Judith Krantz (23 page)

“I don’t know,” Jazz laughed, “are you?”

“That wasn’t a question,” he responded. “It was a statement of fact.”

Jazz knew that she had never been in love. She’d had a crush on one of her teachers in sixth grade and felt a flutter for three weeks for the boy who acted opposite her in the eighth-grade play, but the Bishop School had contained no possible love object, nor had she had time, in the rigorous first year at Graphics Central, even to think about men.

Nevertheless, her memory of her emotions from grammar school was enough to inform her, as she tried and failed to eat the hamburger for which she thought she had been so hungry, that the way she seemed to be bending her attitude toward Tony Gabriel had something to do with her heart.

When he picked up a strand of her hair, looked at it with intense concentration, and asked, “What do you call this color—cornbread with maple syrup?” she felt as if he’d fallen to his knees and told her she was far more lovely than a Botticelli Venus.

She found herself studying the two deep vertical lines on either side of his mouth, which remained whether he smiled or not, as if they would provide a clue to her inability to look away from his perfectly ordinary nose, very big but not remarkable in any
other way, and his bright, clever brown eyes, no different from anyone else’s bright, clever brown eyes, and his rather humorous mouth, which was just a man’s mouth with a nice ordinary upper lip and a nice ordinary lower lip and nice ordinary teeth. There was nothing about the ensemble of his features, either separately or taken as a whole, that she could honestly pick out as special, and the topography of the human face was the area on which she had concentrated her interest for years. Gabe was … attractive, very attractive … and somehow interesting looking, but so were a million men. He certainly couldn’t be called handsome or striking, she told herself, desperately trying to hold on to reality. It must be all those silly cowlicks.

She couldn’t stop staring at him.

“Something wrong with the hamburger?” he asked.

“No, it’s fine. I’m just … not hungry.”

“Neither am I,” he said, looking in some surprise at the almost untouched hamburger on his plate. “Maybe we should have gone for something more exotic.”

“I don’t think that … would have helped.” Jazz found that she had to force herself to speak. Her lips seemed frozen and her mind wasn’t working normally. In fact, it was barely working at all.

“I’m not hungry,” Gabe said in wonder, “and I haven’t eaten since breakfast.” He sounded bewildered, a man who has made a discovery he knows is momentous although he doesn’t yet know why.

Jazz made a noncommittal noise that indicated a response. Something about the way he’d offered this piece of information made it seem as if invisible, golden trumpets had blown a glorious fanfare. He wasn’t hungry and she wasn’t hungry. She felt a rising, choking, dangerous tightening in her chest, as if she were about to burst into tears or laughter and be unable to stop.

“Don’t take this personally, but do you believe in love at first sight?” Gabe asked, with an expression of
shocked and terrified disbelief as he listened to his voice saying words he had never said before and never expected to say.

“If you’d asked me that five minutes ago …” Jazz hesitated and lowered her eyelids, unable to meet his gaze.

“Yes?”

“I would have said that I doubt it … but I suppose anything can happen …”

“Don’t stop …” Gabe implored her. “Just say whatever comes into your head.”

“Now … I’m beginning to …”

“To what?” he asked, taking her hands in his and holding the shaking fingers tightly.

“Beginning to wonder …” Jazz’s high color grew higher.

“Wonder what?”

“If may be it’s … possible,” she whispered, overcome by a sudden new bashfulness, her chin lowered so that she was looking only at the table.

“For some people or all people?”

“No idea.” Jazz shook her head.

“For you and me?”

“How would I know? Why do you expect me to know everything?” Jazz said, lifting her head in protest against this blissful, pointless interrogation.

“Because I’m crazy nuts in love with you, I have been since the minute I saw you and it doesn’t seem possible, it’s never happened to me before, so
you
have to tell me it’s true.”

“Oh,” Jazz said, feeling the heart she had judged cool and unready slip easily free of the cords that bound it and dance wildly to the music of the trumpets that blew and blew again their announcement of joy.

“Are you just going to sit there and say ‘oh’?”

Jazz nodded, incapable of speech.

“That’s good enough for me. You didn’t say no, did you? You feel the same thing? It’s not just me? It can’t possibly be
just
me, can it?”

