Perfect Freedom (72 page)

“Adonde usted comida?”
he asked, looking around for the Spanish phrase book he had brought with him. She looked up at him as blankly as if he had spoken an unknown tongue and after a moment's hesitation started back to the kitchen without speaking. He followed her and found her own place laid on the kitchen table. He gathered up plate, knife, and fork and carried them back to his table. She trailed after him. He drew up another chair opposite his and gestured to it. She sat down obediently.

“Comida con migo,”
he said. He was watching her for signs of embarrassment or uneasiness but she seemed to be taking it placidly as part of her job. Their eyes met and he rewarded her with a dazzling smile. For the second time since he'd been here, his rich laughter burst from him at the way she sat, prim and self-contained and terribly young.

“Well, this is great,” he said. “What have we got here?” He served them what appeared to be fish buried under a scarlet sauce and she began to eat with her head bowed over her plate. He continued to watch her.

“You're very pretty,” he said with his mouth full and laughed again as she looked up with a polite attention that suggested she would be delighted to speak to him if she could: “What's your name?” He put down his knife and fork and leafed through the phrase book. Growing impatient, he put it aside and branched out on his own.
“Usted. Nomme. Nomme usted.”

She uttered her careful laughter and spoke at some length during which he heard
Luisa
repeated several times.

“
Usted
… Luisa?” he asked.

“
Si
.” She nodded.

“
Yo
… Lance.” He pronounced the
e
as a separate syllable to make it easier for her.

“Señor Lance,” she repeated gravely, turning the
c
into a soft
ch
and the
e
closer to
o
, as in
Sancho
.

“No. No
señor
. Lance.
Es todo
. Lance.”

“Si, señor,”
she agreed.

“Lance,” he insisted.

“Lance,” she whispered at last with the reluctance of a child who is encouraged to do something she knows is wrong. They ate. She served several more dishes deep in fiery sauces. Every time she leaned across the table, her loose blouse fell away from her shoulders revealing her round childlike breasts. It was a pleasant sight and Lance wasn't insensible to it, although he felt himself forever beyond the reach of physical sensation, past wanting or caring.

When the meal was over, he withdrew to a deck chair at the end of the terrace to give Luisa working room, but he found himself watching her as she moved around the table, studying the slow-motion movements of her legs under the long skirt, observing the way her bare feet seemed to grip the ground. When she went to draw water from the well, he jumped up to help but she shook her head vigorously. It was good having somebody moving around the house. It created a homely atmosphere but it was a bit of a nuisance, too. He would have liked to stretch out naked in the sun, but the place was so small that there was no corner where she mightn't stumble on him. Finally, he went to his room and took a nap.

When he awoke, the sun was setting with the unleashed splendor he was learning was characteristic of Puerto Veragua. He went to the edge of the terrace and stood between sea and sky, looking down at the waves rippling into the rocky cove below and up at the glory of the passing day. It began at the top of the sky in piled-up castles of pink cloud. Below were the foundations of color on which they rested, like the strata of the earth, orange and bloodred and purple. Slowly they shifted into the deep velvet tones of night. The sky was filled with the announcement of night and the sea grew still at the wonder of it. What could one do with a day to justify the majesty of such an ending? Lance wondered with uneasy awe.

His contemplation was interrupted by the arrival of Luisa around the corner of the house, carrying a hissing lamp that gave off a bright white light and had the effect of banishing the twilight, so that the day was turned abruptly to night. They ate a light supper together, engaging in fragmentary conversation as at lunch. When she left him, vanishing into the night, he wanted to call her back. As he sat in the bright pool of light shed by the lamp, the night drew in, whispering secretly, until it seemed to tower just outside the circle of light, threatening in its immensity.

