Naked Came the Stranger (20 page)

He pulled her against him, feeling her stomach and thighs press
into him. His right hand was on her back, his left at the curve of
her waist-buttocks, and his mouth was starting at her neck.

"You'll rumple my dress, Taylor."

"Sweet Jesus, Gillian, I've got…"

"But I'll take it off," she said.

With her right hand she ran down the zipper and in one motion, it
seemed, she pulled the dress over her head. She stood before him in a
half slip and a bra. Now, looking at him she unhooked the bra,
bringing it free in her hand, standing erect, her breasts not large,
but firm and white and straight out.

"Why don't you loosen your tie, Taylor?"

Taylor stopped staring and pulled at his tie as she walked across
the room. She stopped beside the Baron's glass-topped desk, and on
the desk she laid her dress, smoothing it out full length. She put
the bra on top of the dress. And then the half slip. She was standing
nude when she picked up the twin pictures in the single frame.

"This is the Baron," she said, "and your wife?"

'Yes," Taylor said. "Yes."

Gillian put the pictures back on the desk, placing them at an
angle that left the Baron and Taylor's wife looking out across the
room. Looking out at Gillian and Taylor.

"Taylor," she said, "do you love your wife?"

"Good God, Gillian, how do I know?"

He was undressed now. And he was moving across the room to her,
sucking in his stomach and wishing he still had the old suntan.
Gillian wasn't even looking at him.

"And this is the Baron's… what did you call it?…
business
wheelchair? The fast one?" Naked, she stood as easily as
if she were in Lord and Taylor's at 11:30 in the morning, trying on a
new dress. She picked her bra from the desk and hung it across the
left shoulder of the Baron's fast wheelchair. "Wear it with honor,"
she said.

"Don't forget that goddam thing," Taylor said, "and leave it
hanging there."

"Taylor, are you
afraid
of the Baron?"

"Ah, hell, Gillian, just remember to get the thing. I've got to be
back here in the morning to explain something the Baron'll be
madder'n hell about, and it's going to be bad enough without a goddam
brassiere hanging on his fast wheelchair."

Gillian picked her panties from the desk and hung them on the
right shoulder of the wheelchair. Taylor caught her from the side and
pulled her around, feeling her body against his. Walking her
backward, he moved her in front of him. "If you're so interested in
the Baron's chair, Gillian, I'll show you something else." With three
steps, he maneuvered her and then pressed her over and came down on
top of her, feeling her legs come up.

"This is the Baron's vibrating chair," he said. "When he's not
sitting in that goddam fast wheelchair, he sits in this one
and… vibrates."

It was also a reclining chair, tufted brown, with a footrest, and
Taylor dug at Gillian's breasts with his face and mouth.

"Start it up," Gillian said.

"Godawmighty," Taylor said. "Are you talking about the chair?"

"If it vibrates, then start it," she said. "Or do you want me to
get up and do it?"

Taylor leaned over the side, feeling for the buttons and gears.
With his right hand, he pushed a lever and he felt them start, he and
Gillian and the tiny wire-nerves in the chair that made it vibrate.
And he was inside of Gillian, too, now, warm. And it was Gillian and
he and the tiny wire-nerves and he and Gillian and Gillian and the
tiny wire nerves and he and Gillian and he and he and he and Gillian
and He and He and GILLIAN and HE and GILLIAN and HE… and
HE… and he and he and Gillian… and gillian. And
gillian.

The chair, its fabric crinkly against Taylor's side as he rolled
over, was still vibrating. He reached over, feeling for the
lever.

"Leave it alone," Gillian said quietly. "It feels good."

As they lay there, with the left side of Taylor's body against
Gillian, he could feel the vibrations of the tiny wire-nerves. On his
right side, the vibrations were direct. On his left, coming first
through Gillian, they were soft.

"You're good, Taylor," she said. Gillian realized, with a start,
that it was the first sincere compliment she had paid a man since the
beginning. She was quiet, reflective, the lines on her face easy.
"Did you like me?"

"Damn knows," Taylor said. "You're something
else
, Gillian.
How do I tell you? How do you describe it?" Unconsciously, his hand
went toward his chest for a cigarette and then over the arm of the
chair, as if he were reaching out toward the lamp table at home, the
lamp table that separated Sarah's bed from his own.

