The Sensual Mirror (12 page)

The darkness spread, east and west, north and south, deepening over the face of the globe until it began to meet the light, and twilight and dawn, evening and morning, night and day, striped the earth with perfect symmetry. Green and blue and white and black, the earth spun slowly on its axis, sang its circle about the sun, which followed its prescribed course in the galaxy, joining a billion billion galaxies in a vast and seemingly endless expansion into realms so far beyond human comprehension that only our fantasies suffice to give any solace to our minds.

Gail and Julia wept until their tears were done, and then they pulled back from each other. For a while they busied themselves with handkerchiefs, dabbings, blowings, and sniffings. Then, that out of the way, they had no alternative but to look at one another. They both smiled shyly, a bit embarrassed.

“I must look a mess,” Julia said, her hand going to her hair in a reflex gesture.

“You’re so very beautiful,” Gail said. “I mean, not just your looks. I’ve always known that you were attractive in that way. But I feel that this is the first time I’m really seeing you. I mean, what’s inside.” She pressed her lips together. “Oh, am I making any sense at all? I feel like I’m talking inside a big paper bag.”

“How about some wine?” Julia asked. “That should clear both our heads.”

She poured, and they lifted their glasses, made a silent toast, and drank. The alcohol was a solvent cutting through the glue of self-consciousness. It bit the tongue, flushed the throat, warmed the chest, and hit the belly like a felt hammer on a bronze gong. It was a very good wine, and they finished the first round, poured a second, and were halfway into that before either spoke.

“It seems we have a lot to talk about, and yet, suddenly, I can’t remember what was so important,” Gail said. “I came over to tell you that Eliot had proposed. And then you told me that you made it with him last night. And I suppose I’m supposed to be outraged or vindictive, but right now I don’t feel anything but comfortable. Do you mind if I take my shoes off?”

“Take off whatever you like,” Julia said. The sentence echoed off the wall and bounced back on her, causing her to tilt her head slightly, but she dismissed the perception.

“How long have we known each other now?” Gail continued.

“I don’t know. Must be three years.”

“It’s funny. When I think of you, I always say to myself, ‘Julia my best friend,’ like that, all in one breath, ‘Julia-my-best-friend.’ And now that we’re sitting here, I realize I barely know you at all. That’s peculiar, isn’t it? After all this time, I realize I’ve never seen you cry, or cried with you. And there are some things we’ve never talked about.”

“I guess we’ve just enjoyed each other’s company and never felt the need . . . “ Julia began to say. Then she shook her head. “No, that’s bullshit. There have been a lot of things I suppressed. I guess I was trying to be polite.”

“You know I had a crush on Martin, don’t you?”

Julia kicked off her own shoes, and cut a piece of cheese. She popped it into her mouth. “No, I didn’t know.”

“I kind of fell for him when I used to go to the health club. It was a blow when I learned he was married But I tucked my pussy away and switched the vibration to one of pleasantness. Then he introduced us that night, remember? And I liked you so much all at once, and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I’ve lost a stud but I may have found a friend,’ which is so much rarer.”

“I liked you a lot too,” Julia said. “Meeting you was so good for me. I was beginning to feel the first letdown after our Europe trip. And I had just begun working for Eliot and I got onto a kind of speed trip. So I was simultaneously depressed and strung out. And being with you was like the first breath I had taken in ages.”

At hearing Julia say “Eliot,” Gail gnawed at her lower lip, and her eyes threatened to fill again. Julia didn’t see the reaction until she’d gone on past his name, and when she noticed Gail’s unhappiness, she hung her head.

“Oh Gail, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I wouldn’t hurt you for anything in the world. I don’t know what got into me. I was just so horny. I haven’t fucked in almost two months. And I guess you don’t know this, but Eliot and I had had a very brief affair, just before you met him. We’re together all the time. You know? I mean, we’re very intimate.”

She looked up to see how Gail was taking all that she was saying. Her friend had an expression that seemed to hover between pain and hatred. There was nothing for Julia to do but accept it, to absorb the feeling and transform it within herself. This was part of her dues.

“Shall I go on?” she asked.

