Loonglow (10 page)

You go to a play and find tears streaming down her face when the lights come up; this is painful. You crush her to you. She is still, and warm, and you would like to feel her moving against you, but she seems to be warning you not to think about tasting her lips and her skin. You wonder if you are imagining her resistance. You are certain she must know you love her, so you make your conversation banal and reassuring. You feel a little out of key. It is true that she loves to be told her legs are alarmingly beautiful (this, too, is painful) or that you are passionately devoted to her; also true that she will let you play with that shadowy hair forever even though she claims to dislike being touched this way. She has told you she loves you. She likes, she says, your touching her; it is endearing, she says. You know the reticence you sense cannot be your own, nor can it be imagined, but you have difficulty accepting this and often push solely to discover whether, this once, there will be no resistance. You put your arm around her, squeeze her shoulder, stroke her cheek. Sometimes you refuse to touch her to see if she will touch you. Expecting nothing, you are always surprised
—
and somehow a little disappointed
—
when she does.

“Sometime I want to talk to you about this femininity business,” she says. “I have a theory that it's almost entirely the voice.”

“The voice is a large part of it,” you admit. You have explained that several of your friends have an aversion to her because she is such a “girl” (without mentioning, of course, your surprise at feeling no similar aversion). Her voice is endearingly hoarse and girlish, alternating quotes from Sartre and Proust with vulgar, adolescent jokes, yet she likes girlish things: sachets, feathers, ruffles and perfumes (though so did all those Frenchmen).

She exclaims that, if anything, she has always considered herself to be butch. You introduce (gently) the incident when she sprinkled glitter on her stockings and rainbow-painted her face. (Out of pity, you avoid mentioning the accompanying shiny, strapless blue dress.) She protests. You realize she spends much of her time with you blushing and protesting. This must be why you love her. Soon you will start to imitate her, orally underlining words with
great
enthusiasm, making fascinating swoops of tone and color.

Some evenings she will come over and get you stoned, and you will lie on the floor smiling and accusing her of ruining your self-respect, as you listen to records or fall asleep to the drone of her stories. She will lie with her face next to yours, and the paleness of her skin, her mouth, the perfection of those soft, high breasts, will confuse you. Very slightly, the faint perfume will make you ache.

“This is not entirely terrible,” she said, putting the chapter down.

He pulled her plate to him, picking at her largely untouched dinner. “Have you always been so insatiable?” He twined a generous amount of her pasta around his fork.

“I'm known for it—and my mortifying table manners.” She watched as Clay dangled a strand of her spaghetti in the air and leaned his head back, dropping it into his mouth. “You can't believe the number of times I've been asked to leave restaurants,” she added dryly.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, haughtily. “I wouldn't know.” She snorted. “So you think it's the most brilliant thing you've ever read?”

“Tolerable,” she said. “Now and then a line or two isn't too offensive.” She pulled her dinner toward her and surveyed it with distaste. “Did I really eat this?”

“No, that was me. So you think it'll win all awards hands down and I won't have to sell my body anymore?”

“But that's your destiny, Clay.” She affected a pained expression. “If you really cared about art, you wouldn't fight it.”

“Was that a yes?”

“All right”—she gave in. “Satin sheets will be hung at half mast all over town.” She toyed with the food on her plate. “I don't suppose you'd like to slam the rest of this down?”

“What do you
take
me for?”

“Trash.” She looked on as he pulled the dish back and calmly finished her meal. “Everyone knows it, and it's time you did, too.”

“I don't keep you around for your insights, missy—just your sweet nature.”

She grabbed an olive. “Ditto, pruneface,” she said, stuffing it into his mouth. “Now don't you think it's time you decided what I want for dessert?”

The thing that surprised Louey most about the months she'd worked with Clay was how easy it was to spend time with him. Often when she came to work and shuffled through her pile of messages, the only one that didn't make her shudder was from Clay.

“Tell me why I don't mind getting calls from him, no matter how busy I am,” she asked one morning, bringing Kevin tea.

“Compulsive blabber?” he suggested.

She didn't even mind it when Clay talked her into holding their discussions over drinks or dinner. “It's not as if I don't like boys,” she mused. “I like them.” She stared down at a giant doughnut in his hand.

“You like the ones who blush like pretty girls,” said Kevin, handing her some slightly sticky galleys to be sent for quotes. “We've all seen how you tease them.”

“We can't agree on everything.” She shook a finger at him. “Just because your own tastes border on …”

“Sublime?”

It puzzled her; she'd never found straight men that interesting for more than short periods of time, and sooner or later—usually sooner—they always came around to making a pass. (If had happened too often to surprise her. The number of males who were genuinely baffled when she took their hands from her hips or waist made her wonder what other women's responses to such tactics were, and if any man had ever been rejected before she'd come along.) With Clay, though, no rules seemed to apply. She had no precedent for their friendship.

“I've seen boys with just his kind of charm,” said Kevin.

“Seen?” she snorted. “Nice euphemism.” Why didn't Clay fit any pattern she had come across, straight or gay? “He's not one of those suave guys,” she went on, “who keep doing you favors—until you find out why.” She handed him the galleys with a pile of letters to be typed. “You, for instance.”

Kevin laughed. “What I think,” he said, “is that this polite-guy stuff is camouflage. He's a brute at heart—you wait and see.”

“You like that kind, eh?” Louey turned to rewrite jacket copy for three books someone had mistakenly placed in their science-fiction line.

Several hours later Kevin returned to slip the heavily rewritten pages from beneath her elbow. “May I?” She nodded, covering her eyes. “I think we've done more than enough here, thank you.” Her shoulders shook. “By the way, I've solved the Clay conundrum, if you're interested.” Louey looked up at him, curious. “He's a simple, sweet, but spineless child who gets crushes on inaccessible women to avoid facing his own true sexuality.”

