The Insiders (19 page)

Damn Eve Mason, the stupid bitch! Why did she have to linger in his mind? His mind was, after all, Syl's province. Lovely, golden, corrupt Syl, with her soft hands and wet mouth and gurgling laugh—his "teacher," he used to call her. Syl, who had been his teacher and his love and his mistress—Syl, who also happened to bfe his aunt. Goddam! He crushed the cigarette out and lit another. By now he had realized that he wasn't going to get any sleep until he had wrestled with his demons, an expression his analyst had used. This was something else the good doctor had taught him. If something was on his mind, he must get it out into the open, examine it,
think
about it, instead of pushing it away into the depths of his subconscious. Once he had thought something out or had made a decision of some kind, he could always relax again. Once he had decided on a certain course of action, he never looked back. It was the only way to survive, to stay in control. He thought about the way he'd had to wrestle with the car earlier, to pull it out of the skid. The challenge had excited him. Any challenge did, even the challenge of wrestling with his own thoughts—and particularly certain memories.

His eyes narrowed against the cigarette smoke, Brant stared up at the raftered ceiling. No mirrors here. No mirrors anywhere in his room. And no one else had shared it with him, ever. The game room was for his women of the moment and his friends' women and their orgies. For playing. This room was his alone, and no one else entered it except Jamison.

He turned restlessly on his pillow, smelling Eve Mason's perfume again, and was tempted with a spurt of anger to fling it away from him. Of course, he'd brought
her
in here. He didn't know why he'd done it— he'd never brought another woman in here (except Syl, and she was in his mind only)—but after the doctor had left, and the last stragglers, she'd looked so pale and
lifeless
—as if she were really dead and not just drugged. It took some people that way, Jack had reassured him, after he'd given her the shot. It was just a sedative; she'd wake up on her own and be just fine. Still, after everyone had gone, he hadn't wanted to stay there in that damned room any longer, and he couldn't very well leave her there by herself, so he'd carried her in here, noticing grimly that bruises were starting to show all over her ivory-tinted bo
dy, and feeling the soft silki
ness of her hair against his arm—the only thing she had in common with Syl, the texture of her hair.

He turned out all the lights and stared unseeingly into the darkness while he wrestled with his demons.

The money. Always, he had known about the money. It set him apart, forced him to build from within himself,
for
himself. The money belonged, at first, to his grandfather. And then that enormous, fabulous, written-about fortune had been left to him—all of it—carefully skirting his jet-set, indolent parents. Willed to three-year-old Brant Newcomb, II—the senior Brant being his grandfather—a small, bewildered child growing up surrounded by old people and silence. He remembered the silence most of all. For a long time, he hadn't dared to break that silence. If he cried, or even if he laughed, he was quickly picked up and carried away by his nurse, who would whisper to him that his grandfather was old and did not like noise. After a while, he had not been bewildered any longer, and they had not needed to remind him to be quiet.

His parents? They had sufficient money, as much as they needed for the duration of their lifetimes. His gay, flapper mother had dutifully given birth to a son, who was promptly and with secret relief handed over to the forbidding Newcomb in-laws (the old man had been the one who had
really
wanted a child from them, anyway), setting Fay and her darling Dickie free at last to do as they pleased. They visited occasionally—short, strained visits that ended with relief on both sides.

Fay Newcomb thought her son a pale, cold, and reserved little brat who had no real feelings, or warmth. And Richard, her husband, almost
disliked
the boy himself, resenting somehow in his dull, vaguely thoughtless, and pleasure-seeking soul, his son's self-containment and cold withdrawal from any bluff overtures. Well, Richard would think, Father has trained him well. Better than he has been able to do with
me.
And having produced an heir, Richard and Fay were at last free— and in command of all the money they needed for as long as they lived. No more stern lectures and strict allowance invariably overspent; no more painful interviews with a father who could not quite understand, nor hide his disappointment, how any son of his could turn out to be such a cloddish, plebeian individual. And above all, no more staring up at his fragile, golden-haired mother's portrait, which hung on the wall of his father's study to remind him constantly that it was he, Richard Carlson Newcomb, all ten pounds of him, tearing through those frail, thin tissues, who had been the cause of her death.

