Fancy Pants (18 page)
"Who said anything about a back seat?"
She stared at him for a moment and then exclaimed, "Oh, no! I'm not
lying down on that creature-infested ground. I mean it, Dallie."
"I don't much like the ground myself."
"Then how? Where?"
"Come on, Francie. Stop plotting and planning and trying to make sure
you always have your best side turned to the camera. Let's just kiss a
little bit so things can take their natural course."
"I want to know where, Dallie."
"I know you do, honey, but I'm not going to tell you because you'll
start worrying about whether it's color-coordinated or not. For once in
your life, take a chance at doing something where you may not come out
looking your best."
She felt as if he had held a mirror up in front of her—not a very large
mirror and one with clouded glass, but a mirror nonetheless. Was she as
vain as Dallie seemed to believe? As calculating? She didn't want to
think so, and yet... She stuck out her chin and began defiantly peeling
down her jeans. "All right, we'll do it your way. But just don't expect
anything spectacular from me." The slim denim pantlegs caught on her
sandals. She bent over to struggle with them, but the heels stuck in
the folds. She gave the jeans another tug and tightened the snare. "Is
this turning you on, Dallie?" she fumed. "Do you like watching me? Are
you getting excited? Dammit! Dammit to bloody hell!"
He started to move toward her, but she looked up at him through the
veil of her hair and bared her teeth. "Don't you dare touch me. I mean
it. I'll do it myself."
"We're not getting off to a real promising start here, Francie."
"You go to hell!" Jeans hobbling her ankles, she hopped the three steps
back to the car, sat down hard on the front seat, and finally
extricated herself from the pants. Then she stood up in T-shirt,
underpants, and sandals. "There! And I'm not taking another thing off
until I feel like it."
"Sounds fair to me." He opened his arms to her. "You want to cuddle up
here for a minute and catch your breath."
She did. She really did. "I suppose."
She curled into his chest. He held her for a moment, and then he tilted
back her head and began kissing her again. She'd sunk so low in her own
estimation that she didn't even try to impress him; she just let him do
the work. After a while, she realized that it felt nice. His tongue
touched hers and his splayed hand pressed against the bare skin of her
back. She lifted her arms and wrapped them around his neck. He reached
under her shirt again and his thumbs began to toy with the sides of her
breasts and then slid over onto the nipples. It felt so good—shivery
and warm at the same time. Had the sculptor played with her breasts? He
must have, but she didn't remember. And then Dallie pushed her T-shirt
above her breasts and began teasing her with his mouth—his beautiful,
wonderful mouth. She sighed as he sucked gently on one nipple and then
the other. Somewhat to her surprise, she realized her own hands were
once again beneath his shirt, kneading his bare chest. He picked her up
in his arms, walked forward with her curled into his chest, and then
laid her down.
Over the trunk of his Riviera.
"Absolutely not!" she exclaimed.
"Give it a chance," he replied.
She opened her mouth to tell him that nothing in the world would
convince her to be mauled while she was stretched out on the trunk of a
car, but he seemed to take her open mouth as some sort of invitation.
Before she could frame her words he started kissing her again. Without
quite knowing how it happened, she heard herself moan as his kisses
grew deeper, hotter. She arched her neck to him, opened her mouth,
thrust her tongue, and forgot about her demeaning position. He reached
down and encircled her ankle with his fingers, then pulled her leg up.
"Right here," he crooned softly. "Put your foot right up here next to
the license plate, honey."
She did just as he asked.
"Move your hips forward a little bit. That's good." His voice sounded
thick, not as calm as usual, and his breathing was faster than normal
as he rearranged her. She pulled at his T-shirt, wanting to feel his
bare skin against her breasts.
He peeled it over his head and then began tugging at her underpants.
"Dallie . . ."
"It's all right, darlin'. It's all right." Her underpants disappeared
and her bottom settled on cold metal dusted with road grit. "Francie,
that package of birth control pills I spotted in your case wasn't just
there for decoration, now, was it?"
She shook her head, unwilling to break the mood by offering any lengthy
explanations. When her periods had unaccountably stopped a few months
ago, her physician had told her to quit taking her birth control pills
until they resumed. He had assured her that she couldn't get pregnant
until then, and at the moment that was all that mattered.
