Chapter 3

The harbor was still that afternoon, very still. The seagulls screamed as ever. There was the occasional tinkle of a harbor buoy as it bowed toward Fort Sumter. Otherwise all was still.

Even Larrine was pensive, withdrawn. And before us, standing, not speaking unless spoken to, were Elza and June, both structurally shy.

Larrine's butler had served us all drinks-martinis. After each of us had downed two cocktails, had talked fitfully about the girls' work at school (a subject that evoked no enthusiasm), their boyfriends, if any (a subject that stirred no great interest), about what they had been doing since coming back to Charleston (nothing), Larrine asked each, in turn, to get up and walk around the room.

Each, in turn, got up, said, more or less, "Gee, I feel those drinks," and obligingly walked around the room.

The request was stage-setting, no more, no less. It was to give legitimacy to my interest in hiring them as models. If I were to use them as models, picture their figures and faces in a picture book about historic Charleston, I would be expected to want to know how well they walked, how graceful they were, how loose-limbed, nonchalant, natural. Such are the established features of high-fashion models.

Although I intended to take their pictures when they were stark still and wearing no clothes whatever, it was good public relations, I thought, to talk art before getting around to nudity. Later, it would be well to prize nudity before getting around to intimate touching.

Asking the girls to walk around the room gave my venery the benchmark of an audition. It suggested that they were on trial. It was up to them to show themselves worthy to be featured in my unworthy and as-yet-unsold book.

And I had not as yet, I now realized, mentioned my unworthy, unsold, unrealized book.

My next step would be to offer them modeling fees too tempting to be refused.

I had learned from the casting techniques of Cloris that all young girls are both vain and venal. To seduce them you do not lean too heavily on charm. On wit. On your own evanescent, if ever actual, physical appeal. You speak of beauty and offer bribes. Beauty laid bare, of course, is art. The bribe makes every girl a dedicated, inveterate, intransigent lover of art. If the bribe is large enough, the virtues of art are instantly self-evident.

"You walk well, you talk well, you are indecently handsome," I announced, as the girls rounded out their tour. I could not, without more groundwork, ask them to take off their T-shirts.

I needed now an interim piece of business.

"Thanks," Elza said, June said, with what I took to be adolescent appreciation. (I was particularly pleased with my reference to talking well-an extravagant praising of six or seven "wows.")

"I admired your looks when I first saw you ... at Seabrook."

"We sure barged in at the wrong time, didn't we?" Elza asked, with adolescent malevolence.

"We sure did." June's eyes widened. She saw, no doubt, the tattoo still sunning itself on Amy's flank. And young girls do not often come across such brazen tattoos, nor such rampant display.

"I'm writing a book," I announced, moving my strategy into its second phase.

"He's a good writer. He really is. He's written about Amy. And he's written about the famous, fabulous Lady Cholmondeley. But I don't recommend that either of you read them." Larrine was multiply helpful.

"This is a different kind of book," I said.

My image of myself, at this point, was not pretty. I do not like being sly, devious. Nor did I feel that I needed to be. But I was. I was pretending to write-at least, produce-a book which I had no intention of writing or putting together; which I could not possibly sell, if produced. All because I wanted these two girls; and as if I did not have Amy, almost in surfeit; Cloris. Sooner or later, I told myself, I would dream up a rationalization for what I was doing. It was part of my craft to lie to myself; the decay of art is the decline of lying.

"About what?" The two girls asked this in unison.

"About Amy ... as usual," Larrine said, sipping her drink. Then, making a gesture to the girls, "Do sit down."

"Thank you," June said, sitting herself stiffly on the edge of a Queen Anne armchair.

"Thanks," Elza said, plumping comfortably on the couch.

"This is another book ... an art book." I pronounced art solemnly, as if I were introducing the Queen of England.

Both breathed hard.

"It is a book about the historic places in Charleston ... the finest possible photography ... almost poetic text"

Larrine shot me a serpent look, sly, disapproving, pleased.

"And I need two frabjous models."

"My," said June. "Frabjous!"

"Oh, my," Elza said. "Beamish, too?"

The fact that I had asked Larrine Lamboll to ask them to meet me at her house this afternoon implied that-now that program was public-they were--likeliest candidates.

Charleston, today, is a cosmopolitan city; more cosmopolitan, even, than Durrell's Alexandria. Here old decadence is swept by fresh currents. Artists, retired diplomats, retired admirals and generals, young professors, writers like myself, girls as pretty as the Chelsea girls-all meet, intertwine, gossip. And those so inclined enjoy one another in secret, experimental ways. And all in the gentle ambience of the great oaks, the fragrance of the sea, the sadness of magnolias.