The boy, Brant, was fortunately considered to be like his grandmother; the boy, Brant, was to get all the family fortune; the will had been drawn up, it was all settled. Brant Newcomb, Sr., while he kept many mistresses, never remarried—they said he had worshiped his young bride, and now his grandson, who looked so much like her, became the reason for his existence.

Fay had one sister, much younger than she—as blond and curvaceous as Fay was brown-haired and fashionably thin. Sylvia was sent to a convent school, her flapper sister held up to her constan
tl
y as a bad example, until she ran away often enough to get expelled. After the last expulsion from her third school, and a quickly hushed-up episode concerning a boy who had given her a ride, Sylvia went to live with Fay and was married at seventeen to one of Richard's friends. She divorced him a few years later to marry again, this time a French movie producer who put her on exhibition in some of his movies. Sylvia did well enough with her lush good looks and what little talent she had, but divorced him at length to go to live with an Italian movie star who was regretfully but permanently married to his childhood sweetheart.

Sylvia, blond, voluptuous, and beautiful, was fond of her sister, and because she could not have children of her own (a botched-up abortion had taken care of that), she paid special attention to her nephew and seemed, indeed, to love him more than his own mother did. Sylvia visited the child much more often than his parents ever bothered to do, and would send him small gifts and brightly colored postcards from all over the world. Brant's grandfather did not actually
approve
of Sylvia, but he was shrewd enough to realize that her love for the boy was genuine, and so he let them alone.

Sylvia was the only young and beautiful thing in Brant's existence, the only person he let himself care about. When he was old enough to be sent to a private school and didn't see her for some years, her letters were the only bright spots in his otherwise strictly regimented life. He was studying hard, as his grandfather wanted him to do, and she was back to acting now, and somehow their vacations never seemed to come at the same time. Sylvia was traveling a lot—her letters and cards bore strange and different postmarks every time she wrote. But she
did
write—long letters in her large and sprawling handwriting, describing places she had seen and people she had met. Brant saved every one of them.

Far ahead of his contemporaries because of his private tutors and high IQ, Brant was ready for college before he was fifteen. He studied for his degree with the same concentration and lack of enthusiasm as he had done everything else that his grandfather had planned for him to do. It was something to be done and put out of the way. And then, when Brant was eighteen and almost ready to graduate, his grandfather died.

Richard and Fay didn't fly down for the funeral; they were cruising on some Greek millionaire's yacht and didn't see why they had to leave such charming, interesting people for a funeral. The old man was dead, wasn't he, and his will no mystery. Why be hypocrites? Why pretend? But Sylvia, hearing about it, flew over from Switzerland, where she had been vacationing.

She found Brant, her lit
tl
e nephew, a man already— in appearance, at least. On the surface the same air of coldness that was almost a withdrawal, but with a kind of arrogance added now, and a blazing, Greek god kind of beauty and purity of feature that took her breath away. Brant took after his dead grandmother, as everyone was swift to say, but Sylvia saw, too, with a kind of joy, that he resembled
her
also. They had the same thickly lashed eyes, the same finely chiseled lips. They could be brother and sister, she thought, and was determined that she would not let him shut
her
out, as he did the others.

"Brant— Oh, Brant, I'm so
glad
to see you again
!
"

She avoided his formally outstretched hand and kissed him warmly on the lips; her familiar perfume enveloped him and made him a boy again. He held her close, enjoying the strange and unusual feeling of a soft and melting body against his—the unfamiliar closeness to another human being.

"Syl!"

He had always called her that. Starting with "Silly" when he was very young and she was still a giggling but gently affectionate teenager who always had time for him, in spite of the thirteen-year difference in their ages.

"I'm happy to see you, too," he said. And then, diffidently, "Will you stay?"

She was the person he asked to stay on after the funeral, in the big house with all its guest rooms and its staff of impeccably trained servants. Everyone else went back to town, shaking their heads in disapproval and talking in shocked whispers about the lack of manners and feeling displayed by the younger Newcomb. But neither Brant nor Sylvia cared a whit for their opinions.

