Starting Over (29 page)

“Not directly.”

“What do you mean
not directly?
Either she says something or she doesn't.”

“It's not her style—to say anything.” Marilyn made a mock smile and her voice raised an octave: “She just
oozes
—sweetness.”

“But—about what? How do you know it's about me?”

“Oh, she says something like, “Ah saw Phee-ul lass night.' Then she oozes.”

“Does she?” Potter asked anxiously.

“Ooze?”

“No—mention me.”

Marilyn sighed. “Yes, yes, of course. Jesus. This whole thing is getting sickening. Can't we talk about something else?”

Somehow Marilyn's obvious dislike of Amelia's manner excited Potter even more. “Really,” he said, “she has something—different. I don't know how to explain it.”

Marilyn lit a cigarette, and looked at Potter with a not very friendly grin. “I bet I can explain it,” she said.

“You can? Really? What is it? How do you figure it?”

“How many times have you seen her now?”

“Five. Five times. Tomorrow night will be our sixth date. Counting lunch and the concert yesterday. Why? Are you going to tell me I hardly know her, I haven't had time to know what she's really like?”

“No. I wasn't going to tell you that.”

“Well? What
were
you going to tell me?”

“I wasn't going to tell you anything. I was going to ask you something.”

“OK, what?”

Marilyn dragged on her cigarette, her mouth pursed and she blew a large, perfect smoke-ring at Potter. “How is she in bed?”

“In
bed?
”

Potter was shocked.

“You haven't fucked her yet, have you?”

“Why do you have to use that word?”

Marilyn began to giggle.

“What the hell's funny?” Potter demanded.

Marilyn's giggling got louder, more hysterical. She doubled over, coughing, wiped at her eyes, and sipped some water, then broke out laughing again while Potter, annoyed and impatient, waited for the fit to pass.

“Ohhhh,” said Marilyn, partially recovering. “Ohhhhh—you poor sap.”

4

It was not until after their seventh date that Potter took Amelia back to his own apartment. He had feared that the mere suggestion of it might have seemed … lewd. That she might be offended by the very idea. Going alone to a gentleman's private apartment!

The afternoon of their Saturday date, he had tried to straighten it up. He took out the trash, piled his ungraded papers into neat stacks, washed a two-week accumulation of grimy dishes, and even cleaned the grey ring out of the bathtub. He hid his dirty laundry in the closet, and—
just in case
—he put clean sheets on the bed. This was a real problem because the only “clean” sheets he had still bore stains on them from someone or other he had fucked during their menstrual period. Ordinarily, he would have just put them on, stains and all, but the idea of Amelia touching such sheets was a prospect too shameful to even consider. He jumped in his Mustang, sped to the Sears on Mass Avenue, and bought a set of lime green sheets and pillowcases.

It crossed his mind that buying the new sheets might be bad luck, might make Fate or God think he was counting on getting Amelia to bed, and so jinx the whole thing. But on the other hand, if he didn't put on clean sheets, and it turned out she wanted to go to bed, he would be too embarrassed to take her there. And she certainly wasn't the sort of girl you fucked on the couch or the kitchen floor.

After dinner at Stella's, which was noisy and crowded, Potter suggested they go to his place to have a brandy.

He had bought a bottle of Remy Martin. And he had two fine snifters that were part of his share of the spoils from the wedding presents of his marriage.

At the suggestion Amelia lowered her eyelids, smiled sweetly, and said, “Aw right, Phil.”

Amelia declared what a charmin' apartment Potter had, and he said, “That's very kind of you, but I know it isn't nearly what it could be. It's the kind of place everyone says what a lot could be done with it, but I don't know how to do it.”

“But
ah
do,” Amelia said with a quiet smile.

“Well, of course, I'm sure you do, but I can't ask you—I mean it's my own place and I ought to be—uh. You know. It's my own responsibility.”

“But darlin', if you don't have the touch—you can't help it.”

“Well, I certainly lack the touch, all right.”

“Of course, everyone has different taste. You might not like what I'd do at all—”

“Oh no, I'm sure I would—”

“You mean you'd
let
me?”

“You mean you'd
do
it?”

