“Like I said, she’s a cold fish. She never should have become a mother in the first place. She does it now just because she thinks she should, because it’s one more noble responsibility for her to shoulder. She’s not even comfortable around Danny. She pats him on the head like he’s a neighbor’s kid or something. It’s a real crime, Cady. He’s shut down for days after he gets back from her.”
“How awful.”
“It is. You should see him. He has to pretend she loves him. He makes up stories about the nice things she does for him. You can tell he makes them up.”
I nodded.
“I don’t talk about it a lot, because it sounds…you know, typical. Fighting over the kid.”
I reached out and squeezed his hand—or as much of it as I could manage: a finger or two. Neil squeezed back, looking straight into my eyes. “I just think he deserves better,” he said.
I told him I thought so too.
We got a lot merrier after that, practically closing the place. How we made it back up the hill safely in that golf cart will remain a mystery to me forever. We were both giggling like stoned teenagers when we reached the daunting stairs at the Zane Grey. Neil composed himself briefly, then hoisted me to his chest with an exaggerated groan and began the climb. “Jesus,” he muttered. “Who knew a few scampi could weigh that much?”
“Just shut up and drive,” I said.
“Yes, Miss Daisy.”
That got us both giggling again, more hysterically than ever, until it struck me that Neil had begun to sway ever so slightly, like an oak in a high wind. “Stop,” I said. “We’re gonna fall.”
He came to a halt and steadied himself. “Just trust me, OK?”
I gazed down at the necklace of lights along the beach, the black silhouettes of the palms, the luminous white carousel that was the casino. Even at this height, it was far too beautiful to be scary. And what a way to go, I thought, to tumble heedlessly into that mystical landscape in this man’s arms. It would almost be worth it.
“Just take it a little slower,” I said.
So he did, and we made it, congratulating ourselves with simultaneous sighs of relief. The little pool was lighted now, the same glowing green—or so I imagined—as the eyes of the cats who slept in the shadows around it. Wisps of vapor shimmied along its surface, beckoning to us. Neil stood stock-still at the edge, as if momentarily hypnotized, then shucked off all his clothes and dived in. His body shot through the pool like a projectile, a dark steel torpedo, surfacing in a soft-spoken explosion at the other end. “It’s really warm,” he said. “Go for it.”
I glanced around briefly to make sure we were alone, then kicked off my shoes and shed my T-shirt, leaving it on top of Neil’s. My entrance into the water wasn’t nearly as graceful as his, but after dropping like a rock, I managed to flutter-kick my way back up to the surface and catch my breath. I gave Neil a game smile, which he returned from across the way, bobbing merrily above the surface, on the same level as me for once.
“Nice,” I said.
“Mmm.”
I wasn’t sure where to look at this point, so I looked up, found the moon, studied it as a newfound object, huge and pale and perfectly round. It glinted back at me in amazement, like a monocle inserted in haste by an old man who couldn’t believe his eyes. When I looked down again, Neil was paddling closer.
“Maybe they could use an act.”
“Who?” I asked, still treading water.
“This place. Then we’d never have to leave.”
“Right.”
“I could play, you could sing ‘Feelings.’”
“Where? Next to the Ping-Pong table?”
He chuckled, closer still, walking on the bottom now, though his head remained level with mine.
“My legs are tired,” I said. “I think I’d better…”
“Grab hold,” he said.
“What?”
“Put your hands around my neck.”
I did that without protest, and my buoyancy increased instantly, lifting me like a giant’s hand, up and forward, into the sleek porpoise flesh of Neil’s chest. As my feet dangled free, relieved of their task, my muscles relaxed completely. I felt the cedary caress of his breath across my cheek.
“How’s that?” he asked, holding me by the waist and drawing back a little.
“Fine.”
He bounced a little on the balls of his feet. “Where would you like to go?”
“Nowhere.”
He studied me for a moment, then kissed me on the mouth. I kissed him back.
There was a clink. Then the whir of machinery and a final kerplunk. Somewhere in the darkness behind us, a can of soda was removed from a machine.
We froze in that absurd bouncy-baby position, silent as burglars, with only our eyes to register alarm. Neil was facing the wrong way, but I could make out movement in the shadows, a fragment of something pale. It hissed at us, snakelike, as a pop-top was released, lingered there for a moment, then retreated down a concrete path, to the slapping sound of flip-flops.
“Damn,” said Neil, grinning. “How long you think they were there?”
“Who knows?”
“Oh, well.”
“Yeah.”
Still holding his neck, I began to tread water again. I wasn’t altogether surprised when something poked against the bottom of my foot. “What’s this?” I asked, feigning shock.
He gave me a sheepish look.
“How long have you had that?”
“Long enough.”
I couldn’t resist. “Seems to be.”
He chuckled.
I moved my foot in tight against his sculpted belly, then down into that sweet Velcro wonderland until it rested on the base of his cock, making it spring out from his body. Then I traced its length slowly with my toes, enjoying the silken feel of it—my own private diving board.
He began moving us toward the shallow end.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Somewhere where we’re not the resident act.”
