Three Rivers (30 page)

They parted after lunch. Cecil, still overwhelmed by Isabel and her new relationship, wished her all the best, at the same time making her promise not to let her heart rule her head.

Max arrived at six-thirty that very evening. Isabel told Endo to make something simple for supper and, if he wanted the evening off, he could have it.

Max was exactly the same with her as he had always been, and only a short time after they were together, he was making love to her, touching where he knew she would get turned on quickly. At first Isabel was uneasy with Max. Then she realized that Alexis was so clever — there
was
something to resolve here; to be finished or maybe not finished. He was right; she had to find out how she felt, and so she relaxed.

Endo rang through on the telephone and said there was a buffet in the dining room. They should try and eat no later than ten o’clock or the dinner would not be so nice. He was leaving now if there was nothing else. That was his discreet way of saying that the house was now empty but for them.

Max asked about the man with whom she had been lunching. She asked about his friends. He asked about Egypt but really was not very interested. He rolled a few joints, and after they smoked they both felt more relaxed.

They went to the bedroom because Isabel wanted to change into a galabia. He would not let her go once they were there, but threw off his clothes and climbed into the bed, pulling her down on top of him. They lit up another joint, and while they smoked she asked about the girl.

Suddenly everything that he had ever said to her took on a different light. His caution, his private ways, his excluding her from his life except for sex. All this that she had accepted before, but resented now. His lack of generosity towards her was astounding.

Max remarked about her jewelry. He said it was dazzling, and where did it all come from? She told him Alexis
had given it all to her. He asked her how they made love; clearly
that
was all he was interested in. She told him and it kindled his passion. He now had her in his arms and he kissed her and fondled her. When he sucked hard on her tits she became very excited.

He rolled her onto her side and moved his hands over her. He put her on her back and kissed her breasts again, and then her stomach, nibbling at her through her pubic hair. He lay on her stomach with his face between her legs and searched with his tongue until he found her clitoris.

His legs too were spread wide apart, and she could see his small asshole and his beautiful balls. She bent her head forward and took them in her mouth and rolled them around. They both became crazy with excitement; they had been making love for a long time and knew each other’s bodies perfectly. He made love to her in every imaginable position. Then they used dildoes on each other.

Max would come to the edge of an orgasm and stop, prolonging it so he could have more of her. Sometimes in the middle of it all, they would just stop and talk until he was calm and under control, and then they would start up again. Never would he allow her to calm down though. He always kept her coming.

This night though, for the first time in all their years together, Isabel refused him something. When he wanted to come in her mouth, she could not do it.

He sensed something was wrong, but that only made him want her more. Eventually they went down to the kitchen and had some supper, then to the drawing room and lit up more joints. He took her again there. He was very aggressive with her. He had a fantastic stroke and his balls slapped against her again and again. He had her bent over a chair and pressed hard on her hindquarters as he pumped deep into her. With every stroke, she could feel him pounding her uterus. He had her coming now in constant orgasms, and when he finally came, and she felt him wash over the inside of her, they both moaned with the joy of it.

Exhausted, they went to the bedroom and fell asleep.

When they awoke, Isabel murmured, “It’s very late, but I don’t want to leave you. I wish you could stay, Max.”

“Well, you know that’s impossible,” he sighed. “As it is, I will have so much to explain when I get home.”

“What will you say?”

“Oh, that I was out with the boys. I don’t know, I’ll figure something out. I’m so warm and happy here, I hate to go out into the cold.”

“Do you want me to run you a bath? Stop kissing me, Max, it only makes it harder for me to let you go. Now, do you want that bath?”

“Yes, if you take one with me.”

“You know I will. You know very well how I adore washing you all over, getting you all soapy and slippery. Let me go. Come on, I’ll go run the bath.”

“I’ll let you go if you let me do with you what I want in the tub,” he laughed. As Isabel climbed out of bed he gave her a hard smack on the bottom.

“Oh! Max! That hurt!” Isabel yelped.

