The Casanova Embrace (16 page)

"The house is literally dripping with fresh
pussy," Raoul said, lighting a cigarette and pushing the smoke out through
both nostrils.

"Same Raoul."

"I think your mother's trying to marry you off."
He paused. "In your case it might not be such a bad idea. Keep you out of
trouble."

"I'm not in trouble."

"That's what you think."

"No politics, Raoul."

Raoul shrugged, chasing a brief frown that had wrinkled his
forehead. "Doesn't matter anyway. If you go too far, we will simply cut
off your balls."

"There are worse fates."

"Name one."

Downstairs the party was in full swing. Eduardo's parents
stood in a receiving line greeting an endless procession of guests. One by one
his sisters came over and greeted him, wiping off their lipstick from his
cheeks. His father looked at him, nodded and smiled thinly. Raoul had already
cut one of the beauties from the crowd and had begun to dance, undulating in
half rythm, concentrating on his prey. Voices swirling around him, Eduardo
searched for Miranda. Walking halfway up the stairs again to gain a better view
of the crowd, he felt the agony of loss. Perhaps she had not, would not come.
When he could not find her, he proceeded to the bar and downed a double Scotch,
coughing as the liquid passed his gullet. He was not used to it. Then he had
another. And a third.

People greeted him. Old schoolmates. The daughters of his
mother's friends. He nodded politely, waiting for the liquor to anesthetize him
as he wandered through the crowd, searching every female face for Miranda.

By the time she arrived, he was already slightly dizzy and
his vision was distorted. He was not used to alcohol. Leaning against the wall,
he watched her, surrounded by young men, giggling, dividing her attention
coquettishly, cool, arrogant, beautiful. He felt his face flush and his stomach
knot. It was only when Raoul joined the circle that he found the strength to
unlock his knees and amble forward.

"...and here is the son and heir," Raoul said.
"Arch traitor to his class. You know Eduardo, Miranda." His easy
intimacy with her galled him.

"Yes, we've met," she said, flashing a clear
white smile his way, then turning to Raoul.

"I saw you play tennis," he said, his tongue
thick, although he imagined that he had covered it well.

She turned to him again. "I'd rather play tennis than
anything," she said, winking at Raoul.

"Than anything?" Raoul, as usual, was lascivious.
Eduardo's gorge rose.

"My game is soccer," he said, stupidly.

"Wonderful," Miranda said without interest,
turning again to Raoul. The other men had drifted away.

"Did you enjoy the Riviera?" Raoul asked. Eduardo
resented the intrusion of a subject foreign to him. He had never been to the
Riviera.

"I've never been," he said. But she had ignored
him.

"Cannes was wonderful." Then they began to play
"do you know" while he stood around awkwardly, shut out of the
conversation, determined to find his courage.

"Can I get you a drink?" Eduardo asked. She
paused, putting a finger on her chin in an attitude of indecision.

"Champagne?" Raoul suggested.

"Yes, that would be nice."

"Make it two, Eduardo," Raoul said. Angrily,
Eduardo turned and moved through the crowd to the bar. The arrogant
sonofabitch, he thought, the old boyhood awe congealing into hatred. He downed
another double Scotch, took two glasses of champagne and renegotiated the crowd
to where they had been standing. But they had gone. He saw them on the dance
floor, their bodies close. Raoul was whispering in her ear. Unsteady hands made
some of the champagne spill, dripping over his fingers. An image of Miranda in
Raoul's arms, naked, intruded. He wanted to fling both glasses at him. Never
had he felt such hatred. Moving through the dancers, he reached them. Raoul
looked at him strangely and shook his head, his meaning clear. When Eduardo
continued to stay with them, Raoul said, "Not now, Eduardo."

Miranda's eyes were closed, her cheek resting against
Raoul's, her body mashed against him. His mother and father danced nearby,
watching him.

"You are being ridiculous, Eduardo," Raoul said.

"I am ridiculous," he mumbled, his stomach
churning.

"Are you drunk?" Raoul asked. Miranda opened her
eyes and looked at him with contempt. His father moved closer to them, perhaps
sensing something going wrong. More champagne slopped over Eduardo's fingers.

"Why don't you sit down, Eduardo?" Raoul said.
"You are embarrassing yourself."

