Passion Play (30 page)

Many of the bridle paths, once a pleasure of the hunt, were now narrow and disused, their jumping obstacles—a pile of timber, a fence, the barricade of a fallen tree—collapsed, or mottled with patches of grass and moss, ragged bushes shoring them up like bats with outspread wings. In serried ranks along the paths, monumental firs, their shaggy peaks heavy with cones, bowed.

Soon Fabian would signal to Vanessa to turn off the path and, guiding their horses through the clawing underbrush, they would wander over the parched beds of streams, cantering along banks of sand that had caved in, past wasted trees felled by lightning. Roots dragged at the hoofs of their mounts as they lingered at the brink of humid gullies.

The heart of the woods, a chapel of silence, was invaded only by the scuttling flurry of the tender creatures of the ground, the chaste quiver of a fawn. Spent, drained of desire by the exhilaration of the chase, Fabian and Vanessa would dismount and lie down enfolding each other, brother and sister now, leaves of the same branch.

In the eyes of the other, each spanned measureless time, the frontiers of memory abolished. Heady with the dew of ferns, the scent of cold resin, they would talk of those hazards of the mind exposed to none until this, a privileged intimacy as limpid and inevitable as a forest brook, their revelations cloaked by branches hanging like whorls of dark smoke.

Through these exchanges of silence and confession, Fabian came to know Vanessa as he felt he had never known another. In the wisdom with which she set aside conventions, however binding or plausible their force, in the candor with which she saw herself, she never ceased to be, for him, sovereign in her possession of a flame of life.

There were times when Fabian was immobilized with the old pain in his back, unable to ride or to teach, confined to bed in his VanHome. After her classes let out, Vanessa would go to him, having told her family that she was studying with friends. She would prepare a meal for him and, when he had eaten, she would
smooth bed sheets, plump the pillows around him. Tenderness displacing passion, she girded him with a steady flow of patience, to ensure that, as he moved, no limb would be wrenched, no nerve strained. Under her hands, he would turn onto his stomach, and she would straddle his back, her weight on her knees, her hands kneading and easing his shoulder blades, pressing into his muscles until the last knot of rigidity was gone.

The sole grace of his age his ability to suffer quietly, he found himself contemplating whether his longing for her—the attraction of a man garnering loneliness brought by time to a crib of solitude—was the lost thread of some primordial quest of the child in him, of his need for a mother, the solace of her touch.

After Vanessa had tended him, she never forgot to feed, water and groom his ponies. Drowsy with the pleasant rustle of her moving about the tack room or kitchen or alcove, he would fall asleep, a last balm the certainty that, when he woke, there would be tucked under his pillow or waiting next to his bed a note of love from her.

As long as Fabian taught riding at the Double Bridle Stables, he and Vanessa saw each other regularly. Under some excuse-having the suspension of his VanHome checked or a tailgate light fixed—Fabian would leave the stables and take a winding country road to a clearing in the woods beyond Totemfield. Vanessa, alert not to be followed, would ride her bicycle toward the same retreat. She would enter his VanHome, dragging her bicycle behind, dropping it with the indifference of a child abandoning a toy, then rush to embrace him.

Fabian would then steer the VanHome onto one of the state highways around Totemfield and drive until he reached one of those seldom-used rest areas at the side of the road. There, among trucks and other trailers, his VanHome would not be noticed.

With the muted whirring of traffic the only intrusion of an alien world, he and Vanessa would be undisturbed, secure in the midst of his polo gear, among his books, Big Lick and Gaited Amble standing guard. Fabian knew that, because Vanessa was legally a minor, in so small a town as Totemfield the two of them had
to consider the possibility of surveillance—by her parents or the staff of her school—as well as the curiosity of her friends and the nosiness of local authorities. His VanHome was not impregnable; the prospect of a sudden invasion was never to be overlooked.

In imagining the possible circumstances of such an invasion, Fabian always considered the caprices and peculiarities of the laws regarding sexual relations wih minors. His behavior itself, he was aware, would be sufficient to support a conviction on the charge of statutory rape if it could be demonstrated that, “by circumstances and surroundings” alone, his acts had been indulged in with intent to arouse his passion; the consent, passion and sexual desire of his alleged victim were a matter of legal irrelevance.

