Chapter 2

I drove slowly and tried to remember my loneliness when I met Jamie that day on the Via Veneto. Instantly, as we sipped Cinzano and talked, I thought of making love to her. But also from the first, I realized I was hung up on her far beyond the idea of possessing that ripe, young body.

I'm considered a cynic, but deep in each cynic is a romantic, and in all those years of women-years living mostly for sexual pleasure-there had always been a vaguely defined but quite definite ideal of a girl. This ideal had been with me in the trenches in Korea, in several years as a merchant seaman, in construction work in Africa and in deep-sea diving in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

Jamie was the ideal and though I considered half of what she said ridiculous, I quickly fell in love with her.

But something in the lush, wet undergrowth I passed pulled only sex images of Jamie from my memory, and as the swamp rolled past, I remembered her lying on the balcony of my apartment overlooking the Piazza Navana in Rome, her incredibly lovely, incredibly pale body glistening with sweat which matted her tiny panties to her buttocks.

My fingers were slippery on the steering wheel and as I turned in the vent to catch the steaming air, I remembered most her death-white skin that burned with a molten quality that resembled warm, white honey.

Jamie lay that afternoon on the cold marble balcony, naked but for the damp panties, and I lay beside her, propped up on an elbow, my lips sucking clumsily at her enormous breasts, my tongue circling the too-long nipples of bright red, while her slender fingers toyed with my ears and damned near drove me crazy.

For two hours, we had kissed and petted there on the balcony, with the sounds of water in Bernini's fountain splashing below.

For two hours, I had kissed her puffed lips and felt her slender tongue rub my tongue and the roof of my mouth.

I had cupped and squeezed her breasts and kissed her nipples and stomach and licked along her feverish, wet thighs, and had even laid on top of her and pumped at her buttocks with my desperate hands.

This un-likely petting session was typical of our three-week-old affair, and as usual I was so aroused I ached, and completely unnerved by, and obsessed with, that body and the huge, innocent blue eyes and the halo of honey-blonde hair about the beautiful face.

And so we lay on the cold marble balcony and I sucked at the oblong, red nipples and gasped out my frantic breath.

"Please, darling, take it easy," she said, in her soft, childish, Southern accent, as she pulled her fingers away. "Please, Carl. You know I don't want to tease you and get you excited and all, and I've told you a dozen times I won't go all the way with you."

"Dammit, I love you," I mumbled, and took the breasts in my hands and squeezed too hard and she gasped and bit her Up. I released the breasts and sucked at her lips and shoved my tongue into her mouth as I rubbed over the warm, wet flesh of her thighs to the bottom rim of the white bikini panties.

But she suddenly doubled her knees and twisted away to block my trembling fingers. And she tore from my sucking hp.

"Please, Carl," she said, and sat up, smoothing her hair back from her sweating forehead and narrowing her blue eyes. "Darling, I love you, too, but this is leading nowhere. You're going to get worked up again, and I can't bear that. But nice girls don't go all the way where I come from."

"Christ, you're in Rome, Jamie," I snapped, as I lay back on my elbows and cursed beneath my breath. I had lived a large part of my life for sex and only sex, and I'd made love to women in half the countries on earth. In the past few years, three girls had teased and petted heavily and then refused to make love. I knocked the hell out of two of them. The third one, a particularly pretty, nasty little California bitch I raped.

But I was lonely and desperate and particularly vulnerable that July. I had fallen in love with, as far as I knew, the last 20-year-old virgin on earth.

"Let's not start that again, Carl," she said. "I've told you and told you I won't go all the way with any man until I'm married and I warned you tonight before I came up here that all I would do is pet. And it's not often I let a boy get me down to my panties and even lay on top of me."

"This is madness, Jamie," I said. "Dammit, I'm not a boy. I'm a thirty-five-year-old man. And you're a woman. And as you know, I'm perfectly willing to marry you."

"You're impossible," she said. "I do love you, or as much as I could love anybody I've only known three weeks. But marriage is out of the question for now. And so is any more sex, darling. You scare me. I know you won't hurt me, but there's something very frightening and animalistic about your behavior tonight."

"Christ, I'm hot as hell," I said. "And I could have a dozen women. But I want only you, Jamie. I'm obsessed with you, baby. I love you. I worship you."

"Please don't talk like that," she said, and took a sip of soda from the glass beside her.

"Forget going all the way, as you so cleverly p,ut it," I said. "I think it's sick, frankly, but I'm too hung up on you to push things. Just lay back, and let me kiss you all over."

"Everywhere?" she asked, with just a hint of unexpected desire and wickedness.

"Everywhere," I said. I reached for the panties, but she blocked my hand with hers.

"I've never let a boy take my panties off," she said. "Twice, when I was pinned to boys, well, I let them put their fingers under my panties and well, you know. But I didn't let them take the panties off."

"I want to be as intimate with you as I can, no matter how," I said, and realized I had come to accept sex on her level. Yet anything further might break down her resistance, and make her want to make love. "I've never done this to a woman, except as a part of making love. So it will be a first for both of us."

"That would be kind of degrading to you, I'd think," she said, and the blue eyes widened. "Frankly, I think that kind of thing with your mouth is awfully nasty, and all, but well, if you really want to. When in Rome, or something like that."

"I really want to, Jamie," I said.

"Don't try to get me all excited, or anything like that," Jamie said, as she lay back down. "I mean, it might get me kind of excited, but I've petted a lot and I can control myself, and I'd never forgive you."

"Don't worry, Jamie," I said, and scrambled between her luscious, tapered legs and spread those virginal, hot-ivory thighs and her unreal fever seemed to flow into my body.

The panties were matted to her skin and the bulge was large against the white silk. There was a faint smell of powder as I rubbed my flat palms over the upper thighs and inched my face forward, and with the powder a further smell, slightly pungent, and so arousing my mouth fell open and saliva dropped from my lips and I slid my hands to cup her buttocks as I nuzzled the panties and mumbled, "Jamie, Jamie," into the silk.

I noticed her flat stomach was heaving and her little hands had doubled into fists at her sides, and then I planted my lips against the silk and groaned aloud at the sensation.

I tore the panties off those squirming thighs, kissed over the sweating flesh, and then I slid my hands beneath her to fondle her poking buttocks as I gazed for a moment at the huge mound of matted blonde hair.

I sucked in my breath and there was no powder smell then, and I extended my tongue and flicked at the mat of hairs and my heart pounded and a strange warmth permeated my rigid body.

I felt Jamie's body tighten, and then I licked through the thick curl of hair and when my tongue touched the flesh, touched the firm-soft, wet, sticky lips, I heard myself gasping.

With an animal cry, I buried my face, kissing and licking and sucking in a frenzy.

Then as I pumped at her moving buttocks, my lips and tongue found her clitoris, and as though I had discovered salvation, I took it in my lips and sucked, and my tongue lashed frantically.

Jamie abruptly jerked her body away, and scrambled across the balcony, her breath coming in short, desperate gasps.

I looked over, my eyes glazed, my face flooded with moisture, my body weak, hot and aching.

"No, Carl, please, this is enough, this is wrong," she was babbling, as she tugged her panties on. "If you love me, please stop. I should never have let you do that."

"My God, I do love you," I said. "I want you, darling, more than I've ever wanted a woman. I'll marry in this instant. Please, I want you. I need you."

And then my little virgin got the panties over her thighs and she bolted up and backed toward the door. "Don't ever be weak with me, Carl," she said, in a strange, cutting voice. "If anything ever comes between us, it may be what you just did. Let's go somewhere, and talk. I do love you, but I just hate sex like that."

We dressed and crossed Piazza Navona to Tre Scalini and sat in the outside cafe in front of Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers, beside the Church of St. Agnes in Agony.

Jamie ate a tartufo, a huge mound of rich, dark chocolate ice cream, covered with chocolate and whipped cream, and filled with fruit. She ate greedily and with a touch of mischief and a child-like quality.

After the ice cream she had espresso and I drank Peroni Beer. We sat with our chairs together and I put my arm around her as bells pealed vespers and swallows circled in the deep blue sky above the faded red and brown houses that lined the square.

The fountain has four giant stone figures each representing a river, and Jamie studied the gigantic figure with the cloak over his face, that looked onto the church.

"Why is his face covered like that?" She asked.

"He represents the Nile," I said. "And in Bernini's time, the source of the Nile was unknown. But there's another explanation, which you don't find in the guidebooks."

"What is it?" she asked eagerly.

"Bernini thought the guy who designed the Church of St. Agnes in Agony was a lousy architect, and he considered the church so ugly he had his stone man hide his face rather than look on it."

Jamie laughed. "I like that story best," she said. "It is an ugly church. Why is it called St. Agnes in Agony?"

"She was a Christian maiden during Roman times," I said. "And this was a stadium, this whole piazza. A Roman nobleman became obsessed with her and she refused his advances. So he had her stripped and tortured in the arena. But her hair miraculously grew long to cover her body and save her from humiliation."

"That's some story," she said.

'That's not the whole story," I said. 'They tried to burn her alive, but the flames wouldn't burn her, so they had to cut her head off."

"Poor St. Agnes," Jamie said. "To be remembered by such an ugly church. And to be humiliated like that. Even if her hair did grow down, she must have been abused sexually and degraded in front of all those people."

"It's just a legend," I said.

"Oh, it's probably true," she said. "It makes me shiver just to think of it, Carl. I can't conceive of anything worse than being sexually humiliated or exploited. Or of being weak, and at the mercy of someone else's sexual whims."

"Baby, the world's not like that," I said. "No one has to be exploited, or at anyone's mercy. But people do want each other, very much, particularly when they're in love. And I love you, dammit. To get excited or passionate isn't weak, Jamie."

"Oh, I believe in love," she said. "I really love Daddy, and I think I love you. But Daddy has raised me never to be weak or to want anyone or to let myself get obsessed with anything. He hates weakness. And so do I, Carl. I want you to love me, darling. But don't ever get carried away like you did upstairs."

"You know, you've got a real goddam father hang-up," I said. "It's time you grew out of it."

"Don't try to provoke me," she said. "I guess I am hungup on Daddy, as you say, particularly since my mother died when I was young. But I do respect his incredible strength and his ability to be successful without needing another living soul. Except maybe me. I think you're a lot like him. But you were really weak with me about sex, Carl. And a nice girl just doesn't go beyond a point."

"How can I argue with you?" I asked. "It's a hopeless goddam argument. I've never been obsessed with a woman the way I'm with you, because I've never been in love with a woman they way I'm in love with you, Jamie. In my world, people meet and if they like each other, they make love. You're right, I'm not weak. But I've never been involved with a so-called nice girl like you. Nothing you say makes sense to me."

"Oh, you are mad," she said and nodded with mock severity. "It is a useless argument, darling. But our worlds are so totally different, you have to be patient with me. To show weakness with anyone, even over here, makes me wary. Daddy has to be so careful, and I know I'm his most vulnerable point."

"Now, you've lost me again, crazy girl," I said.

"Carl, Daddy went into our town many years ago, with nothing but his clothes, not a penny," she said, "and he scratched and clawed and built up a huge business and got awfully wealthy. But the town doesn't like strangers and people really resented that an outsider could become so wealthy. And to get where he is, Daddy had to step over a lot of people."

"So his friends and neighbors are just waiting for a chance to undo him?" I asked.

"Oh, not everyone, silly," she said. "But some people would love to see him ruined. Why, the next door neighbors, the Conways, are practically bankrupt, because of Daddy's business activities. And that terrible Peggy Sue Conway just hates me. And people hate Daddy, too, because he did it all alone, and never asked for any help, and is so independent and strong, he can't be touched or degraded in any way."

"And you're afraid someone will use you to hurt him?" I asked.

"They sure would, but they'll never get the chance," she said. "I'm awfully careful to be the nicest girl of all, and not to pet too much or drink too much, and girls like that Peggy Sue just despise me and would love to see me make a slip."

"Hell, baby, that sounds like an awful life," I said. "Why not marry me and get the hell out of there and live your own life?"

"It's not a terrible life, either," she said. 'There's fun and nice people and everything is gentle and proper and I like it that way. And Daddy needs me."

"Hell, let's walk," I said.

We had this kind of argument before, and as usual I ended it before I got angry. I thought she was half crazy, and her values and arguments ridiculous. But I was hopelessly infatuated with her.

And so we walked and held hands and I could only hope that in time, I could pull her from her background, and alter her values and ideas.

Later I took her back to her pensione, and we made a date for lunch the next day.

But I never saw Jamie again. In the morning mail came a short letter saying she had received a cable from her father and had to go home. She said she loved me, and would write me, but she never did.

She had never told me her hometown, and so I could never contact her.

I was hurt, my goddam guts ripped out, and for weeks I lived only for the three time a day mail delivery at the trattoria where I got my mail.

I later went to Morocco, to the Red Sea on a diving job, and then to Crete, to stay with a woman.

On my return to Rome, there was a letter from Jamie, several weeks old, asking me to go to her hometown and help her.

I cabled her I was on my way, and planes to New York and New Orleans led me to this drive through the swamps.