"I want to dance," Eduardo mumbled, his tongue
thickening, his cheeks hot.

Raoul turned, releasing Miranda, and faced Eduardo, whose
legs seemed like jelly.

"...for Godsakes, Eduardo.... "Raoul began,
caught in mid-sentence by two splashes of champagne in his face. The high
cheekboned face paled, the eyes blazed, the lips curled, as he gathered his
dignity. Luckily, most of the liquid had spilled and what was left was like a
brief drizzle. Eduardo could see his father's face, the jaw suddenly slack. But
it was Miranda's look of disgust that shattered him, and even through his
drunkenness he felt his shame as he turned and pushed his way through the
startled dancers.

Upstairs in his room again, he lay on his bed and,
remembering his dream, watched the ceiling, hoping it would descend and crash,
snuffing out his miserable life.

"I can't believe it," his father said softly
beside him. "It is not like you, Eduardo. Are you all right?" He felt
his father's cool hand on his forehead, caressing him, pushing a shock of hair
upward. He could not recall how long it had been since he had felt such a
caress. Eduardo nodded, although he felt tears slide out of his eyes, over his
cheeks.

"Did Raoul insult you?"

He shook his head. He could feel his father watching him,
sensing the love the older man felt, knowing his own. He wanted his father to
embrace him.

"I'll be all right," he whispered, knowing that
it would never be true.

"Is it the girl?" his father asked gently. He did
know.

Eduardo did not answer.

"So.... "his father began, swallowing what was to
come. So they had found his vulnerability, he told himself, feeling his head
clear momentarily. It was the time to offer a denial. But none came. And he
knew that he was ready to sell his soul for Miranda.

Being near the big old Georgetown Public Library had hardly
been a consideration in Jack and Penny Anne McCarthy's purchase of the Van
Lovell place on R Street. Even the historical aspects of the place were less a
consideration from an aesthetic point of view. What they were buying, they both
knew, was the social values that the place suggested, the idea that they could
purchase a spot in the social hierarchy of Washington by simply buying the
historical significance their new home suggested.

It was quite typical of Washington's transient social
whirlpool, where image counted for everything. Van Lovell had been Secretary of
the Navy back in the 1880's and he had built this house--once the glittering
center of Washington's party life--and with it, of course, came political
ferment. The house passed on to a series of Cabinet ministers from the
administrations of Teddy Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson. Then old Joe Kennedy had
rented it briefly during the Roosevelt administration. That counted for huge
brownie points in the image-making process. The fact that he had only lived in
it for three months hardly counted against it. Later, Mrs. Carter Howell had
owned it and she had become a legendary social arbiter. Presidents had dined
there, and kings, and it had been written up constantly in the local press.
Once House Beautiful had done a picture layout, which the real-estate broker
had mentioned umpteen times, not without a stimulating effect. And, after all,
since Jack McCarthy was going to be an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, it
would make one hell of a springboard. A New York financial practice was all
right. But Washington. There was a big stage for you and what good was it
without a proper backdrop, especially if you had the money?

So they had purchased it and Penny and Jack McCarthy had
become, in those first Nixon years, the fun social couple of Washington, and
the big house was once again written up, and coincidentally, had been done
again by House Beautiful Penny had posed with François, her little
miniature poodle, suitably groomed and coiffured, although a bit nervous. There
they were in front of the mantel, over which hung the huge Chagall that had
come down through Jack's Aunt Martha, who had had all those wealthy husbands
and to whom they were deeply indebted for the windfall of her inheritance.

But Jack had this thing about being too conspicuously
ambitious. The accent, of course, was on "conspicuous" because it was
his ambition and the disappointments about it that finally killed him. All that
Watergate business had left his psyche in shambles, not that he had been
involved. They had shut him off early in the game. That was frustrating enough.
But when the old crowd and his old lawyer buddy from Wall Street, John
Mitchell, got it, that was the end for Jack McCarthy.

Penny McCarthy had been granted two years to muse about her
twenty years with Jack. Two babies had come and gone, both married and living
in Portland, Oregon, of all places. That was about as far away as chickens
could possibly stray from the coop and still be within the continental limits
of the United States. Perhaps it had all been her fault, although the doctors
had assured her that Jack had died from a heart attack and that he had had a
history of rheumatic heart, which was what had kept him out of the military
service.

