as we pass ormolu-mounted mahogany commodes and go to the end of the longest hall and up the stairs where she led me to a spartan and nunlike bedroom, the windows looking out onto the East River below. And suddenly she retreated.
“Oh no. Not here. Let’s go to the music room. We can listen and have some music.”
Pulled by the hand I followed her back down the stairs and along the hall, over the splendor of rugs and parquet and past the paintings and a Canaletto scene of Venice I’d not seen before. The doors of the music room closing behind us. Out the windows the sky darkening with a storm and the glass streaked with rain. Dru going to her record player.
“I want to dance.”
Bach’s Suite No. 2 in B Minor. Then over by the window, Dru lifting her sweater over her head and undoing her skirt and casting them aside. Now her under-clothing and stockings dropped to the floor, her lithe body twirling around in the middle of this room, in a sinuous dance. And a shiver of recognition of Sylvia. Then as the record ended and I was licking my lips watching her, she crossed to the piano to sit to the keys.
“Stephen, I’ve practiced and played from this whole pile of scores. I wish I could play as beautifully as you do.”
“Ma’am you do, you do.”
“Could you recognize the composer if I play a piece.”
“I believe Ma’am, if I am not already distracted by other more pleasantly urgent matters, that you can play me any successive five or six notes or chords from any composer you like.”
“Okay. Here we go, then.”
“From the exquisiteness which comes when he lets go with his larghetto in his Oboe Concerto in C Major, that’s Vivaldi.”
“Oh, you are clever. Here we go next, maestro.”
“Although great orchestral volume always provides the grandness, those four tinkling notes are from a Beethoven piano concerto.”
“Well, I’ll have to be more obscure. Try this.”
“Ravel, Piano Concerto in G Major, adagio assai.”
“Oh my God, how can one win. And one more.”
“Rachmaninoff. Piano Concerto Number Four in G Minor, opus 40, allegro vivace.”
“Well this one I’m sure you won’t get.”
“Sibelius, the ‘Swan of Tuonela.’”
“My God, you are, aren’t you, really clever. Which I always knew you would be. From the very first moment I clapped eyes on you and you first spoke, if a little bit pedantically.”
“Ma’am, one does not regard this as any feat. It’s just that I praise and love music in all its forms, harmonies, and rhythms.”
“Khachaturian, then. Let me put on the record. While you dear sailor, take off your clothes. To have my need sated, it badly requires that Irish cock of yours stuck deep within me with plenty of percussion fucking to the ‘Sabre Dance.’”
“Ma’am, outside of those motifs reptilian, you sure as hell do have some fine orchestral ideas for accompaniments.”
“Inspired of course by having those arms of yours around me hugging and holding, that one day soon will have conducted some of the great orchestras of the world performing your first, second and third symphonies. And who knows, out of death perhaps the freedom of life doth come.”
Dru pirouetting across the room to the window, turns, staring at me, her arms outstretched and undulating her breasts. Directed to sit on the piano, I sat. Waiting for her to come smiling on tiptoe. Slowly approaching, hips swaying, her winking eye winking.
“I come now to fuck thee, sailor.”
And boy oh boy, who knows, maybe out of death the freedom of life really does come. Kissing me on the lid of each eye as she does. Her tongue burrowing like a corkscrew in each ear. Kissed then on the tip of the nose and at last on the lips. Then spreading her thighs she sits astride me. Haunches heaving to the rhythms of Khachaturian. Requiring astonishing syncopation. Bury my face in her soothing breasts. The bleakness of death to come again tomorrow. And wondering if we will break the goddamn stool which already felt as if it had gone wobbly and weak in one leg. Another’s flesh against mine. Touch the beautiful, shun the ugly. Growing up I was told I was so good-looking that I would be welcome anywhere. And to try it out I walked the streets of Riverdale to see if I could find where there might be a party in progress. When I saw several lights on, I walked up the path to their door and knocked or rang. When the door was answered, I asked in all deep sincerity, “excuse me, kind sir, is there a party going on in there.” I would nearly always be invited in and even was able to test my looks further by beckoning to a couple of friends hiding behind trees out in the road or across the street and asking if they could be invited as well. Only once did I hear a voice say, “Get the fucking hell off this goddamn porch before I fucking well kill you.” And that bastard always flew an American flag on his front lawn.
And now here was Dru. Her hair shrouding her face and her head hung over my shoulder as she milked me, she sang:
“My momma done told me
She didn’t tell me much
But she told me not to do
To do such things like this.”
A mournful hoot of a tugboat on the river and sound of rain spattering windows as Dru released herself from my lap and her voice dropped and seemed to fade away. Her beautiful breasts seemed to hang lower.
“Oh God, Stephen, all these things have their repercussions. What have I done. Betrayed a daughter. A husband. Betrayed him.”
“Holy cow, ma’am, you mustn’t think like that.”
“Don’t you damn well tell me how to think. His memory should be sacred and it’s betrayed. And he cares. I know he does. He’s somewhere, I know he is. And is mortified and horrified.”
“Holy cow Dru, take it easy. As people die, they’re no longer there to care.”
“Well, maybe you don’t care.”
“Gee Dru. Give me a break, will you. At least from the new surprises, until I recover from some of the old ones.”
My first nearly angry words spoken in the company of this rich woman. Innocent but carrying all the blame of all the millions dumped on her. And right at the moment I would love to get the sort of spiritual bliss that one can feel listening to vespers as I did once at King’s College Cambridge, sung under the vault of the great chapel ceiling. And I suddenly imagined that in order to shock my Irish Catholic soul Dru might now hold out her hand in front of my face and say, Okay sailor you’ve had yours, pay me. But instead, her voice was plaintive.
“Although he loved Sylvia, I so disappointed him. That I wouldn’t be a mother and he be a father of his own offspring. But I decided that with so many children already in the world, more coming would be too much. And I didn’t want to bring any into the world myself. And still, even if I could, don’t want to be a mother.”
Dressed, we went out of the music room, past where I had pissed all over the powder room floor and up the stairs again to a different and sumptuous bedroom. Dru’s private domain. A television set. Bookcases and books galore. Rugs deep as snowdrifts on the floor. Her diamonds which she usually wore around her wrists and neck, were on her dressing table. Portraits of her own mother and father on the wall. As she now lay on her back on the purple covers on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. A bottle in one hand and the other thrown across my stomach. She said it was time to think. Of Paris and next year’s racing at Longchamp. And perhaps I thought she was even thinking of caressing my Irish cock to new endeavors as she always seemed to ethnically call it. And I was thinking of ole Max’s occasional words of wisdom. “Pal, the world is where you make it, right in the close little space of the world around you. If you want more spiritual room, get back to old Europe, pal. Old Europe. That’s where the solution is. Deep in the bowels of ancient traditions. And if what you’re not doing is what you should be doing, then the solution is to have a roof over your head. Keep chickens. Fresh eggs for breakfast. Be careful of women. Trust none.” And I said to Max, “Isn’t that cynical.” And he said, “You bet, pal, you bet.” And then as she took a drink from her bottle, came Dru’s words.