“Yes,” Gail said, her lips tight. “I want to hear. Please.”

“Well, I know things about Eliot that could send him to jail for ten years. He’s a lot of things to me. A father figure, a boss, a teacher, a confidant. When I began to go through really big trouble with Martin, Eliot listened to me for weeks and weeks.”

“But during all that time you hardly told me what was going on.”

“I suppose I have a natural instinct to go to a man when I need help.”

“I know what you mean,” Gail replied, her bitterness hanging out.

“Anyway, there was something in the air all day yesterday. Both Eliot and I felt it. And when quitting time came, it was just obvious that we both wanted to fuck. And I worried about Martin and I worried about you, but somehow it didn’t seem to involve anyone else. After all, we were consenting adults. We were both free. And it never occurred to me that Eliot had a date with you. You know his style. His appointment book is immaculate. He even schedules a precise amount of time between appointments, enough for transportation, enough to think about the next person he’s going to meet; he even leaves himself time to piss, for Christ’s sake.”

“I know,” Gail said, and a shadow of a smile fell across her lips.

The two women stole glances at one another. A subtle checkpoint had been passed.

“So I thought we’d just do it. You know. Get the panties off, get the pants down. Cock hard, hole all greased up. Huff and puff, move the old ass around, rub my fingers on my clit, and get my fucking rocks off.”

Gail’s eyes opened wide. She had never heard Julia speak like this before. In fact, she’d never heard any woman speak like this before. She had thoughts which used those words and those images, but they were fleeting, formless things which never got translated into sound, much less communicated.

“Are you shocked?” Julia said, seeing Gail’s expression. “Well, I’d choose more fancy language, but that’s exactly the way I was thinking. I knew there wouldn’t be any gooey stuff between Eliot and me, and no traces the following day. We could both do the thing and draw a curtain over it and act like it never happened. He’s a very attractive man in his brutal way, as you well know, and a certain charge builds up over time. So we discharged the charge. And nothing would have come of it if he hadn’t proposed to you. If he hadn’t stood you up to come over here.” She poured more wine into both their glasses. “I wonder why he did it?”

“Maybe he wanted something to happen. Maybe it was his way of blowing the lid off.” Gail picked up her glass and sipped at the wine.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, look at what’s happened. Eliot wound up proposing. And you and I are having probably the first real conversation of our entire friendship.”

“It seems a hell of a roundabout way to get at things.”

“Life is funny,” Gail said.

“Life is a soap opera,” Julia amended.

The two women looked at a spot on the floor between them. The pattern of their talk for the evening had been set. It would be a series of spirals ending in resolution at each level, with a pause before going to the next plateau. The movement was endless and could carry them for the rest of their lives, defining the meaning of relationship, A melting was taking place, a process they both felt, and the unexpected blow which had hurled them together so violently was indeed proving a form of caress.

“What about . . . Eliot?” Julia asked. “Are you going to tell him that you know?”

“I’d have to, if I was going to have anything more to do with him.”

“Are you?”

Gail looked up sharply. “Julia,” she said, “do you mind if I ask something personal?”

Julia smiled broadly. “Well, what could be personal now?”

“What was there between you and Martin? I mean, really. Without any bullshit.”

Julia stirred and changed her position. She unfolded her legs and sat with her back against the couch. The white terrycloth robe fell open and revealed her thighs far up past her knees. Gail found herself glimpsing the expanse of white skin. Julia’s hair hung loose about her shoulders. Her breasts were half exposed. Her face was open, easy, intelligent. Gail caught her breath. She was caught by a brief, intense desire to put her arms around Julia’s waist and bury her head in the other woman’s soft belly.

“I guess at first it was the challenge of getting married. You know. We’ve all been handed the story from the time we could understand English. That’s the big one, right? And then there was the physical part, of course. Martin is such a stud. Hung like a horse, and practically tireless. He used to screw me so long and so hard sometimes that I couldn’t close my legs for an hour afterward.” Julia looked about her almost absent-mindedly. “Do you have any cigarettes?” she asked.

“No,” Gail replied, “but I brought some grass. Would you like a joint?”

