Parachutes and Kisses (49 page)

“Is she asleep?”

“Presumably,” says Isadora.

“Good,” says Lowell. “I had such a hard-on driving over here from Southport that I thought I'd have to stop and jerk off or I'd drive off the road.”

“I seem to inspire that in men,” says Isadora.

“I'll bet you do.”

He slings her over his shoulder and carries her into the bedroom, where he drops her on the waterbed and begins peeling off all her clothes.

“Suede, suede, suede,” he says. “I thought you were a Friend of Animals.”

“Only animals like you,” says Isadora, undaunted by his attempt to make her feel as guilty as he probably does. She feels no guilt toward Bean or Kevin (both of whom are probably with their other girlfriends tonight—although she does feel useless guilt toward the animals who gave their lives for her ensemble).

Toward Lowell she feels mostly curiosity. Will she still lust for him passionately now that Josh is no longer on the scene? Or will he seem superfluous to her? The adulterous antidote you choose in the midst of a poisoned marriage does not usually work very well once that poison is out of your system and the marriage is over. People who marry adulterous lovers are fools, Isadora thinks; they're just reacting against the marriage they're in, not truly choosing afresh. And then she remembers that she herself did that with Josh!

Lowell has got off all the skin-colored suede and is down to Isadora's own skin—which is lacily covered with beige bikini pants and a beige lace camisole.

“I had forgotten your fabulous nipples,” says Lowell, pushing up the camisole, “the pinkest nipples between here and München.” Lowell is recalling their first tryst—though Isadora's memory has dimmed. “Do you know I dream about your nipples?” he says, sucking on the left and then the right. “Do you dream about my big cock?” he asks, kicking off his tasseled loafers and then adroitly pulling off his trousers and boxer shorts with one hand, and exposing the glorious pink object in question.

Isadora eyes it curiously. Is it bigger than Bean's? Who cares? Can it make the same magic? Well—this should be an interesting experiment.

Lowell is growling with passion, mad with his wife's fortuitous absence. He grabs her by the hair, by the shoulders, by the flesh on her buttocks. He tears off her bikini pants and spreads her legs as if he were attempting rape.

“I've missed you,” he says plunging in.

“And so have I missed you,” she moans, curiously detached as he is fucking her.

The cock goes in; the cock goes out. Oh, Bean, she thinks, I love you. How I love you.

Lowell thrusts and thrusts like a madman, getting her somewhat excited at the last—just before he comes.

Winded, spent, he falls upon her. Absurdly enough, he is still wearing the bow tie and shirt.

“I guess I've forgotten how to make you come,” he says. “Sorry.”

“Oh darling—it's okay,” says Isadora. “I'm distracted tonight, not really all there. It has nothing to do with you.”

The act of sex with Lowell is so inconsequential tonight that it may as well never have happened.

“I'm so sorry about your not coming,” says Lowell, scooting down between her legs to eat her dutifully—as Leona has probably trained him to do.

The practiced tongue flicks at her clitoris; the fingers explore the purple cave within; another hand wanders up to flick a nipple. This is textbook sex, Southport sex, Wall Street's version of The
Joy of Sex,
Isadora thinks. And yet she is determined to have an orgasm just for
auld lang syne.
But somehow she can't get into it. All the buttons are being pushed, but something is wrong. What can it be? She used to find Lowell Strathmore so sexy—in his ur-WASPy way.

Aha—the ur-WASP, she thinks and in her mind's eye sees Bean as Lowell lies between her legs. Gone is the middle-parted hair, gone the bow tie, gone the watery blue eyes usually protected from the world by Ben Franklin glasses. Instead, it is Bean lying between her legs, Bean flicking her, Bean licking her, Bean fingering her nipples. Having got the fantasy right at last, she comes tumultuously, screaming, “Bean!”

“What?” says Lowell, getting up and picking a pubic hair from between two front teeth.

“Oh darling—it's just a private joke,” she says. “Josh used to say that sex was better than bean sprouts—remember how he was a vegetarian? So sometimes, to twit him, I used to make vegetable references when we made love. ‘Bean' came to stand for the greatest orgasm of all—the ten on a scale of one to ten. And, boy, was
that
it!”