She had not, of course, told them about his drinking
habits, a fifth of vodka as a daily ritual, the last inch of the bottle always
taken before bedtime to make him sleep. Pass out, rather than face another confrontation
with his impotence. That was one part of it that she was glad was over.
Especially since she was convinced that his impotence was caused by her
frigidity. We are both unfeeling stones, she had decided, although she could
never quite find the courage to tell him it was really her fault. She had tried
everything to engender some response. Perhaps it was the trying too hard, the
contrivance of it, that finally killed desire. Not that there was ever much to
begin with, even at the beginning. She had pondered that point while he was
alive and it had underpinned the rationalization for her own unfaithfulness.
After all, she was entitled to find some reason for being a woman. Which was
another nightmare! She had only confirmed what she knew. She was colder than
ice, if that was possible. And while all this was going on, it seemed a miracle
that they could maintain that great facade and attract such interesting people
to their home. They went everywhere, and even at the very end, Jack could still
be impressive. That, she had decided, was his principal quality. He was
impressive, forever the harbinger, always the potential, never the realized.

Sometimes in the emptiness of the big house, which she
clung to, she could still hear his voice, sweet and deep, the voice always
clearing before the mind honed the inner articulation. He could always talk so
beautifully. But it was only she who really knew how thin the crust was.
Finally, in the end, she had actually begun to love him again, and when he had
gone she felt she had lost a lover. If he had not gone so swiftly, she might
have confessed to him her infidelities and could envision a deathbed scene,
heavy with expiation. But he could not grant her even that satisfaction and
simply expired in his sleep. She had not heard his last gasp, nor had she
discovered that he had died until late in the afternoon when she had returned
from a luncheon.

Jack's death, of course, changed her life, gave the final
knell to the brittle ring of her social life, the constant comings and goings
of people needed to fill the void. Now, the void could not be filled with
people. Conversation actually seemed to become extinct in her mind. That, too,
was a signal that something had changed radically in her chemistry, and
sometimes she felt her conscious self drifting further from what had once
seemed reality.

It was the discovery of the Georgetown Public Library that
redirected the drifting and, she was certain, saved her sanity. The library
had, of course, been there all along, but she had never been inside it until
after Jack had died. Now it became her life, a ritual, to spend her days in the
quiet reading room, amid the compelling essence of the dreams and fantasies of
others. It was, after all, safer that way. No danger.

By then, too, friends had ceased to call. Those that did
received curt acknowledgments and sometimes stony indifference. Invitations
dwindled. She could imagine them all saying, "We give up on Penny. She's
never gotten over Jack's death." Or, "Let's leave Penny alone. She's
wallowing in self-pity these days. Let her wallow."

She dealt in projects, tackling authors one at a time. I am
searching for wisdom, she had convinced herself, and she had undertaken the
investigation with both diligence and discipline. By that day in February, with
the leaves long gone from the dying ginkgo trees, she had already worked her
way through Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Thackeray, and was
pursuing Balzac when she first spotted him reading at a corner table, the light
from the high windows crawling along the polished surface as he quietly took
notes, his head rarely moving, revealing a remarkable concentration.
Occasionally when she was deeply absorbed, she felt his gaze wash over her, but
when she looked up, he had turned back to his work. It was an odd sensation,
deflecting her concentration. Sometimes she tried to catch him in the act. But
he was too quick.

Some mornings they were the only two people in the reading
room. And the only sounds were their own stirrings and the occasional whispered
conversations of the librarians. At first, she was annoyed by his presence and
the little game they seemed to be playing. She wondered if it were merely her
imagination, a psychic pull from an odd magnetic field. Finally she came to expect
him, to want him there, although neither showed any covert signs of the other's
presence.

He never stayed the entire day. Sometimes he would leave
the room quickly. At other times, he would spend the hours reading, scribbling
notes, then carefully replacing the books he had pulled out. She was determined
not to feed her own curiosity. Nothing must deflect her attention. Her peace of
mind depended on it, she was convinced. That, and keeping the big house neat,
well maintained.

She did all the chores herself, including cutting the grass
and trimming the shrubbery, keeping the silver and glassware shined and the
house well dusted, tasks which kept her busy until she went to bed, resisting
all errant thoughts, concentrating on complete emptiness of mind, a discipline
she had actually begun to master.

