The Lover From an Icy Sea (35 page)

As Kit was about to rouse her from whatever half-stupor she apparently still languished in, her next gesture hit him with the force of a coil and quick strike, and then slowly injected its venom into his mind. With one hand, Daneka reached up and pushed her bikini top off; with the other, she reached down into the thin thread of material covering her pubis. The one hand was roughly squeezing her own nipples, its fingernails clawing her breasts and leaving the evidence behind in clearly delineated red streaks. The rough and greedy ministrations of the second hand in almost no time became rougher, greedier and faster under the cloth of her bikini bottom. A grimace crossed Daneka’s face. Whether it was from the self-inflicted pain or from the self-induced pleasure was a distinction Kit preferred not to consider. What was obvious to him, painfully obvious to him in a way that no erotic experience in his life had ever quite prepared him for, was that he was not a player in any part of this scenario. The fantasy or memory—he had to concede the possibility—that was driving Daneka inexorably towards frenzy was empty of his participation, except as a sorry spectator. He had never felt more pathetic, more redundant, more alone—more lonely in his life.

If there was still any doubt in Kit’s mind whether she was flying entirely without him in the trapeze of this autoerotic act, Daneka promptly put an end to his speculation. As the tempo and violence of her masturbation increased, she consciously or unconsciously added language and an imperative voice to it. What he’d heard out of her mouth the first time they’d made love in her apartment, he realized, was no hallucination. If she’d been speaking in tongues at the time, this particular patois was yet another language in which she was clearly quite fluent.

She delivered, seemingly to the air, hard-edged commands in a particular version of Anglo-Saxon Kit thought the preserve of porn. Her consonants were all percussion, no melody, and she bit off and spit out each imprecation as if it were a piece of gristle. Her climax to come was one he had no desire to witness. The traffic cop of his senses had long since redirected the blood-flow elsewhere—mostly, Kit realized, to a brain on fire and in desperate need of a dousing, of a drenching, of total submersion.

He jumped into the water with no thought for how cold it might be or for what he might find—or for what might find him—swimming around down below. He closed his eyes and tried to block out the memory of what he’d just witnessed—as if, by shutting them tightly enough, he might simply squeeze the memory out and let it merge with the salty darkness surrounding him. He remained in this state of suspended agitation for what might’ve been close to a full minute. Then, however, his lungs suggested to him that enough was enough.

He broke the surface of the water and inhaled sharply. The boat had drifted only a few yards off from where he was now treading water. He paddled his way over to it and hoisted himself up. Daneka, he noted, was stern-faced as she gripped both oars.

“
Let’s go back.” It was as much oral communication as he would receive from her for the next several hours.

She rowed them to the beach. Together, they hauled the boat back up to its former landing; turned it over; placed the oars underneath; then re-inserted the anchor into its former nest after having first removed the tin can, which Kit handed to Daneka.

She removed the lire notes and stuffed them back into her bikini bottom, then threw the tin can in the general direction of where she’d originally found it.

They walked back to the hotel in silence; ascended by elevator in silence; walked through the hotel lobby to their room in silence; opened the door in silence.

“
I believe I’ll lie down for a while,” Daneka finally announced. Then, without waiting for Kit’s acknowledgement, she walked to the bedroom, took off her bikini and slipped in under the covers. Kit remained dressed, followed her into the bedroom and climbed in next to her. In answer to his fully-clothed proximity, Daneka turned on her side and towards the wall, brought her knees up against her belly, dragged a pillow down to her chest and hugged it. Her neck, he noted from his position behind her, was bent over the pillow. The slenderness of it, the gorgeous white expanse of it, lay before him like an altar. He bent his head down and kissed it gently—once, twice, three times.

Daneka moved away from Kit’s kisses and in the direction of the wall.

After a moment of further silence and a distance—he felt—that was growing inexorably between them at a speed Kit didn’t even care to consider, he got up off the bed, walked out of the bedroom, quietly closed the door behind him and sat down to write Daneka a note, less salutation: “I’ve gone for a walk. I’ll be back before dark. Kit.”

He left their hotel room, then walked back through the lobby and out through the pool area. This time, he took no notice of whether those lying around the pool were male or female, pre- or post-pubescent, with or without a top. He found the elevator to the beach and descended, then began a walk along the shore that would take him several miles around the perimeter of the gulf, all of the remaining daylight hours, and—in his head—three thousand miles across the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to a tiny island off the coast of New Jersey.

Chapter 45

By the time Kit returned to the stretch of beach just below the
albergo
, the moon had risen up over the gulf. Until that moment, he’d never seen a larger and more beautiful moon than that over Manhattan in late September or early October. Each year, as if en route to an annual cotillion ball, it would rise towards sunset, towards summerset, in a pale orange of such sensuality that no camera could capture it, no set of eyes see enough of it, no set of words describe it more honorably than to call it by its given name: harvest moon.

This evening, however, Manhattan’s moon would find a tough competitor and a real contender for the crown. The color of this moon was not pale orange, but roseate, and it was every bit as shapely as the competition three thousand miles to the west. Moreover, it was the gossamer gown of this moon high-stepping in reflection off the Gulf of Salerno—rather than pushing, shoving, kicking its way out from behind the roughneck silhouette of Queens—that imbued it with a grace no ragged harvest moon of Manhattan could hope to contend with.

Tiny waves broke in muted applause along the shore, sending up their silver spray like handfuls of pocket-change. Who would wear the crown at this particular cotillion ball was clearly not in dispute.

Kit easily found the elevator in the moonlight, stepped inside and ascended to the level of the hotel. He walked out across the pool deck—deserted except for one couple stretched out on one of the chaises longues and in the throes of something he preferred not to know anything more about—then proceeded through the hotel lobby and out. When he reached their room, he unlocked the door, then closed it and walked across to the bedroom. As he was about to enter, Daneka put down her make-up and stood up from her vanity table.

