Scruples Two (18 page)

There was a flicker of fear in his eyes as he watched her take out the long chiffon scarves that she kept ready in the bedside table. “Don’t worry,” she said briefly, “I don’t believe in causing pain.” Deftly she fastened his wrists and ankles to the graceful curves of the iron headboard and footboard, knowing that the scarves, for all their softness, were exceedingly strong. She arranged the last scarf so that it lightly covered his eyes, enabling him to see her through a layer of chiffon, but not to see clearly. Susan Arvey stepped back, looking at her captive with gourmandise. His penis was a burly, twitching, aching thing that he could not reach under any circumstances, that he could not touch for relief. He was entirely at her mercy, aroused to a point that an average man would be incapable of sustaining for long, but the agency did not send average men, and she knew she could do whatever she wished to the boy, as slowly as she pleased.

She let her robe fall softly to the floor and then she took all of the pile of pillows that separated the crown of the boy’s head from the headboard of the bed, threw them to the carpet and made a fairly wide place for herself on the mattress behind his short curls. She perched lightly there, kneeling, watching his eyes as he tried to look backwards at her nakedness. Oh, but he wanted her, she thought, he wanted her so badly. Restraining him was necessary for what she intended to do to him. Even the best trained of the agency men couldn’t be entirely trusted to acquiesce in the punishment she had formulated for him. Slowly, from her kneeling position, she curved forward over him until the big tips of her dark nipples swayed over his open mouth, just too high for him to reach them. His tongue flickered imploringly in the air as he watched them through the scarf. Now and then she allowed him to capture a nipple and suck on it for a while until she pulled back, ignoring his protestations, humiliating him until he begged, for now that he had lost all hope of pleasing her by docility or obedience, he implored her shamelessly. Susan played this game with him as her nipples hardened into tight points, and slowly she allowed him to take more and more of each breast into his mouth, relishing the excruciating good steady suction. Only when she chose not to continue to hold back did she lean far forward over him, resting on her elbows and her knees, her legs spread open wide above his head.

Slowly, ever so slowly, knowing that he was watching helplessly, now speechless with lust, she lowered herself toward his mouth. She sensed, rather than saw, his fleshy tongue straining up toward her. His tongue was blunt and wet and desperately eager and eventually, after much hesitation, she finally allowed him to use it between her open thighs, to use it on the soft, fragrant, partially opened lips of her lower body. She let him plunge his tongue between those lips, parting the hair, stabbing at the slickness and the wetness there, his chin raised as high off the bed as possible. She let him attempt to weaken her with his clever tricks, she felt her own congestion grow heavy while she kept her eyes on the clublike penis he was utterly unable to use. As soon as she could drag herself away from this luscious importuning, she lifted herself up again effortlessly and sank backwards on her heels so that he couldn’t reach her or even see her.

“Oh no! Please!” he begged and she laughed and let him suck madly only on her flickering fingertips. Soon she bent her body down over his mouth again, this time low enough so that he was able to capture her clitoris and work on it with his tongue and his lips and the insides of his cheeks while she circled her bottom slowly, knowingly, pushing it hard into him for an instant before she lifted up just out of reach. Again and again she raised herself completely off his mouth and listened with voluptuousness at his supplications to let him put his cock in her, just to let him inside. “No,” she insisted, “never.… you’re worse than ever, you can’t be trusted, you’re disgusting, totally disgusting, I warned you … I even gave you a second chance … but there’s no help for you now … you deserve to be punished.” Now she stretched herself so far forward that he knew that if she chose to, she could easily reach his penis with her tongue. However, she lay quiveringly still, permitting him to explore deeply, with his mouth, the succulent bounty between her legs. She concentrated on his frantic lapping of her rapidly engorging clitoris. His penis was so sternly distended in its peak of excitement that she almost took pity on herself and on him, almost let herself touch it with her tongue, but she firmly prevented herself from yielding to that weakness. Soon she saw signs that he was beside himself with excitement, for although he couldn’t touch his penis, or close his thighs over it, he was still free to use his pelvic muscles to clench and unclench his rear in a grinding up-and-down motion that was about to carry him over the top of endurance. Only then did she abandon herself to the tugging and pulling of his tongue on that heavy, hot, yearning point of her body, only then did she allow herself to give in to the waves of lust that led her so quickly into her long, drawn-out peak of release that was made all the more delicious by the sight of his sperm bursting forth into the air, but not in her, no, never in her, for that was not allowed, not while she was the boss, not while she was on top, not while she was in power.

