Keeper of the Light (20 page)

She pulled the belt he was wearing out of the loops of his jeans and began fitting the new belt through. It was slightly too wide, and the pressure of her fingers as she worked with the belt made him hard in an instant. He turned away from her, embarrassed.

She looked up at him from her seat on his bed.

“Paul,” she said, her dark blue eyes big and sad. “I don’t get it. Don’t you want me?”

He looked down at her, startled. “I…
yes.
But I didn’t think you…”

She groaned, curling her fingers into the pockets of his jeans. “God, Paul, I’ve been going crazy trying to figure out how to make you fall in love with me.”

“I’ve been in love with you for weeks,” he said. “Here. I can prove it.” He pulled out the top drawer of his desk and handed her a poem, one of many he’d written about her in the past few weeks. It made her cry.

She stood up to kiss him, a far longer, far steamier kiss than the one they’d shared on stage. Then she walked over to his door and turned the lock. He felt his knees start to buckle and wondered how he would get through this. “I’ve never made love before,” he admitted, leaning awkwardly against his desk. He’d had a number of girlfriends in high school, two in particular, who were drawn to his sensitivity and his poems, but he was still very much a virgin.

Annie, however, was not.

She smiled. “So
that’s
it,” she said, as though that explained everything. “Well, I’ve been doing it since I was fifteen, so you don’t have a thing to worry about.”

Her words shocked him at first. Disappointed him. But then he felt relieved, because as she began kissing him, touching him, it was quickly obvious that she did indeed know what she was doing.

“You are to do absolutely nothing,” she said. She undressed him to his boxer shorts and rolled him onto his stomach. Then she straddled him and began a long, deep massage, her hands soft and cool at first, heating up as she worked them over his skin. She rolled him onto his back and took off her T-shirt and bra. Paul reached up to touch the creamy white skin of her breasts, but she caught his hand and set it back down at his side.

“You may look but you may not touch,” she said. “I told you, you have to just lie here. Tonight is entirely for you.”

She made love to him the way she did everything in her life—generously, putting his pleasure ahead of her own.

In the weeks that followed, he realized that she could give endlessly, but she could not take. When he’d try to touch her during their lovemaking, she’d brush his hand away. “You don’t need to do that,” she’d say, and he soon realized that she meant it, that she’d be overcome with discomfort, thrown completely out of equilibrium, when he tried to turn the tables and give to her, in bed or out.

He bought her flowers once, for no particular reason, and her smile faded when he gave them to her. “These are way too pretty for me,” she said, her cheeks crimson. Later that day, she gave the roses to another girl in the dorm who had admired them.

He bought her a scarf for her birthday, and the next day she took it back, slipping the twelve dollar refund into the pocket of his jeans. “Don’t spend your money on me,” she said, and she would not listen to his protests. Yet her gifts to him kept coming, and he grew increasingly uncomfortable accepting them.

One day he and Annie were eating lunch in the cafeteria when they were joined by a pretty brunette Annie had known in elementary school. “You were the nicest girl at Egan Day School,” she said to Annie. Then she turned to Paul. “She was by far the most popular kid in the entire school. She was one of those girls you wanted to hate because she was so popular that she left no room at all for the competition, but she was so nice you just couldn’t help but like her.”

That night Annie lay next to him in his bed and told him how she had earned her popularity. “I have an enormous allowance,” she said, her voice oddly subdued, almost flat. “I bought the other kids candy and toys. It worked.”

He pulled her closer. “Didn’t you think you were likable just as you were?”

“No. I thought I was an ugly little girl with terrible red hair. My mother fussed with my hair every morning, and she’d say how horrible it was, how bad I looked. I’d end up crying practically every day on my way to school.”

“You’re so beautiful. How could she do that to you?”

“Oh, well.” Annie swept her arm through the air. “I don’t think she meant to hurt me. She just…I guess she has her own problems. Anyhow, I really panicked when I got to high school and there were zillions of new kids to meet. I knew candy and toys weren’t going to work anymore. I had to find some other way to get people to like me.”

