Pinball (3 page)

“Don’t you feel good about being a composer?” she asked, looking at him intently.

“I don’t compose anymore,” he answered.

“Are you ever going to give another big concert?”

“No more big concerts,” he said firmly.

“Why not?”

“I lost my following,” he said.

“But—why? They used to love you.”

“They—the critics, the audience—changed, and I didn’t. Or maybe it was the other way around.”

“You’re still a recording star,” she said. “Your records touch more people than any concert would.”

He felt her eyes on him, pleading, as soft and inviting as if she were a child, and he was tempted to kiss her.

“If my records touch you—can I?”

“Do you want to?” said Andrea, and she leaned back on her elbow and faced him. As she did so, her breast brushed against his hand.

“Only if you want me to.”

“What makes you think I don’t?” she asked, inching closer, her lips parting.

As he faced Andrea, he pondered what to do. He recalled a time in Oslo, during one of his European concert tours, when a young woman reporter interviewed him over dinner and then came back with him to his hotel. She asked him if she could spend the rest of the night in his room rather than drive all the way home, and although he found her tempting, he was perplexed, for during the whole evening she had not been the least bit flirtatious. He announced in the most straightforward way that his room contained only one bed, and she said that sharing it with him wouldn’t bother her one bit, for as a girl she had often shared beds with her friends. Given that gratuitous admission and the Scandinavian reputation for sexual openness, Domostroy felt confident enough to tell the young woman that all through dinner he had imagined the two of them making love in a variety of ways and that he was
therefore pleased and anxious to share his bed with her, as well as everything he had fantasized.

The woman became indignant. “I think you have this all wrong,” she said. “All I asked was to share a bed with you, not you with the bed. For me,” she said, “sharing your bed would be like going swimming with you. When swimming, you don’t talk about it; you don’t ask each other whether you like to swim or whether you prefer swimming on your back or stomach. You just swim. Making love is the same way. Why don’t you try thinking about things that way!”

Angry, she left. As for her lesson, it was lost on Domostroy, who as a boy had almost drowned and ever since had been afraid of water.

“What makes you think I don’t want you to touch me?” Andrea repeated. “After all, I came to hear you at Kreutzer’s and slipped you that note about how much I liked you, didn’t I?” She shifted again, and now her breath was on his neck, her breast against his chest.

In an instant he could cover her with his body, but he did not move. “Have you been with other musicians?” he asked.

She looked at him quizzically. “Been with?”

“I mean—”

“You mean slept with. Sure. I’m a music student, remember? What about you? Don’t you fuck the girls who hang around Kreutzer’s?”

He sat up and moved away from her. “You weren’t just hanging around. You came with a purpose.”

“I did,” she agreed. “To know you.”

“But—you already knew my music; wasn’t that enough? Music doesn’t make demands. Composers do.”

“I don’t mind your demands.”

“You don’t know me!”

“I know myself.”

“Would you come to see me if instead of what I am, I were, say, a piano tuner?”

“Piano tuners don’t interest me. Patrick Domostroy does.”

She moved closer. Her hand rested on his thigh, and pulling him to her, she gently kissed his earlobe.

When he didn’t respond, she pressed her breasts against him, then kissed him on his neck. He shivered lightly and reached for her, an excitement surging through him, propelling him toward her. Suddenly she stopped and pulled away, and his yearning subsided.

“I won’t pretend that sex with you is all that excites me,” she said, her eyes searching his. “There’s one thing you—and only you—can do for me.”

A slight discord was growing between them. “What is it?” he asked, fearful that she might ask him for money.

“I want you to introduce me to Goddard!”

“To Goddard? Which Goddard?”

“
The
Goddard. The one and only.”

“Goddard the rock star?” he asked, feeling lost. He could see no connection between himself and the world of headlines, success, money, and popular music that Goddard’s name evoked.

“That’s right,” said Andrea. “I want to meet Goddard. In person. That’s all I ask.”

Domostroy had to smile. Was she joking? Behind her slick facade, the girl was peculiar. “Is that all?” he asked sarcastically.

