Chapter 12
Carol laughed at Ed, shaking her head. "WHY would you want to find me?" He grinned easily. He took her arm and they walked apparently without direction. He said, "That's a good question. I never had much luck with you a couple of drinks, a couple of refusals to my propositions. Why, indeed, would I come looking for you?"
"Why, indeed?" Carol tried to keep her voice light, but she was flattered that he had found her in this city, so far from Bluetown. A man she had known just casually but who had not forgotten her in the long year she'd been imprisoned.
She glanced at Ed from the corners of her eyes. His smile, the shape of his face reminded her of Brad, and this was good. It gave her something upon which to base her liking of him. He was older than Brad, and he had told her he'd been married, hurt, divorced. But he was a handsome and charming young man.
"May I take you to dinner, Carol?"
"If you want to. Only I'm not very hungry right now. Are you?"
"I'm hungry, all right," he said. His tone was cryptic. "But I can put off eating as long as you like."
She smiled. "Why don't we go somewhere and talk? I want to hear more about why you came looking for me."
"There are a lot of cocktail lounges along here."
"I don't drink any more."
"Oh? Reformed, Carol?"
"No. I just don't need it. I don't want it. I'm not running away from anything any more."
"Sounds promising."
"Oh, I don't know if it's going to work."
"We get no guarantees of anything, Carol. We just do the best we can, that's what I think. Tt works out for some of us, and for other back to the booze."
"How about you?"
"What about me?"
"You and the booze?" she said.
"I can take it or leave it alone. It's like eating, Carol. It's not what I'm hungry for right now."
"What are you hungry for, Ed?"
He glanced at her and gave her a broad smile. "I'll have to tell you about that. It's all mixed up in why I've been looking for you, Carol. But it just about simmers down to one point: I'm hungry for the kind of girl I hope you are or that you can be."
"That sounds mixed up enough."
"It's really very simple. After the last time I saw you at the Embers, I asked around about you. I found out plenty. In fact, I found out everything."
"Why?"
"At first it was just curiosity. I had had bad luck with my wife. I figured I knew what kept her from clicking I just didn't have the key to open her up. Maybe some other guy will. I hope so. But I wanted to know what made a mixed-up kid like you click. And I found out. I went to your home town. I met your sister ... "
"That's how you found me."
"That's one way. I would have found you, anyway, because by then, I knew I had to. By then, I knew more about you than anybody else did. I knew your true age the way you used to toss off martinis made three-to-one, a seventeen-year-old girl!-I knew how mixed up you were, and why."
"Why would that make you want to find me?"
"Because I figured maybe, with luck, the two of us could teach each other about loving. like you, I'm a one-time loser. I don't want to fail again. And I thought maybe you felt the same way."
"Oh, God, if you only knew!"
"So I figured, one cripple to another. The blind leading the blind. Me, I'm thirty-one. But you're so young no matter what you've been through you're still a baby and you could learn whatever a guy wanted to teach you, if you wanted to learn. I figured, if you'd even look at me, we could at least try."
She smiled. "I don't know if it would work, either, but you're right, Ed, I'd like to try."
"Now, shall we go have something to eat?"
"I'm still not hungry."
"My hotel is right there. We could have something sent up later, if you'd like."
"That makes sense."
Ed's hotel room was brightly painted, freshly furnished. Everything looked expensive, neat and new. Carol was glad, because this seemed somehow important and symbolic right now.
The bed dominated the room now that they were in it. There were chairs, a dresser, a large mirror, the gleaming bathroom; but once he had locked his door behind them, it seemed to Carol that the bed was suddenly huge, and one saw it no matter which way he turned.
She felt the trembling start deep in the pit of her stomach. She looked at Ed, and liked the looks of him. Her heart seemed to turn over and to sink from its moorings with the abrupt need that being here like this aroused in her. But along with the excitement and the desire there was the old fear. And now there was a new one, too. She had spent her life afraid of men could she ever overcome it? Now she was remembering the way Maudie had raised the first response from her on that prison cot. But suppose a man could not dispel her unnatural fears and inhibitions?
"Carol." She heard Ed's gentle voice.
She looked up. She smiled wanly, her heart pounding wildly. "I'm here."
"You sure are."
He put out his arms to her. She walked into them. She put her own arms up around his back, letting her hands close on his shoulders, aware they were tense and shaking. She was afraid of him, afraid of failure, but she would try to overcome her fear. He looked into her eyes and smiled, and she tried to match his smiling. His arms closed around her and he drew her against him. She felt the firm, strong outline of his body, aware of it as a man's body for the first time and not as an object for her obsessive hatreds.
