Murdering Mr. Monti: A Merry Little Tale of Sex and Violence (20 page)

I chose option two.

I also chose, while fully admitting that my mission had failed, not to be too hard on myself for my failure. I certainly wasn’t denying that my reach had exceeded my grasp—but what a reach! I’d devised the perfect crime, and though the execution left something to be desired, I had to give myself credit for possessing a quite remarkable talent for murder.

Or as Geena Davis, having embarked on a life of crime, so gleefully put it in
Thelma and Louise,
“I just feel like I got a knack for this shit.”

•

A
fter returning the Buick and grabbing a cab back to Georgetown Park to retrieve my car, I made a quick stop at the market to pick up some swordfish, which—topped with fresh salsa and teamed with pasta dressed with garlic and olive oil—would serve to show my husband that no matter how insensitively he behaved, I’d always meet my culinary commitments.

When I got home, however, two brief notes were waiting on the kitchen table—a “Mom, I’m with Jo. I’ll see you Sunday” from Wally, and a “Brenda, I need a time-out. I won’t be back until tomorrow night” from Jake. Wally’s note had a “love” in front of the signature. Jake’s did not.

In all of our married life, Jake had never before gone off for the night without advance warning. He had never gone off for a night without providing a telephone number where he could be reached. Nor had he ever gone off because he needed—what was that nasty phrase?—“a time out.”

My
Thelma and Louise
euphoria vanished.

Big bad bleak black thoughts clouded my mind.

I shoved the food into fee fridge and removed a chilled, unopened bottle of Chardonnay, deftly yanked out the cork, and filled up a glass. No, in case you are wondering, I am not a secret drinker, but sometimes a woman has to have a drink, A Saturday that includes attempting murder and being abandoned by your husband is—in my view—certainly one of those times.

My big bad bleak black thoughts grew bleaker and blacker.

Had I, in trying to kill Mr. Monti, lost my moral moorings? Had I maybe lost my husband too? Had I, in addition, lost my looks? A glimpse of my haggard self, as I carried my drink past the front-hall mirror into the living room, suggested that this might indeed be the case. I seemed to be a dead ringer for that woman in
Lost Horizon
who aged a hundred years when she left Shangri-La. No one would mistake me for Goldie Hawn’s first cousin.

For a few shaken moments I almost—along with my moorings and husband and looks—lost my self confidence.
I
felt myself surrendering to despair. But then my can do attitude—enhanced with several swigs of the Chardonnay—came, as it so often has done, to my rescue, allowing me to review and reconceptualize the current situation.

So I said to myself, If Anne Archer, in defense of herself and her family, is entitled to kill Glenn Close in
Fatal Attraction
, surely you are entitled to kill Mr. Monti.

Ergo I have
not
lost my moral moorings.

And I said to myself, If Angelica Huston, in spite of many obstacles, can get Jack Nicholson back in
Prizzi’s Honor,
surely you will be able to get back Jake.

Ergo I have
not
lost the man I love.

And I said to myself, Tomorrow morning, after a good night’s sleep, your skin will be brighter, your eyes will be wider, those brackets between your nostrils and mouth will vanish, and you’ll stop resembling that lady in
Lost Horizon
and start resembling Goldie Hawn’s first cousin. Furthermore, I reminded myself (although I still didn’t want him) that, just a few days earlier, in my kitchen, Philip Eastlake had found me wildly attractive.

Ergo I have also
not—
not in such a short time!—lost my looks.

By the time I had finished ergo-ing, I had finished my third glass of wine, which—since I’d skipped eating lunch—winged straight to my head, from which all thoughts had fled except for the oddly comforting thought that Philip Eastlake found me wildly attractive. A naked woman quoting James Joyce while on her elbows and knees in the moistly receptive Jumping White Tiger position is Philip Eastlake’s notion of wildly attractive. My mind traveled back to March 18, half a year ago, when I’d been that woman.

•  •  •

Arriving at noon that March day at the John Hay suite of the irreproachable Hay-Adams, I had found Philip eagerly poised at the open door, elegantly but improbably clad in a flowing silken black-and-gold kimono. He helped me off with my coat, continentally kissed me on each cheek, and told me he was delighted that I had come. Then he gestured grandly to a table set for two, next to a window that offered one of the most theatrical views to be found in the city: the White House, with its amicable majesty. And behind it, solemn and pure, the Washington Monument. (And in front of it, in Lafayette
Square, a homeless fellow napping on a park bench, though Philip, when I pointed this out, insisted that some of the homeless in Lafayette Square are really the Secret Service working incognito.)

