Routes Page 23

  “How terrible!”

  “… yes! I would have been with them had I not been nine months pregnant. When it rains, it pours. As you can imagine, losing my father and husband both on the same day was quite a blow. And then a month later the market fell. My inheritances, the estates of both Cornie and my father, each sizeable to begin with, were hit hard. With almost everything wiped out behind me, my daughter was born. Yes, I have a fourteen month old at home. Facing an uncertain future, I needed to work, not an easy thing for a lady to the manor born.” She says this with some resolve and the best patrician yodel in her voice her perfect pitch can muster. “I had many compliments from ladies and gentlemen alike on my beauty. I decided to try my hand at being an artist’s model. But Hub society is so stuffy, you know, people who say they are sympathetic to the arts, but squawk in the face of freedom of expression. There was unpleasant talk about me, even though Cornelius was still my one and only. With the idea that things were so much more relaxed here in the west, and with everything back east reminding me of the life I didn’t have anymore I decided it was time for bold resolve, to start over again. I came west under my maiden name with my young daughter to see if I can make a career out of it. So far things have not been easy.” She sighs.

  “But I’m sure the greatest artists in the Bay Area, once they know of you, will be dying to paint you. I’ll have Edgar draw up a gift for you in the meanwhile. No, no, I insist. Six months before the crash my father’s financial advisors had him put a large amount of investment capital in munitions. When the market collapsed, we were hardly hurt. In fact we made money at other people’s expense.”

  Swan is charmed and does not think about truth or the lack of it in the peach’s story. He even thinks he remembers being introduced to Cornelius the Second, Sarah’s falsified father-in-law, at some Beantown society bash or other.

  “Were you very attached to your husband?”

  “Do you mean am I still attached to him?”

  Exactly. Oh, Swan likes this, a woman not afraid to lay her cards on the table!

  “When I married Cornie most of my friends said it was puppy love. My father wouldn’t dream of telling me how to live my life, but he did think I was young and inexperienced, and might be rushing into this because I was very eager for the money and the social connections being Mrs Cornelius Duke the Third would bring. But I was lucky. What I wanted and what I felt obliged to do were one and the same. Cornie wasn’t a stuffed shirt at all. He had an artistic side and taught me a lot about life in the short time we were together. Before I met him I tended to be dreadfully stuffy myself, but he gave me an idea of what it was like to be a freethinker. I’ll be honest with you, Mister Swan, I loved my Cornie like there was no tomorrow, and there turned out not to be.”

  So, while her autobiography is a wholesale fabrication, the gist of it, the significant thread, that her heart is elsewhere, is true. And it just so happens that the man she loves in fiction has the same name as the man she loves in fact. “After Cornie I’m not so sure I’ll ever again be able to give myself to another man completely, body and soul. Besides, I’ve heard a thing or two about you and I know something about the playboy philosophy. It’s a game of wining and dining a woman and finding a way into her favor. You use words like ‘forever’ and ‘always’ when you mean two weeks at the longest. Mister,” she says demurely and takes a long double gulp of the brandy, “men like you are a menace to a young girl’s safety.”

  Although Harry has never been one to care about the soul when a woman has physical charms, he marvels at the beauty he sees in Sarah inside and out. He finds her frankness, even if it is feigned, refreshing. There is nothing to do but keep his distance and give her the respect she commands. “If you wish, I’ll have Edgar drive you home. But I hope you will allow me the pleasure of seeing you again.”

  In courting a white goddess a complacent man fares better than an audacious one. Sarah has won, so she can finally give in. First she gives Swan the half smile he deserves, the one which lets him know that, under the surface, they are birds of a feather. Then she gives the leg of his pants a little tug. “Remember, I said part of the reason I go under my maiden name is to help me forget. I just wanted to let you know who says ‘when’. And never say ‘forever’, lover. I don’t need all that much time to get started. Let’s be here now, and make a little of what we fancy come true tonight. Leave tomorrow out of it, I’ve learned you never know what it might bring.”

