Those Wicked Pleasures (23 page)

‘Yes, go ahead, beg.’ There was a hardness in his voice that had not been present seconds before. She felt suddenly as if she wasn’t there. Only her body and his lust seemed to have significance. He seemed transfixed by the large dark nimbuses of her breasts. It excited her, so that her nipples performed, became erect.

‘The most depraved thing about you, Lara, is not your cunt and what you can do with it, but your tits and what I can make you do when they respond to me.’

He took the nipples between his fingers, rolling and squeezing them. Then he tantalised her with his tongue upon them. He felt her lean in to him.

‘Well?’

Lara could say nothing. Her body was already
eloquent. She was moving, just perceptibly, from the waist down, back and forth, with slow, sensuous, pelvic gyrations, not wholly conscious of what she was doing.

‘You want me? Go on, beg. Tell me how much, what you will do to have me.’

She couldn’t do it. She wanted to. After doing just that for so long, it should have been easy for her. But it wasn’t. She wanted him as much as she ever had. But somehow she felt that she had gone as far as she could. She removed his hands from her breasts, bent forward and kissed him lovingly on the lips.

When she straightened up and gazed into his eyes, the hardness that had been there, the meanness, the sadistic pleasure he was deriving from her, seemed to have vanished. He rose from the bed and was reaching for her, to take her in his arms, when the door suddenly opened.

Lara jumped back, her arms spontaneously folded across her uncovered breasts. The woman who stood framed in the doorway was clearly stunned by the scene she had burst in upon. A menacing stillness enveloped her.

The mere charm of youth was absent, displaced by a ravishing elegance. Her beauty quite took Lara aback. She reached for the red silk sweater and turned her back to pull it over her head and cover herself with it.

‘Amanda, not a very clever move. And your timing, my dear, is right out.’

‘Agreed. But you should have come downstairs, Jamal, instead of provoking me. Can’t you see how angry I am? I feel so humiliated by all this. But I’m not going to apologise for the intrusion. I want to talk to you, Jamal, and now. Right now.’

Lara caught the note of real anger. She grabbed her sneakers and started for the door without a word, trying not to look at the woman.

‘Stay!’ Jamal took Lara by the arm and pulled her to him. He then propelled her into the wing chair near the fireplace.

‘I want to leave, Jamal.’

‘Quiet! You might learn something from this.’

‘Let her go, Jamal. She’s only a child.’

‘Not quite, Amanda.’ His mocking tone said too much. More than Lara wished. ‘Now, what do you want, Amanda?’

‘Not in front of the girl.’

‘Only in front of the “girl”, Amanda.’ It was more a directive than a suggestion.

Lara began to wonder what she was caught up in. She wanted to be anywhere but where she was. The woman carried herself like a movie goddess, dressed in Ralph Lauren. Her anger was as fiery as her red hair. She managed to maintain a degree of poise which to Lara seemed superhuman. For the woman’s situation seemed unpromising.

She threw her handbag down on the chaise. ‘By god, you’re a real shit. You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?’ She seemed angry enough to hit him.

‘No, why should I? OK, out with it, Amanda. What do you want?’

The woman nervously tossed her auburn hair back from her face. She paced the floor for several steps in front of Jamal. Her fingers, embellished with gems – a large square emerald surrounded by diamonds on one finger, a square-cut diamond on another – were raked through her hair. ‘You know what I want, you bastard. Take me back.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we were happy together.’

‘That’s no longer a reason.’

‘I can’t live without you.’

‘Neither is that.’

Lara could bear it no longer. She rose from the chair, but Jamal shouted, ‘Lara, I said stay and I meant it.’ Stunned by his anger, she sat down.

‘You don’t know what you’re saying! You can’t mean that, Jamal!’

‘But I do.’

‘Am I nothing to you?’

‘Not quite
nothing
. Everyone is
something
to me. Even my …’ He broke off. Whatever he was about to say was too cruel even for Jamal to dish out.

‘I don’t believe you no longer want me.’

‘I didn’t say that. You’re beautiful still. You’re not a woman to be thrown out of a man’s bed. I like how you’re begging to stay in it. I said I wouldn’t take you back. Remember, you left. I didn’t send you away.’

There was a terrible beaten note of resignation in this beautiful and proud woman’s asking, ‘What must I do?’

‘Well, the first thing is to apologise to this young girl. And then we’ll take it from there.’

That was it for Lara. She broke in: ‘I’m going to be sick,’ and fled from the room. Jamal caught up with her on the stairs.

‘Lara!’

