Exit to Eden (25 page)

The clash between our little universe and the raw reality of Beirut unnerved me. It gave me the shivers.

Yet the book was not raw. The book was art. And this place was art. And it struck me that Elliott's reasons for coming-here had nothing to do with escape or renunciation of who he was. His reasons maybe had more to do with the pilgrimage by Burton, and Burton's obsessions and quests.

If you have landed in Beirut in the very middle of a war, where you might be killed by a bullet or a terrorist bomb, what is it like to come here where you know you won't ever be injured—on the contrary, you will be nurtured, watched over, babied—yet all these things will happen to you, these raw humiliations and exposures that most human beings could not possibly bear?

What had Martin written in the file? "Slave says he wants to explore what he fears most."

Yes. This had to be a sexual odyssey for Elliott, a deliberate violence to himself, a plunge into the things he feared in a place where he couldn't be hurt.

And the eerie thought came to me that he was really
disguised
as a slave the way that Burton had been disguised as an Arab when he penetrated the forbidden city. The disguise was nakedness. And I had found his identity in the things he owned, in his clothes.

Eerie thought, because as far as I knew he was being the perfect slave. He was in tune with us all the way. And I was the one with the jammed gears and the screaming engine. I was dreaming up all this shit about him. I ought to leave him alone!

I poured a fresh cup of coffee and made a slow promenade of the room.

Why weren't we obscene to him compared to the suffering of Beirut? Why wasn't our sexual paradise the worst sort of decadent contrivance? How could he take it seriously on any level when he took pictures so skillfully of all that?

I put down the cup of coffee and put my hands to my temples. It was as if the thoughts were hurting my head.

It came to me again, as it had on the vacation in California and on the plane coming home, that something was very wrong, that something was happening in me, a momentum building that I didn't understand, to which I didn't want to lose control.

The Club: Twenty-four Hours
. Was it all equal in his mind? But the pictures would never tell the tale.

I think for the first time in all the years since it had begun, I hated The Club, at least for a moment. I hated it. I had this irrational desire to push out the walls that surrounded me, push up the ceiling, get out.
Something brewing, and for a long time
.

The phone was ringing. For a long moment I just stared across the room at it, thinking somebody should answer it before I realized the somebody was me.

I had a sudden fear that it would be about Elliott, Elliott had "cracked."

Very reluctantly, I picked up the phone.

Richard's voice: "Lisa, have you forgotten our appointment?"

"Our what?"

"With the pony trainer from Switzerland, Lisa. You know our friend with the elegant human stable…"

"Oh, shit."

"Lisa, the man really has something here, something rather marvelous if you could…"

"You handle it, Richard," I said. I started to put down the phone.

"Lisa, I spoke to Mr. Cross. I told him you weren't feeling too well. Needed some rest. Mr. Cross says it's up to you to approve all this. You should see the slave ponies, review the whole…"

"Richard, tell Mr. Cross I've got a hundred-and-three temperature. You play the ponies. Sounds just great to me."

I hung up the phone, shut off the bell, pulled the plug, and knelt down and hid the disconnected phone under the bed.

I went back to the suitcases. I picked up the silver turtleneck that I had unfolded before, and I pressed it to my face, smelling the rich cologne. I slipped off my negligee and my nightgown. And I pulled the turtleneck over my head. It was like having his skin on, to feel it on my arms, over my breasts, and smell that perfume.

After several visits to Bath Heaven and its choir of little Bathangels I knew nobody was going to tell me much about her, who she really was.

I did worm it out of Mr. Iron Fingers Masseur that there was a gorgeous female slave named Diana mixed up in it who was in tears someplace because the Boss Lady-Perfectionist hadn't sent for her in two whole days.

"But where does she come from, what kind of jokes does she laugh at, you have to know something about her that's not classified, come on."

I kept doing inventories of her possessions, those sculptures, that shelf of books.

"Those paintings, the masks, how did she get those?"

"Elliott, this is like a stuck record," he said, working my skin like it was clay. "Get your mind off her. Male slaves don't get close to her. Think about all the beautiful ladies and gentlemen she's training you for."

"What do you mean, she doesn't like men, is that what you're saying, that she and this Diana slave… ?"

"You're getting yourself wound up over nothing. She doesn't like anybody. She just knows how to handle everybody better than anybody else could handle them, get the point?"

But the one thing they didn't mind confirming, over and over again, was that she was the real creator of The Club.

Almost every little game she had invented; the sports arcade was entirely her idea, and she had some other elaborate trips on the drawing board right now.

And I kept thinking about the way she looked last night when she stood in the middle of the arcade and said in that strange ironic voice, "Aren't we geniuses of exotic sex?" She was some kind of genius all right. But I was building up a suspicion about her. How did she feel about what she had accomplished? Was she one-tenth as impressed with it as I was? I didn't think so. I wish I had grabbed her and kissed her like Rudy Valentino in
The Sheik
.

But it was too crazy. I mean I was fantasizing about her, imagining she could love, she could feel, that I could affect something in her. I mean it was… like the goddamned song… almost like falling in love.

What the hell had Martin said, about sado-masochism maybe being a search for something.
You might be searching for a person, Elliott, rather than a system and at The Club the system is what you get

I didn't need Martin to tell me not to fall any deeper into this trap.

Listen to what Mr. Iron Fingers is saying to you. You're supposed to want the system. You're supposed to prove Martin was wrong.

