19 Purchase Street Page 16

  Gainer was tempted to have her shave him now. His face, especially around the eyes, felt starchy from all those hours of concentrating on the road. However, he reasoned it would be quicker if he shaved himself, told her that.

  “No hurry,” she said, archly blasé and then contradicted that by kissing him a very slick, promising one before leaving the bathroom.

  She was gone less than five minutes, returned carrying a silver tray.

  By then Gainer was all lathered up and making a face in the mirror to help the blade of the straight razor get at an awkward area below his nostrils.

  “Need help?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  Leslie imitated him with a Quasimodo.

  “I’d still love you,” he said.

  “Hell you would.” She placed the tray on the toilet seat. It held Beluga caviar, iced in its original half-pound tin, a pair of Baccarat goblets and a chilled bottle of Le Montrachet ’78 that according to its label and price was from the chateau of one Marquis de La Quiche.

  Leslie poured, handed Gainer his glass. He got lather on it as he took some long sips that went down into him like heated silver wire. His eyes were on the caviar. She fed him a heaping spoonful. Straight, no garnish of any sort. After a second helping for him, Leslie sat on the edge of the tub and helped herself.

  A jet plane was heard, miles up but still audible along with the repetitive thumps and fizzes of the Atlantic breaking.

  “There’s a chance Norma may show up tomorrow,” Gainer said.

  “Only a chance?”

  “I think I might have talked her out of it.” Now he wasn’t so pleased with having done so. He had a notion to take a run over to Chilmark to a pay phone, call Norma and tell her to hell with everything, hurry on back. To keep from doing that he went on shaving and asked, “How’s Rodger?”

  “Who?” As though the name meant nothing.

  “Heard from him?”

  “He’s in San Francisco. At least Walsh mentioned that he was.”

  Walsh was one of her husband’s pilots.

  Silence told Gainer that for the time being Rodger was not to be a topic. He glanced around at Leslie. “Only one thing wrong with you.”

  “Since when?”

  “You have rotten teeth.”

  She craned up for the mirror, then stood up beside him and gave it the sudden phony model’s smile. She saw the black, like cavities.

  “From eating too many sweets,” he said.

  “You are that,” she said, purposely flat and without looking at him. She took a mouthful straight from the Montrachet bottle, swished it around before swallowing. Then, caviar remnants eliminated, her fullest smile quickly on and off was once again equal to any advertisement.

  Gainer was almost through shaving, had only beneath his chin to do. Leslie took over the razor for the finishing touches. Which left his hands free. He undid the drawstring of her blouse and put both hands up in under, skimmed her breasts, barely brushed them, traced duplicate sensations all the way from the ladder of her spine around to her nipples. Cupped her breasts as though extracting from them.

  He noticed the first signs of flush apparent on the fair skin of her throat, a pink mottling that he knew from the many times before was evidence of her arousal. She had always considered it a disadvantage, having such an obvious giveaway. But not with Gainer. She liked that he could know how little was needed from him to begin her.

  In spite of his hands, she remained apparently intent on shaving him, kept up the same firm sure strokes using a page from a magazine to wipe lather from the blade. She held back warning him that such erotic distraction might very well cause her to nick him—or worse. His hands on her while hers with the blade were on his throat created a disturbing circuit that he was not unaware of, she figured. She prolonged it, spent more time than needed on his Adam’s apple.

  At the same time Gainer had the urge to pinch her nipples.

  He withdrew his hands, took the razor from her, cleaned it and put it into its special leather case.

  The mottling on her neck had spread and was deeper pink. She carried the tray in to the bedroom.

  He took a very brief shower, did not dry thoroughly, went out to her.

  She had undressed, was on the bed. Not posed, just there, faced up in an ingenuous waiting position.

  He stood beside the bed.

  She stayed still, had to control her legs because they wanted to part.

  “I love you,” he said, giving each word equal importance.