From this flowered madness, Amy was inseparable. Even in Rome, Florence, Mantua, there was always about her, in passion or quiet, the sweetness, fragrance, the gentle mystery and singing fight of this enchanted place.

And such a place, as would be expected, as we have learned to expect of the other golden cities, gives birth or passing comfort to those whose gifts, beauty, wit, needs, are uncommon.

Before me, suave, knowing, eminently hospitable, was a choice example-Larrine, Amy's warmest friend. You could talk to her about Proust, Gide, the "Arcliduke" Trio, or soixante-neuf. All would be treated with equal grace, curiosity, passion, and detachment. (In this she was much like Cloris.) Nor would she let her affection for Amy, or the urge that led her to paint so many nudes of Amy, dilute her kindness to me.

"What do you want to do with the twins?" she had asked me. "Fuck them or write about them?"

"Both," I said.

She conceded that the latter was a good idea, and that the former was as good a way as any to get on with the latter. She held that there had not been an adequate book about twins since The Bobbsey Twins, although she gathered that my approach would be radically different.

Quite so.

"And, of course, you don't really want to take their pictures."

"Not at all."

Knowledgeable, like Cloris, she agreed that taking pictures was a promising way to get started; not for nothing had she painted nudes of Amy.

What tact now required was an overwhelming mention of money.

I made my face look disinterested, as a gentleman's face should look when he talks to a girl about money. Money was no object. Art-art was the thing; art and beauty.

"I will pay, of course, the usual modeling fee." As if anybody knew what was usual. "A hundred dollars each, per session. That is, for an hour or so. And three or four sessions each week."

(It made no difference to me what I paid. All of this would be deductible, because I could write about it ... even if nothing came of the crazy idea about the picture book. Besides, who knows? Even the picture book might work out. This is a surrealist world.)

I might have offered more, but too much might seem unprofessional. Too much might have suggested that my basic intention was to get them undressed-which it was; undressed and undone, solo and en brochette.

"Wow," Elza said.

"Wow," said her sister.

With this money, I pointed out, each could buy many books-books on psychology, books on theater, even buy a package tour of Europe: London, Paris, Rome. (Perhaps I could even go with them, combining the services of patron with the office of cicerone and-had they been married-cicisbeo.)

"I would like you to show me the Louvre," June said, almost reading my thoughts. (Better a gazebo in Deer Park.)

Elza, more practical, spoke of Crazy Horse, the sumptuous strip lounge on the Avenue George V, a stone's throw from the Hotel George V.

"I will pay you for the first shooting in advance." I had learned well. This was how Cloris had sealed her bond with Jennifer Digby, Sir Kenelm's daughter, that singular afternoon in her hotel suite at the Savoy, in London. ("I've never done this before," Jennifer had said, nonchalantly raising her skirt.)

"You mean it?" June thought the proceedings acceptable, although unorthodox.

I took out my wallet. I had come prepared. I counted out two hundred-dollar sums in twenty-dollar bills. The currency was mint-fresh. I had seen to that. New money speaks of crispness, business, style. Only old bills call to mind the seamy acts by which society, like the cockroach species, obverts extinction.

"We might as well get started," Larrine said.

"Okay." June was cooperative, although scarcely enthusiastic.

"Okay," said Elza, half-whispering.

I now took notice of their dress. I had not analyzed it before. I was now to anticipate revelations, as each piece of clothing came off. Both were barefoot. Both were in blue jeans. Both wore T-shirts.

I took my Nikon out of its case, looked through the through-the-lens viewfinder, read the indications of the light meter. Then I set the lens stop for the indicated shutter speed: f.2 for 150th of a second. That was for an average spot, that afternoon, at that time, in Larrine's drawing room. I was using Tri-X film, which is fast-ASA 400.

All of this was throwaway ritual. I had no interest in taking pictures. But as an adopted Charlestonian, Amy's lover, Larrine's friend, I had to legitimize my role. Voyeurism is not, as yet, a recognized profession. Politesse is a beating around the bush.

"Who is first?" Larrine asked.

"June," said Elza.

"Elza," said June.

"You decide," I said to Larrine.

"You must think of this as art. Pure art." Larrine smiled affably as she said this to Elza, going over to June, kissing June, lifting June's T-shirt.

"Gosh," June said, pulling the shirt over her head. "I've never done anything like this before." June was the one.

A tight, white, neat bra covered her candy-apple breasts; she was thus no more exposed, unveiled, than she would normally be on the beach.

"Take a drink." Larrine poured another martini, handed it to her.

"Thanks." June took the glass, put it to her lips. Larrine meanwhile walked behind her, unhooked the bra, exposed the candy-apple breasts, fingered them.