Jazz could not even make a gesture. She just sat there, immobile, knowing that it was enough for her
to accept his words and wait. His hands were trembling as badly as hers, but his were warm and hers were cold.

“So that’s settled. Love at first sight, that’s what it’s called, that’s what’s happened to us.

Jazz tried to smile. She failed. She felt so frightened that she didn’t know what to do. She could never get up and leave the safety of this red leather booth. She’d have to spend the rest of her life here. How had she managed to talk to him before? What part of her brain had permitted all those words? Just so long as he didn’t let go of her hands, she’d be all right.

“Did you know in the lecture hall?” he demanded tenderly.

“I don’t remember. It was too long ago. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“But you kept walking away, Jazz. What if I’d let you go?”

“You couldn’t have.”

“I couldn’t have,” Gabe agreed. “No way. Do you realize that I haven’t kissed you yet?”

“It doesn’t seem to matter,” Jazz muttered timidly.

“You’re right. We should give it a chance to matter.”

“There’s no rush,” Jazz said, almost unable to breathe.

“Don’t you care?”

“I care too much.”

“Me too. We’d better get it over with. The longer we wait, the tougher it’s going to be,” Gabe said with the determination and knowledge of a man who made his living taking risks no sane man would take. “Will you come back to my hotel?”

“Of course. But you have to hold my hand the whole time. Don’t let go.”

As soon as they reached the hotel room, Gabe dropped Jazz’s hand, which he had clutched except when he had put his key in the ignition, and put his
arms tightly around her, standing up with his back to the door.

“You’re safe now, we’re home free,” Gabe told Jazz, who was shivering in spite of her heavy sweater.

“Just keep holding me.” Her voice was low and tyrannical. She buried her head in his chest.

“Are you that afraid?” He spoke to the top of her head.

“Yes,” she answered, as resolutely as if she were denying any fear.

“Me too.”

“But you’re much older than I am. You have to be brave,” Jazz argued, stubbornly bashful, clinging to bashfulness as if it were familiar, although she had never been bashful in her life before.

Gabe held Jazz a few inches away from him, tilted her head upward and touched her lips softly with one finger and grinned.

“I’d damn well better be brave enough to kiss you.”

Gabe inclined his head and placed his mouth slowly on her mouth, and his delicate, almost humorous kiss allowed some of the muscles in her shoulders to release a little of their tension. “I’m even brave enough to kiss you a lot,” he whispered, and he kissed her again and again, feeling her cold lips turn warm and her shivering grow less, as he learned the feel of the shape of her mouth. It felt even fuller than it looked, he thought, even fuller than he had imagined, succulent, tender, firm, fresh, a mouth like none other he had ever known.

Jazz responded with an awkward willingness, beginning, little by little, to match him kiss for kiss, as if kissing were a marvelous game at which the players never lost or won, a game that could be played indefinitely.

“We just can’t stand here necking,” Gabe finally said, between kisses.

“Sure we can,” Jazz murmured. “There’s nobody to stop us.”

“It’s not comfortable. Want to … sit down?”

“I want to do whatever you want to do.”

He’d never had a girl in his room before, Gabe thought—and God knew there had been more than his fair share of girls in his rooms—who wanted to keep on kissing standing up all night, but he’d never been in love before, so maybe that accounted for it. All the old rules were changed. This was a whole new ball game.

“So how about the couch?” he suggested, feeling ridiculous but willing to feel ridiculous.

“What about it?” Jazz landed a kiss on his nose.

“We could look at it or we could talk about it or we could reupholster it—or we could sit down.”

“Oh, let’s sit,” she said, laughing for the first time since the door had closed behind them. “Isn’t that what’s it’s there for?”

Gabe took Jazz firmly by the hand and led her over to the couch and watched as she sat down neatly, almost primly.

“Like this?” Jazz asked. She was playing dumb, Gabe decided. His darling dumb some-new-sort-of-blond.

“For a job interview, yes. This isn’t a job interview.” Gabe rearranged her until she was in a semi-reclining position. “O.K., now hold still. There’s this particular place right behind the top of your ear where the hair starts to ripple—I’ve been thinking about that place all night. I want to kiss you there. You’re not ticklish?”