  They seemed like inscriptions on white silk floating down to her, those words. Her lips were dry but she would wait for him to wet them. She knew she had hands in her eyes. She watched him become hard while just standing there.

  “Beautiful cock,” she thought, so caught up by it she did not realize those words had come out. Her hand went to it, led him down to her by it, spread and found herself for it. She tried not to come quickly. At least not as quickly as usual but her mind as well as her body was full with him. He caused flowers to open in her belly and her thighs, and no sooner had they begun to fade, he would blossom them again.

  Gainer came.

  He stayed inside her after he came, and within a short while she felt him become as hard as before in her and go on.

  They loved, one way or the other, for most of that afternoon. Dozed in between times and finally slept. Usually it was difficult for Gainer to sleep with Leslie. She was such a determined snuggler. They would start out compatibly positioned with an equal amount of territory on either side. Before long Gainer would come half awake to find he was on the edge with, for example, a knee cantilevered way out or his hand braced on the floor not to fall, and Leslie pressing to get still closer. Rather than shove her away, he’d get up and sleepwalk around to the other side of the bed for the ample space there. Right away she would begin to close the gap. Gainer complained about it. She was most apologetic. She did not, however, suggest separate beds. Nor did he. It was, he figured, a small enough price to pay.

  GAINER and Leslie.

  They had first laid eyes on one another two Novembers ago. A miserable day, drizzling and cold.

  Gainer was at his herb store on Sixty-second Street, minding it while Miss Applegate was out having a chiropractic adjustment. He was seated on a high stool behind the old, long table that served as a counter, going over yesterday’s racing form, searching between its rather cryptic lines for a reason why yesterday’s unlikely winners had won.

  Leslie entered.

  Gainer looked up and kept looking.

  She was in sable, Barguzin sable. Rain looked as though it enjoyed being on it. Her hair, all but a couple of disciplined wisps left and right near her temples, was contained within a sleek cloche of tiny iridescent black beads. The collar of her coat was pulled up so that it nestled her face, made it appear small, recedent. The tip of her nose was reddened from the cold.

  She looked like some exceptionally elegant woman who had somehow stepped over all the years since 1920, Gainer thought. He said his best “may I help you?”

  Leslie acknowledged it with an almost indiscernible nod. She surveyed the place while taking off, finger by finger, her black kid gloves and tucking them in her handbag.

  A large diamond and a wedding band, Gainer noticed.

  “By chance do you have mouse ear?” she asked.

  Her voice was British flavored.

  “Mouse ear,” she repeated.

  “Probably,” Gainer said, glancing up at the rows and rows of jars on the shelves. “What’s it used for?”

  “Perhaps you know it as cudweed.”

  Cudweed didn’t ring a bell.

  “You do work here,” she said dubiously.

  He admitted he knew practically nothing about herbs. “I only own the place,” he told her, downplaying that.

  “Oh.” Her lips formed a perfect little circle. She released the collar of her sable, which almost floated from around her face.

  For Gaine
r it was as though the curtain had gone up on an exquisite opening number. He didn’t give a damn if he was staring. She’d be gone in a moment. He’d enjoy her while he could.

  “I use it to make mouthwash,” she said.

  “Mouse ear mouthwash?”

  “It’s true.”

  “Everything you say is true.”

  Gainer thought that caused a slight break of a smile. He started looking for mouse ear or cudweed among the labels on the rows of bottles.

  “How about some pokeroot?” Gainer suggested, choosing an herb at random.

  “For a mouthwash?”

  “Whatever.”

  “You’re dangerous. Pokeroot is a poison.”

  She searched the labels with him, stood closer. The fragrance she was wearing seemed to be going off in tiny explosions around her. “To hell with it,” she said. “I’ll come back another time.”

  Think fast. “May I put you on our mailing list?”

  She said her name and address only once and so rapidly Gainer wasn’t sure he got it. Then, without bothering with her gloves, she pulled the sable close around her face and was gone.

