Lace (74 page)

Later, still naked, they pulled the bed straight, but as soon as they’d smoothed the antique patchwork spread Tom gently pushed her back on it and again reached for her breasts. Kate
pulled him down, dodged his hands and instead slid down between his thighs; lying curled between his legs she stroked him, feather-soft, cupped him in her hands. He felt her warmth, the soft
stroking touch of her hand on his cock, then her lips were sucking, soft as a sea anemone, then more insistently. He felt her tongue searching, reaching, sliding, slipping, sucking until Tom could
think of nothing except the scratching fingernails on his inner thighs, that sure insistent mouth, the mounting, quickening pressure of her lips upon him until, with a groan, he climaxed.

Kate, who never knew whether to swallow, spit or dribble, tasted the oddly pungent, acrid almond odour. “What do men like?” she timidly asked Tom later.

Silence, then he said, “Naturally, I can’t speak for the rest of my sex, but when borne on summits of delights such as I have just experienced, I neither know nor care.”

It was six o’clock in the pearly grayness of Monday morning. “You’re quite something,” Tom said. “I don’t want anyone or anything else. But
let’s keep this from the office, huh?”

Naturally, that was impossible. Monday, Kate was a different, sparkling creature, thought Judy, from wan, little Friday Kate. Tom hadn’t been in all weekend and she’d left plenty of
messages, getting crosser and crosser with his answering service. Both of them had been unavailable. Unavailable together all weekend, concluded Judy.

Before Monday was over, Kate had casually asked Judy what Tom’s wife was like. “She’s just a simple all-American girl,” Judy said. “Aged twenty-three, golden hair
and a handspan waist, radiant as the dawn, that sort of thing. . . . No, I’m joking, she’s really ninety-five and the poor woman’s only got one eye, no teeth and these thirteen
lovely children, all very hungry. . . .” She relented. “In fact, they split up before Tom and I joined forces. His ex is all right, there’s nothing wrong with her; she’s
just a spoiled Jewish princess who never stops yacking—heavily into macrobiotic nutrition and meaningful encounter groups. But the two boys are really neat. Tom doesn’t talk about them,
but he sees them as much as he can.”

When they were together, Kate felt an irresistible and seemingly irreversible love for Tom. This wasn’t like her girlish wish to be married to Robert. This wasn’t like the awed
infatuation she’d felt for Toby, her ex-husband. This was a growing, tender lovingness. She didn’t feel hemmed-in, she didn’t feel humble or in any way subservient, she
didn’t want to get on her knees and worship and she didn’t feel that she was putting on an act or altering herself to please him. Not once did she feel the urge to scribble Kate
Schwartz, Mrs. Tom Schwartz or even Kate Ryan-Schwartz. She simply wanted to be with Tom, whenever she could, and to hell with the future. Suddenly Kate’s neat navy suits were seen no more;
instead she appeared in an amethyst linen suit from Yves Saint Laurent that she wore with no blouse underneath. This went down so well that she went back and bought another version in shocking
pink. Shortly afterward she turned up at the office wearing a Spanish orange jersey jumpsuit. Nobody in the office needed to be told that Kate was in love.

Tom also had suddenly changed. He became more affable and mellow, he was seen to smile during office hours and his sharp sarcasm softened. To Kate, he was surprisingly loving, gentle and
generous. Aware of his office reputation as a tightwad, he consciously tried to overcorrect, and Kate loved him for it.

But she didn’t want diamonds, she didn’t need emeralds—all she wanted was Tom.

The first edition of
VERVE!
had a good cover but it was not well printed. It was way over budget and the advertising was sparse. Nevertheless, they all had secret joyous
moments when women on buses were seen to be reading
VERVE!
or someone was spotted actually
buying
the thing from a newsstand.

The second issue contained better text, better pictures and marvellous beauty coverage, but again, it was badly printed. Again the ads were sparse, and it was a day late on the stands.

The third issue was always the test, after initial curiosity had died down. For the third issue they had to go bigger. Pat frantically tapped her secret network of moonlighters—journalists
on the staff of other publications who were prepared to make extra money by unofficially and anonymously taking on extra work. The third edition was still thin on advertising, because the agencies
weren’t prepared to take space in the early issues of a magazine that had now lost its novelty value but wasn’t firmly established. They were sitting back and waiting to see whether
VERVE!
was going to be a fast folder.

