Lunch (12 page)

Olivia shivers when he touches her, but does not pull away. “You're one solid lump,” he says, probing her clenched muscles. “Relax. Close your eyes. Calm down.”

“Nick,” she says.

“Yes.”

“I can't—­”

“I know.” His fingers sure and strong, soothing away her tension. “Just relax.”

The room is silent, the sounds of the street muffled into indistinct mumblings of noise, a child shouting, a siren, the heavy rumble of a truck. It is warmer outside than usual, the sun shining, and I forgot to light the fire.

“Lie down,” he says, his voice barely louder than a whisper. “I want to rub your back.”

“No—­”

“Lie down,” he says, sweetly insistent, pulling her up and propelling her to the bed, pushing the comforter out of the way. “It will make you feel better.”

She thought she had the energy to fight him today, to say this is the last time, and mean it, but she hasn't, she can't when he is being nice. I have long thought that men who know when to be nice, these skillful practitioners of seduction and elicitors of orgasms who transfer their niceness into the bedroom, these men who are so skilled at sex are in truth those creatures who cannot love. It is all put into the act itself, so that their niceness is never selfless, but a shiny mirror meant only to reflect their performance. Only then can they bask in its glory, distill it into all their other, equally meaningless acts, their smooth hellos and busy days and vapid, useless nights.

Nice, from them, is easy.

Nice, from Nick, is irresistible.

He pulls off Olivia's boots, and her socks, eases her sweater over her head, unhooks her bra, not touching her jeans, and covers her bare back with the comforter. “Don't move,” he says, and unlocks the trunk, rummaging for the bottle of scented oil I'd put in there weeks before. Then he quickly unbuttons his shirt, takes it off, and throws it in the corner.

He rubs the oil between his palms, to warm it, then bends over to the ripe warmth of Olivia's skin, glowing white, delicious. He wants to sink his teeth into the divine taste of it, but instead he is calmly massaging her neck.

“Yummy,” she says, “this oil. Where'd you get it?”

“M got it. Elixir of Life, it's called.”

He feels her chuckle softly, relaxing further, gentled, his hands steady, pushing the comforter away, concentrating, up and down her spine, her arms, back to her neck, stealing down again.

She turns her head to the side. “Who lives here?” she asks him.

“What do you mean?”

“Alderson, Andrews, Fairley, and Scott. The names, on the buzzers.”

“Sounds like a law firm.”

“Mmm, it does. But I never hear anybody. The building seems so empty.”

“I guess it does,” he says, his voice so steady and even you'd never presume that he was lying through his teeth, “but I never much thought about it. It's not like I spend so much time here, or you.” Her muscles tense reflexively, and he rubs it away. “It's one of the reasons I like this flat so much, the quiet, I mean. The privacy. Nobody knows who I am here, and nobody wants to know. I haven't been chased down the street once. Must be slipping.”

“Do you get chased so much?” She turns her head to the other side. “That's a stupid thing to say. Of course you do.”

He looks up at the mirror, and me, and smiles.

“Flip over,” he says even as he eases her over, then stretches across the bed to turn down the light. “Give me your hand.” He takes it, sitting at her side, not touching any other part of her body. “Hands are the nicest.” He is thorough, his motions firm, assured, lingering over the paint specks freckling her fingers.

She opens her eyes to watch him, absorbed in his task, concentrating, his features almost boyish, and he is pretending that the heat of her gaze is not burning a dull throb deep in him. He shifts to her other hand, then, slowly, his fingers move up her arm, over her shoulders, down to her breasts, swirling, dulcet fingers, her nipples are hard and he won't touch them, he ignores her desire, moving down to her ribs, her belly, unbuckling her jeans, easing them off, leaving her panties on, rubbing more oil between his palms, rubbing it, lavender and rosemary and geranium, smoothly into her heels, the soles of her feet, her ankles, her calves, her knees, up her thighs, soothing her into lazy tranquillity.

Her anger, the long despair of her walk across the park, has disappeared, dissipated into the silence of the room, absorbed into the brocade and gilt, sunk into the luxurious comforter, tranquilized by his knowing fingers. The familiar ache replaces it, not leaving her, the aching burden of pleasure and the aching burden of guilt.

I see it all so clearly on her face.

