Blinding Light (53 page)

“And some of them treat me like a freak.”

“Slade, don't you see they're looking for a headline?”

Steadman hung up. He was tired, and Jerry wore him out just sitting there attitudinizing, doubting him, jeering at the president. The president had become the butt of all jokes and now wore a shamed cringing look, like someone brutally mocked and still trying to maintain his dignity.

“I feel for him,” Steadman said.

“The smart money says he'll resign.”

“Why should he?”

“For disgracing the office of president. For being a chubby-chaser. Listen, toots, I was in the service. If a senior officer was caught doing that, he'd have to resign.”

Steadman said, “Would you like someone checking up on what you do in your spare time?” and felt he had struck a nerve.

Then they were rolling up the driveway of the Ritz-Carlton. Jerry stopped the car and got out quickly to dash to the passenger side and help Steadman. But Steadman had already gotten out, provoked by the man's fussy certainty. Wishing to be away from him, he swept with his cane, found the curb, and moved on.

“Can I help you?” A strange voice in his face.

“Yes, get out of my way.”

As soon as Steadman entered the hotel lobby he felt lonely, his feet unsteady, as though the floor were aslant, for loneliness was also a sorry flutter in his inner ear, a loss of balance.

He went to the bar and eased his way through the drinkers, who cleared a path for him. Feeling for a stool (“Right here,” someone said), he found one that had just been vacated, the cushion still warm. The acute perception of temperature had also become part of his blindness.

“What'll it be?”

He ordered a glass of wine. It was put into his hand. He was careful to sip without spilling: people were watching.

A warm body next to him kept him wondering at its softness. He knew women by their obscure sounds, of chafing silks, tightening undergarments, the clatter of bangles as they slipped to a narrow wrist. This woman's body spoke, and her breath, that fragrance. She stayed at his elbow, and she too was drinking wine—he knew by her sips and sighs.

He was thinking: Then don't come home. I don't want to see you in this mood.

“What's your name?”

“Dewy Fourier.”

“That's an interesting name.”

“It's French. Can I order you another cocktail?”

He was trying not to smile. “No thanks. One is my limit. But you can help me find the elevator.”

“I'd love to.”

She guided his elbow, crowding him, jostling him, because he knew the way out of the bar. At the elevator, she pressed the button before he could and was saying, “Where to?” as he tapped his way in beside her.

“Mind pressing fourteen?” The doors sucked shut, and when they were alone he said, “You only pressed one button.”

“I'm going where you're going.”

They ascended in silence. He inhaled a vaguely familiar aroma, a thick odor of fresh blossoms, like syrup in the air. When the elevator stopped at the fourteenth floor the woman got out with him, still touching his arm. Her fingers told him everything: she was nervous, eager, young, excited. Her leather bag was not large, but it was heavy and dense.

“I know the way.”

She released him as he tapped toward the door of his room. She remained, walking slightly behind him.

He tucked his plastic key card into the slot of the door lock, but when it buzzed he did not push the door open. The woman was a warm breathing shape of perfumed flesh next to him. He heard the binding of her shoe strap. Her long naked body was apparent to him as a bright shadow, submissive beneath her insubstantial dress.

“Yes?”

“I was wondering if there was anything I could do for you.”

“I'm thinking,” he said.

She hesitated. She leaned toward him as though to kiss him. They stood at his door in an empty corridor, on a thick carpet, the distant sound of a food cart rattling out of a service elevator.

“I'm very oral.”

Now he hesitated. She was faced away from him, not out of shyness but making sure that no one would interrupt, the edginess of a fox near meat.

“Good. Then you can read to me.” He pushed his heavy door open.

He sensed her whole body reacting with relief as she passed him, still radiating warmth, and went inside. He followed her and kicked the door shut.

He put down his cane, took off his jacket, and threw it on the sofa. He found a bottle of mineral water and poured himself a drink. He jerked the drapes, closing them. Then he excused himself, went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and returned to the sitting room of the suite, where the woman was standing in the center, stiff with puzzlement, clutching her hands. She had placed her heavy handbag beside the sofa.

