Chapter 16A

Twenty teens gathered in the small theater in Anita's building. They were a very mixed group from all over the metropolitan area, some of them rich kids that had attended Anita's earlier party, others were apparently not so rich. A very democratic crowd. I was surprised to see a couple of black couples, an unlikely presence in Memphis. Both couples appeared to be from overseas.

Maury sat down front with his coterie of seven or eight admirers, all of them in suits. Chris sat in the farthest row back, in a blue, open-necked shirt and sport coat and loafers. Anita and I sat next to him. Anita was dressed like most of the other girls in the crowd, in a casual full skirt and loafers, and I seemed to fall right in, dressed like Chris and most of the other guys. The exceptions in the crowd were Maury's group, who dressed more formerly for reasons that seemed unclear beyond identifying them as "Maury-ites," as Chris came to call them. Chris had with him a very attractive brunette girl. He introduced her as Susan and we chatted for a few minutes before the meeting began. She was very poised, reminding me in many ways of Martha, Ronnie, and Anita rolled into one -- proving Martha to be right again, darn it: you meet one, you meet more through them, and you meet more.

The first order of business was to hold a brief club meeting and recognize some visitors. It was a friendly touch, though I blushed like a ripe pomegranate when I was introduced to the crowd. The president of the club presided onstage. He was a nondescript Jewish kid from the Bronx, and he seemed by dress and manner to be among the non-rich. He led an argumentative discussion about ways to get members to pay their club dues on time, reminding them that legally the Carreras family was not authorized to let the club use the Mexican government's facilities for their gathering that night, and Anita stood to diplomatically tell the crowd, in so many words, to pay up or shut up if they wanted to keep such gatherings on the schedule. Even Maury had something sensible to say in that regard, though he seemed to enjoy grabbing the spotlight more than making his point. Everyone applauded him, an adulation I didn't get and which Chris endured with a slow wag of his head while he sat with his arms folded, annoyed.

After covering a few more official matters, the rules for the readings were announced, along with a glance at the small plaque to be given to the best reading.

There were five performances. A young kid from Brooklyn gave a rendition of two Robert Burns poems, which had Chris and Anita nodding approvingly from start to finish. At the end of the kid's performance Anita grabbed my arm and whispered, "He was so good. He's new in the club, too. I wish we at least had a second prize for that reading."

The second reading was a bit embarrassing, based on a speech delivered by Benjamin Disraeli in the British Parliament. Great speech, but the older kid who read it didn't convey the famous prime minister's deportment, on which the effectiveness of the speech depended. But I was impressed that the entire eight minute address was memorized. I couldn't have managed that, myself.

I was third. I'd assumed that as the only visitor on the schedule I would be last. When my name was announced, I sat still for a minute, with Anita beaming at me.

I looked around. "Me?"

Anita said, "You don't even look nervous. At least you could look nervous, Steven."

Actually, I was numb. I muttered, rising from my seat, "Don't let the look fool you."

She said, "You'll be fine."

I took the stage and held my script in my hand. My hand shook, as it always did in Memphis when I first got up. I raised my head to speak, but waited a few seconds until the audience was quiet -- a trick learned from an older guy at the Memphis Little Theater. "Make them look up," he had told me, "let them know from minute one that you're the one who's up there, not them." I began by telling the audience briefly that the reading was from 'The Sound and the Fury", that the principal speaker was Quentin, who was lamenting the faithlessness of Caddy, and that my voice would be used for the voices of three other characters who spoke in Quentin's memory. I told them that the passage had been edited, but that it represented the gist of Quentin's memory of a haunting series of events.

Then I began, with one of the main characters talking quickly and anxiously:

"Father will be dead in a year they say if he doesn't stop drinking and he wont stop he cant stop since I--"

I slowed it down, after a second's pause, a pause that was not in the text, because there were no pauses or punctuation in the text itself. I had to insert pauses and meanings vocally. I resumed with a crack in my voice, "since last summer." I looked up, and went on, more anxiously, and faster, each word progressively more perturbed, "And then they'll send Benjy to Jackson I cant cry I cant even cry one minute..."

