Blind Date (20 page)

Levanter opened the speech to a page with a bent corner and indicated a passage he had marked with pencil. He moved closer to Madame Ramoz so she could read it with him.

“‘And so my husband, the President,'” he read, “‘took upon himself the arduous task of hatchet man to his country.'” He paused. “As it stands now,” he said softly, “this passage suggests that President Ramoz became a vicious killer.”

Madame Ramoz stiffened. Leaning over Levanter's arm, she examined the text closely.

“Surely you didn't mean that,” said Levanter. “What you undoubtedly meant was that Mr. President took upon himself the task of trailblazer for his people.”

“But of course,” exclaimed Madame Ramoz. “Everyone who has known and loved him through all these difficult years knows that! The speech was originally written in our language,” she said. “The error must have been made when it was translated into English. I will make the correction. Thank you for your assistance to me and the President.”

“Then I have been of some help, after all?”

“Yes, you have,” she said. “Now, who are these two supposedly innocent reporters?”

Levanter scribbled the names on the back of his calling card and handed the card to Madame Ramoz, who took it and held her hand out. The colonel strode over from across the room and, bowing, took the card from her.

The two reporters were released from prison soon after Madame Ramoz's return to her country. Presumably under instructions from their government, they notified Investors International that all
charges against them had been dropped and they were reunited with their families. A subsequent inquiry by Investors International confirmed that they were free.

Levanter had nearly forgotten about the incident when one day, some months later, a middle-aged, poorly dressed, Eurasian-looking woman stopped him as he was leaving the Investors International headquarters.

“Are you George Levanter?” she asked, shaking.

“I am.”

The short woman edged closer. Her hair was matted and smelled of grease. “If I could, I would kill you,” she stammered, her face pale and her movements jittery. “I swear I would,” she whispered.

Levanter was startled. “Why? What have I done to you?”

“You have put my brother in prison,” she snapped. “He was tortured.” Her face twitched and she started to cry.

“You're wrong,” said Levanter. “I have never put anyone in prison.”

The woman grabbed his arm. “But you work for that bitch, the wife of that hangman Ramoz.”

“Madame Ramoz?”

The woman spat up at him. Her saliva dribbled down his chin, but Levanter did not move.

“You're wrong,” he said slowly. “Utterly wrong. I merely pleaded with Madame Ramoz to set two men free. Nothing else, I assure you.”

The woman looked up at him. “My brother was a translator. Now he's imprisoned for sabotage, kept in a ‘safe house,' the government interrogation center. They put him on ‘cushions of air' — his feet on one bed, his head on another, his body suspended in midair. And whenever he dropped, they gave him
‘falanga'
— beating on the soles of the feet. The person who wrote to me about him learned from someone in the Palace Guards that it was George Levanter, from Investors International, who denounced my brother to the Ramoz woman at a party in New York.”

Levanter was driving from Switzerland to France. He passed the Swiss border guards and entered no man's land: a quarter-mile stretch of highway separating the two borders. It was there that he saw a young woman standing next to a car, its hood open, its emergency lights flashing. She wore a tapered T-shirt with
FOXY LADY
printed in large block letters across the front and back. He pulled up beside her and asked whether she needed any help. She said she was waiting for a mechanic and needed only someone to wait with her.

She told him she was from the Middle East but had gone to school in the States and now lived in New York. Levanter remarked that anyone would assume she was an American. She wore skin-tight jeans and had thick black hair, evenly cut to shoulder length. Her make-up had been applied with such skill and care that her complexion appeared quite natural even in the glaring sunlight. Her T-shirt displayed a smooth neck and large breasts. She had a slim waist, gently rounded hips without a fold of fat, and long, slender legs with small, narrow feet; and she carried herself with grace. Everything about her appearance was sensual and provocative. On both sides of no man's land, customs inspectors and border guards were eyeing her with delight.