She's not ready to say what she came to say. That's why she's here, why she didn't call, why her feet dragged her across the park. She still wants it, I see the desire shining in her eyes like molten silver, a sword's edge, flashing in sunlight. I see it transformed by a blink into remorse and a biting sense of shame for her greedy grasp of the pleasure Nick gives her. She knows it's not just what he's given to her painting, she still wants him, here, in the flat, her body wants him, awoken from a long slumber, his body taking her relentlessly, she will let him devour her whole as long as he doesn't stop, not here, not now, not yet.

Every relationship needs a touch of madness. I see it so clearly every time I look in the mirror, my own desire reflected back to me, coolly mocking.

“Feeling better?” Nick says.

“Yes.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No.”

“Do you want to go home?”

Her eyes fly open. “That's a trick question.”

“Sorry,” he says, caressing her thighs, “forgive me.” His hands straying closer. “Is this okay?” She nods, helpless now, and closes her eyes. “Tell me when to stop.” His fingers on her, stroking the crazy, infuriating ache, pulling down her panties, calm, deliberate, in ever-­narrowing circles, her arms on his, gripping him, pushing him in closer.

“No,” he says, “let me do it. Don't move.” He takes her arms and binds them with the cords on the bed, but she doesn't protest, not this time, no, she wants him to, wants him to do anything as long as he hurries back to her and makes that maddening ache go away.

His fingers, his mouth, his tongue on her, her back arching, involuntarily, her arms straining against the bed, her skin alive, screaming to be touched, her head lolling from side to side, her breathing hoarse.

He has never been so gentle with her before, so patient, so generous. It is so easy, to succumb.

“Don't go,” she says, “don't leave me.”

“I won't,” he says, even as he pulls away, only slightly, teasing.

“Come back,” she says, gasping, “I want you to come back.”

“I'm here,” he says. “Tell me, tell me what you want. I'll do anything you want.”

“Kiss me,” she says, “just kiss me.”

“Like this?” he asks, pecking her on the cheek.

“No. More.”

“Like this?”

“More.”

He will kiss her, again, over and over, he will leave her breathless, delirious, he will stop only to do it again, until the desire is quenched in her, and the frenzy stills.

It is worth everything, to hear her beg.

O
LIVIA QUIETLY
gets dressed, yanks up her boots, runs a brush through her hair, puts on her lipstick. Her sure, sweet, capable artist's hands are trembling.

“When?” he says. “I've got to shoot all day tomorrow. The day after.”

“I can't.” She buttons her coat. “I'm going away for a few days.”

There is a long pause. “Going where?”

“Cairo.”

“Why?” He sees her face. “Oh.” He is still playing nice, he will be nice, he will let her go, flushed and satiated, glowing with sex, her lips swollen from his kisses, what a perfect mood for parting, if indeed she must go. Let her, he has work to do. Revenge will come later, it can wait. For now he is thankful in an odd selfish way that he has not bruised her, perhaps that's what she was afraid of, unwittingly, when she came in, her steadfast self-­loathing such divine aphrodisiac. He still smells it on her, lingering, she will sit soaking in the bath, scrubbing her skin, washing it away, desperately grateful there are no divulging, telltale signs imprinted on her body, the stigmata of duplicity, to compound her contrition.

Calmly, Nick lights a cigarette. “Is that what you wanted to tell me when you came in?” She wants him to react, he feels it and he ignores her, she wants him furious, because anger she can try to understand, although no one can quite divine the deeply hidden depths of Nick's wrath. Except me.

“Partly.”

“I see.” He exhales, small, flawless circles. She waves them away. “When are you coming back?”

“I don't know yet.”

“Well, have fun. I'll miss you.”

“I know.”

“Kiss me goodbye.”

She shakes her head no.

He smiles at her, and shrugs. “Then you owe me a kiss.”

“Bye,” she says, frustrated yet grateful for the reprieve, and is flying down the stairs.

N
ICK IS
staring at the ceiling, still blowing smoke rings, when I come in.

“I'm fucked, M,” he says. He starts laughing, the unimaginable pleasure of her pleading demands lingering in his mind, his body languid, lying on the bed, naked, her scent on the sheets, a whiff of the scented oil escaping as he turns to me, the essence of Olivia, the Elixir of Life. His eyes are glowing more fiercely than his cigarette. “Can you believe the little bitch is leaving? Not after this.”

“Probably because of this.”

“Do you know,” he says, needing to talk, the postcoital conversation almost as vital to him in this exultant state of physical awareness as the cigarette, “when I'm touching her, when I'm inside her, I'm so—­I don't know how to say it—­
aware,
of her, so intensely
alive,
feeling the texture of her skin, her flesh underneath me, every bit of her body, goose bumps, a bruise, purple, or fading to green, that I put there—­I must have, I don't remember—­and all I want to do is give to her, give something back that I know I'm taking, making her feel exactly what I'm feeling.”