I went on for ten minutes. No one was more surprised than I when I ended without once losing my place or making a mistake in the voices or mood changes. At the end of my rehearsals I was tired, but now I felt great. I was vaguely aware of loud applause, and when I looked up, Anita was applauding and smiling, and Chris was leaning back in his seat, one foot propped on the chair in front of him, and with his eyes popped wide he made a big "O" with his mouth and was waving his hand at his cheek, as if frantically cooling himself off. I laughed at that. As I regained my seat people were clapping, some of them looking back at me.

Anita leaned toward me and whispered, "Steven. I had no idea." She clapped with the rest of them. "I know you won."

I muttered back, "Maury always wins."

Anita said, "Not this time."

Maury was fourth. He did a short reading from the prelude to Shakespeare's Richard III, coupled with a few lines from later soliloquys of Richard. "Now is the winter of our discontent..." He was technically correct with it, but the emotion and the character were Maury, all Maury, looking out of place with his suit and making a show of fiddling expertly with the garment and strutting about. The crowd gave him quite a hand, especially his entourage down front, and at the end he took his seat with a disingenuously humble grin of gratitude.

The fifth reader was an older girl, a very pretty, Irish looking young woman with long hair and a long, flowing, but simple country dress that was very appropriate for her reading. She read two of the old maid's passages from 'Spoon River Anthology.' Hers was a heartfelt rendition that twice put a lump in my throat, and her voice was exceptionally effective. When she finished I couldn't resist sitting up straight in my chair and applauding loudly, whispering to Anita, "Oh, was she good! She was terrific."

Anita said, "You still won, though."

"Oh, no," I said, clapping away. "She was really great. Just beautiful."

Maury won, of course. When the announcement was made there seemed to be little surprise by those who applauded, some of them responding mechanically, while the usual admirers went crazy and whooped it up. Maury put on a suitably modest smile and stood to hold up the little plaque for all to see. And he topped it off as he regained his seat by holding up a cautioning hand, saying "No, no," and when Maury did that, I saw Chris look at me and make a motion to shove his finger down his throat.

Anita just sighed, "Oh, well." She didn't look at me, but I glanced past her at Chris and whispered above the sound of the waning applause, "Maury always wins," and Chris nodded yes.

Anita said flatly, "I see Chris explained all that." She bent down to get her purse. She said, "You should have won."

"Thank you, but 'Spoon River' should have won. She was so good."

"You should have won," Anita said again. She hung her purse on her shoulder and said, "Agree with me, please, and let's go eat."

"Yes ma'am," I said.

We had a small buffet snack in one of the reception rooms in Anita's building. We sat in a group of chairs, Anita and I, and Chris and his date. and another teenage couple from Long Island. They spoke mostly of the state of careers in the theater. I told them that show business wasn't my objective; my eyes were set on teaching. I said, "You're at the mercy of the box office when you hit the commercial theater. I'd prefer the educational theater, where you're free to do some real work."

Anita said, "You'd be wonderful in radio, or voice work. The way you manipulate your voice. And your sense of timing... it's impeccable."

I said, "Only after I've been rehearsing six hours a day for a week."

"Face it. You were impeccable. And you should have won."

I told her, "I was satisfied with what I read, that's the main thing."

Chris said, "A guy after my own heart."

And after a while Anita began glancing at her watch, and I saw Chris watching us over his glass of soda when Anita said quietly, "Steven, it's getting late. Come on. I'll show you around the place."

Chris waved a bye-bye with his little finger as Anita excused us and led me out of the reception room. We walked down the long hall, across the lobby, down the stairs, up another set of stairs, and entered her family's quarters. One of the male housekeepers approached her and she spoke back politely. They spoke in Spanish. The housekeeper left us alone, and Anita continued leading me through the hallways of their residence.

I said as we walked, "I notice you don't have a Spanish accent."

"I only speak Spanish to Hispanics." She glanced at me. "I notice you don't have an Italian accent."

"Southern Italian," I said.

She laughed softly. "It's cute."

"I wish people wouldn't say that."

"But it is."

She led me into a large room that appeared to be a library. A door led to another room. The door was closed.

She said, "That room in there is a guest room. It should be very quiet and comfortable. Do you want anything to drink? Water or anything?"

"Nothing, thanks."

"Then, here, come with me."