She stayed on
. They rode together, talked for hours, and he even taught her to shoot, laughing at the way she winced each time she pulled the trigger of the rifle. He talked to her and confided in her as he had never been able to do with anyone else. He thought afterward that their closeness made what happened later inevitable.

Sylvia had been at the house ten days. She grew restless after a while and wanted to go
out.
But out where? Why, she said, anywhere, it didn't matter. Did he enjoy dancing? Then he could take her to a discotheque. She had heard there was one in town. Did he mind escorting her?

"Wait, wait," she told him mischievously. "I won't let you be embarrassed. I don't look as old as I really am, do I? I know, I'll dress eighteen, and you—you could easily be twenty-one. You look older than you are, do you know that, Brant? But you need to act younger, be younger. Why, sometimes you seem much older and wiser than II"

During the drive out to town, she snuggled close to him, asked him teasing questions about other girls, just as if she were really his date.
Were
there any girls in his life? He shrugged coldly. Yes. Grandfather had—he grimaced—had him duly initiated. It had been an interesting experience, albeit clinical. And, he added carefully, he didn't trust women. Or have time for girls.

"Oh, Brant!" Syl said, half-laughing, but upset all the same because she thought he needed some warmth and love in his life. She squeezed his arm.

Her hair hung down her back that evening, and she had threaded a ribbon through it. She looked no older than eighteen, as she had promised.

Brant enjoyed that evening as he had enjoyed nothing before in his life. The men all looked at her hungrily, lustfully, for she was as gay, laughing, as a young girl; but she had eyes only for
him,
her date. There was nothing in his life as beautiful as Syl that evening— Syl dancing close to him, her perfumed hair grazing his cheek; Syl hanging on his every word, ignoring every other man in the room.

Outside the private club, afterward, he kissed her unexpectedly and felt her lips part under his, tasting of the bourbon he'd used to spike their drinks. Suddenly, she'd blinked her eyes and stiffened, pulling away quickly, pretending she was high.

"Ooh—I don't even know if I can stand straight. Guess you'll have to carry me home. But oh, Brant, it was such fun
!
"

"We'll have to do it again," he said slowly, feeling the unfamiliar tightening and swelling in his crotch, trying to slow his breathing—damning himself for being gauche and hating himself for being young.

Abrup
tl
y, needing to break the silence, Sylvia began to talk about having to leave.

"I—I have to go back sometime, Brant. Besides, I have a movie to complete, and—well, Europe is my home now, it's where I belong."

She saw the look on his face, and groaning inside herself, she touched his arm pleadingly.

"Come with me? Oh—but I
mean
it. You need Europe; you need change, travel, to find out what the rest of the world is really like. You need—you need to live, and to love, and, yes—even to be hurt. You need to learn how to feel. How can I describe it?"

She threw her arms out in a wide, dramatic gesture, and he began suddenly to laugh, throwing his head back, feeling the excitement and the strange new and forbidden tingle that started in his groin and spread all over his body.

Yes, he decided then. She was right; he needed to
feel.
He needed to get away, to see new things, meet new people—learn about life. And—he was rich, which helped. For the first time in his life, Brant began to realize how free and independent the money made him.

"Syl—let's go. Let's go—oh, I don't care! Tonight, if we want to. Will you let me stay with you?"

In his young, eager selfishness it never occurred to him that she might have someone else, some man in her life. But she, with her own kind of selfishness, did not care, either. She was caught up with the excitement of the moment, of feeling young, loving him. She caught his hands.

"Brant—Brant—of
course
you'll stay with me! Come on, let's hurry! We have to go back and pack and make reservations, and while we're doing that, I'll tell you all about it—about life in France and Italy and London and—oh, it"s all going to be so wonderful!"

She stopped, giggled. "Just think, we might even run into Fay and Richard. Imagine their
faces
if we do!"

At the thought, he laughed, too. She had brought laughter into his life, and he felt as if he'd only just learned how to laugh and have fun.