Lowell looks moderately convinced by this specious explanation —which is, after all, absurd enough to possibly be true. He cradles Isadora in his arms.

“I had forgotten what a piece of ass you are,” he says. “God damn it. This will have to hold me for a year.”

“Till some other relative of Leona's dies in Southampton?”

“She died in New York,” Lowell says, humorlessly. “They're just dividing up the booty at the Southampton house.”

“What a lagniappe for you,” says Isadora.

“A what?”

“A lagniappe—something unexpected, an extra treat, a little gift,” says Isadora. “It's a Creole word meaning an unexpected gift.”

“A piece of ass with a fantastic vocabulary.” says Lowell. (His vulgarity in bed is, after all, part of his charm.)

“So I'm told,” says Isadora. “That and a token will get me on the subway.”

“You're a fabulous woman,” Lowell says. “I'd marry you in a minute if ...”

“If I weren't quite so fabulous?” Isadora asks. “After all, you told me in Germany—and also once in Fort Lee, that all my accomplishments intimidated you—you who remain Leona's grumbling slave.”

“Well, wasn't
I
the fool?” Lowell says, not so rhetorically.

“You'll never be able to leave her now,” says Isadora. “She's probably so rich now that her ma has died, that being married to her is like being married to Fort Knox.”

“In more ways than one,” Lowell says.

“And I'm broke,” says Isadora.

“Well—not really,” says Lowell, sitting up in the waterbed, reaching for his glasses, and adjusting his shirt and bow tie (which absurdly enough is still tied—though askew).

“Remember the Mandy Trust?” he asks.

“Damn straight I do.”

“Well, the Mandy Trust, if I may say so—immodest though it seems—has been invested by a very talented investment adviser.”

“And a very talented lover, too,” says Isadora, flattering him as a matter of course, “albeit an infrequent one.”

Lowell smiles. “Better have me as an investment adviser than a lover,” he says. “As an investment adviser, you get my services daily. And it just so happens that your inattentiveness to your own business affairs gave me the freedom I needed to play my hunches. Other clients call me up and bug me all the time—and it throws me off. I'm trying too hard to please and second-guess. But with you—you fabulous piece of ass—I just fantasize about you and pick any stocks I please. And it turns out to be a fabulous system.”

“What's the Mandy Trust worth?” Isadora asks.

“I can't give you an exact figure till I get into the office tomorrow morning—but it's got to be several times what you put into it. I'll call you tomorrow morning with the figures.”

And with that, he gets up off the bed, strips off his bow tie and shirt, and heads for the shower.

“Why are you showering,” she asks, “if Leona's away?”

“Don't want to get Opium on the sheets. She uses Arpège,” Lowell yells from the shower.

“I would have thought so,” Isadora mutters, wandering into the bathroom. “Leona's the type to use Arpège.”

“What did you say?” Lowell asks.

“I said: She's the type to use Arpège.”

“What type is that?”

“Dippy,” says Isadora.

“Can't hear you with the water running,” yells Lowell.

“Good,” says Isadora.

She is admiring his huge pink body lathering in speeded-up motion behind the steamy glass door of the shower stall.

“You're a gorgeous man,” she says, meaning it truly—but thinking how little he stirs her now. She readies a big bath sheet for him and wraps him in it as he emerges from the shower.

“Sir, your towel,” she says, serving him like a geisha, just because it pleases her to do so.

“I've got to get home,” Lowell says, with his old fear of Discovery.

“For heaven's sake—why?” she asks. “I thought Leona was in Southampton.”

“She's going to call at ten-thirty. If I'm not there, she'll suspect something.”

“For heaven's sake, Lowell,” says Isadora, “you astound me.”

“I often astound myself,” he says throwing on his clothes—boxer shorts, shirt, trousers, bow tie, glasses, silk socks, tasseled shoes. She, in turn, puts on a caftan to walk him to the door.

