Cheyney Fox (31 page)

For him to have been in Athens and not to have called her — had she deserved that? Not even a call to tell her he might be there. Well, of such is the kingdom of the footloose. Yet, from the moment their eyes met, he settled his companions at a table, apparently intent only upon going directly to her. His mere presence at the café was bad enough, but now he was walking toward her. It brought her slowly to her feet.

Neither seemed able to speak. At last it was Cheyney who broke the silence. “A long separation.”

“Yes, rather prolonged. I think you are more beautiful even than I remembered.”

“Oh, then you do remember?”

He began afresh. “How are you, Cheyney?”

“Weren’t you even going to call, Grant?”

“I’ve been thinking about it.”

“How much thinking does it take? How long have you been in Athens?”

“I arrived two days ago.”

“Two days to find a phone. Or to find something to say, for chrissake.”

“There hasn’t been time. Not time to reflect at all. This has been my first free morning. Why am I making excuses?” He looked very angry with himself or with her for making an issue of it.

“I don’t know. I shouldn’t put you on the spot. Look, if you’d wanted to call, you would have called.”

She gathered up her handbag, her newspaper, the dog leashes that had been draped over the back of her chair. Romeo and Zazou sprang to life. She fumbled with her things and first dropped the newspaper, picking that up only to drop her handbag. Her distress was obvious and she seemed unable to keep it from spiraling toward farce. Grant grabbed her by the arm.
“Cheyney, come and join us. Have a coffee, a drink, anything you like, with us. I’ll get away from them as soon as I can.”

“Forget it, Grant.”

He increased the pressure on her arm. “Why are you doing this?”

“Figure it out.” Her distress now turned to anger. She wrenched her arm from his grip and walked away from him, tears brimming in her eyes.

He caught up with her two blocks on. The two dogs were already in the taxi, and she was just about to step into it. He grabbed her by the arm. “I have to see you. I have to be with you.”

She felt weak-kneed with desire for him. Her heart pounded, her mouth went suddenly all dry, and tears of frustration formed in her eyes and made her more angry with herself than with him because she wanted Grant so much. She pulled away from him and jumped into the taxi. He was right behind her. He closed the door. “Go away. Please, go away, Grant. Go back to your friends, your little Chinese fortune cookie. Jesus, she’s a baby.”

“Oh, I see, that’s what this is all about.”

“Well, of course that’s what this is all about,” she shouted at him, and quickly gave the driver her address.

“I can tell you that little cookie would never behave as badly as you are now. Uncomplicated, easy, no demands, and no commitments to that little lady.”

“Girl. Get it right. I’m a lady, she’s a girl. And whoever asked you for any commitments. Certainly not me, and you can be sure I never will. Now, please, get out of my taxi!”

“You’re even more beautiful when you’re angry. Stormy skies — they bring out the sun. Your anger has given me recall. It’s the first time I do remember you as the woman in the rain, in another taxi, years ago. You were angry with me then. Not quite like this, though.”

“You haven’t really seen much of me, have you? Get out of my taxi.” She ordered the driver to pull up to the curb. “We started in a taxi, now let’s just finish it in a taxi.” She leaned over him and flung the door open. “Out.” She was trembling with rage.

He slammed the door shut and ordered the driver to go on.
Romeo and Zazou, confused by the stopping and starting of the taxi, a door opened and closed without anyone going anywhere, chose to start leaping around the car. Now the driver got into the fray. He demanded that she control the dogs, shrugged his shoulders, and turned up the volume on his radio.

“Are you married? Is there a man in your life?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Don’t be angry. I didn’t say it was my business. I asked you a civil question.”

“Okay, you want this taxi, you can have this taxi.” For the second time she ordered the driver to the curb. Tears of anger stinging her cheeks, she yanked the two dogs to her and scrambled out.

“And what the fuck are you doing with those two stupid, noisy animals?” he shouted at her back.

“At least they come when I call them and have no hang-ups about commitment!” she shouted over her shoulder as she ran down the street and away from him.