Moreover, the law drew little if any distinction between direct evidence and that which was purely circumstantial. Even if the girl had not been a virgin at the time she had first met him, for Fabian to be found guilty, medical authority merely had to establish that a lustful act had been accomplished with her by the accused, once only or many times, not solely at the time in question, but at any time in the past, however remote.

In addition, Fabian knew that although a charge against him might designate Vanessa, his mature but legally underage companion, as “prosecutrix,” the law could excuse her, as a minor, from the obligation to testify should he be brought to trial. Nor could she be compelled to submit herself to cross-examination. In no scrupulous fashion, therefore, could Fabian effectively challenge charges brought against him.

Vanessa’s hymen became in their encounters a focus of allure, of exaltation; to break its seal was the only taboo. Their love-making found license in the existence of that intimate veil. In accommodating both her virginity and their desire, they refined pleasure, amplified excitement.

Sitting at Vanessa’s side, Fabian would bring her close. He might begin with his teeth to fret her neck, his fingers stroking its nape; she would arch up, her breath rasping. Gently he would
lay her down, his fingers fumbling with the buttons of her blouse; quickly she would brush his hand away and undo the blouse herself, yet leave it on, almost as if afraid to part with him for even a moment. He would unclasp her brassiere. However girlish its presence, the contours of Vanessa’s body were rounded and womanly; her breasts seemed small in proportion to her hips, her buttocks too full. His fingers would capture the nipples, twisting them gently, teasing, pulling, rolling them between his fingers until they hardened. He would move his mouth from one nipple to the other, then back again, sucking and pulling, until she started to squirm and moan, her head thrown back.

When Fabian would begin to loosen her skirt, Vanessa would raise herself slightly, to help him slip the skirt off. He would spread her calves with one hand, the other between her thighs, stroking in rhythm, exciting her; his hand would quicken, his fingers sliding over the filmy fabric of her panties, feeling the crease, the mat of her hair; slowly he would stretch the fabric, revealing the flesh beneath, until, his lips swept by the heat she gave off, he would boldly bend his mouth to her flesh.

It was broad and extended, long in shape, its outer lips spacious palms that were the mark of its beauty, lithe, fanning and outstretched, the shaft of the flesh a crest of frenzy surging under a hood. Fabian was intrigued by the bold protrusion of her inner lips, elliptical, yielding wafers, wet with her fluid. He remarked that one lip was distinctly longer than the other; she told him it was, like her harelip, a birth defect.

Her hands splayed wide on Fabian’s bed, her legs flexed outward, the calves gently pinioned by his hands, her back lifting, Vanessa would rise lightly, as if to offer her inmost self to him. He would touch her breasts again, then gather them in a caress. In haste, listing to one side, Vanessa would shed her panties, impelling herself against his mouth and chin, her pelvis in spasm. He would kiss her, the long lap and lick of his tongue blending his own moist heat with hers. What began as a moan would swell in volume as his head bent to her, the flick of his tongue prodding the hood, in quest of the firm gland, then snaring it with his tongue, releasing it, moving lower, wedging between the inner lips that parted before him. As she plummeted to orgasm,
she would open the wholeness of her flesh even wider to him, his tongue infusing her, unrelenting, until it arrived at her hymen, moving over the taut shield, then withdrawing to the chamber of her inner lips.

Now, in her car, Fabian placed his forefinger gently on her lip, tracing lightly the furrow of the scar.

“You frightened me so!” Vanessa said again. She glanced at him, and he caught the change in her mood; she brought her hands tentatively to her face, as if testing it for traces of Fabian’s hand. She lifted her arms and blotted the sweat on her face with the billowing sleeves of her dress. She touched a slight swelling by her mouth, then smiled. “Your left hand is a bit strong for making passes, Mr. Fabian. You haven’t become left-handed, have you?”

“Left-handed? A southpaw can’t play polo! You’ve forgotten all about me, Vanessa,” he said in mock grief.

