Lucky Bastard (22 page)

Oddly, Jack had the idea that Morgan loved him. In every respect but physical response, her behavior displayed the hallmarks of passion—of obsession, even. Morgan gazed at Jack as if she desired him—tenderly, as if she wanted desperately to take his body into hers and repeat over and over again the burlesque of procreation that was the calisthenics of the Movement. But this hadn't happened. If Jack had not known better, he might have thought that Morgan really and truly did not know about sex, that she was some sort of cryogenic virgin, a woman of twenty-seven who had been frozen and stored at absolute zero since the age of five. She was awake now, but in a state of puzzlement about the breasts and pubic hair she had grown in her sleep.

Rejection is a powerful aphrodisiac, and Jack was half in love himself. This weird absence of sexual awareness was, in its way, as exciting as the wild, cold-hearted couplings with Greta. Even more so, in a way. Having never before experienced the unattainable, Jack was beginning to understand why so much poetry had been written about it through the ages. Two days before commencement, he was still unsuccessful. Whitlow asked him how such a thing could be.

Only half lying, Jack replied, “The Morg is my Beatrice.”

“You mean, as in Dante?” said Whitlow, eyebrows climbing.

“You mistake virtue for perversion, you fucking cynic.”

Whitlow gave Jack a look of mock sympathy. “You need help,” he said. He looked left and right, then reached into an inside pocket and produced a twisted marijuana cigarette in a plastic bag. “Tijuana gold,” Whitlow said. “A graduation present. Get her to smoke it. And may it rid you of this hag.”

5
Because she hated Ma Bell—believing, like Greta, that the CIA was one of its wholly owned subsidiaries—Morgan did not have a phone. Therefore, later that evening, Jack knocked without forewarning on the door of her apartment. It was his first visit to Roxbury. Morgan had been right: Merely imagining this neighborhood filled him with fear. Seeing the reality terrified him.

She lived in a fourth-floor walk-up. Stepping over children both sleeping and waking who perched on the steps as if waiting for something to end or begin, Jack made his way upward. Morgan's door stood at the end of a cluttered dark hallway that reeked of milk, urine, scorched food. Through the door, a brand-new one, sheathed in steel, he heard the sound of very fast typing. He knocked. The typewriter keys ceased to rattle; he heard a page being ripped from the platen. Morgan's green eye appeared in the peephole, wary even though disembodied. The peephole closed. He heard the sound of many chains and locks being undone.

Morgan did not seem to be surprised by Jack's arrival—or particularly pleased by it, either. In silence, she refastened the various chains, deadbolts, and bars. A blackjack hung by its thong on a hook beside the door.

She wore a long T-shirt but no other garment. Jack watched appreciatively as she worked on the locks, bending and stretching, putting her whole body into the effort. Her bottom was harp-shaped, womanly, and pleasing, like a nymph's bottom in a painting by Bouguereau. Jack had never seen her legs before. They were long, as he already knew, and shapely and strongly muscled, as he had suspected, but the remarkable thing about them was that they did not match. The left one was much thinner than the right one. Each in its own way was normal, even pretty. But they were not a pair.

That was why she always wore pants. Her bib overalls hung from a hook by their straps. He expected her to grab them and put them on, but instead she sat down in a kitchen chair and hid her legs under the table.

She still had not spoken. The apartment consisted of one big room with the table in the middle, a Murphy bed folded up against the wall, an old-fashioned wardrobe trunk, and an alcove kitchen with sink, hot plate, and tiny refrigerator. Through an open door Jack could see a bathtub and toilet. The table was piled high with books, but otherwise the place was spotlessly clean. A tumbler of apple juice stood beside the typewriter.

Morgan wasn't wearing her glasses. Her eyes were large, green, slightly tilted. Suddenly she swept her hair over one shoulder and held on to it with both hands as if to keep from falling off the chair. It was the most maidenly gesture Jack had ever seen her make, and certainly the most unexpected.

Jack said, “Do you always type without your glasses?”

“Always. I only wear them for distance.”

Jack looked more closely at her swimming, slightly-out-of-focus eyes and realized that Morgan was wearing contact lenses—the only woman in the world, he thought, who wore glasses in public and contacts when she was alone.