“Yes” she said, “that’s all. Find out who he is. Better yet: find him. I want to meet him.”

For a moment he felt disillusioned. Her girlish confidence annoyed him. So that’s what she needed him for. An older man helping a young woman to fulfill her adolescent fantasy.

“What on earth makes you think I can find Goddard?” he snapped.

“Why can’t you?” she asked, looking at him. “Aren’t you a name too?”

He became impatient with her. “Look, for five—or is it six?—years,” he said, “Goddard has been the biggest recording star in the country. Yet he’s still nothing but a voice and a name—a complete mystery. Nobody has ever
seen him or managed to find out the least bit of information about him. Nobody! And since the day his first big record was played on the air, every magazine, newspaper, TV and radio station, every professional, and every dilettante in the celebrity business has tried. But nobody knows any more about Goddard today than they did when he started. And you want me to find out who he is?” He laughed. “Are you sure you know who I am?”

“Of course, I do!” she said, also annoyed. “And also that you could find him. You could—but only if you wanted to badly enough. If you felt it was worth it to you, you could track Goddard down,” she said emphatically. “All you have to do is want to find him. I’ve researched you,” she said, “and I found out a great deal about you. I know you won the National Music Award for
Octaves,
and that both the Music Writers Guild of America and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts voted your music for
Chance,
the best film score of the year.”

“What else?” asked Domostroy, a part of him pleased by her childlike belief in his power.

“Also, that for some twenty years or so, you were known all over the world and that in those days, you knew every big shot in the music field and the arts. I saw photographs of you with pop singers, business types, movie stars, TV anchormen, dress designers. I read the resolution the composers, lyricists, and performers of MUSE International drew up to honor you when you finished your second term as president of that association. They said you had shown an imaginative and protective sense of responsibility toward musicians all over the world; and that the fruits of what you had achieved would extend for into the future. Well, if you did all that for them then, don’t you think they would do you a favor now? All you’d have to do would be to call, ask a few questions, and follow a few clues, to Goddard. Don’t you see?”

He was impressed by her breezy rundown of his past success and her thoughtful disregard of his stalled career.

“It’s not so easy to call people I used to know years ago and say I’d like to use them!’ he said softly, trying not to discourage her. “Don’t you think that all the reporters,
disc jockeys, columnists, commentators, and musicians in the country would give just as much as you would to find out who Goddard is? What makes you think that all I have to do is phone a few old acquaintances and say, This is Patrick Domostroy. Tell me, who is Goddard?’”

“I’m not that naive,” she said, ready to appease him, “but surely, somewhere out there are people who really do know who Goddard is, and where he is and what he looks like—and what he eats and whom he fucks and what he takes or smokes or shoots to get high. There must be a fair number of them—his family, relatives, friends, lovers, record company bigwigs, tax accountants, IRS agents, attorneys, clerks, secretaries, doctors, nurses, music technicians. No matter how great—or cunning or clever or rich—Goddard is, he could not have made it all alone! Look, every serious musician can tell that only one ear—yours!—wrote every one and all of your musical pieces! Yet, because, to guard the integrity of your work, you hand picked your own music-editors, that radical scandal sheet went after your entire reputation by alleging you didn’t write your music alone! Can’t you see there had to be people who helped Goddard? And who work with him now? All you have to do is find one of them. Just one!”

“Even if I could come across one of them, would anybody who has remained silent all this time break that silence—for me?” He shook his head.

She was adamant. “Find one before you say no! And persuade him—or her.” She paused and waited for him to react, but when he did not, she continued. “If you say you’ll try to find him, I’ll do anything I can to help you. Anything, Patrick. I’ll pay you in cash now what you make in six months at Kreutzer’s. And I have enough money for us both to live on. It all comes from my family.”

The prospect of living with her and of ready cash—his car needed repairs—was overpoweringly tempting.

He got up and walked around the room. “How long have you thought about all this?” he asked.

“About meeting you?”

“No. About finding Goddard.”

“For a year or so.”

“Have you talked to anyone else about it?”

“No.”

