Exit to Eden (26 page)

"I want to see you in this," she said. She bent over the suitcase and pulled out a gray turtleneck shirt. "You like gray, don't you? And you don't like colors. If you belonged to me in the outside world, were my slave utterly and completely, I'd dress you in colors. But put this on for me now."

I felt absolutely strange taking the shirt from her. I jerked it down over my head as if I'd never done anything like that before. It was incredible, the liveliness of the sensation as the cloth touched my skin all over. And my lower half felt ludicrously naked. My cock looked illegal. I felt like a centaur in a pornographic sketch.

But she handed me a pair of brown pants before I had even pushed the sleeves up a little, and I put them on, feeling the rougher cloth scratch at my backside, come up uncomfortably tight around my cock and balls. I didn't think I could close the zipper. I put my hand in trying to shift the painful erection, flashing a little smile at her, feeling her eyes on me.

"Zip it," she said. "And don't come."

"Yes, Madam," I said. "Just wondering if Adam and Eve felt this way in Eden the first time they got dressed."

I took the belt from her and that was a trip, holding the leather myself for once, sliding it through the loops. I shouldn't have spoken to her like that. It was the clothing doing it already. But this was all madder even than the sports arcade and the damned whipping post and everything else that had gone down.

"You're blushing again," she said. "It always makes your hair look terrific, really blond, when you blush."

I made a little gesture of mock modesty, like golly gee, I just couldn't help it.

She handed me a pair of socks and the brown Bally loafers I didn't like very much. I had to make myself stop staring at her and put them on.

Really weird, even the fraction of a difference in height, the leather against the sole, the smooth feeling of it all, like it was a casing, like it wasn't natural—all this clothing, like it was a form of being shackled and harnessed, just being dressed.

She held out the brown wool jacket.

"No, not that…"I said.

Hesitation. She looked suddenly blank, lost.

"I mean it's too precious, the jacket matching the pants and the shoes. I'd never wear that."

"What then?"

"Give me the Norfolk jacket, the tweed. I mean if you don't mind, if I have something to say about it."

"Of course," she said. Apologetic! She put the brown back on the hanger and took out the Norfolk jacket. I love belted jackets. I really wanted one of my filthy old safari jackets, but I didn't think she'd go for that.

"You happy now?" she asked. Tough again, slightly sarcastic.

"Not till I comb my hair. It's kind of a compulsive thing, you know, after I put on my jacket, I comb my hair." My butt was burning under the cloth of the pants. I thought my cock would go off. I was literally tied in knots. When she reached into her back pants pocket just like a man would do it and drew out a black plastic comb, all her gorgeous little curves jiggling like crazy, I couldn't help shifting my weight, trying to get more straight with not coming. "Thanks."

"There's the mirror," she said, pointing to a rather small narrow one between the two doors that led to the hall.

And there was Elliott Slater in it, combing his hair, looking like he had two million years ago in San Francisco when he headed out to catch a movie on his second to last night as a free man.

I looked down when I was finished, and then up again slowly as I handed the comb back to her, letting my fingers linger on hers for a second, and then staring at her. And she backed away. She almost jumped. But she realized what she'd done, and she stiffened as if she had to take command again, deny that she'd showed this little glimmer of fear.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Shhh. Walk up and down so that I can look at you," she said.

I walked very slowly away from her with my back to her, feeling everything pulling and rubbing and burning and cramping me, and then I came around again towards her, getting closer and closer, until she put her hand up and said sharply, "Stop!"

"I want to kiss you," I whispered as if the room were full of people.

"Shut up," she said, but she had backed away again with two little anxious steps.

"Are you afraid of me, just because I'm dressed?" I asked.

"Your voice is changed, and you're talking a lot and acting different!" she said.

"What did you expect?"

"You have to be able to play it both ways for me," she said raising her finger and pointing at me threateningly. "And you behave yourself, dressed or undressed. You make one impertinent little move, and I'll press one of some ten different buttons in this room, and you'll be running races in the sports arcade all night."

"Yes, Madam!" I said again unable to stop a little smile. I shrugged. But then I looked down again, trying to show that I wanted to please her. If she pressed one of those buttons, well…

She turned her back on me, and I had a feeling it was kind of like a young, inexperienced matador turning his back for the first time on the bull.

She walked around in a little circle, and when she glanced at me again I lifted my right hand very stiffly to my lips and I blew her a little kiss. She stood there staring at me.

"I did something," she said suddenly. She put her left hand on her hip and she looked uncomfortable, very uncomfortable. "I found this book in your luggage and I unwrapped it so that I could look at it."

"Fine," I said. Don't try to figure this out, I was thinking. She can't really be interested. "I'd like you to have it, if you want."

She didn't answer. She just studied me for a moment. There was all sorts of light and heat playing in her face. She went over to the table and she picked up the book.

It gave me a mild shock to see it—Elliott the photographer, Elliott the correspondent—but not as bad as I would have thought. She had a fountain pen in her hand and she said, "Sign it?"

I took it from her, trying very discreetly just to touch her hands when I did it and not managing it, and I went over to the couch and sat down. I can't sign books standing up.

I went suddenly and totally on automatic pilot, like I didn't know what was going to come out as I moved the pen. I wrote:

To Lisa,
I think I am in love with you,
Elliott

And I stared at it. I gave the book back to her. I felt like I had just done something really stupid that I'd regret till I was ninety years old.

She opened it and when she read the words, she was beautifully stunned. Beautifully!