Dallie's hand closed over the inside of one of her thighs. He moved it
slightly away from the other and began stroking her skin lightly, each
time coming closer to the one part of her that she didn't find all that
beautiful, the one part of her that she would just as soon have kept
hidden away, except that it felt so warm and quivery and strange. "What
if somebody comes?" she cried as he brushed against her.
"I'm hoping somebody will," he replied huskily. And then he stopped
brushing, stopped teasing, and touched her . . . really touched her.
Inside.
"Dallie . . ." Her voice was half moan, half cry.
"Feel good?" he muttered, his fingers sliding gently in and out.
"Yes. Yes."
While he played with her, she closed her eyes against the slice of
Louisiana moon above her head so that nothing would distract her from
the wonderful feelings that were rushing through her body. She turned
her cheek and didn't even feel the dirt from the trunk rub against her
skin. His hands grew less patient. They spread her legs farther apart
and pulled her hips closer to the edge. Her feet were balanced
precariously on the bumper, separated by a Texas license plate and some
dusty chrome. He fumbled with the front of his jeans and she heard the
zipper give. He lifted her hips.
When she felt him push inside her, she gave a small gasp. He bent over
her, his feet still on the ground, but drew back slightly. "Am I
hurting you?"
"Oh, no. It—it feels so good."
"It's supposed to, honey."
She wanted him to believe she was a wonderful lover—to do everything
right—but the whole world seemed to be sliding away from her, making
everything dizzy, wavery, and mushy with warmth. How could she
concentrate when he was touching her that way, moving like that? She
suddenly wanted to feel more of him. Lifting her foot from the bumper,
she wrapped one knee around his hips, the other around his leg, pushing
against him until she had absorbed as much of him as she could.
"Easy, honey," he said. "Take your time." He began moving inside her
slowly, kissing her, and making her feel as good as she'd ever felt in
her life. "You with me, darlin'?" he murmured softly in her ear, the
sound slightly hoarse.
"Oh, yes . . . yes. Dallie . . . my wonderful Dallie . . . my lovely
Dallie ..." A cacophony of sound seemed to explode in her head as she
came and came and came.
He heaved hard, and something halfway between a moan and groan escaped
him. The sound gave her a feeling of power, touched fire to her
excitement, and she came again. He quivered over her for a wonderfully
interminable length of time and then grew heavy.
She turned her cheek so that it pressed against his hair, felt him dear
and beautiful and real against her, inside her. She noticed that their
skin was stuck together and that his back felt moist beneath her hands.
She felt a small drop of perspiration fall from him onto her bare arm
and realized she didn't care. Was this what it meant to be in love? she
wondered dreamily. Her eyelids drifted open. She was in love. Of
course. Why hadn't she realized it long before this? That was what was
wrong with her. That was why she'd been feeling so unhappy. She was in
love.
"Francie?" he murmured.
"Yes?"
"You all right?"
"Oh, yes."
He eased himself up on one arm and smiled down at her. "Then how 'bout
we head for the motel and try it again on top of those sheets you were
so set on?"
On the drive back, she sat in the middle of the front seat and leaned
her cheek against his shoulder while she chewed a piece of Double
Bubble and daydreamed about their future.
briefcase in one hand and a bag from Zabar's perched on her opposite
hip. Inside the bag was a container of golden figs, a sweet Gorgonzola,
and a crusty loaf of French bread, all she needed for a perfect working
night dinner. She set down her briefcase and placed the sack on the
black granite counter in her kitchen, leaning it against the wall,
which had been painted with a hard burgundy enamel. The apartment was
expensive and stylish, exactly the sort of place where the
vice-president of a major advertising agency should live.
Naomi frowned as she pulled out the Gorgonzola and set it on a pink
glazed porcelain plate. Only one small stumbling block lay between her
and the vice-presidency she craved—finding the Sassy Girl. Just that
morning, Harry Rodenbaugh had sent her a stinging memo threatening to
turn the account over to one of the agency's "more aggressive men" if
she couldn't produce her Sassy Girl in the next few weeks.