  She lies out on the cushions in sublime soft stiffness and while the clock strokes midnight, with the Cygnet Prince and his fairies whirling on the brandy lake in her mind, she invites Harry Swan to dive into the black patch of heaven between those statuesque, marble-smooth, cool white legs.

  Dulled by the Rubbing of Rich Men

  Of course, right from the judge on down the line, whenever possible Sarah has tried to coax climaxes so that the seed falls on barren ground, for anything further she has insisted the man use protection. But now with Harry, a vital healthy man in the prime of life making intimate visits on her person, she makes doubly sure she is safe by having a doctor place a gold slug in the slot of her uterus. The last thing she wants to be is pregnant for the second time.

  Sarah feels a daughterly affection toward Swan, love in fact, as if he were the liberal father she never had. The old goats she has relations with she handles purely for money. She remains completely in control of these grand old sugar daddies whose kick comes from offering their primordial rock candy, dinosaur penises, to a sweet young soft thing. She knows where she stands with them, the line is clearly drawn. Harry is the sole man in her life who is not business only. With him she finds the line is fuzzy. She derives pleasure from going out to the opera or ballet with him. Although she doesn’t particularly care for the music, she does enjoy sitting next to him in his box, or at the fine restaurants around town, all dressed up, looking at all the other fancy people, feeling she is one of them. She likes the crispy rich way he smells, and finds him handsome, but later after they’ve had their late supper, she feels as if she owes him something for the swell time he showed her.

  She does for him what she would do for any cash-in-advance customer, whether he pays or not. Of course he does. He buys her expensive presents, tribute, tokens of his esteem, exchange for her favors. Like the others he loves her best when she is dreadfully sophisticated and frightfully beautiful and cooperative, although not too cooperative. The act is easy for her; she fills the bill perfectly. The playboy expects her to be good in bed, and she, an old pretender by now who knows the power looks have in playing to men’s fantasies, does not disappoint him. He is good to her, she is good to him. With Harry there are none of the explosive finishes, the burning of body and soul, the sweet sentimental poetry, the crowning pleasures, that she felt under the sway of the brave buck. But Corn Dog is still astray and Sarah, no saint, feels she must get something out of life besides waiting for him. She comes closer to a finish with Swan than she does with the walrus and the money magnets. He might not be the wizard that Corn Dog is, but he’s a world apart from them. It feels good to be wanted and needed by a man she finds attractive. But if she had it her way she would just as soon kiss him on the cheek and leave it at that. More time for reading. She honestly makes sure he understands that she wants no part of marriage, that she wants to be free, and she expects him to respect her privacy. He is not one to settle down either. He likes her mysterious and has been around enough to know not to spoil a good thing by smothering it.

  Up until now Harry Swan has seen no reason why a woman should be treated like a porcelain doll. He has always had the fantasy that the ideal playboy girl is athletic, a good sport, used to an outdoor lifestyle, and built tough to take it. Sarah, though, is not one to gain his attention by competing with him in a game of physical one-upsmanship—the man versus the young boy-girl contest. She is strictly a female female, a fussy, frowning, stern, sickly neurotic type, who more easily takes to bed feeling ill than sexy. She is
serious, and apparently intellectual.

  Much of her mooning is over Corn Dog. Vice is its own punishment. Being with other men, the reason she missed him, now makes her miss him all the more. Experience leaves little doubt in her mind: there is no lover like Corn Dog. All told by now, including Achilles Fleet and his friends, she has had about fifty men in her life. She has endured a share of abuse, but, especially lately, has had more than her share of adoration from them. None of the worship she has enjoyed, men offering to put the world at her feet, comes anywhere close to Corn Dog’s way of looking at her plainly, lovingly, of seeing what she is behind her poses, human, and adoring her anyway. She thinks of him as he was and hopes he will be, shy, smiling, with his perfect ear of corn poking at her through his buckskins. With him, being human was being part animal and part divine. The act of love was proof of this. She looked like an angel and went after him like a wild animal. When he was in her, she could love who she wasn’t, as well as who she was. Love was a quality of her being. She never felt as if she had to work to make it worthwhile, but only had to abandon herself to it. And when the hugging was over, his reverence for her remained. He did not expect her to hold her poses any longer than amused or suited her. That was the way to do it! She prays she’ll hold him again, and squeeze him again, and introduce him to Gloria.

  Thanks for the memories, Cornie dearest, if only life were that simple …

  With Laudette working around the clock the split personality can accept Swan’s invitation for sleep-over pajama parties. When she appears at his door she is carrying a bag with her night dress, a kit of cosmetics and several books. She keeps him waiting what seems like forever while she stays in the bath fixing herself for bed. She bathes, perfumes, paints herself, combs her hair until it is slick and shiny, and patiently gets the strings and bows on her nightgown and bed jacket just right. Good things come to those who wait, thinks Harry as he sits in the wing chair by the bed reading magazines and nursing a bottle of brandy. When the silky, sulky darling emerges he is thrilled, ready and raring for bed. But she says, “Wait, I have to do a little reading at bedtime to help me relax.”

  Out come the books, whatever it is she is up to these days, the literature of Hummel, Gunthar, Louis Meme, Candor, the plays of Witherspoon, or the philosophy of Secretius and Stratos, and The Blind Poet’s Tale of the Sea Sick Sailor. She withdraws from him partly because she is educating herself in the things not offered in the Prophet’s schools, partly because she loves to read, and partly so that he can love her for it. Swan has been with a host of women but never one who reads such things. Under this mind-over-matter influence he becomes moony and blithely sensual. He doesn’t mind sitting, sipping his nightcap and contemplating the solemn bookish Sarah, looking owl smart in the countess’s frightful horn rims, adopting pose after pose of a girl reading a book: on her belly, on her back, sitting up with the book between her legs, on her side propped up on her forearm, holding her cheek in the palm of her hand, her sleek blonde hair hanging down to her elbow. She is a mistress of facial expressions. She raises her brow, widens her wide eyes, purses her lips, lets her glasses drop and turns up the tip of her nose. Sometimes she is amused and she rubs her thighs or breasts distractedly, at other times she seems disgusted and turns down the corners of her mouth in the attitude of one who’s smelling something disagreeable.

  Is it all an act, the split pea outdoing herself in poses of reading? Yes and no. She is quite aware of how superior she looks, but at the same time her mind is on her reading. She thinks, too, about what connection she has to the minds and ideas of great men. She comes to the climax of Witherspoon’s Star-Crossed Lovers where the hero poisons himself before making absolutely certain his beloved is as dead as she appears. A tragedy. But the bard was observant. Left for a moment with their imaginations, how quickly temporarily disjointed lovers can jump to the conclusion that they’ve been deserted forever. Where, oh where, can my Corn Dog be? She takes her time reading the last act so she can think of the brave, almost as if Harry were not in the room at all. Thinking of Corn Dog, as inevitable as it is, overcomes her with despair. She senses something is wrong, very wrong. The thought that she will never see him again could drive her to suicide. She must get her mind on something else.

  Finally she closes the book, takes off her glasses, and puts them with the book on the night table. Then she seems to drop off. It is a signal to Harry that she is ready. When he takes her in his arms she is limp, soft, willing, dreamy, as if she were asleep or drugged. He slips his hand into her silky wrapper, and feels the smoothness of skin.

  Sarah is indeed dreaming, with a vague thrill, of idolatry, only now she is the idol. She takes on the personality of the hairy sour-puss god of the Shibbolites, the Lord whom her father and his fellow Shibbolites kept having to flatter by saying He was a Jolly Good Fellow. She will not necessarily reward her worshipper for his show of adoration by making things easy for him, but will punish that man with an absolute zero chill, a withdrawal to closed unconsciousness if she doesn’t get such adoration. To gain favors, Harry sees he must baby her, not like a child but like a lady. Indeed Swan idolizes every inch of the beauty, sleeping or awake. He brushes her ears with his lips, murmuring his appreciation of the wonder of her every move and muscle. He tries to get his tongue in her mouth edgewise, but she makes out as if she wants to sleep, and acts irritated for the disturbance. At the same time, a split pea, she lets him slide her gown up above her thighs and welcomes his kisses to her breasts. Because he loves her teats, he lets her have her fits, her snits, her tantrums, her hysteria, and, finally, her indifference.