“Dewy?”

“I'm here.”

“I know. What do you think of my suite?”

“I can't see anything.”

Only then did he realize that he had not turned on the lights. He laughed and switched on a lamp next to the sofa. He sat and stuck his legs out.

“It's beautifully appointed. Very comfortable-looking. Exquisite taste.”

The words made him frown, but as he pitied her he was aware that she had stepped to the door and hooked the safety chain. And she had glanced into the bedroom as she passed it.

He went to her. He caught her arm and held her hand and touched her face. She was not tall, and though she radiated heat she was fleshy, even plump. He could tell by passing his fingers over her face that she was pretty, and when he touched her she did not resist. She relaxed and took half a step nearer and smiled. So far, in the strange distortions of this book tour the only women who had offered themselves to him had been heavy and slow and unsubtle, incurious about his mode of living. But this one, Dewy, was bright and attractive and—he wondered why—very curious. From the moment he had switched on the lamp she had not stopped looking around.

“I can see in the dark.”

“Incredible.”

“I know you from somewhere.”

She put her hand over her mouth to stifle her reaction.

“I signed a book for you.”

“If you say so.”

“I'm trying to think where it was. New York, maybe? What are you doing here? You're a writer, aren't you?”

“I do a little writing.”

“You're following me. You were waiting for me in the bar.”

The answer yes was a perceptible twitch in her body.

“What is it you want to know?”

Her silences told him everything, and she was still looking around the room, as if searching for clues.

“Nothing,” she said.

He laughed, because he had made her so self-conscious and defensive. He said, “You said you'd read to me. What did you have in mind?”

“Something from your book.”

“It's a little late.”

She felt for him, her fingertips stroking his thigh. “I've got all night.”

He was smiling at her, and she did not seem to be aware that he knew that as she was stroking him she was nodding at the corners of the room, pausing to examine the items on the tabletops, the clothes showing in his open suitcase, glancing back at his face to peer at his eyes.

“Something from my book.” That had surprised him. Even though he was suspicious of her, he was flattered by the suggestion. He moved away from her and, sitting on the sofa, felt for a copy that he had left on a side table.

She sat beside him and said, “Mind if I get comfortable?”

She slipped her shoes off and drew her legs up beneath her and still, from where she sat, she was searching the room.

“I like the scene where you're in the car, making out,” she said. “And your date goes down on you.”

“Not me. The main character.”

“He doesn't have a name—how am I supposed to know?” she said, and took the book from him and flipped pages. “Anyway, the back seat of the car. A hot night. It was a turn-on. Here it is.”

She began to read. “I
look fucked!

“Still smiling and peering intently into the mirror of her compact, she wiped the smears of lipstick from her face, dabbed at her eyes, combed her hair. And just as he thought she had finished, she took out a pouch of cosmetics and applied mascara and thickened her eyelashes—slowly, paying no attention to him, who watched with fascination as she prettied her face. She rouged her cheeks, reddened her lips again using a brush and lip gloss, made herself a new face, a mask of desire.

“I love that,” she said. “It goes on.

“She faced him. The dusty moonlight deepened the texture of her makeup and softened the planes of her face, and what had seemed an innocently questioning smile in the small mirror was now lust lit by moonbeams.

“She leaned toward him and her lowering arm crushed her gown as she reached down and slid her hand along his thigh.”

As Dewy read, her voice thickened and purred, and she let one hand drop onto Steadman's leg. Though her fingers crawled across his thigh he was hardly conscious of it. He was listening closely, not aroused by anything she read but instead questioning the punctuation and certain words. “Lust lit by moonbeams” seemed purplish and pointless. She was racing ahead, reading with emphasis.