She sat on a stair and hurriedly put on her sneakers. She was trying to think of something to say to him, but suddenly there seemed no point. All she managed was, ‘I’m out of here.’

He sensed that she meant she was out of there for good.

‘You’ll be back.’

‘Not on your life. To wind up like that woman?’

‘You will, you know.’

‘If you think that, you don’t know me at all, Jamal.’

Chapter 16

Relief predominated. Lara had broken out of a spiralling fall. She would not falsify to herself the nature of her relationship with Jamal. That was not her way. In fact, she did quite the opposite. As she fled Jamal and the house on Fifty-Third Street, she reviewed ceaselessly in her mind the depths she had fallen to in the name of erotic love. The vision of the beautiful Amanda grovelling for readmission to Jamal’s bed was the unflattering mirror of her own pleadings.

‘Relief is all I feel, nothing more. Just relief that it’s over and I’m out of it,’ was what she told Julia. She did not elaborate, and never mentioned the love affair to her friend again. It was a conscious falsehood to block out her real feelings of despair at having to leave him. The transition from that untruth to self-deception meant that she could lie to herself and her friend in good faith, and would be more readily believed.

Whatever the success of the self-deception, however, the rest of the process did not work out too well.

She could cope with her sense of how much sex with him had meant to her, and the emptiness she encountered in living without their secret liaisons. She blocked out her still-strong sexual desire for him, the erotic fantasies that haunted her night after night. She retreated from any sexual relationship with any of the men who pursued her. Most disturbing to watch was her behaviour towards
Jamal, who remained, as he had always been, a friend to the Stanton family. She showed not a hint of
angoisse
.

Relief, she kept telling herself, was what she was feeling. That, and nothing else. But retreat was implicit in everything she was doing. She retreated first to Cannonberry Chase and the family. To the horses, her plane, her sailboat. Even in retreat she fought to carry on as normal. She kept most of her diary engagements. On the surface she was still the beautiful, charming, rather nice girl. Sexy, wealthy, altogether eligible.

She had it in mind that, so long as she could carry on with her life, no emotional damage would result from her escapades with Jamal. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

She began seeing a lot of Sam again, and the more they saw each other the happier they seemed to be. The comfort and fun she found in the reawakened relationship was by no means one-sided. Once more their relationship eliminated all others for her.

They were playing romantic roles with each other long before either of them realised it. When Lara and Henry sailed his sloop from Cannonberry Chase to Newport, Sam was already there, on the dock, his arms full of flowers. When Lara made her solo flight across the Atlantic, Sam was there with the family to see her off. And again at Charles De Gaulle airport with Elizabeth, Henry, David and Max to see her land, and to pin a pair of angel’s wings, solid with diamonds, on her flying suit.

More and more Sam and Lara seemed, as in the old days, always to be there for each other. It was Lara who surprised him with a birthday party. She was waiting for Sam in Los Angeles when he arrived with the Polo Club to win a silver cup. Together they had long weekends in exotic places. Everyone but them knew they had once again fallen in love. They rekindled the sexual attraction
they had for each other hesitantly, remembering the past and trying to ignore it. They became reluctant lovers.

Like all else in their relationship, the sex was comfortable, satisfying, without trauma. Jamal saw it all. He affected disdain for what Lara had settled for. Only once was he prompted to say something about it to her; something that might induce her to resume their secret sexual life. They were dancing at one of Emily’s charity events when he made an attempt to penetrate the invisible wall they had erected. It was meant to keep their sexual past out of their present relationship as life-long friends. He pulled her that little bit closer into his arms. He knew she still wanted him, for her body, reacting to his intent, went rigid. He could feel her heart race. She missed a step – the slightest of falters – and he knew she was still his.

That mis-step brought her back to herself, gave her the strength she needed to resist. ‘Not a word. Not if you want to remain a friend. I still value our years of friendship and I know you do too. So not a word.’

‘And are you a clairvoyant, to know what I was going to say?’ he asked, as they continued dancing.

‘That part of us is in the past. Leave it there.’

She was so emphatic, he knew she was lying. ‘Just a word of caution, then. Beware of the rebound. Yes, that old syndrome. Now come with me for a glass of champagne, and I’ll tell you about a horse race. One I want you and Sam to enter. It should be exciting. David, Henry and Max have already accepted. It’s down the coast of Morocco. One of the events I’m putting together in honour of my father’s seventieth birthday. I want you all there as my guests.’