“Why not”

“I didn’t have the right connections. Until recently, I was afraid to approach you because I didn’t think I had anything to offer that would interest you.” She paused, and a sly smile spread across her lips. “I read just about all the crap written about you since you first played in public long before I was born. Then, just as I was about to give up my research on you, I came across a most revealing article. It was written years ago—but it spoke of your true inclinations, and it gave me hope that you might not be indifferent to me after all.”

“Was it my cover profile in
The New York Times
magazine?” he asked.

“It wasn’t.” She laughed mischievously. “It was in
Hetero
, ‘the magazine of the morally liberated’—though not exactly a moral majority publication. Have you read it?”

“I might have at the time,” he said. “There was so much nonsense published—”

“The article was written by one Ms. Ample Bodice,” she interrupted, “a one-armed porno star who moonlights as a reporter of the sex scene. In it, Ms. Bodice described a weekend at the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a private club in the Catskills for ‘sexual seekers,’ where she ran into Patrick Domostroy. She said you were there with a sinuous young thing who behaved like a sex slave. Throughout the weekend and the various ‘sexually imaginative’ activities that supposedly filled it, your little leather-and-lace girl kept changing from one costume into another—sometimes looking pubescent, sometimes whorish, sometimes like a coed—each costume perfect, down to the smallest detail of dress and makeup. And not once did she repeat herself.” Andrea stopped and waited for him to react. She moved and sat directly across from him, her calves crossed, her thighs spread wide, her flesh on display. She watched him calmly, as if he too were on display, with nothing hidden from her scrutiny.

“You’ve come a long way—from composing great music
and giving sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall to living at the Old Glory and working as a stringer at Kreutzer’s, a pinball joint that tries to pass for a nightclub! A long way! Wouldn’t you like to change all that?”

“That ‘long way’ happens to be my life, and I don’t complain about it,” he said, wishing he could deflect Tier argument. “And don’t be so quick to knock pinball joints!” He assumed a lighter tone. “After all, Earle Henry, the man who invented the pinball machine, also invented the jukebox. And where would your precious Goddard be without jukeboxes?”

Andrea disregarded him. “All I’m saying, Domostroy, is this: become as inventive in life as you once were in music—and, apparently, in sex—by working for me. Help me find Goddard. You won’t regret it: I too can play sex slave and wear kinky costumes, you know.”

“I’m sure you can—but I’m wrong for the role of the master,” said Domostroy, standing up abruptly to get his jacket and leave.

She walked over to him and put one hand on his shoulder; with the other, she unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it off his shoulders so that it fell to the floor. Then she stretched to her full height and stared at him, forcing him to look her in the eye. She knew she had won him over.

“Money will be only half of your payment,” she said. “And this”—she nudged him with her thighs and glanced at the bed—“will be the other half. At least you won’t be wasting your time playing pinball joints anymore.”

“But wasting it, instead, on Goddard!” he said.

“You won’t be wasting it!” She laughed and kicked off her shoes. Her hands slid down to her waist, and she slipped off her skirt and pantyhose and unbuttoned her blouse, letting it fall from her. As she lay down naked on the bed, another of Domostroy’s records dropped onto the turntable.

While she waited for him to speak or react, her fingertips began to brush and circle her breasts, then move slowly to her belly and below, to stroke and rub her thighs. Standing there under her gaze, he felt clumsy and
ill at ease: here he was, trying to save his dignity while trading his middle-aged wisdom and experience for sexual favors from a young woman. He would have preferred to undress her. Now, instead, it was she who was watching him, as if with a magnifying glass.

Before his last record ended, he switched to the radio, already set on her favorite station.

The mechanics of undressing further distracted him, and for a moment he sensed a loss of arousal. Afraid that she would notice it, he pretended he had to sit down to take off his pants, and he remained sitting, with his back to her, while he removed the rest of his clothes. Then, still hiding his now limp flesh, he crawled over to her and began stroking her shoulders, kissing her neck, bringing his body slowly over her belly while keeping one hand between his thighs, lowering his head to her breasts, kissing, licking, and rubbing her nipples with his lips and tongue. He was aroused again.