Paradise - Part One (The Erotic Adventures of Sophia Durant) (2 page)

It was a text message from Julie, my best friend whose couch I slept on.

JULIE: Hey Soph, so how’d it go? Is celebration in order?

I tapped out a quick reply and clicked send.

SOPHIA: Not yet, I think I got it, but won’t know for sure for a few days.

JULIE: Thunder & lightning here. Thought we could stay in, cuddle up under the covers & watch a horror film.

We had cuddled under covers and watched horror films before. It’s one of our favorite things to do and we’ve done it since we were kids. Our relationship is sexually ambiguous in other ways too. Julie was always a very popular and social girl at school, and she has been promiscuous from her early teens, if not earlier. I’m the opposite. I’ve had one serious boyfriend from my undergraduate days and a one-night stand, and that’s the sum total of my experience. And both of them were searing, wounding experiences, leaving negative impressions. Julie has been with over sixty partners. She can do this because she has no emotional memory to speak of. That’s how I term it. She can cry and be down about a thing one minute, and, the next, completely forget it happened. On the other hand, I have a profound emotional memory. It’s eidetic. I remember every slight committed against me since I was conscious of the concept of individuality.

I say our relationship is sexually ambiguous not only because Julie often says she wishes I was a man so she could marry me, and I share a similar affection for her, but because on one night cuddling before a horror film we kissed. It was one of those old British horror films produced by Hammer Studios in the sixties about a werewolf who’s in love with a local village woman. The man, played by Oliver Reid, whom on occasion transformed into a werewolf, was kissing his love interest when Julie turned to me in the firelight.

I saw her large eyes grow larger with a mixture curiosity and excitement dancing in them. Our knees were already touching. She had one hand on my arm. Julie looked very attractive to me in that light, and in that moment. Her lips parted. My heart skipped a beat. I closed my eyes and felt the fullness of her moist lips touch mine once, then press against them. My skin tingled and broke out in goosebumps. Our tongues were drawn together like magnets. The whole experience hit me like a bolt of lightning.

Julie ran her fingers down my chest, over my breasts, along my stomach, and into my pants. At that point, I was overcome by exhaustion, and probably shock. I fell into a deep, languorous sleep. We hadn’t spoken of the occurrence since it happened, over a year ago. The unexpected result had been that our relationship deepened considerably, and we felt much more protective over one another than before. But it would be hard to say whether there were any possessive feelings involved. In fact, I would say there weren’t because she’d had lovers since, and it had no effect on me.

The rain came in a torrential downpour when I pulled up on the cobblestone of 117 Evergreen Drive. It was a two-story, country home built in the late 1940s for veterans returning from the war that reminded me of an English country manor with the high arches over the windows that protruded from the
attic, and the rounded chimney tops. It nestled among the trees on eleven acres of forested property. On entry, I noticed a bright blaze in the fireplace, and, as I took my shoes off, my smartphone sounded.

“Hello, Sophia.” It was a faint voice I did not at first recognize.

“Yes?”

“It’s Isabella—Isabella Gardner. I’m calling regarding the position you interviewed for today.” She stopped, perhaps waiting for some reaction she wouldn’t get. I was quiet. My excitement had cooled, and I told myself I didn’t care whether I got the job or not. Still, my breath slowed as I awaited the following words: “The job is yours, if you will take it.” Again with the strange wording, I thought. “Are you there?”

“I most definitely will take it. When do I start?”

“You will move what items you require for your convenience at the nearest possible time.” Her speech was as studied as it was absurd.

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow is fine.” There was a harsh click of the phone and three beeps to indicate the end of the call.

“Jeez, I don’t know how I’ll stand that conceited bitch,” I said, my gaze landing on Julie who had just entered the sitting room. What she was wearing immediately caught my eye—a sheer halter top and a short silk skirt. This was not altogether unusual as we often traipsed around the house in various states of undress, but something about her dress combined with her manner made me feel there was some
intention
involved.

“You got it!” she said. She raised a bottle of Champagne and shot the cork in my direction. I turned and ducked but it was too late—the cork made an unabashed direct hit on my chin, leaving a mark.

“That hurt, Julie.”

“Do you want me to kiss it to make it better?” she asked. “Come in the kitchen, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

I followed her into the kitchen to the table whereupon I found a chocolate gateaux—my favorite—with burning candles on it. She poured the Champagne into flutes next to the cake.

Tears formed at the corners of my eyes as I surveyed the scene. I couldn’t help it. I was deeply moved by the love and consideration of my dear friend.

“There’s salmon on the stove too, but I figured we’d have the cake first.”

She looked at me in a curious way she had in which she seemed to be able to look right through me. I shook the uncomfortable thought and suggested we get started. After dessert followed by dinner, we went into the upstairs master bedroom—her room—and snuggled under the covers as a
blu-ray played. Lightning flashed in the forest without and thunder ripped through the air. Rain blew sideways in pockets. Onscreen, red candles burned next to the title: “Hammer Studios presents.” The somber and haunting melody of a solitary violin came over the soundtrack filling the room with hi-def surround sound. Hammer films were a shared obsession with Julie and me. I often saw my life in the stark contrasts and romantic imagery of the Hammer horror film. The soft Playboy magazine style of lighting, the beautiful actors, the threadbare storylines. There was no coherent story to life anyway so why should a film have one? The slight sense of unease produced by the mythical vampires or werewolves, or in the falsity of the Hammer film sets, more closely reflected the sense of unease given by the horrors of the real world than did any serious dramatic film. The shifting sense of unease I felt about reality came in part from what I felt were false technological advancements. Of the Henry Ford school of thought (not believing in the existence of any kind of world or history before my birth and that there will be no world after my death), I felt that all technological advancement was really a sort of deceptive magic with convenient miraculous explanations like the idea that there were satellites in space which transmitted our text messages and phone calls, or that there was some invisible “internet” which transmitted our emails and suspended websites floating in “cyber space.” These ideas were as absurd and ridiculous to me as the theory that humans came from apes or the theory behind Hitler’s eugenics and the practice of social Darwinism. Why should I believe in a bunch of nonsense merely because a group of self-proclaimed “experts” tells me it’s true? Invariably what’s held as sacred truth today is disproven tomorrow and new views come into vogue. The earth was flat and the sun and the stars moved around it, then it became round and revolved around the sun, tomorrow it will no longer be round or revolve around the sun but something else entirely will take its place.