“Well, I can’t help it. When I see your round, full ass it’s hard to resist giving you a whack. Come here, and I will kiss away those red marks.”

“Come on, Max. Let me fill the tub.”

“Well, now that I think of it, you’re like the man in
The Picnic
by Renoir, without clothes on,” Isabel smiled. “Now that we have decided that we are both masterpieces, I will go and see what the time is. Do you want a cup of coffee before you leave?”

“Make it tea, honey.”

“Max, it’s four o’clock,” Isabel called. “Well, ten minutes to four anyway.”

“Oh, shit. There’s going to be hell to pay.”

“Max, I don’t understand. I just don’t. You’re not married to her, you tell me that you don’t love her, but you don’t want to hurt her. You tell me that you’re going to leave her, and yet everything that you do with her governs how far this affair of ours can go. Oh, I know … I promised that I would never talk about it to you. I used to be afraid to; we had something very good together, and I never wanted to ruin it. No, don’t say anything. Let’s not talk about it.” Isabel stared at him, and she knew her decision was firm.

“Now, stop it,” Max ordered. “We said we would not worry about it. Time will fix everything.”

“That’s right, Max,” she shrugged. “Time has fixed everything. I used to think that your lady friend was the problem between us, but she’s not really. There is no love between us,
that
is the problem.”

“Come on now, give me a kiss before I go,” Max said, avoiding the issue. “A brotherly-sisterly kind of kiss. Although, whatever you did to me, I couldn’t get up again.”

“Bye, Max.”

“I’ll give you a call. Listen, you know it’s very difficult. I will come as soon as I can. But, remember that if I don’t call or I don’t come, it isn’t that I don’t think about you or that I don’t want you. It’s just that, well, things are all complicated. You know the story. But I will come as soon as I can.”

“No, don’t bother, Max. It’s over.”

“It’s what?”

“Over, finished.”

“Is that really what you want, to give up this fantastic thing we have together?”

“I am not going to give it up. I am going to have it with a man who loves me and wants to make me happy, and that is not you.”

“Oh, stop being silly. I made you happy tonight,” he scoffed. “I will again one day soon. Listen, I must go now.” He kissed her on the cheek and left.

Isabel was both emotionally and physically exhausted. She saw Max leave, and with him, years of tension and hidden anxiety.

The house was very still. The animals were sound asleep. She went back up to the bathroom, where she picked up towels, mopped up some water and generally tried to put it in order. She took two aspirins because, suddenly, she had a splitting headache.

Picking up some fresh sheets and pillowcases from the linen cupboard, she went to the bedroom, stripped the bed and remade it. She opened a window, and the gust of cold dawn air moved the draperies and freshened the room. She removed her robe and collapsed into the clean bed, snuggled down deep in the eiderdown in a fetal position. She tucked a pillow close to her cheek and closed her eyes. She was terribly unhappy over Max’s insensitivity and lack of understanding.

Isabel had no idea what she had expected. At the beginning of their lovemaking tonight it was difficult for her, and he knew it. He was afraid that it was over, and so he worked on her, seducing her down to the raw bones of sexuality. They stayed steeped in it. He gave everything and took everything.

It was not until she had ridden him in the bath and had collapsed, exhausted, ready to be held and cared for, that she realized that it was over for him. He was going home to another woman. At last, because of Alexis, she had spoken up.

Alexis offered her love and companionship, or at least the possibility of them. Max offered her nothing ….

She woke at one in the afternoon, mercifully, without the headache. Her body was completely exhausted. Ringing through to Endo, she asked him to bring her morning drink and some tea.

When he came into the room with her tray, he asked if she was well. It seemed that some time during the morning the dogs had barked and scrambled to be let out of her room, and she had never even heard them. She told him he was not to worry, that she was fine, but very tired. She would not leave her bed that day. “Oh, and if Max Aspinal calls at the house here, you are never to let him in ever again. If he should call on the telephone, simply say I am unavailable.”