She led me through the door that led from the library, pausing to throw the light switch on the wall beside the door. The room we entered was a large, well furnished suite. Directly in front of the door was a narrow room about six feet wide that appeared to be a small study, one wall lined with bookshelves and a long desk built into the wall; the left-hand wall was windowed, overlooking the street. To our right was a separating arch that led to a spacious bedroom, everything in it very ornate, mostly white, and very Spanish. Just as I stopped in the doorway with a stupid look on my face, she gestured toward the tall, twin French doors on our left that led into a balcony overlooking Central Park.

She said, "Let's go out on the balcony, there. It's wonderful. And there's always a cool breeze from the park. Go ahead. There's a small lock near the handle there, just turn it."

I went to the doors and opened them, stepping into the small balcony that hung from the building over Fifth Avenue. It was a beautiful, third floor view of the park. I turned to look back into the bedroom. She turned out the light in the study, leaving on a small outdoor lamp on one side of the balcony. She closed the door leading from the library, and joined me on the balcony.

She asked, "Isn't it nice out here?"

"Beautiful."

"There are no chairs, but I usually sit here, on the ledge. I spend a great deal of time here at night, sometimes." She sat on a limestone ledge that jutted from the wall on one side of the balcony. There was a huge concrete urn on the ledge, but there was room for her to sit with her knees up, her dress covering her legs as she leaned back against the wall. "Even with the traffic on Fifth Avenue, it's very peaceful sometimes. For Manhattan, anyway."

We talked for a while. She told me of her plans. Social work. And she asked me about my plans. I was bound for teaching of some kind, probably in theater.

I said, "Not much money in teaching, though."

"But much life," she said. "And art. And ideas. Not much money in social work, either. And not much joy about it from godfathers and godmothers."

She said there were new movements afoot in the U.N., sending more and more social workers and missionaries and medical personnel into the poor villages of the world, working with the people, living with them. It was a hard life. She had already had a taste of it when she lived in Mexico City with her godparents for two years in secondary school, before going to France to complete her college prep.

She said, "Yet it was my godparents that gave me the idea. They're trying to do good work in the world. But it's so difficult, when you have to use language that completely skirts the issues. I suppose they believe they work very hard. And they do in some ways. They have to make wise, responsible decisions. It's always difficult, making those decisions. But they don't see blood on their hands, or get their backs whipped, or watch their children starve. They don't see dead infants along the side of the road, with their mouths and noses so full of mosquitoes they're black. But I've seen that. I've seen it."

She looked out at the park across the street. The third floor of her building was almost at treetop level. I could hear the breeze sift through the leaves.

She said quietly, "That's why, Steven, you mustn't entertain so many fantasies about me. I'm not a princess. I'll be a social worker with a degree from UCLA. A mother in San Diego I never see, and the godchild of Mexican government servants. And I'm leaving Tuesday. We'll never see each other again."

I looked at her. "Doesn't matter."

She smiled, a little smile of impatience and affection at once, and she let her head rest on her raised knees, and she said, "Oh... You're even more of an idealist than I am. You don't know. You really don't know. But, oh, you're so romantic. You make me feel so feminine and so... And even younger than I am. But none of it's true."

I said, standing beside her. "I don't care if it's true."

I started to bend down to kiss her, but she said, "But you must know who I really am. I don't want you relating to me through a fantasy."

"I see what I see. Very beautiful in this light. In any light."

"And you are very strong, and ambitious, and very stubborn. I'm so unaccustomed to you. So basic, really. Earthy and uncomplicated, but so idealistic in certain things. Tonight when you read I saw how emotionally intense you are. So intense. Just as Martha said."

"Mmm. And what else did Martha say?"

She grinned, looking up at the moon. "Oh... that's five times you asked."

"That's five times I got the same answer."

She laughed again, her soft, elegant laugh. Then she said, "I'm not a virgin, Steven."

I said, "Neither am I."

After a pause, she said, "But Steven... I'm leaving Tuesday."

I said, "I don't care." I bent to her, and when she didn't move I moved my lips to her cheek, and her eyes fluttered and closed, and I moved in front of her and I put my lips on hers, and we kissed softly. Then she lowered her head, her forehead against her knees. Her response to my kiss wasn't the heavenly, passionate explosion I anticipated. She said, "But... your words tell me you don't really who I am. I seem so pristine to you." She said softly, "I've had three lovers, Steven."