She fumbled with the key and almost fell over the dogs when she finally had the door open and they scrambled ahead of her into the drawing room and straight onto the sofa. Cheyney closed the door behind her and leaned against it. She dropped her things where she stood. She was shaking, quite unable to control the tremors of feeling. Unable to take another step forward into her own home. She remained where she was and finally calmed herself. Her sobs subsided. She had no idea how long she had been standing there. She jumped when she heard the knock at the door. Her heart leapt. It had to be Grant. She wiped the tears form her cheeks. Yet another knock. “Are you going to let me in?”

“Just go away, Grant.”

“Let me in, Cheyney. Or so help me, this door comes down, and that is not just a threat.”

Cheyney, at last, found the energy to move. She turned around to face the door, and then she opened it to him. Silently she stepped back and let him pass into the apartment. He closed the door behind her and pulled her roughly into his arms. Grabbing a handful of her hair, he pulled her head back and pinned her to the wall with his body. He placed his other hand around her neck.

“What is it with you? You’re forever erupting into my life, always sending me out of control. I have only to see you and you trigger something in me that’s both basic and base.”

Cheyney could feel his anger as if it were her very own. He crushed her with his passionate kiss, sucked her lips into his mouth, and bit them. She slipped her arms around his neck and grabbed his hair with both hands, pulling as hard as she could. He did not let her go. Instead, he lifted her off the floor by the waist. She tried to wrap her legs around him. Hindered by her skirt, he ripped it from the waistband to the hem. It fell to the floor. Now she clung to him with her legs around his waist, and he supported her with his arms.

He did not stop kissing her lips. Their tongues made hungry love. His kisses found her eyes. He pulled the earrings off her ears, and threw them away, and sucked on the lobes, the flesh at the side of her neck. He was in a wild passion for her. He tore her silk panties first down one hip, then down the other, and roughly yanked the remnant from between her legs. Caressing her naked bottom seemed to drive them both into a greater carnal frenzy. His searching fingers probed between the fleshy cheeks, reached under her and found what he was after. He kissed her with his fingers as deeply as he could, once he had breached her vaginal lips. His mouth and tongue found hers, eager now to please him.

While he carried her thus from the hall, she clung by her legs, wrapped tight around him. She tore off his tie, ripping open his shirt. She rubbed her face back and forth across his naked chest and licked him with her tongue. Her quick hands darted beneath the opened shirt. To feel his body in her hands, the touch of his skin, his flesh in her mouth as she passionately sucked on his nipples. She mouthed huge lusty bites of him, leaving deep red teeth marks. She must unbuckle his belt, get it free of its loops, and fling it into the room.

Their anger had blazed into lust for each other. Her fingers scrabbled at his buttons and zipper. She grabbed the pants and his shorts together on his hips and pulled as hard as she could, leaving him naked to his thighs. She loosened her grip on him, and he swept her away from him to impale her with one forceful thrust of his penis. She let out a cry but muffled it with her
hand. She tightened her grip on him with her legs, driving him that precious bit deeper into her.

He couldn’t wait, he slowly sank to his knees. Then he took her on the cool marble floor, half in the hall and half in the drawing room. Afterward he carried her to the bedroom. Time for gentler explorations of their passion for each other. It hardly subsided when they dozed enfolded in each other’s arms. Their mutual urge to realize all their sexual fantasies for each other drove them on.

Years of sex with Kurt had made Cheyney into a more adventurous, even more responsive sexual partner than Grant had known her to be. Now there was nothing he need hold back from her. Not even the most nakedly outrageous sex. He spent in her his last, most intimate self.

It had been less difficult for her to do that. She felt no shame that he should see her lust for his seed, know her desire to be filled with it. Why shouldn’t he know how she loved the taste of him in her mouth, the feel of absorbing the fruit of his orgasms into her womb? What did she care that he knew how vulnerable she was in his hands? How she wished she could keep alive every drop of his sperm, have it cling to her so she could nurture it as she wanted to nurture him.

It was dark outside when he woke her, with yet another passionate kiss. She was surprised when he switched on the bedside lamp to find that he was dressed. Well, as dressed as he could be with a buttonless shirt held together by a well-knotted tie and a tweed jacket over it. She touched the sleeve of his jacket with a tenderness they had shown sparingly to each other that day. She sensed that he wasn’t pleased by her touch. She pulled herself up against the pillows on the bed. Cheyney had a feeling she was not going to like what was coming. She tried to fight it off. She fixed a gaze on his handsome, rugged face, as if she were trying to burn a vision of it into her memory forever. A bad sign, she thought to herself. He had a bruise on the side of his chin and on his lower lip. They had made love like rutting animals.