As Levanter chatted with Foxy Lady, the Swiss mechanic finally arrived. He took one look at the car's engine and announced that he could not fix it on the spot. He hitched it up to tow it to his garage in the small border town. Levanter turned his car around and, accompanied by the friendly cheers of the border guards, followed with Foxy Lady in his car.

He invited her to have lunch with him while she waited for her car. As they ate, she mentioned that she had just come from a Swiss clinic. The second time the clinic came up in their conversation, Levanter asked her why she had been there. At first she hesitated; then she said she had just undergone surgery for the removal of a tumor in her uterus. Her lids shyly lowered to half cover her eyes as she explained that, even though the tumor was not malignant and the doctors had discharged her, her sexual activities would have to be restricted for some time. Levanter found her frankness enticing.

The mechanic was unable to repair the car before the garage closed. Levanter assured Foxy Lady that his business in Paris could wait and offered to keep her company. They took adjoining rooms in a motel. That evening they were the only dinner guests in the motel's restaurant, and the manager, a hospitable, elderly Swiss woman, treated them to a rare white wine. This wine, the woman explained, was made of grapes from the vineyards high in the glacial region of the Alps. The vines had been planted centuries ago by religious sects that had settled among the inaccessible peaks to escape persecution. She offered the glacier wine, she said, in honor of the beauty of Foxy Lady. She stared at her, repeating again and again that many chic people passed through this border area, yet she had never seen such a beautiful woman. Foxy Lady appeared to be excited by the compliments. Her cheeks were flushed. When she looked at Levanter, her lips quivered. As the woman spoke, Foxy Lady nudged Levanter under the table with her foot. Gently, she pushed his legs apart and he felt her toes on his calves. After dinner he and Foxy Lady retired to their rooms.

Later, Levanter knocked on her door to say good night, expecting to find her ready for bed. Instead, she was dressed, her makeup fresh and immaculate. He assumed that she wanted to go out
again. But when he said that the motel bar was still open, she said she wanted them to stay in her room to get to know each other better. She surveyed herself in the mirror and hastily adjusted her clothes. She looked at Levanter with her expressive, shiny eyes; then she came to him and very softly began to stroke his hair. She kissed him, nibbling his neck, her tongue plunging into his ear. She pressed her breasts against him, then quickly unbuttoned his shirt and started to kiss his chest, her tongue caressing his nipples, her hands loosening the belt of his trousers. Levanter was aroused but he pulled away, afraid he might hurt her. She pouted. He explained that he was concerned about her operation.

Without a word, she began to undress, scattering her clothes and sandals around the floor with abandon. Her breasts were full and firm with small aureoles and short nipples. As if to tease him, she paused before removing her panties. Then she slipped them off and moved toward Levanter, exposing her flesh and a pad of white gauze, the final remnant of her visit to the clinic. She lay down on the bed and reached for him.

In her lovemaking that night, she was very inventive, eager to compensate for the part of her body that still had to remain dormant.

They returned to New York together. Foxy Lady adored dancing. Each time she entered a new nightclub or disco, she told Levanter, she felt as if she were on a high diving board, about to take her first jump before a crowd of spectators. Since Levanter did not dance well, he took it upon himself to introduce Foxy Lady to the best dancer in the place. She would always select the table that gave her the best view of the floor and offered others the best view of her. Then she and Levanter would screen the dancing couples, looking for a partner who could keep up with her frenetic energy without trying to upstage her. When the two of them had agreed on which man qualified as a candidate, Levanter took Foxy Lady to the floor. There, in the first few steps, they would veer toward the unsuspecting couple, making certain that the candidate could get a good look at Foxy Lady. Once he began to stare at her, Foxy Lady
knew she had him. Feigning clumsiness, she would bump into the man and his partner. Levanter always promptly apologized, but in the process made sure to introduce himself and Foxy Lady, casually remarking that, after his mishap, he was through dancing for the night. Amicably, he proposed to Foxy Lady that if she wanted to dance, she would have to find herself another partner. He would chat with the couple until they volunteered to join him and Foxy Lady at their table. Soon the candidate would ask Foxy Lady to dance. Within minutes, she and her new partner were the center of attention.