She kicked off her gray suede pumps and nudged them out of the way with
a stockinged toe while she removed the rest of her purchases from the
sack. How could it be so difficult to find one person? Over the past
few days, she and her secretary had made dozens of phone calls, but not
one of them had run
the girl to ground. She was out there, Naomi knew, but
where? She rubbed her temples, but the pressure did nothing to relieve
the headache that had been plaguing her all day.
After depositing the figs in the refrigerator, she picked up her pumps
and headed wearily out of the kitchen. She would take a shower, put on
her oldest bathrobe, and pour herself a glass of wine before she
started on the work she'd brought home. With one hand, she began
unfastening the pearl buttons at the front of her dress, while with the
elbow of her other arm, she flicked on the living room light switch.
"What's doin', sis?"
Naomi shrieked and spun toward her brother's voice, her heart jumping
in her chest. "My God!"
Gerry Jaffe lounged on the couch, his shabby jeans and faded blue work
shirt out of place against the silky rose upholstery. He still wore his
black hair in an Afro. He had a small scar on his left cheekbone and
tired brackets around those full lips that had once driven all of her
female friends wild with lust. His nose was the same—as big and bold as
an eagle's. And his eyes were deep black nuggets that still burned with
the fire of the zealot.
"How did you get in here?" she demanded, her heart pounding. She felt
both angry and vulnerable. The last thing she needed in her life right
now was another problem, and Gerry's reappearance could only mean
trouble. She also hated the feeling of inadequacy she always
experienced when Gerry was around—a little sister who once again didn't
measure up to her brother's standards.
"No kiss for your big brother?"
"I don't want you here."
She received a brief impression of an enormous weariness hanging over
him, but it vanished almost immediately. Gerry had always been a good
actor. "Why didn't you call first?" she snapped. And then she
remembered that Gerry had been photographed by the newspapers a few
weeks before outside the naval base in Bangor, Maine, leading a
demonstration against stationing the Trident nuclear submarine there.
"You've been arrested again, haven't you?" she accused him.
"Hey, what's another arrest in the Land of the Free, the Home of the
Brave?" Uncoiling himself from
the sofa, he held out his
arms to her and gave her his most charming Pied Piper grin. "Come on,
sweetie. How 'bout a little kiss?"
He looked so much like the big brother who used to buy her candy bars
when she had asthma attacks
that she nearly smiled. But her temporary
softening was a mistake. With a monstrous growl, he vaulted over her
glass and marble coffee table and came for her.
"Gerry!" She backed away from him, but he kept coming. Baring his
teeth, he turned his hands into
claws and came lurching toward her in
his best Frankensteinian manner. "The Four-Eyed Fang-Toothed Phantom
walks again," he growled.
"I said stop it!" Her voice rose in pitch until it was shrill. She
couldn't deal with the Fang-Toothed Phantom now— not with the Sassy
Girl and the vice-presidency and her headache all plaguing her. Despite
the passing years, her brother never changed. He was the same old
Gerry—larger than life,
just as outrageous as ever. But she wasn't
nearly as charmed.
He lurched toward her, his face comically distorted, eyes rolling,
playing the game he'd teased her with
for as long as she could
remember. "The Fang-Toothed Phantom lives off the flesh of young
virgins." He leered.
"Gerry!"
"Succulent young virgins!"
"Stop it!"
"Juicy young virgins!"
Despite her irritation, she giggled. "Gerry, don't!" She backed away
toward the hallway, not taking her eyes off him as he advanced
inexorably toward her. With an inhuman shriek he made his lunge. She
screamed as he caught her up into his arms and began spinning her in a
circle. Ma! she wanted to shout. Ma, Gerry's teasing me! In a sudden
rush of nostalgia, she wanted to call out for protection to the woman
who now turned her face away whenever her older child's name was
mentioned.
Gerry sank his teeth into her shoulder and bit her just hard enough so
that she would squeal again, but
not hard enough to hurt her. Then he
stiffened. "What's this?" he cried in outrage. "This is awful stuff.
This isn't a virgin's flesh." He took her over to the sofa and dumped
her unceremoniously.
"Shit. Now
I'm going to have to settle for pizza."
She loved him and she hated him, and she wanted to hug him so much that
she jumped up off the sofa and gave him a sucker punch right in the arm.
"Ow! Hey, nonviolence, sis."