Morgan said, “Why are you here, Jack?”

“To celebrate,” Jack replied.

“Celebrate what?”

“Tomorrow. The big day. How about a pizza?”

“Jack, tomorrow doesn't mean a thing. I'm busy.”

“Doing what—writing a paper on the night before graduation? Give me a break.”

Expressionless as usual in the face of innuendo, Morgan said, “What kind of a break did you have in mind?”

In return, Jack smiled at full wattage.

Morgan stared. Quizzical and very nearly smiling herself, she said, “I'm sure you don't realize it, but you look kind of like a Kennedy when you smile.”

Jack said, “No kidding? Is that a point in my favor?”

Morgan was still holding on to her hair, and she was still wearing nothing but a T-shirt. Her legs were not crossed, nor were her arms. She had just said something to Jack that could be construed as a compliment. He was beginning to think that this might, after all, be his lucky night.

Jack produced Whitlow's marijuana cigarette.

Morgan said, “What's that supposed to be?”

“A graduation present.”

“I thought you didn't do drugs.”

“I don't. It's for you.”

“How sweet.” Her voice dripped sarcasm. “What, as an aid to seduction?”

Jack said, “Jesus, Morgan, lighten up. You've got your blackjack.”

This seemed to amuse her. She said, “Okay. There are matches in the kitchen.”

Jack fetched a kitchen match and lit the joint for Morgan. She inhaled deeply, doing something she had obviously done many times before. Her chest expanded, breasts stretching the T-shirt. Eyes squinting, she passed the joint to Jack. He waved it away.

She exhaled. “None of that shit, Jack,” she said. “You brought it, you help smoke it.”

“I have no idea how.”

“Like this.”

She inhaled again, then passed him the joint. Jack took a mouthful of smoke and held it. He hated the taste. Smoke leaked from his nostrils. He opened his mouth and the smoke rolled out.

“Again,” Morgan said. “Inhale.”

Jack dragged inexpertly on the cigarette.

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” Morgan said.

She got up out of her chair. Static electricity had pasted the tail of her T-shirt to her bottom. Morgan leaned over him, breasts swinging freely beneath the gray cloth, and clapped one hand over his mouth. She pinched his nostrils shut with the thumb and forefinger of her other hand. Jack's eyes rolled. He swallowed the smoke and coughed, then retched.

Morgan said, “Give me that fucking thing.”

Sitting in the kitchen chair, drawn out from the table now, she smoked the joint down to the last half inch. Jack looked at her legs. She put them on the table, ankles crossed.

“They never matched,” she said. “One was always smaller than the other. What's your secret?”

Jack pointed at his lap.

“Ah,” Morgan said. “Omar the tentmaker.”

Conditioned by Morgan's frigidity, Jack was taken unaware by this remark. He realized that he was a little shocked that she had it in her to say such a thing.

She pulled the Murphy bed down from the wall and stripped off her T-shirt. She had endearing cockeyed breasts: one pink areola stared straight at Jack while the other glanced shyly to the side.

Jack took off his own clothes—speedily, lest she change her mind. Reclining on the bed with one ankle crossed over the other, Morgan watched, unblinking, silent.

Jack had never felt such intense sexual desire. Except once, in the Daimler. He was afraid it might be over for him before he could make it to the bed.

6
Jack soon found that Morgan unclothed was no more responsive than Morgan in bib overalls. As soon as he joined her on the bed she wound her smaller leg around the larger, tight as a tropical vine. As if performing some perverse yoga exercise, she then hooked her left foot around her right ankle. This utterly defeated Jack's tried-and-true technique with girls whom he wished to spare the trouble of saying no. Try as he might, he could not get Morgan's legs uncrossed, much less slip between them, Vaseline at the ready. Jack was trapped in the portcullis of desire with no way out and no way in. Morgan did not resist his fondling her breasts, but even more than most men, Jack had no interest in foreplay sans aftermath. His urgency was great, but when he tried to guide her own hand onto his body, Morgan clenched her fist and resisted. He pressed himself against her and groaned. She watched his twisted face with clinical interest, neither resisting nor assisting.

Panting, Jack said, “What in the name of God is the matter with you, Morgan?”

