Pinball (37 page)

Leaning over her shoulder, careful not to press too heavily on her, he let the tip of his hard, protruding member touch her back, further proof of his nearness, as he kissed her neck, her chin, her ear, and brushed his cheek against her hair.

As he bent over her, his elbows touching her shoulders, he let his hands play with the lightest touch on her breasts, the cushions of his fingertips barely sliding over her nipples, leaving them standing up hard and pointed, then over the aureoles, then under her breasts, over her rib cage, down toward her navel, then back, then downward again. His fingers descended hesitantly along the skin on either side of her belly and moved between her thighs to her groin. His hand pressed-more firmly now, until the palm of one hand settled over her groin and his fingertips descended again, stroking, spreading and entering her flesh.

With his chest pressing on her back, his face next to hers, his hands between her thighs, Donna kept on playing, her body swaying under his touch, languorous, on the way to being overcome by desire.

Just when her torso seemed no longer willing to support her arms, and her hands seemed to resist movement as if separated by an invisible accordion that she could no longer open and close, she began to play “Out of My Sight,” one of Chopin’s expressive two-strophe songs set to a poem by Adam Mickiewicz, which she and Domostroy both loved. She had often sung it for Domostroy while she played it on the concert grand:

In every place, during every
day and night,
Where with you I wept, where with
you I played,
Everywhere and forever I shall be
by you,
For there I left a piece of
my sotd.

Not allowing her to interrupt her playing, he sat next to her on the bench. Lifting her gently, he moved under her and slowly lowered her onto his thighs, entering her, filling her flesh with his, steadying her yielding body with his chest, rocking rhythmically with her, sliding in and out of her, drawing her tighter until she began to shiver and tremble and moan feverishly. Her fingers lost their fluid motion then, and her hands dropped from the keys, no longer airborne, no longer free to move on their own.

He lifted her again, pushed the bench away, and lowered her to the floor. With their clothes for a cushion and the empty seats of the ballroom as their audience, she clung to him at once tender and giving, brutal and selfish.

They drove to the airport in his car, Donna’s two large suitcases—one filled just with evening gowns for her competition performances and state dinners in Warsaw—taking up most of the backseat. She sat close to him, and he drove with one hand, keeping his other arm around her shoulders and occasionally mussing her hair or touching her neck with his free hand. Wordlessly she took his arm from around her shoulders and clasped his hand between her thighs. With her chest rising and falling and her breath quickening, she moved closer to him, bringing his hand deeper into her, warming it with the heat of her flesh. Clinging to him, she leaned her head on his shoulder, raised her eyes to his face, and emitted a low moan through dry, parted lips.

Even though she had asked him to go with her to
Warsaw, and even though he could have made the trip with the money he had saved from Andrea’s payments, he had decided that it was important for Donna to be in Warsaw on her own, without his censoring eye and ear, with only the audience she yet had to conquer.

Her mother and four younger sisters would be waiting for her in the departure lounge, she said, and she had been told that the press would be there to interview her. Domostroy convinced her that she should greet them alone. At the airport he pulled the car up to the curb, got out and opened the door for Donna, handed her luggage to a porter, then turned from her and slipped back into the car as her relatives and the reporters, cameras flashing, started to advance on her. Always eager for visual novelty and memorable faces, the media had found in Donna Downes the perfect subject through whom to cover the much-publicized Chopin competition.

By the time Domostroy had parked the car and entered the terminal, Donna was surrounded by a solid wall of camera crews and reporters, who had managed to steer her family off to one side. He could barely see her for all the shoulders and elbows in the way, but whenever he caught sight of her, she looked intense and beaming, and she answered the endless questions with poise and quiet self-assurance. He saw her glancing around, looking for him, but each time she did he ducked out of sight, having decided that the moment belonged to her alone.

Her interview ended when the pack of press people disappeared to cover the arrival of a plane bringing back the bodies of American servicemen killed somewhere in Latin America.