“Which might be hard to do when she's strapped to the bed.”

He doesn't even hear me, lost in his soliloquy.

Audiences are supposed to be quiet, and listen. Especially me. I can watch Olivia, he wants me there to watch her most ultimate moments laid bare to Nick's inexorability, but I am forbidden to intrude. Look, but do not touch. Those are the rules. Until now, they were unassailable.

“It's like I am moving outside of my own body, moving within it, it is me, mine, yet I'm removed, so I can watch myself,” he is saying. “I can't get enough of that feeling. I'll never get enough of it.”

“You mean she won't let you.”

“No, not like that. I can remember, literally, controlling the motion, Olivia was on top of me so I could see her face above, her eyes were closed, and I was saying to myself, not imagining it, but knowing it to be true, that I will never again feel this close to death.” His voice is rapturous. “I was feeling her, Olivia, on top of me, inching up and down, inch by fraction of an inch, with so little margin of error, a membrane away from death.”

Disbelief that Nick has himself found the words to articulate these shared secrets so precisely is etched on my face, but he doesn't see me, lying on his back, lounging into the pillows, his eyes narrowed by memory and smoke, small, flawless circles floating up to the ceiling. He doesn't see me, because I don't matter.

It hits me with a tiny jolt, realizing how little he cares. I push the thought away. I don't want to think, watching them is too exhausting. I only want to disappear, I only want to sleep.

“And you know,” Nick is saying, “I didn't want it to be so intense. Not at first. But now, between her and this damn movie, it's better than any drug.”

“The Elixir of Life.”

“Yes,” he says, laughing again. “The fucking Elixir of Life. It was perfect. Where the hell did you find it?”

I shrug. I don't remember.

“What am I going to do?” he says, stubbing out his cigarette and throwing on his clothes. “We've got to think of something. A nice welcoming party at the airport, perhaps.”

“What do you really want to do?”

“Make her come home, of course. When I can't have her I only want to hurt her for leaving me, and when I do have her I only want to make her beg me to stop. So it's simple. She tells the Frog bastard she's really sorry it won't work out and comes with me.”

“Simple.”

“Fuck off.”

“What if it's the other way around?”

“It won't be.”

How convenient to have a memory so selective, erasable like chalk after a few blissful hours of lunch. The truth is too painful to confront, too painful to deny. It isn't love, I want to say to him, not what you want, not what she knows to be love.

He who has loved nothing, who, I thought, had like myself no heart to give, only the Pinocchio heart beating mercilessly in the same entrenched rhythms, wooden and yearning, beating unaware, blinded by the dazzling light of pain beaten into us so early, with such brutality, that he would never see the possibility of surrender.

This time he is on his own. I can no longer help him.

His world has been reduced to a room perfumed with the essence of Olivia.

 

Chapter 14

I
am standing guard.

The wardrobe mistress was glad to oblige, anything for Nick, so happy to be of ser­vice for the costume party he says he's going to, thank you very much indeed for thinking we could help, thank you even more for the payoff I swiftly palmed to her. Money does buy freedom, don't believe anyone who says it doesn't. Enough of it also buys silence.

So does my face.

The chauffeur uniform suits me, much better than Nick's dishwater-­blah janitor's jumpsuit. The large peaked hat and the Ray-­Bans cast a deliberate shadow over my face, and I am not stared at quite as much as usual. Twin rows of gold buttons run down my chest. Olivia Morgan is written in smooth black block letters on my sign.

Her face when she sees me, coming out of customs, a stunned, tenuous grin of nervous bewilderment. She looks ravishing, like a woman who's just been endlessly fucking the man she loves, relaxed, calm, lost in thought, until she recognizes me. I realize that except for those two lunches and the one time I took her home, I've never seen her outside her studio or the flat, moving purposeful, apart from Nick, apart from us, herself, her needs not ours in her own daily world.

“What are you doing here?” she says, confused, coming up to me. “How on earth did you know I'd be on this plane?”

An explanation is not really necessary. A few quick phone calls, the usual payola. Simple.

“Never mind,” she mutters. “Let me guess.”

She sees Nick, then, leaning against the wall near the restroom, mop in hand, and stifles a laugh at the fake beard glued to his cheeks and the cap pulled low to hide his famous face from curious eyes, a mock ID tag dangling from the breast pocket of his uniform.

