Any Minute I Can Split (14 page)

“Maybe you'd like to give it to me now,” De Witt said.

“Oh, yes!” Gratefully she dug around in the paper bags in the back and pulled out the pouch, wedging it
between his hands and the steering wheel.

“Mmmmm,” De Witt said, “That's marvelous. So soft. Lovely. Thank you, Margaret.” He gave her the plastic pouch he carried with him and asked her to transfer the tobacco. In its unburned condition the tobacco had a pleasant fruity smell; she did it slowly to make the job last longer. “All right,” De Witt said, opening his window wider to tap the pipe outside, “now fill this up for me.” Carefully, feeling as though some high honor had been conferred upon her, she began filling the pipe, taking a few strands at a time, pressing them down, but then she suddenly became aware of the sexual nature of the act . . .
of the present itself
 . . . the softness of the pouch, the whole thing . . . a soft suede proposition . . . she was full of distaste for herself. What a sneaky fumbling way to tell someone you were horny!

Horny she was again, that was for sure. It had crept up on her slowly. Subtle accommodations to her celibate state, like trying to be asleep before David came up to the room so she wouldn't betray her need to him. Dreams that Roger was giving her a shampoo. Memories of losing her virginity on the beach near Gloucester, except that nostalgia transformed the coarse grains of Gloucester sand into something resembling talcum powder, and fierce little Tony Lopanto into a ballet dancer in the manner of Jacques d'Amboise.

Oh, to be a member of some earthy primitive tribe where the simplest symbol would suffice to get you laid! Twirling a bead! Baking a tart and laying it at someone's feet! The lack of formal symbols only served to make you self-conscious about the contrived ones. Why did she have to know what she was doing so she'd feel rejected when it didn't work? Why should she assume she'd be rejected, anyway? With the exception of Butterscotch he'd made love with every, woman at the farm at one time or another. Mira. Dolores. Carol and Starr had both needed him at bad times during their marriages, and he'd been there to fulfill their needs. Why not her?
Why not me, De Witt?

“De Witt?”

“Mmmm?”

Think of something.

“When you think about the future, do you ever think you'll stay forever?”

“No. I never think that about any place.”

“I used to think it about every place. Until I left.”

“I couldn't survive that way,” he told her. “To me the thought of being in one place forever is the thought of living death.”

She'd lived in more than a dozen places before she met Roger and half again that many times since, but each time she'd moved she'd been paralyzed for weeks, for all intents and purposes. Once she'd accused Roger of moving just for the pleasure of seeing her go into shock. She hadn't mentioned that she'd moved more often before meeting him but it had seemed different then because her real life hadn't yet begun.

“My God, you're not planning to go soon, are you?”

“No.”

“Good. The thought of being here without you or Roger is frightening.” Whoops. She'd said what she meant. But De Witt nodded, seemed to find it easily understandable.
Then do you know maybe De Witt what it's like to want to be filled up
? A phrase she'd once taken for a metaphor, the kind of thing no one ever felt except via Maxwell Anderson.

“I sometimes think of how much I'd miss you if
I
left,” she said. “But I never thought about
you
leaving.”

“Well that's fine,” he said. “Because I'm right here. Aren't I?”

“Mmmmm.”
You, me and the pouch. Talk, Margaret, make a cold shower of words.
“De Witt? What's Mitchell's thing with the farm?”

“You mean why he lets us use it and pays the taxes and so on?”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, first of all, he has some pretty good tax breaks going, but if he didn't he could still afford it. He's rich.”

“Are you close friends?”

“I wouldn't say so, no. We met a few years ago at a party. He already owned the farm and he was sort of flirting, you could say, with the idea of intentional communities . . . but he himself couldn't conceive of living in one on a full-time basis. His businesses wouldn't allow it and even if they did, he's not really suited for it.”

And De Witt was suited for anything as long as he didn't have to do it for too long.

“What makes someone suited for it?”

