Pinball (12 page)

“She lived on the ground floor of a large country house near the university.” Domostroy went on. “The owner, who occupied its top floor, was a retired attorney,
once a partner in a prominent Washington law firm and in his younger years one of the top White House counsels.”

“And did he leave White House stationery lying around?” asked Andrea with a smirk.

“Even if he had, at that time I had better things to think of than filching fancy stationery for letters I might one day write—as a woman at that!—to a rock star with a disappearing act.”

“Better things? Such as?” asked Andrea.

“Musical compositions. That was the year I wrote
The Baobab Concerto.
”

Andrea smiled disparagingly. “Which, just a few years later, as I recall, you chose to rewrite because you said it wasn’t good enough. Obviously you had other things on your mind the first time through. That young assistant, to begin with.”

“Correct,” said Domostroy. “Without her, my teaching would have been a drab routine.

“The old man, by the way, lived alone, and despite his advanced age, he insisted on preparing his own meals—thus saving the cost of a cook.

“One Saturday morning my assistant called me and asked if I could come over right away. She had a surprise for me, she said, which might just inspire a musical piece.

“When I got to the house, I found her in the garden wearing an almost transparent chiffon gown from an earlier era and a pair of old-fashioned high-heeled shoes, and as she walked toward me a breeze made the gown cling to her shapely body. Like the Lady of Shalott from the Waterhouse painting in the Tate Gallery, she took me by the hand and led me to the house, where she blindfolded me with a scarf and led me up a flight of stairs.

“We entered a room. From the smell of books and old leather, I guessed we were in the old man’s study.

“The girl led me to a leather sofa and pushed me down onto it. Suddenly, as she placed a wet kiss on my lips, she pulled off the blindfold. I opened my eyes and saw him sitting at the desk not ten feet from us, his head resting on his hands as he stared at the two of us in blind fascination.”

“Him?” asked Andrea.

“The old man, who else?” said Domostroy. “But he didn’t move—he was dead.”

“How long had he been dead?” asked Andrea matter-of-factly.

“Just a few hours. That morning the girl noticed that he hadn’t come down to pick up his copy of the
New York Times.
When she went upstairs, she found him at his desk, already cold, and on an impulse she propped his head on his hands and telephoned me. She had a taste for the bizarre, you see.”

“And silly me, I thought I could surprise you with my punk leather outfit!” Andrea moaned. “Tell me what happened next.”

“Nothing much,” he said. “We went through his things—drawers, files, letter cabinets. His presence definitely excited her—the idea of Death watching Life. She said that the two of us making love then and there would have made a perfect subject for Hieronymus Bosch or Dali.”

“With the old man, I hope, just watching,” interrupted Andrea. “Or was your assistant ready for a more bizarre experiment?”

The aircraft carrier was gone now, and all the small boats had scattered.

“And the stationery?” asked Andrea.

“I took a packet of White House stationery from his desk. As a souvenir,” he said.

“A souvenir,” murmured Andrea. “I wonder of what?”

At odd and unexpected times, Andrea liked to throw Domostroy off balance.

“When my grandfather retired,” she once remarked to him, “he did not want to eat anymore, and when the doctors saved him from starving himself to death, tired of his useless life, like Hemingway, he blew his brains out with a shotgun. Why haven’t you?”

“Because I’m still useful,” said Domostroy. “To myself. To you. I’m happy to be alive.”

“That’s not being useful,” she said, laughing at him. “That’s having an ego!”

Occasionally Andrea would remind him that once she knew who Goddard was, Domostroy would have to go. She would say this perfectly calmly, as if to point out what was obvious: that finding Goddard was the only reason she and Domostroy were together. And she would sometimes say it right after their lovemaking, when she would let him excite her and then, switching roles, would tease and arouse him to cross all thresholds. When there was no more tension in him to release, after begging her to stop pushing him beyond his limits, he would fall asleep, exhausted by excitement, and wake up at her side satiated and serene. Then she would tell him.

