The Carpetbaggers (35 page)

"You'll dream your dreams again," Margaret said slowly, holding Rina's head against her bosom.

"No, I won't!"

"Yes, you will," Margaret said firmly. "Tell me about it and I’ll help you."

Rina stopped sobbing. "Do you think you could?" she asked, her eyes searching Margaret's face.

"Tell me and we'll see."

Rina took a deep breath. "I dreamed that I was dead and everybody was around my bed, crying. I could feel how much they loved me and wanted me because they kept begging me not to die. But I couldn't do anything about it. I was dead."

Margaret felt a cold shiver of excitement tremble through her. Slowly she got to her feet. "Close your eyes, Rina," she said quietly, "and we'll act out your dream. Whom do you want me to be?"

Rina looked up at her shyly. "Will you be Laddie?"

"I'll be Laddie," Margaret answered. "Now you close your eyes."

Margaret looked down at the girl. Suddenly her eyes began to fill with tears. A sudden fear began to tear through her. Rina was dead. Rina was really dead. "Rina!" she cried hoarsely. "Please don't die! Please!"

Rina did not move and Margaret fell to her knees beside the bed. "Please, Rina. I can't live without you." She leaned over the bed and covered Rina's face with kisses.

Rina opened her eyes suddenly, a small, proud smile on her face. "You're really crying," she said, her fingers touching Margaret's cheek. She closed her eyes again contentedly.

Slowly Margaret slipped the nightgown off. "You're beautiful," she whispered. "You're the most beautiful woman in the world. You're much too beautiful to die."

Rina looked up at her. "Do you really think I'm beautiful?"

Margaret nodded. She ripped off her pajama bottoms and let them fall to the floor. "All you have to do is look at me to see how beautiful you really are." She caught Rina's hand and pressed it to her breasts, then down across her stomach to her thighs. "Feel how flat I am, just like a man?"

Slowly she sank down onto the bed beside Rina, gently caressing her breasts, pressing her lips to the soft, cool cheeks.

"I feel so safe with you, so good," Rina whispered. "You're not like the other boys, I don't like them to touch me. I'm afraid of them. But I'm not afraid of you."

With a cry of agony, Margaret rolled, her knees forcing Rina's legs apart. "I love you, Rina! Please don't die!"

She pressed her mouth against Rina's. For a moment, she felt the fire of her tongue and then she heard Rina's voice whispering huskily. "Laddie, fuck me, fuck me! I love you, Laddie!"

RINA LOOKED DOWN AT HER WATCH. IT WAS HALF PAST two. "I really must be going," she said.

"To hurry after such a lunch?" Jacques Deschamps spread his hands. "It is sacrilege. You must have a liqueur before you go."

Rina smiled at the slim, graying
avocat
. "But— I— "

"You have been in Paris for more than a year," Jacques interrupted, "and you still have not learned that one does not hurry after a meal. Whatever it is, it will wait." He hissed at a passing waiter, "Psst!"

The waiter stopped and bowed respectfully, "Monsieur?"

Rina sank back into her chair. Jacques looked at her questioningly. "Pernod. Over ice."

He shuddered. "Over ice," he repeated to the waiter. "You heard mademoiselle."

The waiter looked at her quickly with that glance of appraisal that all Frenchmen seemed to share. "Over ice, monsieur," he said. "The usual for you?"

Jacques nodded and the waiter left. He turned back to Rina. "And how does the painting go?" he asked. "You are making progress?"

Rina laughed. "You know better than that. I'm afraid I'll never be a painter."

"But you are having fun?"

She turned and looked out at the street. The faint smell of May that came only to Paris was in the air. The truck drivers were already in their shirt sleeves and the women had long since begun to abandon their drab gray and black winter coats.

"You do not answer," he said.

She turned back to him as the waiter came with their drinks. "I'm having fun," she said, picking up her drink.

"You are not sure?" he persisted.

She smiled suddenly. "Of course I'm sure."

He lifted his glass. "
À votre santé
."

"
À votre santé
," she echoed.