These thoughts and the questioning of conventional wisdom was an integral element in the longest lasting friendship of my life, that with Julie. And that night, though it was unsaid, we felt that perhaps we were losing one another. I watched Julie as she watched the screen. The light of flame from the hearth in her room gave her the appearance of constantly changing form as the fire twisted and pulsated behind her. She took on an almost reptilian look at times.
Snakelike eyes.

She turned her head and caught me looking at her. At first she smiled,
then she looked quite serious, almost longingly. From the depths of my soul came the desire to give expression to this tremendous sense of love rising in me. In my mind it was not a sexual desire but more a deep-seated need for increased intimacy and greater depth in our unfulfilling lives. Next to this vast sense of unity, of sharing the same universal soul, the circumstances of our lives seemed far away, like remote villages so far on the periphery of this all-consuming lightness of being that they seemed nonexistent. We lost ourselves in effervescent radiant jubilation.

In the physical world, she removes her short skirt and sheer halter top and I remove my top, leaving only my panties—I had taken off my rain-soaked jeans before we ate. She looks at me languorously as if overcome by desire. Her movements are hypnotic like those of a snake charmer. She climbs on top of me and her perfect round breasts loom over me. I touch them, at first one then the other. She leans in for the kiss. Touching my lips briefly once and swinging back up before swinging down again and connecting. Our tongues meet. An electric current of pleasure passes through us. Seconds translate into eternity. Her lips move away from me. She looks down into my eyes. For the first time I see a luminous violet hue in her eyes, lending the scene a supernatural, transcendental quality it did not have before. I feel at once that I have met my first soulmate, and in this act we have reached a summit—a form of completion—by traversing intimacy as far as she can be traversed in every direction. There is nothing else to do now with this beautiful girl, we have reached the heights of ecstasy together. With this sense of finding an end comes a vile intruder, an integral part of the experience of this world—the part called time.

I put on the 1978 horror classic
I Spit On Your Grave
(original title,
Day of the Woman
) while I packed my suitcases. I packed the essentials: a week’s worth of dresses, pants, shirts, and so on. I packed some films and books. Occasionally, I glanced at the screen to see Camille Keaton running nude through the forest or sitting astride a man in the bath, parading her glorious tits in full view—furry muff—about to kill him. Many of the original viewers of the film found it contemptible but I found it liberating, a pro-feminist statement in the extreme. Keaton was a towering image of a woman scorned and crazed into the ultimate course of vengeance.

Julie was gone when I left. I had made sure of it. If she was at the house as I was leaving I wouldn’t have been able to go. Already doing my best to put despair at bay, it was all I could do not to lapse into tearful remembrance of times past with
her
. Of course she would come visit me and I would visit her, but distance always puts a stick in it to some degree and I was not consciously ready to detach myself from her. I left in a hurry, without looking back. Though as I write these words it hits me and I can’t hold back the tears any longer. Perhaps I’ll send her this journal at some point in the future, though I don’t know when. She’s the only one I’d let read it.

In the SLK I plugged in my iPod and played “Somebody That I Used
To Know” by Gotye and Kimbra. With the wipers on high I rolled onto FL-20 Eastbound and punched it despite the heavy downpour.

Along Cinnamon Beach it was near hurricane weather, palm trees bent low by high speed winds. I hydroplaned for several seconds on that road and had to slow down. Lightning struck off the coast over the sea. There was no one in sight for miles and I felt alone. I felt that I was crossing over. Not in the sense of physical death but it was a kind of death and there were the early pangs of rebirth, of landing on a new shore. There was a high electrical charge in the atmosphere like that which accompanies the transmigration of souls. A new life hung in the balance waiting to descend upon me, a product of the feelings and ideas I held at that moment like an undeveloped photograph in my mind. There was nowhere to go from here but headlong into a new life as an explorer, into the lives of Mark Stafford, Isabella Gardner, and Baby Savannah, whose soul was as pure and translucent as her father’s smiling eyes.

I saw that the gate was open at the Stafford dacha and assumed the storm must have knocked out the power. I parked under an overhang near one of the mansions, left all my belongings in the car, and hurried inside. The sound of a large generator whirred without and I saw a few lights on inside. I had picked the right mansion, for Anna was there and she took me immediately to Mrs. Gardner. The old maid, standing at the top of a winding staircase, looked down at me with an expression of rigid consternation and bewilderment. I could only think she knew I was coming and wondered what it was all about. Was it about her husband? A kind of portentous jealousy? Was it nothing to do with me but rather in reference to some abstract thought? The more time spent with her, the more I learned that I would probably never get close enough to the woman to know something of her. If I spied on all her communication, I’m sure I would know nothing about her. Why not? Did she have no sex life to speak of? Was she mortified by life in general and all it entails? Or was she merely an extremely simple woman—an ox? No, since she was married to Mark Stafford there must have been something to her. Or was there?

“Welcome, Sophia. We are so happy to have you,” she said in a way that reminded me of the classic film actress Agnes
Moorehead. “When the storm clears, Anna will help you move your bags to a guesthouse. Until then you may do what you like, have a look around, enjoy a cup of coffee.”