Her words inevitably brought back the terror he had often felt before he met her—the terror of driving back each night—alone—from Kreutzer’s to the Old Glory—the black hole of his shrinking universe.

Domostroy knew that if the letters from Andrea and the photographs intrigued Goddard sufficiently, the star would eventually track her down to claim her. The trick would be to make it impossible for Goddard to positively identify Andrea before she could identify him. For if he found out who she was, there would be no reason for him to reveal himself, and all their efforts to discover him would have been in vain. Even if Goddard found Andrea and became her lover, Domostroy reasoned, he must never—not even with her naked body stretched out next to his—be able to make a positive identification on the basis of her looks. Rather, in order to identify her as the White House woman, Goddard must be forced to talk to her at length in hope of making her betray herself by alluding to a thought, a phrase, or an association in one of her letters to him. Domostroy hoped that, during their long verbal exchange, Goddard would trip and reveal himself
first, by involuntarily referring to something Andrea would recognize as having its origin in the letters.

To give Andrea the fullest advantages in the match, Domostroy decided to photograph her in an anonymous motel room rather than in her apartment, which Goddard would probably recognize instantly. He also decided to disguise her. By washing her hair with a color rinse and blowing it dry, he changed its shape and consistency. Then, using body makeup, he slightly altered the indentation of her navel, enlarged and darkened the aureoles of her breasts, and covered several conspicuous moles on her back and thigh. Because she regularly shaved off her pubic hair, he made her put on a pubic wig, a device popular with transvestites and hermaphrodites, which made her vagina look higher set, larger, and more elongated than it really was.

In the many photographs Domostroy took of Andrea, he himself had to be completely invisible. There must be nothing in the picture or in Andrea’s expression or pose to indicate the presence of a man in the room. After preparing her for each pose, he would disengage himself from her, get up, and position the camera so that the photograph would show Andrea’s body—but not her face—and the camera itself, solitary, reflected in a mirror.

As Andrea lay naked on the bed, with the pillows and sheets in disarray, Domostroy would pour oil on her shoulders, neck, breasts, belly, and thighs, and then on himself. Sitting next to her or straddling her, he would massage her with even strokes, starting with his palms at the top of her spine and descending along her back until his thumbs spread her buttocks. Turning her over on her back, he would guide his hands to the circles of her nipples, then press the tips of his thumbs on the nipples, stretching the coronas; he would slide his hands lower and with his thumbs trace oil on her loin, over the contours of her buttocks, on the lips of her vulva. He would pause to pour more oil on her and then, hard, rigid, tense, and
oily, raising her up without warning, her calves slippery against his arms, his chest against the backs of her thighs, he would slide into her with all his force and weight and push in and out of her. Just as her breasts started to rise and fall and she began to twist and moan and scream and toss and strain under him, he would pull away, dash to the camera, and direct it at her as she lay contorted, midway in her need. Then, after the undeveloped picture rolled evenly out of the camera, he would study its emerging contours and colors, checking critically the sharpness of every detail of her body and flesh as they gained contrast and density second by second.

He would move the camera, massage her again, change her position—or the position of her hands on her breasts, her belly, or her mound—and take more pictures of her, glistening as if her body were bathed in sweat. Again he would return to her. Heaving, seeking his mouth, she would strain under him, shuddering, and her hands, slipping along his hips, would grab him and guide him into her flesh. He would thrust into her then, but only until she started to quiver and heave against him. Then he would pull out again and run to the camera.

He took one picture after another, leaving her unfulfilled, screaming, calling him cruel and heartless. When she grew frantic, he would go over to her and with one hand slap her face back and forth while with the other he roughed up her flesh, until she would whimper and let him force her own passive hand between her thighs into her groin. As he rushed back to the camera and moved it closer to photograph her breasts, her thighs, her flesh and her fingers on it, she would start to abuse him again, and he would go over to her. Shouting that it was her idea to excite Goddard by showing him how aroused she could get, he would hit her on her breasts and belly and hips, like a jealous husband in a fight over his wife’s lover. Turning her face down, restraining her in a powerful grip, he would mount her from behind, then dive into her time after time, hurting her more with every thrust, while she thrashed under him, her face buried in the pillow, begging him to let her be.