He put his glass down. "And your friend?" he asked. "How is she?"

"Peggy's fine," Rina said automatically. She looked at him steadily. "Peggy is very good to me. I don't know what I'd do without her."

"How do you know?" he said quickly. "You have never tried. You could be many things. You are young, beautiful. You could marry, have children, you could even— "

"Be your mistress?" She smiled, interrupting.

He nodded and smiled. "Even be my mistress. That is not the worst thing that could happen. But you remember my terms."

She looked into his face. "You're a very kind man, Jacques," she said, remembering the afternoon she had first heard them.

She and Peggy had been in Paris a few months and had just found their apartment, after her father had given his permission for her to stay in Paris for a year. Peggy had taken her to a party given by a professor at the University, where she had just begun to work.

Rina felt very alone at the party. Her French was not good enough to let her mix easily and she had retreated to a corner. She was leafing through a magazine when she heard a voice. "Miss
Américaine
?"

She looked up. A slim, dark man with a touch of gray at his temples was standing there. He was smiling gently.

"
Non parle fran
— "

"I speak English," he said quickly.

She smiled.

"And what is a pretty girl like you doing all alone with a magazine?" he asked. "Who is fool enough to bring you to a party like this and then— " He gestured expressively.

"My friend brought me," Rina said, indicating Peggy. "She has just got a job at the University."

Peggy was talking animatedly with one of the professors. She looked very attractive in her slim, tailored suit. "Oh," he said, a strangely quizzical look on his face.

"And whom did you bring?"

"No one." He shrugged. "Actually. I came in the hopes of meeting you."

She glanced at his hands and saw that he wore a wedding ring, as so many Frenchmen did. "You don't expect me to believe that?" she said. "What would your wife say?"

He smiled and laughed with her. "My wife would be very understanding. She could not come with me. She is very, very pregnant." He held his arms out in an exaggerated circle in front of him.

She laughed again and just then, Peggy's voice came over her shoulder. "Having fun, darling?"

Some weeks later, she was alone in the apartment one afternoon when the telephone rang. It was Jacques and she met him for lunch. And several times after that.

Then one afternoon — it had been a day just like this one — they sat dawdling over their liqueurs. "Why are you so afraid of men?" he asked her suddenly.

She felt the red fire creep up into her throat and over her face. "What makes you say that?"

"I have the feeling," he said. "Inside. I know."

She looked down at her drink. She didn't speak.

"Your friend is not the answer," he said.

She looked up at him. "Peggy has nothing to do with it. She's a good friend, no more."

He smiled knowingly. "You are in France, remember? There is nothing wrong, we understand such things. But I do not understand you. You are not the usual kind who lives like that."

She could feel her face flaming now. "I don't think that's very nice of you."

He laughed. "It is not," he admitted frankly. "But I do not like to see you waste yourself."

"You'd like it better if I went to sleep with some clumsy fool who knows nothing and cares less about the way I feel?" she said angrily.

He shook his head. "No. I would not like that at all. I would like you to come to bed with me."

"What makes you think it would be any different with you?"

He looked into her eyes. "Because I am a man, not a boy. Because I would want to please you. Boys are like bulls; they think only of themselves. In this you are right. But because of this, do not think that it is only women who know how to make love. There are men also who are aware of the sensitivities."

"Like yourself?" she asked sarcastically.

"Like myself. Do you think I see you again and again only because I have a purely intellectual interest in you?"

She laughed suddenly. "At least you are honest."

"I am a great believer in the truth."

* * *

A few months later, on a rainy afternoon, she went to his apartment and it was just as he said. He was kind and gentle and she did not hurt at all. And all the while, she felt the power in her, the power to bring him to a point of ecstasy from which he would never return, a power that could never turn into terror for her because she could always control it or him.

She watched him buttoning his shirt in front of the mirror. "Jacques."

He turned. "What is it, my sweet?"

She held out her arms to him. "Come here, Jacques."

He came over to the bed. He bent swiftly and kissed her naked breast. "When you make love, my darling," he said, "your nipples are full like bursting purple plums. Now they are like little pink poppies."