"Why do men want to smoke afterward?" Gillian said.

"I don't know," Taylor said. "But you sure to God do. I guess if
you didn't smoke, you wouldn't want to. But if you smoke, you sure to
God want to."

Taylor got up, going across to his coat to get a cigarette, and
wondering how he looked to her from the back, naked. He brought her a
cigarette, too, and they lay there together in the vibrating chair,
smoking and not talking.

Lightly, Gillian kissed Taylor on the neck and then on his
chest.

"You're good, Taylor."

"I'll tell you one thing," Taylor said. "I've never felt so good
in this office, not in the past fourteen years."

Again Gillian kissed Taylor on the chest and then, pushing with
her hands, she was standing, walking toward her clothes. Taylor
followed her. On the desk he could see the pictures of his wife and
the Baron, both watching him, and they both seemed angry. He wondered
how they liked him naked.

Gillian picked her bra from the left shoulder of the Baron's
wheelchair, started to stretch her arms through the straps, but
Taylor pulled her to him. She held the bra now in her right hand and,
as her arms went around him, Taylor felt the bra skid once, gently,
against his back as it slipped to the floor. Carefully, he lowered
her back into the wheelchair.

With Gillian's arms around him, her body there just below him,
Taylor Hawkes spun the wheelchair away from the wall. In the open
room, on the deep green carpet, he gave a push with his foot and
tried to jump aboard, as he'd jumped as a child on a rolling
scooter.

"The old sonofabitch," he said.

They hit the brown leather couch and came to a stop there.

"My God, Taylor!"

He came down on her, pressing her legs apart, against the arms of
the chair, and feeling his knees driving against the wheels. Almost.
His knees off the wheels, closer, and he was there now, there, but
they were rolling again.

"Goddam!"

"Make it stop rolling, Taylor!"

With his foot, he drove the chair into the angle between the couch
and the wall and lunged. "Taylor! Oh, Taylor!" Gently, rhythmically,
the chair skidded, forward, backward, gently rhythmically.

Taylor heard it, didn't hear it, thought he heard it, thought he
didn't hear it – the click of the lock at his back. The click
of the lock and no other sound as the rubber tires of another
wheelchair moved silently across the deep green carpet. Glancing up,
Taylor saw him, saw the Baron, rolling toward them. And now
braking.

"Well, Taylor." The Baron.

"God, Taylor, don't stop!" Gillian.

And now all of them the three of them!

"Taylor! Taylor!" This was Gillian.

"Dammit, Taylor, if you break my chair…"

"Now, Gillian! NOW! Gillian, oh, Gillian!"

For a moment Taylor lay there. And then, slowly, they rose from
the wheelchair, he and Gillian.

She made no effort to hurry or to cover herself. She walked to the
spot where she had dropped her bra on the floor and bent to pick it
up. The Baron, in his black suit, with his round, silver head cocked
slightly, turned the chair an inch or two, Taylor thought, to watch
her walk.

And then the chair and the black suit and the round silver head
were directed again at Taylor.

"In a wheelchair," the Baron said softly. "That's
something,
Taylor." He rolled his own chair six inches backward
and six inches forward. "Well, Taylor, you won't have to explain the
Honest ad tomorrow. I'll mail you your check." His voice was still
even, quiet. "And I'll have a car pick up Sarah tonight."

"Baron," Taylor began, "if you…."

"Good evening, Taylor." The Baron was starting to roll. Then he
paused, a last look at Gillian. She had picked up the bra but she
hadn't put it on. In her right hand, it swung at her knees.

"You have a fine body, young lady," the Baron said.

"Thank you, Baron Morgan," Gillian Blake replied. Stretching, she
put her arms through the brassiere straps. The Baron made no effort
to leave. "You don't live in King's Neck, do you, Baron?"

"Old Brookville," he said.

"Too bad," Gillian said. "I was going to ask why don't you roll
over and see me sometime."

Gilly: Did you ever stop to realize how everything
has become sexier these days, Billy? You know, movies, books,
magazines.

Billy: I know what you mean. And without being a prude, I think
it's something we have to watch carefully. Because in some cases, it
borders on, well, smut.