Her hair tumbled in auburn disarray as she slumped against the door. “It’s been so long, Fabian! You used to tell me that you wanted to adopt me and be my make-believe father. You said we’d share our own special bond, a bond to be free, to surprise each other with freedom, which blood fathers and daughters don’t have.” She was pensive, her eyes on the darkness outside. “I felt such freedom only with you.” Slowly she turned and rested a hand on Fabian’s shoulder. “Will you promise, Fabian?”

“Promise what?”

“That you’ll surprise me.”

“Surprise you with what?”

The pressure of her hand increased, then she removed it. Abruptly, she started the engine. “You’ 11 think of something. Since I saw you last, you must have done more than pitch flowers to young ladies.”

She shifted into gear, backed the car onto the road, and drove it slowly forward.

She pulled up at his VanHome. He waited for her to say that she wanted to go inside with him, but she said nothing. The thought that this might be their last meeting, that she might not want him, gripped him, and suddenly he did not know what to say, how to tell her that since he had left her, he had had too little money to return to her and that now he had not expected to find her still in Totemfield instead of away at college. They sat in silence for a few moments, then, just as he was about to get out of the car, she again placed her hand on his shoulder; the hand rose to his neck, resting there, not committed to a full embrace.

“Why don’t you take me with you?” she asked.

Her scar was a saber cut in the night glow. He reached out and touched it; moisture tipped his finger.

“Take you where?”

“You used to say that one day, when I’d be free to go places, you’d return to take me with you. I’m not that little girl that visited you in your VanHome. I’m old enough, and free to go with you.” As she withdrew her hand from his shoulder, the aluminum panels of his VanHome, reflecting the headlights of her car, silvered her face, her hair.

“I’ve thought of you often,” she said quietly. “At times, I believed you were my only reason to grow older, to mature. I’m glad you came back to give me a rose at my party.”

He stepped out of the car and shut the door. “Tomorrow night?” he asked.

She nodded, and the car began to crawl away.

It was almost midnight. Fabian steered his VanHome through the city’s teeming, narrow heart, crowds spilling from its side
walks into streets narrowed by double-parked cars. Policemen threaded between the cars, methodically fixing parking tickets to windshields. As he waited for a traffic light to change, Fabian reflected that, only a short distance outside this packed zone of energy, the rest of the city, muffled, was caught in the inertia of the night.

Vanessa stretched lazily at his side and looked at him. He returned her gaze. In the stream of passing light, now sharp, then blurred, her eyes on him, the scar gleaming on her lip, she seemed tranquil, almost voluptuously at ease. Fabian sensed that, like her, he could readily succumb to the seduction of passivity, let himself flow toward her.

He chose to rupture the mood. “How do you feel?”

Her answer surfaced through the weight of her lassitude. “It would be nice to go swimming,” she murmured. “That would feel good.”

“A swimming pool?”

“Yes, a pool with lots of cool water.” She was musing; her hair tumbled over the headrest.

They had reached a park and were driving into its leafy blackness. The VanHome’s headlights slipped over police cars drawn up discreetly along the pathways, picked out a solitary cyclist, the bloodshot eye of the bicycle’s tail light winking back at them, then a sudden flurry in the underbrush, a scramble of small animals. At the fringe of the park, they passed two men, dim shapes on a bench, tucked into each other. The VanHome glided out of the park.

“You’ve never told me anything about your life,” Vanessa said.

“What do you want to know?”

“Why don’t you ever use your first name?”

“Most people can’t pronounce it. ‘Fabian’ is so much easier.”

“Were you ever married?”

“My wife died while you were still a child.”

“How long were you married?”

“Six years.”

“That long?”

“Six years seems long only to someone your age.”

“Did you love her?”

“I was attached to her.”

“Any children?”

“No. We never wanted any.”

“And your family? Where are they?” she kept prodding.

“I have no family.”

“How come?”

“My relatives died in a fire.”

“All of them?” She turned sharply to look at him, incredulous.

“Except my parents. It was arson. One of the biggest fires ever.”

“Is that why you won’t settle down under one roof?” She was pouting slightly, the scar a sullen blemish.

“Roofs catch fire,” Fabian said.