Naked Came the Stranger (26 page)

"Didn't have to do what?"

"That bit of business with the sweater," he said. "I noticed them
without any assistance from you."

"I like your work," Gillian said. "I loved
Mountaintop."
Mountaintop
was the latest. The critics had described it as a
bristling, earthy and not unpoetic story of girls on the loose and
boys on the bum. Kids with flowers in their hair and fire in their
loins, to quote the Time critic. In the novel they had demonstrated
for peace, group marriage, male prostitution and free public toilets.
In the memorable final scene they had all stripped, guzzled cheap
wine and chewed peyote. There had been a wild dance in the firelight
followed by the hero expressing his love to a twelve-year-old girl
and a three-year-old ewe. Gillian had sensed then, sensed again now,
that the author had lived the scene. And that was Caradoc's strong
point. Even his harshest critics agreed that he wrote from life, that
this was the literature of experience.

"It wasn't a bad book," the author said. "It wasn't as good as
some, not as good as
Anteaters and Belly Dancers, b
ut it
wasn't bad."

As he spoke, the overhead lights flickered once, twice, then
remained on. The end of the power failure. Gillian was sorry in a
way. The candles that had lined the long dark bar at Morarity's were
extinguished one by one; the saloon could now be seen in all its
60-watt splendor. Sawdust on the floor, grime on the windows, glasses
coated with dust. The six other patrons of the moment, the regulars,
should have been swept out with sawdust; they wouldn't have
noticed.

"My place or yours?"

"What?" she said.

"My place or yours?" he repeated. "I'm assuming you don't want
this to end any more than I do."

"Yours," she said.

Her intentions were innocent enough. There was no reason to look
on Caradoc as a prospect. There was no marriage to be tested. And so,
humming gently to herself, she calmly followed the writer as he drove
through downhill woodland toward the shore. The house, every window
now ablaze with light, sat on a rock base in a protective cove. The
tide was high and the bay water had risen above the foundation and
lay flat below his living room windows.

The wide tile-floored entranceway to the house was dominated by a
huge wire statue, a male nude with an erection. Indeed, the small
placard proclaimed the title of the work to be "Male Nude With
Erection." Each room held its own array of wonders. Gillian noticed
the names – Cezanne, Picasso, Van Gogh, Pollock, Warhol, Rivers
– and was suitably impressed. There was a huge portrait of
Caradoc's left eye – no mistaking the brilliance of that blue.
An oil of Paige Marchand in bra, panties and leather boots. Ivory
tusks, a mounted stingray, loudspeakers on every wall.

In the main room Caradoc paused to depress a wall switch that
simultaneously dimmed the lights and started the record player
– jetting the raucous sounds of the Jefferson Airplane from
every available wall.

There were none of the standard overtures. Caradoc simply stood in
the center of the huge room and undressed. First his jacket and his
shirt, then his trousers and his shorts. Though Gillian had done
nothing, said nothing, the author was in a state of visible
excitement. The sight was impressive enough. What was even more
impressive was the realization that Caradoc had served as model for
the wire sculpture beside the front door. There was no mistaking the
likeness; Gillian found herself wondering how long he had been able
to hold the pose.

"What do you think you're doing?" she said.

"It's the visuality," he explained. "Very important."

"I think you've misjudged me, Mr. Caradoc," she said.

"I don't think so, Mrs. Blake," he said. "And I want to be
completely honest with you. Everything that you say from now on will
be recorded."

"Will be what?"

"Taped," he said. "If I ever write about this experience, if there
is anything here worth writing about – and that should be a
challenge to you, Mrs. Blake – I want to get it right,
letter-perfect. I want to tell it like it is."

"You're wasting your time – there'll be nothing to tell."
She backed slowly toward the door. Caradoc, crossing the room with
surprising agility, stood between Gillian and her escape route. Still
in a clear state of sexual excitation, he advanced toward her.

"Don't," she said. "Please don't."

"I won't do anything you don't want," he said.

"I don't want anything but out," she said.

"That's what you say," he replied. "Some day you'll thank me for
what I'm going to do."

Gillian, paralyzed now, saw his right hand, his good hand, reach
out, felt his fingers close slowly over the top of her sweater. And
then in one swift sure move, he ripped the sweater away from her.
Then he reached for the skirt, shredded that.