"Gee," June said, not removing the glass from her lips.

"Gee," Larrine murmured.

I focused my camera, made two or three ceremonial shots.

Larrine made two or three ceremonial remarks.

We all had two or three more ceremonial drinks.

June, meanwhile, got used to her absence of upper costuming. She walked about unusually erect, her little breasts jutting out in adolescent pride.

From time to time I focused my camera, clicked, to make a conspicuous display of professional interest.

When enough time had elapsed for a smooth transition to nudity, I said, still ignoring the fully clothed Elza, "Please drop your pants."

"Panties too?"

"Panties too."

"Everything?" June acquired fresh joy in dragging out the discussion.

"Let's have a look at the golden ass." Larrine lit herself a cigarette.

"If s okay with me." June looked at her sister and winked. She looked at me and smiled. She looked at Larrine and stuck out her tongue, as if to say, "Don't you wish, at your age, you had an ass as neat, as tight, as innocent as mine?"

She unbuckled her belt. She undid the button at the top of her jeans, slid down the zipper. Then she began the artful, slow process of sliding the pants. More skin came into view. Then the pale yellow hair of the pubic mound. There was very little of it, little more than a suggestion, as if puberty had decided to stay with her a long, playful time.

Unfortunately, her undressing came to a swift, dry halt.

Larrine had closed the door leading from the central hallway to the drawing room. Now there was a hard knock on the door, and the sound of a man's voice: a grunt, a conspicuous clearing of the throat, and the words, "May I come in?"

Simultaneously the door began to open. The opening was delayed, ominous, continuous.

Then the man was with us. He had about the height and weight of Cary Grant; an abstracted, reflective expression which seemed to say, "I'm a stranger here on earth." He was also very pale.

Larrine jumped up "My God, the guru."

"I just got out of jail," he said.

"Good for you." Larrine was congratulatory. "I always knew you'd make it."

Larrine introduced him around. I had read about him (in the book John Dellmore wrote about Amy). He was now famous, or notorious-depending on your social alignments. Dalton Vanderhof, Ph.D., onetime professor of psychology, had had high adventures in inner space, had rediscovered the psychic high jinks of the Far East, had ultimately migrated to Charleston, where he had a Pied Piper influence on the very young, a Svengali influence on their sisters, mothers, aunts.

Of late he had had trouble with the law. I remembered reading about it in the Paris Herald Tribune. He had opened, in Florida, a therapy clinic for those well-heeled, but suffering from incurable tedium vitae. His treatment was simple. He provided all his patients with luxury rooms, gourmet food, masseuses who gave "total" massage; all patients with exquisite bed partners of the requisite sex; all patients opium and its many derivatives. He was consequently indicted, tried, convicted, and jailed for income-tax evasion.

"It was ennobling," Vanderhoff said, going to the bar and pouring himself a neat slug of scotch.

"Help yourself to a drink," Larrine said, purring proper words post facto.

"Ennobling and enfeebling, like an amateur crucifixion."

Larrine smiled benevolently at June. "You have a lovely pussy."

"Thanks," June said.

"A slight, slim, slit," Elza conceded. This was her first announcement that ran on past the initial syllable.

"Ennobling?" Larrine indicated to Vanderhoff that, despite vaginal distractions, she was listening.

He gulped his slug, poured himself a second. "Ennobling because of the stretch of inner space. Not for nothing do we speak of 'doing a stretch.' Certainly not for nothing. Nothing is a great deal of something. It's the emptiness in the middle that makes a wheel a wheel."

"Where are you staying?"

Vanderhoff did not seem to hear. His eyes fixated themselves on an imaginary emptiness in the middle of a wheel. "The lower one's vitality, the more sensitive one is to the Wheel of Life."

"Drink your drink ... and tell me where you're staying."

"The trick is to lower your vitality. That's why a man's best moments are when he is in prison-look at Socrates!-or when he is all fucked out. Given my druthers, of course, I'd choose the latter."

"Do sit down." Larrine had resigned herself to an afternoon of non sequiturs.

Vanderhoff loped to the armchair nearest the bar. "Behold! I preach the Gospel Of Exhaustion. Perhaps here we have the founding rock of a new church. Let us invite our souls to rest."

He dropped with a thud into the armchair, draped his right leg over the right arm of the chair. "Where am I staying? I'm staying with my dear friend Isabella"

"Berkeley Hall?"

"Berkeley Hall. Of course Berkeley Hall. I'd be a fool to dream my dreams in Locksley Hall." He tossed off his whiskey.

"Isabellas back?"