I was on an adrenaline high, having spent from 6:48 until 11:10 in Joseph Monti’s vigorous embrace, after which I had scooted home to shower and dress and perfume myself for my second bout of adulterous activity. Which, in sharp contrast to my morning encounter, Philip eased us into with great tact.

Indeed, as we chatted over a meal of lobster bisque, grilled lamb chops, and champagne, you never would have believed we had sex on our minds, for we seemed to be getting together for the sole and exclusive purpose of discussing Yeltsin, the Middle East, the greenhouse effect, education, and the fluctuating state of the economy. I can’t quite remember how we got from the deficit to Oriental erotica, but that’s where we’d got to shortly before
P.M.
, when Philip opened his robe to display what he called—as he gently urged my hand upon it—his Weapon of Love, his Precious Scepter, his Jade Stalk, his Crimson Bird, the Lingam with which he yearned to fill my Yoni.

“Excuse me,” I told him, “I grasp the idea, but I don’t grasp the context.”

Philip was happy to help me with the context.

It seems that while he was doing research for his TV program on Oriental art, he learned that this art included the art of erotica—exquisitely painted and highly graphic and (to him) profoundly arousing portrayals of often esoteric acts of love. By the time he had finished pursuing his intriguing line of research, he had had—well, let him tell it—“an epiphany. I understood that the
interpenetration of the esthetic, and the erotic was my path to a thrillingly total soul/body experience.” (Which, of course, is how I picked up that damn phrase.) Philip had also acquired, in the course of his thorough review, of the material, a vivid and varied vocabulary of arcane sexual postures and bodily parts, legitimized by references to the Taoist and Tantric teachings of Eastern philosophy.

He spoke knowingly of these matters in his aristocratic voice. He spoke with his hands.

“The union of woman and man,” he explained, unbuttoning my blouse, “precisely mirrors the mating of Earth and Heaven. In making love”—he adroitly unhooked my new red peekaboo bra—“we recapitulate, microcosmically speaking, the macrocosmic harmonies of the spheres.” He paused to taste what he characterized as the Immortality Peach Juice of my breasts, causing my breathing to quicken and his Crimson Bird to flutter under my fingers. And then he went on to say—as he unzippered my skirt and dropped it to the floor, along with my stockings, lace garter belt, and panties—that what we were embarking upon wasn’t mere carnal contact but the merging of Positive Peak and Pleasure Grotto, of Yang Pagoda and Purple Peony.

“This just isn’t me,” I started to say as Philip removed his robe and stretched me out on the rug with my legs in the air. But then I reminded myself that I was here precisely
because
I didn’t want to be the old sexual me.

As Philip straddled my hips and draped my ankles around his neck, preparing my Honey Pot to receive his Ambassador, I huskily whispered, “Philip, wait. The Trojans.”

“We’ll try that one later,” he promised, resuming his efforts with an ardor that almost made me forget about safe sex. Fortunately, my purse was on the floor, within reach of my hand, and despite great distractions I finally extracted a condom. Which, after a few more moves that took me up to, but not over, the brink of bliss, he paused to put on. But instead of returning to what he proudly informed me was an inspired variation of the ever popular Pawing Horse position, he sat me upon his lap, easing my Precious Conch Shell onto his Jade Flute, and swayed us backward and forward, not to mention from side to side and round and round, in the even more in spired Shouting Monkey Embracing a Mountain Goat variation.

Once again Philip brought me to the very portal of paradise and stopped an instant before the bell was rung, a tantalizing tactic that he repeated again and again with impeccable timing. My nerve ends revved and ready, I eventually attempted to accelerate, but Philip—twisting our bodies into increasingly improbable positions—said we must move to the music of the spheres. And so he bent and folded me into the Mysteries of the Clouds and Rain position. And then he stood me on my head in the Donkeys in the Third Moon of the Spring position. And then he arched me over into the—

“You’re asking a lot of my lower back,” I was about to complain, when the music of the spheres picked up its beat, and Philip’s Faithful Servant addressed itself without restraint to the final requirements of my Valley of Joy.