"Nonviolence, my ass! What the hell is wrong with you, barging in here
like this? You're so damned irresponsible. When are you going to grow
up?"
He didn't say anything; he just stood there looking at her. The fragile
good humor between them faded. His Rasputin eyes took in her expensive
dress and the stylish pumps that had fallen to the floor. Pulling out a
cigarette, he lit it, still watching her. He had always had the ability
to make her feel inadequate, personally responsible for the sins of the
world, but she refused to squirm at the disapproval that gradually came
over his expression as he surveyed the material artifacts of her world.
"I mean it, Gerry," she went on. "I want you out of here."
"The old man must finally be proud of you," he said tonelessly. "His
little Naomi has turned into a fine capitalist pig, just like all the
rest."
"Don't start on me."
"You never told me how he reacted when you married that jap." He gave a
bark of cynical laughter. "Only my sister Naomi could marry a Jap named
Tony. God, what a country."
"Tony's mother is American. And he's one of the leading biochemists in
the country. His work has been published in every important—" She broke
off, realizing she was defending a man she no longer even liked. This
was exactly the sort of thing Gerry did to her.
Slowly she turned back to face him, taking some time to study his
expression more closely. The weariness she thought she had glimpsed
earlier seemed once again to have settled over him, and she had to
remind herself it was merely another act. "You're in trouble again,
aren't you?"
Gerry shrugged.
He really did look tired, she thought, and she was still her mother's
daughter. "Come on out to the kitchen. Let me get you
something to eat." Even with Cossacks trying to break down the door of
the cottage, the women in her family would make everyone sit down to a
five-course dinner.
While Gerry smoked, she fixed him a roast beef sandwich, adding an
extra slice of Swiss cheese, just the way he liked it, and putting out
a dish of the figs she had bought for herself. She set the food in
front of him and then poured herself a glass of wine, watching
surreptitiously as he ate. She could tell he was hungry, just as she
could tell that he didn't want her to see exactly how hungry, and she
wondered how long it had been since he'd eaten a decent meal. Women
used to stand in line for the honor of feeding Gerry Jaffe. She
imagined they still did, since her brother continued to have more than
his fair share of sex appeal. It used to enrage her to see how casually
he treated the women who fell in love with him.
She made him another sandwich, which he demolished as efficiently as
he'd eaten the first one. Settling down on the stool next to him, she
felt an illogical stab of pride. Her brother had been the best of them
all, with Abbie Hoffman's sense of the comic, Tom Hayden's discipline,
and Stokely Carmichael's fiery tongue. But now Gerry was a dinosaur, a
sixties radical transplanted into the Age of Me First. He attacked
nuclear missile silos with a ball-peen hammer and shouted power to the
people whose hearing had been blocked by the headsets of their Sony
Walkmans.
"How much do you pay for this place?" Gerry asked as he crumpled his
napkin and got up to walk over to the refrigerator.
"None of your business." She absolutely refused to listen to his
lecture on the number of starving children she could feed on her
monthly rent.
He pulled out a carton of milk and took a glass from the cupboard.
"How's Ma?" His question was casual, but she wasn't fooled.
"She's having a little trouble with arthritis, but other than that,
she's okay." Gerry rinsed out the glass and set it in the top rack of
her dishwasher. He had always been neater than she was. "Dad's good,
too," she said, suddenly unable to tolerate the idea of making him ask.
"You know he retired last summer."
"Yeah, I know. Do they ever ask about . . ."
Naomi couldn't help
herself. She got up from the stool and walked over to rest her cheek
against her brother's arm. "I know they think about you, Ger," she said
softly. "It's just—it's been hard on them."
"You'd think they'd be proud," he said bitterly.
"Their friends talk," she replied, knowing how lame the excuse was.
He gave her a brief, awkward hug and then quickly moved away, going
back into the living room. She found him standing next to the window,
pushing the draperies back with one hand and lighting a cigarette with
the other.
"Tell me why you're here, Gerry. What do you want?"
For a moment he stared out over the Manhattan skyline. Then he stuck
his cigarette into the corner of his mouth, pressed the palms of his
hands together in an attitude of prayer, and sketched a small bow
before her. "Just a little sanctuary, sis. Just a little sanctuary."