  “My god, you’re beautiful,” he repeats as he lips his way down her stomach and below. She remains rather blase, as if she were doing him a favor. Again the pose is real and not. For she is playing sleeping beauty, as in a ballet they attended together, a woman whom only the right sort of kiss will awaken. Harry tries to solve the riddle of her pleasure by sealing her sphincters with a kiss, and with that, slowly, she pretends to wake, to respond to his reverence with her body. She does not exactly get lively, but she reaches to him and fondles him in return, sighing and moaning as if she were smouldering under her dry icy exterior, and invites him into her soft sex machine. She does feel something warm and tingly in her once-over-easies with him, good but not great shakes. Mainly she is flattered. The enthralled way he makes love to her fleshes out in her mind the full power of the womanly development of her figure. She knows she’s moving up in the world. The playboy is experienced, he has taste, he has style. Praise from Harry Swan is praise indeed!

  “You’re a live ringer for the white goddess, Cupcake! You really ought to be in the movies, but you’re real, and you’re right here with me.”

  She sees the way he looks at her. She’ll take his word for it.

  Smart Sarah, indeed, does know her mark. Her relative coolness causes Harry to pick up the slack. Instead of losing interest, he waxes passionate, gets hotter about her, sends flowers and candy every day and invites her out to quiet candle-lit restaurant dinners. Several nights a week they end up at his place. They take romantic drives up the coast on the weekends. An avid sailor Swan, yet he is sensitive to the traumatic accident she described, and leaves his yacht out of it.

  He does no checking into her checkered past and present. He seems to have no trouble swallowing her story about being an unlucky lady from back east. When she sees how easy it goes down, she is not too amazed, actually. It supports what she learned when she was a sinner playing saint, that the inclination most people have is to see only what they want about you, what interests them most.

  Does she begin to believe a bit of it herself, this story of being a hapless heiress, a sophisticated widow and orphan lady, rather than an unwed teenage mother, runaway from a grim fundamentalist cult? On the surface she does. It seems to her that her luck has changed; certainly she can forget the days when she was a ragtime doll in a Shibbolite shell handing out goodwill jelly beans to braves. Those days
are gone for good, thank goodness. Or are they? Never during the day does she forget Corn Dog. She sees him in Gloria. She knows full well that the man she loves is a noble savage and not some wealthy Beantown book and banana heir, but in her memory she begins to translate the love she had with him into an ideal rather than a reality, an after-the-fall aspiration rather than an attainment, and the blanche Sarah that loved him seems like an identity from a dream or a past life.

  By March third, the great pedestrian, having traded his soft buckskins for sack cloth pants and a hair shirt, has come through the Valley of Death. After sixty days of cross-country hiking, he now walks the wastelands of Enchantment. His house is of sand and rock, no walls, no roof, no water. He falls down on his knees and prays Sarah to forgive him for his jealousy, his poor judgment, his desolation, his fall from the grace of freethinking.

  The dusty buck’s prayers fall on no ears but his own. Surely the animals have no sympathetic sense for atonement, and Sarah, perhaps sensitive to what is on her lover’s mind, finds herself at times lately, split within her split; at the same time she pines for Corn Dog, she finds fury in her heat for him. Who does this penniless wayfarer think he is to stand her up? She has good reason for the superior smile on her face. Men like Harry Swan kiss her ass!

  Certainly Harry is passionate, attends her with frequency, but the reason he does not check her out is that he is too busy hiding affairs of his own from her. Old habits die hard. Even in love, with someone he cannot forget on his mind, the playboy will take advantage where he can. He is not inclined to give up some of his second-and third-string sex objects. He still values women he can pick up in a night club, fuck and forget. They in no way lessen his love for Sarah, but keep his playboy ego boosted enough to allow him to throw himself at her feet.