"This is rape," Gillian said.

"It may begin as rape," he said, "but that's not the way it
generally winds up."

"Please don't," Gillian said. "I don't want this to happen, not
this way. I'll come back some other time when we feel better.
I'll…."

The promise was interrupted as his hands, gentle now, reached
around her and expertly unlatched the brassiere strap. As it fell to
the floor, Gillian turned and ran toward the first door she saw. A
mistake – it was the bedroom and it was too late to escape.
Caradoc stood at the doorway to the room, then came toward her,
forcing her to retreat back onto the most enormous bed she had ever
seen.

He stood over her then and smiled down at her. She closed her eyes
to shut out the sight of the man but there was no way to eliminate
the other sensations. Gillian felt cold. She shivered, braced herself
for the attack that never came. What Gillian recalled later was the
surprising gentleness of Caradoc as he applied himself to his task.
For long moments he did not put a hand on her. There was only his
mouth to reckon with – a mouth fastened itself to her throat,
then moved down to her breasts. She could feel his tongue as it
traced the outline of her rib cage, paused to explore her naval,
continued to chart a downward course.

Despite herself, despite a fear she could not really explain,
Gillian felt the warmth returning. The mouth kissing, pleading,
cajoling, insisting. Gillian felt herself relaxing, felt the tension
flowing from her legs, felt her body beginning to writhe, responding
to the mouth with the harmonic precision of an orchestra responding
to a conductor's baton. The tongue was alternatingly gentle and
impertinent, loving and demanding – very much like Caradoc
himself.

Gillian was aware of an argument raging within herself, a great
debate between body and mind. She felt herself lose all control over
her legs. The insistent tongue urged them open, and they opened. She
felt her back stiffen and arch. It was not what she wanted, not
really, but she found her hands reaching down to Caradoc's head,
holding tight to his long blue-black hair, encouraging him now,
guiding him, directing him.

And then it ended.

"All right, Mrs. Blake," she heard him say: "You can go home
now."

"What do you mean?" she said.

"I was just testing your reactions," he said. "I think I've got
what I wanted."

"You mean this – all this – was just an
experiment?"

"That's all, Mrs. Blake," he said. "You can go home now… if
you really want to."

He stood before her still physically aroused, taunting her,
waiting to hear her beg for him to continue. Waiting to record her
pleadings for some future novel. She had an unholy desire to reach
out and touch him, to hold him there, to make him plead for her. But
she did nothing. She retrieved her panties from the foot of the bed
and stepped into them. She found her brassiere in the living room and
put it back in place. She found an overcoat in the hall closet and
put it on. Caradoc watched all this in mute wonder, in a seeming
state of shock.

"Amazing!" was all he said.

"What is truly amazing," she said, "is your ego."

"Hey," he said, "you'll come back, won't you? You'll come back and
visit me, won't you?"

"I'll think about it," she promised – that and no more
– and then she was gone.

She thought about it and she came back. There had never been a
rationalization, a justification, a way to explain her repeated
visits to the isolated house by the water's edge. But time and time
again she returned. Possibly because Caradoc became such an effective
antidote for the sordid little affairs as they ended, perhaps because
he was a bracing tonic for the new affairs that were about to begin.
Most likely, however, because in a sense they both were scientists,
experimenters seeking life's more elusive truths. Even their
interests were similar – while he explored love, she explored
marriage.

It ended only because it had to end. Caradoc drained her of time
and emotion. With Caradoc she had found more than a mutuality of
interests, more than sex, more than the conversation that never grew
stale or repetitive. There came a time, as winter gave way to spring,
that she thought, not without alarm, that it might even be love. If
it was love, it would ruin everything – the show, possibly
herself. If not love there was no reason to continue. And so, one day
early in June, as Zoltan Caradoc was saying that this year, for some
reason, he didn't feel like going out on one of his annual
three-month hunting expeditions, Gillian calmly did what had to be
done. She ended it.

After that there was just one bit of communication. One last
letter to become a treasure beyond price for literary historians
tracing the career of Zoltan Caradoc. The envelope carried a postmark
from Haiti.