She stared at him for a moment and then exclaimed, "Oh, no! I'm not
lying down on that creature-infested ground. I mean it, Dallie."
"I don't much like the ground myself."
"Then how? Where?"
"Come on, Francie. Stop plotting and planning and trying to make sure
you always have your best side turned to the camera. Let's just kiss a
little bit so things can take their natural course."
"I want to know where, Dallie."
"I know you do, honey, but I'm not going to tell you because you'll
start worrying about whether it's color-coordinated or not. For once in
your life, take a chance at doing something where you may not come out
looking your best."
She felt as if he had held a mirror up in front of her—not a very large
mirror and one with clouded glass, but a mirror nonetheless. Was she as
vain as Dallie seemed to believe? As calculating? She didn't want to
think so, and yet... She stuck out her chin and began defiantly peeling
down her jeans. "All right, we'll do it your way. But just don't expect
anything spectacular from me." The slim denim pantlegs caught on her
sandals. She bent over to struggle with them, but the heels stuck in
the folds. She gave the jeans another tug and tightened the snare. "Is
this turning you on, Dallie?" she fumed. "Do you like watching me? Are
you getting excited? Dammit! Dammit to bloody hell!"
He started to move toward her, but she looked up at him through the
veil of her hair and bared her teeth. "Don't you dare touch me. I mean
it. I'll do it myself."
"We're not getting off to a real promising start here, Francie."
"You go to hell!" Jeans hobbling her ankles, she hopped the three steps
back to the car, sat down hard on the front seat, and finally
extricated herself from the pants. Then she stood up in T-shirt,
underpants, and sandals. "There! And I'm not taking another thing off
until I feel like it."
"Sounds fair to me." He opened his arms to her. "You want to cuddle up
here for a minute and catch your breath."
She did. She really did. "I suppose."
She curled into his chest. He held her for a moment, and then he tilted
back her head and began kissing her again. She'd sunk so low in her own
estimation that she didn't even try to impress him; she just let him do
the work. After a while, she realized that it felt nice. His tongue
touched hers and his splayed hand pressed against the bare skin of her
back. She lifted her arms and wrapped them around his neck. He reached
under her shirt again and his thumbs began to toy with the sides of her
breasts and then slid over onto the nipples. It felt so good—shivery
and warm at the same time. Had the sculptor played with her breasts? He
must have, but she didn't remember. And then Dallie pushed her T-shirt
above her breasts and began teasing her with his mouth—his beautiful,
wonderful mouth. She sighed as he sucked gently on one nipple and then
the other. Somewhat to her surprise, she realized her own hands were
once again beneath his shirt, kneading his bare chest. He picked her up
in his arms, walked forward with her curled into his chest, and then
laid her down.
Over the trunk of his Riviera.
"Absolutely not!" she exclaimed.
"Give it a chance," he replied.
She opened her mouth to tell him that nothing in the world would
convince her to be mauled while she was stretched out on the trunk of a
car, but he seemed to take her open mouth as some sort of invitation.
Before she could frame her words he started kissing her again. Without
quite knowing how it happened, she heard herself moan as his kisses
grew deeper, hotter. She arched her neck to him, opened her mouth,
thrust her tongue, and forgot about her demeaning position. He reached
down and encircled her ankle with his fingers, then pulled her leg up.
"Right here," he crooned softly. "Put your foot right up here next to
the license plate, honey."
She did just as he asked.
"Move your hips forward a little bit. That's good." His voice sounded
thick, not as calm as usual, and his breathing was faster than normal
as he rearranged her. She pulled at his T-shirt, wanting to feel his
bare skin against her breasts.
He peeled it over his head and then began tugging at her underpants.
"Dallie . . ."
"It's all right, darlin'. It's all right." Her underpants disappeared
and her bottom settled on cold metal dusted with road grit. "Francie,
that package of birth control pills I spotted in your case wasn't just
there for decoration, now, was it?"
She shook her head, unwilling to break the mood by offering any lengthy
explanations. When her periods had unaccountably stopped a few months
ago, her physician had told her to quit taking her birth control pills
until they resumed. He had assured her that she couldn't get pregnant
until then, and at the moment that was all that mattered.