“Oh, c’mon. Think of the fun we’ll be spoiling.” It was booze and nothing else that made me this playfully brazen. I can be as trashy as the next girl, but I’m not an exhibitionist. At least not the sexual kind.
We gathered up our discarded clothes and made our dripping way back to Neil’s room. It was a miracle we didn’t run into any of our neighbors in the process, but we didn’t, so the poor souls were deprived of cocktail chatter that would have lasted them well into the next millennium.
Neil’s room was exactly like mine, except that the closets were reversed and his plastic cactus was of a different variety. He switched on a little lamp on the dresser, then brought towels from the bathroom and dried us—first himself, hastily, then me—blotting away gingerly as I stood on the nubby chenille of the bed, my cool skin all taut and tingling, my knees weak from the exercise and the raw, unobstructed sight of him. “You OK?” he asked softly as he put down the towel.
“Fine.”
“Lay back, then.”
He scooched both pillows against the headboard and eased me back into them, stroking me lightly, smoothing me into place. Then he knelt on the floor next to the bed and moved in close to me, his head so huge and unbelievable it might have been on a movie screen. The lamp behind him produced a sort of coppery nimbus around his hair as his velvety lips covered mine. His tongue slipped into my mouth, filling it momentarily, then roamed off to my ears, my neck, my nipples, which he lapped at with teasing expertise before finally devouring my tits, one after the other, completely enveloping them in liquid warmth.
Before long, though, his mouth had wandered off again, swabbing its way across my belly and between my legs. I reached down and buried my fingers in the thicket of his hair as his tongue continued its exploration, charting in precise terms a territory it seemed to know already. When he looked up again, smiling at me with half-lidded pleasure, he said only one word—“Nice”—and returned to the business at h
and.
“Hey,” I whispered.
“Mmm?”
“Come up here.”
He hesitated briefly, then rose somewhat clumsily to his feet, his cock swinging into sight. “Where?”
“On the bed.”
I wiggled closer to the wall to make a space for him.
“Like this?” he asked, lying down.
“No. Kneel.” I had spoken his name, of course, which was funny to me, but I didn’t remark on it, since it was hardly the time for word games.
So he knelt in the middle of the bed and I knelt in front of him, a pilgrim before the Wailing Wall. From there I could reach up to pet the thick-skinned planes of his chest and stomach and, moving lower, trace the thin ridge of hair descending from his navel. I hoisted his balls with one hand, feeling their weight spill over the sides, then nuzzled the shaft until it began to stir in fits and starts, jerking to life again, the foreskin rolling back with lazy majesty to reveal flesh as shiny and pink as the heart of a conch shell.
In no time at all, my hand couldn’t encompass it, so I used two to steady him as I went down on him. Actually, around on him would be more like it, since I had to tackle the job in stages, a bit at a time, like licking a large manila envelope. He made gentle growls of encouragement while I worked, stroking my hair and leaning into me for easier access.
When I finally got the head in my mouth, he bent even lower, propping himself up with one hand, sliding the other across my tits and belly and into my bush, where his middle finger pushed deeper and deeper as I bounced on my haunches. In the process his cock slipped from my mouth and banged against the side of my head like a boom on a sailboat in a storm at sea. I wanted his lips on me again, but they were miles away by then, somewhere just below the ozone layer. He must have sensed this, because he stretched out full length on the bed and pulled me up into the crook of his arm, still wearing me on his hand like a bowling ball. Then his mouth covered me again, and a second finger joined the first, and the circle was miraculously complete.
I lay there panting, a pat of butter melting into him, as much there as everywhere. Those chimes were back again, doing their silly thing, and a kitten was mewing plaintively somewhere outside.
“What about you?” I asked, glancing down at his cock to show him what I meant.
He took hold of it and slapped it once against his belly, making a wonderful sound. “You mind?”
“Of course not.”
He smiled at me sheepishly and began pumping away, slowly at first, then building steam.
“What can I do?” I asked.
“Nothing. Just stay there. Stay close.”
So I obliged, happily, nestling into his shoulder, enjoying the ripe, ferny smell of him, the rising heat of his body. Just before he came, I lodged my tongue in his ear and gave his nearest nipple a vigorous tweak. Jeff told me once that men like that too—or at least some of them—and it seemed to work, because Neil groaned even louder the moment I did it. His sperm shot so far that gobs of it caught us both in the face.
“Whoa,” I said, laughing.
He rolled his head toward me, wiped some of the stickiness off my temple. “I’ll get a washcloth.”
“No. Stay put.”
“OK.” He observed me with startling tenderness, then added: “Those eyes.”
We stayed sprawled there for the longest time, blissfully debilitated. As I nestled into his shoulder, he reached down and held my foot for a while, rubbing it idly, as if it were a smooth stone, all but engulfing it in one of his palms. Something about the gesture got me to thinking again. Worrying.
“Neil?”
“Mmm?”
“This wouldn’t be…a black thing, would it?”
“Huh?” He turned his head toward me again.
“Don’t take it personally, OK?”
“What wouldn’t be a black thing?”
“This,” I told him. “Us.”
“What are you talking about?” He let go of my foot at this point, not angrily, but certainly distracted.