De Witt puffed at his pipe; the fruity smoke wafted past her cold nose. “Oh, lots of things. Some pleasure in physical work, I suppose. Which Mitchell doesn't have, as a matter of fact. He's very much a city person, business, lunches, theater, cocktails before dinner and grass after, when he comes up in the warm weather he takes out a chair to sit on while he reads the Sunday
Times.
But let's see, more importantly, the ability to accept some degree of organization . . . maybe you know that before we came into this Mitchell had let his oldest daughter and some friends take over the farm for a year or so, you know, a bunch of kids who thought of anarchy as an everyday way of life, the place was an incredible wreck inside of six months . . . so, there's the ability to submerge one's own personality just enough to permit others to express theirs, which you could say is almost the same thing as the ability to compromise. The ability to recognize that the world we came from was also something less than perfect. Aside from my own specific necessity to escape . . . some legal unpleasantness in Los Angeles . . . you can't divorce the idea of a place like the farm as an escape, a refuge, from its other attractions. It isn't Utopia and Utopias always exist in contrast to some outside stress, anyway. Many of the people who would flourish in a setup like this also flourish in the business world, the city, whatever, so that their intellectual perceptions of that world—”

“Good grief!” she interrupted. “Talk about intellectual
perceptions! It sounds as though you sit around intellectualizing about the whole thing all the time.”
For Christ's sake, Margaret—goading him just because you're horny.

He didn't seem irritated though. “Not all of it. I think about the whole business a lot, though. It demands some conscious effort, you know. If it didn't I suppose I would have gotten bored with it a long time ago.”

“Still,” she persisted, “you're making it sound very abstract.” She glanced out the window; the highway was lighted only by the reflection of the banked snow. She couldn't tell where they were, felt desperately frustrated at the idea that they might be nearly home.

“That's only because I'm talking in generalities. If I talk about specific people I can tell you things that aren't at all abstract. I can talk about Alice, for example, who left the spring before you came. A bright aggressive woman with a mind too restless to be harnessed. She spent her first four months at the farm memorizing the contents of the
Organic Gardening Encyclopedia,
then planting time came and she left because she couldn't accept the rigid scheduling. It seems it reminded her of her childhood. She got into constant arguments with Mira, who was in charge of schedules during that period, and finally she just took off one night. Then there was—”

“Were you fond of Alice?”

“Yes, you could say that. I enjoyed talking with her, we had some very good conversations.”

“You mean you didn't fuck her?”

He laughed. “I didn't say that.”

When is my turn?

He opened his window again, knocked out his pipe on the side of the truck, handed it to her. She looked around outside. On the otherwise deserted road she saw a neon sign. As they approached she could read it—LAURENTIANS MOTEL . . . Vacancy . . .
Ici on parle français.
De Witt turned the jeep into the driveway and parked in front of the office. He leaned over and kissed her forehead lightly.

“I'll be right out, Margaret.”

So she hadn't had to ask outright. He'd understood. But in a
motel?
The last time she'd seen the inside of a motel she'd been hitchhiking home to Boston from college and had gotten a lift from an extremely attractive middle-aged man in a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac who'd begun by lecturing her on the dangers of hitching when you were an attractive young girl, almost suspiciously bought her a steak dinner somewhere in Connecticut, the burden of his converstation being that he didn't approve of this sort of thing at all, and by the time they'd reached New Haven, where his wife and three beautiful daughters, whose pictures he'd shown her during dinner, were awaiting his return from a business trip, he was trying to decide at which of two motels he'd be less likely to run into one of his buddies who did this sort of thing all the time.

De Witt came out, led by a small barrel-shaped man whose feet pointed away from each other and who waddled in the fashion one would thus expect. The man led them to one of the rooms, opened the door, turned on the light, and said, “Voilà.” Never looking at them the whole time. Margaret went in while De Witt moved the jeep.