The next day, when she met Natalie Eustace for lunch, Susan Arvey listened attentively to the detailed discussion of the best in Off-Broadway plays. Natalie loved these lunches, during which she could feel so superior to her old friend, whose life, though privileged, didn’t include this artistic dimension.

“How are you spending your evenings here, Susan?” Natalie finally asked after she’d described her own doings at length.

“The usual, dinners with business friends of Curt’s, people you’d have no use for. I do envy you, Natalie, going everywhere, but there are some things I just don’t have the time for, alas.”

“Perhaps when you’re in town to buy antiques with Mark Hampton, you’ll have time to devote an evening to me. But let’s leave Curt at home—as usual, hmm?”

“We’ll count on it, Natalie, even though antique-shopping usually leaves me wilted on the vine.”

“I must say you don’t look wilted,” Natalie said with a note of envy at Susan’s glowing health.

“It’s the California life, cookie, I’ve always said it may be dull, but something about it is unquestionably good for you—some secret ingredient in the smog.” The red wig tonight, she thought, the one that is long and straight, and two boys … yes, she’d phone as soon as lunch was over and reserve the two newest, youngest boys the agency had, and force one of them to watch, naked, bound and unable to move, while she taught the other to obey. Yes, with his eyes covered with one thin layer of chiffon, so that she felt completely free, he would observe everything while he waited his turn, he would watch until he understood that her orders were never idle threats. If he had learned his lesson properly, perhaps she would touch him with her tongue, even with her lips … or perhaps not. There would be so many other games to play with two boys instead of one, just as there were so many possibilities in a world where the only dogma worth observing was that which was self-imposed.

7

Y
es, Jean-Luc, you wanted to see me?” Josie Speilberg, busy in her office one morning in the early summer of 1980, wondered why the chef had requested a private interview with her.

“I must give my notice, Mademoiselle, with regret,” the portly man said calmly.

“Oh no, Jean-Luc, you can’t do that!”

“But indeed I can, Mademoiselle. There is nothing wrong with this position, you have been most kind and I have no complaints, but I must be realistic. Next year Gigi will be away in college. She has been my dream pupil, and frankly, I have stayed on here this long only to teach her everything I could. Madame Ikehorn has no real need of a chef.”

“But, Jean-Luc, Mrs. Ikehorn always has a chef, she’s had a chef ever since she married Mr. Ikehorn, of course she needs you.” Josie was appalled at the prospect of finding another experienced chef, just when things had been going so smoothly in the kitchen that she had been able to forget all about it.

“Permit me to disagree. When Madame is here, she eats so carefully that the quality of my cuisine must, of necessity, be diluted into, shall we say, a thin broth? Nourishing but needing no special skills. If Madame ever entertains again, she can always employ a fine caterer. She doesn’t need to keep a chef who has practically nothing to do. Soon I will forget the uses of butter and the taste of heavy cream.”

“If it’s a question of salary … if you’re going to cook for someone else …”

“No, Mademoiselle, it is not that. It happens that I have a chance to realize an opportunity I have long hoped for. A friend requires a chef for a small restaurant he is about to open in Santa Barbara. The cuisine will be distinguished, the restaurant elegant, and he has offered me a partnership. I think you will agree that I would be foolish not to seize this chance.”

“I can’t deny we don’t do a lot of fancy French eating here, Jean-Luc, but isn’t there anything I can do to change your mind?”

“Short of keeping Gigi at home, nothing, dear Mademoiselle. I need not leave for another two months. I think that will give you enough time to find somebody else who will suit. Perhaps an older man, someone who will be glad to be paid to sit around in great comfort and do a minimum of work, someone who will not miss the lack of challenge, perhaps.… an American?”

“Oh, really, Jean-Luc!”

“I am frank, Mademoiselle, but not unfair,” he said respectfully, and took his leave.

Provoked by Jean-Luc’s attitude, Josie searched far and wide until she discovered a young chef, twenty-six-year-old Quentin Browning, whose father owned a fine country hotel in the Cotswolds, known for the excellence of its kitchen. The Ash Grove, a venerable hostelry near Stratford-on-Avon, offered twenty bedrooms and five suites, but the key to its year-round success was its good-sized restaurant where tables were booked weeks in advance by people from the neighboring countryside as well as Londoners who made the jaunt just for the food.