“I don't think that's it,” she said, “but let's just ask him, shall we?” She picked the phone up, and Kevin fled her office in mock terror.

It had been Louey's idea to transpose Clay's theories about love to fiction. “I sense a closet novelist lurking inside that shameless body,” she'd said, and Clay had to admit she'd been right. Nothing could have prepared him for the way he lost himself in his creations, characters who wouldn't exist without him. And Louey called him “a born writer”: fresh, funny, original, she said. The book (which she referred to as
Bright Lights, Hot Pussy
) still expressed his thesis about love, but she had helped him create a male character who embodied its follies and aspirations. “Why not make the narrator a boy with a lot of talent and a bright future,” she suggested, “who keeps forestalling his own potential by becoming obsessed with one woman after another, mistaking the passion each provokes in him for the heightened life experience he's seeking?”

Why the hell hadn't he thought of it himself? “You could even salvage your research,” she added, “give the hero signs he's on the right track—you know, ironic proof from movies, songs and books that love is more important than achievement.” By offsetting his hero with characters who tried to restore him to a life of conventional accomplishment, Clay was able to voice his ambivalence far more subtly than his essay had allowed. And there was great fun in creating the women his hero longed for—laying out a portrait of Manhattan as he'd first seen it gave him a nearly malicious satisfaction. Louey had a few sly ideas of her own, as well—especially as to where his hero should meet women.

I met Mimi in a small dark room. I was riding up in the elevator of the tallest
—
and the first
—
office building I'd been in since arriving in New York. The one suit I owned was newly pressed and on my back, and although the building was (if anything) overly air-conditioned, my nerves were making me uncomfortably warm.

At the twenty-fifth floor, the elevator stopped, and all the other people filed out, leaving me to my thoughts. The door was closing when a husky voice called out, “Could you hold it?!” I stared at the air for a split second, then moved to hit the “open” button when a stocking-clad leg stuck its way into the door and prevented it (with no little pain to its owner, I imagined) from closing.

He didn't know what he had done to deserve the attention she'd shown him. Her willingness to take time out from what he knew was an insanely busy schedule to go over the most minute problem he might have with his material, the most inane question, seemed to transcend mere mortal patience. And the way her mind always came up with the answer to illuminate his difficulties was remarkable. He couldn't match the feeling he got when he showed her a batch of pages and her face lit up with pleasure, letting him know he was on the right track. Perversely he even enjoyed it when she criticized him, as if she'd understood better than he what he'd meant to say.

I pushed the button decisively, as if to make up for my delay. The door opened, and I faced a woman in an evening dress.
A
spectacular woman, actually, nearly six feet tall, all legs and flashing eyes and brazen shoulders and hips.

“Thanks.” She grinned conspiratorially, then looked me up and down. “Interview, eh?”

I gave her the same treatment. “Convention, eh?” I said.

She laughed, raucously
—
hardly the kind of sound I would have expected from someone who had walked off the cover of
Vogue. “
Nothing gets by you, does it, honey?
”
she said.

Two things happened next: I sneezed and the elevator came to a thudding stop.

The only real problem was the ending. Louey was partial to the unexpected twist, but as yet neither of them had come up with anything inspired. Clay couldn't decide just how to bring his hero's plight to a resolution; simply having him continue his fruitless search for validation in physical bliss with women seemed inconclusive and unsatisfying, while providing him a pat resolution—like a woman who fulfilled all his dreams—seemed a cheap trick that betrayed his thesis. He considered having the character suddenly and unaccountably in the arms of one of his male friends—the biggest protester against the hero's quest for meaning, say—just to satisfy Louey's sense of the absurd, but he suspected this was a private joke few besides Louey would appreciate.

My companion looked on in amusement as I played with the buttons. We couldn't be stuck.

“
You may as well give up,” she said. “Once it sticks, it stays stuck until the repairmen come to fix it.
”

“
But I have an interview in fifteen minutes. We can't just stay here!
”

She shook her head. “Doesn't look promising.
”

I moved to ring the emergency button, but a surprisingly strong hand covered mine and pulled me away. “Calm down,” she said. “Listen, there's nothing we can do but wait, so we may as well accept it and make the best of the situation.
”

“
Great,” I said. “How do you propose to make the best of three feet of space, no air, and nothing to do?
”

“
Depends on how you look at it.” With this, she slid to the floor, slipping off her shoes with a sigh of relief. “I've been dying to get out of these for hours. In fact, this whole ensemble is more than I can stand for one more minute.” Before I could blink, she was stripping off the charcoal stockings and then unzipping the tiny strapless dress. I could hardly believe my eyes.

“
You can't be serious,” I managed.

“
Why's that?” A smile played over her lips as she rose and inched out of the tight dress, revealing a breathtaking collection of flesh and bones.

“
Look,” I said. “I hope you don't mind, but I'd really rather—
”

“
Aren't you feeling a bit … warm?” she asked. My throat was parched suddenly, and when I tried to answer, no sound came out. She scolded me with an outstretched finger, then moved it so that she was tracing the inside of my collar, toying with the buttons of my shirt.

“
Are you crazy?” I pushed her hand away.

“
Now, now,” she murmured, “you don't want to get overheated.” She slipped the jacket off my shoulders; I looked around the elevator for escape.
Next thing I knew, she'd moved so close her breasts were pressing against me. My heart beat wildly as my nipples strained against the thin silk of my shirt as if to meet hers. Her hands came around me, barely skimming the surface of my body, unbuttoning my shirt. I stood frozen as she let my pants slide to the floor.
I stared, wide-eyed, into what seemed to be a normal, sane face
—
my breath was coming in short gasps now. Her tongue slipped into my mouth, licking the soft inside of each lip, and then
—