I bristled a little at that one. Another illusion bit the dust. But I held my ground. I said, "So have I."

She gave a muted laugh, and blushed and laughed again with her face hidden between her hands, and she looked up at the park, grinning again. She repeated, surprised, "Three?"

"Yes."

"Oh god," she grinned wider, her face toward the sky. She said, "Three." She looked down, and she still blushed, and she said, "But they were nothing, nothing, nothing like you. They didn't tempt the way you do, and then move away. They were more... oh, I don't know, they were more..."

"Self controlled? Cool?"

"No, no."

"Aggressive?"

She stopped laughing, and thought for a second. "All of those, I guess. And they were, well, in a way..." She went on gently, "A little more direct, I think. I mean --" She eyed me good-naturedly, but added pointedly, "I mean, for them, there wasn't so much at stake."

I looked at her, unresponsive. But I knew what she meant.

She leaned forward, her chin on her raised knees, and she thought again. "It wasn't that I thought they'd hurt me. It was that I wasn't afraid of hurting them. I think, maybe they even deserved to be left behind. One of them, certainly."

I sighed and stepped back, looking at the park. I was beginning to think that this fantasy is getting too damn complicated.

She straightened up, smiling, running a hand across one side of her long hair, which was swept back and held with a pale blue ribbon. She said, "They didn't see me as a princess. It didn't seem so fatal to them. Or to me, I guess. Except for one of them. For one of them, I think I was a prize. Someone on their list."

That was enough for me. Frustration was welling up. I looked away from her, out toward the park. I said firmly, "I don't keep a list. And if I were with you, I wouldn't want one."

Behind me, she said, "No, you wouldn't. You're much too nice."

"Maybe I should clean up my act, and not be nice at all."

"Well, perhaps, something more toward the middle."

"Maybe that's not who I am. Maybe I'm like you, and I don't want you dealing with someone I'm not." I turned to her, and said calmly as I crossed to her and stood beside the ledge, "Look, I don't know how others do this. But I already gave one reading tonight. I don't have any more lines. What I have is one night. And who I am, and what I feel. Maybe... maybe we oughtta go back to the party, before I get out of hand."

I made a move to leave, to get out of there and go downstairs and be polite about it but say hasta la vista. I took a step away from her, toward the door to the library. But she quickly reached out with one hand and grabbed my arm and got to her feet.

She whispered, "Steven, no." She stood beside me, one hand on my arm. She said candidly, "I knew you'd be angry. That's what I mean. You don't understand how selfish I am." Her grip on my arm relaxed, and she said earnestly, with an edge of irony in her voice, "You're so intense. *So* intense. And you make it so complicated. You make it so difficult for me just to say I want you. But I want you my way."

I looked at her, looked at her brown, intent eyes. She gazed at me with a heavy lidded look, lips parted. How the hell could I resist that? Greta Garbo couldn't have been more tempting. But, alas, I figured it was all over; I figured that her words were a polite adios, a thanks but no thanks. So I lowered my lips to hers, expecting the conversation to end with a kiss.

And then she mashed her mouth against mine, hard, her hands tight at each side of my face. And I kissed her back, wondering what the hell was going on. She ended the kiss quickly, her body against me, her lips near mine, and she said resolutely, "But no illusions about me, Steven. I'm not an innocent princess."

I said, looking straight into her, "I don't care."

She whispered, looking at my mouth, "Well, then..."

She went into the study and flicked a switch on the wall that turned out the light on the balcony. Then she stepped into the dark bedroom and kicked off her loafers and glanced at me. I saw a glint in her warm eyes from where I stood on the balcony. She reached behind her head to undo the ribbon in back, and her hair flowed over her shoulders. She said, "Leave the balcony open. No one can see in here. I like the doors open."

I walked to her, while she started unbuttoning her dress. I undid the cloth belt of her dress, and she unbuttoned the buttons down to her belt and I saw her dark skin and the white slip and bra and the swell of her breasts. She pulled off my jacket, hurriedly, and pitched it onto a chair, and without a word, she looked down at my belt and unbuckled it. I could hear her breath quickening and her hands were everywhere, unbuttoning her own buttons and then quickly helping me with my shirt buttons, and then my shirt was off and her dress was off. She was beautiful, simply beautiful in that slip, and then the slip went over her head, and she was even more beautiful, dark-skinned, trim, with taut shoulders and waist and thighs -flawless. Then I pulled my t-shirt over my head and she unsnapped the bra and threw it away and she put her fingers on my chest and she bent down, and I thought she looked as if she wanted to bite, but she kissed, kissed my collarbone and my chest. My arms went around her and her arms went around me, and she shoved her soft, naked, largenippled breasts into me and pressed her pussy against me and grabbed my hair and kissed me, her mouth tender but hungry. She finished the kiss and I said, "You're beautiful," and she said, "You're beautiful, too." She stepped back and pulled down my zipper and I spread my pants open and pushed them down and kicked them off one foot and then the other. She looked down at my cock swelling in my underwear and she pulled down the top and ran her palm under the cloth and wrapped her fingers around my cock and pulled the jocks farther down with her other hand. She looked at my cock, touching, caressing, and while I pushed my jocks down she took her hands away and pulled her panties down and off and pitched them away quickly. They landed near the balcony doors. I pushed my jocks to my calves and lifted one foot out of them, and she knelt on one leg and grabbed my jocks and pulled them to my feet. I lifted my other foot out and she threw the jocks hurriedly onto the floor near the bed. Now clothes lay all over the floor. She knelt on both knees now and ran her palms over the hard muscles of my tummy and she wrapped her fingers around my thighs and kissed my tummy below my navel and then kissed my pubic hair. She wrapped a hand around my cock and whispered, "Yes." She looked up at my face, her eyes burning, and then she lowered her eyes and pulled my cock with a tight fist, pulled again and held, her fist gripping the tip. I thought she might suck me, and there was no way I'd last if she started that. I held her by the shoulders and pulled her up. She stood and melted into me, her pussy moist against my thigh, her bush thick and fluffy. I kissed her, and she wrapped her arms around my neck again and she kissed back, hard. She pulled her head away and pressed her face and her whole body against me, so that I had to step back, keeping my balance.

She chuckled against my ear, "Oh... I have to slow down." For a few seconds she caught her breath. She said, "Your body feels so good. There's no lazy fat on you, not anywhere. But your skin's soft. You feel like soft skin on a tree. The skin's soft but so firm." She kissed my shoulder and said, "So firm," and I circled her small waist with my hands and pulled her closer, closer, unable to get her close enough, and she moaned and melted into me again, simply melted.

I had no idea what it must feel like to be enfolded by a coiling, pressing, warm skinned serpent, but surely it felt the way Anita's body felt to mine. My hands curled around her waist, my fingers almost meeting front and back. I whispered, "You have no idea how good your feel." She pressed harder, molding herself to me. My lips found her neck, her shoulders. What did they say in the books: 'His fevered lips found her flesh'? I used to laugh when I read crap like that.

My brain and chest were exploding. She kissed my neck, and her healthy young woman's scent rose in the air, my senses going insane with it. Over her shoulder I saw the bed behind her, a big, white bed and huge pillows. There, I had to get her over there, and I took a step toward the bed with her against me, but after a couple of steps she held me still.

She whispered, "No, wait," and then she relaxed against me and whispered, "Wait for me here. I have to go into the other room. I'm sorry, I -- I'm getting ahead of myself. I have to take precautions."

She took a deep breath and smiled, disconcerted, her hand covering her eyes. "Oh my, you... had me in such a hurry. I'm sorry. I'll only be a moment." She hurried to the dressing table. She reached down for her purse on the seat of the dresser chair and pulled out a small, cloth pouch a little larger than a wallet. She closed the purse and I watched her, watched her bend over a little, and her body was perfect, her waist without a wrinkle as she bent, and her breasts hung down, dark nipples swollen, as she placed the purse on the seat of the chair. She balanced nimbly on her long legs with one knee bent and one foot arched, and her glistening eyes glanced at me and she said, "I'll be back as soon as I can."