He had the whole long evening ahead of him, alone. He should have asked the girl to stay with him a little longer. What had ever possessed him to move to this desolate house? He stared broodingly into the night and cursed the habit of money that had made him rent it so casually. When he thought of the way he had lived these last few days, letting himself drift, lolling in the sun, he felt the quick stirring of anger with himself. He felt his mind drifting back into the past and he fought against it. It was too painful and it couldn't tell him anything anyway, except that he had struggled to find his own place in the world—his own place, not that provided by the accident of birth—and that every time he thought he had succeeded, everything had gone terribly wrong.

Sitting alone, with the night so close that it seemed he might touch it, the future seemed a dark void. He would stay here long enough to get his nerves straightened out and then he would go back—to work, to achieve something, even though there was no longer any hope of reward. His savings were almost gone. There was that to look forward to—the force of necessity, the relief of no longer being able to choose.

He awoke the next morning to find Luisa already there. She presented him with a breakfast of beans and chili sauce topped by a fried egg, which after a moment's hesitation he downed without protest. Her presence made the place seem bearable once more and in turn charged him with energy. After breakfast he set off down the road in the blazing morning sun to pay his respects to Flip Rawls and to deliver the bit of native pottery that was all he had been able to find for her in the local market. He also hoped he might borrow some tools to create his private beach.

He found her on her terrace having breakfast, a very different affair from his, all silver pots and dainty slices of toast. The
New York Times
was folded beside her. He doubted that there had been anything about him in it for more than a week. In view of her strong stand on the housing situation, he was a little embarrassed about telling her what he'd done but she was unruffled by his news.

“I'm so pleased,” she purred with the delightful tilt of her head. “I didn't dare suggest it myself—one never knows with people—but I hoped—I had a
feeling
you might come to it. Those things are in our destinies.”

Lance felt as if she had tricked him somehow. She showered him with invitations—for lunch, for dinner, for lunch the next day—all of which he refused in order to hold his own against her. Eventually he made off with a pick and shovel and trudged back along the dusty road, indulging himself by imagining that he was a real workman with a real job for which he would be paid. He had always enjoyed things that were supposed to be disagreeable, like selling his possessions during the brief period when he had had the exhilarating experience of being broke. He had been fascinated by pawnshops; necessity was a tonic.

He attacked his self-imposed task vigorously. He liked the feel of his muscles straining and he liked the sting of sweat in his eyes and the sun burning into his body. He liked in a perverse way the searing sting in the palms of his hands as the tools raised blisters on them. By noon he had hacked tenable footholds out of the rocky ground all the way down to the cove and when he reached the bottom he let himself fall into the sea with an enormous splash, still wearing shorts and sandals.

He worked his way out of them in the water and swam around naked for half an hour, diving and splashing and feeling surprisingly pleased with himself. Occasionally he looked up at the little house, where a flitting shadow told him reassuringly that Luisa was in competent charge. When he climbed back up in his dripping clothes, she indicated to him that lunch was ready.

After lunch, he decided to settle the question of his privacy once and for all. He dragged a deck chair to the farthest corner of the terrace and called Luisa to him. He wanted to explain that while he was in the chair he might be naked and in any case was not to be approached. Luisa stood beside him with the patient attentiveness that was becoming familiar to him.

“I like to take sunbaths without any clothes on,” he explained in English. He made gestures of removing his sarong and stretched himself out in the deck chair. He rose and pointed at her and made forbidding signs that were supposed to indicate that she was to keep her distance. He went through the motions of removing his sarong once again. Not convinced that he had made his point clear, he stretched out in the chair again and closed his eyes and gestured the sarong away.

“
Si
,” she said.

He heard her moving beside him and then his sarong was unfastened and hands were on his cock. He let out a yelp and shot up into a sitting position as if a gun had gone off behind him. She was kneeling beside him and her blouse was gone. Her firm young breasts pressed against his thigh as she leaned down to him and ran her lips and tongue lightly over him. He was too astonished to do anything but enjoy it. His cock sprang up to welcome her attentions. He guessed that she couldn't be more than sixteen but she was doing everything with assurance and composure and great skill. Perhaps it was a local custom.

