Vivian In Red (38 page)

Every reference to Cole Porter, all the times Allen needled him about his love life, was he trying to figure out if Milo was … was game for that kind of business?

And now they were stuck together. A team, Short and Allen, Allen and Short. Their success was together and that’s what people would want more of if
The High Hat
was another hit, and how could it not be? With John Garnett in the lead?

Allen had trapped him into his funny predilections. Naïve Milo Short who barely understood what all that meant, and for certain didn’t want to think about it.

“Milo? Are you coming up with genius lyrics, is that why you’re so quiet?”

Milo sat up on the couch, tossed his glasses on the table, and put his head in his hands. Then he thought about that being how Allen was sitting, just as Milo got the hell out of his apartment. He grimaced; would he ever be rid of Allen’s thin lips crawling around on his neck?

The soft rustle of fabric made him open his eyes. Vivian had crouched down next to him. She smelled of roses and soap with a hint of gin. Her face was all concern, her big green eyes wide, her eyebrows knit together, making a little V-shaped crease just above her nose. She reached one hand into the crook of his elbow.

“Milo, what’s wrong? You look terrible. Is everyone all right at home? Is Leah sick?”

Milo’s voice, when it came out, was abraded and raw, as if he hadn’t spoken in weeks. “I can’t talk about it.”

“Then don’t.”

Her green eyes grew huge as she approached him, and her long dark lashes flickered down, her lips touching his, just barely, that for a moment he thought he imagined it. Then he knew he wasn’t imagining it, and her lips were real, and so was she, and Milo felt he was waking from a century long sleep when he reached for her waist and lifted her like she weighed nothing, onto his lap.

He craned his neck to reach her face, and he was dissolving into her. He put his hand up into her hair, so soft, that hair, that he couldn’t stop stroking it. She groaned a little into his mouth, and Milo sat back, startled. Had he hurt her? She smiled, a brief chuckle, though not unkind. Vivian put her hand behind his head and pulled him forward, groaning again, this time so intentionally that Milo got it, oh yes, that’s a good thing, and then he groaned too in the same moment, and a kind of delirium took him over. He hoisted them both up like he was a sideshow strongman. Her gown was dragging down and he was worried he’d trip on it, as he bore her back toward her bed.

He laid her down, and then frowned at her robe, the complicated ribbons and lace both blurry and confusing. She gave a low, purring chuckle and pulled it loose herself. Her gown swooped low over her bosom, revealing a valley between her breasts that Milo instinctively kissed.

And then he was pushing her gown up, up as far as he could, and she yanked on his belt, and between the two of them, they tossed and pulled and discarded and unbuttoned as much as was necessary, and when Milo saw under the gown itself she’d been wearing nothing at all he wanted to weep, so instead he buried his face in her neck where it met her shoulder so if he did weep she wouldn’t see, wouldn’t laugh at him, and then Vivian’s lips brushed his neck, too, which startled Milo for a moment back to the afternoon, and Allen.

Milo reared up, and loomed over Vivian’s heaving, creamy body. Then he swooped back down over her like he was ravenous, which in fact, he was.

Vivian tickled his chest hair with her red nails. “I love you, too.”

Milo sat up on one elbow, and felt like he was half in a dream.

Vivian stretched and turned over to face away from Milo, and began patting the bedside table. “You don’t remember saying it, do you?”

“What?”

“Saying ‘I love you.’ Then again, perhaps you were a little distracted.”

Milo remembered nothing but a wave of sensation so intense he instantly understood every crime of passion, every farkakte thing every person ever did for the opposite sex.

“Damn, my cigarettes are in the other room.” Vivian stood up out of bed, nude, and Milo averted his eyes. She laughed shrilly. “Oh goodness, we’re well past modesty. But suit yourself if it makes you feel better. There, I’m decent now.”

Milo looked back. “Decent” was arguable. She’d put on the filmy robe but skipped the nightie. She glided out of the room and in short order returned with two lemonades and her cigarette case pinched under her arm.

Milo drank his lemonade in three gulps, not realizing until he felt the kick in the chest she’d spiked them with the gin. Vivian held her glass to her forehead and closed her eyes. “Be a love and fetch me the matches? And the ashtray. They’re on the side table, by your side.”

Milo reached over and picked up a matchbook and ashtray, both from the Stork Club. Another memory, angry Vivian and soused Allen, back when he was still cranking out
Hilarity
lyrics.

His thirst overcame his languid exhaustion, and he hauled himself off the bed to get a plain old drink of water. In the kitchen, though, he spied the gin, and with a shrug, he picked it up to bring it back to the bedroom.

“Hey!” Vivian called out. “Bring that steno pad in here! Let’s see if you’re feeling… inspired, shall we?”

Milo paused in her sitting room, gin in one hand, glass in the other, eyeing the steno pad where she’d dropped it on the floor next to the divan. So far all that sweat and worry by himself had granted him only two lousy lines. “Sure, why not,” he muttered, so quietly she couldn’t have heard where she lay stretched out on the bed in her gossamer robe.

Inspired Milo was, as it turned out.

He lay sideways across her bed in his undershirt and shorts, hanging his head backward off the edge, enjoying the blood rush and the gin or maybe both and who cared?