“You're not as broke as you think,” says Lowell, combing his hair.

“Are you suggesting I rob my daughter's trust?” Isadora says.

“You wouldn't be the first mother in history to do it—would you? Anything that floats the sinking ship has got to be considered.”

“Is it legal?” Isadora asks.

“I don't know how the trust is written,” Lowell says, putting on his outer clothes now and opening the door, “but there's no trust under the blue skies of Connecticut that can't be broken.”

“What blue skies?” Isadora asks.

Dogstoyevsky has come out from under the living room couch and is barking ferociously.

“You know—we've forgotten all about dinner,” Isadora says. “Won't you stay and dine with me? I've got quail and wild rice, and a fabulous dessert.”

“I can‘t,” Lowell says. “What if she calls and I'm not there?”

“It's only nine-thirty,” Isadora says.

“What if she calls
early?”

“True, true,” says Isadora, wondering whether she can snag someone else for dinner at this hour. Otherwise what a waste of Danae's feast!

Lowell runs out the door.

“Your daughter's well fixed—though you may be broke,” he says. “God—you turn me on. I could start all over now.”

“So could I,” says Isadora, watching him fold his long body—like a collapsible umbrella—into his little black Porsche.

“ ‘Bye!” he shouts, revving the motor.

“ ‘Bye!” she shouts, waving.

He roars up the driveway to his phone call, while she goes in to nibble at the quail alone and think and think and
think
about her life and its absurdities.

Take him, I won't put a price on him. Take him, he's yours. Take him, pajamas look nice on him. But how he snores!

—LORENZ HART “Take Him”
Pal Joey

For this relief, much thanks.

—SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet

As promised, Lowell called the next morning to tell Isadora that if he continued to invest it luckily, Mandy's trust might eventually cover a portion of the back taxes. How large a portion depended upon when Uncle Sam called in his markers and the vagaries of the stock market. So if Isadora's ledger was not exactly back to zero again, she was not as much in the red as she feared (unless of course Mel Botkin had left other little surprises, which was not unlikely). But somehow Isadora cared far less about all this than she had before. Debtors prison no longer loomed. Broke or not, in the red or not, she was working, and work always made her optimistic. Anything could happen. Hits, flops, fortunes gained, fortunes lost—the only thing to fear was stasis. She was well and truly out of her depression.

She would start again, working her ass off—once again saved by her daughter and her random lusts. Lowell might not be a dependable lover, but he was a dependable friend and adviser. The main thing was that she had been unblocked by her financial emergency. She was writing love poems to Bean at the rate of two and three a day (though love poems certainly would never pay the tax man); the Papa novel had come unstuck and was moving again; and she was writing the treatment for an original screen-play called
The Vagabond and the Movie Star
—about a well-known thirty-nine-year-old actress who takes up with a twenty-five-year-old actor.

Isadora loved being flush with words again. She still had no proper nanny for Amanda; Bean still invaded her life and her peace of mind on a completely unpredictable schedule. But at least she was writing again, so she felt moderately sane—as sane as she ever did anyway. The daily bloodletting of words on the page kept her from going bonkers.

Of course, it was not easy to balance this with domestic duties, trips to New York, erotic trysts, and the like—and Isadora always felt as though she lived in the midst of a travelling circus. There never seemed to be enough time for anything. She felt like one of the Keystone Kops—now writing for three hours, now playing with Amanda, now shopping for Amanda's clothes, now feeding the dog, now taking Amanda to the pediatrician or the dog to the vet, now driving to New York to consult with more lawyers and business managers, now arguing with Josh over the divorce, now meeting Kevin, now meeting Bean.

She had figured out a way to be faithful to Bean without ever really
saying
she was going to be faithful. Whenever Kevin came up for the night (or they met in New York), they would have dinner, get into bed, and she would promptly fall fast asleep. She would sleep in Kevin's arms, dreaming of Bean. In the morning she would always think of an appointment she had to run off to. How ironic, she thought, to find fidelity vaguely forbidden and exotic after all that promiscuity and to have to find excuses (even with
herself)
to be faithful.