“This is all there is for us. It’s more than most people have in a lifetime. Learn to live with it and remember it’s no easier for me to live with that knowledge than it is for you. But that’s the way it is. I may be back one day. If I’m not, what we have
had together for these few hours should serve as a good lesson to remind you why I’m not. You wouldn’t want to lose what we share any more than I would. Being together the way you would like would kill that. Don’t wait for me. Get on with your life; I’ll be doing the same. I’m not difficult to find. If ever you need something, anything, I’ll be there to help you.” And he walked out on her.

He scarcely listened for her whispered “Good-bye.”

Chapter 29

W
hy wasn’t she upset? Not even angry. She felt neither deserted nor alone. She felt no malice toward Grant Madigan for so coolly walking out on her. For not wanting to include her any more in his life. She would never be with him again. For the first time that seemed a reality. They might never have the thrill of being two bodies and one soul as they had been in the hours they had just spent with each other, as it had always been for them, right from their first coming together. Not ever again. Rather than indulge her sadness, Cheyney chose to savor every nuance of this last overpowering love they felt for each other that seemed only able to express itself in mutual lust.

Cheyney turned out the light and slipped down from the pillows to lie in the dark. Grant Madigan had given her, for the moment, everything he was capable of. And he had been right: it was more than most people had in a lifetime. She was reluctant to get up and wash away the scent of him on her, his touch, their orgasms. Instead she caressed herself with loving hands, for a last time seizing pleasure in what remained of
their lust. He could be hers for a few more hours. Thus she slid into sleep.

When she woke, she felt, at last, fresh and free of Grant Madigan. Because there had been no choice, her good-bye to him had been genuine. But that was not to say she didn’t understand her great loss and that she would have to live with it for the rest of her life. But now she was ready to make her commitment to Kurt Walbrook for always.

She turned on the light. The room was a shambles where she and Grant had left a trail of strewn clothes, sheets and blankets, and pillows everywhere in the wake of their lovemaking. The bathroom was no better, towels, terry-cloth robes, powder and open jars of cream, perfume. In the drawing room she was reminded of their violent passion by a turned-over table, a chipped vase, an abandoned cushion, an open champagne bottle, a broken glass. There was a scattering of the flowers he had placed in her hair, before he had made love to her. Romeo and Zazou were silent, nowhere in sight. She found them asleep in their baskets in the kitchen where Grant must have put them. Canine indifference to human carnality.

Closing the door quietly so as not to rouse them, Cheyney went back to the drawing room. She found one of her earrings he had flung away, then spotted the other on the far side of the floor. In the bath, the jasmine-scented soapy water brought out the bruises on her body. A cherished reminder of the violence of Grant Madigan’s passion for her.

The following morning, Cheyney was dressed and out on the streets of Athens by half-past six. She walked all over the city, the old parts and the new. She made several pilgrimages: the Agora, the Acropolis, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the Roman Agora, and the Tower of the Winds, where she drank coffee on the street at a café. She walked through Monastiraki and Syntagma Square up to the Benaki, and then downtown again to the Archaeological Museum. Down old narrow streets, the backwaters of Athens, to cafés she had known and tavernas where she was welcomed. She spoke to the trades people she knew, friends she bumped into. In the late afternoon, exhausted and unwilling to walk another step, she found a taxi. She went ten miles out of Athens to the Byzantine monastery church of
Daphne. She wanted another look at the mosaic of Christ Pantocrator in the dome.

She arrived back home at nine o’clock that evening. She realized she had been saying good-bye to the city. Cheyney Fox was through with Athens and Greece, ready to move on. The voice of some fundamental change within herself told her so.

All day it had been creeping up on her, a kind of excitement and enthusiasm that kept growing stronger with every step she had taken. Now, waiting to hear Kurt’s voice come on the line, she felt happier than she could ever have expected to feel.

“Sheyney?”

She closed her eyes, feeling a thrill at the sound of his voice. She wished she was there, right next to him, so she could put her arms around him. She would kiss him and let him know how happy she was that he was a part of her life.

“Kurt.”

“This is the first time you have ever called me. Does it mean what I think it means?”