Syl taught him much more; she taught him everything. It was inevitable that it should happen, after all, and it did. She was too weak and too willful to let herself fight the lust she had begun to feel for Brant, mixed up with the real love she had for him; he was too young and hotblooded to let her stop him. She taught him slowly and with infinite patience that was rewarded by his retention and practice of everything she could show and teach him about sex. They made love endlessly and tirelessly—he was her young stud, her rich young lover, and she was the envy of all the other women in her set.

Under the warm sun of the French and Italian Riviera, Brant's body tanned to a golden brown as his hair bleached and grew longer. He became indolent, easily bored, and even more arrogant—except when he made love to Sylvia. With her, he was always tender, always seeking, speaking only to her of love, of caring. He grew, also, more sure of himself as a man and as a lover.

Brant had quickly gotten used to the money he had inherited and the power it gave him. He bought and learned to race fast cars and boats; he skiied on snow and in the water and took risks. He gambled in the casinos, and inevitably, too, he discovered other women. But they were all too easy and therefore eventually boring, without challenge. They offered themselves to him, and he took what they offered if he felt like it, but there was really only Syl for him—only Syl he could burrow into, stay in, let himself
care
about. With his youthful, selfish arrogance, he expected her to be all his, waiting for him; his alone, while he, being a man, could take what he wanted and needed of the other women who threw themselves at him.

The nights and days of frantic, endless loving began to take their toll of Sylvia, for Brant was almost insatiable as a lover. Under the harsh and burning sunlight, he began to notice the new, slight lines on her face, an almost imperceptible softness of her thighs and breasts. He became more open and blase about his other women; and one day Sylvia caught him making love to her new maid and threw a fit of screaming hysterics. She was almost ugly in her rage, and he slammed out of her house sulkily. When he returned repentan
tl
y that evening, she had gone out to dinner with the Spaniard, Morales, who was directing her new movie. Burning with an unfamiliar, jealous rage, Brant went to a party thrown by an expatriate Englishman and stayed until the end, becoming involved in his first three-way sex orgy that night.

Filled with remorse afterward and a sick kind of disgust, he went back to the villa. Syl was still with Morales. They lay together, sleeping, in her bed, which had been
their
bed. The covers, trailing onto the floor, exposed her body to the waist; her heavy breasts and tangled hair were half-covered by the man's revoltingly hairy body.

All injured vanity and hurt pride, seething with a mixture of rage and hate and pain, Brant walked out— left her house and took his own apartment in the same city. He would show her! He became a member of the most depraved and decadent set in Rome, going with both women and men according to the circumstances or as the inclination took him. He joined in orgies, experimented with drugs, made the scandal sheets regularly.

Having wanted only to punish Brant, and frantic now because instead of merely getting jealous and returning penitently to her, he had instead seized on her infidelity as an excuse to leave her, Sylvia tried to get him back. She telephoned; she wrote him letters; she made tearful scenes in public. He was coldly adamant.

She came to his apartment one hot noon, pounding on his door and screaming insults until he opened it to her. As soon as she saw him, she began to cry, her voice pitiful, pleading.

"Oh, God—don't you see that I love you? I love you, Brant. Don't hurt me anymore. Stop punishing me!"

"Sorry, but you blew it. You told me I should learn about life, Syl, and I've only just begun to learn. From all kinds of teachers, too. Man, am I learning!"

His voice was cruel, mocking her—her tear-ravaged face, her too-lush body, her lack of pride.

She couldn't speak, and he hammered home tire last bolt, the last and most painful insult.

"It's
over,
Syl. Find another gigolo, another stud, huh?"

"Do you honestly believe that's all it was, Brant? Do you?"

She had stopped screaming at him, her voice suddenly quiet, ragged-sounding.

"What was it, then? Was I looking for a mother, you for a son? Well, maybe that was it—maybe that's all it was. I wanted a mother, and you— What
was
it you wanted, Syl? Someone young and untiring to fuck you? Ah, who knows, who cares? Sorry, Syl, but I've still got a lot to learn, and
you
have already taught me everything you know."

He was standing in the doorway of his apartment; he hadn't let her come in, and the door opened wider behind him, the girl of the moment looking out sulkily. Sylvia knew her—she was the young French starlet who'd had the ingenue lead in her last picture.