It could have been worse, Margaret.
The plastic philodendrons could have had plastic flowers on top of them. The chenille bedspread could have been pinker, the green walls darker. She took off her coat, refrained from looking for a quarter for the TV set, sat down in the armchair and closed her eyes. She heard De Witt come in and lock the door.

“De Witt,” she said without opening her eyes, “I feel stupid.”

“I don't see why.”

First of all because I feel as if you're just doing this on my account.

“I dunno,” she said. “A motel, for Christ's sake.”

He laughed. “I was thinking of privacy.”

“Oh, my God, the twins!” She opened her eyes. “I haven't thought about them since I left.”

“That's as it should be.” He'd taken off his coat. He was wearing his sexy black turtle-neck sweater. He stretched out on the bed and beckoned to her. “There're plenty of people taking care of them, they don't need you right now.” His eyes pulled at her.

“Don't you think I should just call?”

“It's difficult to see what purpose that would serve,” he said gravely.

“I could tell them I'm on the way home.” Yicch. She stood up but didn't go to the bed. She felt like a great jackass, not at all sexy. “I could say you noticed I was horny so you took me to this motel for a short . . . it'd be great. No one would believe me. Living at a commune and getting laid in a motel with plastic philodendrons.”

“Why are you putting up barriers, Margaret?”

Gazing at you, I hear the Muzak
 . . . but she moved toward him, nervously turning off the light on the way. Groping. Sitting down on the edge of the bed. He ran his hand up and down her arm lightly.

“De Witt?” she asked nervously. “Do you really feel like screwing me or is this, like, part of your job?”

“Now you're being ridiculous,” he said, pulling her gently toward him.

Panic. “De Witt! Please!” Whispering because it was dark. “I can't stand the thought of being someone's obligation.”

“What a terrible view you have of yourself,” he said, caressing her hair, her breasts, kissing her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, her chin. “You're not my obligation, Margaret. You're my very good friend whom I love.” He kissed her lips and she found herself getting drawn in, quite in spite of her mind. “I don't know what's wrong with me,” she whispered as he pulled up her sweater and eased it gently over her head. “I feel like a criminal.” He kissed her breasts, sucked gently at her nipples. David! She should've brought David with her to town, then this criminal thing couldn't have happened! De Witt tugged at her slacks and she lifted
her backside to make it easy. “I must be practically a celibate by now, it's been so long . . . eight months . . . My God!” He kissed her pubic hair, fondled her thighs. Since she was sixteen years old she hadn't gone eight consecutive months without getting laid. “Do you think maybe if you get laid when you're very young and never again maybe the membrane grows back by the time you die?” He parted her legs and began to gently massage her. “Mmmmmmm,” he said, “you feel wonderful.” It felt good to her, too, when she thought about it, but if she didn't think she forgot about it. What the hell was wrong with her? Was it her concern about being a charity patient? Or was it guilt, and if so toward whom? David, who didn't want her? The twins, who'd never know the difference? Mira, who was off someplace on transcendental cloud number nine? Mechanically she got under his clothes, fondled him, licked his ear, caressed his buttocks, did everything she could think of that she was supposed to do. He got out of his clothes and slowly, gracefully got into her. Stroking away masterfully. Everything was just right. WHAT THE HELL WAS WRONG WITH HER? She clung to him tightly as he came, no closer herself than if they'd just walked in the door. They kissed lengthily. Finally he rolled off her. On his side he peered down at her, caressing her belly. Her belly was still flabby and stretch-marked but he wouldn't be able to see that. Maybe he wouldn't even care; he seemed not to notice her more gross characteristics.

“I don't know what's wrong with me.”

“There's nothing wrong with you, Margaret.” He tried to part her legs to get his finger back into her but she resisted. He wanted to satisfy her and she didn't want to be satisfied.

“De Witt. I know I'm acting like an idiot. I don't know what it is. Maybe the whole situation. Why couldn't we do it in the barn or something?”

“It's pretty cold. And I thought you'd feel safer here.”