Cheyney began to laugh, “If you think it means what I think you think it means, which is that I have called to ask you to marry me, then you’d be right.”

His laughter was filled with sunshine, “When, this eager bridegroom would like to know? Today, tomorrow, the next day?”

“The sooner, the better. But you mustn’t say anything to anyone, or do anything about it, until we have a talk. Promise me that.” He promised. Cheyney arrived in Venice two weeks later with six pieces of luggage, plus Romeo and Zazou.

It was unseasonably warm that afternoon. She felt that Venice had never looked lovelier. Kurt met Cheyney’s plane, a private jet that detoured to Athens to pick her up. He managed to send the other two passengers off with the two dogs and the luggage in a motor-launch to the palazzo while he captured Cheyney for himself in the palazzo Borgano’s gondola, and took her into Venice.

Once they were settled under the canvas canopy and against the daffodil-yellow Fortuny cushions he kissed her face, then her hands.

“It’s good that you are really here with me at last.”

“No ‘at last.’ Well, not yet. Not till we have had our talk. Can we go for a coffee in the square? I really have to talk to you before we go home.”

“Of course.”

The Piazza San Marco was more visibly enticing than ever. The tourist season had not quite begun. It was, for that much-peopled piazza, virtually empty. They sat at their favorite café, drinking Americanos in the afternoon sun. The resident musicians sawed their way through Vivaldi.

Finally he asked, “What is it you’re so anxious to tell me, Sheyney?” A flower lady passed by. From the basket over her arm she offered a nosegay of spring flowers, their stems wrapped in silk ribbon and trailing in long, slender streamers. Neither of them could help smiling; it was so like a miniature wedding bouquet. He presented it to Cheyney and paid the woman.

“I almost don’t know how to begin. Because, you and I, we never talk about our personal pasts. We hardly even talk about yesterdays. We seem always to live in the immediate present, without questions, without queries about each other’s lives. We seem to be two people happy to leave each other our separate secrets. I don’t even now particularly want to know about the other women in your life, your mistresses. And that seems to be all right. It seems to work for us, and I hope it always will. But … I want to marry you, and something has happened, and I think I have to tell it to you, because unless I do I will always be afraid that you’ll think I have married you for some other reason than loving you and deciding at last I am free enough of my past — financially independent enough, and whole enough as a human being — to go forward and make a life with you as your wife.”

Kurt took her hands in his. He lowered his head and kissed first one palm, and then the other. She felt a tremor of pleasure. Warmth flowing from his hands into hers. When he raised his head, his eyes were still closed. His seductively long, thick, lashes shivered, and he opened his eyes. His provocative look drew her to him. His fatal charm, that combination of raw male sexuality, power, adoration, caused her to stumble over her words. Then she continued, a nervous tremor, although slight, in her voice.

“His name is Grant Madigan. I have only been with him four times over a period of ten years. It’s a strange love story. It hardly existed until the day before yesterday. And now, it’s over, and forever.” Cheyney was brief, dispassionately honest about her affair with Grant.

Experience had withered the rampant masculinity in Kurt Walbrook into a calm understanding of women. He could absorb all she told him of Grant Madigan. He sensed that when Cheyney said she was finished with Grant Madigan, she probably was. And the man seemed finished with her, no matter what. Kurt recognized that, but for the intense sexual encounter the couple had shared two days before, they might never have resolved their relationship. Then he would not have been about to marry the only woman he wanted for his wife.

It was possible that he loved her that little bit more. Less for her honesty than for the maturity she brought to understanding the relationship between her and Grant Madigan. He knew instinctively that Cheyney Fox’s love for him had become even stronger because of Grant Madigan and what had happened in Athens. Their marriage was going to be all he had always hoped it would be.

She seemed calm, not at all ill-at-ease for having told him her only dark secret. And he liked that. He kept her waiting no longer. He asked, “Would you like to stay in Venice and marry me here? You won’t even have to go back to collect your things if you don’t want to. We can send for everything, ship it all to Garmisch-Konigsberg. We could make that our real home. I seem to recall you said it was a place where you could live forever.”

Unable to hold back, she burst out with, “Oh, I’m so happy. I love you so much, you know.” She threw her arms around him, almost toppling him and his chair over, while she kissed him. Titters from the tables all around them brought a blush to her face. Cheyney sought to regain control of herself, yet again.