  Later, when Miss Applegate returned, Gainer learned that mouse ear was also known as everlasting and they had plenty of it in a jar on the topmost shelf. He emptied all they had into one of the store’s printed brown paper bags and went out. He couldn’t get a taxi because of the rain and rush hour so he walked the nine blocks up Lexington and the two longer crosstown blocks over to Madison and the neat blue awning with her desirable address on it. It wasn’t a huge apartment house, but it had two formidable doormen on duty in white gloves, little white bow ties and dark blue uniforms that fitted them as though tailored.

  Gainer was soaked, rain dripping from his ear lobes. Affluent people were rarely caught in such a rain.

  “For Mrs. Pickering …”

  A doorman took the paper bag from him.

  Gainer thought he could get past them, get in there if he really wanted to. He put a folded ten into the white gloved palm and went out into the rain again, thinking Mr. Pickering was one lucky son of a bitch.

  Over the following few days Gainer spent more time than usual at the herb shop. He didn’t entirely admit to himself it was on the chance that she’d come in again. His style wasn’t to stand around waiting for a married woman to throw five or ten of her many leisure minutes his way. Nevertheless, there he was.

  And on the bright, nippy afternoon of the next Tuesday, there was Leslie.

  She looked different. All her nutmeg-colored hair was exposed, suggestively, a bit wild. She had on western boots tucked with straight-legged tan slacks that fit precisely, a plaid wool challis shirt and a loose-fitting antelope jacket lined with lynx.

  She smiled right off, an honest to friendly smile, thanked Gainer for the mouse ear. Promised when next she made up a batch of mouthwash with it she’d give him some.

  Gainer picked up on the future that that implied. He was suddenly aware of an urge to know her immediately all the way down to her most personal marrow. He imagined her answering his most intimate questions. His next thought was how unfair and unromantic that would be.

  That day Leslie bought enough herbs to supply a small naturopathic army. Miss Applegate was overwhelmed to the point of tears. Gainer carried the packages out to Leslie’s car, a black Rolls-Royce Corniche defiantly parked in a tow-away zone. Seeing her so casual at the wheel of it, using it as though it were a Toyota, subdued him.

  Leslie visited the shop twice more that week. Once for a sprig of vetiver, which seemed a pretext, considering she stayed over an hour. Exchanged viewpoints with Gainer on a number of subjects such as the marvelous compensation for enduring New York City and some of the possible explanations for déjà vu.

  Saturday she came in again, starved.

  Gainer, careful to sound offhand, suggested lunch.

  Her eyes got him by the eyes as she told him: “I’d like that.”

  They lunched at Le Relais.

  For four hours.

  Held hands beneath the table and then, with her initiative, in plain sight.

  That was the start of them.

  There were never any trading lies or need for other such synthetic excitements. Not even the usual purposely bewildering omissions. Leslie believed right off in the quality of what she felt for Gainer, and instead of cynically chalking it up to a mere phase of latter-day naiveté, she opened to it and allowed it to lead her.

  She especially wanted Gainer to understand her marriage.

  She’d been twenty-eight when she married Rodger Pickering. He was in his fifties and wealthy beyond count. His business was heavy construction on the international level. Hung on the walls of his study were photographs of him at the sites of huge projects in various parts of the world—of him stripped to the waist, chunky, hairy, wearing a hardhat and looking as though he could break rock.

  Rodger didn’t marry Leslie to camouflage his homosexuality. He no longer gave a damn who knew about that. His cock and ass were his cock and ass and he’d do whatever he wanted with them, was his attitude. He married Leslie to satisfy, in the least oppressive way, an older man’s innate gravitation toward domesticity. Also because he liked her, liked her spirit and coveted her style and knew they required expensive upkeep. She hadn’t saved much from her thousands of hundred dollar hours in front of the cameras, and it was imminent that her booking charts at the modeling agency would become spotty and then go blank. She’d seen other slightly older models suffer through that and she knew it was something to avoid if at all possible.