“Did you find a way?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“I found a way to get the boys to like me, anyhow.”

“Oh, Annie.”

“Don’t hate me.”

He stroked her cheek. “I
love
you. You don’t have to do that anymore. You’ve got me.”

“I know.” She snuggled close. “Hold me tighter, Paul.”

He did, loving that she would confide in him, and he thought the time was right to ask her the question that had been on his mind since the first time they’d made love.

“Something bothers me, Annie,” he said. “Do you ever come when we’re making love?”

He felt her shrug. “No, but it doesn’t matter. I’m content just to be close to you and see you enjoying yourself.”

He was disappointed. Embarrassed. “I must be doing something wrong.”

“It’s not you, Paul. I never have.”

He leaned away so that he could look at her. “You’ve made love since you were fifteen and you’ve never…?”

“I truly don’t care. It’s never been important to me. I’d see a guy and want to hold him, to feel good that way, warm and loved. If sex was what I had to do to get that, so be it.”

He pulled her close again. “If you really want to make me happy, Annie, then let me make
you
feel good for a change.”

“You do,” she said. “You make me feel wonderful.”

“You know what I mean.”

She shrank away from him. “I figure it must not be possible for me,” she said. “I think it would have happened by now.”

He was unwilling to talk to his friends about something so personal, so he spent the next afternoon in the library hunting for a solution to Annie’s dilemma. He found a book filled with advice and illustrations which he couldn’t bring himself to check out from the wizened old gentleman behind the desk. So he sat in a secluded corner and read it, from cover to cover.

That night in her dorm room, he sat down on her bed and patted the space next to him. She joined him, wrapping her arms around him and planting a wet kiss on his neck.

“I read a sex manual today,” he said.

“What?” She jerked away from him.
“Why?”

“Because it’s your turn tonight.” He reached for the hem of her T-shirt, but she stopped him.

“No,”
she whined.

“Annie.” He held her by the shoulders. “Do this for me if not for yourself, all right?”

“What if it doesn’t work? You’ll be disappointed in me… You’ll…”

“I’m not going to be disappointed in you or stop loving you or anything else you’re worried about. It’ll be fine. But you have to relax.”

She bit her lip. “Turn off the light,” she said.

He did as he was told, and then returned to the bed where he undressed her, rather methodically, and sat behind her with his back against the wall.

“What are we
doing?
Aren’t you going to take off your clothes, too?” she asked.

“Nope.” He spread his legs wide and pulled her back against his chest. The illustration from the manual was burned into his brain. All day he’d thought of how it would feel to hold Annie this way, to touch her, to finally feel her respond. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her shoulder. She was shivering.

“This is nice,” she said. “You could just hold me like this. I’d rather do this than…”

“Shh. Rest your legs against mine. That’s it.”

“This is stupid. I feel ridiculous.”

He stroked her arms, her shoulders. “You have to tell me what feels good,” he said, moving his hands to her breasts. “Let me know if anything hurts.”

“That doesn’t hurt.” She giggled and seemed to relax in his arms, but she went rigid once he lowered his hands to her thighs.

“Come on, Annie, relax.”

“I’m
trying.
I just don’t like all the attention being on me. I don’t see why…
Oh.
”

His fingertips had found their mark. Annie drew in her breath and her legs suddenly opened wider, pressing hard against his own, her hands grasping the denim that covered his thighs. He slipped a finger of his left hand inside her and she shuddered.

“This feels good to me, too, Annie,” he said, encouraging her, but it was unnecessary. She was letting herself go, letting herself
take.
When she came, he had one sudden pulse of terror that she might be faking, but then the waves of contractions circled his finger, and he felt her go limp.

That night was a turning point for them, not just that it made sex better—she continued to refer to sex as a “by-product” of being close—but that it shifted their relationship to a different plane, one in which Annie allowed things to be done for her. The addiction, though still an addiction, was mutual now.

His family adored her. He and Annie visited Philadelphia twice that year, and Annie slipped right into that female dominated household as easily as if she’d been born into it.