He photographed her also when she was poised and calm, standing or sitting in the bathtub or with a dryer in her hand and her hair floating over her face to shield it from the camera. Then, to assist his memory of her, he photographed for his own possession each step of her dressing: in panties, putting on stockings and shoes, with her blouse open, with it buttoned up, stepping into her skirt, buttoning it at the waist.

With the passage of time, Domostroy changed his attitude toward Andrea’s place in his life. He still needed her, but he began to resent his need. Though he would rush to be with her, anxious not to miss a single moment of the lovemaking she dispensed so obligingly, as he got to know her better he rebelled more and more against his dependence. He feared that in his relationship with her he had begun to resemble those sexual addicts for whom he had always felt contempt, men and women who came to rely so completely on the guaranteed fulfillment of their own brand of sexual pleasure that they looked for it only in the safety and predictability of private sex clubs such as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

There was another reason for Domostroy’s rebellion. In Andrea’s incessant curiosity about Goddard the man, in her never-ending speculation about his life, his money, his lovers, and his travels, she consistently relegated the most important thing about him—his music—to a position of no great consequence, a view Domostroy found crude and offensive.

“One day,” said Domostroy, gathering Andrea into his arms until their lips touched, then breathing his words into her mouth, “one day you might be lying like this in somebody else’s arms—somebody who might be Goddard—and he might ask you about something—an image, an idea, an association—that he read in one of our letters—
and you’d better be ready for it!” He squeezed her by her shoulders until she twitched in pain. “To make it easier for him to trace you, I plan to refer to some of the subjects you’re currently studying at Juilliard—Chopin’s life and letters, for instance. But you’ll always have to be on guard. Even in the heat of the sack, you’ll have to remember exactly what it was that I wrote and be able to recognize his slightest nuances in trying to find out if it was you who wrote the letters.”

She freed herself from his arms and said waspishly, “Don’t be a fool, Patrick. When Goddard’s in bed with me, he won’t be—like you—cross-examining me. Hell have other things on his mind.”

“Do you think Goddard will miss not seeing my face, or think I’m ugly or scarred?”

“Maybe, but by then he should be in love with the rest of you.”

“He might already be in love with someone else.”

“He might. But if she’s his intimate friend and knows who he is, then he has no mystery for her, and she none for him. If she takes his greatness for granted, she leaves his vanity starved, whereas you in your letters fulfill it. Being his lover, she can at best only fuel his lust—but you can awaken his self-love, the drum major of love. With her, he feels understood. With you, he’s wanted and admired. Imagine his temptation to be with you!”

“Imagine mine!”

“I do. I also know that once Goddard knows where to start looking for you, you and I will have to find new places to see each other. I wouldn’t be safe here, or even at the Old Glory; he—or his spies—might be watching. And you wouldn’t want to lose Goddard merely for the sake of keeping Patrick Domostroy, would you?”

“I certainly would not!” she replied. Then she said, “How will Goddard ever know who I am?”

“From clues I drop in the letters to him. Ill make him succeed in tracing you, don’t worry.”

What if he fails?”

“I’ll send more letters. With more clues.”

She stretched and yawned. “I wonder what our mystery man is doing right now,” she said.

“He might be wondering who you are!” said Domostroy.

James Osten stopped in front of a Fifth Avenue watch shop, studied the window display, and went inside, where he was promptly accosted by a young salesman.

“Good morning, sir,” said the salesman in a heavy Italian accent, smiling at Osten with unconcealed admiration and swishing behind the counter like a ballet dancer. “Can I be of service to you?”

“Yes,” said Osten, “indirectly.” And pointing at a gold wristwatch in the window, he said, “I like that watch.”

“My compliments on your taste,” the salesman breathed, all smiles, as he removed the watch from the window. “This is the thinnest watch ever made. And,” he added with a suggestive flash of his eye, “it’s a unisex design.”