Chapter 20
I answered Dora Corlani's question by ordering her in a very surly voice to get herself primped up in the washroom and then follow me to the Thunderbird because I was going to drive her home.
I drove to my home instead, I parked the Thunder-bird in the garage, and then I walked her into the house and up the stairs and towards my bedroom. She was glancing at me in a very scared way, but she was also blushing. I swung the door open and I gestured for her to enter.
When I turned on the light and delicious Dora saw the panorama on all the walls, she turned redder than ever, and then she turned to look at me with huge eyes as she stammered, "Oh, Mr. Venturi, I do deserve an awful spanking. Because, you see, I've wanted you to do it ever since I saw you spank Maxine right there in the office."
"I see. How long have you felt this way, Dora?"
"Oh, ever since then Mr. Venturi! And then just now when you told me on the phone you were going to spank me if I didn't tell you what was happening, I-I-I'm afraid I purposely rambled a little so you'd get real mad and maybe do it," she confessed.
"I see," I said, sternly. I clasped my hands behind my back and stared at her for a long minute. Then suddenly she began to cry, bowing her head and putting her hands to her face, and she wailed, "Mr. Venturi, I can't help it, I guess I'm just crazy about you. And I know I'm just a fat stupid girl from a poor Italian family and I shouldn't even dare think of a fine handsome rich man like you, but-"
"Just a minute, Dora, let me get this straight. What's this business about a rich young man?" I interrupted her.
She dropped her hands and lifted her lovely face to me, streaked with tears, her eyes huge and now shining with delight: "It's true, Mr. Venturi. I called Mr. Karogian at home as soon as I read that letter, and before I went downstairs and found Jane Wilson, and he said he could put two and two together and figure out that that mortgage was a fake. He said he was willing to bet that your dad had signed one set of papers and Don Foster and Philip Young had just transferred that signature onto another set and given them that payable on demand clause they were holding over you. And Mr. Karogian said he was going to call the president of the bank and tell him the whole story, and he knew the president wouldn't foreclose on you until an investigation had been made. And Tulio Verduga says that he's got orders for about fifteen thousand dollars worth of Venturi wine, and-"
"That's enough, Dora."
"Yes, sir. Do you want to spank me now?"
"You talk too goddamn much, Dora darling. Come here to me," I said roughly.
She stared at me as if she couldn't quite believe her ears. I took a menacing step towards her, and with a sobbing cry, she flung her arms around me and turned her face up to mine. I kissed her, and she wasn't fat or bespectacled or timid any more. She was a dish. She was a real Venturi dish, the kind you have for dessert, the rich kind.
I had never had such a thrilling kiss, even from Madge Fryberg or even my little nurse in San Francisco. And when it was over and I had to come up for air, I said, "Maybe I'm crazy, but you've been dieting, haven't you, Dora?"
She went red as a beet then, and turned her face away, and I had to put my hand to her chin and force it back to look at me: "Haven't you?" I repeated.
"Yes, yes sir. I knew you wouldn't want a fat ugly girl like me. Not that I've even dreamed you'd ever want me at all, but I said that I was going to lose weight so that maybe you'd notice me. I was always in your office and I saw how you looked at the pretty girls, and I wished I was as pretty as they were so you would look at me that way. And I thought that maybe if you spanked me on the b-b-bare the way you did Maxine Lavolta, you might get-well, get excited and want-w-want-"
"Suppose you just shut your big sweet adorable mouth and let me take over from now on Dora Venturi," I said.
Well, it's almost Christmas now. And Dora Corlani is Dora Venturi, and we play our little game almost every night. The blindfold game. Dora's a masochist too, but not a perverse one. She just wants to be spanked by me, and then fucked by me alone. And there's certainly nothing wrong in that. We've tried about seventy-five of the different positions by now, and I have a hunch that Dora's about to give me a little bambino in about seven months hence.
Madge Fryberg? She came to our wedding, and she'd thought I'd made a wonderful choice. She's going to work in old Doc Franklin's clinic, and there's a handsome young doctor whose going to work with her, and I've got a hunch that Madge Fryberg is going to get over her bitter loneliness and she won't need a man to fuck her as a catharsis. She'll just want to be fucked because it's nature and love, and that's the way it should always be.
So there you have it. Fresno has its faults, but the Venturi Vineyards are passion's vineyards now, and the earth is good and the grapes are rich and the wine excites Dora and me, and we're going to stay around awhile and give old Marcantonio that bambino he always wanted. And probably a lot more than one, too, by the time we've acted out every single illustration on my bedroom walls.