“Your family’s so warm, Paul,” she told him. “You don’t know how lucky you are.”

She would not take him to meet her own parents, however, even though they lived no more than a half hour’s drive from school. After much arm-twisting on his part, she finally agreed to take him home with her on her father’s fiftieth birthday. “You talk about him all the time,” he said. “I want to meet him.”

She did talk about her father a great deal, her voice often swelling with her pride in his accomplishments as a physician. She worked for a month on his birthday gift—gold cufflinks she had designed herself—showing Paul the progress she was making on them each time he came over.

Paul held the small package containing the cufflinks on his lap as he and Annie turned onto the tree-lined street leading to her house. She had been quiet during the entire trip, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel of her red convertible.

“What time is it?” she asked, as they passed one enormous mansion after another.

Paul looked at his watch. “Ten past four.”

“Oh, God. My mother will throw a fit.”

“We’re not
that
late.”

“You don’t understand. She has this thing about time. When I was little and she promised to take me someplace, she wouldn’t do it if I was even a minute late getting ready.”

Paul frowned at her. “You’re kidding.”

She shook her head. “Let’s tell them your last name is Macy,” she suggested.

“Why?”

“Just for fun.”

He stared at her, confused. “It’s not my name,” he said.

She stopped at a stop sign and looked over at him. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Paul, but my parents are very prejudiced.” She lowered her hands to her lap and began kneading them together. “Do you understand? I mean, unless you’re just like them, they… They’ll like you better if they think you’re…”

His cheeks burned. “Do you want me to lie about what my parents do for a living, too?”

She looked down at her hands. “This is why I didn’t want you to meet them.”

“I won’t lie, Annie.” Back then he never did. She said nothing, pressing her foot once more on the gas pedal.

“I thought you loved me,” he said.

“I
do.
I just want them to love you too.” She turned into a long driveway, and he caught a glimpse of a Tudor-style house far down the expanse of manicured lawn before it disappeared behind a row of pines. “They have my life planned out for me, Paul,” she said. “I’m supposed to be majoring in something useful—we had a terrible fight when I told them I wanted to be an artist—and I’m supposed to marry one of the eligible sons of their elite little circle of friends. Do you understand now why I didn’t want to bring you here?”

Yes, he understood, but she was a little late in telling him her reasons.

An elderly woman dressed in a dark uniform and white apron let them in. She kissed Annie’s cheek and led them into the living room. “Your mum and dad will be down shortly, dear.” The woman left the room, and Annie smiled at him nervously. He shivered. The living room was huge and cold, like a cavern.

“You get used to it,” Annie said. She was perspiring despite the chill.

Her father walked into the room first. He was a thin, good-looking man, tan and fit and stern. His thick hair was mostly gray. He bussed his daughter’s cheek.

“Daddy, this is Paul,” Annie said, avoiding the surname issue altogether.

“Paul…?” Dr. Chase shook his hand.

“Macelli,” Paul said, the name sounding suddenly dirty to his ears. He shook the man’s hand with a sense of defeat, imagining that he was already being ruled out as a serious candidate for the hand of his daughter.

Annie’s mother made more of an attempt to feign warmth, but Paul felt the coldness in her hand when she touched her fingertips to his. She was a plain-looking woman, perhaps even homely, despite the heavy use of cosmetics. Her red hair was drawn back under serious control into a bun.

He could barely eat the slab of roast beef a second servant put on his plate after they’d sat down to dinner. He didn’t balk at the probing questions about his family, however. Instead, he began to enjoy them, making it clear to Annie’s parents that they had the son of blue-collar workers eating off their fine china, perhaps even sleeping with their daughter. He talked at length about the fireworks business and he told them about the time his mother cleaned the house of the mayor of Philadelphia.

During dessert—a birthday cake in the shape of a tennis racket—Annie presented her father with the set of gold cufflinks. “Why, thank you, princess.” Dr. Chase leaned over to kiss Annie’s cheek and then set the box next to his plate. Paul had the feeling the cufflinks would find themselves in the back of a drawer somewhere, if not in the trash.