The Lover From an Icy Sea (17 page)

“
Oh, my darling, my darling, my darling! My love.”

She’d said it before either of them could check the impulse. They’d entered new territory; they couldn’t go back—and both of them realized it in the same instant. It was not the three-word declaration, of course. But she’d used the most important word, and only subject and object were missing.

Kit would not be greedy and demand more—not for a while, at least. For the moment, he was ecstatic—and Daneka, in her own way, was too.

Chapter 22

The next two nights and all of the space in between were filled with bliss: the bliss of young and crazy love; the bliss of sensual delights to their eyes, ears, nose and stomachs; the quiet bliss of just lying or walking side by side. Something in each of them knew that what they were experiencing was a true
folie-à-deux
—but this was, after all, France. Where better to fall under the spell of their own lovesick insanity than in the country whose language had given the world such a singularly apt expression for it?

When they packed their bags Monday morning and headed back out to the airport, it was not entirely without regret for the loss of this first, fresh bloom. They might never again recapture it, but at least they’d had it. Whatever else might befall them in the coming weeks, months and years, they, too, would be able to say: “We’ll always have Paris.”

As the plane lifted off the ground through a thin fog, both Daneka and Kit looked out over the city with something already bordering on nostalgia. And yet, they each privately knew that other adventures lay before them. In just over two and a half hours, they’d be in Lisbon. From there, by rental car, they’d descend along the coast to the most southwesterly point of all Europe, the Cabo de São Vicente, in the Algarve. Daneka had already done her research from New York; had wanted a place they could have to themselves; had found one and booked it: Villa Sol. With its swimming pool and view of the sea, a restaurant or two within walking distance, she figured they’d know how to spend their time in agreeable pursuits.

As the plane began to level off high over French soil, Daneka and Kit settled in for the ride. Daneka looked around and noticed that most of their fellow passengers were businesspeople merely en route from someplace to someplace else, with probably little more on their minds than making a deal and heading back home. Were it not for this man and this brief interlude, she knew she’d merely be one of them. These businesspeople were each in their own separate universes—and, at this moment, theirs had nothing to do with hers.

As she contemplated her happiness, a flight attendant approached on her way to the rear of the cabin. She first looked, then smiled at Daneka as she continued her journey aft. Daneka took the woman’s smile as an invitation to request a favor.
             

“
Mademoiselle, cela vous importerait de me descendre une couverture?
”

“
Mais pas du tout, Madame
.” The flight attendant promptly opened the overhead bin and took out a blanket. “
Aussi un oreiller?
”

“
Non, merci. La couverture me suffit.
She looked once at Kit, then back up at the attendant and smiled conspiratorally.
J’ai déjà mon propre oreiller
,” she said, looking back at Kit.

The attendant handed her the blanket with a barely perceptible smile. “
Je vois bien
.”

“
Merci, Mademoiselle
.”

“
Pas de quoi, Madame
.”

And then to Kit, “I think I’ll take a little snooze, darling. ‘Mind if I use your lap?”

Kit was surprised. They’d only just crawled out of bed an hour and a half earlier. But he was only too happy to oblige.

Daneka kicked off her shoes, spread the blanket over her, and put her head down on Kit’s lap. She pulled the blanket up to her chin so that only her head was visible, then slid her hand over Kit’s thigh and let it come to rest on his crotch. At the same time, she turned her head to look at him, smiled mischievously, and ran her tongue over her lips. Then, like a spirited child up for a game of hide-and-seek, she snapped the blanket over her head.

Kit leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and reveled in the sensation of Daneka’s hand. He couldn’t suppress a chuckle when he felt himself responding to her touch. The chuckle turned into an audible laugh when he heard Daneka’s muffled voice from beneath the blanket.

“
Oh, dear me! What have we here?”

He swallowed his laugh, however, when he felt her hand reach up to his belt buckle, which she unfastened with ease. He gulped when he felt that same hand take hold of his zipper and pull it down in one easy motion. And he felt the tingle of minor panic when he realized she was reaching into his shorts.

The next thing he felt was Daneka’s lips. The only thing keeping him from drifting off at that moment into his own quite separate universe was the tingle of panic. He looked up and saw a flight attendant moving down the aisle with a drink cart. He calculated, at her present dispatch, that it would be no more than a minute or two before she’d be parallel with him and this blanketed mound in his lap.

This may be Air France, Kit thought to himself. But even Air France has limits. He looked down at his lap and saw the outline of Daneka’s head bobbing up and down under the blanket. He decided in favor of camouflage, and quickly lowered his tray-table. He looked down again. The table indeed covered the bobbing blanket, but was, itself, bobbing. He thought maybe a magazine would help and picked one up. It didn’t. It simply became another link in the chain of bobbers. Daneka’s head had its own motor, and that motor couldn’t be stopped. At the same time, the flight attendant had her own motor, and it, too, couldn’t be stopped. Kit foresaw a collision of wills, and he was sitting right at the point of impact. He froze. The flight attendant pulled up alongside him while his tray-table and magazine continued to bob.

“
Vous désirez quelque chose à boire, Monsieur?
” she asked with perfect French aplomb.

“
Eh bien, oui
,” Kit answered with the most serious tone of nonchalance he could muster. “
Du café, s’il vous plaît. Et un jus d’orange
.”

“
Volontiers, Monsieur
,” the flight attendant answered with no change in tone or expression. The bobbing continued unabated. Kit wondered where she would put the coffee and orange juice, and whether she would finally notice, possibly comment upon, the peculiar air turbulence that had attached itself to Kit’s tray-table.

Instead, she poured the coffee into a cup and placed it on her drink cart. She next pulled out a plastic glass and a pitcher of orange juice, then filled the glass and put it down next to the cup.