She tilted her head and he kissed her. For a moment her lips remained cool, but he pressed his mouth harder, parting his lips, and Carol sighed, opening her mouth under his. His tongue played over her lips and she responded with her own, eagerly, in a way she believed was symbolic, too. She felt the warmth and excitement of the kiss flowing downward through her body, warming away the chill.
She felt his hand move to her breast, and for a moment he stood with his hand covering its firm opulence. Then his fingers were working at her blouse. He tried to laugh, but his tone was awed. "If I'm moving too fast for you, let me know."
"I'll write you a letter." She whispered it, trying to keep the fear and uncertainty from her tone.
He laughed, loosening the buttons, removing her blouse. He expertly unhooked her bra, peeling it away. Her breasts spilled free. His eyes were wide with admiration and awe at this full loveliness exposed to him.
"Unbelievable," he whispered.
"Why don't you believe it? It's just me."
"Honey, don't ever say that again." His hands were adoring her breasts. "Say what?"
"That it's just you. You're special. You're more than that. You're extraordinary. Fantastic."
"I don't feel any of that."
"You will, because I'll teach you."
Carol felt a delicious shiver course through her body. "Oh, yes," she whispered. "Please, Ed. Teach me."
He smiled at her. "It may take a long time."
"I've plenty of time, Ed all the rest of my life."
"I'll promise you just one thing. I'll do my best."
She moved against him, feeling the promising rigidity of him. "Yes," she said laughing. "I'm sure you will."
He covered her mouth with his again, hungrily, thrusting his tongue inside. She felt the small pleasure-bumps stand at the nape of her neck, and gooseflesh formed along her arms and legs.
His hand loosened her skirt and now she helped him. She wriggled her hips as he pushed downward and then she took a waltz-time step out of the skirt, which had fallen over her shoes. This brought them back against the bed.
For a moment she stood with the backs of her legs against the mattress, and as though her life flashed before her eyes, she found herself remember Mort and Herb and Nat and John and Brad-and Maudie. But now there was a difference, an earth-shaking dissimilarity For the first time since she had invited twelve-year-old David in to see her nakedness, she wanted to be where she was. She wanted Ed now more than she had ever wanted anything, and her greatest fear was that she would not please him, that something might yet be lacking between them.
Ed's slightly trembling fingers caught her panties and drew them down. She stepped out of them and kicked away her shoes.
She stood naked before him, seeing the fervent admiration in his gaze.
"Do you like me?" she whispered. She was thinking that this was as it had been in the beginning, with young David. She was all new, and she was starting all over again, fresh.
"Fantastic," he said.
He undressed then, standing before her, not taking his warm eyes from her. She watched him, feeling the churn of excitement at seeing a man a man whose thrilling, muscular body she wanted to see, wanted to love in every way she had ever learned. What a difference desire made!
It amazed her to think she had been with so many men, and yet had wanted none of them not even Brad as she wanted Ed. Partly, it was a reflection within her of his unbridled need for her. But she knew it was more than that. It was a sort of coming alive for her because she had never felt this way before, and suddenly it was all as natural as all the other good things in life. More natural and better. All the loving she could never express that had been denied her by her own fear and hatred, was open for her now, and her love welled up as if the floodgates had parted for her. She lay back slowly on the bed, presenting herself to him, waiting, letting him see and feel and know how deeply she wanted him.
She watched him finish undressing. He accomplished it speedily now, driven by his need for her, by the need he now saw in her.
She gazed in pleasure and rising passion and desire at his nakedness.
She moved her hips on the bed, pushing them upward.
"Oh, Ed, hurry, please hurry!"
"Here I am, my baby. You have nothing to fear."
"Nothing to fear."
He moved closer, leaning over her trembling form. Then she felt him collide with her, felt herself accepting him, welcoming him, loving him. She cried out, her legs going taut, her toes pointing toward heaven.
Excitement and pleasure overcame her. She felt herself unable to wait any more and she wailed with the ecstasy of total release. And then he began to move on her again, rousing her once more to the wonderful swirling exhilaration of delight.
Nothing to fear.
She knew that he had opened her up to love and passion, the joyous, sharing kind that made gods of the people who found the right mates. He manipulated her with such ease, raising her again and again to unendurable pitches of excitement.
He smiled, panting from the pleasurable exertion and body-wracking passion. "You've just been starved," he told her. "Starved for love."
She laughed. "Yes. Starved. But not any more. You've satisfied me well, darling! More than satisfied!
I was so afraid of love, but I'm not afraid any more. I was even afraid I might not please you, but now I know better, because now I know there's nothing I won't do to be sure you're pleased!"
He moved on her again. Harder. Faster.
"Please me!" he cried out, panting. "You sure can, darling!"
"I want to. Oh, I will. Oh, Ed, you're driving me out of my mind again! Not again, Ed, I can't stand it again."
But she knew better, and so did he.