Gilly: Exactly.

Ansel Varth walked as though he should have had a
staff in his hand and a tribe of Israelites trailing him. It was,
Gilly thought, bizarre in a man in his early thirties. There was a
grotesque quality about him that had aroused Gilly's curiosity
– and, concomitantly, her libido. She needed something
different. Ernie Miklos's ice cubes, Paddy Madigan's mini-member,
Arthur Franhop's aberrant innocence, Joshua Turnbull's flying leap
– all these encounters had left Gilly jaded. She was looking
for a pick-me-up.

She had noticed Ansel Varth about the streets of King's Neck. She
had seen him standing beside the gasoline pump in the Shell station,
seemingly absorbed in the roll of the high-test meter. She had
glimpsed him leaving his home on Frigate Lane with his plump little
wife beside him. And she had seen him sometimes at the post office.
She had heard that Varth was an accountant who worked out of his
home, and he apparently conducted much of his business by mail. It
was at the post office that Varth was at his most grotesque. When he
approached the slots, he had the furtive quality of a small boy who
had dirtied himself and had decided to brazen it out by walking as if
the lump in his trousers did not exist.

They reached the slots at the same time, and Gilly made contact.
"Excuse me," she said, brushing against him. "I want to send this to
Manhattan. Do I use the out-of-town slot, or the local slot?"

"The out-of-town slot," Varth answered, speaking with the careful
enunciation of a second-rate comedian attempting to imitate a Harvard
homosexual. "The out-of-town slot is for all mail not to be
delivered within the unincorporated area of King's Neck. Any mail
that is to be delivered within King's Neck goes into the local slot.
I usually use the out-of-town slot."

Bingo! The voice was unmistakable. There was simply no question
about it. Gillian knew immediately where she had heard it before.
Gotcha you bastard, she thought. Then she started laughing. Of all
people, she thought, Ansel Varth. Why he even wore a homburg.

"Well, I'll tell you one thing," she said. "I never thought it
would be you."

"I beg your pardon," Varth said.

"Come on, you know who I am. I'm Gillian Blake. God knows you've
spoken to me enough times."

"I don't believe I've had the pleasure, Mrs. Blake. I'm Ansel
Varth from Frigate Lane."

Gillian stared at Varth and trapped his eyes. She smiled her
sweetest smile. "Oh, we've had the pleasure," she said. "I've got a
pair of big ones, and you're jack the Fucker."

Varth's mail bag plopped to the floor. He looked as if he were
going to cry.

"What was it you told me the last time you called?" said Gilly.
"Oh yes, you came to a point. And you said I was a whore."

Now Varth looked as if he might be sick.

"Don't worry," Gillian said. "It was kind of nice, having a crank
caller, all my own. Besides, you've heard of Madame Pompadour. Well,
I'm her cousin, Lady Asshole."

"Please… " said Varth.

"Don't worry," she said.

"You mean you're not…."

"No," said Gillian. "Actually, it interests me."

Ansel Varth took off his eyeglasses. "Holy shit!" he said.

"That's better," Gilly said. "Why didn't you tell me it was you
making all those phone calls? We would have met long before
this."

"Son of a bitch!" said Varth.

Varth hastily stuffed his mail into the slots, and asked if they
could go somewhere. Gillian suggested a motel. She was having a
marvelous time. Ansel Varth might be just the tonic she was looking
for. She was going to have this coitus-crazed accountant make an
entry. Maybe even a double entry.

Varth loosened up during the drive to the motel. He was still
talking as they entered the room. His conversation was full of words
like cunt and snatch.

Gilly was enchanted. Nobody had ever talked dirty that way to her
before.

"I'll tell you one thing," she said. "You certainly don't sound
like an accountant."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, you can enunciate like one, but you'll have to admit that
your conversation isn't what you'd expect from an accountant."

"What do I sound like?" he asked.

Gillian laughed. "Like a crank-caller," she said. "Or like someone
who writes dirty books."

Varth, who had just shucked off his topcoat, dropped on the bed
and stared at her.

"Cocksucker!"

"What's the matter?" she said.

"You're fantastic. You must be psychic or something."