Dallie's hand closed over the inside of one of her thighs. He moved it
slightly away from the other and began stroking her skin lightly, each
time coming closer to the one part of her that she didn't find all that
beautiful, the one part of her that she would just as soon have kept
hidden away, except that it felt so warm and quivery and strange. "What
if somebody comes?" she cried as he brushed against her.
"I'm hoping somebody will," he replied huskily. And then he stopped
brushing, stopped teasing, and touched her . . . really touched her.
Inside.
"Dallie . . ." Her voice was half moan, half cry.
"Feel good?" he muttered, his fingers sliding gently in and out.
"Yes. Yes."
While he played with her, she closed her eyes against the slice of
Louisiana moon above her head so that nothing would distract her from
the wonderful feelings that were rushing through her body. She turned
her cheek and didn't even feel the dirt from the trunk rub against her
skin. His hands grew less patient. They spread her legs farther apart
and pulled her hips closer to the edge. Her feet were balanced
precariously on the bumper, separated by a Texas license plate and some
dusty chrome. He fumbled with the front of his jeans and she heard the
zipper give. He lifted her hips.
When she felt him push inside her, she gave a small gasp. He bent over
her, his feet still on the ground, but drew back slightly. "Am I
hurting you?"
"Oh, no. It—it feels so good."
"It's supposed to, honey."
She wanted him to believe she was a wonderful lover—to do everything
right—but the whole world seemed to be sliding away from her, making
everything dizzy, wavery, and mushy with warmth. How could she
concentrate when he was touching her that way, moving like that? She
suddenly wanted to feel more of him. Lifting her foot from the bumper,
she wrapped one knee around his hips, the other around his leg, pushing
against him until she had absorbed as much of him as she could.
"Easy, honey," he said. "Take your time." He began moving inside her
slowly, kissing her, and making her feel as good as she'd ever felt in
her life. "You with me, darlin'?" he murmured softly in her ear, the
sound slightly hoarse.
"Oh, yes . . . yes. Dallie . . . my wonderful Dallie . . . my lovely
Dallie ..." A cacophony of sound seemed to explode in her head as she
came and came and came.
He heaved hard, and something halfway between a moan and groan escaped
him. The sound gave her a feeling of power, touched fire to her
excitement, and she came again. He quivered over her for a wonderfully
interminable length of time and then grew heavy.
She turned her cheek so that it pressed against his hair, felt him dear
and beautiful and real against her, inside her. She noticed that their
skin was stuck together and that his back felt moist beneath her hands.
She felt a small drop of perspiration fall from him onto her bare arm
and realized she didn't care. Was this what it meant to be in love? she
wondered dreamily. Her eyelids drifted open. She was in love. Of
course. Why hadn't she realized it long before this? That was what was
wrong with her. That was why she'd been feeling so unhappy. She was in
love.
"Francie?" he murmured.
"Yes?"
"You all right?"
"Oh, yes."
He eased himself up on one arm and smiled down at her. "Then how 'bout
we head for the motel and try it again on top of those sheets you were
so set on?"
On the drive back, she sat in the middle of the front seat and leaned
her cheek against his shoulder while she chewed a piece of Double
Bubble and daydreamed about their future.
Chapter
13
Naomi Jaffe Tanaka let herself into her apartment, a Mark Cross13
briefcase in one hand and a bag from Zabar's perched on her opposite
hip. Inside the bag was a container of golden figs, a sweet Gorgonzola,
and a crusty loaf of French bread, all she needed for a perfect working
night dinner. She set down her briefcase and placed the sack on the
black granite counter in her kitchen, leaning it against the wall,
which had been painted with a hard burgundy enamel. The apartment was
expensive and stylish, exactly the sort of place where the
vice-president of a major advertising agency should live.
Naomi frowned as she pulled out the Gorgonzola and set it on a pink
glazed porcelain plate. Only one small stumbling block lay between her
and the vice-presidency she craved—finding the Sassy Girl. Just that
morning, Harry Rodenbaugh had sent her a stinging memo threatening to
turn the account over to one of the agency's "more aggressive men" if
she couldn't produce her Sassy Girl in the next few weeks.