But the third issue had an exclusive Jane Fonda cover, and a lead interview that they were able to tag “How to Enjoy Your Man in Bed” and link with their sexual pleasure survey.

The ads came in for the fourth issue and
VERVE!
took off.

Kate was frightened of her new happiness. Everything was going too well; she was frightened of allowing herself to be vulnerable again. She already knew that what triggered
love for her was harsh rejection and an abject, humiliating need for approval. She knew that as soon as she fell for a man, she turned into a grovelling doormat and asked to be kicked in the teeth.
She knew that the last thing she needed in a permanent mate was another man who would make her feel unlovable.

So she was terrified of admitting to herself that she was in love. She hesitated to commit herself. In order to test the strength of her feelings for Tom, she started going out with other men,
rather as some women flirt in front of their husbands with men who don’t interest them in the slightest. It wasn’t difficult for Kate to find other men, because success is a powerful
aphrodisiac. Besides, at thirty-nine, Kate’s invisible, sexual glow was as much in evidence as it had been when she was seventeen. For the next few months, tough Burt Reynolds look-alikes
waited for Kate in the small reception area of the
VERVE!
office. Kate broke dates with Tom at the last minute, and other men’s shirts and shaving gear were obtrusively obvious when he
stayed overnight at Kate’s apartment.

Tom scratched his head and decided to turn a blind eye to her odd behaviour. He seemed to be the first man (except maybe for Scotty) who was genuinely fond of Kate as opposed to being
irresistibly attracted to her. He loved her for what she was, and he didn’t demand what he realised she couldn’t yet give him—her trust. So although he found it difficult, Tom
ignored her exasperating behaviour, ignored the muscular hulks in the lobby and her other little tedious traps to test his love. Tom understood Kate’s insecurity better than she did herself,
and the reason was that he had suffered similarly.

One Saturday afternoon, after she had asked some question about his family, Tom clasped his hands behind his head as Kate snuggled up to his bare chest. “To a certain extent, I can
understand how you feel about your father,” he said, “because what
I
resented in
my
life was my mother. She was a very domineering, typical Ukrainian boss-mother. If I
asked my father for anything, he’d say, ask your mother. He was a huge, strong man—he ’d been a professional fighter—so physically he would never lift a finger to his wife
or to me, because he was afraid of really hurting us. And my mother knew this, so it gave her complete control of the household.
He
would decide whether Roosevelt was right to appoint
Eisenhower supreme commander in Europe, but he wasn’t allowed to decide whether I could have a new pair of shoes—because she made all the decisions. I resented her complete control and
the way she threw it in his face. They had an argument or a fight every single day for thirty-seven years, after which she died. I still resent those arguments. I also resented the fact that she
always criticised everything I did.
Nothing
was ever good enough for that woman. I felt guilty because I wasn’t good enough for her and guilty because I felt resentful.”

“That’s how I felt, too. What did you do about it?”

“Look, I’ll show you.” He gently pushed her aside, jumped out of bed and padded back with his wallet in one hand. “I look at that.” He pulled out a white business
card upon which was scrawled in capital letters FUCK GUILT.

“I taught myself to accept guilt and then forget guilt. Sometimes I have to say I’m sorry, and sometimes I have to compensate for some revolting thing I’ve done. But then I
simply go out and get on with my life, and somewhere up in the heavenly accounting department, I assume that an angel is adjusting my profit-and-loss sheet. I’m sure I’ll end up showing
a net profit.”

The other side of the card said FUCK ’EM ALL.

“It helps me keep cool,” Tom explained, “stops me from paying too much attention to other people’s opinions instead of relying on my own.”

Kate nestled closer to him.

“There’s one further thing we have to discuss,” Tom said quietly. “I’d appreciate it if you don’t fake orgasm
ever
with me again. Keep it for these
handsome hairy hulks that leave their shirts here.”

There was a pause, then she said sulkily, “I don’t always.”

“I know,” he said gently, pulling her to his chest, and stroked her hair softly, as he carefully said something that he’d been meaning to say for a long time. “Kate,
darling, sex is the closest possible communication between two people and faking is lying.” He gave an exasperated sigh. “I can’t think why women do it.”

“Out of politeness, sleepiness or feelings of inferiority,” Kate said defensively. “I suppose I do it because I’m frightened that I’m not up to standard; I
don’t get there in ten point nine seconds or whatever the going rate is.”

