Keeping Secrets (25 page)

“You’re kidding.”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life.”

“How come I never heard of this place?”

Jesse shrugged. “Why would you? All that’s been over now for almost forty years.”

“A saloon?” Emma imagined spangled dancing girls, swinging doors, silver revolvers flashing from holsters laced against hard cowboy thighs.

“‘Speakeasy’ would be a better word. Come the end of Prohibition and the beginning of the Depression, it fell on hard times. But it sure saw its share of good ones.”

Emma crossed over and ran her fingers along the dust-shrouded rosewood bar. The mirror behind it was splotched and blackened in spots but still intact.

“How do you know all this?”

“Bart, my neighbor, brought me up here. His family’s lived in the mountains for three generations.”

“Who owns it now?”

“I do. I just bought it—am about to start fixing it up. When it’s finished, I’ll run it again as an inn.

“Like the Awahnee in Yosemite?”

“Sure. Smaller, of course, more intimate. But…” He paused and Emma knew that he was seeing his dream in his head. “It would be more than that, too.”

And then Emma’s own fantasy raised its hand. “Would it have a restaurant?”

“Sure, and a gallery.” He swept one arm wide, along with the flashlight, and Emma saw the acres of space.

“For your work.”

He shrugged. “And others’.”

“An art gallery in the woods.” Emma walked right into Jesse’s dream. “With all this height, the work could be hung one above another like in Gertrude Stein’s living room. Huge paintings that can’t be hung anyplace else. For openings, there’ll be chamber music, giant potted palms. It’ll be like the Plaza. A Sunday afternoon saloon salon.”

Jesse laughed. “And after they’re drunk on culture and champagne, they can spend the night. Here.” He took her hand. “There’s another wing. I’ll show you.”

He pulled her with him in a rush to show it all, through a cavernous kitchen, a pantry, a storeroom, down a hall and up a flight of half-broken stairs. There were ten more rooms opening off a narrow hall. Some still had beds that now looked like nests.

“Do you think people sneak in to sleep here sometimes?” Emma whispered in the dark.

“Probably not now. But who’s to know?”

Emma’s imagination took another leap. She shivered. It
could
harbor criminals, robbers, bandits. It could.

“Follow me,” Jesse was saying now, leading the way back down the stairs. “I’ll go ahead and catch you if you fall.”

He took her hand again.
Oh!
She’d been so swept away by Jesse’s dream that she’d forgotten for a time about the actual physical man. But now the electricity that had for hours in the Claremont House kept her sitting on the edge of her chair traveled up through her fingers, down her arm, warmed her breast.

She clutched his hand tighter.

He turned, and the glow of the flashlight illuminated her face.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She looked into his eyes and then she had to look away. For she was drawn into them, into him, like a moth. And he knew that in an instant. She could see recognition of his power in the corners of his eyes, his mouth. He knew that he could pull her back the other way, lead her into one of those little rooms, and have his way, her way, their way.

“Sure,” she said, “just a little out of breath.”

Their steps were loud as they made their way back down the stairway.

Then they were again in the living room, Jesse’s flashlight once more lighting the hearth, the fireplace.

But there, just there, leaning against that wall, what was that?

Emma took his wrist and redirected the light.

“Look!”

Jesse said nothing, but held the torch steady.

Emma moved forward from his side. “It’s a painting.”

“Yes.”

“God, it’s so beautiful.
She’s
so beautiful.”

The strong golden light fell upon a woman’s face that stared right back into her own. The seashell skin was like porcelain, all of the naked flesh from her forehead right down to her feet. There was a hint of Botticelli about her, the translucent drape, the long swinging rope of silver hair.

“She’s breathtaking.”

“Umm,” Jesse murmured.

“Is that your work?”

He nodded yes. “I used to work in oils when I was young.”

“But why did you hang it here? Someone will steal it.”

He laughed a little. “It’s not hung. It’s painted on the wall.”

Emma turned and looked at him. His eyes were still on the woman.

“Then you can’t ever take her away.”

“I don’t want to.”

Emma looked around the dilapidated room. “Lot of work here.”

But she really had no idea. Her imagination ran ahead, skipping right over the renovation to the finished product. She had moved right into Jesse’s fantasy, merging it with her own most recent dream of opening a restaurant. She saw herself in a white apron, stirring huge stock pots, cooking astonishing meals, just one menu each night, what she had was what you ate, like a favorite place in Provence. Wouldn’t it be the most fun in the world, to own a place like this where you could feed people, tuck them in at night, see them like family in the morning? A place where they’d feel at home?

“I didn’t think I had the eyes right till now.”

Emma started at the sound of Jesse’s voice. In her mind she’d been out gathering lettuce from the kitchen garden she’d planted outside the door.

“What?”

“The eyes. I didn’t think I had them right till now.”

Emma followed his gaze back to the portrait. She found herself staring straight into lake-blue eyes. It was like looking into a mirror.

Jesse switched off the flash. In the moonlight the painting shimmered.

He moved one step closer and placed his hands on her shoulders.

Then the fantasy in which she’d been playacting dropped away. This was the here and now. She reached up and with one forefinger touched his bottom lip.

“You have the most beautiful mouth.” She’d been wanting to say that for hours. They both leaned just a fraction closer and their mouths joined in a kiss.

His arms held her closer and tighter until she felt that she had stepped through the wall of his chest and was now inside.

“Jewish eyes,” he murmured. “That’s what I was thinking about when I was doing the painting.”

“Southern Baptist-Jewish eyes.”