Without comment or pause, she reached in over Kit and lowered Daneka’s tray-table. She was close enough that Kit could smell not only her perfume, but also some of her perspiration. The flight attendant stood back up; picked up the coffee and orange juice; put them down on Daneka’s tray. Kit’s tray continued its satanic bob.

Just as Kit thought the ordeal over, the flight attendant reached under her service cart and pulled out a plastic flute and a split of champagne. In what seemed like one quick motion, she removed the wire and wrapper and popped the cork. She placed bottle and flute on Daneka’s tray-table alongside his coffee and orange juice.

With no variation in tone, the flight attendant looked at Kit. “Pour Madame. Avec nos compliments.” She then turned her attention to the passengers opposite Kit and Daneka’s seats and proceeded with the same battery of questions.

*  *  *

When they arrived at the airport in Lisbon two hours and thirty-five minutes later, Daneka was indeed asleep, but upright in her seat and with the most self-satisfied of smiles on her lips. She still held an empty champagne flute in her hand, but all other evidence of a late-morning refreshment had long since been removed. The first bump on the tarmac awakened her.

She took one glance out the window, smiled, and then turned to Kit. “Portugal! Be a sweet man-of-war and give me some of your best poison.”

Without wasting a word, Kit reached down inside her blouse and grabbed a breast. Daneka’s mouth was on his as she answered with an inarticulate growl whose meaning, however, was clear to both of them. After only two or three passes with the tip of his finger, her nipple began to respond while her low growl conveyed a clear message of appreciation. She took her mouth from his and moved it up to his ear. At the same time, she opened her eyes and caught an equally appreciative stare from across the aisle.
These French
, she thought to herself.
They love to watch almost as much as they love to do.

Although she could easily have put an end to their very public display, she resolved to enlarge it. With perfect calculation of the consequences, she threw back her shoulders so that a button popped off her blouse and a breast sprang into view. At the same time, she reached down into Kit’s pants. The fit was tight, but he instantly, reflexively, sucked in his stomach. Her mouth at Kit’s ear, she whispered just loud enough for her neighbor across the aisle to hear.

“
How about a little fucky-fucky?”

Kit had been assaulted from too many angles at once to know how to react appropriately. Even if he didn’t share Daneka’s precise knowledge of the voyeur across the aisle, he was nonetheless no exhibitionist. That Daneka’s breast was on display sent the equivalent of fire alarms to his brain. Those alarms quickly put an end to his momentary arousal, and his hands did the rest to return both Daneka and himself to the status quo ante.

“
Where, in God’s name, did that come from?” he asked, as much amused as horrified at the inventiveness of her vocabulary.

“
Oh, it’s not mine, darling. I just read it. Last week—in a story I found in Granta, by a Ms. Erthal, or Erdview … Erdal, that was it! Jenny Erdal. Called ‘
Tiger’s Ghost
’.”

“
You read Granta?” Kit asked, visibly amazed.

“
But of course, darling. How else am I going to enlarge my vocabulary?” Daneka said chuckling to herself as she slipped back into her seat and rearranged her blouse less one critical button. The chuckle became an audible laugh as she looked up at Kit, whose blush was almost fire-engine red.

“
My terribly demure darling,” she whispered as she reached her head and mouth back up and nibbled at his ear. “But you know something? I happen to disagree with Ms. Erdal on one critical point. I, for one, do not think that ‘discretion is the better part of ardor’.”

She looked over at her erstwhile spectator and noticed that he, while appearing to study the air traffic scene outside his window, had both hands in his lap—as if attempting to keep quiet and firmly in check the happy testament to his voyeurism.
Boys will be boys
, she thought to herself.
Silly little boys. With their even sillier, predictable little toys.

As their plane taxied to its gate, Daneka and Kit sat together, quiet arm in quiet arm. Kit’s blush gradually receded behind normal flesh tones as his thoughts turned to disembarking, finding luggage, getting a rental car and driving down the coast.

Daneka’s thoughts, however, stayed momentarily with this man—this Kit immediately beside her—and with the seemingly unending source of pleasure he‘d become in the space of only a few weeks. As she then considered how she, at her age, was still apparently as much a source of pleasure to him, she also felt the pride of her sex. It was wonderful to be a woman. To be able, with the exposure of a body part, not only to hold one man entirely captive, but to arouse the feral desire of another in the same instant. She decided to try again.

“
Wanna coït?”

Kit looked at her and blinked.

“
Wanna coït with a poet?”

He had understood her correctly. What a word! He’d never heard it before.

“
Wanna coït with a poet, man, and bank some doh re ME?”

She was too much. He looked at her—bemused by this jewel of a woman who had not only lips to die for, but killer words at their behest.
An empress of blow-jobs with a brain
, he thought to himself.
There’s something downright Baudelairian about her. Now, why does that sound so familiar?
he wondered—and continued thinking.

Daneka, believing she had just been rebuffed, allowed her thoughts to stray beyond her immediate lover. She began to dissociate and wonder which of her body parts and available orifices could hold a number of men captive at any one time and in a way that would render her literally—if not præternaturally— fulfilled. She closed her eyes and drifted off into a contemplation of a score of naked bodies—under, over, at either end of her, writhing like rude snakes in competition for her attention, for her ministrations, for a mere touch of her fingers, or lips, or hair to bring them to, and hold them in, a state of excruciating suspense. And then to watch those for whom she had not enough hands or lips or hair, out of impatience or brute lust, finish off the matter in their own way. This, as they watched her being taken by those more fortunate and aggressive participants who might actively and simultaneously engage both hands and the three portals in which intercourse with her was physically possible.