“Darlin', ah'd adore to do it. I just love fixin' things up, and organizin' things.”

“Jesus. That's what I can't do at all. I'm the most disorganized person in the world.”

“Well then,” she smiled, “ah guess a person like you needs a person like me.”

“God,” he said, “you're wonderful.”

He clutched her, held on to her, buried his face in the sweet richness of her honeysuckle-smelling hair, while she rubbed her hands softly over his shoulders, down his back, cooing “Darlin' darlin'” as if comforting a homeless child. He felt safe, sheltered. And the comfort Amelia gave him was not only soothing, but stimulating. He drew back, staring at her face, gently running the tips of his fingers over it like a blind man trying to memorize it, as she smiled and closed her eyes, offering herself like a cat to be stroked, and making a sound that was the closest human equivalent of a purr.

“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm …”

When he kissed her then, long and hard, her mouth for the first time opened to him and she pressed her body against him.

It was not until, prone, on the couch, when Potter reached back for the zipper at the neck of her dress that Amelia stiffened, drew away, sat up. Cigarette time; but Amelia didn't smoke. Potter did. Neither of them said anything. It was obvious that negotiations were necessary before further intimacy was achieved.

Amelia took his hand. “Phil, darlin'.”

“Yes?”

“Ah guess I'm real old-fashioned.”

“Yes?”

“Ah just don't—go around—doin' these things.”

“Of course not. I know you don't.”

“Matter a fact, ah guess you could say—ah'm practically a virgin.”

“Practically?”

“Well, there was only this one man. And we were engaged. We were plannin' to get married acourse, but it didn't work out. Ya see, I know it's not popular now, but I was raised to b'lieve that a woman should—save herself—for the one man, she would marry. And give him—everything.”

Potter swallowed hard, the
everything
reverberating in his imagination. His mind tried then to absorb the fact of an attractive, twenty-six-year-old woman being “practically a virgin.” The phrase itself was an old joke, and he wondered if she was putting him on. Then, looking into the wide and misty sincerity of her eyes, he was ashamed of himself for doubting her.

“All I know,” he said helplessly, “is I love you.”

“I know, darlin',” she said sympathetically. “And I love you, too; that's what makes it so difficult. Ah love you, and ah'd love to be able to—give myself to you.”

“Oh, God,” he said.

“There, there,” she soothed, stroking his forehead.

Later, they necked some more.

Later still, back home alone in bed, Potter masturbated, imagining “everything.”

That Saturday morning Amelia came over in bluejeans and a man's white shirt tied at the waist, and began the redecoration of Potter's apartment. Part of the redecoration included cleaning up the accumulated debris, the dirt and grime that he had allowed to grow, like some kind of experimental bacteria, throughout his living quarters. After taking a moldy piece of cheesecake out of the refrigerator and tossing it into a trash can, Amelia sighed, kissed Potter on the tip of the nose, and said, “You know, darlin', you met me just in time.”

By five in the afternoon they were able to sit down for a drink in the sunny, glistening living room with bright yellow curtains fluttering at the windows, books neatly arranged in orange-crate shelves that Amelia planned to paint bright green the next weekend.

Amelia had brought supplies for dinner, and while Potter sipped a second drink she prepared a feast of boneless chicken breasts, brown rice, asparagus with hollandaise, a chilled Pouilly Fouissé and ambrosia for dessert. Ambrosia, food of the gods. Amelia made everything seem ambrosial, and Potter indeed felt like a god.

As well as bringing groceries, Amelia had brought two of the lush cushions from her own apartment so that she and Potter could dine at the living room coffee table in a simulation of oriental comfort. She had also brought a change of clothes, so that she wouldn't have to sit down to dinner in the blue jeans and shirt she had worn for working around the house all day. For dinner she wore a long gingham dress with lace at the cuffs and collar, and an old-fashioned brooch. She looked like one of those wonderful young ladies in Degas, the kind who were taken for rides in canoes, holding a parasol and letting one hand gently drape itself into the water.

“You look wonderful,” Potter said.

“It must be because I feel wonderful.”

Potter, on hands and knees, crept from his pillow over to hers, and put his arms around her. “You
are
wonderful,” he said.

