(1987) The Celestial Bed (39 page)

It was the telephone on her bedstand ringing insistently.

‘You don’t have to answer,’ Brandon said. ‘This time it can’t possibly be Dr Freeberg.’

‘But it has to be something important. No one else ever calls at this hour. I must answer, Paul.’

She snatched up the phone receiver and brought it to her.

She listened, and replied to someone, ‘Yes, this is Gayle Miller.’

She listened some more, and from the intent expression on her face and her half of the conversation that he could hear, Brandon guessed it was someone important about something important, after all.

‘Oh, how wonderful!’ she exclaimed.

The receiver was pushed tightly against her ear, and her expression had become one of unadulterated pleasure.

‘That’s the best news in the world I could have heard,’ she was saying. ‘How very kind of you to trouble to call me. I’m absolutely thrilled. I’ll look forward to your mailing the details, and I’ll be there all right, you bet I’ll be there. Thank you a thousand times, Dr Wilberforce.’

Gayle dropped the receiver on its hook, and spun about on the bed, her arms upraised as she gave a great whoop, her face totally wreathed in a smile.

‘Listen to this, Paul, listen. That was the head of the Admissions Committee for the Graduate Programme in Psychology at UCLA. They’re sending a letter telling me that of the more than 500 applicants to the Department of Psychology this year, I’m one of the sixty students to be accepted. And also, I’ve been given a Chancellor’s Fellowship — a full one-year’s scholarship. They were kind enough to call and let me know without my having to wait for their admissions letter. Isn’t that fantastic!’

Her arms came down and encircled Brandon, hugging him to her.

He kissed Gayle. ‘Congratulations, darling. It is fantastic, absolutely.’

‘Now I’m going to quit surrogating, much as I hate to, and go full steam ahead. I’ll be another Freeberg, sooner or later, you watch and see.’

‘I know you will. I’m sure you will.’

Brandon reached for her again, but she held him off briefly and, cocking her head at him, considered him with special seriousness.

‘And you, Paul, you should be, too. You should also get a graduate degree in psychology, and then we can both be on campus, and afterwards have our own clinic and work together. We can work together and love together. What on earth could be better? You must do this, Paul, you must try it.’

Brandon grinned at her. ‘I already have.’

‘You have?’

‘From the moment I met you, Gayle, I knew you’d get into graduate school and I wanted to get in, too. So I applied, went through the whole routine, and prayed.’

‘And then what?’

‘My prayers were answered. I received my preliminary notification of acceptance last week.’

‘You bastard, not telling me! With me worrying about your future.’

‘I couldn’t tell you, Gayle. I had to be sure you’d be accepted. Because if you hadn’t been, I might have withdrawn from the whole thing and gone on to do something else with you. Thank God, I don’t need a scholarship. I’ve saved enough along the way to manage.’

She took his face in her hands. ‘Congratulations to you, too, Paul!’ She smothered his face with kisses. ‘Now I’m really on cloud nine.’

He cupped his hands under her breasts. ‘Ever think of trying for cloud ten?’

‘I’m beginning to think of it seriously this second.’

They both heard the front doorbell ringing.

‘Who can that be?’ Gayle wondered.

‘I’ll take this one,’ Brandon said. He leaped from the bed and tramped out of the room. In the living room, he picked his trousers up off the floor, pulled them on, and fastening them, he marched to the front door and flung it open.

A delivery boy stood on the porch with a bouquet of yellow roses in his grip.

He handed the bouquet over to Brandon, who signed for it.

Closing the door, carrying the roses, Brandon tramped back through the living room to the bedroom.

Gayle was on her knees on the bed, curious.

‘Flowers. Who can they be from?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Brandon.

‘There’s a little envelope attached to one of the stems. I can see it. Come closer.’

He did, and she tore off the envelope. ‘It’s addressed to Miss Miller and Mr Brandon. Let’s see who sent them.’ She slit the envelope and pulled out a card. She read it aloud: “We spent last night together and we did it. It was divine. We want to thank you both for making this possible. We don’t know what’s ahead for us, but last night - wow!”

Gayle squinted down at the bottom of the card and gulped. She raised her head. ‘It’s signed, “Nan and Adam.” ’

Brandon had put down the bouquet of flowers. ‘Gayle, fun and games may be all right for them,’ he said, ‘but not for me. I want to marry you.’

‘When?’

‘Don’t rush me, lady. First a little premarital love, my last fling at being sinful. After that some eggs and bacon. Then back to bed until dinner. After that some nocturnal love. We’ll be ready to sleep, and when we wake up we can get married. Or do you have anything else on your mind for today … and for the rest of your life?’

‘Only you, Paul. Forever.’

He climbed on the bed, and rolled over next to her. He took her in his arms to begin the first day of Forever.

AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Of the numerous sex surrogates who gave me assistance - there were nine in all, six of them female - I want to credit two in particular who made this book possible.

I want to thank Maureen Sullivan, the best-known and busiest of all female sex therapists, and I want to thank Cecily Green, the articulate training administrator for the International Professional Surrogates Association.

These two deserve credit for the accuracy in this novel. On the other hand, they should be held blameless for those few instances when I used author’s licence to depart somewhat from the facts in order to make a work of fiction possible.

Irving Wallace