Lara should have been warned, but she wasn’t. She blocked out her momentary panic that he might seduce her back to his bed. She could not deal with the thought
that she might even vaguely want him. Instead, she listened to Jamal’s plans, accepted his invitation, and showed a genuine enthusiasm for the race and the week of celebrations he was planning.

Had her abrupt departure from Jamal changed Lara? Always courageous, now perhaps she appeared even more so. She seemed constantly to be seeking dangerous and thrilling competitions to test her skills. Big risks, higher stakes. She was more aggressively competitive. Winning, ever a Stanton obsession, was now more exclusively hers. It was Emily who recognised the change. She suggested to her daughter, ‘To win at everything is very commendable, dear. But some of your pursuits …? I hope you’re not turning into one of those thrill-seekers. David has a streak of that in him. It throws me somewhat, I must say. But I’m damned if I’ve ever been able to do anything about it.’

The St Gennaro fair in Little Italy: all colour and Sicilian music. All very ‘O sole mio’, all cannelonis and pizza and pasta. Garishly painted madonnas and plaster saints in tinsel dresses and lots of crimpeline ruching. Church brass bands with rolling drums, and bleeding Christs, crowned, crownless, or crowning themselves with thorns. Christs poised ten-deep on purple plastic stands, row upon row, offering their divinity for $39.99.

Garlands of plastic flowers in luminescent pink, yellow, ugly blue, were entwined with real flowers and draped in profusion from every stall, cart, booth, and lamp-post. The streets were arched with swirls and stars, circles and bows of coloured light-bulbs. Under them street vendors hawked sausages from the overhead racks of their stalls. Sausages fat or skinny, long and short, spiced or garlicked. They were on sale by the pound, but people seemed to be buying them by the metre. Fat pink
mortadella, and Parma ham, and prosciutto hung voluptuously between mysterious white balls of cheese: ricotta and provalone, parmesan and gorgonzola. The odour of the San Gennaro fair teased the senses, and mingled with the garlic and cured meats, the oregano and chili and peppers roasting over open fires. Cauldrons of bubbling meatballs in tomato sauce. Incense and hot candle-wax wafting through the open doors of the church. Just out of the oven Italian breads, vanilla and chocolate, almond and caramelised sugar, pastries and cookies. Ladies’ cheap perfumes – violet and carnation and rose – and men’s pungent aftershave.

The crush of people was as much a part of the decorations as anything. People surged up and down the streets. They ate, drank, bought and sold, laughed and sang, shouted and muttered. Sleek, dark and handsome Italians of all ages, shapes and sizes. Crying babies and out-of-control children screaming for sweets. Mischievous, sullen teenagers by the hundred, still half-responsive to their mother’s pinching thumbs. Horny Italian studs eyeing succulent virgins with lowered lids and innocent smiles, secure in their parents’ clasp as they pushed through the fair seeking the right connections for an Italian wedding.

Every restaurant seemed to be decorated as if for New Year’s Eve and was bustling with trade. Any shop whose owner was not on the street was stuffing shopping-bags inside as if famine loomed, or a tax on Italian produce was to be levied any minute. People leaned comfortably propped on bed pillows from tenement windows, shouting to their friends in the streets.

Once a fair for the families of Little Italy, it had grown into the most colourful and best-fun street-party in the city. Before other street-parties got the message, it had for years been New York’s Little Italy party. They rushed
down from all over the city for a taste of something other than New York, other than chic, a taste of ethnic fun and down-to-earthiness. They celebrated the Italians in New York, their saints in heaven, and were out for one of the great free good-time parties of the year.

The high point was when the multi-coloured saint, garlanded with plastic roses, crinoline-robed and draped in jewels, was carried through the streets, under a canopy of silk and velvet-embroidered flowers and sequined stars, on devout macho shoulders. The horde frantically crowded in on the statue, their ultimate desire to kiss or touch the figure before its return to the niche in the church. The bells clamoured, beckoning the procession home.

One of a party of twenty or more friends, all participating in the crush, Lara was swept along in the stream of people. She, Julia and Sam, with two other friends, separated from the rest of their party, finally broke away into a less crowded side-street. Beer in one hand, hot pizza in the other, they ate as they walked, following some of the crowd down an alley. Alley led into alley, till they found themselves in one that bristled with a marvellous collection of motor bikes and preening, leather-clad bikers.

The bikers, several Hell’s Angels and a dozen or more neighbourhood Italian boys, obviously had permission from the fair’s organisers to show off their bikes. Lara stood with her party among the other people who had drifted off the street into the alley. But not for long. She abandoned her alfresco meal for a closer look at the bikes.

