Half of Paradise (32 page)

He had to wait a moment in order not to embarrass himself before he could stand up and follow her into the bedroom. His shirt stuck to his back with perspiration. She drew the curtains on the window and undressed and lay on the bed with her hair spread out on the pillow. Her skin was white and her waist was slender and she wore the gold cross and chain around her throat, and when he looked at her he felt something drop inside him. He lay beside her and kissed her. She reminded him of how she had looked the night they had the argument in Biloxi.

“I’m sorry to hurt you,” he said.

She put her arms around his neck and held her cheek to his.

“I always loved you. I was never as happy as when I was with you,” she said.

“You’re a swell girl.”

“Do it to me. I want you so badly.”

“You won’t cry anymore?”

“No. I promise. It was just because I didn’t want everything to turn out bad again. Oh, Avery.”

“Does it hurt you?”

“It’s lovely. I’d forgotten how good it is. Do you still like me?”

“You’re wonderful. Was there anyone between?” he said.

“No.”

“You’re my lady.”

“I was always your lady.”

“My darling lady.”

She kissed him hard on the mouth and he felt her body tense as her arms tightened around his back.

“Hold me. Do it harder. Oh Avery darling hurt me please hurt me. It’s so good. My lovely sweet darling hold me. I love you terribly.”

They lay in bed and drank wine and smoked cigarettes. He pulled her to him and kissed her on the cheek and bit the lobe of her ear. The back of her neck was damp. She held herself close to him and put her forehead under his chin.

“I’m sorry for the way I acted,” she said.

“You don’t feel bad about it?”

“Of course not. Do it to me once more.”

“Aren’t you tired?”

“I could never be tired of this.”

“Your roommate might come home.”

“We have time. Let me do it to you. We’ve never done it like this. I want to do it every way we can.”

She changed her position. He looked up at the gold cross swinging from her throat and her hair on her shoulders.

“Am I good like this?” she said.

“It’s fine.”

“I want to always make it good for you.”

“You’re nice inside,” he said.

“You’re being bad.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I want you to be bad. I want you to say bad things.”

“I like your thighs,” he said.

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“Very much?” she said.

“I love your thighs.”

“Now you are treating me bad.”

“I do love you.”

He pulled her down on him and felt the softness of her breasts against him and rubbed his hands over her back and down the insides of her legs. She propped herself on her arms again and smiled down at him, and he looked at the whiteness of her breasts and the curve of her neck and her dark Creole eyes and then he held her very tightly and he felt his loins grow warm and then hot and everything went out and away from him. She leaned down and kissed him and then lay beside him and put her arm across his chest. He felt empty and cool inside, breathing her perfume and the smell of her hair, and he didn’t want to move or get up or even talk.

“We’ll have to get dressed, darling,” she said later. “I’m sorry.”

“Let’s go to a hotel.”

“It’s too late. You have to work tomorrow.”

“Lock your roommate out,” he said.

“You’re unkind.”

“Your roommate is unkind.”

“We’ll go to a hotel tomorrow evening and stay together all night.”

“Do you promise?” he said.

“We can get some good wine and you can drink and I’ll take care of you.”

“You’re my wonderful lady.”

“I’ll always be your lady.”

They dressed and she made up the bed and combed her hair. She took the two glasses and the wine bottle into the dining room and put them on the table.

“Good night,” he said.

“Good night. I love you.”

“You’re very pretty.”

“Come over as soon as you get off from work,” she said.

“Will you keep your promise?”

“Yes. Kiss me good night.”

“Pretty lady.”

“Good night,” she said.

“Good night.”

He met her at the apartment the next evening, and they had dinner at a small French restaurant on Burgundy Street that had red-checkered cloths on the tables, and they sat at the bar and ate oysters on the half shell and drank beer, and the Negro waiter opened the oysters with a knife and squeezed a lemon on the muscle and if it didn’t twitch he threw it away and opened another. They bought a bottle of Liebfraumilch from a package store and they stayed in a hotel outside the Vieux Carré and she was there beside him whenever he wanted her. They finally went to sleep after midnight, and he awoke later and felt it grow in him again. Her body was cool from the breeze through the window and her legs were long and white. They lay undressed on top of the sheets with the green wine bottle in an ice bucket by the side of the bed, and when the sky turned dark blue just before morning he didn’t want to see the sun come up and the night to end.