“I’m already a bit stoned, but why not?”

Gail reached into her bag and pulled out a tiny cigarette case from which she extracted a thin, hand-rolled marijuana cigarette. “This is a present from Eliot,” she said. “Just in from Thailand. A hundred and seventy-five dollars an ounce.”

Julia made a whistling gesture with her lips, which jolted Gail with its suggestion of kissing.

Gail lit up, inhaled, ballooned the smoke in her lungs, and passed the joint to Julia. The next few minutes were given up to the ritual of the grass high, letting the weed work its subtle alchemy, setting up temporary headquarters in the brain, rearranging the pattern and intensity of signals. It was an extraordinarily powerful strain, and by the time they were down to a roach, holding the ember with the tips of long fingernails, they both found it difficult to focus on anything but the waterfall of sensations exploding in their bodies.

“Whew,” Gail said. She leaned back against the sofa, her head on a pillow. She unbuttoned the waist of her skirt and pulled the bottom of her blouse out. She slid down until she was three-quarters reclining on the floor.

“Why don’t I put on some music?” Julia said.

She got up and went over to the stereo and stacked six records on the spindle. She listened only to slow music, and her collection reflected only the most mellow of whatever genre she choose. In popular, it was, for example, Donovan, not the Stones; in classical, it was Debussy and some of Satie, not Wagner; in Indian, it was Ali Akhbar Khan, not Ravi Shankar, So it didn’t matter which records she chose; they would all reflect the same mood.

When she returned, Gail was largely disheveled, her skirt hiked up past her knees, the top four buttons of her blouse undone. She was gazing at the ceiling, her eyes somewhat glazed.

“Where were we?” Julia said as she lay down.

“Martin was hung like a horse and you couldn’t close your legs after he fucked you,” Gail replied, her voice drowsy.

Julia sighed and sank back into her story. “Right. After that, there was the prospect of Europe. He wouldn’t have gone in a million years, but I was able to move him out of that dreary little town and that absurd job and for almost a year we lived like rich people. Moving all the time. Then there was domesticity, which lasted about three months before I got bored with living a twenty-four-hour schedule. It was like having two jobs: Eliot from nine to five and Martin from five until nine the next morning. And when I looked deep into my heart, I knew that if I had to make a choice, I’d prefer giving up the job with Martin. It wasn’t as exciting, and I didn’t get paid. After that, it was just a matter of time.”

“What about him?”

“Who knows? He’s not the world’s most articulate man. But I suppose if it takes two to make a marriage, it takes two to make a divorce. I assume he got as bored for his reasons as I did for mine. Anyway, the last few months before we split up were practically unbearable. We used to lie around all night and silently hate one another.”

“I didn’t realize,” Gail said. She rolled over on her side and looked at Julia who still lay on her back. The grass had imparted a softness to her aura, and Gail suffered a momentary loss of erotic indentity. For an instant she looked at Julia the way a man might, seeing the lush. unconscious invitation of the almost perfect body, the pose of utter lassitude. When she snapped back into herself, however, the feeling did not leave. And she found herself thinking. This is desire. What I’m feeling is desire.

“That was the worst part, getting caught up in that terrible trap of the closed pair. You know, the bond between a man and a woman is so strong, so total in a way, that it shuts everything else out. There were a hundred times I wanted to call you, to talk to you. But I had this idea that I owed Martin one hundred percent loyalty, that I couldn’t be really real with anybody else. You know, I was less upset over my sexual infidelity than over talking to somebody else about my marriage.”

Julia turned her head to look at Gail. Her eyes widened and then narrowed when she saw her friend looking at her. Gail’s face was a pool of such clear water that the bottom could be seen, magnified, clarified. And the feelings that lay at the core of Gail’s person at that instant were so sharply defined already that Julia couldn’t mistake them. Except that she did, for she had not made that leap across gender lines, and any erotic component to the mood of the moment could not be registered. What Julia perceived was concern.

“Gail, what’s the matter?” she said.

“I guess I’m mixed up,” Gail replied. “Suddenly it seems like there’s a lot of people in the room.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get so depressing.”