“In the name of who? Nothing that I know of.”

“Well, at least tell me this much: Is it just me, or are you always like this?”

Morgan said, “It's not just you.”

“What is it then, men as a class?”

“No.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Jack, listen,” Morgan said. “I'm not the one who just came all over you, so I don't owe you any explanations.”

She got out of bed and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. After a moment Jack heard water running in the tub. Stealthily, he tried the bathroom door. It was locked. He went back to the bed, covered up and closed his eyes, feigning sleep. Perhaps Morgan, thinking him asleep, would drift off after her bath. Unless she tied her ankles together, he could wake her up with a big surprise. The key to Jack's plan was to stay awake. But, exhausted by the struggle and by the marijuana, he soon fell asleep in spite of himself.

Much later, he woke shivering with cold, to find himself alone in the bed. He groped for the covers; they were gone. He tried the bathroom door; it was locked. Morgan had taken the blankets and locked herself inside.

“Hey, Morg,” he said, knocking.

No reply.

Jack covered up with Morgan's naval coat and fell into a deep sleep.

He opened his eyes and saw Morgan, completely naked, crouching at the foot of the bed, legs apart, fur showing. The room was filled with morning sunlight. Morgan stood up on the bed and threw back her hair with a practiced shake of her head; it swirled away in a ripple of light, thousands of individual hairs moving as one. But, amazingly, it was dyed: the roots, like her pubic hair, were dark.

With an incandescent smile—it
was
his lucky morning!—Jack sat up and reached for her. His hands were jerked to a stop. He felt sharp pain in both his wrists. His wrists were handcuffed to the bed. His hands, fingers curled, were encased in surgical gloves.

Morgan said, “Don't struggle. You are completely in my power.”

“Jesus Christ, Morgan!”

“Relax.”

She moved between his legs. He realized that he was tied by the ankles to the foot of the bed. Did she have implements of torture? Her blackjack still dangled from its hook by the door. There was no sign of anything sharp. She seemed to be empty-handed. But what might be under the bed? He began to hyperventilate.

Morgan said, “Be calm, Jack. It's only a game. Just cooperate.”

She was expert, practiced. Though still fearful—what was going to happen afterward?—he was soon in a state of almost terminal excitement. Adroitly, Morgan pressed the underside of his penis with a thumb, preventing ejaculation. He writhed in agony. She continued the pressure until the spasm passed, gazing sympathetically into his wild, pleading eyes. She was not wearing her contact lenses, and the glitter of anger had vanished from her eyes, which now swam with the dreamily vacant look of the very myopic. Jack smelled shampoo, perfume, female musk. Morgan's legs gleamed from the razor; her armpits, too, were shaved. Apparently she had prepared for this pornographic encounter with a ritual bath.

Jack started to speak. Morgan, straddling his thighs, drew an
X
across his mouth with a slippery fingertip. He tasted Vaseline. She showed him her palm, on which a gob of petroleum jelly glistened. She greased him, deft and quick. And then with a brilliant smile—she had beautiful teeth all the way back to her throat—she turned her back, seized him, fitted him.

Jack thought,
The Daimler!

He had suppressed, banished, forgotten the details of his last terrifying moments with Greta. But now they came flooding back as Morgan, as if playing a role for which Greta's ghost had rehearsed her, descended on him in some sort of reenactment of the last sexual act performed on him in Germany. He heard Morgan screaming, the same long shriek that Greta had uttered. Just as before, he was seized by an uncontrollable spasm of fear and remembrance, as if he was remembering his own death as it had happened in a former life. In mid-orgasm—the first time he had ever had a conscious thought at such a moment—he realized that, figuratively speaking, that was exactly what was happening.

He lay for a long time with his eyes closed. When he opened them, he found Morgan waiting. She was wearing her glasses; nothing else. He was too frightened to laugh.

“Hi,” Morgan said in a clear Junior League voice he had never heard her use before. “Welcome to the country of the blind.”

7
What followed, to Jack's surprise, was a week of impulsive lovemaking. Afterward Morgan sometimes had the face of a woman in love—of a woman long deprived of love and starved for it. She fucked, Jack told Whitlow when they settled their bet on Commencement Day, like a widow who lived with her mother.