“The sound of his pleasure came slanting from deep within his lungs and seemed like an echo of a softer sighing in her throat. Her breasts were in his hands, his thumbs grazing her nipples. Her touch was surer and so finely judged that she seemed to feel in the throb of his cock the spasm of his juice rising—knew even before he did that he was about to come. Then he knew, his body began to convulse, and as he cried ‘No'—because she had let go—she pushed him backward onto the seat and pressed her face down, lapping his cock into her mouth, curling her tongue around it, and the suddenness of it, the snaking of her tongue, the pressure of her lips, the hot grip of her mouth, triggered his orgasm, which was not juice at all but a demon eel thrashing in his loins and swimming swiftly up his cock, one whole creature of live slime fighting the stiffness as it rose and bulged at the tip and darted into her mouth.

“Holding him with one hand, she devoured it and was still swallowing as he went limp and slipped out of her mouth. When she looked up at him with her smeared face and smudged eyes, she was still greedily gulping, licking droplets from her gleaming lips.”

She put the book down and moved her hand between his legs, and then he kissed her. Moments before he had sensed warmth, a glow of pleasure, but there was none on her lips. She was made of clay, going through the motions—he could taste her indifference, another low temperature. Her hands and arms were cold, her grip was perfunctory, as if coaxing a stubborn lever. She was placid, really; there was no thirst in her body.

But she said, “That feels nice.”

He smiled at her lie. He could easily discern her calculation, a different sort of scrutiny, like the squinting gaze of a bobble-headed passenger sitting across from him on a train, sizing him up. As a blind man he had become used to that stranger's gaze—people staring at him in public. But in his own room it alerted him. She sniffed as she searched, and still her hand was closing on him.

Then she stood and slipped out of her dress, and when she sat again and was naked he sensed that he knew her absolutely. He reached behind her and turned off the lamp.

“Why did you come here?”

She let go of him. Her whole body contracted as though denying the implication behind his question.

“I have a feeling someone sent you here.”

Her reaction, which was not audible, not visible, not an odor, nothing except a suggestion of furious molecules, her stiffening and becoming a fraction smaller, told him it was true.

“You're trying to find out if I'm really blind.”

Again the whir of molecules, a swallow of air, her knees together, her surprise. He sensed all this in the darkness as a liquefaction slipping slowly past him.

“There's no story,” he said. “Put your clothes on. You don't belong here.”

She said, protesting, “You wrote this sexy book and I want to give you head and you throw me out of your hotel room? Tell me that's not a story.”

But she had started to dress, trying to be calm, like someone woken and startled by the smell of smoke, preparing to flee a dangerous room.

“It was in New York,” he said. “In the hotel. You asked me to sign your book when I was with Manfred.”

“No.”

“He sent you here to check on me.”

“No.”

“Tell Manfred to stay away from me.”

She was fumbling with her dress, hopping a little as she pulled it on and straightened it. “Please put the light on.”

“If you tell me the truth.”

“Manfred said you were a kind of mind reader. I didn't believe him. But I believe him now.”

Steadman switched on the light and said, “You have a yeast infection.”

The woman began to cry, and her crying hindered her movements as she finished dressing, her sobbing slowing her and making her clumsy. When she was done and had put on her shoes, she stumbled slightly as she left, yanking the door, catching and straining the safety chain, and crying in frustration as she unfastened it and went out.

Steadman sat, a film of guilt like scum on his face. Needing to complain, he rubbed his eyes and dialed Ava. Just as quickly he hung up, realizing as he tapped the keypad how late it must be. He had not checked his watch—he unconsciously assumed that his watch face would be visible. It usually was at this hour. Touch was like sight: he stroked the hands of his watch—almost midnight. He cursed Manfred. And he imagined the phone call he had just aborted, Ava saying,
You pushed your luck—what did you expect?

What happened next was odder than anything that had happened on that odd day. He was groping toward the bedroom when he remembered that he had not taken the drug since rising that morning in New York to catch the early train to Washington. He had been blind for more than eighteen hours—unprecedented, unexplainable. And the moment this disturbing thought occurred to him, he bumped into the bedroom wall.