“
Good evening, darling. Nice walk?” She had addressed him directly with her voice. Her eyes, however, presently looked everywhere else but at him.

“
Yes, thank you.”

“
And thank you, by the way, for the note.” Kit looked at Daneka in the hope that she would at least reciprocate with a glance. She didn’t. His stare, however, brought him tangential rewards: he noticed her dress—one he’d not seen before—as sheer a material and subtle a pattern as any he could recall on the models in the innumerable high-fashion shows he’d shot over the years. To say she was stunning in it, Kit thought, would simply concede the poverty of his own vocabulary; to describe her using any English word, he imagined, would simply highlight the poverty of the language. The moon he’d just seen might well be the belle of the ball, but even that moon, he felt, would run for cloud-cover if Daneka were to appear before it.

She was beyond beautiful, beyond regal, beyond—if possible—even perfection. Hyperbole as homage in this case was no better than chump change. What nature and a bit of science had given this woman was, Kit decided in that instant, a singular endowment and only to be repeated at the risk of impoverishing the gene pool for the rest of the species. Do other men see her as I do? he wondered. If not, why not? If so, how can they get on with their lives, their work, their wives, their mistresses—and not thrash about in the night, at least in their dreams, in search of this extra-ordinary thing that I possess in the flesh, but which for them is destined to remain an unattainable Cockaigne
 
for carnivores?

“
I believe I’ll go up to the terrace for a cocktail and wait for you there, darling. Is that okay with you?”

It wasn’t. The last thing Kit wanted was to allow her out of his sight. But he knew bondage was not his prerogative. Risk. He would have to learn to live with it if he wanted this woman to remain in his life, and he in hers.

“
Of course. I’ll be up shortly.”

As Daneka made her way out of the bedroom and across to the front door of their hotel room without so much as a wave, Kit thought the best he could hope for would be low light on the terrace—too low to reveal to the other guests the body and face of the goddess who was now sitting among them. He put the unpleasant thought out of his mind, took his clothes off and jumped into the shower; followed the shower with a shave; put on a clean set of clothes; brushed his hair and teeth; then left the room.

When he arrived at the terrace, his eyes easily found Daneka seated at the end of a line of tables, just next to the balcony. The choice had clearly been hers, as there were a number of other, empty tables between her own and the next occupied table. She sat—Kit noted briefly and thankfully—absorbed in a quiet contemplation of the moon rather than busied in some effort to broadcast her presence. In a kind of lunar noblesse oblige, the moon’s reflected rays—together with the light of one candle on the table in front of her—seemed to pick out Daneka’s face for particular encomium. The re-reflected light played charitably on lines she might otherwise not have wished to reveal in public had she not been so self-absorbed.

He approached her table and she looked up.

“
Hello, darling. Hungry?”

“
Not terribly, though I can certainly eat something. You?”

“
Famished!” At that same instant, a waiter who’d apparently taken note of Kit’s arrival approached their table.

“
É arrivato
,” he said to Daneka, as if to confirm the obvious. And then, looking at Kit, “
Buona sera, Signore
.”

“
Buona sera
,” Kit returned. “
Portici, per piacere
—” but the waiter had already anticipated Kit’s request and presented both him and Daneka with a menu, laid a wine list down on the table, then launched into a recitation of that evening’s specials. He subsequently bowed in proper, waiterly fashion and withdrew for a few minutes to give them an opportunity to decide.

“
What are you in the mood for, darling?”

“
I’m in the mood for love,” Kit intoned—but his attempt at levity floundered like a singed moth to the ground. “If I understood him correctly, they have a number of seafood specials. I think I’ll get the
frutti di mare
. And you?”

“
I’m feeling like meat tonight. I think I could eat a whole cow if they brought me one.” At that moment, the waiter returned to their table.

“
Signora, Signore, avete fatto una scelta?
”

Kit ordered the seafood platter for himself, a steak for Daneka. “
Al sangue
” she offered in anticipation of the waiter’s question as to how she wanted it cooked.

“
Va bene. E da bere?
”

Daneka ordered a glass of one of the local reds for herself while Kit looked through the wine list. He ultimately opted for a white from Sardinia and ordered an entire bottle. The waiter nodded, collected the menus and wine list and retired to the kitchen.

Kit may well have felt the need for conversation, but Daneka apparently did not. She continued to stare at the moon, interrupting her contemplation only occasionally to take a sip from her cocktail of white wine.

The waiter returned to their table several minutes later with Daneka’s glass of red and Kit’s bottle of white, which he opened and poured for Kit to sample. He did and nodded his approval, at which point the waiter filled his glass and withdrew once again. Kit picked it up and held it out midway across the table.

“
To you.” Daneka picked up her own, brought it out to meet his, and clinked.

“
And to you.” She took a sip, set it back down on the table, then returned her gaze to the moon. Kit took out a cigarette and lit it up.

“
So—” he ventured, but without having first considered what other little bejeweled parts of speech he might pack into this treasure chest of a sentence that would pique the pleasure of her curiosity. Kit’s poor planning left Daneka demonstrably unmoved. She’d been staring at the moon for twenty minutes in stone-cold silence; she might be quite willing and able, Kit realized with some chagrin, to stare at it in silence for another twenty—even if slightly stonier, slightly colder. At one point, she waved her hand in front of her face, suggesting that the smoke from Kit’s cigarette was getting to where it was decidedly unwanted. Kit quickly re-positioned his hand so as to send the smoke off in some other direction. Unfortunately, his cigarette seemed to have a will of its own, and that will took the smoke directly back into Daneka’s face. She waved again. He stubbed his cigarette out and moved the ashtray to the next table.