And yes I said yes I will yes (I am, of course, quoting Molly Bloom in Joyce’s dense but deeply rewarding
Ulysses)
as inner and outer . . . and heaven and earth and micro- and macrocosm interpenetrated.

•  •  •

While the floor, two pink chairs, a floral print couch, and a Chippendale conference table had served as the sites of our acrobatic amours, we never got anywhere near fee bed until after. But after our passions were spent, we summoned the strength to crawl between the pristine sheets, where Philip napped and I evaluated.

Had I liked it? Hey, I’d
loved
it. All my molecules were humming. The sheets could ignite from the heat coming off of my skin. Every inch of my body—including my earlobes, my eyebrows, my belly button, my toenails—quivered with voluptuous satisfaction. My big Oriental O bad been, without any question, a once in-a-lifetime experience.

But once was enough.

Yes, even if I had been into long-term adultery, once with the Pair of Tongs position and the Bee Buzzing Over Man position, not to mention die Fixing a Nail and Soaring Seagulls and Spinning Top positions, was quite enough.

Why? Because it’s a miracle that I didn’t wind up in traction ate all of those tricky gymnastic gyrations.

But also, and mainly, because Philip never smiled.

What I mean is, he brought to his efforts to wed the esthetic to the erotic a dedicated, unrelenting solemnity. What I mean is, the man was remorselessly sincere. There were times when I wanted to laugh—when I thought I’d explode if I didn’t laugh—when the only response was to laugh—but I didn’t dare. Now believe me,
I am
willing—just as willing as anyone else—to be reverent abort acts of sexual love, but how can a person
feel reverent when doing a back bend? And while I was truly grateful for the attention that Philip’s Warrior had lavished so warmly on my Pleasure House, how could he speak those names with such a straight face?

Lying beside him in bed, I began to giggle—softly at first, and then dementedly. Yes, I thought, clamping both hands on my mouth so I wouldn’t disturb his rest, once was enough.

I drifted off to sleep, and when I awoke I found Philip gazing upon me adoringly. Adoringly, but as I was later to learn when we met the zoo, with full awareness of each and every physical imperfection from laugh lines to . . .

Anyway, there was Philip, gazing and quoting—I guess—from some Eastern book of love; “How delicious an instrument is woman. How capable is she of producing the most exquisite harmonies, of executing the most complicated variations, and of giving the most divine of erotic pleasures.” His Precious Scepter was showing some definite signs of perking up as he continued. “With minds freed from doubt and shame, we have not cooled the natural urges of our passionate—”

“Philip,” I interrupted, not wanting to deal with any uncooled natural urges. “It’s getting late. I’ve really got to go.” Which is when he insistently asked how soon we two could meet again. After which, complications set in.

•  •  •

My Philip Eastlake reveries and my end-of-the-bottle-of-Chardonnay golden glow were banished in a flash by the sound of his-and-her voices quarreling on my front porch. The voices belonged to Wally and Jo, who weren’t supposed to be at the house this evening. Their
words, despite the closed windows, came through step and clear. I don’t think you call it eavesdropping when people are speaking so loudly that you’d actually have, to leave the room not to hear. I did not leave the room.

“I said I’d drive you home, but I didn’t say I was coming in with you,” said Josephine.

“You’re not staying here. I can’t stay with you at your sister’s house. What,” Wally angrily asked, “is going on?”

“Separation-individuation,” Josephine Said, “is what’s going on.”

‘That’s fine. You go and separate-individuate from your father. That’s probably an excellent thing to do. But, damn it, Jo, we love each other. I’m the guy you’re marrying. Don’t separate-individuate from
me.”

Wally’s voice broke as his hurt and bewilderment overrode his anger. He (and his loving mother) were close to tears.

“I won’t feel guilty,” Josephine snapped. “I won’t let you make me feel guilty because I want some psychological space.” She let out a heavy sigh. “Oh, Wally, don’t you understand that I can’t just go from my dad’s domination to yours?”

Wally shouted “Christ!” and pounded his fist against the front door. “That’s nuts!” he said, and pounded the door again. “I am
not
your father. I do not
want
to dominate you. And if that’s what your shrink is telling you, then tell her for me that she’s totally full of—”