But all day long I was playing this maddening little game of watching for her. Watching for her in Scott's class, half relieved she wasn't there to compound that little torture-chamber nightmare. And half disappointed she wasn't. And seeing her in the crowds all around while I mixed drinks and carried drinks and set down drinks, trying to properly wallow in the pinches and the compliments and the smiles.

But then there were those final confusing moments last night, when she was standing there naked in that open negligee, all moist and sweet and pink, with that handler gaping at her, stammering all those directions like the building was on fire. Damn her. I wanted to grab her, just hold her. I wanted to say just let me stay here and let us talk together for a little while, let us…

I wished I could talk to Martin. Ask him what to do about this. Emergency. Help. Something dangerous was happening in my head, the thought that I could make her love me, make her really love me. Ah, pride before the fall as all know.

And now and then, I thought of screwing up to disgust her and get away from her, to be sent back below stairs.

But it was really too late for that.

During the trainers' class, when I had almost bolted away from the hands examining me, I had been terrified of being sent back down again, separated from her. And there had been the electrical fire in my brain when Scott, that dark, feline trainer had whispered in my ear: "Thinking about her, Elliott? Dreaming about her? What would she do if I gave a bad report on you, Elliott?"

Martin, I am in trouble. And the trouble is, it's too late.

Six o'clock and no chimes anywhere on the island. Just the thumping in my chest. The handler glanced at his watch, and then told me to go in and wait right beside the door.

More than anything, I wanted to savor the first glimpse of her, wanted to slow things down so at that moment I could truly see her and hear what was in my head.

I have this theory actually, that after an absence you discover in that first glimpse what you really think and feel about another person. You know things you couldn't know before.

Maybe I wouldn't be so stark raving mad about her; she would be a little less dangerous, less pretty. I would start to think more about the others; like, who knows, maybe I'd start thinking about Scott.

The door closed behind me. The handler was gone. And the room looked warm in the soft electric light, the sky beyond the lace curtains a leaden gleam. Dreamy place. Like a chamber of the heart.

I heard some sound so unobtrusive that I wasn't even sure of it, and I turned my head towards the open parlor doors.

She was standing there all right. And I was in love with her. So much for the first glimpse. And the really wonderful thought came to me that she was quite deliberately trying to drive me out of my mind.

She was in a man's suit, a tight-fitted little three-piece number, except it was made of dark, dusty lilac velvet, so deep that in the creases it was an ashen gray. And knotted very loosely under the white collar of her shirt was a pale pink silk foulard. Her hair was swept up and back in a twist, and she was wearing a fedora of the same dusky mauve with a dark charcoal silk band. It was right out of the forties gangster movies, the shape of the hat, the way it dipped over one eye, and she was all cheekbones under the shadow of the brim, the mouth a kind of pouting glimmer of red.

The lust I felt for her was so total I could hardly keep still. I wanted to bury my face in her crotch, pull her down on top of me. In love with her, love her, the words were caught up in the lust.

I could see her eyes now, clearly, and feel that force emanating from her, see the hair swept up from her naked neck, her naked ear. She looked delicate in the suit, downright breakable.

"Come closer," she said. "And slowly turn around. I want to look at you. Take your time."

The pants were so snug on her they must have been made for her, and her breasts were pushing at the covered buttons on the vest.

I did as she said. I wondered if they'd given her the details, about the trainers' class, what that little adventure had been like.

And I could feel her coming closer, as if she affected the air around her, feel her perfume before I smelled it, feel that force again when I saw her angular shadow in the corner of my eye.

I inclined my head to the side rather deliberately and glanced down at her, sucking up her appearance before I looked straight ahead. Shiny little pointed toes peeking out of the pant legs, high heels, pants tight enough in her crotch to make her feel the seam between her legs.

I saw her hand move and I thought I can't stand it. She has to touch me. I have to touch her. Rudy Valentino, the sheik, is going to kidnap her and take her off to his tent in the desert. But neither of us moved.

"Follow me," she said, snapping her fingers lazily, the light glinting on her fingernails for a second, and she turned and went through the pair of double doors.

It was the parlor I'd glimpsed last night. I watched the easy shift of her little hips, wanted to touch the back of her naked neck. She looked like a little manikin in the suit. I mean a baby man, a supernatural creature, something not a woman yet just as little and lovable and soft.

Large desk, massive African sculpture in one corner, and a really terrific Haitian painting in six panels of scenes from the French colonial days, something to look at later when she wasn't blinding me, in all the thousands and thousands of times I'd be in these rooms kissing her naked insteps and her naked calves and her naked crotch that ought to be freed from those tight little pants and let to breathe in my face. Nothing really feminine in this room, except her steaming in the mauve velvet, turning back to me and then staring quite deliberately to her left.

I looked in the same direction, and for one moment it didn't register. "Those are my suitcases," I said.

Martin had said that your clothes are locked up. It's the strictest security because if you can't get your clothes and your papers then you can't possibly escape from The Club. He said they weren't even on the island, the clothes, they were stored in a special place. And I remember I had pictured bank vaults.

Yet there were my suitcases unlocked and open and I could see my passport and my wallet on top of the clothes. It was almost embarrassing looking at those personal, otherworldly things.

"I want to see what you look like," she said, "in clothes."

I looked at her, trying to figure what this meant. And the surprising thought came to me that that would be too humiliating to be dressed in front of her. But it was kinky, divinely kinky. And I could feel her trembling though she didn't appear to be trembling at all.