‘Let’s go,’ Sam suggested. Taking her arm, he tried to lead her back into the street.

She laughed. ‘And miss this? No way, Sam.’ Her arm through his, she marched him down the line of
motorcycles, eyeing them and their owners alike.

‘This,’ a biker said with languid disdain, slowly, as if to a foreigner or an imbecile, ‘is – a – bike. A – motorbike.’ There were sniggers and scattered laughter. A hand moved obscenely.

‘Let’s go,’ Sam insisted.

Lara detached herself from his arm, ignoring his suggestion, and said to the biker: ‘Oh, we’re playing jungle games, are we? You Tarzan, me Jane? Well, I know that game. This – Yamaha.’ And she traced the name etched on the glinting belly of the machine. ‘Nice – pretty.’

The other bikers found that amusing. From inside his black leathers, the owner detected an insult. The bikers gathered round Sam and Julia and the others, waiting. Something had to happen. A short distance away, several riders stood, others were draped casually over their bikes, behind a dark-haired dramatically handsome man in his early thirties. He stood out from the crowd, casually dressed in grey flannel trousers and a yellow leather jacket, and he was leaning against a Harley Davidson. His velvety eyes never left Lara. She caught only a glimpse of him before she was distracted by the black-leather-clad biker cast as Tarzan.

‘Nice, pretty? Bikes like this one don’t get called pretty. Go back up town with your faggoty friends, girl. Pretty? Nice? That’s pig-ignorance.’

‘OK, I didn’t mean to be insulting. Well, maybe I did. I know bikers can be sensitive about their machines. It’s just, it’s such a great-looking bike. So slick – all moulded form and chrome. It’s great! Nice, and pretty, too, like I said. Whereas a Harley is all classical elegance and quality. It’s performance. One look at it and, well, we’re talking King of the Road.’

‘So you say. Moulded form and chrome, is it? Harleys
fucking classical? And you know shit, lady! Take her home, Charlie. Back where she belongs, to her nice and pretty Vespa scooter. That’s if the lady can manage a scooter.’ He flashed his teeth at Sam, who by now was none too pleased with Lara.

‘Oh, lordy.’ That was Julia, who knew what was bound to happen, and she was right.

Sam decided to terminate the bike-scene. Time to quit the alley before things got out of hand. ‘She’s a biker, fella. Comes from a family of bikers. And she’s far-gone on Harleys. Biased, I should say.’

Sam had just scratched his chance of getting away. The bikers embraced her like an old friend. Ten minutes and she had charmed her black-leathered friend into giving her a ride down the alley. At the bottom of the alley, they spoke for about five minutes. And then she was racing the machine hell for leather, back up the bike-lined alley. They were on first-name terms now, and Lara introduced the bikers to her friends.

The biker with the yellow jacket and the velvety eyes asked, ‘Still just, “nice and pretty”?’

‘Jesus, Mario, what the fuck is this nice and pretty business? Ya know damn well she’s beaten most of the bikes here. Ya lookin’ for a three-alley race ta prove it?’

‘Ya know I don’t race on the Saint’s day.’

‘Oh, yeah. I forgot.’

‘Afraid so, Mario. “Nice and pretty”, a good ride. A great ride, as a matter of fact, Carmine, so don’t be upset with me, but she just isn’t my Harley Davidson,’ said Lara with all the condescension of an aficionado.

‘Any Harley?’ added Mario. ‘We have this argument between Carmine and me. We spend a lotta time proving it.’

A flirtation was fizzing between Mario and Lara. If her crowd missed it, it was because they were either busy
accepting short rides up and down the alley or talking to the bikers. Two guys arrived on roller-skates bearing a huge pot of steaming risotto. Some girls produced a stack of bowls and large spoons. A boy with a keg of beer called up some plastic cups.

‘Now, if I had my bike here, Carmine,’ said Lara, ‘I’d prove it to you.’

‘We’ll prove it together. Hop on,’ Mario suggested.

‘Mario, you can see I’m OK as a rider. Lend me the bike, I won’t harm it. We have a better chance with a single rider.’ The irresistible Lara Stanton charm, the sensuous looks used calculatingly to get her her ride, silenced the bikers. They watched and listened. Mario let anyone touch his bike? But there was an exciting tension between these two. Mario took Lara’s face in his hand, raised the chin and moved it admiringly back and forth. Silence, while his gaze probed her eyes. Then he jolted her chin to one side. ‘Go for it, kid. After making love, the thing I like best is winning.’ The surprise around him was detectable.