After each high-diving-board evening, Levanter and Foxy Lady returned to their hotel suite. For Foxy Lady the night had not yet ended. In the nightclub she had once again proved to Levanter that the world was in love with her; now she needed proof from him that he was completely hooked on her. Still elated, she would reach for the glacier wine to which she had become almost addicted and which he had taken great trouble to procure for her. She quickly bathed, and came to Levanter radiant. She would stand before him, slowly exposing her body, which she knew mesmerized him. It was a perfect, sculptured body zealously cared for each day by experts, its hairless skin glowing without a blemish, its muscles tightened and toned by the experienced hands of trained masseurs. Sustaining Levanter's arousal, guiding him up and down through the peaks of frenzy, was to Foxy Lady a final tribute to her own beauty.

Every time Levanter returned from a short business trip out of town, Foxy Lady would tell him, with her accustomed candor, what she had done in his absence. As if to remind him of her desirability to others, she related in great detail descriptions of evenings spent in male company while he was away. There were other times, she said, when she wanted to be among women, who found her as beautiful and desirable as men did. For many, she became their first female lover.

Foxy Lady would spin out the stories of her encounters one after another and Levanter would listen, trying not to feel threatened by her erotic exploits with others. He recognized that this was the
stuff of her life: she was just as beautiful for everyone else as she was for him. To appreciate her beauty did not require special taste or unusual insight. Thus, his own desire for her appeared to him as ordinary as the desire of another man, who might at any time replace him. Levanter could no more ponder what her loss would mean to him than he could imagine ever possessing her entirely. He could think of her current lover as a rival, he could be jealous of two or three of her intimate friends, but how could he be envious of that stranger whom Foxy Lady had not yet met? He knew that in the constellation of her erotic adventures he was one of many stars.

For her, dancing and sex were her only means of making contact with other people, just as caring for her body and her appearance constituted her only sense of herself. To be seen, to please and dazzle with her looks were her only motives. She hated any activity that required being alone; but she would rather not go out at all than go out and not be noticed and admired. When she saw someone's eyes resting upon her, she seemed to come to life as if she were being touched by the eager hands of her lover.

Because Foxy Lady saw herself as the source of Levanter's desire, she willingly gave herself to him; she submitted to pain, if inflicting pain was what he needed to make him feel he finally possessed her. But as soon as he was about to give in to the release of his own excitement, she regained control over him; then it was she who was the instrument of his satiation and he who was her slave.

He felt possessive of her beauty; still her sexuality was ambiguous to him. He could not pin down exactly what she wanted from their lovemaking, yet she seemed to understand everything he wanted. Whereas other women had at times responded as if his urgings were odd, she accepted his needs as if they were to be expected. She seemed to be proud of her ability to bring out all his secret lusts and longings. In a sensual vigil over his flesh, she monitored every detail of his release, anxious to know the duration and intensity of each spasm.

In an effort to understand Foxy Lady, he began taking pictures of her, trying to capture her expressions, her gestures, her smiles.
As the stack of prints grew, he would look at them, one after another, secretly hoping to discover in her looks what it was that both held and disturbed him. But just as the photographs failed to reveal her to him, they offered no insight into his compulsion.

He started to photograph her on transparencies. The slides would rotate in the projector and, as images of Foxy Lady flashed on his portable screen, he felt as if the beauty they conveyed was coming from someplace in his brain, imprinted by an artist who chose to remain unidentified.

He had known her for only a relatively short time, and whenever he mentioned his concerns about her sexuality, Foxy Lady answered that the tumor surgery had traumatized her body, upset her menstrual rhythm, and threatened to make her barren. Her body had not yet healed, and she had to have weekly examinations and injections. Midway between medical appointments, she grew depressed and unsure of herself; after the injections, she was euphoric and confident.