“I think this calls for champagne, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, those wicked champagne cocktails they do here.”

“Quite right. The house wickedness it shall be.”

Cheyney watched him give the order and was thrilled that he looked so happy. It occurred to her dimly that she might
have lost him over Grant Madigan. The very thought came as a shock. She would have coped, she knew that. But the loss to the quality of her life … only now did she realize it would have been incalculable.

“Cheyney, I have something to say to you about you and Grant Madigan.”

“Yes?”

“Have you thought what you might do if he has made you pregnant?”

His question surprised Cheyney, for she just hadn’t thought about it. “Why do you ask?”

“Such things happen.”

“Well, yes. There are precedents, now that I think about it. But you must believe me, Kurt, the idea never occurred to me.”

“Calm yourself, Cheyney, I believe you. It’s surprising how often people tend not to. I am only asking you to think about it now. It makes no difference to me, but it might to you. We should talk this out, now.”

“But, Kurt, I wouldn’t have suggested that we marry if I had thought I might be pregnant.”

“Cheyney, stop protesting, I told you — and I do mean it — it makes no difference to me. Only to you. If it were so, what would you want to do about it?”

“Have the baby, of course. But I wouldn’t want Grant ever to know.”

“Are you so sure about that?”

“Oh, absolutely. He would hate being trapped by a child. He has made that clear to me in no uncertain terms. But, of course, we cannot marry until I know, can we?”

“Why not? We can marry and be happy together, whether you are pregnant with his baby, or mine, or not pregnant at all.”

“I don’t see how, Kurt.”

“Quite simple. You let me be the baby’s father, no matter if the natural father is Grant Madigan. Cheyney, I am no longer a young man. It has been a long time since any of my female companions have claimed I’ve made them pregnant. And look at us, there has been no pregnancy for us as yet. I wouldn’t want to deprive you of having this so-far imaginary child, if
you want it. Nor would I deprive Grant Madigan of his child. If ever a time came that you wanted him to know he had one. But one thing you must understand: once we marry, I’ll never give you up to him. I would embrace his child as if it were my very own. Because it’s yours, I would like it to be ours. As far as I am concerned, that’s all I have to say about our marriage and a child — if a child should happen along. So you see, these are things you have to be very sure of. If we agree on them, to the altar we go. And I, for one, say, the sooner the better.”

“You mean that with all your heart, don’t you, Kurt?”

“Yes, I do.”

Their drinks arrived. They touched the rims of the glasses and silently drank a toast to each other. Kurt put his glass down and began to laugh.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Because if you have conceived out of such an intense love encounter as you have had, you and I had better do some quick catching up. That way I can at least be almost a part of this baby. Lots of sex is called for, Cheyney.”

“I think you are teasing me, Kurt!”

He placed some money by their bill and said, “Let’s go home and see.”

They married four days later a short distance from Venice on the island of Torcello, deserted except for the restaurant famous for being another arm of Harry’s Bar in Venice. Ernest Hemingway was said to have written
Across The River And Into The Trees
while living in the rooms above. In the ancient ruins of a church and in the presence of thirty of their closest friends, Cheyney and Kurt took their vows. Della and Roberto and Lala were there and two of Cheyney’s best friends from Greece. Kurt’s best man was a playboy prince, the other men handsome and amusing polo and Austrian boyhood friends of Kurt, with their glamorous wives groomed to perfection. A string quartet and marvelous food and wines added to the romantic setting to give their wedding distinction and good humor.

Valentino was rushed in from Rome. He brought dressmakers to conjure a wedding gown for Cheyney from a two-hundred-year-old length of Belgian lace, a gift from Kurt. It
was a Walbrook family heirloom. Like the large, transparent-brimmed horsehair hat she wore, it was the color of champagne in the sunlight. She carried a cascade of four dozen white moth orchids. This was the day of Cheyney’s life.

Cheyney hadn’t realized how much she had already merged into the pattern of Kurt Walbrook’s existence. If she had any doubts that her husband was a remarkable man, a law unto himself, then they were dispelled during their first weeks after marriage. For someone as intimately involved as she had been with him for so long, she knew relatively little about Kurt. Every day she discovered a little bit more of the remarkable life he so carefully cultivated for himself and now for her.