Chapter 3
Marilyn put the lid down on her suitcase and snapped the lock. She felt his hand around her waist and pulled away. "It's late, Lou. I told you what would happen if we remained in bed all morning," she said eagerly.
"Don't worry-you'll make the train on time."
He saw her go into the bathroom and put some toilet articles in a plastic container. Then she opened the suitcase and placed the bag inside. She walked over to him and bent down to rumple his hair. He reached up and kissed her forehead.
"To bad you have to leave just when you're on the threshold of your first big success," he said, lighting a cigarette. "I've never seen Michaels more enthusiastic about a pending series. And he usually doesn't reflect exuberance," Lou remarked casually.
She spread her arms happily. "I'm so excited I could burst all over, Lou," she said.
"This Garden street bunch will make the paper a lot of new readers. It's quite an expose-front page stuff and all."
"I'll be back in a few days," Marilyn said.
"I'll try holding my breath."
"You'll make it, Lou," she said with an eager smile. "How about a drink?"
Without waiting for his answer she walked to the bar in the corner and filled two glasses. Her slip was a shortie and her legs showed amply. Men told her that she had pretty legs.
Lou took one of the glasses and she sat down beside him. Marilyn always did something to him. What was it? Annealing-that was the word. She could heat him, cook him and cool him and she could soothe him with little brittle. With her he felt always naked in the sun-lolling with soft pleasures. She took a long swallow of her drink and then bent over to kiss him.
They were on the couch. He put his hand beneath her blouse and rubbed her firm breasts. She ran her hands through his hair and pulled him close. "Oh, darling, if we must, then let's hurry," she panted.
She helped him fumble from his trousers. For a moment she felt it was wicked to do this at the last moment. The room was bathed in glorious sunshine and her morals seemed hushed. She closed her eyes and kissed him but she moved her body toward his. She let him run his tongue in her ear ... she let him kiss her with hot open mouth ... she let his hand roam everywhere and suddenly she felt ringed with complete desire. She twisted and turned toward him. She wanted no mock affair-no silent, meaningless emotion. This was the real thing.
Easy, baby Marilyn, relax, let yourself loose. Let the sun play while Lou tingled her, unbending her virtue and inflaming her passion. She opened her eyes and looked at Lou with glistening eyes, her face flushed for thrills. Hurt me and love me, I don't care, she thought, put a new world in orbit for me. She tried to push everything else from her mind that was alien to the ecstatic moment before her, as if everything else but this searing love was offensive. And once, she remembered, she had been so innocent.
College gave her the knowledge of learning and male anatomy. Which came first she couldn't remember. Before her sophomore year ended she knew she had a button called a clitoris with an immense arena of tingling possibilities. The private courses in the use of the condoms and the mystery of the male phallus was just another basic background that fitted adequately. Her room-mate Joan had discovered sex earlier and liked it better. Marilyn wasn't sure-but she wouldn't have been surprised if Joan opened her vagina as often as she opened her purse. They even went once as guests to a nudist camp. The men stared at them-at their uptilted grapefruit breasts, long legs and sexy bodies. Some of the males looked ready to explode on contact.
She moved through the college years assessing the world and its males. She knew there were strong and weak people-the leaders and the led. And those that just passed through sniffing and wondering. She had many affairs-all without inner meaning and so thin they dissolved very quickly. But her sexual frustrations were stilled-the ruts smoothed and cushioned.
She developed her own logistics of living. Sex became the sauna bath of her emotional salvation. That summer in Europe she found that it was basically sex that tied so many Americans together. Sex was the umbilical cord that never let go-branching into many new friendships. To the European men she was but a second-rate curiosity. Europe was so much older than America-a continent where sex was no curiosity to be kept safely hidden as in her own country. She picked the men she slept with and her soul was open to all. None of them rendered the special quality of meaningfulness and there was no special memory attached-she saw them all as bodies in a bedroom.
Her emotional bubbles blew to the bursting point but men failed to explode her into something lasting. When it was over it all seeped out in small shivers. There was a man in Rome. She thought she loved him. She might have married him if he had asked her. But it was only her body he wanted-not her brain ... not her soul ... not her life. So life went fast and things happened and everybody rushed through trying to touch all the bases-but everywhere she missed. Where did she miss?
With Lou she had been close. They never talked of historic events, philosophy, or nature. These things were awkward for him. They were not his dishes. Whatever they had in common belonged in the bedroom and nowhere else. Would it ever work out? Could it? At times she wondered, but didn't care. It was enough that she enjoyed him making love to her anytime-at all odd hours. But when it was over, her mind was in another room somewhere, very distant from here.
Now she moaned and called out, "Oh, Lou," over and over again. She could feel his hot gasping breath pouring onto her warm skin. She squinted and narrowed her eyes. The room looked long and thin like an Italian bread sliced lengthwise. She liked his love. It was art and history and dreams combined. Soon she rose and picked up her panties and hurried into the bathroom.