She hoped that the way her father had taught her to do it would also please a foreigner. Her brothers liked it. She was the only female in the household and it was a great honor for her to be allowed to pay homage to this sacred part of a man. Her father had taught her that it was a sin only if she allowed it to be put into her, as many fathers did with their daughters. He had taught her to remove her blouse because playing with her breasts added to the pleasure. The foreigner had made it clear that he wanted to be naked. She had been sent away from her last work because she hadn't understood her duties and she didn't want to risk its happening again.

The
señer
's prong was much bigger than the ones she was accustomed to and she wasn't able to put much of it into her mouth. She hoped that she could please him with her hands. She loved holding it. At first it had been as soft and tender as some small wild creature. Now it was big and hard and mighty, as if it were about to release its juice. For the first time, she didn't want a quick ending. She loved having it in her mouth and feeling it and looking at its beautiful color, pink and golden. If all men looked like this, it would be very difficult to resist the great sin of letting them be inside her. She had never before been tempted but she longed to let this one into her.

Recovering from his astonishment, Lance drew her up and put his mouth on her adorable breast and nibbled a nipple. She felt him get very hard when he did this and she uttered little cries of delight, knowing that she pleased him. He lowered his hands to the waistband of her skirt, trying to find out how to unfasten it. She pushed his hands away and pulled back and shook her head and spoke at some length. Was she telling him that she was a virgin and that their pleasure must be restricted? He couldn't think of anything else she would have to say under the circumstances.

He smiled and nodded and let her continue the service that she performed as if she were proud of her accomplishment. She brought him easily to a wrenching orgasm, ending his long celibacy. When the spasms had subsided, he took a deep breath and rose and pulled her gently to her feet. Her small breasts lifted to him with the firm buoyancy of youth. She looked more than ever like a Balinese drawing. The problem of naked sunbathing had been solved.

Her blouse was lying where she had dropped it and he picked it up and held it in front of her. She reached for it but he shook his head and smiled. “No shirt,” he said in Spanish. “Never here. Beautiful like that.” He let it fall on his sarong and took her hand and led her to the bedroom. He wasn't going to try to seduce a child but she had released his carefully disciplined sexual needs and he wanted to find out how far she was willing to go. He wished he could explain that she could be safely naked with him; they could give each other much pleasure without his entering her.

He held her in front of him beside the bed and cradled her breasts in his hands. He stooped to kiss them and straightened and drew her closer so that he could feel them lifting against his chest. He leaned to her and took her mouth in an exploratory kiss. She seemed to expect and welcome it. Her hands moved over him and dropped to his cock and stroked it. He drew back and smiled into her eyes as she revived his erection. She obviously liked it that way.

She released him and unfastened her skirt. His heart gave a little leap of excitement but subsided as she dropped it and he saw the white petticoat under it. She made no move to remove it but took a tentative step toward the bed and looked at him questioningly. He nodded and they stretched out together and he held her sweet brown body lightly in his arms.

“Here tonight?” he asked in Spanish. “All night?”

“Si.”

He kissed her again, fondling her breasts while her hands stroked his erection. He reached down to lift the petticoat to test his understanding of the rules. She seized his hand quickly and fell back, her breasts quivering with her rapid breathing. If she let him touch her there she wouldn't be able to resist him. It was too great a sin to commit until she knew more about him. She saw that the tip of his beautiful pink and golden prong touched the little hole of his birth and her body seemed to turn all liquid as she thought of it inside her.

When he woke up he was sprawled out alone in the bed, still with a hard-on, his body heavy with heat and sleep and satisfaction; he stretched lazily, a smile playing around his lips, and called her name. After a moment, he gathered himself together and leaped out of bed and went to the terrace. She was nowhere about and he stood irresolutely, wondering about her. Was she available to everybody who took this house? Had it been a momentary folly that she had immediately regretted? With the memory of her lovemaking fresh in his mind, he didn't believe either possibility.