"It was like you said it would be, Jacques."

"I am glad."

She took his strong brown hands in her own and looked down at them. His gold wedding ring shone up at her. She looked up into his face. "I think I would like to be your mistress," she said softly.

"
Bon
," he said. "I had hoped you would say that. That is why I took this little apartment. You can move in tonight."

She was surprised. "Move in here?"

He nodded. "If you do not like this place, I will get another."

"But I can't do that! What about Peggy?"

"What about her?" He shrugged. "It is
fini
."

"Can't we just go on like this? I’ll meet you here whenever you like."

"You mean you will not move in?"

She shook her head. "I can't. What would Peggy do? She needs my help to keep the apartment. Besides, if my father ever found out, he'd kill me."

"But he does not worry about your living with that — that
lesbienne
?" he said bitterly.

"You don't know my father. Back in Boston, they don't ever think about things like that."

"What does he think she is?"

"What she has always been," she answered. "My teacher, my companion."

He laughed shortly. "She has been your teacher, yes."

"Oh, Jacques," she said in a hurt voice. "Don't spoil everything now. Why can't we go on like this?"

He looked at her. "Then you won't move in here?"

"I can't," she said. "Don't you understand, I can't."

He got to his feet, and walked back to the dresser. He finished buttoning his shirt and picked up his tie.

"I don't see what difference it would make. After all, you're married. How much time do you think you could spend here, anyway?"

He studied her. "That is different," he said coldly.

"Different?" she shouted in anger. "Why is it different for you and not for me?"

He stared at her. "A man may be unfaithful to his wife, as she may to him if she is so minded. But a man is never unfaithful to his mistress, nor is a woman unfaithful to her lover."

"But Peggy is not a man!"

"No, she is not," he said grimly. "She is something worse than a man."

Rina looked at him for a moment. She drew her head up proudly. "Those are your terms?" she asked quietly.

She sat there proudly, her back straight, her naked breasts magnificent over her deep chest. He could see the outlines of her ribs against her flesh as they rose and fell with her breath. Never in my life have I known so much beauty, he thought. Aloud he said, "If that's the way you put it, those are my terms."

She didn't answer.

"I just don't understand," she said. She looked up at him. "You had better hand me my dress."

That had been many months ago and oddly enough, they still remained friends. She raised the Pernod to her lips and emptied her glass. "And now I really must go," she said. "I promised Pavan I would be at his studio by three o'clock."

He raised an eyebrow. "Pavan? You have taken up sculpting?"

She shook her head. "No, I'm modeling for him."

Jacques knew how Pavan worked. He used many models for just one statue. He was always trying to create the ideal. He would never succeed.

She felt his quizzical gaze sweep down to her breasts. She laughed. "No, it's not what you think."

"No?" he asked. "Why not?"

"He says they're too large."

"He is mad," Jacques said quickly. "But then, all artists are mad. What is it, then?"

She got to her feet. "My pubis," she said.

For the first time since she had known him, he was speechless.

She laughed.

He found his voice. "But why?"

"Because it's the highest mountain any man will ever climb, he says, and more men will die trying to climb it than ever fell from Mount Everest." She smiled and bent over him. "But we won't tell him that you survived the ascent, will we, Jacques?"

She kissed his cheek quickly and turned and walked out onto the sidewalk. He watched her until she was lost in the crowded street, then turned back to the waiter. "Psst!" he said. "I think I will have another drink!"

SHE HURRIED PAST THE POLITE GREETING OF the concierge, up the three narrow flights of the staircase. She'd stayed at the studio later than she thought. There would be just enough time to prepare dinner before Peggy got home.

Rina went through the tiny living room into the kitchen. Swiftly she lit the gas under the hot-water heater for the tub and with the same match, the oven, leaving the flame low. She took the small, browned chicken she'd just purchased, already cooked, at the corner rotisserie and put it into a pan and into the oven to keep warm. Rapidly she sliced bread from a long loaf, arranged it next to a large piece of cheese and began to set the table. In a few minutes, she was finished.