She kicked off her gray suede pumps and nudged them out of the way with
a stockinged toe while she removed the rest of her purchases from the
sack. How could it be so difficult to find one person? Over the past
few days, she and her secretary had made dozens of phone calls, but not
one of them had run
the girl to ground. She was out there, Naomi knew, but
where? She rubbed her temples, but the pressure did nothing to relieve
the headache that had been plaguing her all day.
After depositing the figs in the refrigerator, she picked up her pumps
and headed wearily out of the kitchen. She would take a shower, put on
her oldest bathrobe, and pour herself a glass of wine before she
started on the work she'd brought home. With one hand, she began
unfastening the pearl buttons at the front of her dress, while with the
elbow of her other arm, she flicked on the living room light switch.
"What's doin', sis?"
Naomi shrieked and spun toward her brother's voice, her heart jumping
in her chest. "My God!"
Gerry Jaffe lounged on the couch, his shabby jeans and faded blue work
shirt out of place against the silky rose upholstery. He still wore his
black hair in an Afro. He had a small scar on his left cheekbone and
tired brackets around those full lips that had once driven all of her
female friends wild with lust. His nose was the same—as big and bold as
an eagle's. And his eyes were deep black nuggets that still burned with
the fire of the zealot.
"How did you get in here?" she demanded, her heart pounding. She felt
both angry and vulnerable. The last thing she needed in her life right
now was another problem, and Gerry's reappearance could only mean
trouble. She also hated the feeling of inadequacy she always
experienced when Gerry was around—a little sister who once again didn't
measure up to her brother's standards.
"No kiss for your big brother?"
"I don't want you here."
She received a brief impression of an enormous weariness hanging over
him, but it vanished almost immediately. Gerry had always been a good
actor. "Why didn't you call first?" she snapped. And then she
remembered that Gerry had been photographed by the newspapers a few
weeks before outside the naval base in Bangor, Maine, leading a
demonstration against stationing the Trident nuclear submarine there.
"You've been arrested again, haven't you?" she accused him.
"Hey, what's another arrest in the Land of the Free, the Home of the
Brave?" Uncoiling himself from
the sofa, he held out his
arms to her and gave her his most charming Pied Piper grin. "Come on,
sweetie. How 'bout a little kiss?"
He looked so much like the big brother who used to buy her candy bars
when she had asthma attacks
that she nearly smiled. But her temporary
softening was a mistake. With a monstrous growl, he vaulted over her
glass and marble coffee table and came for her.
"Gerry!" She backed away from him, but he kept coming. Baring his
teeth, he turned his hands into
claws and came lurching toward her in
his best Frankensteinian manner. "The Four-Eyed Fang-Toothed Phantom
walks again," he growled.
"I said stop it!" Her voice rose in pitch until it was shrill. She
couldn't deal with the Fang-Toothed Phantom now— not with the Sassy
Girl and the vice-presidency and her headache all plaguing her. Despite
the passing years, her brother never changed. He was the same old
Gerry—larger than life,
just as outrageous as ever. But she wasn't
nearly as charmed.
He lurched toward her, his face comically distorted, eyes rolling,
playing the game he'd teased her with
for as long as she could
remember. "The Fang-Toothed Phantom lives off the flesh of young
virgins." He leered.
"Gerry!"
"Succulent young virgins!"
"Stop it!"
"Juicy young virgins!"
Despite her irritation, she giggled. "Gerry, don't!" She backed away
toward the hallway, not taking her eyes off him as he advanced
inexorably toward her. With an inhuman shriek he made his lunge. She
screamed as he caught her up into his arms and began spinning her in a
circle. Ma! she wanted to shout. Ma, Gerry's teasing me! In a sudden
rush of nostalgia, she wanted to call out for protection to the woman
who now turned her face away whenever her older child's name was
mentioned.
Gerry sank his teeth into her shoulder and bit her just hard enough so
that she would squeal again, but
not hard enough to hurt her. Then he
stiffened. "What's this?" he cried in outrage. "This is awful stuff.
This isn't a virgin's flesh." He took her over to the sofa and dumped
her unceremoniously.
"Shit. Now
I'm going to have to settle for pizza."
She loved him and she hated him, and she wanted to hug him so much that
she jumped up off the sofa and gave him a sucker punch right in the arm.
"Ow! Hey, nonviolence, sis."