"Obviously. Otherwise, except by astral projection-the infinite erection of a cosmic, gaseous vertebrate-it would be very hard for me to stay with her. ... Isabelle's been living in Nepal," Vanderhoff said.

Larrine nodded. "I know."

"She corresponded with me in prison."

"Oh?"

"She's very astute, you know. Very astute."

"That I knew." She smiled, recalling, I assume, the ways in which Isabelle Wescott had played on Amy's weakness, had contributed to her strength. (The seduction at Berkeley Hall. The double seduction-the seduction which induced Amy, in the midstream of her own seduction, to seduce her own nephew.)

"She knew I was about to be paroled. She knew it-not I. She wrote, 'When you get out, meet me New York.' This, mind you, from Katmandu."

"You met her?"

Vanderhoff nodded. "She's lost a lot of weight."

"Then, together, you came back here?"

"You put two and two together very nicely." He smiled approvingly at the twins. "Always did."

"You're very astute yourself."

Vanderhoff looked at her through his shot glass. "What a pleasant spread of compliments. Astute guru."

"Does Isabelle still have a thing for Amy?" I smiled to myself. Larrine was doing my work for me.

"She will always have a thing for Amy. She's mad

... fucking mad ... about Amy." He got up and refilled his glass.

The two girls exchanged eye gestures. June motioned with her head toward the door. With her lips she formed the words "Let's go."

Elza answered, silently. I am not much of a lip reader, but it appeared to me that she said, "Wait a minute ... I want to listen ... this is wowl"

"Still no interest in men?"

"Not really."

"But you go to bed with her."

"Of course. But then I'm a collector of chinoiserie. And I think in pizzicato."

"What's it like."

"Making love to Isabelle."

"Making love to Isabelle."

"Always interesting. Impersonally interesting. like making love to the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons Lits et des Grands Express Europeans."

Larrine, as gracious a hostess as Amy, turned to me to include me in the intimate frame of reference. "The guru once took Amy ... just as impersonally ... in this very same room."

"Ah ... Amy! Amy!" Vanderhoff gazed up, his eyes presumably passing through the ceiling in ascent toward a pendant Queen of Heaven. "What a gluteal jewel."

Then, as if recalling some vagaries which had asserted themselves before my arrival in Charleston, some delicious and unexpected gallimaufry, he added, "She lets us play with the tresses of her hair."

There was, for a space, an embarrassed silence, as if we were all aware that there are certain insights not to be bandied lightly. He looked at me. "Blessed are the imperfect," he quoted, "for theirs is the Kingdom of Love."

"He's really an old friend of Amy's." Larrine thought some explanation was in order. An old friend is expected to have an intimate acquaintance with gluteal muscles.

Vanderhoff lapsed into soliloquy. Images intertwined. "Ah, Compagnie Internationale des Wagons Lits et des Grands Express Europeans. What a delightful phrase to have tattooed, hopefully, on one's extended part."

"Who would know?"

The girls tittered. Nothing of this sort turns up on TV. Nor is such talk common on Seabrook.

Vanderhoff flopped back in his chair. His right leg again draped itself over the right chair arm. "You know, three of you-you, Amy, Isabelle-have done Charleston an enormous service. You are a cabal. A liberating cabal. The city will never again be swallowed up by the old miasma."

"We do our part, sir. Our part." She looked approvingly at the two girls, as if to say, "It's only a matter of time, now, before you, too, will be doing your part ... naked and prone."

I mentioned, earlier, that with VanderhofFs entrance, June's undressing had come to a sharp, dry halt. This was something of an overstatement. Everything, by then, had been taken down or off. All that remained for her to do was step clear of the dropped, crumpled blue jeans. And this she had done, with insouciance and grace, while the guru talked. With a deft kick, the jeans had been dismissed; and she, more or less self-consciously, stood in the middle of the drawing room, puffing on a cigarette.

VanderhofFs eyes wandered to her middle. "How pleasant it is to see things steadily and see them whole."

"Home fucking," said Larrine, eyeing me, "is the curse of the middle class."

Had I become too settled with Amy? Was that what she was telling me? Was that why she was being so helpful to me in my machinations with the twins?

But though scant as my memories are of the moments there that signal afternoon, very full and warm in me is the fused memory of the two bright girls who were first undressed there. like the Ancient Mariner, I, in general, remember so little. The Mariner seemed to recall only the albatross and that ghastly crew; and I recall only my absence of understanding-and the palliatives thereto.

"May I sit down now?" June asked, with the shy politeness which stems from good breeding. This was obviously her first official nakedness; and she approached it with the deference that one might reserve for the first edition of a play by some lesser Elizabethan or Jacobean. It boded well.