“Well, some black people see little people as…sort of enchanted. Like a good luck charm or something, someone who can grant wishes. They’d do anything for you. Just because you’re there.”
He propped himself up on his elbow suddenly, separating us. “I am not believing this.”
“It’s the truth.”
“According to who? David Duke?”
“I know how it sounds, but it’s not just blacks. Norwegians are just as bad. Or good, depending on how you look at it. And some of the Eastern Europeans. It’s cultural, really.”
“And you thought…?”
“I didn’t think anything. I’m just asking.”
“What? If I think you’re a leprechaun?”
“Well…yeah.” I tried to soften it with a smile. “More or less.”
He laughed more bitterly than I’d hoped.
“Please don’t be mad.”
He brooded for a while, then asked: “How long have you been thinking this?”
“Not long. Just then, really. I’m trying to…explain it to myself.”
“Explain what?”
“Why you would…you know.”
“Cady…”
I knew where he was heading, or thought I did, and did my best to stop it. “I’m not fishing for compliments, Neil.”
He grunted. “More like handing out insults.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve had it happen before, that’s all.”
“You have?”
“Uh huh.”
“Somebody black.”
“Yeah, sure.” Reading his expression, I amended that as quickly as I could. “I mean, not like this, not with someone I really…not in bed or anything…Oh, fuck, just fuck it.”
My confusion made him laugh, at least. “Relax,” he said, sliding in next to me again. “Tell me about it.”
“No, it’s stupid. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“C’mon, tell me.”
So I told him about the time Mom and I stopped at a market in Watts to use the telephone, how the kindly old proprietor had grinned at me and followed me through the store, heaping me with frosted doughnuts and Baptist blessings, how we’d returned there repeatedly when money was low for bags of free groceries, with nothing expected in return except the touch of my hand on the old guy’s arthritic elbow.
“Was he the only black person?” Neil asked.
I told him there’d been a few others.
He chuckled, absorbing it all, more fascinated now than offended.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I said. “I was just being insecure.” I smiled at him wanly. “Which is a Jewish thing.”
“I know,” he said somewhat ruefully. “This whole thing could be a Jewish thing.”
“What do you mean?” The way he punched the J-word made me put my guard up.
“You having sex with me. It could be Jewish guilt, for all I know. Your version of a freedom ride.”
“Well, that’s pretty nasty.”
“No nastier than comparing it to a couple of free doughnuts.”
“It wasn’t a couple,” I said, thumping him on his sticky stomach. “It was lots. And bags and bags of groceries.”
“Oh, well…in that case.”
“I wasn’t comparing, either. I just wondered…”
“Yeah, yeah. Did it work?”
“What?”
“Did you cure his arthritis?”
I gave him a guilty smile. “I got a movie about that time. We never went back.”
He issued a little murmur in response—disapproving, I thought—then left the bed, snatched a towel off the floor, and wet it in the bathroom sink, mopping himself up. When he came back a minute or so later, he worked on me, dabbing delicately at my face and shoulders as he held my head with the other hand.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said finally.
“What?”
“You granted my wish.”
I sail
ed along on that thought all night, willing myself awake sometimes just to prove that he was there, warm and real and breathing beside me. Once I even left the bed, so I could stand by the window and feel the breeze and memorize the look of it all: that enchanted ballroom, the dwindling constellation of lights along the shore, the miracle of Neil’s body beneath the sheet. I knew that whatever happened from then on would never be quite the same as this, never as pure and rich and bracingly new. I wanted to save it somehow, to store it away somewhere to be treasured again when I needed it most.
The feeling lasted well into the next morning, but I never gave words to it, for fear of frightening him. He had hoped this would happen, I reminded myself; he had planned on it even, much more than I had. His actions that morning gave witness to that, since he held my hand at breakfast (a sweet little greasy spoon straight off a sound stage) and romped with me in the clear blue-green waters of our own secret cove. Even as we sailed back to the smogbound mainland and watched with mounting melancholy as our special island shrank back into nothing, he stayed close to me always, touching, smiling, speaking with his eyes. There was nothing to dread, I realized. Everything about him said this was a beginning, not an end.
He dropped me off at my house a little past six. We kept our goodbyes brief and unsensational, sealed with a couple of pecks on the cheek. Renee watched us from the door, giving a little wave, obviously bursting with curiosity, since overnight funerals are not all that common a phenomenon. Once Neil was gone, I told her something vague and half-assed about missing the last boat and went directly to my room.
That was yesterday. Now it’s night again, late, and I’ve been writing nonstop since who-knows-when, practically to the end of the journal. Renee has been in and out all day, both excited and vaguely unsettled, I think, by this burst of literary activity. She had a date last night with “a serviceman,” she says, though she seems unclear about exactly which branch of the service it was. They went to a taco place in Burbank and then out for beers somewhere. I have a strong suspicion she fucked him in his car.
She’s in bed now, talking ladylike in her sleep, delivering her Miss San Diego acceptance speech. I melt a little whenever she does that; don’t ask me why. I’d hoped that writing this all down would eliminate the need for a listening ear, but it doesn’t seem to have worked at all. This one takes a girlfriend, I think.