"Nonviolence, my ass! What the hell is wrong with you, barging in here
like this? You're so damned irresponsible. When are you going to grow
up?"
He didn't say anything; he just stood there looking at her. The fragile
good humor between them faded. His Rasputin eyes took in her expensive
dress and the stylish pumps that had fallen to the floor. Pulling out a
cigarette, he lit it, still watching her. He had always had the ability
to make her feel inadequate, personally responsible for the sins of the
world, but she refused to squirm at the disapproval that gradually came
over his expression as he surveyed the material artifacts of her world.
"I mean it, Gerry," she went on. "I want you out of here."
"The old man must finally be proud of you," he said tonelessly. "His
little Naomi has turned into a fine capitalist pig, just like all the
rest."
"Don't start on me."
"You never told me how he reacted when you married that jap." He gave a
bark of cynical laughter. "Only my sister Naomi could marry a Jap named
Tony. God, what a country."
"Tony's mother is American. And he's one of the leading biochemists in
the country. His work has been published in every important—" She broke
off, realizing she was defending a man she no longer even liked. This
was exactly the sort of thing Gerry did to her.
Slowly she turned back to face him, taking some time to study his
expression more closely. The weariness she thought she had glimpsed
earlier seemed once again to have settled over him, and she had to
remind herself it was merely another act. "You're in trouble again,
aren't you?"
Gerry shrugged.
He really did look tired, she thought, and she was still her mother's
daughter. "Come on out to the kitchen. Let me get you
something to eat." Even with Cossacks trying to break down the door of
the cottage, the women in her family would make everyone sit down to a
five-course dinner.
While Gerry smoked, she fixed him a roast beef sandwich, adding an
extra slice of Swiss cheese, just the way he liked it, and putting out
a dish of the figs she had bought for herself. She set the food in
front of him and then poured herself a glass of wine, watching
surreptitiously as he ate. She could tell he was hungry, just as she
could tell that he didn't want her to see exactly how hungry, and she
wondered how long it had been since he'd eaten a decent meal. Women
used to stand in line for the honor of feeding Gerry Jaffe. She
imagined they still did, since her brother continued to have more than
his fair share of sex appeal. It used to enrage her to see how casually
he treated the women who fell in love with him.
She made him another sandwich, which he demolished as efficiently as
he'd eaten the first one. Settling down on the stool next to him, she
felt an illogical stab of pride. Her brother had been the best of them
all, with Abbie Hoffman's sense of the comic, Tom Hayden's discipline,
and Stokely Carmichael's fiery tongue. But now Gerry was a dinosaur, a
sixties radical transplanted into the Age of Me First. He attacked
nuclear missile silos with a ball-peen hammer and shouted power to the
people whose hearing had been blocked by the headsets of their Sony
Walkmans.
"How much do you pay for this place?" Gerry asked as he crumpled his
napkin and got up to walk over to the refrigerator.
"None of your business." She absolutely refused to listen to his
lecture on the number of starving children she could feed on her
monthly rent.
He pulled out a carton of milk and took a glass from the cupboard.
"How's Ma?" His question was casual, but she wasn't fooled.
"She's having a little trouble with arthritis, but other than that,
she's okay." Gerry rinsed out the glass and set it in the top rack of
her dishwasher. He had always been neater than she was. "Dad's good,
too," she said, suddenly unable to tolerate the idea of making him ask.
"You know he retired last summer."
"Yeah, I know. Do they ever ask about . . ."
Naomi couldn't help
herself. She got up from the stool and walked over to rest her cheek
against her brother's arm. "I know they think about you, Ger," she said
softly. "It's just—it's been hard on them."
"You'd think they'd be proud," he said bitterly.
"Their friends talk," she replied, knowing how lame the excuse was.
He gave her a brief, awkward hug and then quickly moved away, going
back into the living room. She found him standing next to the window,
pushing the draperies back with one hand and lighting a cigarette with
the other.
"Tell me why you're here, Gerry. What do you want?"
For a moment he stared out over the Manhattan skyline. Then he stuck
his cigarette into the corner of his mouth, pressed the palms of his
hands together in an attitude of prayer, and sketched a small bow
before her. "Just a little sanctuary, sis. Just a little sanctuary."
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