Quentin Browning had gone to Rugby and then headed straight for Switzerland for schooling in the hotelkeeper’s trade. He had always known that one day he would go into the highly prosperous family business, he took a keen interest in the varied skills of hotelkeeping, and he did well in Switzerland. Afterwards he decided to train seriously as a chef. Although the Ash Grove employed a large, skillful staff in the kitchen, it was essential for him to be able to do anything the head chef could do before he was experienced enough to criticize and innovate. Unless he had that ability, he would always be at the chef’s mercy, a situation that would be intolerable.

Quentin Browning worked in great restaurant kitchens in Lyons, Paris, Milan and Rome, starting with the lowliest jobs and moving upward stage by classic stage, his success assured by hard work, talent and the powerful personal charm that has twice its normal impact when it is possessed by an Englishman, a member of that island race that does not rely on charm as a job qualification. Quentin Browning had just completed a one-year stint as assistant chef in a top French restaurant in Houston and had been offered a tempting job in San Francisco. However, he had turned it down for this opportunity to work in a large private house.

A lack of challenge, he decided, was exactly what he needed after the medieval slavery of his years of a chef’s apprenticeship. His father didn’t need him quite yet, and would never guess that his dutiful son was enjoying the equivalent of a well-paid vacation, considering the high wages that the simple job offered. Why shouldn’t he enjoy a lovely long gulp of the California lifestyle: surfboards, sunshine and his particular fancy in the female line—big, beautiful, buxom, blond broads, preferably by the dozen—before burying himself in the depths of the Shakespeare country and tackling his life’s work, Quentin asked himself, with the answer implicit in the question.

Gigi said a sad farewell to her Jean-Luc, her friend and irreplaceable teacher who had stayed on long enough to see her graduate from high school, an event attended by Billy, Spider, Valentine, Dolly and Lester, Sara the hairdresser from Sassoon, everyone who lived in the house on Charing Cross Road, and half the staff of Scruples. Vito was somewhere in the South of France, and only Gigi missed him.

To cheer herself up after Jean-Luc’s departure, Gigi decided to make a cake for the replacement who was due to arrive tomorrow. Nothing fancy, nothing showy, nothing vulgar, but a cake that would test this newcomer’s knowledge of baking as little else could. She decided to make a vanilla génoise, the basic French sponge cake, which, to be perfect, demands such invisible expertise that only another expert can judge it. His reaction to the sponge cake was the test she devised, the trap she laid for him, for she had no faith in any Englishman who made the bold claim to be a finished French chef.

“But why a sponge cake, Gigi?” Burgo O’Sullivan asked curiously as he watched her set about her work in the kitchen that was deserted on that afternoon. “Why not something more eye-catching?”

“Burgo, I know it wasn’t easy when you taught me to drive, I know you took your life in your hands when we tackled the freeways, but even you would never have the sheer reckless courage and the skillfulness of hand to attempt to make this seemingly plain cake. There are so many things that can go wrong in the process that I’d be all atremble thinking about it, if I weren’t so damn good.”

“I admire your modesty.”

Gigi grinned at him. “Modesty has no place in a kitchen. It’s like a bullring, Burgo, you don’t start something you can’t finish,” she proclaimed as she beat eggs, sugar and vanilla with a whisk over hot water. “This has to exactly quadruple in volume, my friend, this mixture has to be
overbeaten
by ordinary standards, overbeaten with an exactitude and precision that is heart-stopping to contemplate.”

Burgo leaned back comfortably. Gigi, working with total concentration, enveloped in a starched white apron that reached almost to her ankles, with a black velvet headband holding back her bangs so that they wouldn’t get into her eyes, looked like an industrious, old-fashioned child bride, he thought, someone who should be drawn for an illustration in a Victorian cookbook. “I’m not impressed yet,” he said, “but I know it’s just a question of time. Since you’re going to tell me anyway, why overbeaten?”

“Because the secret to this potential disaster of a cake lies entirely in its supreme texture, and when I add two and a half sticks of melted butter to it, as I will in good time, the butter will deflate the batter, and might even break it down. Therefore,” Gigi pontificated, flourishing her whisk at him, “I must compensate in advance by overbeating in order to end up with a cake that’s divinely moist.”

“Makes sense,” Burgo grunted.

“Wait, Burgo, wait! If I get carried away and overbeat even the slightest bit too much, the batter will become too fluffy and the cake won’t be moist either.”

“Too much and it’ll be dry, and too little and it’ll be dry?”

“A giant crumb, Burgo, one miscalculation and that’s what it’ll be,” Gigi said with mock gloom, beginning to sift flour into the mixture, which she judged had reached its instant of immortality. “On the other hand, since I’m not using baking powder, if I don’t fold this flour into the batter in absolutely the right way to achieve an utterly smooth combination of ingredients, the cake will be heavy and sticky, not a vast crumb, Burgo, but a huge, soggy pancake.”