The following afternoon he had to check in with the parole board, and afterwards they went to the beach and rented a cabana under some palm trees. They watched the waves roll up on the sand and the crimson sun going down beyond the water’s edge and a single sailboat with a red sail tacking in the wind. They brought their bathing suits and dressed inside the canvas cabana, and after dark they went swimming in the surf. The moon reflected off the water and the palm trees hissed in the breeze. In the distance they could see the glow of the city. She ran through the breakers and swam out quite far from shore and then swam back and knelt in the shallows, sitting on her heels, laughing and panting for breath, with the small waves breaking around her waist. They went back to the cabana and lay down in the sand. He kissed her on the mouth and smelled the salt in her hair. The moonlight came through the open flap of the cabana and shone on her ankles, and he wanted to do it right there but there were other people farther down the beach.

“As soon as we get home,” she said.

“What
will we do with your roommate?”

“We’ll send her out.”

“You’re getting cruel also,” he said.

“She won’t mind. She’s quite nice.”

“I don’t like her.”

“You don’t know her.”

“I don’t like her, anyway. She stays home too much. Tell her to have an affair with someone,” he said.

“Wasn’t it nice in the hotel? Let’s go there again.”

“I don’t get paid until Saturday.”

“I have money.”

“You always have money,” he said.

“Daddy spoiled me. I want you to spoil me too.”

“I’ll spoil you in a particular way. Will you really ask your roommate to go?”

“Yes, darling.”

“I’ll spoil you the rest of the night.”

“I wish we could always be in bed and do good things to each other,” she said.

“We could close the flap now.”

“Those people might come by.”

He slipped the strap of her black bathing suit off her shoulder and put his hand on her breast.

“You’re taking advantage,” she said.

“I’ll do other things when we’re in bed again.”

“We’ll do them together. But not now.”

“You have nice breasts.”

“Oh, Avery.”

“They are.”

“You’re terrible.”

“Do you like me terrible?” he said.

“Yes. I love it.”

He unrolled the canvas flap over the door opening, and as they dressed he looked at the smooth curve of her waist and the indentation of her stomach when she bent over to get her sandals, and he felt that same feeling of something dropping inside him. They rolled their bathing suits in a towel and walked up the beach along the white sand by the edge of the surf towards the lighted walkway and the amusement park where her car was. A few hundred yards behind the beach they could hear the music from the carousel and see the brightly lit Ferris wheel revolving against the sky. They stopped at one of the open-air stands in the park and drank a beer with the sea breeze blowing in from the Gulf. Her car was in the darkened gravel parking lot, and he drove them back to town. It was the same low-slung, wide-based, Italian sports convertible that she had gotten for her graduation from high school. It had four forward gears, and when he stepped on the accelerator he could feel the guttural roar of the exhaust through the steering wheel and the power of the take-off pressed him back comfortably in the thick leather of the seat. She sat close to him with both her hands on his arm and her cheek on his shoulder and her wet hair whipping behind her in the wind. They drove along those wide curving cement drives outside New Orleans that wind through groves of oak and cypress trees with the moss hanging in the branches, and the night air smelled of lilacs and jasmine and freshly cut grass.

They were alone at the apartment and they made love in her bed. She got up to make sandwiches in the kitchen and she brought them back on a silver tray with two iced drinks of cognac and orange juice. They ate the cold chicken sandwiches and drank the brandy and then did it again.

“Am I making you too tired?” he said.

“Don’t be silly. It gets better every time.”

“The cognac makes it better.”

“Darling?”

“What is it?” he said.

“Can those parole board people do anything to you?”

“Why do you ask that now?”

“I was worried about it. I know you don’t like to talk about it, but I worry.”

“I just have to go see them once a month.”

“You looked angry when you came out today,” she said.

“I get sick at my stomach every time I go in there.”

“Don’t do anything that would make them send you back. I couldn’t stand it.”

“I won’t.”

“I’m sorry for talking about it. I know you hate it,” she said.