In the mornings, before she walked to the library, she
spent an hour in strenuous exercises, while Bach wafted through the house
stereo system, which Jack had installed himself with such care. The exercises
had been difficult at first, but now she was hard and stretched and could
contort her body to the full extent called for by the exercises. She had cut
her hair as short as possible and had pared her wardrobe to gray slacks and
white blouses and serviceable cotton underthings which she changed daily. She
had deliberately installed, it seemed, a clock in her mind. Not a moment was
allowed to be unfilled, but not with trivial deflections or contrived escapes.
She took no newspapers, had her television set removed, and had installed a
telephone answering device to take her calls. The message she transcribed on
the tape was, she knew, impolite, but hadn't she, after all, taken the call?
She never returned them.

Even her children had apparently given up on her, although
they took to writing her long letters which she read with mild interest. One of
her fears was that they would disrupt her life with some sudden emergency, to
which, she knew, she would have to respond. She never went to a store to make a
purchase. Food was delivered and her meals rarely varied. Oatmeal for
breakfast. A cheese sandwich for lunch. Meat and a green vegetable for dinner.
She didn't drink liquor or coffee, had given up cigarettes and sugar.

If there were any lapses in her rigid schedule, they were
either inadvertent or subconscious. Occasionally, she had dreams. Most times,
she could will herself to forget them. In a way, her life was tranquil and she
had structured it to suit her new self, to cope. Most important, she had, with
deliberate and skillful mental discipline, emptied herself. And her most
conspicuous achievement was that she was not lonely in the sense that she could
define it. Nor did she miss not having Jack around anymore. She missed no one.

Her most recent delight was discovering that Balzac had
written how many books in the Comédie Humaine series and she
estimated that there was a good six months of Balzac's world ahead of her. She
began to hope that the man would complete his project quickly and leave the
reading room of the library to her. She could have, of course, changed her
seat, but that would mean disruption and she had learned that disruptions
required adjustments and adjustments required concentration and the act of
achieving concentration meant a form of compromise. So she stayed put, trying
to will the man's presence out of her consciousness.

One night, just as she had closed her eyes, an image of him
appeared in her mind. Despite every effort of her will, it persisted, would not
disintegrate. It was focused in remarkable clarity, the long lashes which
shaded the gray eyes, the white teeth, the dark tanned look. As the sun's
brightness had moved across the polished table, it had illuminated his hands
and she saw again the tapered graceful fingers tapping lightly on the table.

The image did not last long at first, but when it came back
the next night and then popped into her head during her exercises, she began to
realize she would have to find some wellspring of special energy to will it
away. But the harder she tried, the stronger his recalled image became. Then
one morning as she approached the library, she saw him leaning against a stone
pillar at the foot of the brick staircase leading to the library's entrance. He
was smoking a cigarette, holding it delicately between his long fingers,
expelling the smoke in thick gusts from his nose and mouth. The day was clear,
remarkably pristine, with a delicious but icy nip in the air. A breeze crackled
the dry leaves, still on the ground, lifting some on its eddy. Seeing him gave
her an unaccustomed sense of danger. She ignored him and sprang up the stairs,
reached for the brass handles of the double doors, and, pulling, felt the
resistance. She knew he was watching her.

"It's locked," he said.

She paid no attention to him, banging on the door with the
heel of her fist.

"I've done that," he said.

She did not feel embarrassed by the obdurate door or even
the futility of the exercise. It was simply something that had never happened
before and that was quite enough to challenge her courage. Her rigid new life
had not prepared her for sudden changes.

"The librarian is probably late," he volunteered
politely. "It happens sometimes," he said.

She stood on the upper landing, feeling foolish. She
wondered if she should turn and walk home, but that, too, would be a break in
her routine, something to fear.

"I see you here all the time," the man said as
she continued to face the door. "You're doing some research, I
suppose." She resisted the urge to nod her head, hoping he would go away. Once
she had made it a point to avoid doing what was deliberately rude. That, too,
had been thrown away with her old life. But the man was not to be put off.

"It's strange that such a beautiful library would have
so little use by others," he said. "But perhaps at night. In any
event, I'm glad I found it. It's a perfect place to work, don't you
think?"

His voice seemed soft, velvety in the crisp air. She hoped
the librarian would come soon.