Vivian had taken command of the pen, seeing as how she was marginally less pickled, and Milo would’ve been embarrassed about a girl being more sober than him, if he’d been sober enough to remember to care.

Milo sang to himself in his squeaky, wavering tenor, for lack of a piano.

“
You might just love me… I think. Did you just give me a…
.”

“Wink!” shouted Vivian. She was cross-legged on her side of the bed, like a schoolgirl playing jacks. Her robe covered all the important parts, but her bare legs and toes peeked out from under the diaphanous fabric.

“Yeah, wink. I was gonna say that, give a fella a chance.
Did you just give me…a wink? But I’m no swell, can’t you tell, my charms might simply…shrink?
”

“Oh, I like that. But can charms shrink? Do you think? Ha, now I’m doing it! Maybe the charms should evaporate.”

“Try to rhyme evaporate, I dare you.”

“Extrapolate!”

“Okay, I’ll give you that one. Now you fit extrapolate and evaporate in those syllables.”

“Um…” Vivian paused, scribbling, then sat up straight. “
Don’t you extrapolate my charms might evaporate?
”

Milo sat up fast, his head swimming, a not-unpleasant sensation in a girl’s bed. There are few unpleasant sensations he could have in a girl’s bed, Milo figured. “Excellent rhyme, doesn’t fit the phrasing. But more to the point, I got you to sing for me.” He smiled, and pointed a finger at her in mock triumph. “Your voice is just like your laugh. It’s … lyrical.”

Vivian gave Milo a small, sad smile that made him hold his breath. Then she said, “That would be a …miracle.”

“Empirical,” Milo answered.

“Satirical.”

“Spherical.”

Vivian nudged his calf with her bare foot. “Hysteer-ical!” Her burst of laughter rang like chimes, then receded as she shook her head. “No, we must get back to business. We’re writing you a hit song, Mr. Milo, and I will not be distracted. Not evaporate, then, but charms should do something else.” She crossed off the abandoned rhyme.

Milo flopped down again and warbled thoughtfully, “
I’m no swell, you can tell, my charms will evaporate, you think?
”

Vivian jotted something, then tapped her pencil against her lips. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be ‘charms.’ Maybe it’s something else entirely.
My dear, in a year, your estimation of me, will sink
.”

“Maybe. ‘Estimation of me’ sounds clunky. Hard to sing. I like the ‘sink’ though, that’s a good thought. It’s why I picked ‘wink,’ because it has lots of easy rhymes.”

“Aren’t you very clever.”

“I’m also very tired. Let’s take a break, eh, kid?”

Vivian tossed the pad on her floor. “A break it is, but you don’t get to call me kid anymore.”

“Awww, don’t get sore.”

“I’m not sore at all. I’m just twenty-six years old.”

Milo rolled over and crawled like a cat to stretch out next to her. “Then you have lived twenty-six exquisite years.” Milo threaded his arm behind her neck and pulled her close to his chest.

M
ilo wondered why his mother was in his apartment, shaking him.

He snapped his eyes open to a fuzzy brown blur, with a voice that was not his mother’s. “Milo. Wake up. I have to go.”

Vivian. He was in Vivian’s bed. Someone was banging a kettle drum in his head, his mouth tasted like a rug, and he thought he might dump the contents of his gut all over her bed sheets. How could Allen do this all the time?

Allen. Curse that damn Allen anyhow.

“Milo!”

He shook his head and with effort focused on Vivian, who was pulling on a sky-blue dress. “It’s time to get up, don’t you think?” He fumbled for his glasses, and when her smiling face came into sharp clarity, he returned her amused grin.

She approached him, turned her back, and said, “Zip, please.” Her dress was only zipped up partway. She tipped her head down slightly, and waited.

Milo at first fumbled with the tiny zipper. Then he pulled it smoothly closed over her satiny slip, smooth bare back, and sharp shoulder blades. He rested one hand on her shoulder, the other on her hip. He was about to pull her back toward him, and reverse the action on the zipper, when she stepped away briskly, whirling around fast enough her skirt hem swirled around her knees.

“I’m not sure it would do, to leave you here alone, and in this state, while I step out.” She raised her eyebrow at “state,” causing Milo to look down and inspect his unshaven, smelly, nearly naked self. That unromantic reality jarred him out of the sensual fog he’d been in for countless hours. A pang darted through his chest, as though something precious had been irretrievably lost. He began to search the floor for his clothing.

Vivian continued explaining, though Milo had not asked her to, nor objected to leaving. “It’s true what I said that no one cares about a man visiting here. But there is a landlady who might let herself in to fix something, or just to be nosy. And I don’t need her spreading stories.”

When Milo continued to collect his clothing without comment, Vivian sat at a dressing table and began to make up her face.

Milo found his pants in a crumpled heap on the floor. As he pulled them on, he wondered anew how Vivian would get by once the newlyweds returned to claim their home. By the time he stuffed his shirttails into his pants, he’d vowed to find Vivian another job, a job with an understanding boss. Hell, maybe if
The High Hat
took off, he could hire her as his own personal secretary. That would solve everything.