Isabel went back to bed and called the friends that she was to have tea with and canceled. The two girls, Joy and Joanna, had enough to do without her, and so she had her quiet day alone in her room.

She did not sleep; she just lay there quietly, resting with her eyes open, not even thinking. At four in the afternoon there was a light tap at the door and Endo entered carrying a five-foot-high orchid plant. There must have been fifty or sixty pure white baby orchids on it.

Endo had no need to tell her, she knew at once that they were from Alexis. She had them placed on the chest behind her bed. Endo handed her the card. It was just signed, “Alexis.”

The flowers were staggeringly impressive and luscious when you looked at the entire effect the plant made. But when you looked at one orchid at a time — the little white velvety blossom with its short throat and small round tip that made the center of the flower look like a clitoris — its beauty made you want to weep.

By seven in the evening she was hungry. Endo brought her a tray of scrambled eggs, green salad and a peach. After her tray was taken away, she fell asleep and slept all through the night.

Ava had been flirting for a long time with an industrialist who happened to be a friend of her husband’s. He was very rich, stable and married; had grandchildren, was intelligent, interesting, very gregarious and generous. Ava saw him as a responsible man, still virile. She played the coquette with him in front of his wife and her own husband. She teased and toyed with him, and everyone thought her very amusing.

He, in turn, found her fascinating, because of her preoccupation with herself, her little projects and her vanity. Being middle-aged and Greek, he liked the attention and flattery that she paid him. Never once in the two years that they had known each other had he ever overstepped good manners by putting her in her place for her sometimes cruel teasing.

He knew his friend, Alfred, to be the kindest, most honorable of men. If Alfred had any fault at all it was that he might be a little boring. The man
did
often ponder how frustrated Ava was sexually. There was something about her, something unfulfilled, and he knew that his friend, though he might have a good sex life with her, was too kind in bed to this woman. He had picked up long ago the underlying aggression Ava had towards men.

On Wednesday, the same day that Isabel was spending in bed in London, Ava met this man, whose name was Takis, by accident. Alfred was away for the day on business of some sort, and Ava had decided to go shopping in the morning and spend the rest of the day at home working on one of her articles.

Walking along Basilies Sophias Street, near the Benaki Museum, she was stopped by the tooting horn of Takis’s new light-blue Mercedes.

“Ava, come,” he said. “I will give you a ride in my new car.”

She popped into the car and gave him a kiss on the cheek, then proceeded to tease him about his expensive new car. He invited her for a ride to his house in Sounion and offered her lunch in a small tavern near the sea.

On an impulse and because she really wanted to be with him, she said yes, she would love to, and off they went.

Ava flirted with him outrageously. She teased and touched his arm, his thigh; patted his cheek as he sped
along the sea road through Glyfada. She kept drawing attention to herself: “Do you like this color on me? Do you think that yellow suits me? Takis, tell me, do you think this dress is too tight? Alfred says it shows my figure up too much. What do you think, Takis? I can hardly believe it! You look so young to be a grandfather. You know how Athens gossips. They will say next you have bedded me.”

She laughed and smiled through her entire monolog on herself and now sat provocatively next to him. He occasionally got a word in about the quality of the ride, or the color of the upholstery, but she distracted him from his preoccupation with his car by sitting close to him.

He bought her a delicious lunch of
barbounia
and salad of tomato and onion swimming in heavy olive oil. She declined the salad, ate the fish, and crumbled half a loaf of bread to bits as they finished two bottles of Domestica.

She took his hand after lunch and pretended that she could read his palm. She played with his fingers and toyed with his hand. She pinched his cheeks and told him he was pudgy and lovely, like an old teddy bear.

He helped her up to the car from the beach taverna where they had eaten. She leaned against him lightly, pretending she was quite weak from drink. He picked her up by the waist and set her on her feet a few steps above him. She turned around and pulled him up the few stairs. “How strong you are, was I very heavy? I am not very heavy, am I? I work at it you know, how much do you think I weigh? Here, lift me again and you will be able to tell. Well, maybe I am too much for an old grandfather like you.”