“Oh, Phil. Darlin'.”

They rocked into one another, clutched, kissed, stroked, licked, bit, nibbled, rubbed, gasped, gurgled, grew hard, and groaned hot declarations of love, until Potter, dizzy and breathless, broke away, sat up straight, slightly shaking, holding one of Amelia's hands with both of his. “Listen,” he said, “will you marry me?”

Her eyes, large and moist and intent, searched his face. “Oh, Phil. Darlin'. Are you sure?”

“Yes. I think I am. But I want to be even more sure. I don't want to make a mistake again. I want us to wait a while. To take our time.”

“Of course, darlin'.”

“Think of everything. Plan.”

“Oh, yes.”

“And Amelia. I don't want to tell anyone yet, I mean like having a formal announcement or any of that. Not till we've decided everything, have everything worked out.”

“Of course, darlin'. It'll be our secret.”

“You don't mind?”

“Mind? Oh, darlin'. I think it's wonderful. It's exciting—a secret engagement!”

Potter hadn't wanted to use that word. “Engagement.” It sounded too—certain. Irrevocable. But if Amelia wanted to think of it that way, he didn't want to object. What the hell. It was only a word.

It turned out to be a magic word. The engagement, even though secret, was enough to satisfy Amelia's scruples about further intimacy, and she allowed an escalation that led to removal of all her garments except for panties, a final barrier that couldn't fall until Amelia was able to arrange for what she called “precautions.”

Amelia thought it would be nice if she and Phil could go away somewhere for the weekend after she obtained her precautions; instead of making love for the first time in Potter's apartment, she felt it would be so much more romantic to have it happen in a new and lovely setting. The ocean, perhaps, or the mountains. Somewhere in the country, maybe.

Potter immediately agreed, but was privately apprehensive. He knew how disastrous “romantic weekends” could turn out to be. Like his weekend with Marilyn in Vermont. He felt superstitiously it might be bad luck to go to a Country Inn again, after the fiasco in Middlebury. He was also concerned about Amelia's sense of protocol and propriety, fearing a motel room might seem shabby or illicit to her, might make her anxious or embarrassed and turn her off. She wasn't experienced at this sort of thing, and Potter grew even more worried when he realized that in Amelia's case “this sort of thing” not only included staying with a guy in a rented room somewhere but also the very act of making love. That is, if he believed her story about being “practically a virgin.”

He had known her for less than a month, knew nothing about her past except what she had chosen to tell him, and for all he knew she perhaps had moved to Boston not out of her proclaimed love of its historical and cultural attributes, but because she had such a wild reputation in Georgia no Southern gentleman would deign to marry her; perhaps those weekends she spoke of so dreamily at the Sigma Chi house at Chapel Hill had been drug-crazed orgies, perhaps she had been a football groupie and had laid every starting quarterback in the Southeastern Conference …
Shit
. Potter stopped himself, condemned himself, and felt ashamed and ridiculous for doubting Amelia's account of her practically virginal past, a noble and remarkable record of purity stained but once, and even then only because she thought she was going to marry the guy. Though the fellow had scored with her, it was not, in retrospect, according to the rules, so the score was not really a legitimate score but more like a touchdown that is called back because of a penalty; it didn't really count. On the other hand, when Potter thought about it, Amelia never said that she had only done it once with that guy but that she had only done it with that one guy, which left open the possibility that he had fucked her hundreds or thousands of times, that his fantastic love-making had turned her into a sensual beast, a creature of passion, and she hadn't done it with anyone else because she knew it would never be so good again.…

God
damn
it, there his mind went
again
, irrationally, tormentingly, foolishly. He shamed himself
again
, not only for his doubting Amelia, but for falling into such an old-fashioned hangup about a woman's relative virginity for christsake, when he had never in fact been turned on by the notion of making it with virgins, when he knew things would be a lot easier all around if Amelia had had some experience with her former fiancé. But he couldn't help hoping that the experience hadn't been all that great. A woman friend once told Potter that if she were a man she would not ideally look for a virgin, but would prefer to find a girl who had already been fucked a few times, but badly. The logic of that seemed indisputable, and he secretly hoped it was the case with Amelia.