“What’s the point? Where is it going to get you? Why don’t you
help
me to make you feel wonderful? Faking isn’t helping, it’s sabotaging yourself and our
relationship because you’re sometimes too damn prim to tell me what you want, you silly little prude.” Tom nibbled her left earlobe. “You have as much right as a man to an orgasm
and the way you reach it is your business.
You
know what’s right for you and until ESP is with us, it’s up to you to show me, otherwise how the hell am I to know?”

So Kate told him a bit. Then she told him a bit more.

Then Tom swung into action and pulled out his entire repertoire. First he went down on her, and then she went down on him and then they tried it on the kitchen table and knocked the milk jug
over, so they moved to the living room floor and took up sixty-nine positions on the carpet and then Tom impaled Kate and staggered around the living room thus, and all the time they asked each
other all the relevant questions, such as do you like it like this, harder, softer, faster, slower, and then Tom produced a little packet and said don’t for God’s sake sneeze and he
laid out three lines each on the low glass table in the living room and offered Kate his hollow gold telephone dialer from Tiffany’s and she dutifully said it was wonderful, which was nothing
less than the truth . . . except that it left Kate with a slight chemical tang at the back of her throat and in her heart. Compared with the dizzy excitement that Tom aroused in her, the coke
didn’t quite make it. Somehow the whole scene hadn’t been about loving, but about scoring.

“How was it for you this time?” asked Tom tenderly, and she started to say wonderful, but then heard herself say, “. . . Darling, if we’re telling the truth . . . I
thought it was strung-out and artificial.”

A flash of blind panic crossed his face, followed by a defensively aggressive expression that meant he was about to hurt this person as hard as he could for attacking him when he had laid down
his defenses and offered her his all. He opened his mouth and was about to tear her to pieces so that she’d never be able to put herself together again, when he paused to consider. Then an
expression of relief crossed his face and he said softly, “I know what you mean.”

Kate said tentatively, “I think I like you better than that.”

Tom said, “I think we both like each other enough not to play games.”

Suddenly Kate was no longer afraid that he might despise her or leave her if she didn’t perform satisfactorily. She no longer felt that she had to impress him or seek his approval.

“It’s not that I don’t like conformist sex, I just don’t like it according to the self-improvement books,” she confessed. “I’m conformist all right, but
I can’t perform if some dominant person in bed is determined to make me come, or if I feel that some invisible doctor is nodding wisely as he watches my efforts from the ceiling.”

She wriggled onto her bare stomach on the greengage carpet and propped her head on her hands. “What I
really
like sexually,” she said thoughtfully, “is corny rubbish.
Candlelight and sheer chiffon and being pressed to his manly breast by his muscular arms and feeling the seas pounding relentlessly in my ears and fierce waves surging up the unresisting beach as I
sink back and he murmurs thickly in my ear, God, darling, I never knew it could be like this.”

She turned to Tom, also lying naked on the green carpet, and added, “Corny rubbish is what really makes me feel sexy.”

“If I suddenly started spouting purple prose, you’d only laugh,” said Tom with conviction, “and what’s more to the point, I’d feel like a fool. So I
don’t know how I’ll handle the dialogue, but I promise you that next weekend is going to be in the land of corny rubbish. . . .”

“. . . By the seaside?”

“Connecticut,” Tom promised. “The complete experience. Sandy beaches, pounding spray, lobster dinner and galloping white horses. And there we will play at total
corniness.”

The following Friday evening, they arrived at a seashore cottage that belonged to a friend of Tom. On Saturday, they ran along the beach, climbed gray rocks with the wind whipping their hair,
licked the salt from each other’s lips and ran along the lace-fringe of the gray ocean, barefoot, with their jeans rolled up. On Sunday Tom tried, and failed, to climb a pine tree, and then
they went for a ride. (It had taken Tom over an hour on the phone from New York to arrange for the horses to be waiting for them after breakfast outside the cottage door.) Tom had been on a horse
only once before, in his teens, when he’d spent a weekend on a dude ranch outside El Paso. Kate amused him with her prim English trot, and then she amazed him by making her bay hop, one foot
at a time, over a fallen tree trunk. Tom couldn’t get his stubborn chestnut mare to move—she took no notice of the human on her back, but kept putting her head down and cropping grass
in a determined manner, as if she intended to shave the whole of Connecticut.