“Only on the soles of my feet.”

Gabe sank to his knees on the floor, since it was a foam-rubber couch, both low and narrow, and leaned over Jazz. He slid one arm under her head to support it, and held the hair off her neck with the other hand, rummaging around behind her ear with his lips, kissing her with tiny, tasting, peregrinating kisses along the length of her hairline to the nape of her neck.

They hadn’t turned on any of the lights in the room, and he could only see her dimly, her head half-turned away from him so that he could have complete access to her hairline, but the tactile contrast of the
softness of the skin of her neck with the springy birth of her hair with its promise of a thousand discoveries to come, was almost as exciting as her lips. Jazz, utterly silent, half-opened her mouth in delight and closed her eyes so that she could concentrate on his warm, moving mouth as if she were listening to music too important to permit visual distraction.

Gabe’s lips ventured slowly upward, behind her ear, and crossed her temple to her eyelid. He slid the tip of his tongue across the curved line where her eyelashes grew from the skin of her lids, skin so delicate that he dared only to brush it with the lightest of touches. He flicked his tongue over the tips of her lashes and she cried out suddenly, the first sound she’d made since they’d moved to the couch.

“You like that,” he muttered.

Jazz broke out of her trance and grasped him around the neck, drawing his head down. “Lie down next to me,” she begged.

“There’s no room.”

“There’s room on the bed,” Jazz said.

“That’s a wonderful idea. I wish I’d thought of it.” Gabe marveled at his delicious dumbbell.

“You’re the one who said the couch,” Jazz replied, almost reproachfully, getting up, crossing the room, kicking off her shoes and lying down on the bed.

“It’s all my fault. I won’t make it again. Straight to the bed from the door. What was I thinking of?”

He stood over her, studying her. “White pants and white sweater on a white bedspread? This won’t work. How can I find you—it’s like looking for a white rabbit in a snow bank.”

“Look for a pink nose,” Jazz answered, sitting up and pulling her sweater over her head.

He gasped at the sight of her breasts. The sweater was such a thick knit that there had been no way to even imagine breasts like these, so utterly young, yet heavy and opulent; ripe breasts that were so firm they rode high on her chest, lifting upward with their big rosy nipples hardened and pointed.

Gabe slid down and pulled Jazz over on top of
him so that her breasts were above his face. She leaned on her elbows as she gazed down at him, a look of intent curiosity on her face. He moaned and with his large hands he took her breasts and pushed them together so that he could take both her nipples into his mouth at the same time. With all the pulling, sucking force of his lips and tongue and cheeks, he feasted on those hot buds as if he could make them open and flower inside his mouth.

For many minutes his whole being was concentrated on the nipples he held so firmly enclosed. He suckled at her unmercifully, teasing her with tiny nips of his teeth, causing her a pleasure so wonderful that she bit her own lips as she tried to force even more of her breasts into his mouth. She pressed down on him with her hips without realizing what she was doing, rubbing and pushing so urgently, with such insistence, that finally he knew that it was time to tear himself away from her breasts. Gabe took her by her shoulders, turned her over on her back and, with the boldness of an outlaw, stripped off what was left of her clothes, intent, possessed.

Jazz lay spellbound, suddenly stilled, with only her hair to cover her shoulders, watching him, a question again glowing in her eyes. He stood beside the bed while he tore off his own clothes. Jazz stared at Gabe, her eyes widening at the sight of his tanned body in the dimness of the room. He was as thin as she’d thought, but she hadn’t imagined that his arms and legs and shoulders would be so unexpectedly sinewy, or his chest so broad. Nor had she tried to picture to herself the powerful, heavy, masterful penis, thicker and longer than she could have believed, that stood out and up from the dark hair between his legs. She drew in her breath, stunned, incredulous, unable to look away, shocked into immobility.

Gabe knelt on the bed, his knees holding her thighs apart, kissing her open, panting mouth many times, making sounds she couldn’t understand. She
threw her arms around his neck as she tried awkwardly, but with all her strength, to pull him down on top of her, desperate to be crushed under him, to feel his skin everywhere on her body.