“It’s all right.”

“Does it bother you much?”

“No,” he said, thinking of the nightmares he had been having in which he was back in the work camp, expecting to wake to the morning whistle for breakfast and roll call and then the ride in the trucks out to the line.

“I know it bothers you. I can tell,” she said.

“You’re a good lady.”

“I wish I could take it all away. Do you think about it when you’re with me?”

“I think about your thighs.”

“Always think about my thighs.”

“I like to stay between them.”

“Tell me something else.”

“You have good hands,” he said.

“Do you really forget the work camp when you’re with me?”

“Yes.”

“I’m so glad. I want you to be happy. We can stay in a good position and you don’t have to think about anything except me.”

“Can you do it again?”

“I’ll do it any time you want me.”

“I want you all the time,” he said.

“Tell me bad things. I want you to. I think I’m becoming degenerate.”

“Is it good?” he said.

“It’s wonderful. Do it hard. Make me hurt.”

“You’re worse than I am.”

“Is there any other way to do it?”

“Not that I’ve thought about.”

“We’ll find new ways,” she said.

“I don’t think so.”

“Let’s drink some more cognac and make it nicer. Good Lord, I know I’m becoming degenerate.”

“Do you want some cognac?” he said.

“Yes. You can feel the fire go down inside you. Will you mind if I leave you a minute? I’ll be right back.”

She returned with the square, dark-colored bottle and filled each of their glasses half full. She sat beside him and drank hers down fast. It was strong brandy and it made her eyes water.

“Can you feel it get hot inside you?” she said. “Isn’t it nice? I’m going to have some more.”

“You’ll be tight.”

“Will you like me better?” she said.

“I like you any way.”

She drank more of the brandy and set the empty glass on the floor by the bottle.

“God, that’s strong,” she said.

He kissed her mouth and neck.

“I’m sorry. You’ve been waiting,” she said.

“I love you very much.”

“I’m so happy with you, Avery.”

He kissed her again and he felt the coolness of her arms around his neck and then it began to swell inside him and he held her very tight with his face in her hair and he felt it go through his body and his entire existence was concentrated in that one moment and he could feel the muscles in the back of his legs quiver and then he was quiet and relaxed inside, and they went to sleep.

*   *   *

They saw each other every evening, and sometimes they stayed in the apartment or checked into a hotel outside the Quarter or went dancing or went to the parties that one of her friends gave, and one time when the pipeline shut down for a couple of days because of rain and Avery was free they spent the night in a small guest house down by the beach and he rented some flounder gaffs and flashlights and they hunted along the edge of the surf for the flat-sided fish lying in the sand, he barefoot and in dungarees and stripped to the waist and she in toreador pants with a white blouse held closed by a knot tied at the stomach; and he cleaned the fish on the beach and built a fire from pieces of driftwood while she opened two bottles of beer from the cooler they had brought with them. He fixed the fish on sticks, and they baked them over the fire and peeled them off in strips to eat. They sat in the sand, still warm from the day’s sun, and drank another beer. There was no one else on the beach, and they put out the fire and undressed and went swimming. Later, they walked along the edge of the water and hunted for seashells with the surf rolling over their bare feet and the moon low on the horizon and the sky clouded from a thunderstorm that was building in the Gulf.

They went to a party one Saturday night and left early. It was like the other parties they had gone to. The rooms were crowded with people, and there was a progressive combo trying to play above the noise; the bass player passed out in the hallway, and Wally, the redheaded, blue-eyed Cambridge boy with a taste for Scotch, gave an imitation of a Baptist preacher. Someone opened the door of a bedroom at the wrong time and there was a scene and a girl began crying and left by herself since her date had been one of those in the bedroom. The people in the upstairs apartment knocked on the walls and floor, and Wally went out and came back with a bum he had found in Jackson Park and the bum got sick in the flower bed of the courtyard and Wally was told to leave by the hostess. The knocking on the walls and floor continued, and finally Avery and Suzanne left by the side door without saying good night to anyone and walked down the quiet cobblestone street in the dark and breathed the cool night air. They stopped in a bakery and bought some pastry and went to her apartment to make coffee.