She went to a small white antique chest of drawers against the wall beside the dressing table. From the top drawer she retrieved a floor length, thin silk bathrobe, dark brown with a silvery cloth tie, and she threw it around her shoulders and tied it shut as she walked to the library door. She opened the door a crack and bent her head toward the bed. "Wait there for me. Leave the bed as it is. I'm sorry to leave you for a minute, but I have to. Don't worry. No one's in this part of the house."

She disappeared through the door to the library, her long hair flowing behind her, and then the library light went out, and I heard her go out another door.

I sat on the bed. Light from the street cast a dim bar across the floor. One of the french doors was partially closed, throwing the bed into shadow. Cars passed outside on Fifth Avenue, muted and sluggish. I heard another breeze whip up, and the trees across the street moved, and a light drizzle began. I thought: Precautions. Rubbers. Damn.

Then I remembered that I hadn't called Martha. I looked for a phone. There was one on the table by the bed. I sat on the bed. Hell, why hadn't I called before?

I reached for the phone. I waited for a second. Behind a nearby wall I heard a door close. Someone coming? No. In the same spot behind the far wall I heard water running, and a sound like a wooden cabinet door slammed shut. Anita was in a bathroom behind that wall. I hoped.

I dialed Martha's number. Two rings. Martha picked up.

"Hello?"

I said softly, "Martha? Steven."

"Well, at last. So are you all right, or what?"

"Uhh, yeah. I'm fine. Just want you to know I'm fine."

"Good, well, thanks for letting me know. Why are you talking so quietly? I can hardly hear you."

"I -- am I? Sorry, I didn't think I was. Uh, just calling to let you know I'm okay. I'll try not to stay too late."

"Oh. Well, tomorrow, you know, we're supposed to go --"

I said quickly, "Uh, somebody else has to use this phone, so I should get off."

"Oh."

"Anyway, I'm fine, and... I'll, uh, I'll call back if you want. Later."

"Okay, just thought you might want -- "

"Have to go. Really." Behind the far wall behind me, I heard the water stop running.

"Okay. I just wanted to know if the reading went well."

"Oh, yeah. It was great, really great."

"So who won?"

"They, uh, they don't know yet." I looked at the door into the library. I saw a spill of light as the door into the library from the hall was opened. "Anyway, I have to go. Okay?"

"Okay. Let me know."

I whispered, seeing the spill of light shrink as the door into the library from the hall was closed again, "Okay. 'Bye."

I hung up, and lay on my side on the bed, and Anita entered the bedroom. Carefully, she closed the door. She placed the small cloth pouch on the dresser and then untied the robe and let it slip down her arms and placed the robe in a limp little pile on the dresser. There, bathed in the dim glow from the balcony, stood her beautiful, perfect, young, naked body. She glanced at the french doors, her left hand pushing hair from her cheek. Her right shoulder and breast were curtained with her long, long hair. Below her navel, her patch was dark and thick, and below that the petite hood of flesh over her clit reflected a sliver of light. As she crossed to the bed she looked at me, frowning. "Were you talking?"

"Just a line from my reading. About honeysuckle."

She settled onto the bed, hands first, then she stretched her long, lovely legs, and she lay on her side, one hand brushing hair from her face. She smiled. "Honeysuckle."

"Yes."

She lay back against one of the giant pillows, her hair draped around it, framing her face. And her lissome legs were folded, her knees toward me, her breasts upright, her arms on the bed palms up. I could smell the sex of her, faint, humid.

She said quietly, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. Not very romantic."

"I needed to slow down."

"Well," she said, "let's not slow down too much."

I stretched out beside her, and as I embraced and kissed her she slipped a thigh under mine and then wrapped her legs around my leg and pressed against me. For a long time we kissed, the drizzle outside building to a tranquil rain. Her mouth was soft, avid, luscious, her breathing turbulent, and again and again she sighed a sweltering "Ah" at every touch. And very soon, the death knell tolled for dozens of my illusions -- for my sweet, mild mannered, Spanish princessa was a spitfire, her nails clawing and gripping, her legs spreading and her neck arching back, her lips smacking and sucking my chest and shoulders, and her hot whispers, "Ah, there! Ah, your hands! Put your fingers in me! Ssss! Yes!"