So much for security in airports.

She sees him, then, leaning against the wall in the same pose as when she'd painted him a lifetime ago, leaning still and watching, waiting, and she stares back in perplexed astonishment, torn between indecision and desire, too stunned by the shock of his presence to be furious that he's dared find her here, so soon after, when she's defenseless.

Run, I want to say, run back onto the plane, fly away, fly to Cairo or wherever he is this week, run quick, find a taxi, lock your door, don't look back.

“Go on,” is what I hear myself saying. I wonder if she will forgive me for saying it, but I tell myself she won't even remember that we spoke. “The coast is clear.”

Indeed it was, but even if the restroom had been filled with drunken soccer hooligans Nick would have stood there, lounging, patient, mop in hand, because he is waiting for Olivia to come back to him, his eyes liquid with lust, moving only to stroke her cheek, tender, gentle as she draws close, telling her softly, oh so softly, that he was going mad without her.

Olivia places a palm over the fingers caressing her cheek, and without her noticing I take her bags. In a flash the light in Nick's eyes deepens and he grabs her tight, twists her off-­balance as he hauls her inside and quickly into the stall we'd prepared, the handicapped one because it is larger, an out-­of-­order sign taped to it, and slides the lock behind him. So quick she couldn't have articulated a word of protest, for he'd performed this variation on a theme so many times the motions were seamless to him, practiced and easy, and that was half the joy of it. He is kissing her so deep she can barely breathe, forcing her to kiss him back, his mouth delirious on hers, murmuring her name, over and over, one hand in her hair, pushing her back up against the back wall, one hand moving down between her legs, parting them, her head spinning, her legs melting, liquid, but it is too much, he is too strong. This is what she feared from him the last time, the last perfect lunchtime when he made her swoon, this is the fury she knew he was hiding under glib goodbyes and flawless circled smoke rings.

She does not want him here, he has no right to trap her like this, catching her unaware, the feel of Olivier still lingering on her skin, she does not want Nick to touch it so, not now, not like this.

She is beginning to struggle against him, to try to pull her mouth away, and that is all he needs, the intoxication of extorted surrender, and he leans all his weight against her, into the cold tiles of the stall, forcing her mouth to stay open to his longing.

“You owe me a kiss,” he says, “you owe me,” pushing her hands rudely into the handcuffs that she hadn't seen already dangling from the pipe, put there hours before, when we arrived and changed into our uniforms. Pushing down her panties like a flutter of silken toilet paper. Pushing down his black jeans and into her with such force that her smothered scream nearly tears his hand away.

I have brought Nick's mop and her bags inside, and am busy washing my hands, trying to drown out the muffled sounds no listless tourist can hear but me.

“How could you,” he says in a vicious whisper, “how could you leave me?” How she fights him, squirming, her eyes shiny with tears of rage, trying to bite the hand that imprisons her, shocked and furious at his instant transformation from sweetly tender to tyrannical, waiting for her, off-­guard, waiting to pounce on her travel-­weary confusion, waiting for her when she hasn't the strength to push him away, even if she truly wanted to.

And then he is kissing her again, biting her lips, biting the tears away, pushing her harder up against the wall, her legs around his waist. He knows her limits, and she hates him for it. He knows what she likes, he knows just how far to go and when to withdraw, he knows how to melt her anger so she can no longer fight him off, and she succumbs.

I
TIMED
it. Seven minutes. Enough time to sit in a trendy restaurant, eat the olive from a martini, scan the menu, and order
osso buco.

Enough time to suck out the marrow.

Enough time to say a few prayers, and light a candle for your soul.

L
ATER,
WE
watched the video. We had experimented on the angle of the mini-­camcorder packed gently in foam in Nick's mop bucket and started from a remote I held, following them into the men's room, watchful and wary, just in case. We had concentrated on angles and focus for endless hours, busying our hands with preparation, anything to keep Nick's mind from straying to thoughts of the hotel room in Cairo where Olivia was sleeping in Olivier's arms.

Despite our careful planning the focus was off, grainy, jerky. The video is no more real than an abstract painting, a shifting landscape of cloth, of knee, of parted thighs, of hisses and muffled moans, of enraged yearning less potent than a whisper.

An unwitting viewer would see it and shrug, not realizing that this tape had captured the most authentic image of the fury of Nick's passion, unleashed.

Unseen. Uncaught. Seven minutes.

It was all the time he needed.