“Is baking always this rough? The Betty Crocker box makes it look more like fun.”

“Burgo, I’m aiming at an otherworldly cake, something that will make this new chef’s little piggy eyes pop right out of his smartass head. Betty Crocker wouldn’t do it.”

“Seems to me that you’re showing off.”

“Good cooking is always about showing off,” Gigi said imperturbably. “If it weren’t for the cooking instinct, we’d still be sitting around in a cave, eating raw meat and roots. Houses exist primarily to shelter a kitchen. There’d be no civilization without the cooking instinct.”

“I knew there had to be something to blame for civilization,” Burgo said, as Gigi poured the batter into a cake pan, put it in the prewarmed oven, and began to make the butter cream combined with custard with which she would ice the cake and spread between its three layers. “I’ve been living in this house so long,” he added, “I’d begun to think it was the shopping instinct. You got a date tonight, Gigi?”

“Naturally,” she said smugly. “We’re all going to the
Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“My gang, Burgo, you dope, my gang—Maze and Sue and Betty and some guys. Why?”

“You’ve seen it twelve times,” Burgo objected, knowing that they would probably see it twelve more times before the fad ran its course. What he really wanted to know was if Gigi had a date with any particular boy. On poker nights he occasionally questioned his friend Stan, the security guard at Uni, about the phenomenon of group dating. Burgo thought it was high time that Gigi had a nice boyfriend of her own instead of always being part of a swarm, for after all she was eighteen—his mother had been pregnant with her second child at eighteen—but Stan, who knew far more about teenagers than Burgo, told him it was perfectly natural. “If she went steady with one rotten stud, then you’d really have something to worry about, overprotective the way all of you are,” his friend had advised him. “As soon as Gigi goes to college next fall, it’ll change and you’ll wish she were back in a nice, safe gang.”

For a time, while the cake chilled enough for Gigi to slice and ice it, the two of them sat in companionable silence.

“Burgo, look at this cake,” Gigi demanded when she had finished. “What do you think?”

“You said you wanted something plain.”

“But not boring! This is the single dullest-looking cake I’ve ever seen. It’s round and it’s white and that’s all you can say. It could be a whole Brie cheese if it weren’t the most sublime sponge cake in the world.”

“So decorate it.”

“I had intended it to be immaculate, a throwaway, a seemingly insignificant cake, so that this Limey creep’s reaction would be only to its quality. Anybody can decorate a cake and let the eye fool the palate. I’ll ruin its purity if I decorate it, but if I don’t, nobody will even bother to taste it. This is not how Sara Lee got rich.”

“Hey, Gigi, you’ve got an artistic problem. Do you sell out or do you stand your ground?”

“I compromise. I’m going to pipe a message on the cake in the simplest possible way,” Gigi said, inspired, as she melted white chocolate and fashioned a pointed paper cone. She poured the liquid chocolate, mixed with a dash of vegetable oil, into the paper, snipped off the tiniest bit of the tip of the cone, and on the surface of the cake wrote, “Welcome to Quentin Browning” in large, thin, flowing script, before she added an almost invisible, complicated loop design around its entire perimeter.

“That’s grand,” Burgo said in admiration. “White on white, like a gangster’s shirt and tie.”

“He’ll have to try it, if only to be polite. And when he tastes it, I’ll casually remark that I’m just an amateur hobbyist cook and baked it for kicks. Ha! Then let this Browning try to top it. Jean-Luc told me that Englishmen simply can’t bake … it’s something genetic. Now Burgo, you and I do the dishes.”

“The cook does the dishes, Gigi. Do you think I’m a complete patsy?”

“I know it for a fact. Here, you can lick the icing pan first.”

On Sunday afternoon, when Quentin Browning arrived at Charing Cross Road with his luggage, the great house lay sleeping. After Gigi’s graduation, Billy had taken off for Munich, where clothes-conscious, deutsche mark-loaded women were thirsting for the opening of a Scruples that was still not quite ready. Since most of the staff had the day off, Burgo had been delegated by Josie to greet the new arrival. He showed Quentin to his room in the staff wing. “Do you want the guided tour or do you want to get settled?” he asked.

“I’ll unpack later, thanks. I’d like to take a look at the kitchens first. When Miss Speilberg interviewed me, she didn’t have time to show me around.”

“Sure thing. I’ll make you a cup of tea if you like.”