“You’ll have to tell me about that.” And then he ran the edge of his tongue down the side of her neck. Her flesh tingled as if his tongue were electric.

“Another time,” she said.

“Sure. We’ve got plenty.”

But not right then they didn’t, for their mouths had so much to do without talking.

From behind the remnants of a sofa Jesse produced a drop cloth and laid it on the floor. He lit a kerosene lantern, turning that corner of the room sepia.

He stared straight into her eyes as his fingers unfastened the buttons of her blouse. She didn’t look away this time, but held his gaze fast.

Later, she didn’t remember what he did with her lace-trimmed camisole and panties, but they disappeared as if he had sucked them off and chewed them up before he began to nibble on her flesh.

“Ears,” he whispered. “You have the most wonderful ears. You saved them for me under all that golden hair.”

He explored every crevice with his tongue, his teeth, his lips, until she moaned with the thrust of his tongue as if he had penetrated her and pinned her to the floor. Her ear was burning, hot, open, and she heard herself screaming into the big reverberating room,
“Jesse, fuck me, fuck me,”
when he wasn’t even close.

“Oh, no,” he whispered. “My dear, we’ve only begun.”

For Jesse was good, very good. He flipped her over on her stomach, one hand pinned beneath her. The other he bent against her back.

He held her in poses. In her mind, which always saw pictures when the sex was good, they were still lifes, spare in composition, illustrated haiku.

The swan tucked her long

neck into the dark water

Pierced by his gilt stake.

But he didn’t enter her. He took her with his mouth again, his tongue tracing the curves of her behind.

His control was complete. She couldn’t move a hand. She couldn’t caress him in return but could only receive what he chose to give.

Her whole body was alive, hungry, parched for his lips as he concentrated on only one place at a time, giving it his total attention while the rest of her quivered, waiting in line.

“I want you everywhere,” she moaned. “Touch me all over.”

Jesse stopped for a moment, lifted his head from her as if he were a drinking animal who had heard a rustle in the forest.

And in that moment he loosened his hold and Emma turned beneath him. She was desperate for his touch, his weight, everywhere upon her.

He withheld himself for just an eternity more, lingering above her, only an inch of air separating them as he leaned upon his elbows staring down into her face.

“Please,” she pushed the word between clenched teeth.

“Please what?”

You could butter your bread with his words, she thought, and eat it for your lunch.

“Please touch me, please fuck me, please be with me.”

“Where?” he whispered.

She pushed her breast up into him.

“There,” she answered.

“Where?”

Her pelvis grazed his.

“Where?”

Her mouth sucked his into hers, her teeth devouring his lips.

“I want you,” she said.

“Swear?”

“I swear.”

“Swear?”

“I swear.”

“There now, then,” he cried, and he pushed himself into her with no further preamble, but then none was needed, as she had never been more ready in her life. He lifted her knees upon his shoulders, and her screams bounced off the walls where just minutes, or was that hours ago now, they had talked about pictures being hung. They rode together for what seemed like days, but then Emma would never know, for she was completely adrift in time and space. They rode through foreign landscapes, along paths, beside silver streams, and then finally Emma could see a clearing at the top. Together they were approaching a high mountain plain.

Beneath him Emma hummed. Butterflies swarmed around her breast, around her knees, and then they dove right through her center and fluttered, fluttered now in waves, fluttered out her mouth, her ears, her nose, her eyes, out the top of her head, and on, free now, out the windows.

* * *

Some time later as they lay stretched out upon the blanket with the lamplight shining on their damp bodies, Emma murmured, “I have to go and buy a wheel of Brie.”

Jesse’s laugh rumbled up to the high ceiling, where Emma, with her eyes closed, could still see one butterfly stuck. “I don’t think so. Not tonight.”

“Jesus. I’ve really screwed up. What am I going to do?”

And then Jesse opened his mouth and out flew the words before he had time to think.

“You’re going to come and live with me.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, but what am I going to do about the cheese? What am I going to do about that wedding party night after tomorrow?”

“What the hell do you mean, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’?” Jesse was leaning now on one elbow, staring down into her face.

“I mean, yes, I accept, and thank you very much. But that still doesn’t get me a wheel of Brie.”

“‘Thank me very much.’
Fuck
me very much.”

“Oh, Jesse, don’t be so melodramatic. Didn’t you know this was going to happen from the moment you hit me in the head with that door?”

He paused. Well, yes. He’d hoped so.

“So? So what’s the big deal? Why the big surprise if you could see it coming a mile off?” Then she burst into laughter and gathered him into an embrace.

But she was bluffing, Miss Emma Fine was, trembling with terror and bluffing all the way. For she knew no more about living with love (nor did he) than she knew about renovating houses, much less an undertaking as large as Jesse and Skytop Lodge. And she didn’t know that when she held her nose, for she’d never learned to hold her breath, and jumped off the diving board into the depths of Jesse Tree, she was way, way, way over her head.

That first year went like quicksilver. Emma didn’t have time to think.

Jesse had bought an old Ford pickup truck. They named it Elvira.

“You choose,” Jesse said, standing before her with a fan of color samples.

She didn’t hesitate a moment. They painted Elvira the rosy pink that had become Emma’s trademark. Then they loaded her up with Emma’s things. It took two trips just for her kitchen stuff.

“We should have used movers.”

“Yeah. But they wouldn’t let us sing.”

They sang up and down the mountain. He took the low parts, she the high, and then they reversed. Jesse’s falsetto was something to behold.

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream.