Chapter 13
The Southern Cross was a bit of a disappointment after the long buildup. It had started with a pitch from the captain, as if he were personally selling the Southern Cross and expected to make a handsome profit on it. Which, in a sense, was probably true. Certainly the first visibility of the Southern Cross was an extra added attraction of the cruise, of which he was master.
There were some rather gaudy photos of it, highly retouched, and ashtrays with stars in their bottoms and some perfectly revolting pillows with crosses of stars stamped on them, all for sale in the boutiques of the promenade deck. An amateur astronomer, a pestilential nuisance, was dispensing misinformation about the constellation and stars in general and offering views through his pocket telescope, as if that would enable you to read the names on the stars or stamped somewhere in the heavens beside them.
Jennifer found it difficult to spot in the haze and the thousands of other stars. Anyway, she preferred the closer reality of Cabo, where, as Bruce had told her, three young men had designed and built a magnificent hotel, carved from the rock of the promontory and capped only with a great sweeping wing of concrete. Not that she could see it. Cabo was only a faint haze of lights off to port, marking the southernmost jut of Baja.
The amateur astronomer and the breeze, though tropical, soon cleared the boat deck. And Jennifer found herself strolling with Bruce toward her cabin.
Now was the time to speak. To tell him it was over. There would be no more lovemaking. She had decided.
Bruce turned the corner with her, into the narrow passageway, crowding against her, swinging her around and lifting her on tiptoe, kissing her. Kissing her mouth, her throat, tousling her hair, pressing her breast tight against his chest.
It mustn't happen. Not again! Jennifer fought a wave of weakness, holding on to the mundane realities with difficulty. There was something she had to say, something she must tell Bruce.
He was unlocking her cabin door, almost lifting her across the sill, and closing the door behind him. Closing them both in this cabin, where so many things had happened....
"Bruce... no, don't kiss me. Please. There's something I must tell you... Don't... Bruce, please. Please... let me breathe! Don't hold me so close... You-distract me. Where was I? Oh, yes, something to discuss... Bruce! I can't even think when you put your hand on my... Please listen. It's Carol. I think we're compromised. Carol had done her damnedest to start rumors. And she'll probably keep it up, though I threw her a couple of rough curves today at lunch. I've endowed you with a wife and three-no, four children."
Bruce released her long enough to hold her off and look at her, smiling. "So that's what burned Carol up. That you didn't, apparently, care. Actually, it's only one. A little girl of nine. I show her picture at the drop of a hat, or if no hat is handy just ask. Judy is a doll, Jennifer."
Jennifer felt the shock deep inside. She hadn't thought she would. I thought it wouldn't make any difference. And I find it does. It somehow makes it doubly ugly. Because I have been making love with a man I assumed was free- and now I find he's married. That he owes an allegiance somewhere else, to some other woman.
And that made Bruce unclean, and by his un-cleanness dirtied her. Now it was really ugly. Now that heated coupling of bodies was utterly meaningless. Not even the hedonistic delights she had enjoyed... Yes, she could admit now to having enjoyed them. And any fragment of delight was being torn away.
And then Bruce restored it.
"My wife died three years ago. Pneumonia and complications. Pneumonia! In the tropics! It seemed impossible. We were living in Acapulco then. Judy and I still do. Judy and I have a house 'way up on the bluffs, just south of the big hotels, overlooking the bay."
She loved the way he said, "Judy and I have a house." It held pride and deep affection. What a lucky kid, what a wonderful doll of a girl! What a very lucky wonderful doll of a girl, to have Bruce saying, with love and pride, "Judy and I have a house..."
If just once Bruce had said anything like that to her, about her... She put that thought aside. Completely. Hidden. Never to be brought out again. She knew now that this was-as she had always known-just a shipboard romance. She had even got over her innate prudery-or almost.
Bruce had his wallet out and was extracting a slightly tattered color photograph of Judy- minus a front tooth and grinning about it. Aged about seven. Complete with freckles and twin pigtails that jutted out, making her look like a human helicopter. A very charming, slightly roguish human helicopter.
I don't want to love this child, this product of Bruce's making love to another woman, however long ago and far away. But she is cute. More than cute. As Bruce says, a doll.
I don't, really, want to love anyone. Not yet. I have so much living to catch up on. I don't even want to love Bruce --just to love his love-making. That's enough to absorb at one time. I'm not even sure I know how to love. For twenty years love was ruled out. Mother Dear didn't approve of love or any demonstration of it except, of course, for the adoration she extracted for herself. And that's not love. Not the way I think of love. Love doesn't demand; it gives. Everything.
Jennifer studied the picture, smiling involuntarily. "You're right, Bruce. She is a doll. A very roguish, hoydenish doll."
"Oh, she's a rogue, all right. She runs Josephina and the house with a small, iron fist-or at least Josephina lets her think she does. Josephina is fat, fortyish, and has raised more children than population statistics warrant. In her own way she's a doll, too." Bruce suddenly grinned at her, extracting the picture from her hand and restoring it to his wallet. "So much for my wife and four children. Carol can baffle over them for a while." He smiled at Jennifer, a rather tired smile. "I'm not sure the Carols of this world even know how babies arrive. They just know fear of it. And it turns them sour." He pulled Jennifer around and sat her in the one comfortable chair the cabin offered, and he perched on the berth, his smile fading.
"Carol did shake you, didn't she? You are still hurt, still puzzled. Perhaps, tonight, we should just sit a while and talk. Or maybe go back on deck and hold hands and listen to that would-be astronomer tell us marvelous improbabilities about the stars."
"No. Let's sit here. For a moment. I have so many things to sort out, Bruce. I have hated your making love to me..."
Brace's face flushed. He gulped. "But..."
Jennifer stilled his protest. "Oh, the physical part of me loved it, responded, gave all it had to give. At least, I think so. But there was another part of me that said all this is wrong, horrid, dirty... It may be. I no longer have just rigid views. It seems to me anything as wonderful as what we've had together can't be wholly wrong..."
"It isn't, Jennifer..."
She ignored his protest and went on. "I have even tried to tell myself I didn't care if this was your entertainment for each cruise-some woman who would make love with you. I don't know how many other women..."
"There haven't been 'many other women,' though you may not believe it. At first, the very idea seemed disloyal. Then, after a while, I knew she was gone, completely gone, and wouldn't care. Still, other women just didn't seem worth the effort. Or they wanted to use sex to trap me into marriage. I've been-wary."
He flung himself on the berth, staring at the ceiling. "Until you came along. I honestly don't know how I feel about you. Except you're the most exciting thing that has happened to me. You know how to give without demanding. You know how to make love without complicating it with schemes for the future.
"I thought we were ideally suited-until that bitch Carol got into the act. Now this is spoiled. I'll move out of your life. I'll go- now." He started to sit up.
Jennifer moved swiftly, sliding out of the chair to land somewhere between his chest and knees, pinning him down. "Oh, no, you don't. You don't move out on me just because some dyke makes up nasty stories about married men -and I make them up right back at her, but one better. Of course I was-well-a bit hurt, but that's over. And I have nothing to be nasty and jealous over, except a nine-year-old tyrant with pigtails."
"Jennifer!" Bruce caught her, settling her more comfortably on his lap, and then lay back, smiling up at her. "That's better than on the chest. I got in the habit of breathing a while back and don't want to forget how. Except for a tendency to cut off my breathing every now and then, did you know you were quite a remarkable woman? Very, very desirable. And I desire you. If you would just shift a bit off the kidney... There... that's better."
Jennifer, freed-she hoped-from her inhibitions, still wasn't at all sure she wanted to be made love to. Not right away. Casting aside her inhibitions-if she really had any-had taken a great deal out of her. She still wasn't sure. But the feel of his penis, a hard knot just beneath her pussy, started ideas that might develop into something interesting. That, in fact, were developing into something interesting, since Bruce's hand was sliding under her sweater and touching her breasts.
"And you think I give you problems in breathing! Just what do you think your hands do to me?"
Bruce grinned, managing to turn it into a very fierce and somewhat unrealistic leer. "I know what I'm doing to you-I hope. And I intend... Well, what do you know! Your sweater came unfastened. And those are your..."
Bruce propped himself into sitting position and kissed one breast, very gently, and then lay back, grinning wickedly. "That is known as the 'come-on,' the light, deft kiss on the bosom... Oh, you didn't think it was particularly deft? Then try this one for size..." And he caught her shoulders, pulling her down so that one breast pressed against his mouth.
She felt it deep within her, the pull, the welling up of passion, and buried her breast against his mouth, playing with the unruly hair, moaning as his hands caressed her back, worked gently at the fastening of her skirt, so that it fell away from her waist, letting his hands into more intimate and more satisfying regions.
She slid down his front, hating to pull her breast away from his demanding mouth, but wanting the taste of his mouth on hers, the tongues intertwined, pulling, creating new fires within her.
And as they kissed in breathless ecstasy, her fingers worked busily at the buttons of his shirt, so that it fell open. With no undershirt, it let her breasts rest against his chest in sudden, almost alarming heat. She moved slightly, just to feel the motion of her breasts against his flesh, against the mat of hair on his chest.
His hands were sliding her skirt down over the still slightly bruised buttocks, cupping them, pulling her tight against his body, so that she felt the quiver and pulse of his penis within his trousers. It stirred frantic desires in her and she writhed against him, rubbing her pelvis against the bulge of his penis.
Bruce raised her up, moving her a little to one side. "So I can get out of my trousers." He wriggled and heaved and then they were there, lying naked together.
Jennifer could feel the heat of his body down her entire front, where her breasts responded with hardening of pinkish-amber nipples and her stomach drew up tight, quivering with anticipation-and her little pussy started its slow budding, its bursting into soft, pinkish bloom, oozing the excitement of her juices.
Her lips found his ear and she whispered, "Do you know 'The Bridge'?"
He turned his head and kissed her mouth, shooting out his tongue for a fleeting hot contact, and then nodded. "I know 'The Bridge,' and we can try it. But first, let's kiss." And he pressed his mouth down on hers, sealing some new bargain in pleasure, in excitement.