I was still sitting on the couch, and I put my left arm up along the back of it and tried to look very casual, but my cock was pumping like something with a mind of its own that wanted to get out.

Everything was rolling together, this insane lust for her, this love, this love for her, and this absolute exhilaration that she'd read this and she was blushing and she was afraid.

I think if there had been a brass band in the room at that moment, I wouldn't have heard it. I would have heard only this pumping of my own pulse in my head.

She had closed the book and she was looking glaze-eyed almost like someone in a trance. For a second, she was unrecognizable to me. I mean it was one of those moments of "the absurd" when people look not only like strangers but strange beasts. I saw all the details of her as if she'd just been invented, and I didn't know what she was, whether she was a man or a woman, or what.

I wanted to shake myself out of it, but what shook me out of it was the sudden scary feeling she was going to cry. I almost got up and grabbed hold of her, or said something or did something, but I couldn't move. The spell went as fast as it had come. She was all woman again, looking unaccountably soft in the masculine pants and jacket and she knew things about me nobody knew, no other woman knew, and there was this sense of dissolving into her. Maybe I was the one, sitting there on the couch looking casual, who was about to cry.

I could understand this, really understand it, if I pressed Just a little further with it, I felt. But then maybe I would cry.

She licked her lips slowly, and again, she didn't seem to see anything. Then hugging the book to herself she asked: "Why did you get so scared? I mean last night in the arcade when I made you wear the blindfold?"

Shocking, real shocking. Like somebody throwing a bucket of cold water over me, but then that would make me go limp. This didn't make me go limp. Just feel naked as hell in these damn clothes. And like a dangerous rapist.

"I didn't like it," I said. Funny monotone voice. I mean this isn't exactly the conversation you have at a restaurant table, for God's sakes. And we're dressed like we were having lunch at Ma Maison. What was it going to be like, taking
off
these damned clothes? "I wanted to see what was going on," I said. Shrug. "Isn't that typical?" When in the hell had I ever wanted to be typical, I thought.

"It's usually a turn on," she said. But her voice was distant, not listless, exactly like somebody talking in her sleep.

Her eyes were really round. Most beautiful women have almond-shaped eyes, but hers were round, and that and the pouting lip gave her some kind of almost uncivilized look, even though she was so slender, angular, high toned.

"Wearing a blindfold… it can make it easier. You can surrender," she said.

"I'm all yours," I said, "as it is." And you did that to me and I let you do it, and I think I love you, I thought.

She took a step backwards, stopped. She held the book to her even tighter, like it was a baby. Then she went to the desk and picked up the phone.

I started to get up. It was pure craziness. She wasn't going to send me away like this, I'd rip the fucking phone out. But before I was on my feet even, she'd said something into the phone that didn't add up.

"Get ready for takeoff in five minutes. Tell them the rest of the luggage is ready to go." She put down the phone and she looked at me and her mouth moved, but she was silent for a second. Then she said, "Put your wallet and your passport in your pockets and take out whatever you want to carry with you from the bags."

"You're kidding," I said. But it was too gorgeous, like somebody saying, We're now taking off for the moon.

The doors opened and two young flunkies—white clothes but no leather—came in and started packing up the bags.

I put my watch on, slipped the wallet in my pants pocket and the passport in my coat pocket. I saw my diary in the bottom of the suitcase, and glancing at her, I took that out. It meant I needed my shoulder bag, a kind of crushed canvas bag I carried with me all over, and I got that out from underneath everything, put the diary in it, and slung it over my shoulder.

"But what the hell's going on?" I asked her.

"Hurry up," she said.

The two flunkies were taking out the suitcases.

She started walking after them. She still had the book in her left hand.

She was positively marching down the corridor when I caught up with her.

"Where are we going?" I asked. "I don't understand."

"Be quiet," she whispered, "until we get outside."

She cut right across the grass, and through the flower beds, her shoulders very square, her walk jaunty, almost swaggering. The flunkies were loading the bags into a little electric cart on the path up ahead. They both took the front seat as she gestured for me to get into the back.

"Will you tell me what it is we're doing?" I said squeezing in beside her.

My leg was crushed up against her and I had a sense of how small she was as the cart took off a little too fast and she fell against me, her hand on my thigh. She was like a bird next to me, and I couldn't see her face under the brim of the hat. "Lisa, answer me! What's going on?"

"Okay, listen to me," she said. But she stopped. She was flashing as if she was angry, hugging the book to her chest. And the cart was tearing along now at a good twenty miles an hour right around the edge of the crowded pleasure gardens and past the pool.

"You don't have to go if you don't want to," she said finally. Her voice was unsteady. "It's heavy duty, going in and out, stripped down one minute, dressed the next. I can understand if you're not ready for it. So if you want, you can go straight back to my room. Strip down again. Hit the button on my desk for the handler, and they'll take you right off to Scott or Deena or one of the others. I'll call from the gate. You want Scott, you can have him. Scott's the best. He's impressed with you, he wants you: He would have chosen you when you first got here, but I got you first. But if you want to come with me, then come with me. We'll be in New Orleans in an hour and a half. There's no big mystery. We're just doing what I want to do. And we come back when I say we come back."

"Hmmmm, shrimp creole and coffee with chicory," I said under my breath. Going to the moon all right and on to Venus and Mars.

"Smart ass," she muttered. "What about crawfish etouffée and Dixie beer?"

I started laughing. I couldn't help it. And the more solemn she got the more I laughed.

"Well, make up your goddamn mind," she said.