Accompanied by her family and a few friends from Juilliard, Donna moved slowly toward the boarding gate, still looking for him. He followed behind, hidden by a group of beefy East European bureaucrats who were marching in a block toward the gate. When she had given up hope that he would get there in time to see her off, she said good-bye to all the others and reluctantly moved to pass through the security checkpoint. Then he stepped out and waved, and like a child surprised by a gift, her
expression changed. She ran to him and hugged him, and while her mother watched in embarrassed wonder, mildly disapproving, and her little sisters giggled and gazed wide-eyed, Donna kissed him lingeringly on the neck, on the eyes, on the mouth, and he, now oblivious of the stares of her family and the other onlookers, let himself kiss her too, his arms around her, his mouth on hers.

Then it was time to go. She pulled away, and looking only at him while waving at her family, she walked through the gate and down the long passageway. He watched her until her tall silhouette was swallowed up inside the corridor that led to her plane. Smiling and giving a modest nod to her relatives, he turned and started for the exit, but after a few steps he was accosted by a short bespectacled woman in thick-soled sneakers and a broad-brimmed hat with straw flowers on it. “Excuse me, sir,” the lady entreated, her pale watery eyes magnified by thick lenses. “Wasn’t that beautiful young lady you just kissed somebody famous?”

“Not yet, Madam,” Domostroy replied patiently, “but she will be by the time she comes back.”

“I thought sol” the woman cried triumphantly, flashing her dentures. “I thought so,” she repeated. “I can always tell a famous person!”

Andrea had agreed to meet Osten again that night for dinner. In the afternoon he went to his bank to cash a check, and while he was there he started for the safedeposit vault, thinking that he would examine the White House letters once more for thoughts and phraseology that might prove revealing But he changed his mind, deciding that he would do better to take the automatic minisensor tape recorder with him.

He met Andrea at the Stage Fright, a cozy restaurant near Lincoln Center, known for its good menu and handsome staff—all actors and actresses who worked there between engagements. In an organza blouse and close-fitting silk skirt that outlined her body, with her hair falling in long waves over her shoulders, Andrea looked stunning, and once again he thought how much taller and better proportioned she was than the nude in the photographs.

They talked about Donna’s departure for Warsaw, which they had both seen on TV Then, as if to distance him further from the memory of Donna, Andrea told him about Donna’s affair with Dick Longo, the porno star, and the story made Osten laugh even though he felt a twinge at discovering the identity of the well-endowed man from Donna’s photo album.

Seized by the need to be close to her, Osten told Andrea that after meeting her for the first time in Juilliard’s cafeteria he had been curious to know whether she was dating anyone steadily And now that he knew her a bit better, he admitted to wondering whether there was someone
as important in her life as Donna had been in his until recently.

For a moment Andrea looked somber. Then she said she had no boyfriend. Most of her time was taken up by her studies, and many of her weekends she spent with her parents in Tuxedo Park, the place where she had grown up, which held only pleasant memories for her. Maybe one day, she said, he might drive up there with her to swim in their pool under some of the oldest oak and cedar trees in the state.

The more they relaxed with each other, the happier he was that he had not read the White House letters again in order to study the words and phrasing in them. This way he could listen to Andrea without ulterior motive, lost in the enjoyment of her clear, well-articulated ideas and the pleasant sound of her voice—so different from Donna’s speech, which, owing to her upbringing, he had found somewhat mannered.

“Why didn’t you ask Donna about me?” Andrea asked matter-of-factly. “I’m sure she would have come up with some old school gossip,” she added as an afterthought.

“Much as I liked your looks,” he said, “at that point I wouldn’t have risked making Donna jealous.”

They stared at each other in silence.

“After you and I spoke briefly in that cafeteria, though, I began to think about you often,” Osten went on. Then a memory stirred him, and he said quietly, his eyes downcast, “I started to see you—in front of me—even when I shouldn’t have.”

“When?” she asked in a low voice.

“When I was making love to Donna,” he said, meeting her stare again. “I would close my eyes and feel I was with you. I couldn’t stop myself. There you were—like a premonition.”

“A premonition … of what?” she asked, subdued by his frankness.

“Of falling in love,” he said, and only after hearing his own words did he realize how simple and direct his desire was. “With you,” he added, reaching out and gently putting his hand on hers. He felt her pull away. “That’s the
first time I’ve touched you,” he said softly, almost apologetically.

“I like you, Jimmy Osten,” she said slowly, weighing each syllable. “A lot. I liked you even when you were with Donna. I was a bit jealous of her. I felt—and hoped—that there was no real energy between you two. That you were together but not with each other, as far apart as black is from white. I’m glad it’s over. Glad for you, and—why lie?—for myself, for us.”

They soon had no more to say of how they felt about each other. Instead, he asked her to tell him about her life, and he listened, enraptured, while she talked of her flying lessons, her forays into skydiving, her experience of reviewing music for
Soho Sounds,
the avant-garde rock music paper, and most of all, her hopes of becoming a producer of Broadway plays and musicals.

The evening flew by. Driving Andrea home, he noted that she sat as far away from him as possible. He took it as a signal that she was not yet ready for further intimacy, although all during dinner he had given her every indication of his desire.

He respected and even admired her reserve. Taking his cue from her, getting out of the car to escort her to the door when they arrived at her building, he left the engine running.

“Aren’t you coming up?” she asked, her voice again perfectly matter-of-fact.

“Isn’t it too late—for you, I mean?” he stammered, suddenly uncertain of himself.

“Not at all,” she said. “I don’t have any classes tomorrow. What’s more, I’m an insomniac! ‘Macbeth has murdered sleep,’” she quoted.

While Osten parked the car across the street, she waited for him at the front door. In the car, his gaze fell on the bag containing the tape recorder. He hesitated. His instinct told him to forget about it. Not since his time with Leila had he been so eager to be with a woman, and he recoiled from the idea of treating Andrea as though she could be an accomplice to someone as perverse as Patrick Domostroy. Furthermore, Osten noted, nothing she had
said to him so for sounded remotely similar to any of the thoughts or phrasing in the White House letters.

Still, in that split second before slamming the car door, he thought that if there was the slightest chance that Andrea was the letter writer, he had to know it, and he quickly and unobtrusively grabbed the tape recorder out of the bag and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket. Then he rejoined Andrea.

As he climbed the stairs, feeling acutely conscious of her nearness, he regretted that he couldn’t be honest with her and simply tell her who he was and why he had to conceal his identity.

He liked the orderliness of Andrea’s apartment—the well-chosen antique furniture, the neatly arranged notebooks, the family photographs in silver frames, the dusted shelves of books and records. She got out a silver box that held a plastic bag of pot, a packet of papers, and a little cigarette-rolling contraption. As she was showing him her collection of antique perfume bottles he came and stood behind her; then, with a step forward, he took her by the shoulders so that their bodies touched. He turned her around to face him. She hugged him gently, looking into his eyes for a moment, and then went to open a bottle of wine, talking to him over her shoulder all the while, saying that although she needed more sleep than most people, she had great trouble getting enough of it. She then asked him if he’d like to put on a record, adding, jokingly, that she had a few Domostroy records in case he’d care to refresh his memory of that composer. As he bent down to look at her record collection he quickly hid the tape recorder behind a pile of albums. Its automatic timer would activate it the following morning.

He glanced through her records, noting with pleasure her complete collection of Goddards. He was tempted to play one, but decided against it and went over and turned on the radio instead.

She brought the joints and wine, got out an ashtray and a silver roach holder, and sat on the bed next to him, sinking into a bank of pillows and tucking her legs up
under her. They began to smoke, and the smoke drifted slowly about the room.

“Speaking of the devil, have you ever met Patrick Domostroy?” he asked, watching her closely.

“No, I haven’t” she said, “but I know a few things about him.” She seemed so at ease that he felt she was telling the truth. She sipped her wine and passed him the joint. “My parents met him a number of years ago in Tuxedo Park. He used to date a woman writer who lived near them. Is he an interesting person?” she asked, gazing at him. Then she laughed. “Not that I expect you to be objective on the subject!”