  Marriage to Rodger saved her. The convenience, as she said, was more hers than his. Naturally, Rodger protected himself, had his New York lawyer draw up a tight, antenuptial contract that said she’d get nothing from a divorce other than what personally belonged to her. But also legally provided was an escape clause for Leslie—divorce papers prepared in advance, signed by Rodger and kept current. Anytime Leslie wanted out, all it would take was her signature.

  What most made the arrangement comfortable was that she liked Rodger. He was delightfully frank, had a well-honed sense of humor and was, so far as she knew, always honest. Leslie saw relatively little of him, but their time together was usually rich with funny wicked anecdotes, particles from the cracks and crevices of their separate societies.

  Where they lived was in keeping with their relationship. The twenty-room penthouse on East Seventy-fifth Street, for example, was divided equally, a sturdy partition separating Rodger’s space from hers, designed to slide open and out of sight only when mutually activated.

  All in all Leslie had the wealth of advantages that came with being married to big money. And none of the restrictions. She could do whatever whenever she wanted, was not even required to be all that discreet. It was, in many ways, a perfect setup, one that most women would have traded their souls for.

  Gainer was relieved to learn these were Leslie’s circumstances. He would have preferred that she was unmarried, of course, but this was the next best thing. At least he wouldn’t have to feel like a sexual trespasser and keep looking over his shoulder.

  What did bother him, though, was all that money of Rodger’s. And Leslie’s apparent need for it. Early on, only once, Gainer discussed it with her. He told her exactly what he did and what he had. He didn’t ask her to give up a dollar for him nor did he pledge to make an all-out run on the fast track for her. She didn’t volunteer to give up or even check her extravagances, nor did she want him to try hard to be rich. She meant it when she said she thought it would be a terrible waste of both head and heart if he struggled to make millions.

  They made a pact. Never to let money come between them. His or hers, or anyone’s, no matter, they’d just use it.

  That had worked out fine.

  However, recently Gainer happened on a hint of a complication. In the margins of several of Leslie’s books on psychic healing she had doodled, among other things, her first name together with his la
st, and put a “Mrs.” larger in front of them.

  Now, in the bedroom of the beach cottage, that same sort of image came sliding across Leslie’s mind. She let it go by. She was bare, scrunched down in a chair by the window, her feet up on the sill. Outside, dawn was nearly finished. Only a little of the lower rim of the sun remained below the sea. The water was so calm the horizon looked as though it had been cut with a scissors.

  She had gotten up before any sun, rather than lay there half awake and disturbed by premonition. It was like being maliciously teased by some force that already knew what would happen. Why not let her clearly in on it instead of prodding her unconscious with vague unpleasant intimations?

  Gainer was still asleep, lying face up diagonally across the bed, as though claiming all of it. Poor love, Leslie thought, probably she’d oversnuggled him most of the night. She held her breath to hear his and be grateful for it. Felt sorry for the ocher and blue bruises and scabbed-over abrasions on his shins. She scratched a new mosquito bite just above her pubic hair.

  There were the dry clawing sounds of gulls moving about on the roof.

  She went over to the bed, stood absolutely still beside it for a long moment to, as she would say, center herself. Closed her eyes and asked for protection, asked for the help of Lady Caroline and any other guardian angels who might be around. Extending her arms above Gainer, she made her wrists and fingers resolute, placed her left hand an inch or two over her right, palms down. She started at his feet. Made vigorous, clockwise circles in the air, like she was scrubbing, worked all the way up to his head. There she interrupted her scrubbing motion, seemed to push a lot of something undesirable off and away. She shook her hands as though snapping a nasty substance from her fingers.

  Resumed at his feet again.

  Gainer, in the shallows of an REM state, experienced several images, including a cyclone funnel, a helicopter and a dragonfly. When he opened his eyes Leslie was intently churning the air above his groin. Had he been more awake, he would have pulled back.